Impulsivity is one of the most talked about symptoms of ADHD which is testament to its variance, not just within ADHD but in the broader scope of human behaviour. I have long seen myself as an extremely impulsive person who regularly made decisions without reflecting, without assessing risk and without acknowledging its impact on my goals in life. The amount of regret and shame I’ve had to face aligns with my belief that impulsiveness has hurt my life more than any other aspect of ADHD.
Whilst not the most significant problem I’ve had to deal with, food has arguably been the longest struggle in my life and I hold vivid memories of a difficult relationship with food as far back as primary school. I remember being in Year 3 or 4 and eating my packed lunch on the way to school nearly every single day. The teacher caught wind of this one day and made me have lunch with her, at which point I don’t remember much else other than eating a green apple and being overly petrified that she’d call home and stitch me up.
Impulsivity isn’t just acting without thinking, it’s acting in a way that doesn’t fully acknowledge a future with consequences. I’ve always been a person who eats a lot, and at 16/17 I started to slowly gain weight. It’s since fluctuated in the 15 years that followed, leaving me today at 115kg.
I’ve always had difficulty in resisting urges around food, namely not being able to say no when attractive propositions are placed in front of me. Even now, if I were placed in a position where a takeaway every day of that week was feasible, I would be jumping for joy. I enjoy cooking too and aside from being a little limited in my range I generally do okay with it. Day-to-day problems with food consumption are centered around portion sizes and rationing which led to difficulties having smaller meals or making treats last longer. Even if I survive the impulse once, I’m presented with it again and it’s often a matter of time before I crumble. Snacks and sweet treats are eaten within an hour, rather than the few days they were intended for and demonstrates how instant gratification in ADHD can be a big, big driver of behaviour.
Alcohol consumption has also played host to silly decisions made in the moment. I’ve never classed myself as a frequent drinker; perhaps once a month I would have a drink but it’d be a binge, buying a bottle of Jack Daniels and drinking it over a couple of nights before not touching it again for a month. Not being able to stop myself when drinking was a familiar occurrence before I began medication. There’s a lot of times I’d be the one to be written off on a night out or be hugging the toilet at home because I simply didn’t know when to stop, and that one more drink would always be appealing.
Events big and small in my life have reflected impulse or pleasure-seeking behaviours which have landed me in trouble. I remember an argument with my Mam when I was 16 and I walked out of the house in a huff. As I walked past her car, I felt this pulse of rage and proceeded to drive my foot through her wing mirror, shattering it into pieces. Similar on-the-spot outbursts have occurred throughout my life, one of which resulting in a Police caution for criminal damage.
The way that impulsivity and emotional regulation can work together means that some behaviours are aimed directly at other people when faced with emotional triggers. It can lead to becoming sensitive to certain situations or reacting in an intense way to anything I experience as adverse. In school it led to a lot of fighting, often for ridiculous reasons.
It led to difficult moments at work too. I remember being sacked in my first role at McDonalds when I was 16 for having food fights with other staff members and giving away free food. I walked out of other roles on the spot after having disagreements which rubbed me up the wrong way and I just couldn’t move forward and process the anger or disappointment I felt.
More recently, I walked out of a role in 2022 after being called for a performance review by a manager who I very rarely seen during my 14 months there. I was raging, and that rage resulted in me quickly typing out a resignation letter in which I criticised their broader ability as a manager. There was barely a pause to consider my actions as I swiftly sent it to them via email and copied a number of more senior members of staff in, including our programme director. I then continued with my caseload like nothing happened until fulfilling my notice period.
There’s so much I can talk about with impulsiveness; such is the extent to which I unknowingly weaponised it. For nearly ten years I bumped heads with a gambling addiction that dismantled my life repeatedly and had me feeling the weakest I’ve ever felt in my life. The days I planned not to gamble ended with heartbreak because I played blind to my triggers and remained vulnerable every time I set foot out of the door.
My degree was a painful experience where gambling led to me going through cycles of not paying bills or going without food which threatened to interfere with my studies in a way that I couldn’t remedy. I’m not afraid to say that I shoplifted a couple of times to feed myself whilst at the same time writing a dissertation on how prisoners found it difficult to reintegrate back into society upon release.
The catalyst for my change was gambling £5000 not long after I started my Masters degree. That day is etched into my memory and I’ll never forget driving back to my flat, stepping through the door and just bursting into tears, but it was the last time I ever gambled. Whilst the broader landscape of my gambling is anchored around compulsive behaviour, the many day-to-day instances of self-destruction represented the core of impulsive behaviour.
Despite it marking the start of my journey away from gambling I still faced significant debt and no job. It took time to get back on my feet and into work, but debt began piling up even further as I had credit cards and wasn’t burdened with an addiction, so for the first time in my whole life I felt like I had money. I was ordering takeaways regularly as well as other junk food, constantly feeding that impulse and doing little to stop myself as I enjoyed the feeling of spending money after gambling regularly emptied my bank account for nearly a decade.
Money then became a source of frustration in the several years after where my ambitions of getting out of debt and getting a mortgage were obstructed by ridiculous decisions with money that were putting me further in debt. I had 5 credit cards at one point and kept blaming my debt to losses I accumulated through gambling when in reality my debt continued to climb long after I stopped. Financing ridiculous cars without truly considering whether I could afford it happened on a few separate occasions whilst I continued making minimum payments on other debt. Between that and poor day-to-day choices, any unforeseen expenditure or purchases needed after running out of money were dumped on credit cards which caused my debt to surge further.
Me and my partner made the decision to move in with her parents whilst we sorted ourselves out and saved to buy a home. I was excited at the possibility of a fresh start, having got rid of my car 6 months prior to that which freed up a lot of money. Within a month of moving, I had handed the resignation in to that job I talked about earlier, and THEN went and financed a £17’000 BMW with absolutely no reassurances that I was going to find work. But I did find work a month later, and lasted 3 weeks before deciding it wasn’t for me and left the role quickly. So, what did I do after that? Spent 6 months delivering food on the likes of Uber Eats and Just Eat in a ridiculous 3-litre diesel car that was costing a fortune. Impulse decision after impulse decision, completely ignorant to it.
And the driving itself? One of the worst things about me as a person before I began medication. Snap decisions to accommodate thrill-seeking behaviour and aggressive reactions to other drivers who infuriated me have resulted in many situations where I’ve put not only myself in danger but other road users too. The urge to act without thinking of consequences also seen me evade Police who tried to pull me over for speeding, an urge that the majority would have resisted fairly easily. There was a time where I made a similar decision in an area I wasn’t familiar with and drove straight into an industrial dead end, much to their amusement as they handed me a Section 59 warning and watched me leave with my tail between my legs. Driving has been one of the biggest improvements since beginning medication and thankfully I no longer feel like I’m a continuous risk to myself and others.
When I began medication in the summer of 2024 it was a surreal experience looking back. It was also a key point in a shift of my attitude towards money. Whilst £5000 in negative equity I took a loan out to address that and sold my car a day later. It was a great but necessary decision and we completed on our first home together three months ago, in addition to being on course to be free of consumer debt by January 2027.
Whilst this is a big reveal into some of my struggles with impulsivity, I felt it necessary in a space such as this to really show who I am. It’s a capacity every human has, but the consistent lack of any meaningful space between a trigger and acting on the impulse that follows has resulted in a life that’s been littered with stupid, reckless and dangerous decisions. There is so much more that I could have talked about too.
I’ll try to end on a good note though. Being impulsive has often fuelled a desire to be funny in the right environments and, as I stared straight into my partner’s eyes one random night before smashing a full tub of garlic sauce straight off my forehead, I knew that not being able to deviate from the first and often most ridiculous thought in some contexts is an absolute gift, contrary to what you’ve read here.