The 5 Dragon States: Your ADHD Energy Levels Operating System

As I was driving to the club for the board meeting I knew there was likely a conflict coming. There was just something about some of the messages that had been sent out that put me on alert. And when I go on alert, that means my dragon goes on HIGH ALERT.

We know the sting of failure well, and our dopamine starved brains are more sensitive to it than others. When it happens, it can be devastating. What a typical person might see as a simple disappointing episode and quickly move on from we can often perceive as the end of the world.

Because of this hyper-vigilance our dragon adopts an incredibly defensive posture. Dragons don't like to be backed into corners. I know my dragon in this state and the result isn't pretty.

via GIPHY

The difference (it was still an awful meeting, but the dragon didn't go full on destruction-mode) is I was mindful this was the state my dragon was in. Lack of awareness is where people with ADHD constantly find themselves in trouble. Going into this meeting I was determined, no matter what took place, that the dragon wasn't going to get out of control.

Part of that mindfulness has been from a brain meds cocktail (aka ADHD medication), but, most importantly, it came from knowing my dragon and many lessons from dragon riding. I knew there was conflict coming and I was prepared for it and that made all the difference.

The lesson of knowing your dragon is key here and at the heart of it is knowing what I have dubbed "dragon states." Once I described them I realized they are really ADHD energy levels, a combination of dopamine, norepinephrine, and energy levels that coalesce into five core states for my dragon. First, I have to first say, these are the states of my dragon. Yours might have slightly or even completely different side effects or symptoms of ADHD at the different combinations.

Only by knowing your dragon can you learn to ride it. And only by knowing its states can you rely on interventions to begin to ride it. Riding your dragon is the key to your mental health. So let's take a look at them and some of the associated mental health conditions of each state. Please keep in mind I am not a doctor or professional, this is just my ADHD experience. Nothing medical here is a substitute for ADHD treatment under the care of your psychiatric and/or healthcare provider. My goal is to get you to consider lifestyle changes that can help you recognize and regulate these energy levels.

Hunting—the ADHD hyper-focus state.

The meeting I was going into is the perfect example of the Hunting state because hyper-vigilance is a byproduct of hyper-focus. The ADHD brain has an incredible and often stunning capability to turn an incredible amount of focus to the thing that is interesting us. This again, is related to how it handles dopamine. Our dopamine levels aren't driven by rewards like the typical brain is, they are driven by interest.

Hyper-focus is generally the mode that our ADHD brain wants to be in because it's building that dopamine it is constantly starved of.

ADHD Symptoms While Hunting

• Inattentiveness: you get so focused on something that you look around and hours have passed. You may or may not have gotten anything accomplished during those hours. You also may or may not have showered.
• Hyper-vigilance: Hyper-vigilance is hyper-focus taken to the extreme. Our dragons are mighty beasts covered in scars from the many battles they have fought. Each and every one of those scars stays with us—it's carried into the next battle, and we can give you intricate detail on how each was formed. These scars from pain, disappointment, failure, and loss are what fuel hyper-vigilance and destroy our self-esteem. People will often mistake this for inattentiveness when the truth is the dragon is guarding with intense ferocity.
• Unapproachability: Work cubes were always a coffin for me. In the coffin I would be hunting for the thing that interested me. Person enters my cube—I ignore them. Person speaks to me—I continue hunting and answer them without looking at them. Person engages me in conversation—I continue to hunt without ever looking at them. Person is exasperated and (rightfully) labels me unapproachable or inattentive because I don't act like I care about them.
• Lack of Time Management: You fired up a video and six hours later realize you’ve gotten nothing done. You now know everything there is to know about Charles Guiteau, for whatever good that will do you.

If we look at the psychiatry here a bit what is happening is we are searching and craving that dopamine hit that can only come from finding something that interests us. Anything getting in the way of that is an obstacle and it must be ignored. It’s why the name Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is so misleading, and why I never knew I had it.

The American Psychiatric Association is looking to update the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) with regard to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ED would work well for Executive Dysfunction but it’s taken unfortunately. I have the ability to shut everything out with hyper-focus, and I thought that was the opposite of ADHD rather than one of its most common symptoms. It kept me away from an ADHD diagnosis until I was 51 years old.

With all of this said, there are times when hyper-focus is our super power. We are talking about dragons after all and what kicks ass more than a dragon? Nothing, nothing kicks ass more than a dragon. And that same ferocity and tenacity that will get us into trouble when Hunting leaves people in awe of our prowess while Cruising.

Cruising—the ADHD productive flow state.

Ask someone close to you (I know, I bet there are just so many to choose from, right?) and ask them to list the best thing about you. Inevitably they will be reference something from your Cruising state.

I had a manager very early in my career tell me that I thrived on chaos and that when things are chaotic, I was the one he would want at his side to make sense of it. That same intensity that we muster in the hyper-focus Hunting state is what makes us extraordinary in the flow Cruising state. Because we are so dopamine starved, once we find it, we do not want to let it go. Norepinephrine is completely driven out and that means nothing, absolutely nothing, can get in the way of it when we have it. This is why we thrive in chaos.

ADHD Symptoms While Cruising

• Procrastination—I know, you’re confused. Let me explain. Neurotypicals like to call the way we put things off until absolutely necessary to act on them "procrastination" but that's not what it is at all. It’s waiting for Cruising.
• Hyper-focus—but in a good way. The whole world can be going to hell but you instinctively know what to do and how to handle it without breaking a sweat. It is truly when hyper-focus is the super power.

Again, turning to the psychiatry, interest is the only thing that drives our dopamine levels so we are almost completely and solely motivated by interest. This is why we are confounding to all of those close to us because things they clearly see as critical or important we will hold off doing, this runs completely against the grain for them. They see the ADHD symptom of procrastination, but for us, it doesn't matter if it's critical or if it's important, it only matters if it is interesting.

Thus, for a vast array of things, the only time something becomes interesting is right before it's about to blow up in our face. The consequences of something blowing up in our face is interesting because we don't want it to happen. This motivates us to do the thing.

The Greeks had a much better word (they often do, the Greeks were much more expressive and precise in their language versus the Romans who just wanted to get on with it) than procrastination that applies here—akrasia which means doing something against your better judgment. This is much more where ADHD brain, our dragon brains, like to operate. Who gives a fuck about tomorrow? I'm worried about today and if this thing doesn’t interest me today, fuck it. Dragon brain can be impervious to interventions and only exists in the now—doing something uninteresting now is against my better judgment.

Restless—the ADHD seeking state.

Right after my manager gave me the praise about being the one by his side in chaos, he slipped the dagger in. "But God help us all when you're bored." This, is the major impairment to daily life for people with ADHD—Restlessness.

This omni-focus mode is where anxiety lives. We see all the things, we know all the things, we know every nuance of all of the things, but the dragon is trying to decide what is interesting. It doesn't want to be in this mode of scanning, it wants to be in the mode of focusing. When we can't focus on the particular thing that's where the frustration and anxiety kicks in. Thus, Restless is a transitional state and not one dragon brain wants to be in.

ADHD Symptoms while Restless

• Anxiety—this is where ADHD overwhelm kicks in and drives us even further into the Restless state. We are running on little or no dopamine, this allows norepinephrine to take over and drive us into flight.
• Impulsivity—we need that quick dopamine fix and there’s nothing better for that than being impulsive about something. Retail therapy, bright shiny thing that will fix everything, app that will make it all better, these things all come from impulsivity and a lack of emotional regulation. The dragon lashes out or roars.
• Addiction—eventually anxiety drove me to the bottle. When I get so dopamine starved the searching just continues endlessly and, most astonishingly, in multiple directions all at the same time. It's like our brain is reaching in every direction at once to try to find the dopamine. It's fucking flipping out with zero emotional regulation. It's what causes our thoughts to race, obsess over needless details, see and interpret things that aren't there, become completely and totally overwhelmed.
• Paranoia—I haven’t often found it to be thought of as ADHD related but, having lived it, that endless seeking leads to paranoia. "Oh, she left the door to her room opened, that must mean maybe she's letting me in," or, "oh, she left the door cracked, that means she wants to keep me out but since it's open slightly I might be able to get back in." My brain will race over whether MY WIFE COMPLETELY SHUT A FUCKING DOOR OR NOT. Complete and total loss of emotional regulation, everything is about you.

For our psychiatry visit here this is where dopamine is at a low and norepinephrine has taken over. Restlessness is the death spiral that feeds itself. It sends you in 17 different directions at once and you don't finish a single one of them. You have a pile of work in front of you that is only getting higher and you decide to doom scroll or watch videos instead. It leads to sleep disorders. You get up at 4 A.M. not being able to sleep from the anxiety and do what makes sense, let the vices of sex or gambling kick in and take over.

Finally, for me, when none of that would work, let's have a glass, bottle, or box of wine. That will shut that shit up. I never drank with the intention to get drunk, I drank because I liked wine. Once I started, I couldn't stop, it just felt too good to finally rest when I got there.

That's when I would finally crash…

Exhausted—ADHD mental fatigue.

Finally, completely starved of dopamine and now energy, we enter the Exhausted state. It is also transitionary and can come at different times. Often it will come on the tail end of a Cruising state.

ADHD Symptoms While Exhausted

• Indecisiveness: Essentially a lack of executive function. You can't decide what you want to eat or what to wear. Any mental effort at all becomes taxing.
• ADHD Freeze: ADHD freeze, or ADHD fatigue, or ADHD paralysis is just that—like being paralyzed, zero executive function. Whenever I've hit this state I have perfect knowledge of all the things piled up around me. It might be a pile of work, or bills, or just stuff that I haven't picked up. I see it all. I know I absolutely must do something about it. But I don't know where to start, so I just shut down. I'm frozen.
• Depression: Ah, that old friend of ADHD, the lovely comorbidity (simultaneous presence of two or more medical conditions) known as depression. We just sink deeper into this depleted state we are in unable to move. You can't think, you can't act and you can't even react. It seems like nothing can snap you out of it.
• Chronic Fatigue: The Exhausted state can go on for days at a time sometimes and lead to a chronic state of fatigue or mental exhaustion. Despite being exhausted, your sleep quality nose dives. I’ve had this happen to me many times after an extended Cruising or Hunting state.

From a brain chemistry standpoint your ADHD brain has absolutely no idea what to do with this pile of dopamine you have gorged yourself on. You're spent. Where you might have had little executive function before you have none now. Enter ADHD Freeze.

You want to take care of being completely depleted? Totally unhealthy sleep hygiene maybe? Check out. Drink until you black out which, at the end, took a lot of wine for me. Beautiful for mental health, amirite?

My blackouts were so profound I had times where I cooked an entire meal and would wake up the next morning to the dirty dishes not knowing it was me who cooked the meal. Scarier yet, the meal was often good.

Incubating—ADHD recovery.

Whenever a dragon gets completely tired the only thing it can do is circle around or go back to the lair. To those on the outside this can look like we're not doing anything at all but the Incubating state is actually a crucial transition for us and is very different from the Exhausted state. In the Exhausted state we can't rest and in the Incubating state we can. I’ve found that focusing on getting into Incubating should be the goal of all of your interventions and coping mechanisms.

When I was younger this was the state that was frequently ignored or forgotten. Even as I got older I would avoid this state. That's a dangerous place to be in because it leads to that Restless or Exhausted state. It took me a very long time but I finally figured out the trigger to the Incubating state and that is the mundane or physical activity.

100% Benefit from Daily Life

Going back to the lair is when your dragon needs to settle in on some eggs. "Dragon eggs" are the term I have coined to describe those necessary tasks that we don't want to do but don't require a lot of engagement. This is the perfect time for daily tasks: pick up our space, do laundry, do housework, physical activity or the mundane thing where we can totally tune out and settle in with our thoughts.

When we're Restless our thoughts are tortuous, when we're Exhausted they are unrelenting, Incubating is when we can actually get to work on them and develop coping mechanisms. Incubating is where I've been able to develop any number of fantastic ideas and get my brain out of its own way. Using the Pomodoro method with my work to force Incubating periods or physical activity has been one of the most effective coping strategies I have developed to dragon ride.

For instance, during that rough time with my wife I decided that would be a perfect time to clean the downstairs. Again, that relentless ADHD focus to a task kicks in but it doesn't require any serious brain power, we can go on autopilot. With our bodies occupied with the task at hand the mind isn't stuck in overdrive. So when I started cleaning the downstairs that's when I saw how crazy I was about the spare bedroom door and the 1,000 other ridiculous thoughts I had when Restless about the situation.

Incubating is when we do one of the most valuable things, learning. With the dragon engaged elsewhere, we have an opportunity to reflect on the thoughts that have been racing. Things slow down and get brought into focus. Incubating is at the heart of well-being and learning to dragon ride. It is also at the heart of sound cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as it gives us that moment to distance ourselves from negative thought patterns and reflect.

Know Your Dragon and Know Adult ADHD

As I said, these are my dragon's states and yours might be different. Every ADHD brain behaves differently. We all have different things that drive us between different states. I think the differences are most pronounced between children, adolescents, and adults suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. For instance, I think children and adolescents tend to be more susceptible to the inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive side effects of Hunting where someone with adult ADHD will trend towards being unapproachable. One thing I will say, the impulsivity becomes much more dramatic with adult ADHD when it becomes a car instead of a mud pie.

The Hunting and Cruising states are the two that I think are common for everyone with ADHD and, as I noted, the rest are transition periods that can vary. For instance, it may well be you are able to learn in a place where my energy level would be Exhausted. That's completely fine, know your dragon and your states. But, more importantly, learn the triggers for the different states and that is when you learn how to ride.

Once we are in one of these states we become a passenger, a slave to our energy levels. It can be very hard to do anything about them. But, knowing what your triggers are, you can learn to anticipate them like I anticipated my Hunting state going into that meeting. Knowing them will arm you with the coping strategies that will put you on the road to much better mental health.

The meeting didn't go well but that's not what is important. What is important is how I reacted to others and how I handled it myself when it was over. It would have been really easy to see that moment as failure but I saw it as a victory. That's the art of dragon riding, finding those victories.

A Personal Note

I spent 50+ years thinking I was lazy, broken, unfixable. Turns out I was just cycling through these states without a map.

If you're reading this at 2 AM in Hunting state, or paralyzed in Exhausted, or organizing your sock drawer while Incubating—you're not alone.

This isn't just theory. It's my daily reality. Some days I ride the dragon. Some days it rides me. Both are okay.

What state has been dominating your week? Let me know in the comments. I respond to every Dragon Rider who shares their story.

—Guy

Next: My 3-year sobriety anniversary and why the dragon finally makes sense.