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?
ADHD likey helped us in the wild , but hinders us in a society that needs to eek out every bit of cognitive ability to be harnessed by a very rigid system that is very opinionated about how we can contribute. Back then there was probably less incentive to deny your natural affinities instead of something more lucrative. As an ADHD’r I see something familiar in the journals of Davinci, but also in the eyes of the gold rush 49ers.
It’s almost like humans have existed for thousands to millions of years longer than large civilizations or something.