Don’t be fooled (as I almost was) by scammers who claim you have “adult ADHD.” You’ll only be depriving those who really have it, writes MARY WAKEFIELD

I was recently riding the bus to work and must have been bored because I decided to take, rather than ignore, one of those online questionnaires about ADHD in adults. I think it was on Facebook. Question 1) Am I easily distracted? Well, yes. 2) Am I often late? 3) Do I often forget appointments? Yes and yes.

When I arrived, I had signed up for a program called impulse-based brain training, and within a few days I was pretty sure I had been valiantly suffering from undiagnosed ADHD for decades. I was half-caught in the trap of adult ADHD, though I didn’t know it yet.

I asked my brother and some friends what they thought and instead of laughing, they nodded sadly. They had also seen the tests online and it all made sense.

In fact, they were pretty sure they all had ADHD. It turned out they were all brave sufferers together.

I read some very appealing accounts of the calming effect of the stimulant Ritalin and the amphetamine Adderall on the ADHD brain, and I began to wonder, given the huge and growing demand and national shortage of the drugs, how I might be able to get my hands on some.

The trap didn’t close on me just because of a news story I saw last Friday: “ADHD Drugs Significantly Increase Heart Disease Risk in Adults.” It was as if I had woken up on a surgeon’s operating table and found myself about to undergo an unnecessary operation. How had I gotten here? Why was I even considering taking these nasty drugs? Why had so many other adults done exactly the same thing?

Not long ago, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, to give it its full name) was a childhood disorder, something that went a bit wrong with the brains of those kids in class who couldn’t concentrate and were jumping around in their chairs.

Now there are a huge crowd of perfectly normal adults demanding that their GPs give them drugs, and there is nothing left for the poor children.

And suddenly there’s a huge clamour from charities “raising awareness” of adult ADHD and a booming city of clinics in London’s W1 area offering private prescriptions for Ritalin, with (almost) no questions asked.

But this is all nonsense, isn’t it? Yes, some adults are disorganized and distracted. We work, we have children, some of us are absent-minded, but that’s character, not disease. Our short-term memory has been boiled alive by Apple Inc, but that doesn’t mean we have ADHD.

In fact, it is precisely because we don’t have ADHD as adults that it has become such a wildly successful industry.

Worried people have money to spend on drugs and personalized brain training plans. Just enter the letters “ADHD” into a search box and see for yourself. It’s like spilling blood into the water around Amity Island. Sharks start circling almost instantly.

For younger generations, it’s online influencers. The ADHD hashtag on TikTok has more than 20 billion views; and #adhdawareness has almost a billion. And views, of course, mean money.

#ADHD offers videos and survival tips – sexy girls in a mess – and not just an explanation for your unreliability, but a general excuse. Are you always late? Do you let your friends and family down? Don’t worry! Don’t worry! That’s just your ADHD. There’s nothing to be done. Only a fascist would hold you accountable. For older adults, the sharks come in the form of tests and then personalized life plans delivered to your inbox (thanks Impulse!) and all for just (let me check) $39.98 (£30) a week. (Argh! What was I thinking?)

Now, tests appear everywhere, on every Internet page I visit, and I marvel at the speed with which they convert self-pitying curiosity into an established diagnosis in a few quick, compliant steps.

1) Find out if you have ADHD. 2) What is your ADHD type? 3) Here’s how to manage your unique ADHD type. A little begging of the question, a little sunk cost fallacy, and Bob is your direct debit.

The adult ADHD scam uses all the usual charlatan tricks. A Time magazine article, while of course not skeptical, at least noted that about half of the ADHD TikToks made claims so vague that almost everyone could feel they applied to them.

“If you don’t like doing homework, you have ADHD” or “If you zone out during meetings, you probably have ADHD.” These phrases are known as Barnum statements, named after businessman PT Barnum, whose catchphrase was, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The NHS has been so overwhelmed by the rise in adult ADHD that it has set up a new task force – and just as I was reading about it, an advert from another clinic popped up: “The letter you see here defines your type of ADHD! Only adults with ADHD can solve this problem!” But even once the hoax has been exposed, it is surprisingly difficult to leave adult ADHD behind.

‘Mary, we’re sorry to see you go! Why did you cancel? Did you forget your personalized plan? Take back control of your life! Don’t let ADHD hold you back. Request your plan and get up to 20% off! Make it 50%… 75%!’

Among the countless charities set up to combat the “stigma” surrounding the condition is ADHD UK, whose chief executive, one Henry Shelford, sounds almost as if he is threatening any adult who might be in denial.

“It’s chilling to see so many people forced to hide their neurodiversity for fear of stigma and discrimination,” she says.

Creepy? Forced into hiding? How can it be creepy when it is highly uncertain that adult-onset ADHD exists at all, and when testing of adults who reported having ADHD has mostly shown them to be perfectly neurotypical and have none of the distinctive mental patterns found in children diagnosed with the condition?

Another charity, ADDitude, suggests that if adults with ADHD have relatives who “mistakenly believe that only children can have ADHD”, it might be best not to get involved and simply cut them out of your life.

Hold on tight to these family members, I tell you, because they are almost certainly right.

• This article first appeared in The Spectator.