My condition set me back £14,000 a year and nearly cost me my life

In Alex Partridge’s Brighton flat there is a half-full suitcase that remains unpacked from when he went on holiday over a year ago.

He goes shopping every day because the thought of planning more than a day’s meals is beyond him. Each time he will forget his bag for life despite the fact that he has more than a hundred falling out of a cupboard in his untidy flat.

Alex finds organisation difficult. He repeatedly forgets to return calls or complete basic household tasks. But he’s also seen huge success since dropping out of university at 21 to set up social news sites UNILAD and LADBible.

‘My flat is a mess. The rooms are so shameful, you can barely see the floor. The wardrobe is chaotic and I know I’ve got damp laundry in the machine downstairs, which I’ve just remembered to take out; Alex, 36, tells Metro over Zoom, gesturing to heaps of laundry with a self-deprecating smile.

‘But I know exactly where my jeans are, they’re in that pile over there, and I know everything in that pile is clean. But that pile over there needs a wash. It’s embarrassing.’

Shame has been a big part of Alex’s life. When he was unable to answer a question in school at the age of six, the attention caused him to leave the room in a fit of self-consciousness.

In the corridor outside, he pleaded with someone to call an ambulance because he was having a heart attack. It emerged he was having the first of many panic attacks and by the time Alex was 15 he was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and put on beta blockers and antidepressants, which didn’t work.

By 18, he found that alcohol could turn down the volume in his head – although the discovery very nearly killed him.

Alex’s chaotic home is an embodiment of his mind; a creative powerhouse where ideas and projects come and go, some skyrocketing and making millions, while others wither and die as Alex falls out of love with them before they’ve even started.

‘I remember having an idea to do a podcast, and I impulsively spent a fortune on on loads of cameras, dismantled my bed, turned my bedroom into this soundproof studio, hired a director, booked guests, all the cameras arrived and three days later, I had absolutely no interest in doing the podcast anymore,’ he remembers. ‘The person I hired as the director, asked: “When did you get your ADHD diagnosis?”

However, Alex had no clue he had ADHD. He’d always known he was different and that life was ‘an endless cycle of receiving text messages saying “where are you?”’, but even when it impacted every aspect of his life, including his romantic relationships, he didn’t make the link.

‘I would be very impulsive. I can get so excited about going out for dinner, book a table, and then lose interest in the idea while we’re in the taxi going to the restaurant,’ Alex explains.

His partner Tanya, who doesn’t mind the messy flat, has learned to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of his personality. But his ADHD makes him hyper-sensitive to perceived criticism that can leave him crushed at any tiny remark.

‘On one occasion, I was really excited to make Tanya pancakes. And she said something about me putting the ingredients down in the wrong order. And then the excitement instantly disappeared and the whole evening was ruined,’ he explains, while messing with his fiddle stone.

‘I shut down. I almost went non verbal. It was an instant, visceral, physiological response. And that’s just one example of many, and it really causes issues, in this relationship and previous ones.’

It was after the pancake incident that Alex googled ‘Why do I react badly to criticism’ and the browser brought up Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria – a trait of ADHD. As he assessed his past behaviours and experiences, it all started falling into place.

But not before he fell gravely ill through drink.

In 2017 Alex was involved in a major legal dispute over the ownership of the company, and he faced years of legal wrangling culminating in a County Court case which saw him cross-examined in the witness box for five days. He won the case, but the combination of the associated stress – Alex would have to pause proceedings to go and vomit in the bathroom or have panic attacks outside the courtroom – and his ADHD, caused him to seek refuge in alcohol, the only thing he knew could slow his racing thoughts.

Soon, he became a ‘situational alcoholic’, drinking up to three bottles of white wine a day.

His rock bottom came when he woke up in hospital with no memory of how he’d got there. A member of the public had found Alex in an alleyway, passed out and clutching a bottle of vodka. They’d try to help him, but he staggered away, fell and hit his head and ended up in an ambulance.

‘As the nurse was telling me this, I felt overwhelming shame and anxiety. It was unbearable…My parents were told that I could have very nearly died.’

Alex sought the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, gave up drinking in 2018 and found exercise. These days he runs 20km a week to still his mind and has taken on ambitious feats like climbing the Himalayas or running marathons.

But his longest journey yet has been to the AHDH diagnosis, which he finally received two years ago from a psychiatrist who quizzed Alex, his parents and Tanya. After a two-hour consultation over Zoom she told him: ‘You’ll get the full report in a week, but it’s clear as hell to me that you have ADHD.’

By this point, it wasn’t much of a surprise. But the gift of knowledge has given Alex the confidence and perspective to accept all his quirks. He now realises that the condition has brought him creativity, intuition, resilience, bravery, entrepreneurial success and the ability to stay calm in a crisis – amongst other strengths.

And despite his disorganisation and forgetfulness, he gets the vitals done. He thrives running his ADHD Chatter podcast on which he has interviewed more than 150 celebrities, experts and doctors – and has amassed more than 800,000 followers.

Alex is hyper focused on the projects that matter to him. When he founded his news site, for weeks he only left his university bedroom to use the loo, eat and drink. And he has always been able to read people exceptionally well, spotting colleagues having affairs, knowing how others will end their sentences and acting as a ‘human lie detector’.

He also accepts that he may always live with anxiety, but he manages; taking solace in working alone, walking his French bulldog Milo every day and using his toolkit of hacks and coping strategies which Alex lists in his book.

He’s also discovered that ADHD is an expensive affliction. Alex estimates that the condition costs him around £14,000 a year in forgotten parking fines, food he forgets to eat, impulsive buys (a trumpet! A sewing course!), app payments that he forgets to cancel when the free trail is over, new phone screens. And bags for life. He calls this the ADHD tax. But he takes comfort in knowing he’s contributing to the economy.

His diagnosis has been ‘life changing’, which is why Alex is now sharing his story to help other ADHDers, urging them to accept their condition and forgive past mistakes. 

When we tell ourselves “it’s not our fault”, we can strip away the layers of shame that have built up over years of being told we’re broken,’ he explains. ‘The ability to do this comes from a deep understanding of self and an awareness of the fact that you don’t need to change who you are, because who you are is enough.’

Find out more about Alex’s book, Now It All Makes Sense: How An ADHD Diagnosis Brought Clarity To My Life, here.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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