By Paul Sinclair, Managing Director of Mind Matters. One of fewer than 200 Compassionate Inquiry practitioners certified by Dr Gabor Maté, working primarily with high achievers on trauma, addiction, and the patterns beneath both.
In this piece: why ADHD and addiction are cellmates rather than cousins, the dopamine story underneath the ‘willpower’ story, what the research says about the 50 percent figure, Gabor Maté’s hungry-ghost framework, and what healing looks like when ‘cured’ is not on the menu.
Table Of Contents:
- Cellmates, Not Cousins
- Hyperfocus Is the Cruel Party Trick
- Half of All ADHD Adults End Up Here
- Gabor Maté and the Hungry Ghost
- Frequently Asked Questions About ADHD and Addiction
There’s a strange thing about addiction and ADHD. It’s odd; it’s like waking up with panties on and wondering whether to make tea or scream, which is strange. They aren’t cousins at the family barbecue, they’re cellmates handcuffed together, one with a matchbox, the other with a can of petrol. I’ve shared a bunk bed with both. I’ve tried to medicate one without feeding the other and ended up fuelling them both. Tried to outrun them and ended up tripping over my own shadow. It’s not poetic. It’s just how it is.
Cellmates, Not Cousins
ADHD, for those lucky enough to have missed the memo, isn’t simply a matter of being “a bit forgetful” or “quirky.” It’s living with a brain wired like an overclocked microwave, full of sparks and electromagnetic radiation. You’re there, but you’re not there. It’s a relentless inner restlessness, an itch you can’t scratch, the background hum of a thousand faulty smoke alarms. And addiction? Addiction doesn’t kick down the door; it slips under it like a poisonous gas, whispering, “Let’s make all this easier, shall we?”
In my own experience, addiction never showed up as some neat diagnosis or tidy origin story. It wasn’t a disease I caught or a bad habit I picked up for fun. It was an answer, a messy, desperate response to pain I didn’t know how to name. It was what made life bearable when my ADHD had my nervous system treating the world like a war zone. Not a moral failing. Not a weakness. Just a way to stand still when everything inside me was screaming run.
As Managing Director of Mind Matters, I’ve spent part of my life knee-deep in the mess, helping others while trying to keep my ship from sinking. My sarcasm, dark humour, and irony have been my life rafts, the only compass I’ve trusted. When you’re living inside a collapsing circus tent, dodging the knives you threw at yourself, keeping your sense of humour is the only way to stay sane without torching the rest.
Hyperfocus Is the Cruel Party Trick
The ADHD brain is wired differently. And before anyone jumps in with that word “neurodivergent”, save it. I hate that label with the heat of a thousand suns. Sounds like something dreamed up by a PR department desperately trying to make a cancer sound quirky. ADHD isn’t some charming difference. It’s a chemical lottery that some of us lost. It’s not about willpower or grit. It’s about dopamine. that elusive, slippery courier of pleasure and reward. In a so-called “neurotypical” brain, dopamine appears like a loyal postman. In mine, it arrives three days late, pissed, and missing the parcels.
And before we go any further, let’s strangle a few old myths, because if you think ADHD is just about being ‘distracted’ or ‘lazy’, you’ve clearly never spent a day inside this particular asylum.
Take focus, for example. People love to trot out the old line that people like me “can’t focus.” Bollocks. We can focus alright. Hyperfocus is the cruel party trick of ADHD; give me something that sets my brain on fire, like psychedelics, for instance, and I’ll disappear into it for twelve hours without blinking. Forget food, forget sleep, forget basic hygiene. But park me in front of a spreadsheet or one of those corporate meetings where the biscuits are the highlight, and I’m out the window before the PowerPoint loads. It’s not that we can’t focus; it’s that we can’t fake it. If it doesn’t spark something real inside us, our brains down tools and storm off the job. And no amount of motivational posters or pastel-coloured planners will change that.
So what do we do? We look elsewhere. We self-medicate. Sugar, nicotine, alcohol, gambling, shopping, cocaine, sex, writing articles, whatever it is, it’s an IV drip for a brain that otherwise feels like it’s dying.
The darker science: addiction, in its unholy wisdom, rewires the brain’s reward system further. Chronic substance use dulls dopamine receptors, reducing the brain’s ability to experience pleasure from everyday activities even more. So if your ADHD was a garden starved of water, addiction takes a flamethrower to it. You’re not just chasing dopamine; you’re now trying to catch a dopamine hit that’s even more elusive than ever.
In effect, ADHD makes you vulnerable to addiction, and addiction makes your ADHD worse, like trying to put out a grease fire with a bucket of petrol.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been praised for being “fun,” “spontaneous,” “full of life,” when I was sprinting across a crumbling bridge, praying no one would notice the cracks. Addiction and ADHD dress themselves up as the life of the party, but underneath, it’s a hostage note scrawled in invisible ink.
People think of addiction as excess, of having too much of something. In reality, it’s the deep, gnawing absence of something. Connection. Safety. Calm. Presence. And ADHD magnifies that absence like a sadistic carnival mirror. Every moment of forgetfulness, every missed appointment, every social faux pas, they stack up like unpaid bills, until you’re living under the crushing weight of your own failure. And the bottle, the pill, the next “one last hit,” they’re the crowbars we use to prise ourselves out, knowing full well the ceiling’s coming down anyway.
Half of All ADHD Adults End Up Here
The comorbidity rates tell their own grim story. Research suggests that up to 50% of adults with ADHD will struggle with substance use disorders at some point. Researchers at Hannover Medical School in Germany, led by Martin Ohlmeier, reported in 2008 that 50.8% of the adults they assessed with ADHD had a comorbid dependence disorder, exactly the pattern I see in the clinic every week. Half. That’s not a coincidence; that’s an epidemic hiding in plain sight. And what do we do about it? We treat ADHD with weapons-grade amphetamines…
I remember my first real brush with addiction. Thirteen, with a mind like a kicked over beehive. I didn’t recognise it then, but what I stumbled into that night wasn’t just a drink, it was a real coping mechanism. The first proper drink I had was like slipping into a cathedral of silence after years of living in an air raid. The buzz, the warm wash, the sheer blessed absence of static. That night, I realised alcohol wasn’t the threat; it was the sanctuary. Or at least, it looked that way then.
It’s hard to articulate the kind of self-betrayal that happens when you know exactly what’s happening and yet still dive headfirst into it, like knowing the floor is covered with glass and choosing to dance barefoot. It’s not stupidity. It’s survival wearing its most convincing mask.
Gabor Maté and the Hungry Ghost
Gabor Maté, the Canadian physician I trained under directly, writes in his 2008 book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts about hungry ghosts, beings cursed with vast, empty bellies and mouths too small to feed themselves. Addiction and ADHD together are the physical embodiment of the hungry ghost. The hunger is cosmic; the methods of feeding it are pitiful. A line here, a drink there, it’s like trying to build a house with papier mache.
One of the universe’s darker jokes is that the things that offer temporary relief dig the pit even deeper. You’re lonely, so you use. Using isolates you further. You’re bored and lonely, so you binge. Now you’re bored, ashamed and lonely. ADHD makes long-term thinking as useful as a chocolate fireguard, locking you into an endless loop of firefighting your biblical fallout.
And then there’s the shame. Thick as old mustard, clinging to every part of you. Shame is the secret fuel of addiction, the acid that corrodes every “fresh start” you ever tried to make. You can’t outwit shame. You can’t bully it into submission. It’s like trying to wrestle a spirit. The only thing that works is dragging it into the light and daring to look at it without fainting.
If all this sounds a bit like a horror story, that’s because it often is. But it’s not the only story. Gabor teaches that healing isn’t about hammering yourself into enlightenment; it’s about understanding you were built perfectly for the wrong battlefield. It’s about laying down arms.
In my version of recovery, a word I still eye the way you’d eye a suspiciously cheap parachute, I’ve found the only way forward is a brutal, messy connection. Real connection. The kind that doesn’t flinch when you turn up shattered and stinking of failure. It’s hard. It’s also the only thing that feels remotely real anymore.
If there is one, the trick is to stop fantasising about becoming someone else, to stop waiting for a brain transplant or different wiring. It’s to honour your battered, brilliant self and build from there, using the wonky materials you’ve got.
There are days now when I catch myself mid-pattern, hand halfway to a ghost drink, brain halfway to a vanishing act. The impulse still hums in the walls, like an old electricity supply you forgot to turn off. But now there’s a choice, a breath, a pause, a beat. Sometimes it’s enough.
Healing doesn’t mean being cured. It means you’re no longer chained to the same tracks. It means you can hear the train coming and decide not to lie down in front of it. Most days, anyway.
Addiction and ADHD together are like being sold a ticket to a train wreck at the end of the cosmos, one-way only, no refunds. They teach you how to dance on broken glass and call it resilience. This isn’t survival; it’s sabotage in a party hat and clown shoes. They are not your fault. They’re the echoes of wounds you didn’t inflict. They’re the smoke from fires you didn’t start.
So you live with it. We live with it. (Thank you for staying, Nadine, when everyone else ran.)
You work with your head rather than against it. You find small ways to patch up the holes that don’t involve sinking the ship. You breathe. You forgive yourself for the wreckage you sometimes still cause. Slowly, miraculously, you start to see that you’re not broken, you’re magnificent for still being here.
Because if ADHD and addiction have taught me anything, it’s this: survival isn’t some profound life lesson wrapped in a hashtag. It’s crawling from the wreckage of your own making and a grin that says, “Well, that could’ve been worse.”
It’s patching yourself up with whatever’s lying around, gaffer tape, gallows humour, and a cup of tea you forgot you made. It’s not graceful, and it’s definitely not Instagrammable. But it’s real. And maybe, just, maybe, it’s enough to call it a win.
If you recognise yourself in any of this, and you are ready to stop white-knuckling, book a conversation with me. We will not pretend it is graceful. We will work with what you have got.
Frequently Asked Questions About ADHD and Addiction
Are people with ADHD more likely to become addicts?
Yes, substantially. Research suggests up to half of adults diagnosed with ADHD will develop a substance use disorder at some point in their lives. A 2008 German study by Ohlmeier and colleagues found 50.8% of adults with ADHD had a comorbid dependence disorder. Dopamine regulation is the suspected mechanism. ADHD plus trauma raises the risk further. If this pattern sounds like yours, get in touch. We can start with a conversation.
Why does ADHD lead to addiction?
The short answer is dopamine. The ADHD brain produces or processes less of it, so it hunts harder for dopamine-triggering rewards. Alcohol, cocaine, sugar, gambling, shopping, sex. All deliver dopamine hits. An ADHD brain starved of reliable dopamine is biologically primed to self-medicate. That is not weakness. That is pharmacology. Understanding the mechanism is the first step. The next one is getting support.
What are hungry ghosts in addiction theory?
Hungry ghosts are a Buddhist metaphor adopted by Dr Gabor Maté in his 2008 book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. The hungry ghost has a vast, empty belly and a mouth too small to feed itself. Addiction works exactly that way: cosmic hunger, pitiful methods of feeding it. I trained under Gabor Maté directly. The hungry-ghost lens is central to how I work.
Does treating ADHD with stimulants cause addiction?
The research is mixed. Recent meta-analyses suggest stimulant treatment for ADHD does not increase substance use disorder risk, and may slightly reduce it. That said, my view is that handing refined amphetamines to a brain already prone to addictive patterns deserves care, not routine prescription. Ask hard questions before you fill the script. Always work with a qualified clinician on medication decisions. Never self-adjust stimulants.
Can you recover from ADHD and addiction at the same time?
You have to. Treating one without the other usually means feeding the one you ignored. I have lived both sides of that mistake. Recovery here is not a finish line. It is learning to work with your wiring, tolerate the dopamine drought, and build the kind of connection that stops you reaching for the crowbar. If that is the kind of work you are ready for, book a conversation with me.
References
- Maté, G. (2008). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. North Atlantic Books.
- Maté, G. (1999). Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder. Vintage Canada.
- Ohlmeier, M. D., Peters, K., Te Wildt, B. T., Zedler, M., Ziegenbein, M., Wiese, B., Emrich, H. M., & Schneider, U. (2008). Comorbidity of alcohol and substance dependence with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Alcohol and Alcoholism, 43(3), 300-304. https://doi.org/10.1093/alcalc/agn014
Paul Sinclair
Paul, Managing Director at Mind Matters, specialises in mental health, trauma, and psychedelic-assisted therapy. He has trained under Dr. Gabor Maté, a renowned expert in trauma and addiction, and has also undergone extensive training in psychedelic-assisted therapy. Paul's diverse background as an elite military unit member, top athlete, and successful entrepreneur informs his unique approach to transforming ingrained patterns of thought and behaviour. He has trained thousands of individuals, and over 20,000 development and mental health professionals follow his teachings on LinkedIn. Paul believes in the power of resilience and personal transformation, drawing from his journey to inspire and guide his clients.
