I could have been a billionaire but my brain got in the way

God, I’m expensive. Not in a chic way. Not even in a distasteful bourgeois way.

I’m not talking about my skincare regimen, my mortgage, my Afterpay balance, or the little indulgences that make life worth living. I mean that the cost of being me — as I am, natural, unmanaged, without intervention — is egregious. Let me explain.



I accidentally fell off my ADHD medication for a little while this year. Pharmaceutical shortages, out-of-date blood tests, executive dysfunction ..

. it all got in the way, and my prescription lapsed. I’m now back in the land of the medicated, focused and quasi-productive, and as I play catch-up with all the admin in my backlog, no matter which way I crunch the numbers, it all comes out to the same result: I just can’t afford to live without my meds.

Credit: Robin Cowcher Recently, when I was scrolling through my transaction history looking for proof that I had paid my water bill in June, I learned two grim things: I definitely had not paid my water bill, and by forgetting to cancel my subscription before the end of the free trial period, I had bought a full year of Fitbit Premium. I don’t even know where my Fitbit is any more. I tagged the payment “ADHD tax”, and I’ve thought of little else since.

What other debts has my diagnosis racked up? Pre- and post-prescription, what else has this differently wired brain cost me? Late payment fees and missed appointments. All the planners I’ve bought over the years, convinced a Moleskin and colourful tabs will turn me Type A overnight. All the hobbies I’ve picked up and then quickly discarded.

Groceries left to rot in the fridge when a zucchini fixation has passed. Jobs I’ve lost or left over chaotic environments and rigid managers, and books I could have written and sold in a fragment of the time; my earning potential peaking and plummeting between states of hyper-focus and complete paralysis. And what about when my dopamine dips and only an order confirmation email can pick it back up again? Were it not for all my little impulse purchases, I could be a megalomaniac billionaire by now.

And then it gets harder to quantify. Loading More than one relationship has fizzled when my scattered brain lost its charm and became grating instead. Important texts that disappear from my immediate field of vision and go unanswered for days — it takes a very good friend to forgive that.

I don’t know how to do the maths on how many feelings have been hurt by my perceived indifference, or how much love has been lost over misunderstandings. To say nothing of my health, and its compounding interest. A cavity that could have been solved with a filling, left unattended, finally required a dental implant.

My right knee sometimes crunches when I walk — how soon before I need a bionic leg? The skin check I keep forgetting to schedule; we all know the true cost of that..