My wife is huge fan of media that takes place in the 1800s, and while watching shows like Little House on the Prairie, Dr. Quinn, or the various Yellowstone prequels, I started thinking about living in those times, and specifically, living with ADHD.
I don’t know if this is necessary but: I’m not trying to insult or shame here. We all know that we have challenges, and whatever comes after this, or possibly in the comments, is just assumptions on what these challenges looked like through the lens of your typical person in the 1800s.
That being said, I suspect that there wasn’t a lot of successful ADHDers in history.
Imagine living out on the prairie, and animals need fed and milked daily. The crops need planted by a certain time in order to to be ready for harvest, but not too early that they’ll frost and die, and they also need frequent attention. A trip to your neighbors takes twenty minutes and going into town takes two hours. Preparing a complicated meal can be an all day process, and not even basic meals can be tossed together in less than an hour. No refrigeration means no stocking up on perishables, and leftovers are only good for a few hours. And to top it all off, nobody has ever heard of ADHD, let alone any medication, therapy or understanding for it.
Thinking about myself in those situations, I’d especially miss my phone: Reminders, calendars, alarms, being able to look back at what was said in a email or text conversation, and being able to pay my bills or check my bank account the moment I think about them, no matter where I am. I feel like I’d be lost and forgetting everything all the time.
Makes me wonder if the cliche Town Drunk character has ADHD. Chasing dopamine and is able to get by well enough that he can buy his booze and a bed to sleep in, but he’s never really able to keep his shit together long enough to get any further ahead.
Not sure where I intended the conversation to go, but it was something I was thinking about, and I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on the topic. Could you have survived in the 1800s? Are there any careers that ADHD might have been helpful, or at least not as debilitating?
I actually think it would be the opposite. I imagine during the American push west it drew the novelty seekers, the people who weren’t afraid of change and dynamic settings. Neurotypical people would probably stay home. Also, a study from 2024 had results that favored ADHD people when they had to perform a foraging simulation. The impulse to move on and explore is well suited to it. My family has started trying to do a little homesteading, and wow the skills that are involved and the amount of problem solving means there is always something new to do. We are constantly challenged to work with our hands to find creative and affordable solutions. Animals and dependents create external accountability. Deadlines aren’t just meaningless bullshit on a calendar, they are real things that become vitally important enough to awaken the “panic monster”. I’m sure there would be struggles for an ADHD person to do everything, but this was also a time where no one would be doing it alone. Farms and homesteads would hardly ever be a “nuclear family” mom/dad/kid unit. You would have had grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, transient labor, etc etc. The homestead would have a dozen or more people on it, so if you had executive issues with cooking but a hyper fixation on gardening, there would be other people to cover for you. If you were having trouble getting started on something, another household member might get everything needed together and then get you to help them do it instead.
I’m not going to try to sell it as a paradise or perfect existence but I do think that societies and communities used to have a lot more flexibility to accomodate neurospicy individuals. This era we find ourselves in is unique because we have never had so many households of so few people. Throughout history we have had tribes and communities and big households, and neurodivergent people were given a place because they were family members and a part of those communities. Now we are all expected to fend for ourselves completely alone, of course we can’t do it all.
Those are great points!
I know the panic monster can make me pull off some incredible feats when he comes a knocking.