ADHD Liberty: Sarah Templeton

Sarah Templeton is an Best Selling ADHD Author & Activist, CJS ADHD Screening Campaigner & Keynote Speaker, SEND Education Trainer, CEO of ADHD Liberty Charity and Ex Prison Counsellor. She dedicates her life to fighting For ADHD Kids & Adults. Demanding Life-Saving Changes to The Criminal Justice System, The Education System And Everywhere Else ADHD Isn’t Understood all over the Globe.

This LEGEND and fellow Gemini shares her late discovery, double ADHD diagnosis ordeal and the impact the neurodevelopmental condition and commonly co-occurring dyspraxia, dyscalculia and sensory processing issues impact her life.
I am in awe of the work this wonder woman does! THANK YOU SO MUCH SARAH!

Please sponsor Rosie, Darren and all the other LEGENDS cycling from London to Amsterdam to raise funds for Sarah's Charity ADHD Liberty and ADHDadultUK and HERE

Trigger Warning: mentions of triggering topics including: depression, anxiety, ED, alcoholism, addiction, mental health struggles, suicide, suicidal ideation, criminality, incarcaration, car accidents, medical negligence, unemployment, school trauma.
Also contains swearing. 

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We are all in this together.
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Laura x

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Transcript

 Bonjour, my petit filou. I am in France. I'm French AF now. I'm very excited to share this episode with you because it's been a long time coming. I have so much admiration for the work of my next guest. This lady is a bit of a hero of mine. And it was an absolute joy to speak to her. In this podcast I've really wanted to connect people but also to hear a lot of different perspectives.

The ADHD diagnostic crisis that we're in and indeed medication shortages. It's really important to hear all sorts of different opinions. So I was so grateful to Priyanka. Little Miss ADHD for giving us her perspective as an ADHD pharmacist last week. If you've not already listened to that, you can have a listen now.

I've had so much amazing feedback about that. And it was really fantastic to hear her perspective. Oh, also thank you to everybody who loved the last most ADHD things episode. Keep your entries coming. I will share mine at the end of this episode. I've got a very good one, which happened just about an hour ago, but for now, I will leave you with the wonderful Sarah Templeton.

of ADHD Liberty. Enjoy! So  blatantly obvious, the late discovery, diagnosis and treatment at 38 for Severe Combined Type ADHD in 2022, not only improved, but genuinely saved my life, which I have since dedicated to fighting for change amidst the global ADHD crisis.  As the acronym suggests, I swear like a sailor.

And each episode will contain sensitive subject matter, so please always read the description before diving in, where you will also find a link to resources for support. These crucial conversations with experts by lived experience are shared to inform, validate, shame eradicate, and unite the ADHD community, with a fair few laughs along the way.

I've been labelled too much all my life. But finally, I celebrate my too muchness and use my justice sensitivity to let the world know that ADHD presents differently in each individual. Self diagnosis is valid and that ADHD is not a trend. ADHD is real. And I want all ADHDers of all genders to know you are not alone.

The leopard is a symbol of Aberdeen, Scotland, where this podcast began. It also symbolizes bravery, the reclaiming of power, and I'm a total hun. So leopard printners become the uniform of the ADHD AF community, uniting to support each other and push for change, which together we can make happen. We are the leopard.

Hi, I'm Laura and I am ADHD AF. 

We'll start with quick fire questions. Name? Sarah Templeton. Your star sign? Gemini. Me too!  Location? High Wycombe, but everybody always calls it sunny High Wycombe. So sunny High Wycombe.  Is it sunny? No! It's miserable and black. But you still have to call it Sunny Eye Wickham for some reason.  Occupation.

This will be an interesting one. How long are you going? Well, now I would describe myself as an author and activist. And all the A's. ADHD, activist and author. That's what I would like to be able to describe myself as, but I haven't got there yet. I'm a lot older than you.  When I was your age, I wasn't any of those things either.

Trust me.  For fun, your favourite film? Favourite animal? What city in the world are you most like? Oh yeah, never sleeps. Love it. And are you a planner or do you hate planning?  I like planning holidays and I like, I like planning nice events like posh dinners and afternoon teas, but I'm also a bit, um, what's the word?

A bit, uh, oh, what's the word? Well, not, not impulsive, but spontaneous. That's the word. I will spontaneously think, right, sod it. I'm going out to do whatever. I'm going to the cinema tonight. So, A bit of, a bit of both is the answer to that. But the planning is only the nice things, not the horrible things. I agree with that.

Your ADHD diagnosis status, obviously we know that self diagnosis is valid, but where are you at? Oh, I'm combined and diagnosed twice on the NHS because the silly old NHS insisted on diagnosing me twice when I moved 100 miles up the road. First time I was diagnosed inattentive ADHD, I knew nothing about ADHD at the time, so I just accepted it.

Now everybody, when I say that, guffaws and says in a sense, you, you, you! And I'm like, well I didn't know at the time, I just took the paperwork, I didn't know. But then I was diagnosed, combined, so I, my, my official diagnosis is moderate to severe. Combined ADHD. Same! And I just thought that was being a Gemini, hey?

Here we are. Yeah, me too, because Gemini, do you know they say that the Gemini is the most similar sign to ADHD? And a lot of the women that are very well known in the ADHD world in this country, and I will include you in that, now I know you are one, are Gemini's. A lot of them. But you know, it's funny because I always thought that all of those things, impulsivity, being split in different directions, inability to make decisions, excitable chatting.

So in a way, being a Gemini was like a barrier to me realizing that I had. Yeah, I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. I've always thought I was very Gemini, very out there, very, you know, very in people's faces. It's very talkative because we're supposed to be the second most talkative sign of the Zodiac.

Well, I've always been incredibly talkative, never shut up. And I just assumed mine was a lot of Gemini ism to be honest. I did. I really did. So I get you there. Funny. Early or late diagnosis? Very late, 51. And, I mean, you've said you've had to do it twice, so I'm going to say it was a bit of a traumatic process.

Oh, beyond traumatic. I, twice on the NHS, I was told there's no money in the NHS for adult ADHD, go away. Then I went to see a private psychiatrist who told me I couldn't be ADHD because I hadn't been diagnosed as a child. Then I booked him with another psychiatrist, sent him all my notes beforehand. He phoned me up, said, don't even bother coming, you're obviously ADHD, what's your doctor playing at?

I said, well,  he said that, um, I'm going to write to your doctor. And he did. God love this man. I never paid him a penny. He just said, don't bother coming to see me. You're very obviously ADHD. Um, and he wrote to my doctor and suddenly there was money in the NHS for Ad adult, A DHD, because I was referred on the NHS to a, a mental ha health place.

I was living in Paul at the time, and it was for those who know Paul and Bournemouth, they're five miles apart. This hospital was in between Paul and Bournemouth. So there was money in the NHS for adult A DHD services, like three miles up the road. And I was referred. Wow. And we, even when I walked in there, the first thing the psychiatrist said to me was.

Well, I don't think you've got a DHD. Now, bearing in mind at the time I couldn't fit into size 24 clothes I'd given up at 24, I'd gone elastic after that. So I was a probably a size 26, 28 roughly. And he looked at me and said, well, I don't think you're a DHD. And I was like, oh, fuck sake. I said, do, do you mind just reading these notes, the same notes I'd sent to the bloke?

Who'd you.  And, um, he literally read down page one, there was about four pages of typed, very clear ADHD traits under all the, under all the, um, traits, all the examples. He read down page one, flicked over to page two, and he went, oh, well, you are ADHD then. That was the quality, the quality of my diagnosis. I basically had to type it out myself and tell them.

I then wrote back to the bloke who said, You couldn't, because I paid him a load of money, so I wrote back to the bloke who said you couldn't be ADHD because you weren't diagnosed as a child and I got my money back off him because I said you were wrong mate, here's my NHS diagnosis, I'll have my cash back thanks, and my train fare.

And he gave me my money back and my train fare. Yeah. So it was an interesting journey. And had I not had a counsellor, I was so lucky. I had a counsellor who had two ADHD kids, and we've now worked out she's ADHD herself. And it was her that every time I kept going back in and saying, I'm not ADHD, she'd go, bollocks, you are.

Literally, she's a bollocks. And she kept sending me back off. I, you know, I'm a forceful person, but even I, would have been put off by all these people saying you're not ADHD. Oh god, 100%. I believed them, you know, because I didn't know anything about it myself. And how about when you, well, got double diagnosed, did you have any imposter syndrome or did you, did it resonate and you felt like?

No, because by the time I got the combined one, it made complete sense. It was about a year later. And I actually said to that psychologist who was an NHS psychologist, I said, why was I diagnosed with inattentive ADHD? And she said, I'll tell you why. She said, and this is, this is an NHS person saying this.

She said, because the NHS have got lazy. And she said, we assume that adults have all outgrown the hyperactivity. So we diagnosed all you adults with inattentive. She didn't, obviously she was a good one. And she said to me, no, you're definitely combined. What year was this? What year was this? I was diagnosed in March, 2015.

So I'm coming up next March for my 10 year anniversary. Cause I'm extremely old. I know I'm ever so old now. I'm really old,  but I don't pay any attention to that because I've still got the energy of about a 35 year old. So I just, well,  they say we've got a 30 percent delay on average and it goes across the board.

Yeah, but I was the opposite. When I was 12, I was grown up. I was incredibly great. I was like an adult at 12.  Yeah. So yeah, I think it's more that we're the Peter Pans of the, um, of the, the sort of neurodiverse world. Cause I meet a lot of people with ADHD and some of them, you know, I think are 24 and then they tell me they're 58. 

They look so young, a lot of ADHD people. Why do you think it was missed in you until later in life? Because I think I had a, well I know I had a very, very strong mother, so I could, anything naughty  I didn't do because I knew my mother would have told me off massively. Yeah. So I never smoked, I never skipped school, uh, I never was rude to teachers or anything, and it wasn't because of what the teachers would have said, it was because of what my mother would have said when I got home.

So I behaved myself primarily because I didn't want to anger my mother.  Yeah, same. Although I did do those things, I just didn't get caught that much. What do you think has changed for you since your diagnosis? I mean, obviously it's been a while now, but when in those early days, do you think? Well, no, it's not, it's not been that long.

I was counselling at the time and I was counselling a lot of clients and they would talk. took, they were all ADHD, every single one of them. And they would all talk to me about their coexisting conditions. And it wasn't until I was about 56 that I went on to get diagnosed with dyscalculia, sensory processing disorder, but the killer of all of them, severe dyspraxia with 1 percent processing and 1 percent motor skills.

And that made complete sense of my life. Once I'd got that severe dyspraxia diagnosis, because  A, I'm very clumsy. I mean, like, ridiculously clumsy. Break things, drop things. I remember as a child I was constantly being told off for breaking zips because I used to pull the zips up too quick and break the zips.

But also, I don't fall asleep, right? I've got a very, very active brain. I don't fall asleep. Except, Whenever I've been to see a James Bond film. Now, when I go to see James Bond films, I haven't got the first clue what's going on. I can't work out who's a goody, who's a baddy, who's this, who's that. I can't work it out.

So, in James Bond films, I automatically fall asleep.  And as soon as I was diagnosed with that 1 percent processing, I thought that's why I don't understand what's going on in James Bond films. It's also why I don't understand what's going on if there's a program with a lot of flashbacks. If there's just one flashback or two, I can sort of get that.

But when they constantly flash back to the past, to the pre Oh, I'm lost. I'm like, go away. It's just too confusing. I can't do it. That's so interesting. So, so I'm self diagnosed dyspraxic, but I know I am. I'm dyspraxic AF. I walk into things. I can't even begin to drive a car. I can't, there's so much that I cannot do.

However,  I know that I've got auditory processing. What is the difference between auditory processing and sensory processing? What's the difference there? Auditory, and I think I've got a touch of auditory, um, but I'm, I'm much heavier on the sensory. So auditory is when it's all to do with listening and hearing.

It's needing to see things written down because you can't process the information when it goes through your ears. That's very much me. Whenever anybody tries to tell me what's in a text, I say, just give me the phone, give me the phone, let me read it.  If I can read it, I know exactly what they mean, but if they're waffling on trying to explain something, it makes no sense to me.

Also, I used to hate nightclubs, wine bars, pubs, anywhere that's noisy, because I cannot hear or interpret what people are saying. And that now makes complete sense to me. But with the sensory processing, you've got that stuff, but you've also got the fact that every item of clothing that comes into my house is first attacked by scissors.

I cut off every label. hanging  buttons, everything has to go. Yeah, straight. I don't  understand if somebody lends me a top and it's still got the hangy things in it. I'm like, Oh, please, please. I hate those things. Yeah. I despise them. And also with sensory processing, um, it covers all the senses. So another big one of mine is smell.

Now I particularly, this is just one random example. I hate the smell of goat's cheese. So whenever I. Go for a pizza with anybody, I would have to say to people, if you want a pizza with goat's cheese on it, it's absolutely fine. I'm not stopping you, but I will have to sit at another table because it makes me feel so sick.

And they'd go, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course they won't order it. And then they wouldn't order it. Which was always my goal. But just some, some smells can make me feel sick. You know, I've actually been sick. When I'm in a restaurant, if there's a table next to me that's noisy, I cannot block that noise out.

So often I will say to friends, Jesus Christ, are they not driving you insane? And they'll go, Well, yeah, I can hear them, but I can block it out. And then they go, You can't block it out, can you?  No, it's driving me insane!  And if I don't move, I'm gonna, you know, I know that I very rarely lose my temper. Very, very rarely.

But if there's a really noisy table for my, for their safety and mine, I need to move.  Because what happens is, with the impulsivity, and it's happened donkeys years ago, it hasn't happened for ages, but because of my impulsivity, although I'm medicated, I will suddenly lose it, and I will suddenly scream at them, you know?

And so I will say, no, let's just move, let's move, now, calmly, politely.  This happened only a couple of months ago.  So my sensory processing disorder is quite severe, but I would say the thing that's affected me, the two things that affected me more than ADHD, are the severe dyspraxia and the dyscalculia, because the dyscalculia made me fail my 12 and they didn't actually recognize it in me earlier.

They did recognize it after, well not after, they didn't recognize it, but after a year. Had a very, very, very, very crap secondary Melbourne school. Um, I came first in everything. I was bored, stupid, learned nothing. Just knew all this stuff, you know, because we'd done it at my very good junior school. And then at the end of the first year, the head mystery rang and said to my mom that I've got your daughter a place at the, uh, grammar school.

However, my mother then got sent the uniform list and having bought the whole school uniform list the year for, couldn't afford it. So she didn't even tell me till my 16th birthday. So I could have been at a very good grammar school around here. My drama teacher couldn't even take me to O level. She wasn't even qualified to do it.

So I got a CSE grade one, but I couldn't even do O level drama. The dyscalculia  screwed up my education massively by not getting me into the grammar school and the severe dyspraxia affects me every minute of every day. because I can't process, you know, even when I'm talking to somebody, you're, you're brilliant because you're asking one question at a time.

If people do a sentence that's got two, two questions in it, by the time we're at question two, I've no clue what question one was. None. It's gone. So the processing thing, the severe processing, that really affects me. How do you feel about it? You know, I'm super interested because I hold a lot of shame About the fact that I can't drive say and I know that some people with dyspraxia can I cannot do it?

I cannot do all of those things at once and look at the road speed limit I cannot do all of that once and in most of the time i'm fine with it. I've lived places. I walk everywhere It's fine But sometimes just like it'd be really good if I could drive Like a proper adult as i'm 41 years old and everyone has to drive me everywhere and you have this shame Have you got over that?

No, I have it. And if this will make you laugh, sitting on my drive, I can see it there is a hire car because five days ago, I took my eye off the road to look at my phone. I know I did it. We were coming up to a junction traffic lights  and I took my eye off the road to look at my phone. satnav to see where I'd got to go at the junction and crashed for the second time this year into one of those wretched concrete bollards in the middle of the road with signs on.

Second time. Yeah, I did it. I did it once in March and I've just done it now in August, September. And I'll tell you that doesn't half knacker your wheels. So I've just I have I've screwed up three of the wheels on my car and it's literally a split second. It's because I don't trust myself and also my memory is shocking.

So I will look down at the sat nav, look again at the sat nav, look again, look again, look again. And this time there was one of those wretched bollards in the middle of the road and I smacked into it. So I I do like you. I beat myself up for a lot of stuff, but it helps that I'm a qualified counsellor.

And it also helps that I, I did CBT for a year. So I'm very good at recognizing negative thoughts in myself and switching them around. So there was, even after the accident, I was like, you stupid cow, you stupid, stupid. And then I was like, no, not stupid. I was coming to a junction. I was actually being  Um, what's the word I was paying Attention.

Cautious. Yeah. I was looking exactly where I was. My big mistake there was that I didn't have a sat nav  rubber thing on the, on the dashboard. And I've realized now that having it on the seat and glancing to the seat, that was the wrong thing to do. It wasn't in my hands. I wasn't touching it. No. But it was propped up against my bag on the seat.

But even looking round to check. That meant I hit one of those things. So rather than beating myself up now, I just think, no, we've analyzed it. We know what the problem was. The sat nav needs to be up there so that you're looking at the sat nav and the road at the same time. That's why they put them on dashboards.

They're not stupid. I just need to make the change. I just need to buy the things. So I can kind of, because of the CBT, I can switch my thoughts around quite well. And I don't, I, yes, I do still think I'm stupid at times, especially when I bash into things, you know, when I. bashed into door frames and I'm covered in bruises.

I could, I could show you numerous bruises. I got a massive one on my hip.  I mean, times that by about, I've got about 12 of them on me at the moment. I've got two on one shin. I'm always bashing, banging, bashing. And I will, I still do have that inner critical voice that says you silly cow. But then I think, no, I'm not going You know, think of the positives.

I always try and think of the positives. I do, you know, write books, run big companies, run charities, do all this stuff, help a lot of people. I hope that's my goal in life. I kind of tie the two together. I wouldn't be so understanding of, let's take boys in prison as a random, you know, there are boys in prison that have got  dyspraxia, that have got 1 percent processing, that have got dyslexia, dyscalculia, blah, blah, blah.

And they hate themselves for it. And they've got in trouble for it. And they've got crippling low self esteem and they're in prison. And I just like to think, okay, the fact that I've got these conditions and I can understand, for example, I can understand why nearly all of them cannot cope with signing on.

They cannot cope with that system of phone calls and paperwork and logging and portal because I can't do it either. You know? So it helps me. understand and empathize and really, really get these boys and girls, because there are some girls in, well, I always say the ratio of girls in prison with ADHD is the same as boys, i.

e. nearly all of them. So it's, it's, you know, girls have got these conditions as well, but it's the boys that I tend to have worked with, I've worked in male prison, and I understand that they can't bloody negotiate the, the um, the benefit system and they can't, when people say to me, Oh, we're sending you a link to our online portal.

I'm like, don't they say what? And I say, don't, I can't work portals. The word portal to me is like, Oh, Oh, take your portal away. Take your passwords away. Take your, your two, two factor authentication, whatever it's called. Take it away. And that's why I get that these boys in prison. A lot of them can't function in the world today because they can't do all that stuff that other people are saying.

Oh, just go online, you know, and every phone call you're on these days, it says it's much easier if you go on to our online website. And I'm like, no, it's not easier. Just answer your phone. So I can talk to you. I can't go on your online portal and register. Oh God, no, I hate it. Guess what I did the other day?

I'm trying to sort out access to work. A lot of people have access to work, still haven't sorted it out myself. Yeah. But I'm trying. I forgot  my password for HMRC. Yeah. Of course I did. Yeah. Um, but I've also changed my phone number. Oh, that's a killer. Yeah, that's a killer. It took hours.  Hours and hours.

Yeah. And in the end I'm like distressed. Yeah. Saying to somebody, do you understand? 'cause then I had to call back 'cause they asked me exactly how much money on this date and somebody's like, I dunno, no. And she's like, well you failed that. Yeah. So you can have to start again. I was like, are you joking?

I have to ring you back again. Yeah. And then when I did that, then I had to ring back again. I was just like, please, can I explain to you that this is not okay? I'll give you a little tip here. I'll give you a little tip because I'm exactly the same, right? Little tip.  When you next speak to anybody, always say, can you please make a note of these disabilities that I've got?

And these are the reasonable adjustments I need. So with every, everywhere that I ring, they've got notes not to ask me memory questions. So when exactly like that, when, you know, how, when was your last mortgage payment? I don't bloody know.  But nearly always I say to them, look at your notes. You're not allowed to ask me memory questions.

So the only things they're allowed to ask me like name, date of birth, address, postcode, all that sort of stuff. They can't ask me, when did you last do something? Because I ain't going to remember. That's an amazing tip. I don't even think that that would be possible. I had a problem with PayPal once and I said, Oh, me too.

I can't use mine. Yeah. And she, and she said, okay, we will, we will adjust that. that for you. And it's been better since then, but I didn't even think of that. No, do it. But everyone you speak to, because they, you know, by law they have to, they have to give you the reasonable adjustments. Uh, face, face identification is the best thing that ever happened in the world as far as I'm concerned.

I just face ID everything and I dread changing phones because you know, everything's face ID and it's so much easier. I really want to talk to you about all of your amazing work, but there is one question that I'm desperate to ask you because I know.  That you're going to give me and so many people try and get out of this question, but I know you're going to give me an amazing answer.

Oh, okay. No pressure. Okay. Yeah. Self diagnosis is valid as we know, and it has to be in a system that's so broken. You could be waiting the best part of a decade.  Tell me if you could change the ADHD diagnostic process in the UK right now, if you were in charge, what would you do? Let GPs diagnose.  And a lot of them are. 

A lot of them are. We've had, we've had numerous GPs who've come to us, um, and said,  I'll, I'll quote one of them. He said, I'm, he's actually attached to a homeless charity and he said, Sarah, I'm not seeing these people suffer. He said, you know, what's the point of prolonging their suffering? So he said, I am what I call a homeless charity.

provisionally diagnosing them and medicating, and he's not the only one. He said in his town, he said there's at least two of us just in this town doing this, and I've since met loads, loads, in fact one of ours around here in Buckinghamshire, he's doing it. He set up an ADHD prescribing service. As you know, people with ADHD, we can spot each other in about two seconds, you know, so doctors can stick a blooming questionnaire in front of people, the same as they do with anxiety, depression, whatever they can diagnose depression, they can diagnose bipolar.

Why can't they diagnose ADHD? It doesn't have to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Ridiculous. If you, if you let GPs diagnose this whole thing wouldn't be as bad as it was, nowhere near. That is exactly what I think. I don't think it makes any difference. The amount of times I've been in and out of the doctors since I was 14 years old, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, all of the stuff.

And all I could tell at the end of the day is it's a set of questions and a pot of pills. And that's how straightforward it can be. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.  Yeah, GP's, diagnostics, and as I say, a ton of them are taking it into their own hands anyway, and they're doing it for the right reasons. They're not doing it to make money.

They're doing it to help people because they are seeing people suffering. They're seeing people lose relationships to jobs, stay addicted to stuff. They're seeing people who are suicidal. They're seeing people make suicide attempts when they know that the right meds are going to transform them. Any doctor  who really cares, and there's a heck of a lot of them, because I've spoken to loads of them, um, they're going to medicate, for goodness sake, when they know what the problem is.

Some of them have actually paid us for training, not for them, because they're switched on enough, they've worked it out, but they've trained us to train their team, so their receptionists, their nurses, their blah blah. So the whole clinic is ADHD aware. So we're very happy to do that. We'll support any, any doctors doing that because it makes complete sense to me.

We're undervaluing doctors, you know, we're not treating doctors with the respect we should. They don't recognize ADHD. And if they don't, they've only got, as you say, slap the same questionnaire down, but the equivalent of the depression one, the anxiety one, the psychotic one, and answer the questions. It's not hard. 

To diagnose somebody with ADHD.  What do you think, because obviously I've had loads of conversations, but I don't know. I have my opinions. Why do you think there is such an issue with prescribing ADHD medication? Do you think It is about how expensive it is. Is it about money? Well, it depends what issue you're talking about.

If you're talking about in the prisons, the prisons diagnose personality disorders all the time, all the time, rather than ADHD there's a reticence to medicate ADHD in prisons. And I understand the reason is because boys will, and girls, will sell their meds. Yeah, they'll sell it. And inside 10 times the value they have on the outside.

So that's, that's one reason. Then you've got the people who are genuinely, and I'm genuinely rather, and I mean this word in a proper sense of the word, ignorant. So ignorant about the impact of ADHD medication. There are still some Psychiatrists, psychologists and doctors, sadly, who still do think it's a behavioural disorder and you should learn to manage yourself better.

So you don't need medication, you just need to, you know, grow up and be sensible. There's still that portion. There's a lot of parents who are reticent to medicate children and I understand that, I really do. I go into this a lot in my books because parents are very anxious about it. Once you realise that ADHD medication is the most efficacious of any, they say it's the most efficacious. 

of any psychological or physiological condition, because it's the only one that puts something back into the brain that's missing. Now, once you realize that, Why wouldn't you medicate somebody? Why wouldn't you put them back on that even playing field that they can be on? Why would you make them struggle against their brain 24 7, when you could pop a pill in once a day, sort it out?

That's fantastic. So let's talk about what you do. Tell me, tell me everything, because you've got your fantastic charity, and I know that you are making big money. big things happen. So tell me all about it. Well, what I'm trying to do is get people to realise that the prisons are pretty much full of ADHD.

The old figure, very old now was that one in four in prison had ADHD. Well, we've blown that out of the water numerous times. We're doing trials and pilots with We've got several police forces. We've got 33 that have signed up and haven't all started yet, but a lot of them are starting big police forces like Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, Police Scotland, big, big forces.

So we're working with all of them to start screening. They're all at various stages. Some have started screening. You know, some are literally starting now, some started in June, some are still in the planning stages. So there's loads going on with the police forces and our goal there is to get people picked up early.

So ideally the first time they're going to a police station, what, do a screener, hello. This one's got neurodiversity, filter him off, assessment, diagnosis, and let's not criminalize him, which is great. On top of that, the last government put neurodiversity managers in every prison and told them not to screen, which has infuriated most of them.

So we've had loads of them. We've had Zoom meetings with tons of them. Some of them we've trained. They've asked us to train them some brilliant trainings with some of the neurodiversity managers.  Um, All of them are frustrated because they know their prisons are full of ADHD, but they're not allowed to do anything about it.

Now, I'm not going to blame the current government for that because I don't know what their policy is yet with the neurodiverse, not with the neurodiversity managers. Hopefully they're going to let them scream. Yeah, hopefully. However, what we are doing at the moment, we've been promised some funding.

Let's hope it comes through. Set up ADHD support groups in every prison and every young offender Institute. So it'd be very, very educational. If anybody else wants to fund it, talking out there. It's not going to cost  hundreds of thousands. It's actually going to be quite reasonable. At the same time as that, we're just about to start a one year campaign with National Prison Radio, all about ADHD, all about, um, how to know if you've got it yourself, what to do about it, what Pathways is blah, blah, blah.

That's gonna go on in the prisons. 16 prisons have something called launchpad, which is basically a tablet that they can get different apps on. And all our videos are go, well, there's gonna be about 40 videos. They are all gonna go on to launchpad. At the moment it's in 16 prisons, but in within the next year it's gonna be a 40% the, if we get the extra bit of funding, which we're really hoping for.

We're going to train all the psychologists, psychiatrists, and healthcare in prisons on how to diagnose ADHD so they can stop  misdiagnosing everybody with personality disorders and get the right diagnosis. So we're going for this funding. I mean, I'm praying to God we get it the same time as all of that's going on.

We've got all these pilots starting. So we've got pilots starting in the homeless world with the big issue and crisis. They're going to both start screening pilots for us because you may or may not know that the crossover between addiction, offending, and homelessness is huge. It's pretty much the same client.

Most of the clients have either encountered two or three of those things. So for example, most boys who've been in prison come out and they're homeless. you know, and quite a few of them have got addiction problems. So there's a big crossover. So we're just about to start pilots with the big issue and crisis, which is amazing because both of those charities I used to volunteer for years ago did loads of work for the homeless.

One definite and about three or four other potential addiction pilots starting now. Addiction, we know there's a colossal link with ADHD and addiction. So what our goal is there is to get mandatory screening and all addiction services.  And then on top of that, we've got a couple of probation, probation trials going on.

Both of those are coming out at 85 percent or slightly more have got undiagnosed ADHD.  Uh, we've also just done a pilot with a charity that, um, it's a youth careers charity that helps kids who have quote. fallen through the cracks, unquote. So they've fallen through the cracks for a wide variety of reasons.

They might have left school early and not completed education. They might have been in a young offender institute or a prison and come out. They might have come out of the care system and had no guidance on what to do. So they've come from a variety of backgrounds, but we've done That charity said, we'll do a hundred, we'll screen a hundred.

Now, how many outta that a hundred do you think were a D, H, D for kids who'd fallen through the cracks? All of them. Almost all of them. 90. Exactly. 90. 90 out of the hundred. Yeah. So 90 outta the hundred. And the lady who ran it, she said to me, I've had quite a few of them in tears, especially the girls, because the girls like me, when I was diagnosed at 51, the girls didn't have the first clue.

that this might be why they've had addiction problems or anger problems or whatever. No clue that it could be ADHD. And she said, I've had a lot of them in tears, especially the girls. And, you know, bearing in mind, this is a charity that for people who've fallen through the cracks, that means they've been suffering in some way.

Yeah, they've, they've been suffering. And to know that there's a reason for that suffering. She said, it's been Absolutely life changing for all of them, and then the probation pilots that we've got going on, I mean, one of them, I'll be discreet and not name the area, but one of them, she said to me, my God, she said, the GPs in this area must be getting sick of me.

She said, I'm sending  half a dozen people a day. I'm sending to the GP. I've got ADHD. I've got ADHD. I've got ADHD. So. All the pilots that we're running, there hasn't been one where we've gone, Oh, that's interesting. No ADHD. No,  every single pilot that we're running, it's been, Whoa, you know, and, and the figure that is constant and consistent right the way through is 85%.

It's, it's either like the youth charity one was 90. So the two probation ones we've got going on, they're both coming in at. just over 85%. So it's roughly 85 percent of people in the addiction, the homeless and the offending world  and the prisons and the young offender institutes and the juvenile prisons.

It's roughly 85 percent of them, which is why this one in four figure has driven me literally insane over the years. I've known it's so wrong, but we've not been able to prove it. Now we're proving it with all these incredibly. legit organizations, you know, provisions, polices, um, as I say, young offenders, career services, crisis, the big issue, all of those sorts of people.

And it's interesting because I think it was crisis when I spoke to them, they said they have a research and development department and they've been looking for this. They said, we've known there's a reason we've known there's a commonality with these people. We've just not been able to put our finger on what, but we had the research and development people come to the meeting and they're like, this is it.

This is it. This is what we've known, you know, that we've known there's something that they've all got, but we didn't know what. And because a lot of these people like you, like me were completely ignorant of what ADHD really is until you're diagnosed with yourself and you do tons and tons of research because they just thought it was naughty kids, hyperactive kids and distracted kids. 

Anything they knew you'd grow out of it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that you're absolutely right. Most of them did not know that this was an adult condition. They just thought 18, 19, 20. Well, they're sort of done with that, aren't they? You know,  born with it, you die with it. Can I just say, like, phenomenal, like your work is incredible.

I don't know how you've got that many hours in a day. Well, I do, because you won't see it very much because you're in New York. But  I have to say, like, all of it's amazing. But just going back to the first thing you said, I think it was 33. different, um, the police stations. Police forces, yeah. Police forces that are screening, like.

Yeah. That is huge. Well, I was going to say, they're not all screening, but they're all in talks with us at various places. Yes, to start, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because it's exactly like you say, if that can be, that early intervention. Like, that's everything. That's life changing. You might not see that person again.

That person might not repent again. That's the whole point. That is incredible. When I used to talk at my support group about, we've got to get ADHD screening in the prisons, it was actually police officers who said to me, we need to get them before that Sarah. We need to get them when they first come into the police stations.

And I was like, yeah, you're absolutely right. Absolutely. Right. This is my 1 percent processing. See, I don't think of things like that.  I just think they're all in prison. They've all got ADHD.  We've got to sort this, but that's as far as my thinking went, but the cleverers, you know, the clever ones went, yeah, but we can get to them.

We can get to them earlier than that when they first offend and I'm like, yeah, you're absolutely right. Please let's pick them up when they are sometimes literally eight, nine, 10 going into a police station. They're that young and if we can pick them up the first time and the police have a good policy at the moment.

I don't know how long it's been going on for, but they have a policy of not wanting to criminalize children, right? I firmly, firmly agree with that, right? Don't criminalize them. Find out what's going on.  And so this, our offering to screen, which doesn't cost anything, not a penny. We don't charge anybody anything for this because we're offering to screen.

And potentially divert, they have liaison and diversion teams in place, which is to liaise with let's say drugs teams or homeless teams or whatever, and divert people to other services rather than taking them through the courts.  So we are working quite with these L& D departments, we're working with quite a few of them because they think this, the screening fits beautifully into what their job role is.

Which is to liaise and divert, if at all possible. So, yeah, everybody's great. We've even got judges. I mean, we can't name names, but, you know, there are judges that we know now who are throwing court cases out of court if there's an outstanding assessment waiting. I did some very  illegal as such, but some sort of dangerous, impulsive type thing when I was younger.

But this is where we can get into serious trouble, you know, if we're not, um, diagnosed and medicated, these traits can really get us into trouble. We are passionate about all ADHD people, but particularly those in marginalised groups. So we are talking homeless, we're talking addicts, we're talking offenders.

A lot, a lot of people who are against this, they'll say, oh funding, funding, oh we can't possibly, oh funding, I want that funding. I'll email it to you now for free. It doesn't cost anything to screen somebody. It doesn't cost a penny. I know you can't diagnose that, but you can flag up the ones that warrant further assessment very easily.

And it's completely free. So don't give me funding, pardon my language, bollocks. It's nothing to do with funding. It's people who can't be bothered. Well, bother. The difference it can make. Three days ago, I was at an inquest and that inquest was for one of my young offenders who took his own life last March.

And he took his own life. purely because they would not put him on his ADHD medication. He was diagnosed as a child. I wrote safeguarding letters to two different prisons, massive great red letters across the top of both safeguarding rest due to not being on the correct medication, completely ignored. So last March he took his own life in prison.

And that's, that's what I'm fighting against. I don't want to lose any more boys or girls to suicide or serious, serious self harm because nobody's recognized the ADHD and nobody's. put them on the right medication. I'm just not prepared to lose people.  It's too heartbreaking. Is there like an age limit to the people that your charity is helping or it's just all people?

All people. All people. Little, you know, five year olds to 95 year olds. What would you like the world to know about ADHD? If you could bust a misconception or just have one solid truth about it that you'd just be like this, everyone needs to know this thing. That it's, it's got nothing to do with intelligence.

There are still far too many people that think, but I've got a master's, but I've got a degree, but I've got a PhD, but I'm a solicitor, but I'm a barrister. I've got a friend who's a scientist. She doesn't believe she can have it because she's a scientist. She has. But so it's got the fact that it's got nothing to do with intelligence.

What would you like the listeners directly to know? I would like them to know that they can go the right to choose route, which is a heck of a lot quicker.  Um, and I would also like them to know that there are some things that they say are phenomenal for ADHD, and one of them is just literally turning your shower to cold for five minutes in the morning.

I know many people that they can't, they can't be bothered to buy a dunking bath thing and put it in the garden, but they'll happily turn their shower to freezing cold and nearly die the first day they do it. But if you can actually build up to the five minutes, everybody I know says that five minutes of an icy cold shower in the morning is a brilliant way to treat your ADHD, and it lasts all day.

You know, so great. Yeah.  No, do I do it? No, I'm on,  I'm on meds. I've been, I'm not on stimulant meds. Now Vance worked like a dream to me, but it also kept me up half the night. So I've been on the non stimulant. I'm on the highest dose. There is a stratera and I've been on it for nine and a half years and it's very successful.

It stops me binge eating. It stops my road rage. It stops impulsivity. And most importantly, it has turned off my internal motor, which was horrendous before and meant I could never relax. Now I can relax. What do you do? Obviously, we know  our faulty dopamine receptors, we can have lower levels of dopamine.

What do you do to cultivate more dopamine?  I get my dopamine from helping people. And that sounds a bit of a cliche.  But I really do. I just love helping people. I love changing people's lives around. That's why I used to love,  of all my clients, it was my young offenders that I liked most because I liked showing them that was a different life.

They didn't have to have this life if they wanted this life and they wanted to be crime and in prison all the time. They could.  But they had a choice, and most of them, no, all of them, didn't think they had a choice. They thought because they'd been to prison, because they'd screwed up, because they'd got a criminal record, that was it.

Their life was, that was it. They, they literally were set in stone. That was how they got to live their life, and they used to love making them see that it wasn't. that they had choices and options, and they didn't have, their life didn't have to be like that. And now, I'm proud to say, um, most of my young offenders are out, they're working, some are roofers, some are scaffolders, some are builders, um, they're all out there doing physical jobs, but they're out, they're working, they're getting access to work, because we help people with access to work, so if you need any help just shout me.

Yes please! Yeah, yeah, we get them access to work, but they don't have to, there is a life after crime, and they just need somebody. to support them and push them and, and keep saying it, you know. Yeah, you can go back to selling drugs if you want, but that's if you want to go to prison. Do you want to go back to prison?

They'll always say no. You say, right, well, let's do something different then, shall we? And if you're with them and you support them, they can do it.  What is the most ADHD thing you've done this week? I mean Crash my car. Crash the car.  Crash the car. Oh no, this is a classic. Well, this is an ADHD stroke dyspraxic thing.

But yeah, I was waiting to hear from the recovery truck driver to go back to get my car. I was at a hotel with a nice pool and I thought I'm going to get in this pool if it kills me. Then I thought, to keep the phone with me in case they bring a text. I'll get in the jacuzzi. So I got in the jacuzzi. I'm holding the phone like this, getting the jacuzzi.

Everything was going well for about a minute. I don't think I was even in that jacuzzi a minute and I get the message, you need to get back to your car now, right? So I'm like, Oh God. So I get out of the jacuzzi and wait for this. Sounds disgusting. I ripped half a nail off.  I know, getting out of the jacuzzi.

I mean, I'm always in and out of jacuzzis. I love jacuzzis. But no, this time, I was in such a panic, and also not to drop the phone in the water, that I actually ripped  half one of my big, tough nails off. Ruined my pedicure, for starters. Ruined my pedicure. Um, and now I've got like this Oh, it's horrible.

Anyway, that. I honestly, I could talk to you all day, but you're busy and we've covered a lot. Is there anything that we haven't covered? I think the only thing is the fact that we're passionate about training teachers and we go into schools, every, every school from infant, junior, senior colleges, universities.

So if anybody works in any of those or knows anybody who does and thinks that they should be more ADHD aware, give us a shout because, you know, we go into those as well. We do have to charge for that because we have to pay the people, but we don't charge thousands. We don't, we're not ridiculous money. We try and keep it as reasonable as we can so that we can get the training into as many schools in particular, um, but also colleges, universities, as we possibly can, because teachers.

can transform an ADHD person's life at school. So we want to educate these lovely teachers. Most of them have never been trained in ADHD. They haven't got a clue. Exactly. So we never, ever. How would they know if they haven't been trained? Exactly. We don't blame them at all, but we just say, please either buy my book or if you can afford it, get me or one of the others to come into the school and train because every single time we do it, we have teachers in tears. 

You know, a lot of them will be crying, saying, if only we'd known this stuff, and sometimes they look back on kids they've had in years before, and they go, oh my god, oh my god, and when, especially when you're telling them about inattentive ADHD and the dreamers and, you know, the, the, looking out the window people, and they're like, oh my god.

So what are the books? Tell me quickly what the books are. Oh my god, okay. They've all got long titles so I'll give you the short versions. The first, the first one which is for younger kids, I say up to about 10, 11, is How Not to Murder Your ADHD Kid. Instead learn to be a child's own ADHD coach. The second one is for teachers and that's called, um, How Not to Kill the Spirit in ADHD Kids.

And it's got a longer title, but I forget the other bit. And then the third one is how not to damage your ADHD adolescent. And that is massively, it's a big book that because it's all about ADHD teenagers and they are a different breed apart from ADHD kids. So there's a lot of information in the teenage ones, literally goes into everything from, uh, options at school, career choices, college choices, university choices.

First relationships, STIs, you know, all of it. Rejection sensitive dysphoria and how that's going to impact first relationships. It's really detailed on ADHD teenagers. It took me a long time to write that one because I knew having worked with thousands of teenagers, I knew there was so much information that needed to go into a book on parenting ADHD teenagers.

So it's rammed with information, that one. Um, and then the next one I'm writing is all about my time in the prisons and what I found in the prisons. I'm writing that one now. Are you actually going to do this bike ride from London to Amsterdam? Oh, no way. I was on a, I was on a Zoom call last night with them.

And I just said, you know, I said the first thing meeting at Buckingham Palace at eight o'clock, that'd be me finished. I don't do mornings. I couldn't,  I couldn't get on a bike at eight o'clock in the morning. I'd be on the floor within five, within five seconds. I couldn't ride a bike.  I've never ridden a bike on a road when Rosie told me about it.

I was like, that's a brilliant idea. I'll push it. She's like, well, why don't you do it? I was like, I can barely walk without falling over. Do you actually think I can ride a bike on a road? Are you joking? Yeah, exactly. So no, we're not.  But we're incredibly grateful to all the people that are. Ridiculous.

It's taken me this long to say. I've been wanting to speak to you Sarah, because I've been wanting to speak to you since the last time you did a presentation. No, I've, I've known that it's been in the pipeline. But like you, I've just been so bloody busy. You know, but it just hasn't happened. Yeah, it just hasn't happened.

Time just goes. See, I was trying positive things. It's a positive, because now there was much more to talk to you about. So, do you know what I mean? Yes, that's true. Lots more. That's very true. So it had to happen at the right time now. So, if anybody wants to join the bike ride, that neither of us will be on.

And that they can't join it anymore. Can they not? No. Oh, that's my excuse then. That's why I'm not going.  Oh my goodness. Sarah Templeton. I doth mine cap to thee. What an absolute ledge. And Anna Gem and I would definitely come from the same bit of cloth in terms of astrology and neurodevelopmental condition and the rest.

I could talk to her all day. So thank you so much, Sarah. What amazing work you are doing. And as you heard, although it isn't possible to join the sponsored bike ride from Buckingham Palace to Amsterdam, you can still sponsor. And the money is split between Sarah's charity, ADHD Liberty. and the wonderful ADHD Adult UK.

You can sponsor via the link which is in the blurb of this episode. Darren, the wonderful Darren and Rosie are heading up this incredible fundraiser which has raised so much money already, but if you are able, please keep those donations coming in. It's a really fantastic thing they're doing, and as you've heard, such amazing work that the funds will be going to support.

So just a reminder, as we know, we are in this time of medication shortages, as we speak. discuss in the last episode with Priyanka. If you are struggling to access your medication, there is a link in the blurb of this episode to the ADHD directory. I believe it's ADHD. directory so that you can look for different pharmacists that might have your medication in stock.

If you are without medication, if you are on a waiting list, If you cannot take medication, whatever, there are different strategies that we can all implement to try and best support ourselves. And I am literally talking to myself as I say these words, because  self care isn't something I'm brilliant at, and routine is something I'm even worse at.

But I had a wonderful conversation with BBC Morning Live's Riyad Khalaf, who shared his incredible tips to self support ADHDers. So I will also put a link in the show notes. to Riyadh's episode, because it's incredibly helpful. As ever, it's always really important to do that kind of self inventory, because what works for one of us won't work for all of us.

We are all different. So it's really important to look at how to best do that. But yeah, they are some fantastic tips. And I will share with you now my most ADHD thing. Of actually today, but it's a corker. Giving the game away a bit here. But next month is ADHD Awareness Month. And I'm recording.  Lots of very special episodes, but one in particular in which I am inviting some people from the community to join me.

And I thought I was being so organized. I really did. I tried so hard to get everything. This person at this time, that person at that time. I thought I had it all under control, but you add to the fact that I'm also An hour ahead, I'm in the future here in France, so we're on a different time zone, and I suddenly went, oh my god, I'm in a meeting, and I ran to connect to Zoom.

I go in 10 minutes late, so I'm already late for this Zoom meeting, to  two people called Jill.  So, not quite as organized as I thought I was, but we had an amazing Jill Fest and I can't wait to share that with you very soon. So, thank you to the ADHDF online peer support community for all of your support in the continuation of putting out this podcast.

I can't wait to share all of your very important messages for ADHD Awareness Month, in which I'll be sharing some really important messages of my own. I have some big announcements, I have some very exciting things to share, I have some massive reflections to share. And yeah, some big announcements. I will be revisiting the Make It Count campaign.

And I'm gonna be really honest with you. It didn't go to plan. And, uh, the best laid plans, or at least my best laid plans, very often go awry, but I will always try.  And, uh, even if that means falling on my face. So this October, the theme for ADHD Awareness Month is Awareness is Key. And I'm really looking forward to sharing some very, very important conversations, some crucial messages, alongside Some very big announcements from myself.

And this year, ADHD AF Day will be the third annual ADHD AF Day. Each year, it's on a different day in October. And I think that that's really fitting because I am really terrible with dates. So any,  any day will do, but on ADHD AF Day 2024, which will be on Friday, the 25th of October, I'll be asking you all to wear at least one item of leopard print and take either a photo or video of yourself and tag.

ADHD AF podcast on Instagram or Facebook. You can either share it on your story or as a post and tell me what you would like the world to know about ADHD. If you could scream one message from the raft and I know there's a million things I know there is but what is in your core the number one thing you want the world to know about ADHD?

Because as I said the theme is awareness is key and I just felt that that question that I ask all of my interviewees is the one. So help me raise awareness on October the 25th and please wear at least one leopard print item you can wear head to toe. And, uh, let's get those messages out there. Let's make some serious noise and unite as the Leopard Print Army.

And on that note, I will bid you adieu. 

I can't speak French, so I'll let the funky music do the talking.