As punk as attention deficit

Punk changed the world and proved the power of neurodivergence

I'm up and down the West way, in and out the lights

What a great traffic system it's so bright

I can't think of a better way to spend the night

Then speeding around underneath the yellow lights.¹

Punk was one of those things that came in with a crash, astounded everyone but in retrospect looks so obvious, like it had to happen.

There was no slow burn, it was an epiphany. Many people got it, just got it it. It was so immediate, so complete, so quick, for a while there was nothing else to think about. And then wham bam thank you man, it ran through its life so quickly, kept changing, it was fast and furious, involved drugs and violence and danger and a lot of stupidity. And then one day it was gone.

Soon after I came across the concept of attention deficit it occurred to me that punk itself seemed to be an ADHD event. Aside from the fact that it arrived impulsively and then got bored with its original self within a very short few time, the progenitors, the music, the bands, the lyrics and the fans all displayed attributes of ADHD.

The NHS defines adhd through a template approach - if you fit a majority of these attributes since childhood you have adult adhd.

• carelessness and lack of attention to detail

• continually starting new tasks before finishing old ones

• poor organisational skills

• inability to focus or prioritise

• continually losing or misplacing things

• forgetfulness

• restlessness and edginess

• difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn

• blurting out responses and often interrupting others

• mood swings, irritability and a quick temper

• inability to deal with stress

• extreme impatience

• taking risks in activities, often with little or no regard for personal safety or the safety of others – for example, driving dangerously

This list could almost be used to outline aspects of punk itself with its chaotic frenetic rush of blood to the head, its impulsivity and its resistance to authority coupled with a desire to defend the underdog.

What I am interested in is not explaining myself by ADHD but to construct a template that allows me to spot and understand its operating on cultural movements.

A review in the Financial Times of the biography of Malcolm McLaren said he ‘exhibited a kind of cultural ADHD, ripping through fashions, cultures and genres, never standing still.’²

Who overlapped New York and London, who literally created a connection between these two worlds? The ‘punk svengali‘ Malcolm McLaren. And who fits our attention deficit template? Malcolm McLaren.

Punk was cultural ADHD. People with adhd tend to be seen as ‘creative’ (when they are not seen as dangerous or criminal or stupid) because their non-standard approach to the world is seen by neurotypical minds as different and strange, i.e. creative. Adhd manifests as one of three types, hyperactive, inattentive or combined. I see punk as the combined type with its impulsivity (Well I say what I mean, I say what comes to mind), it’s focus on boredom (Boredom--boredom--boredom), it’s procrastination (I never get round to things).Impulsivity, Procrastination, Hyperactivity internal and external, Dopamine search, Time blindness, Boredom, Swift moving on, Epiphany.

If you assemble a list of the attributes of ADHD and compare this as a template to the attributes of punk. Let’s listen to what people actually say rather than impose conditions on them. ADHD can be a positive thing but it generates activities which are often described by society as negative behaviour. It takes some mind work to flip this around, to see what the world sees as bad behaviour as creative behaviour.

When any creative movement starts it takes something different, something new and unique, to trigger it. By definition this new thing is difficult for the straight world to accept, for the neurotypical to understand. But it seems that the neurodiverse, the neuronontypical, are more than ready to flock to these things. I suggest that there is an effect that I would call the ADHD effect where those with the condition recognise it in others and are more than happy to flock with them. In this way we can explain movements that are initiated and created by this specific neurodiversity. So we can have an ADHD cluster, an ADHD movement rather than many individuals with ADHD. 

I looked to apply an ADHD lens to that moment, to try and discern whether it was a coming together of some traits of ADHD that created that spark, whether a meme-cloud of attention deficit somehow cohered out of the primal gases (or the previous era of experimental rock, which was more or less the same thing). Who started this whole punk thing? It’s a long debated question and the answer tends to depend on where you want to end up: New York punk, London punk, Sex Pistols, post-punk: everything fed into what is now musical history. For my purposes I’m looking for something that consolidated a lot of trends, a moment when everything changed, when not-punk became punk.

I look back now at the early days of punk and how it affected my entire life. I never wondered what it was that made me like that, I assumed that it was fairly ordinary to rebel, to refuse, to fight against things and to feel a sense of creativity that comes with this stance..

When I came across attention deficit, I realised that it might offer a lens through which to understand my life and all its ups and downs. That life started in many ways in 1977 with punk and the dopamine rush of rebellion, of aggression, of being in a gang that was transgressive.  The moment I looked at those early brief punk days through the lens ADHD the repeating pattern of my life fell into place. Not that I remained a punk, I didn’t, but that I constantly looked for a new thing, for excitement in my mind, generated lots of new ideas in that space and then got bored with it and left it.

Adhd is a confection of different attributes which manifest in a variety of ways. There are observable behaviour modes at its core: impulsivity, procrastination, hyperfocus, hyperactivity, distraction and time blindness. These traits lead to what most people who are aware of their ADHD would recognise in themsleves: diving into new creative projects, periods of intense focus on those projects to the exclusion of all else and then an abrupt and complete loss of interest in the current project.

So I’m becoming an ADHD coach because I’ve had a revelation. I think that after a lifetime of not noticing what was driving me and then working it’s time to pass it on.

Ivan Pope, PhD, is (among many other things) an ADHD Coach.

1. The Clash, 48 Hours

2. Financial Times, review of McLaren biography