ADHD inertia...and troublemaking (Nabil Abdulrashid’s story)

Nabil Abdulrashid was diagnosed with ADHD as a child growing up in Nigeria. Now a London-based comedian, Nabil credits his ADHD brain as an advantage in his comedy career. He’s quick-witted, both driven and stifled by inertia, tumbling into funny thoughts and scenarios as he speaks. He doesn’t even write down any of his material — it’s stuck in his head and just flows.

Nabil’s teachers in Nigeria thought he wouldn’t amount to much. They didn’t even want him in their classes. He got into fights and turned to sports to channel his energy. When he moved to the U.K. as a teen, he got into trouble there, too. As an immigrant, he was othered, and the rigid school structure didn’t work with his ADHD. He fell into the wrong crowd and eventually ended up in jail, where he discovered his comedic talents.

Listen in to hear Nabil’s “aha” moment and how he channeled his ADHD into a successful comedy career.

Related resources

• Understanding hyperactivity

• ADHD in boys

• Why some kids clown around in class

Episode transcript

Nabil: I always say my "aha" moment probably came, I mean, it's been gradual, but talking with another comic and discussing my creative process as a stand-up and realizing that this thing that I thought was a disadvantage actually helps me in my chosen field. I mean, evidently it's helped many creative people in their chosen fields. There are people who are similar to me. You look at any Lothario in any art and you find that they were very strange in other aspects of their life. It's a sign that maybe they were like me.

Laura: From the Understood Podcast Network, this is "ADHD Aha!," a podcast where people share the moment when it finally clicked that they or someone they know has ADHD. My name is Laura Key. I'm the editorial director here at Understood. And as someone who's had my own ADHD "aha" moment, I'll be your host.

Laura: I'm so excited to be here today with Nabil Abdulrashid, an English comedian who spent half of his life in Nigeria. That's where he was born and raised. Nabil, welcome to the show.

Nabil: Hey. Actually, I was born in London, but we moved back to Nigeria when I was younger. So, the classic, when you're a bit naughty, they send you back home. No, my parents moved back when I was still quite little, so I spent half my life in Nigeria, now spent so far, the second half of my life here in the U.K., which means I'm equally unwelcome in both countries. It's amazing.

Laura: And I got it wrong right off the bat. It's a great way to start. This is how we do it around here.

Nabil: That's the best way. You know, put your worst foot forward.

Laura: Put my worst food forward. OK, so born in London but spent a large chunk of your life in Nigeria. And Nigeria is where you were diagnosed with ADHD. Is that right?

Nabil: Yeah. Amazingly, I got diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 6 in northern Nigeria, Kaduna, where I went to school, which, you know, I have a lot of frustration now when it comes to the topic of being a comedian with ADHD, because I got diagnosed with ADHD long before it became cool. It was a very different climate to have any kind of neurodiversity. Yeah, it wasn't a pleasant experience when, at first anyway, being told that your brain did stuff wrong.

Laura: Were you told at that time what you'd been diagnosed with?

Nabil: Yeah, I mean, Nigeria doesn't really do political correctness. So, they literally said to my mom, "Let’s do a test to see if he's stupid or there's another problem," because it took me ages to finish my work in class. And it's weird, right? Because, like, diagnosing a kid at 6 is so progressive in a sense, because in the U.K. it takes forever to get diagnosis. But then at the same time, the way it was done, the abrupt nature of it. So I would take ages to finish stuff in certain classes at school. I really struggled because my attention span was like nonexistent, especially with more mundane tasks.

But then, teachers said when they spoke to me, I was a very clever kid. I was a sharp kid, but only with stuff that I enjoyed. When it came to the more, less interesting stuff to me, it was like hell for me to focus. And I was hyperactive as a kid. I mean, I wish I could be hyperactive now and lose a few pounds, but I was hyperactive as a kid. And I was constantly doing like crazy stuff to amuse myself. I would disrupt class, I would do things because my imagination and my impulses were like, it's like I had a nuclear reactor in my brain.

So, they gave me a bunch of tests, oral tests, IQ tests, motor skills tests, and pattern recognition stuff. And I thought, "Oh, this is really fun," and I didn't even know it was a test. And they said, "Well, as far as IQ goes, he's way smarter than the other kids. But his attention span is very short." And they're like, "Yeah, this is textbook ADHD." And so yeah, the school I was in at the time was a very good school. They did — like for certain tests, I would take the test orally, one to one with the teacher, and then I would be given extra time for certain exams as well. And then we had lots of afterschool activities. One thing my mum thought that "You know what? To get him reading, it doesn't matter what he reads..."

Laura: Yeah.

Nabil: "...as long as he's reading," right? He's still practicing those skills. So, like the first novel ever read was when I was about 8, was Stephen King's "It."

Laura: I can't believe you read that when you were 8 or 9. That sounds terrifying.

Nabil: Yeah. And people wonder why I'm so screwed up now. Well, yeah, so my first, the first ever book I read was Stephen King's "It," and I enjoyed it, because Stephen King writes the way I think.

Laura: And how's that?

Nabil: Stephen King will talk about a guy walking into a room and wearing a ring, and then the ring reminds the person narrating to you of something that happened to them when they were 5 on a particular day at a particular time. And you know, those times in the summer when the, you know, you could smell popcorn, but not that kind of popcorn, this kind of popcorn, the salted caramel popcorn. And then from the popcorn, we've gone into a discussion about how caramel is and then come all the way back to the guy walking into the room.

So, it's the same thing with me where if somebody walks in, I notice them, I notice a small thing about them, which triggers a memory that I have in my head about a day, a time, and then that triggers a song I know from that period and how that song made me feel, which triggers a memory about something my dad said one time when he was driving his car, when we had that song, which triggers a thought about the kind of car that he was driving and what year did it come out in which triggers...and then I ended up coming back to where I am. And this loop of jumping from topic to topic and whatnot is something that I have constantly. Like I was watching a documentary last night about Michael Jordan, The Bulls, "The Last Dance."

Laura: Oh, it's so good.

Nabil: Basketball. Yeah, loved it. And basketball was my favorite sport growing up.

Laura: Same. Same, Nabil.

Nabil: We're literally the same.

Laura: Oh, my God. It's like we're the same person.

Nabil: I know. BFFs forever. But, like, I was watching "The Last Dance," and I ended up remembering random stuff to do with things linked to The Bulls. And it's weird. It's weird.

Laura: You said something about your, was it your mom or your dad said, "We need to find out if you're stupid" or if...?

Nabil: The teacher said it.

Laura: The teacher.

Nabil: The teacher said it to my mom.

Laura: You found out through the evaluation process, it sounds like, just how smart you are. But even that, "We've got to figure this out, if he's stupid." Did you carry that with you?

Nabil: Yeah, of course. I mean, it was just something that was always at the back of my mind, that I wasn't normal. And I'm not going to lie, it upset me sometimes because I wanted to be able to do certain things. For example, like I've worked retail before and like, folding jeans, I'll fold the first four pairs brilliantly and then the next three will be a bit avant-garde. And then after that, yeah, I'm off with the fairies. Like, where I thrive is anywhere that allows me to just create and produce ideas and discuss things.

And many former colonial territories, many places colonized by the British, there's a hyperfocus and over-personalizing of certain jobs like medicine, law, this, that, and the other. There is almost no, or at least when I was growing up, there was almost no respect for the possibility of a career in the arts or in creativity. If you told your parents you wanted to be an art student, you might as well just tell them you're a drug addict. That's the way...

Laura: Was there a difference in how your diagnosis was perceived when you are in Nigeria versus when you were in London? When did you go back to London? You were in London, and you were in Nigeria, you got diagnosed, and then at some point, you went back to London?

Nabil: I moved over here in my teens. I was like 17, 18. And at that time, people cared a lot more now than they did the first half of my life about these things, unfortunately.

Laura: There are even podcasts about it, Nabil.

Nabil: Yeah, before podcasts were invented, there wasn't even like a Google for me to look up. We didn't have these resources. I just had what I've been told, like, I read, my mom got like a printout that showed me like, and books that talked about people who were suspected of having ADHD through the ages. So, Galileo, Da Vinci, Einstein, The Rock.

Laura: Did you just put The Rock in the company of Einstein?

Nabil: Yeah....

Laura: You had Galileo, Da Vinci, Einstein, The Rock. No, I love The Rock, I'm just, it was just you missed a few centuries there.

Nabil: My earliest memory was stand-up comedy, right? My earliest memory as an adult was watching stand-up as a 4-year-old.

Laura: Who were you watching? Do you remember?

Nabil: It was, we had a VHS. I don't know if you're old enough to remember that.

Laura: Oh, yeah, I had beta too, Nabil.

Nabil: Oh beta, fancy.

Laura: I thought beta was worse.

Nabil: I don't know, man. Like, I never, ever experienced beta. We all, we just had VHS. Isn't it just the thing where, like, in America, you guys had beta and we....

Laura: No, no. There was a war in America, but beta lost hard. OK, but we've really gone off-topic. But I love it, though. It's fun. It's fun going on the journey of your brain and whatnot.

Nabil: So, yeah, so it was Richard Pryor...

Laura: Oh, great!

Nabil: ...we had Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and we had Rowan Atkinson doing a one-man show in a theater. And I loved what these guys were doing. I wanted to be, you know, I love what they're doing, but it's like when I first started watching this stuff, I didn't even know what stand-up was, one. Two, I didn't know that I could want to be that when I grew up, because in Nigeria, your options then were doctor, lawyer, soldier, engineer, corrupt politician, the first four being an entry point to becoming a corrupt politician. Or you could start your own cult, which I think is still an option for me now. Would you like to join?

Laura: I think, we're so much alike, we've already established. So, OK. And you're watching stand-up comedy in Nigeria...

Nabil: And I feel like all this stuff kind of prepared me for the career I'm in now because I was always like, when I was really young, like, onset of my ADHD as a kid when it's still cute was I was a really funny kid. And we had school plays and stuff like that. And I was, I would excel at anything to do with performing, anything to do with talking, expressing myself, writing. I would do very well at that. And it was fun. But then I moved to secondary school or high school. Secondary school was different because the secondary school I went to wasn't as accommodating for people with special needs, like the teachers there were not as tact in dealing with issues that I had.

And then also there was the problem with like, in our culture, if you've got a big brother and someone picks on you, you go to your big brother. And like if you've got a sister, and someone has a problem with her that you can't fight a girl, so they come and fight you, right? And I've got an older sister, she's three years older than me, and she's not a very nice person. So, like, a whole bunch of people have three years’ worth of hatred for her, but they decided they were going to try and take that on me. And the other side of ADHD is having a temper, right? And so, you add ADHD to the fact that I'm now entering my early teens, so I'm already in a rebellious phase and I'm already full of testosterone. And then you throw in the fact that teachers are treating me differently, not being very nice about the issues I've got. And then the teachers didn't like my sister either. So, they will look for excuses to single me out. And it's easy to do that to a kid who's got special needs, which is what they were called at the time. And then on top of that, I've got people trying to pick fights with me because of who my sister is.

So, my ADHD side, the other symptoms of it for the first couple years in school, were expressed in the less desirable, you know. So, I still had the personality that would make someone like a class clown or whatever. But now I'm a disruptive student.

Laura: Right.

Nabil: Now I'm a bad boy, not a funny boy, you know. So, I was fighting every day, not because I wanted to, but because a lot of the time I had to. I didn't realize this is only now, looking back, I understand that. The thing with ADHD is you have a shorter fuse; you are less patient because you're overstimulated. So, yeah, secondary school, while it was kind of fun because like I got up to all kinds of mischief and I got into a lot of trouble, which was my way of entertaining myself. And like, I was still on the debate team. I was still like, I still won prizes for essays and whatnot, but I was constantly in detention while doing that.

Laura: Wow, what a juxtaposition.

Nabil: Yeah, like I was getting good grades, but I was dodging class and punches, like I was, you know? And the thing is, my mom, she was smart from what she'd seen, the best thing would be telling me to channel my energy, extra energy, into sport.

Laura: OK.

Nabil: Video games helped a lot. And my mom built like had a basketball hoop put in our house. And when I come home, I just do a lot of basketball drills.

Laura: Yeah.

Nabil: And after like a year or two in my high school, because it's six years, I got really good at basketball because bigger kids in my neighborhood would come and play with me. And I got used to playing with bigger, stronger kids. And I got really good one summer, like there was one summer where it just clicked and I developed into being a really good point guard, and I just had a good imagination on the court.

Laura: Oh, that's, I've never heard that... a good imagination on the court.

Nabil: Yeah, a good vision. I mean, you could imagine how being creative would help a point guard.

Laura: Yeah, totally.

Nabil: Especially growing up, I was an Allen Iverson fan, so, yeah, I ended up becoming really popular in school because I was a good basketball player, like...

Laura: And this is in London or were you still in Nigeria?

Nabil: This is still in Nigeria because like we're a basketball-playing nation, and there's a lot of Nigerians in the NBA. Olajuwon, for example, was still highly ranked. And then also our principal was American. So, stuff like basketball, and I got into martial arts, I got into like boxing, karate, things like that.

Laura: Sports really helped you, helped you cope.

Nabil: Yes, sports and creativity. And then, like I was on the dance team, like we used to do, like street dances.

Laura: Awesome.

Nabil: Yeah. So, like I was doing so much stuff like, I sit down, not a thing. Wow. I did a lot of stuff as a kid doing so much stuff, and it really helped. But when I moved over to the U.K., I go into a lot of trouble over here as well. I kind of fell into the wrong crowd, because again, it's so easy to switch off, especially in rigid, structured places like college, university, that you come in, especially when you're already othered because like you're the foreign kid, you're the immigrant, you're the... And then on top of that, you've got, you know, the conditioning. It just, it's so easy, so easy to find yourself malingering, as my mom calls it.

Laura: Malingering?

Nabil: So, yeah. Yeah, I've been on some wild and wacky adventures. Secondary school in Nigeria, I was practically pressured by my parents to become a science student because my dad's a doctor, right? And it's like, the head of the science department hid my results. And even though I passed with flying colors, she hid my results because she said she didn't want a crazy, crazy kid like me in a lab.

Laura: She said crazy?

Nabil: Yeah, she said crazy.

Laura: I'm sorry.

Nabil: I mean, it was more down to the way I behaved and not the fact that I had ADHD. But then where does the ADHD stop, and my personality start?

Laura: Yeah, it's a pretty blurry line there.

Nabil: If you want to be a doctor when you grow up and you go to school in Nigeria, you have to be a science student. So, your subject, your core subjects become biology, physics, chemistry, math. And then, well, not math is, of course, that's for everybody. But you do further math as a science student, and then the art students get to do arts, accounting, economics, government, social studies, that kind of stuff. So, in Nigeria, they always, people always looked at art students as, "Oh, they're not serious. Real students go and do the sciences," right?

Laura: Right. Who cares about social studies?

Nabil: None of that hippie art stuff. Yeah, like, "What are you learning in social studies?" Well, that's the mentality. So, I got pressured into becoming a science student. The teachers didn't want me in the labs because, I mean, I pulled some legendary pranks when I was at that school.

Laura: I need an example. Give me one prank. I can't let you say that without telling me one of the pranks you pulled.

Nabil: OK. So, my friend, who I used to get into all this mischief with, was failing his exams basically because of me, right? So, I hatched a plan, and we got a bunch of fireworks and we put them in a massive coffee tin, we're 13, 14 years old. And we got together the equivalent of about $300 worth of fireworks and other kinds of fun explosives. And we emptied out the coffee tin, no, we didn't drink the coffee because that would be dangerous. And then we put all these fireworks in the coffee tin. I got two kids to pretend to fight at the entrance to the staff room to distract the teachers, right? Because in Nigeria when two kids start fighting, the teachers don't break it up. They just say "OK, keep on going. When you're tired, you'll stop," you know? So, these two kids were fighting at the front, the front of the staff room, and I roll in the fireworks, and light one firework, put it in the box, and roll it in through the window and it goes off. And all the teachers...

Laura: Wait, in the window of the classroom?

Nabil: No, of the staff from, yeah. So, like basically at the time exams were marked manually and then entered into a computer system on a Wednesday. So, this was — I did this on a Wednesday around the time I knew that the exams were being marked. So, as the explosions go off and all the teachers run, they leave the exam papers.

Laura: Oh my gosh.

Nabil: So, I sneak in through the window and I steal the exam papers.

Laura: Wow. What a heist.

Nabil: And in proper "Ocean's 12," I destroy the exam papers. And my friend, who I did it for, went on like, if he didn't go on and do well in life afterwards, then it would have been a wasted effort. But, you know, he re-sat his exams, he passed, and he’s great.

Laura: So, you were diagnosed when you were a child?

Nabil: Mm-hmm.

Laura: But you said that your "aha" moment came when you started doing stand-up. Is that right?

Nabil: Yeah.

Laura: Tell me about that.

Nabil: Yeah. There have been several "aha" moments through my career, but comedy definitely. Over time, I've realized that my whole life has prepared me for the career that I've chosen, my career path. And like a lot of great comics, I not saying I'm a great comic...

Laura: I'll say it. He's a great comic.

Nabil: Oh, stop! But a lot of comics I do consider to be great, are people who are neurodivergent and have had, have been diagnosed with ADHD, or have clear signs of it. So, like my ability to recount certain memories from random things, the way my mind works, all these things. A lot of comics are like "I can't do what you do" like it makes more sense when someone watches what I do. But a lot of comics are like, "Well, how do you do that? I can't switch subjects the way you do." I'm like, "Dude, that's just the way my brain works. It literally does." And a lot of comics struggle to write material. They have to sit down and, and you know, they have writing partners and you see them in a Starbucks somewhere looking pretentious, typing and….

But like, for me, like I could literally I never sit down and say, I'm going to dedicate a whole day to trying to write material. It just like, something happens, and then I think about it and it's just like, "Oh, I've got an idea." A lot of my best ideas have come to me while I was sitting on the toilet, and I start yelling it out to my wife.

Laura: So, you don't... do you write down any of your material or you just remember it all?

Nabil: Yeah, I just remember.

Laura: That's amazing. So, you go on stage, how many minutes of material do you do on an average, in an average standup? A tight 10?

Nabil: Anywhere from 30 to an hour and a half.

Laura: Jeez. So, wait, you're just riffing, or it's scripted in your mind?

Nabil: I'm not just riffing. I have bits that I remember that work, so I do them again.

Laura: That's amazing.

Nabil: But like, once I know a bit, I don't need to write it and...

Laura: I have chills. I can't believe that you, I mean, Nabil, I'm sitting here, I'm interviewing you, I interview people about this topic all the time, and it's kind of a similar set of questions that I'm always asking. And I still write down all the things that I, you know, that's amazing.

Nabil: Yeah. I mean, you're clearly a responsible member of society, but you see, people like me, I wrote my dissertation for university in a day. And it got a first. I don't recommend it to anyone.

Laura: Yeah.

Nabil: I don't recommend it to anyone. And I took a lot of caffeine that day. I think Nescafé and other need to take credit as well. But like, you know.

Laura: I'd like to dedicate this dissertation to Nescafé. Wow, no, but you know, if it works for you, you put that pressure on yourself and I imagine it's similar, you get out on stage, you've got the spotlight on you and...

Nabil: I mean, I wish I could be like most people, regular people, and do things in an organized manner and whatnot. But my brain thrives in chaos. And like, I almost go into a flow state. Like when I played basketball, it was the same thing. I was constantly in a flow state. The best way to describe ADHD from a creative standpoint, and even a day-to-day standpoint, I like the term inertia. Inertia is the inability to start or stop motion.

So, in the morning it's hard for me to get out of bed. The anxiety hits me. I don't want to leave my room. I don't want to go out into the world. But when I do, when I commit myself to doing anything, it can't stop. The neurons in my brain just fire. And it's strange that I don't know, like, I remember talking to someone recently and they said to me that they think people like us, we probably would have been like the monk or philosopher or shaman in an ancient society, right? It would make sense because you look at the amount of material that some of these guys put out, they didn't have to, for example, work a 9-to-5 job. They didn't have to get up and be a part of the rat race.

And so, I think somehow people who have these conditions were meant to focus on one thing or a couple of things and be really good at those things. They might not necessarily be the most sociable people. They might not necessarily be the best hosts at a dinner party. They might not be very good at folding jeans at Banana Republic or whatever. But when they get put to write, when they get put to do their poetry, when they get put to do a certain thing, they're brilliant at that thing. And I think comedy is my thing and all things related to it. I think that's like at least in this lifetime, that's the closest to what I am meant to do that I'm doing.

Laura: That makes so much sense. The word "inertia" is just kind of bouncing around my brain too, I think...

Nabil: That's the Nigerian schooling system.

Laura: So, your "aha" moment, in a way, it wasn't a realization that you had ADHD because you already knew it. It was more that you have this ability to harness your symptoms.

Nabil: Yeah. It's a tough thing to talk about now. When you spend your whole life being told that you're not capable of doing things properly the way regular people do, you start to believe that you'll never be good at anything. Because there's many times, like, for as many successes I have in certain things, there were failures in others because I just couldn't focus, and I couldn't get my head around it. And like I spent a large portion of my life, I've got at least 16 doctors or something on one side of the family. That just isn't for me. And you start to feel it when the one thing you've been told you're supposed to grow up to become, you can't do that, then you're not good at anything. When I got to my late teens and stuff here in the U.K., my impulsiveness got me in trouble with the law. So, that didn't help me. That didn't help me.

Laura: I'm not even going to ask you about that one, Nabil. I know better. I know better now.

Nabil: So, you know, it was through my misadventures and brief stint as a guest of the queen. Oh, sorry. You may not understand what I mean when I say guest of the queen. So, basically prisons in the U.K.

Laura: Oh.

Nabil: Like say there's a prison called Springfield. It's HMP, Her Majesty's Prison, Springfield. So, if you spend like a night in jail or whatever, or, then you're a guest of the queen.

Laura: Oh, my God. I did not know that.

Nabil: So, it was whilst I was a guest of Her Majesty that I discovered a talent in stand-up.

Laura: You started doing stand-up in prison?

Nabil: I guess you could say that. Yeah.

Laura: Really?

Nabil: Yeah. Well, here's what it was. It was one day like we were going to get lunch, and I was telling a story to the guy behind me, right? Because you have to queue up with your trays. It's a lot like Starbucks. You got those little trays you have to... Anyway, so, see the look on your face. So, I was telling this guy a story and the guy in front of me starts like, he turns around, "See you, yeah. You're funny. You should do comedy." Because when I was outside, I used to put comedy shows, and you're funnier than most of the guys I paid to do stand-up. And I was like, "Wow. Do you reckon that, like, maybe when we come out, you could hook me up?" He said, "Oh, no, no, no. I'm a drug dealer now. But back then, when I used to do comedy..."

Laura: Oh, my God. All right, this is just, you're blowing my mind. OK.

Nabil: Oh, it gets even crazier, because on the inside, right? People were always fighting. There was a lot of violence. And one guy  — he was an artsy-fartsy guy. He brought three DVDs into our wing. "Delirious." So, that's Eddie Murphy. "Killing Them Softly," Dave Chappelle. "Bigger and Blacker," Chris Rock. And he just went from cell to cell and he would loan it to the inmates. And over a period of about, I think, a month, the violence died down.

Laura: Wow. The power of comedy.

Nabil: And more and more people kept on telling me that I should do stand-up. And I made it my responsibility to just, to extend Her Majesty's library while I was in there. I would order books. And I read Richard Pryor's autobiography and it inspired me. I was like, "OK." After that I started doing a lot of creative writing stuff, and then one day we even did like a mini performance, and I did stand-up and it was cool. And like the officers would come and open my cell door 15 minutes early just so that I could roast them and how they dressed and stuff. And so, once my, I outstayed my welcome with the queen as a guest, I was back on the outside. I was like, "OK, I'm not going to do psychology anymore" because I was actually a psychology student at the time everything happened. I was like, "You know what? I'm going to go and study drama and applied theater. I want to be a performer. I want to study the performing arts and do something that I enjoy because I know that if I do something I enjoy, I'm going to thrive."

Laura: Yeah.

Nabil: And I did. I did. It was brilliant. It was one of the best choices I ever made, doing something that I wanted to do and that I was passionate about.

Laura: Yeah, I feel like I could — I could talk with you for hours. I could. You're so interesting. Everything you say, and it's, there's so many unexpected moments. And I feel like this whole conversation has been kind of a little ride around your brain, and it's like a circus kind of thing. It's amazing. Anything that you're working on right now that you want to plug that people can check out?

Nabil: I'll be doing a series of videos which are going to be rants, political rants with Double Down News. So, they'll be out in a couple of weeks. So, those will be on YouTube. And I'm generally yeah, I just post loads of stuff on Instagram. And so on, but yeah.

Laura:Everybody check out Nabil. He's so funny. And this interview wasn't evidence of his very creative and funny brain. I've just, I'm starting my day with some good endorphins here. Really. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Nabil.

Nabil: Pleasure was mine.

Laura: You've been listening to "ADHD Aha!" from the Understood Podcast Network. If you want to share your own "aha" moment, email us at ADHDAha@understood.org. I'd love to hear from you. If you want to learn more about the topics we covered today, check out the show notes for this episode. We include more resources as well as links to anything we mentioned in the episode.

Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people who learn and think differently discover their potential and thrive. We have no affiliation with pharmaceutical companies. Learn more at Understood.org/mission.

"ADHD Aha!" is produced by Jessamine Molli. Say hi, Jessamine!

Jessamine: Hi everyone.

Laura: Briana Berry is our production director. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. For the Understood Podcast Network, Scott Cocchiere is our creative director, Seth Melnick is our executive producer, and I'm your host, Laura Key. Thanks so much for listening.