The 52-year-old comedian and actor Johnny Vegas just disclosed he has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The comedian told BBC Breakfast that receiving the diagnosis before Christmas “answers many concerns regarding earlier behavioral disorders.”
His remarks followed the recent revelation by presenter Sue Perkins that she, too, had gotten a similar prognosis.
Johnny Vegas wrote last week that “all of a sudden, everything made sense.”
Vegas stated that he and Perkins had the same agent, who requested that he be evaluated as well.
Vegas, of the bands Benidorm and Still Open All Hours, told Breakfast on Wednesday that “a lot of things make sense” now.
When asked what the condition meant for him, he responded, “It’s that feeling of disorganization and difficulty performing fundamental things. I believe everyone has a degree of this, but it depends on the strength of your filter.
“When there is no filter at all, even the simplest tasks become time-consuming. It’s like, [I’ll say] I’ll move that cup, but then you have 10 other ideas and you haven’t moved that cup, and then three weeks later that cup is still there and someone asks why you haven’t moved it, and it’s become this tremendous effort and it’s accumulated.
“It’s just how your brain organizes itself, I think. I’ve always been disorganized, but this diagnosis explains a lot of things at school. I’m on the cusp of learning about it.”
‘No regrets’
He said that in some respects “it has made me who I am” and questioned whether “that chaos made me a better stand-up comedian.”
“In some ways, you can look back on it with regret, but I’ve had a charmed life, so there are no regrets,” he remarked. “I know now, and I think it helps you make adjustments if you want to become more responsible later in life, but I don’t believe it defines me.”
In addition to presenters Ant McPartlin and Richard Bacon, comedian Rory Bremner and model Erin O’Connor have been diagnosed with ADHD as adults.
Tony Lloyd, CEO of the ADHD Foundation, told Breakfast that one in twenty people have the disorder, but that it is “substantially under-identified and under-diagnosed in the United Kingdom.”
“ADHD has been plagued by stigma and persistent myths,” he said.
“Many people have struggled for years with a variety of ADHD symptoms but didn’t realize they had the disorder because they didn’t identify with the school-inculcated concept that if you had ADHD, you were less clever, less able, and poorly behaved. This is, of course, nonsense.
“Thus, there are a great number of adults who, now that ADHD is better known, are beginning to realize that a number of their struggles may have been caused by ADHD.
Many have been treated for years for conditions such as anxiety and depression, and now that they have a better grasp of what ADHD is, they realize that this may have been the reason.
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