If you’re thinking about rehab, whether for yourself or someone you love, you’re probably overwhelmed by choices. Private, NHS, inpatient, outpatient, holistic, 12-step, luxury, trauma-informed, dual diagnosis… The list goes on. And yet, for something this important, it’s surprisingly hard to find honest, clear information. At Open Recovery, we believe that everyone deserves support that …
Most recovery tools assume you can remember things, like staying motivated, keeping a schedule, following through, etc. If you have ADHD, that’s a big ask. Trust me, I’ve been there. I’ve tried the colour-coded planners, the just write a to-do list advice, even the expensive apps that promised to change my life. They usually lasted …
You finally decide to get help, you check into rehab because you want to do the work, and well done to you for taking that huge first step. But three days in, you’re overwhelmed by group therapy, confused by the routine and exhausted from masking. You’re probably trying really hard and yet it feels like …
If your ADHD diagnosis came after sobriety, you may have been expecting things to feel a lot better, but they didn’t. Getting an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood, especially in recovery, can feel like clarity and grief all at once. For me, it explained everything – the chaos, the relapses, the shame. But it also left …
If you’ve been diagnosed with ADHD in recovery, you’ve probably faced the double stigma: addiction shame and medication shame, especially if the medication in question is a stimulant. You might worry: Am I just swapping one drug for another? Will this ruin my sobriety? What will other people in recovery think? Here, I’m going to …
If you live with ADHD, you’ve probably been told a thousand times that “routine is key.” But what no one tells you is how to build a routine when your brain resists repetition, forgets what day it is and wilts under rigidity. Recovery often leans on routine for stability, but traditional schedules can feel like …
If you live with ADHD, cravings don’t just show up in addiction. They’re part of your daily rhythm. Sugar, stimulation, connection and escape. The drive to feel something-or nothing-can be intense and really difficult to control. And when it comes to substances, those cravings can feel impossible to manage. For me, cravings were never just …
You know what to do, but you can’t do it. Or you start…and never finish. Or you finish once, and can’t do it again the next day. That’s not laziness. That’s executive dysfunction, and if you live with ADHD, you probably know it well. On this page, I’m going to talk about how executive dysfunction …
Before you knew you had ADHD, you probably got good at pretending you didn’t. You might have tried to seem “normal”, to act organised, to work twice as hard to keep up. To hide overwhelm, to swallow rejection, and to look calm while you were falling apart inside. That’s masking, and it takes a huge …
If you’ve ever felt like your brain swings between “everything now” and “nothing at all,” you’re not imagining it; that’s dopamine dysregulation. It’s one of the core features of ADHD and it plays a major role in why so many of us struggle with addiction. I’ve had ADHD all my life, and I can tell …
