Up to 80% of people with ADHD experience chronic sleep difficulties, often due to differences in body clock regulation and dopamine levels. Photo / Getty Images
Having spent years helping neurodivergent people sleep better, I’ve come to realise just how much they can teach everyone else about it.
Bursting through the door, I tumbled out onto the packed streets of London’s Soho, gasping for air. My chest was pounding, my mind racing. Barely able to catch my breath, it felt as though I’d had a bucket of icy water thrown over me. Convinced I was having a heart attack, but unable to shout for help, I was terrified.
Now, 30 years on, I know I was experiencing my first panic attack, brought on by the stress of holding down a hectic advertising role after months of broken sleep. On a good night I’d get two or three hours, and still have to show up to work firing on all cylinders.
Eventually, I was given a “managed” exit, with the subtext being, “you can’t cope, get out”. It wasn’t until I retrained as a psychotherapist, then specialised in sleep disorders, that I finally realised that undiagnosed ADHD and its impact on my body clock were at the heart of my insomnia. It was heartbreaking to realise that this was what had really cost me the job I loved.
Research shows that up to 80% of people with ADHD experience chronic sleep difficulty. That’s because ADHD changes how your brain manages three things: how switched on you feel, when your body clock thinks it’s bedtime, and how smoothly you can switch gears into rest mode.
Having spent many years helping people who have ADHD to achieve better sleep, I’ve come to realise just how much those who are neurodivergent could teach everyone else about how to deal with their own sleep issues.
Sleep is a spectrum. There is no ‘normal’
Let’s start by busting the eight-hour sleep myth. Many people are chasing that perfect night’s sleep, but it’s something most will never achieve because – neurodiverse or not – there is no normal. While the recommendation is that adults require seven to nine hours of sleep a night, you may be someone who gets six and thrives, or never feels fully rested after eight.
Those with ADHD will spend their days trying to conform to what society considers normal, and their nights – spent in pursuit of the right amount of sleep – are just as pressured. But fixating on a so-called gold-standard amount often triggers anxiety that only worsens sleep further.
The fix
When I work with clients, I start by helping them to establish what’s “normal” for them. The best way to do this is to look at how you sleep when you’re on holiday, because that’s when people tend to be less stressed and settle into a much more natural rhythm. Keep a diary to track your patterns, and let go of the belief that anything less than eight hours is a failure; shifting your focus off quantity and on to quality is far more beneficial.
Poor sleep is not a choice – it’s biology
Around 70-80% of people with ADHD have a delayed circadian rhythm, your body’s natural 24-hour clock. For some, this means that melatonin (the body’s “it’s night-time now” hormone) is released later than it should be, sometimes by hours, making 10pm feel like 7pm. In turn, “biological night” may not begin for them until well after midnight.
Put simply, you have to be sleepy to go to sleep, and if you have a delayed body clock, your sleep comes much later. So being a night owl isn’t a lack of willpower and your chronotype – your natural sleep rhythm – is not a choice. It’s biology. Despite this issue being common among those with ADHD, 90% of those who come to my sleep clinic have never had it explained to them before. Essentially, your body has been doing its best with a bedtime that doesn’t fit.
It isn’t just ADHD brains that experience this struggle – delayed sleep cycles are something that many of my neurotypical clients also battle with, they just don’t realise that it is the source of their disordered sleep.
The fix
The usual sleep hygiene advice – earlier bedtime, no screens, lavender spray – often makes things worse. You can’t discipline a body clock into submission, you have to work with it.
Instead, I advise my clients to anchor their wake time, not their bedtime, making sure they get up at the same time every day – yes, even at weekends.
This is the single most powerful piece of sleep advice there is. Your body’s entire 24-hour rhythm – cortisol, melatonin, body temperature, hunger, alertness – calibrates from the moment you wake and see daylight. If you struggle with delayed sleep, you need to get outside into the morning light so your body knows that it’s time to wake up. You can’t force yourself to fall asleep at a set hour, but you can choose the time you get up. Trust me, bedtime will follow.
Dopamine addiction is keeping you awake
If your body is exhausted but your brain feels like it’s just had three espressos the moment your head hits the pillow, you’re experiencing the “tired but wired” paradox – and dopamine is at the heart of it.
ADHD brains regulate dopamine – the neurotransmitter that governs motivation, reward and arousal – differently. Throughout the day, the ADHD brain is essentially in stimulation-seeking mode, hunting for its next hit. The problem is that when dopamine stays high in the evening, it physically suppresses melatonin production, keeping the brain in its alert, daytime state longer than it should.
This is why a 10pm bedtime can feel almost unbearable to someone with ADHD. Lying still, in the dark, doing nothing makes the brain rebel, generating racing thoughts, replaying conversations from six years ago, suddenly deciding now is the moment to plan a new business venture, chasing a new dopamine high. And this isn’t an exclusively neurodivergent experience. Anyone who has worked late, doom-scrolled past midnight or finished a gripping series at 1am has experienced dopamine-driven sleep delay, as their brain kept them awake seeking the next hit.
The fix
Work regular daytime exercise into your routine. This helps regulate dopamine across the 24-hour cycle, so by evening the system has a natural ebb. Just make sure you finish at least two hours before bed.
If you struggle to switch off when you get into bed, try replacing your set bedtime with a wind-down routine of 60 to 90 minutes. That might mean taking a warm shower, doing some crafting or gentle stretching, or switching more stimulating Netflix shows for audio entertainment like a podcast so you start to feel sleepy. Brief but engaging activities (a chapter of a novel, a sudoku) often work better than trying to bore yourself to sleep, because they give the dopamine-seeking brain a small, contained reward.
As told to Amy Packer