C15H25N3O
2025 - 2026
One of the clearest memories I have of speaking to a counsellor, aged 18, is describing to her how I experience thinking. It feels as if there is a projector playing a film of my thoughts that I am watching within my mind. There is also the projection of another film on top, and another, and another, all simultaneously playing, with the layers becoming entangled. Audio tracks sit atop of the visuals. I cannot seem to decipher what belongs to where. I try to imagine the subtitles of these thoughts but the words dance between sentences, creating their own incoherent language.
One week before my 40th birthday I was diagnosed with ADHD and chose to take stimulant medication. The first day that I took the medication I felt like an alien in my own skin. Those chaotic thoughts, all swirling around at once and clattering with cymbals for attention were gone. My mind was silent. It was like watching one singular film where the visuals, audio, and subtitles remained in sync, without the signal interference I had lived with for four decades.
During that first year post-diagnosis I created a number of Polaroid photographs made whilst walking (something that calms my mind) and self-portraits. These images were then submerged in a solution of my medication for various durations, creating unpredictable degradations and alterations, in an attempt to better understand my neurodivergence and the impact of this psychoactive medication.
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Produced with funding from Arts Council England.
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