Here’s a thought that fell upon me[1], last night, in those wee frosty, dark and restless hours: sleep is immensely important for everyone but it is even more so for us with ADHD[2] simply because we typically suffer from difficulties directing and commanding our attention and train-of-thought, whilest awake, and sleep, bringing dreams, brings relief.

When I do find myself struggling with control over attention – including getting lost in thoughts, inability to focus, inability to disengage and a propensity to obsess on topics – I also notice that I have absolutely no ability to let my mind drift and sort through the things that are challenging or bothering me, or it, in any kind of cathartic or therapeutic way.

I imagine that that’s what the sleeping mind does and, even more so, that is what the dreaming mind does: sift and sieve thoughts and experiences and memories.

It’s probably also succour for one’s corporeal body. Anyone post-puberty (or sufficiently far embroiled in it) knows that one’s body’s wants manifest in their dreams. Conversely, I know that my ADHD can see my waking self so sunk into a mire of focus that I can go without food or water, without sleep, end up borderline hyperthermic from sitting still or failing to notice that I’m inadequately dressed, even carrying a painfully over-bloated bladder.

Watching neuro-typical people in my life, I observe that they often daydream or muse wanderingly through their ideas as they go about their lives. None of them say they identify with my tales of ignoring my physical well-being in favour of black-holes of thought. Most of them even appear to be able to think about nothing at all at times: something I certainly could never do when I’m awake and sober.

I’ve heard some say that things like music or yoga or running are requirements for them to do this. Some say the television needs to be on but they’re not really watching it. Believe it or not: I even have neuro-diverse friends who use distraction-scrolling, online, to free their minds to mindless musings.

Those concepts are anathema to me. I find music to be exhausting despite loving it: if music is playing, you can be 100% certain that my attention will be focussed solely on it and its harmonies and musicality and dynamics and mood and message. [3] Similar things I could write about the others and scrolling must surely be worst of all.

So, for me, I think that sleep is my brain’s only chance to drift and my dreams are its only sand-box in which to play. [4]

Could one call such drifting and playfulness unnecessary for healthy human life? I shouldn’t think so.

I think that slumber offers the same to others who are either free of ADHD-related specialities, or are living with a different set, but they are rich with other chances to sort their thoughts[5] that are impossible for people like me.

Hence my unproven argument for the heightened importance and necessity of sleep for those with ADHD.

How could I back up this argument with citation? Have you any? Have you read anything of relevance or an opinion to put forth?

What could we conclude as a consequence? Perhaps this is the seed of an argument that any wholistic tackling of ADHD should necessarily amplify its emphasis on nurturing sleep and dream-time and warding against insomnia. [6]

Perhaps I am completely off the mark. [7]

Where shall we go with this, Beehaw? Throw your ideas into this petri-dish.


  1. Hello, Beehaw, and well met. Servus. Wazzup. ‘habe d’ Ehre. [8] I’m new here. I thought I’d just jump right in and make this – my first post – a proper challenging one. Testing the waters by diving into the deep end, as it were… I don’t know you but please Be(e) nice and help me add a “yet” on to that statement. ↩︎

  2. Ugh. I hate that acronym. I hate that label. ↩︎

  3. I cannot listen to the vast majority of over-produced podcasts or shows because of this. I would play a talk- or discussion-show for the ideas being discussed but my brain just goes, “oh, music!” and the words are reduced to noise. ↩︎

  4. I do enjoy games and many creative pursuits, too, but those waking hobbies are invariably approached with intense focus and presence. It takes active effort to prevent them from consuming me – see previous ramblings about forgetting I have a bladder. ↩︎

  5. Let me point out that I only experience ADHD-related inabilities to steer my attention the majority of the time. Sometimes – albeit rarely – I’m actually fine so I know what it feels like to be awake-but-drifting. I’m sure I’ve even meditated, before. ↩︎

  6. I think there is certainly a connection between ADHD and insomnia and finding citations for that would pose no challenge. Sleep-disruption is also listed amongst the side-effects of every ADHD medication’s package-insert that I’ve ever read. ↩︎

  7. I certainly do not mean to reinforce an us-and-them mentality or “claim” sleep for ADHD people in any way. I am simply intrigued by the idea that one could posit that sleep is of even-more importance and therefore more worthy of ever-more consideration. [9] ↩︎

  8. There. That’s about covered all the good greetings I can dredge up from the lands I’ve called, “home.” ↩︎

  9. Of course, I would argue that sleep goes tragically ignored in every population, beyond the charlatans peddling hacks and gimmicks. Today’s hypothetical does nothing to deny that. ↩︎

  • I agree with your assessment and relate to the experience of suddenly finding your body is crying out with needs. I have often got really into something and then came out of it dry-mouthed, tired, cold and in desperate need of a stretch and bathroom break.

    Sleeping is a welcome relief sometimes. I often find it helps when I’m feeling really burnt out, because that’s often a sign (for me) of overfull mental RAM. I’ve got to many things queued up and they need to be dropped, but it’s impossible to do that without the almighty resetting power of full unconsciousness.

    I have been trying out some things recommended by my therapist- namely, trying to use my experience with writing and roleplaying to create opportunities for my subconscious thoughts to be expressed. Mostly this means mentally writing dialogue about something important and letting whatever immediately comes to mind fill out one half of it. It’s been kind of helpful for regulating my emotions and coping with rejection dysphoria.

    Thanks for this post, it was nice to read.

    • Your therapist is onto something. It is a technique that I often use and have used all my life with some undeniable level of success.

      I’m something of an author and certainly a proponent of vivid imagination and imaginings: story-telling in one’s mind. Drifting away into the realm of subconscious thought is often fun and cathartic even when it doesn’t lead to drifting off and, when it does, it often precipitates those most vivid and memorable of dreams in my experience. The practice is also widely applicable in other scenarios: visualisation can help regulate emotions and cope with adversity. It can be a catalyst for arousal or passion. It can help you maintain composure when you need to perform: I use this, myself, on the tennis court, rock face, dance-floor or stage.

      All of this is good. If this technique brings you more success than I and that suffices to prevent a build-up of chronic and disabling sleep deprivation, over time, then sleep well! That’s all I could wish you.

      Normal sleepers cannot understand insomnia – this is the paradox.

      Normal sleepers are sometimes afflicted with unwelcome wakefulness and cannot comprehend the impact insomnia has on the insomniac’s quality of life. They do not experience the loss of quality of life due to sleeplessness but they do experience the acute discomfort of unwelcome wakefulness on occasion and the drag of exhaustion, afterwards, when they’re sleep deprived and, so, they reduce the insomniac’s complaint to mere impatience with being awake or dismiss it as a lack of fortitude when feeling tired. They conclude that the cure for insomnia is falling asleep.

      They fail to realise that no matter how much of a relief it may be, sleep is not the main event: an insomniac wishes to wake up and feel well rested.

      With reference to my original post (that is: in this thread. elsewhere: I have written more) the ADHD insomniac wishes to wake up and feel as if, while at rest, their brain sorted the clutter within their mind that they could never have hoped to approach while awake, leaving peace and space to approach a new chapter of consciousness free from yesterday’s overwhelm.

      With reference to a long period of my adult life: the insomniac sometimes doesn’t even know what “well rested” feels like. They live in a world that stresses productivity and resilience and fortitude and overcoming hardship through determination. They’ve been rising at the wrong time of day since their teens, needing to be at school at the earliest hours, and indoctrinated into believing that that is normal. They drink six cups of coffee before noon and wonder why their hand shakes when they try to write. They quip: “sleep when you’re dead.” They think they were born ready and will answer every call. They sink into depression. The insomniac does not know that there is any other way to live until that RAM… ¬

      Your analogy with RAM is apt; I’ve made it, myself, before. Do you know what a process can do when it runs out of RAM? I’ll spare you the details. But that’s what happened to me. I’m OK, today.

      Or, rather, I’m not OK but I have achieved a very poor and shoddy steady-state that is keeping me alive and affords me a few nights of sleep per week. This is the hard-restart every five-to-seven days that lets me clear the RAM but I feel that the memory-leak goes untreated and remains an intrinsic foible or my individual ADHD melange. I continue to seek a better and more sustainable solution but I am up against a system that does not understand that about which I write so many words, so passionately.

      I know how to make certain cogs turn in the machine and the machine prescribes pills. Pills are a mixed bag. The vast majority do nothing of use and cause unwanted side-effects. Of those I have tried, those that induce sleep with any degree of efficacy do so in a way that meets only the normal sleeper’s needs: they facilitate falling asleep but do not lead to awakening well-rested or improved quality of life the day after. They do not allow my ADHD brain to dream and sort and sift my thoughts like I feel natural slumber allows.

      There is one exception but even it is highly stochastic – sometimes failing to have any effect at all. It’s also addictive and has a non-zero street value so I can only get it prescribed in quantities that allow me to take it about once or twice a week – hence my steady state. (I am loath to complain because I am still alive and doing science.)

      In case my vague description of “quality of life” is hard to parse, here’s another anecdote: having any chance to sleep intensively, even once or twice a week, has all but cured a growing alcohol addiction that I frankly didn’t notice. I was approaching a bottle of cheapest wine a night, alone. I drink no more than half a dozen beers a month, now. I did not join a movement or group or start a twelve-step programme. I acknowledge that these groups and twelve-step programmes are disproportionately effective and save countless lives but, for me, they were not needed after I realised that I actually enjoyed experiencing and remembering the best moments in my life when I felt awake and vigorous enough to be present for them and, conversely, I did not enjoy being drunk and missing them, throwing up, falling over in the middle of city streets while walking home (across the entire city because I was too drunk to do anything else) and having nothing but a headache the next day.

      Alcohol doesn’t make me sleepy, either. I did not turn away from alcohol because I had substituted it. It never served that purpose. If anything, alcohol makes me irritable and fidgety and hyperactive in a restless and annoying way – not sleepy.

      I set the bottle aside simply because I started having fun, being awake, and forgot about drink. Quality of life means being awake and aware of waking life and that distracted me from the vice. I still drink, very occasionally, but only when “life” happens to coincide with an event that lends itself to enjoying a beer – after a few hours in the bouldering gym, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, for example – seldom, appropriate to occasion, and by choice, never by habit.

      This is why this topic is dear to my heart and I wrote the original post. I’ll be the first to admit that I have drifted from the point, here, but, perhaps, you find this intriguing to read, too. (I’ve just ended another trial with different antidepressant medication that was supposed to also assist with insomnia – the outcome was disappointing on all counts – and also just ended yet another season of psychotherapy, also with disappointing outcomes, so I was in an opinionated mood when I chose to reply.)

      If your imagination proves able to lull your mind – sleep well. The exercise is never bad.

      • I don’t have an adequate response to this, I just want to you know it’s an incredibly beautiful post that really haunts me (positive) with the rich mood underlying it. The stream of thoughts is beautifully presented and feels so resonant to me that I found it captivating.

        Thank you so much for writing this. I’ll try to form a more standard response, but I’ve been glancing at this post for a while now and not even knowing how to begin. I wanted to let you know I found it artful and affecting.