Did last night end in a quick drink-or-three to decompress after a stressful day? No judgement here. That used to be me.

I hear this daily from single mums running on empty.

From high-fliers in careers that take everything they’ve got.

I hear it from those in enmeshed family dynamics which suck the life out of them with their expectations and guilting.

And, I hear it regularly from people who look completely fine from the outside but are hanging on by a thread behind closed doors.

(Just quietly, I think I ticked all of those boxes).

Accountability. Does the word make you cringe? Instantly conjure up feelings of unwanted control or pressure?

If you’ve got a rebellious streak with a side of ADHD (ahem, guilty) then you probably really don’t like being told what to do and might already be side-eyeing me.

But the kind of accountability I’m talking about is different. And I’ve found it’s often the missing piece in making sustainable change including my own.

That’s because as humans we tend to do better when we know someone supportive is ‘watching’.

For example:

💪🏼We go to gym classes as being with others motivates us and we don’t want to be the one who walks out after 10 minutes (whereas left to our own devices we might just do that)

💪🏼We know we’re more inclined to meet a deadline when we there are consequences like failing a subject (whereas self-directed and paced learning is a ‘tomorrow’ proposition)

💪🏼We know we’re less likely to drink alcohol if we’re part of a group of people we’ve been doing that with and we’re going to see them in a day or two.

If you've ever wondered why your relationship with alcohol feels harder than it seems to be for everyone else, it’s because with ADHD it is.

You’re not imagining it, you’re not making excuses, it is.

This makes ‘just having one’ often feel impossible. Here’s why and what to do.

When drinking becomes a habit, the brain changes in measurable ways. For ADHDers, the stakes are even higher.

A 2019 major research review published in the Journal of Neuroscience Research pulled together decades of brain-imaging studies to show what actually happens in the brain when drinking becomes a struggle … and what happens when you stop.