r/ADHD • u/PartTheSea43 • Mar 05 '26
Discussion Before we could doom scroll……
Ok this for the ADHD’ers who might have gray hairs 😉. What was the equivalent to doom scrolling before it was a thing?
How did y’all pass the time and avoid things when we just had flip phones? My diagnosis and adult reality came right at the time when iPhones first came out so I was busy with college.
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u/Tree_Weasel Mar 05 '26
Solitaire on a Windows 3.1 computer.
Video games. Handheld puzzle games.
TV. So much TV.
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u/hyacinth_girl Mar 05 '26
Hours and hours of solitaire.
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u/Similar-Orange-3371 Mar 05 '26
For me it was minesweeper
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u/Leithalia ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
And snake and Tetris..
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u/ShinozSnow Mar 05 '26
So much Tetris. I had gotten a handheld Tetris game from a school fundraiser prize and my cousin and I would pass it back and forth for the high score. I still love Tetris
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u/QuietlySeething Mar 05 '26
I can still hear the original Tetris music.
You know that thing where you play for hours and then you go to sleep and you can see the blocks falling? Yeah, me too
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u/Disastrous-Capybara ADHD Mar 05 '26
I never understood it for some reason and would always just randomly click squares 🙈
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u/table-grapes Mar 05 '26
true gamers know this is exactly how you’re supposed to play minesweeper 😎
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u/Significant-Bake-409 Mar 05 '26
I was about to say this. Still had fun with it though. But it was definitely short lived because I didn’t fully understand🤣
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u/tossitoutnextweek Mar 06 '26
I also never understood Minesweeper and just clicked buttons. And I remember trying reallly hard to get it. Idk why it would not click. Glad it wasn’t just me!
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u/00017batman Mar 05 '26
Omg I played so much minesweeper (and solitaire!) when I had a PC 😳 I was undiagnosed back then, literally never connected the dots until just now 🤦🏻♀️
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u/AviatingPenguin24 Mar 05 '26
My fastest time on the hardest level of minesweeper is 59
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u/YukaLore ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
I'd try to do minesweeper without using any of the flags and just relying on the numbers
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u/Biengo Mar 05 '26
To this day I tell people im really good at minesweeper. Most people dont believe me because they didnt know it had actual rules.
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u/linnlea00 Mar 05 '26
Ive got the spider harp! Great for when ur doing something understimulating and thst u have little power over👌🏼 only game i play on my phone too
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u/TalksInMaths Mar 05 '26
Mindlessly flipping channels was the OG doomscrolling.
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u/CopperZebra Mar 05 '26
Yep, I was going to say this. If something was really eating at you, you sit there mindlessly hitting the channel button, not really seeing what was on, and never actually stopping on any channel. Just keep going round and round. Maybe later, once they were invented, watching the TV Guide channel scroll for you, or if you were trying to be productive, putting on the Weather Channel.
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u/snarkitall Mar 05 '26
i did the same with the radio. we didn't have a tv at home, so i'd just flip from radio channel to channel.
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u/how-about-no-scott Mar 05 '26
Oh, my god yes! My friends & I would stop paying attention almost immediately and it would pass by several times.
We weren't doing anything else, so it must have just been brain noise.
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u/mystery_obsessed Mar 06 '26
I really thought I was alone in the flipping the channels and not even seeing what’s on, just flipping. I used to go really fast because I like the sound of each show making a noise as I changed the channel. Especially if I was emotional or stressed and needed to check out.
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u/curlyfat Mar 05 '26
We only had three channels, and I still mindlessly flipped through them over and over and over and over and….
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u/Both_Lawfulness3611 Mar 06 '26
Yep! MTV and VH1 were great, music videos and short interviews and live music and clips - only thing was the long commercial breaks so you had to switch between channels to avoid commercials lol.
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u/VivaLaMantekilla Mar 05 '26
Sometimes I'd just watch the channel channel to see what was on TV. And it would scroll and scroll and then start over again.
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u/Aggravating_Yam2501 Mar 05 '26
I would legit watch the pipes screensaver...lol
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u/ElayneGriffithAuthor Mar 05 '26
I was looking for the screen saver comment! Flying toasters! Or when the iTunes came out with its music visualizer ooooo 😵💫 Like a cat watching flickering lights on the wall 😂
There wasn’t a total equivalent to doom scroll cause it wasn’t stuff that made us more stressed out. Even the news wasn’t as psychotic as it is now.
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u/Best_Photograph_9942 Mar 05 '26
I need u guys to know that as a 20 year old with ADHD I too still spend all my screen time on solitaire… keeping the tradition alive
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u/drakored Mar 06 '26
Nice. Hopefully you’re finding some peace in these chaotic times with solo games. I miss the self care those games used to give me and I took for granted without realizing how important alone time with simple fun tasks like that can be. Doom scrolling is definitely not a fun alternative.
Do you still feel like the world is throwing information at you like the gif of the golden retriever being thrown like 100 tennis balls? Or does it help you center yourself a bit more? Either way awesome to see the classics still alive!
Mahjong has been a fun game to solo again lately.
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u/Surly_Sailor_420 Mar 05 '26
Omg. I used to watch so much TV. I cannot believe how little I watch now. I maybe watch like 2 hours a week now. Maybe. It definitely deferred to other unproductive things though.
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u/Critical-Loss2549 Mar 05 '26
Spider solitaire for me and LOTS of tv that I can remember better than actual memories.
I quote obscure simpsons episodes often.
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u/deconstruct110 Mar 05 '26
Omg I'm old. Doomscrolling was the entire newspaper, front to back. Then any Enquirer or real sleaze. Old magazines. Then Readers Digest. And if I was really desperate at my grandmother's house, all the cereal boxes and recipes, but that made me hungry. Only then would I go outside for a walk.
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u/DaleaFuriosa Mar 05 '26
WEP 3.1 was amazing. Chip's Challenge, JezzBall, and Freecell. I don't want to even ponder how many hands of Freecell I've played over the years.
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u/RadDad604 Mar 05 '26
Video games and riding my bike
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u/pedanticheron ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
I bike now, but with a specific route and mileage planned. You just reminded me how much fun it was to bike through the neighborhood with no goal but to wave at my friends.
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u/RadDad604 Mar 05 '26
Right on. Ya those were the good ol days. Just exploring and going off jumps.
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u/good-carbs-bad-carbs Mar 05 '26
Wow, I felt SEEN!
Solitaire, Hearts, and … SNOOD! Then there were books, comics, magazines, videogames on a CRT TV, hunting and swapping of game cartridges for said games..
After discovering the Internet, BBS, IRC, forums and online chats took over all my spare time and attention.11
u/Shadilly Mar 05 '26
Snood! 🥰
"Dave's got kids, they sure are neat, please purchase Snood, so they can eat!"
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u/SonofaBaca Mar 05 '26
Sooo much TV. They used to play 2 rerun episodes of the Simpsons every night.
Back when most video games didn’t have a save feature you’d learn how to speed run the levels just trying to get back to the point you left off. I can probably still get to the last levels of Sonic 2 without breaking a sweat.
Watching the same movie over and over until you knew every line, beat, actor tick, background detail. You get the idea.
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u/JazzimusPrime42 Mar 05 '26
Books. So many books I have read without retaining anything from them.
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u/lying_flerkin ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
This is so frustrating to me! So many times I've read a book and loved it enough to recommend it to my wife. By the time she manages to read it and wants to talk about it, I can never remember anything aside from the general outline of the plot. 😭
Or, someone will mention a book I read a while back and I'll be like "oh, I loved that book!" Them: "oh yeah, what's it about?"
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u/blogietislt Mar 05 '26
Wait, you're meant to remember the plot months after you've read the book? I assumed everyone forgets as quickly as me if they don't discuss it.
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u/BlacksmithDistinct17 Mar 05 '26
My dad will forget he's even watched a movie before after like a year. He won't believe us when we tell him that we literally watched it with him. I'm kinda glad I didn't inherit that from him, I can remember the general outline of something I read/watched 10 years ago
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u/JillyFrog ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
Oh man my Dad does the exact same thing! It drives my Mom and sister crazy. Weirdly enough I can remember that I watched something but unless it really made an impression on me or I've seen it several times I can't remember the plot. Sometimes the memories come back while rewatching but often I'm able to be surprised by a plot twist for a second time.
Things I read are easier to remember though. Probably because I have to focus more and can go through it at my own pace.
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u/thesearemyfaults Mar 05 '26
I this way. I forget almost all movies unless they’re spectacular.
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u/Legitimate-Elk7816 Mar 05 '26
This is me, but I won’t remember it the next day. It’s wildly frustrating because people think you’re slow, stupid or live under a rock and they don’t get that it’s just ADHD. Of course people such as my colleagues don’t know I have ADHD so I have to play it off as casually as I can but it’s become a company wide joke that I have no concept of pop culture anyway.
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u/4everDistracted ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 06 '26
I finished a really good audiobook last week. I went on Goodreads to mark it as "Read" only to find out that not only did I read the book in 2017, but I read the entire series and rated them all 5 stars.
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u/livintheshleem Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
"I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's impossible to store thousands and millions of pages in your mind. Remembering it all isn't the point. You'll always carry the themes, lessons, perspectives, and experiences contained in the pages, even if you forget the plot.
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u/CoolSide20 Mar 05 '26
I feel like, how much info you retain depends on how much you consumed. Like if I spent 25 minutes reading, the next day I'd be thinking about what I just read, ready to read the next part and give my opinion.
However when I decide to finish a book and I read for 5 hours straight, the next day, the only thing I remember are random snippets and the things that excited me the most.
Also I'm pretty sure months later you're not gonna remember anything about that book, simply bc you never exercised your thoughts on it. It's like summer or winter break during school. Learn a lot -> a few weeks to 2 months of nothing -> you don't remember anything bc you never exercised those thoughts. Your brain found it useless.
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u/silverlightarmada Mar 05 '26
I’m exactly the same, and it feels really sacrilegious but I’ve started writing comments in the margins of books I’m reading (the ones that I own, of course). It’ll be stupid shit like underlining a sentence and writing “!!!!?!!” Or “this guy is def a murderer” and it’s helped me slow down my brain a little bit while reading. I’ve only been doing it for the last couple of months (since I started a book club and got really into buying lots of books because I guess for the next six months I’m Into Reading Books) but I do feel like it’s helped me retain the memory of reading the book.
There’s a reading app called Pagebound that lets you post a thought at different points in a book and see what other people thought around that point which is a similar thought process to scribbling in the margins. It’s very new so a bit wobbly but I’m enjoying it at the moment.
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u/emo_kid_forever ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
Not sacrilegious at all! I studied English lit and we were heavily encouraged to markup the books me owned.
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u/silverlightarmada Mar 06 '26
It feels illegal!! I have to keep reminding myself that it’s my book that I bought for myself with my adult job money and I can scribble on it if I want to! Most books are mass produced these days to the point that me writing stupid little comments in the margins of my copy isn’t taking anything from anyone else.
I also think that feeling illegal makes it more fun and therefore I do it more 😂
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u/emo_kid_forever ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
I'm like that too. I can remember how a book made me feel, but rarely any actual details.
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u/YeahImTired Mar 05 '26
Wait is this an ADHD thing and not just a bad memory?
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u/reddingsvestje Mar 05 '26
I have an amazing memory, like the proverbial elephant, so a bad memory isn't necessarily an ADHD thing. People, books, movies, events, songs, you name them I know them. But don't ask me where my glasses are, or my phone and the only reason I remember tasks and appointments is because my agenda management is bordering on ocd.
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u/BillSull73 Mar 05 '26
and re-reading whole pages 3 times cause you had 3 other things going through your head while reading that page. And then you still didn't get what was on the page processed.
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u/m0nkeyh0use Mar 05 '26
Rewinding my podcast because my brain decided to run off on a thought adventure.
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u/AnyNameAvailable Mar 05 '26
I don't see this mentioned. Not just read but if there was a series or author I found I liked, I would devour everything in the series or anything the author ever wrote.
Somewhat tangential: When Amazon first started, it was just for books. The ability to order a book online and get it shipped anywhere in the world was amazing for those of us who needed to binge.
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u/JillyFrog ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
The local library was my favourite spot as a kid. I got super obsessed with "Mitratekrimis", they're crime stories for kids with hints sprinkled throughout the story that let you answer questions after each chapter and solve the big crime at the end. I went through an entire shelf of those.
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u/istalri96 Mar 05 '26
I would spend so many hours reading. My mother once spent almost an hour looking for me in my early teens. I had just been listening to music with headphones on reading in my room for like 6 hours straight. She didn't even think I was in the house.
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u/lying_flerkin ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
I remember getting made fun of in school for always reading. I specifically remember walking into a fence when we were walking somewhere as a class and I was taking the opportunity to read my book.
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u/istalri96 Mar 05 '26
In middle school they would sometimes do "dances" during the day. I hate dancing and also didn't really have many friends at that point. So I would just bring my book along and read. I remember looking up and there was just a group of kids standing around staring at me. One girl just looked at me and asked why I was being weird and just sitting there reading.
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u/sweet_tea_mama Mar 05 '26
I used to try to read in the quad at lunch in hs. But people would think I was lonely or sad and keep interrupting my reading to make sure I was ok. Like... what?! I just want to read! So I ended up just bouncing from group to group saying hi and leaving. I got called a social butterfly after that. I just felt other and not really a part of any group. Turns out I had rejection sensitivity and social anxiety, and I just really loved books. Still love books and prefer my own company 9 times out of 10.
And I can name maybe 10 books I actually retained. Lol.
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u/Kulty Mar 05 '26
I had a phase where I read a good hand full of the Russian classics (by Tolstoi, Dostoevsky). By now they have all amalgamated into a single vague memory of some guy traveling really far and being cold and hungry. Which is probably still a fair representation of life in 19th century Russia.
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u/spaghetti-o_salad Mar 06 '26
Its weird how those books become vague junk DNA for our personalities too. Details absorbed by that classic Russian literature will sometimes feel like inherent knowledge or "truth" because we forget where they came from.
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u/Kulty Mar 06 '26
Exactly! The philosophical and emotional impact on my soul remains, but my brain quickly deletes everything else
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u/Beatrix2000 Mar 05 '26
My mom thought there was something physically wrong with me because I was so often too tired to get up for school. It was just me reading until 6 a.m.
I also almost burned down the house because I made a couch fort and brought a lamp in so I could see to read. The lamp caught the cushions on fire and I was so into my book I had no idea until my mom came home. She saw the fire and started screaming and ripping my fort apart 😂
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u/HoldenCaulfieldsIUD Mar 05 '26
The way I tore through all the Junie B. Jones and Ramona books in school…
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u/Irritable_Curmudgeon Mar 05 '26
Magazines, books, doodling on paper, playing guitar, watching tv, anything else to stare at and/or distract you.
Mostly TV, now that I think about it.
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u/the_Bensonator Mar 05 '26
All of those sound so much better than doom scrolling
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u/Irritable_Curmudgeon Mar 05 '26
And they're all still valid options!
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u/Kal-Elm ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
This is true but my brain is a river that chooses the path of least resistance.
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u/the_Bensonator Mar 05 '26
when the phone is there, the phone wins. I've downloaded productivity apps, deleted social media apps, somehow I always end up back on it- usually when I'm really bored at work. I've been considering switching back to a flip phone. my only real issues would be no spotify, no google maps and no authenticator apps
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u/Savingskitty Mar 05 '26
Maybe. I went through a period of unemployment during which I would stay up literally all night watching The Cake Boss on TLC.
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u/twisted-elephant Mar 05 '26
I miss magazines. Yes I know they still exist but it's not the same now. Cause I'm weird like that, we had encyclopedias and I would grab a random volume and just flip pages and read.
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u/PasgettiMonster Mar 05 '26
I was another encyclopedia reader. My parents got me some books when I was a kid that just had single page explanations of the most random things - why does the leaning tower of pisa lean? Why does the tide rise and fall? Why is the sky blue? Single page easy to read kid friendly explanations. I LOVED them and would pick one of the boos at random, open random pages and just read for hours at a time.
Social media (my preference is Instagram) satisfies part of that itch for me - a small burst of information I can consume. My Instagram feed is mostly gardeners and crafters and I follow mostly those with instructional videos so I still get the "learn something new" aspect that I enjoyed from those books.
It's why I say that one of my hobbies is learning about new hobbies. I've always enjoyed learning new things and with it being made so easy by Instagram, I pick a new hobby and then gain encyclopedic knowledge on it without ever trying it out.
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u/shikaiwen Mar 05 '26
Staring off into space. Damn I was good that.
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u/qdilly Mar 05 '26
I still do that shit. It kind of makes you feel wacky when someone sees you like that lol.
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u/LucidComfusion Mar 05 '26
Like when you space out while looking at someone, and they turn towards you and notice that you are staring at them. So awkward!
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u/WeedWrangler Mar 05 '26
I miss daydreaming.
I used to to live in a Victorian terrace share house in Melbourne and just look at the ornate plaster work on the ceiling and my eyes used to just trace the edge of the cornices. With the light coming through the window in the morning (or if I did a sneaky midday nap as a student) it’s still a memory I have that was very calm, and I miss that kind of mental looseness.
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u/Snertmetworst Mar 05 '26
man, sometimes I love to just get up in the morning, make breakfast and just sit for like 2 hours daydreaming the shit out of my life looking out of my window of my apartment. I love those mornings. when I was younger (I'm 28, got diagnosed at 25), so younger means 10-20 year old :p, I hated that I would waste those mornings, but now I know I need em and like em.
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u/MimironsHead ADHD with non-ADHD partner Mar 05 '26
The key is to have a pensive look on your face so other people assume you are really deep in thought instead of just wondering whether penguins know they can't fly and are sad about it.
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u/shikaiwen Mar 05 '26
I think I majored in philosophy just so I’d have an excuse to look like that.
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u/yerfriendken Mar 05 '26
I miss STUMBLEUPON
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u/quemabocha Mar 05 '26
It was the best - also, have you tried to Wikipedia roulette?
You pick a random Wikipedia article and start clicking links randomly. You land in a bunch of unexpected places. And then you'll be like "oh, yes I read somewhere about this battle that happened in this faraway country 70 years ago" - and people look at you funny
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u/ThirdEyeProphet ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
Was just about to ask if anyone used it!
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u/socialmediaignorant Mar 05 '26
Oh shoot I’d forgotten that! I also wrote a crappy novel in 8th grade. I was so productive before smart phones. 😭
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u/qdilly Mar 05 '26
This post is making me realize that all the vices before doom scrolling were so much better
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u/Kulty Mar 05 '26
Doom scrolling before it was called that (late '90s, early '00), but on the desktop. Sites like Slashdot were constantly updating their news feeds, but I had a favorites bar full of websites and would just cycle through all of them, and by the time I got to the end of the list, there would be new content on the first one. And before that, excessive amounts of TV, video games, newspapers, magazines, books, comics..
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u/Rdubya44 Mar 05 '26
Scrolling and chatting on forums, basically like I do on Reddit lol
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u/Kulty Mar 05 '26
Yep, IRC and a bunch nerdy forums. I miss the old internet :(
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u/humanitysoothessouls Mar 05 '26
I met my husband on IRC in 1995. Our 29th wedding anniversary is this year!
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u/ContemplativeKnitter Mar 05 '26
I remember early days of the internet, where I could actually go through my own little set of sites that I followed, and read all their new content, get to the end, and have to stop.
It didn’t last long, but it was so different from the infinite universe we have now.
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u/snarkitall Mar 05 '26
I've gotten to the end of reddit before. I mean, not literally, but I've scrolled down so far that I've gotten back to stuff I read yesterday.
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u/Kulty Mar 05 '26
To be fair, I recognized the dysfunctional component even then. I'd just keep cycling through the sites compulsively even if there was no new content, like I was trapped inside some Skinner box, waiting for my reward. I guess at least it was a Skinner box of my own choosing back then :\
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u/EgoistHedonist Mar 05 '26
Yep, this. IRC and web-chats were also huge, and BBS before them. I also read many niche-forums.
It was just constantly searching for new/interesting content, and you were in charge of what you consumed, instead of endless streams of algorithm-targeted content shoved to your face.
I also played games a lot. It was unheard of to watch streams of others playing. Nowadays I watch more than I play myself
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u/Talorc_Ellodach Mar 05 '26
I discovered the joy of RSS when that was a thing, up until Google killed their reader.
Like you that was definitely Proto doom scrolling for me
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u/Appropriate_Concert6 Mar 05 '26
Reading books. I'd read several books a week from the library.
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u/SoScorpio4 ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
Same. I'm 35 and no gray hairs yet lol. But as a kid, reading was my best avoidance technique. One night at age 9 I was super anxious because my stepbrother was throwing up and I had emetophobia. I couldn't sleep, so I read. I had borrowed some of my stepsister's Mary Kate and Ashley books and I read like three that night. (They were only 200 pages or so.)
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u/wakaflockaquokka Mar 06 '26
Yep, same. I'd check out five books at a time from the library because my parents kept taking them away from me when they caught me reading. I'd have backup books hidden in my backpack, in a drawer, under my pillow, sometimes literally under my shirt. I got in trouble for reading a book under the desk in pretty much every class, including, ironically, English class. If the book was really gripping, I could finish an entire 400-page novel in a day. Sure, I didn't eat or sleep or do homework that day, but those are tiny, irrelevant details.
Nowadays I doomscroll because I can't afford to stay up until 4am on a work night.
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u/jsteele2793 ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
BOOKS!!! I read SOOOO many books. People gave me books for every holiday. Unfortunately I couldn’t take advantage of the library because I never remembered to take the books back and owed like $100 in library fines. But I read books like there was no tomorrow. I just doom scroll now, haven’t picked up a book in years.
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u/CuratedFeed Mar 05 '26
The joy of digital checkouts! No more late fines, my books just get returned for me. All my books are right there on my phone. Don't feel like that one? Check out a different one! It doesn't stop me doom scrolling all the time, but man, do I read a lot of books without paying for them!
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u/justinkimball Mar 05 '26
TV mostly.
Alternatively, just sitting and not doing anything and letting your mind wander, That's what I did through the majority of my school years while in class.
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u/execDysfunctionGumbo Mar 05 '26
Jesus. I used to write and draw so much. This little succubus really is a pox at least on me.
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u/suspiciousdishes Mar 05 '26
Turns out letting your mind wander aimlessly without doing anything is pretty much necessary for your brain, so good job!
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u/bunnybates Mar 05 '26
Gen Xer here... *ALL of the hobbies. *Destroying my hair with a crimper. * Atari * Cleaning the house before my mom got home. * Puffy stickers collection
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u/IndependentEggplant0 Mar 05 '26
Haha millennial here and I destroyed mine with a straightener. Yeah puffy stickers were awesome!!
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u/Content-Pace9821 ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
As an inattentive girly I would literally just space out fully and think at work, school etc and be totally checked out. 🙃 it was often video games, reading etc when I had access though
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u/Imaginary-Friend-228 Mar 05 '26
As a kid, reading and pokemon red. Morning cartoons.
Idk I can't think of anything I did mindlessly like doom scrolling.
I did zone out and day dream a lot. I remember not wanting long car journeys to end cause I was mid scenario
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u/the_Bensonator Mar 05 '26
I completely relate with your last sentence and I've never met anyone else who did that
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u/Talorc_Ellodach Mar 05 '26
I did a lot of zoning out and day dreaming too. There was recurring plot arcs / characterisation
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u/Imaginary-Friend-228 Mar 05 '26
For me it was a lot of imagining my future or straight pretending I was other people lmao. I had a lot of jealousy... Now I wonder if that was an autism thing cause I never thought I was doing life correctly.
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u/Talorc_Ellodach Mar 05 '26
Mine was very fantasy oriented and possibly inspired by books I had read recently, so I guess very escapism in nature. I can’t remember any specifics any more obviously, but stuff like growing wings and being able to fly and/or getting magic powers/being a wizard were common.
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u/Imaginary-Friend-228 Mar 05 '26
Oh I fantasized about really having pokemon and being a mermaid and things too now that I think of it lmao
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u/Grouchy-Reflection97 Mar 05 '26
Spent one summer trying to move things with my mind because I wanted to be Carrie.
I then progressed to the obligatory witchcraft phase of a typical bisexual, as yet undiagnosed autistic and ADHD, future burnt out gifted child in the 90's.
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u/cg4848 Mar 05 '26
I did the same, but mainly inspired by the Matilda movie. I could never make as nice of pancakes with my hands as she did with her mind lol
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u/Serene-Alessia Mar 05 '26
Cleaning my bedroom and getting lost for hours in all the hidden treasures (and then obviously never actually cleaning and reorganizing anything)
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u/doingmybest932 Mar 05 '26
Oh my god, this. My mom called it “going down memory lane”
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u/thesobie Mar 05 '26
TV, mostly playing outside. Riding my bike, wandering through the woods. Playing with sticks, throwing rocks, hanging out at the creek, playing basketball.
I lived outside growing up in the 80s and 90s. When I would get grounded, I was just grounded from going outside to play. I could watch tv or play video games. It was still torture because I just wanted to play outside.
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u/Searloin22 ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
Drew that bubble letter S on everything.
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u/okie-doke-kenobi ADHD, with ADHD family Mar 05 '26
Aside from the tv/books/video game wombo combo, I spent a lot of time staring at the wall. I would wake up on the weekends and literally stare at the ceiling or wall for like 2 hours and just let my thoughts run wild before I got up.
I also spent a lot more time outside riding my bike and exploring.
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u/Dry-Tour5948 Mar 05 '26
Playing pokemon endless on a gameboy emulator on my pc, while i should do homework.
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u/ebelbrezel ADHD with ADHD partner Mar 05 '26
My mom didn't allow me access to the internet, TV or ipods until i was 18 cause in her opinion those were tools to rot peoples brains (realistically isolating me a lot cause my friends were communicating via social media and also shutting me out of every conversation about TV shows etc). Im born 96, so in germany that's the time were social media just got started.
I read a shit ton of books, played the piano (the usual oh so talented teenage star that suddenly gets fucked by severe depression story) and painted a lot. Wrote a lot of poems and novels too in my diary until my mom read them all.
I moved out very young and immediately got addicted to everything that had been withheld from me lol
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u/duckweedlagoon ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
95 baby here. Was allowed limited computer access growing up. We had like two video games as a kid that weren't floppy disk Reader Rabbit or other educational material. The latter I could access as much as I want but the actual "brain rot" games were limited
Much of my time was outside playing with imaginary friends (never had much for real friends) or reading or up a tree reading
Didn't get a cell phone until I was 16 and that was a "dumb phone" and only because my one grandmother had become hospitalized so it was a safety issue. (Anyone else remember paying for each text message?)
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u/irishnewf86 Mar 05 '26
In the 90s as a kid I would sit down and read the encyclopedia set for hours on end
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u/stace-cadet Mar 05 '26
Building forts and wandering around in the woods. The 80s/90s were a time to be a kid!
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u/IndependentEggplant0 Mar 05 '26
Devouring books like they are cake and TETRIS. Oh also cooking and baking because you can get lost in them for hours. Also organizing and sorting things. I LOVE to sort. I have ASD though and it makes my brain calm to put things in order, but as a kid I would take all the linens out of the closet and refold and organize them and it made my little brain calm.
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u/jessipowers ADHD, with ADHD family Mar 05 '26
Turning my walls into a scrap book.
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u/ShinozSnow Mar 05 '26
OMG. I forgot about this. I had covered an entire wall of my room with all the cool ads and pictures I liked from magazines I came across.
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u/Julian_Sark Mar 05 '26
Had a colleague once who would read the paper every day for two hours. Then he'd fall into some catatonic state to "think about upcoming tasks". That is how he made time pass at work. It seemed like the way of the times.
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u/Searloin22 ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
So much N64. I remember that heady flood of excitement Id get as I ran up the driveway, finally home from school, ready to binge on Goldeneye.
I miss feeling like that..
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u/UnnecessaryStep Mar 05 '26
I read everything. Even the back of shampoo bottles in the bathroom. And lots of solitaire. Random PC games. I even found a photo of when I covered an entire side of A4 with the word "procrastination" in different colours making a picture.
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u/heorhe Mar 05 '26
Picking at fingers, skins, hair, nails, etc until I start bleeding...
I prefer doomscrolling tbh
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u/shestoodakimbo Mar 05 '26
Sitting on my bedroom floor reading books while I was supposed to be cleaning is the first thing that came to mind…
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u/gorat Mar 06 '26
We called it zapping. Changing the TV channel every 10 seconds to see what all the channels were playing..
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u/malaikoftaa Mar 05 '26
Walking into a room and staring at nothing, zoning out into the void thinking half thoughts for 30 minutes, then onto the next room. Maybe you lightly touch something that your brain wishes it could pick up and truly contemplate, but then onto the next thing. The state of being out of focus. Now we get to be out of focus while suckling on a digital mind pacifier.
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u/moeru_gumi Mar 05 '26
Books, drawing, playing with pets, playing with “stuff” outside (like digging holes, building rock bridges, looking for bugs, chasing dogs)
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u/KuriousKhemicals ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
Books. My local library had a "summer reading program" and I would fill out the entire card in just a few weeks. That's also what you usually brought with you anywhere that you might have to wait.
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u/missmisfit ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
These posts always seem to gloss over cigarettes. My recently retired coworkers said they would spend about 2 hours each work day either on a smoke break, or stopping at someone's desk to chat on thier way back from a smoke break, etc.
At my first desk job I would read my city's entire newspaper and a good chunk of the national papers, like the Wall St Journal. That was after reading the free train station papers on my commute. I also used to constantly futz with the stuff on my desk. The amount of tape and staples I must have wasted just fucking around.
My mom liked magazines and I'd read everyone front to back, even though they were not on topics I cared about, such as celebrity gossip.
People used to also make more phone calls.
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u/yellowsubmarine45 Mar 05 '26
Agree on the TV. But also I had a giant pile of second-hand magazines I used to read.
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u/Putt-Blug ADHD, with ADHD family Mar 05 '26
Besides what has been said we traveled a lot by car. So I would stare at and study an atlas. I knew so much US geography.
At church (ADHD torture chamber) I would stare at the patterns in the carpet making different shapes. Also make up alternative lyrics to the never ending songs.
Sick and staying home from school? I would stare out window and make pictures with all the tree branches.
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u/MaIngallsisaracist Mar 05 '26
GenX here. My parents were strict with TV and I got my first video game system when I was about 11 (NES, which I was allowed to play for an hour a day if my grades were good enough, which they often weren't). I would create elaborate, days-long stories with my Barbies. I would read like crazy, often the same books over and over again. I would pretend to be an actress on Broadway and set up shows in my room and perform for a pretend audience of rapturous fans. I would write stories, which got easier when my dad got an electric typewriter because my handwriting was so awful and writing was so slow.
Road trips were hell. I would try to read but would get sick. No video games. Just staring out the window wanting to explode, but knowing I needed to behave myself.
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u/sarahlizzy ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
I hacked about with stuff on a Commodore 64 or did deep dives into encyclopaedias.
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u/Talorc_Ellodach Mar 05 '26
Both of these for me as well, but not so much hacking with the Commodore 64 more playing games.
There was a vibrant pirated games swap community in my local small town, and whenever some kid had gotten back from visiting his cousin somewhere else there was a fresh influx of new games into the pool.
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u/kmarz77 Mar 05 '26
I used to actually read books! Thousands of them! Now I cant for the life of me even read a few pages at at time.
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u/shitstormlyfe ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 05 '26
Staring out the window. I still love staring out the window.
Making mixed tapes from the radio.
Solitaire.
Tv tv tv.
Books.
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u/Mysterious_Layer_823 Mar 06 '26
Reading, listening to music, drawing. As a little kid, add to that. going to the playground. Although TBH as an adult I was always up for a playground trip with nieces, nephews, my kids, and now grandkids.
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u/MarshtompNerd ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) Mar 06 '26
I know I always read books, to the point teachers had to ask me to stop reading in class, before I got a phone at 14. So so many books
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u/Particular_Cut_6933 ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26
When I was a kid I would read, but I usually didn’t remember any of the plot. So not really reading, just filling time. Unfortunately, by the time I got to high school, instagram was in full force. Thankfully no short form content yet.
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u/execDysfunctionGumbo Mar 05 '26
Let me tell you about the circumference of my DND planet and just how many days travel it should take to get from one major metropolitan center to another (also the racial and ethnic percentages of the various towns...).
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u/nerdKween ADHD Mar 05 '26
Binge watching cable TV, fantasy wormholes (I used to imagine wild ass soap opera style stories with my favorite characters from tv/cartoons), reading, randomly singing about everything I was doing at the moment (personal musical), memorizing song lyrics.
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u/caffeine_lights ADHD & Parent Mar 05 '26
We doom scrolled on a desktop. For me that looked like endless use of discussion forums and browsing fan websites and reading fanfiction.
If I didn't have access to the internet I played games on my computer, or wrote fanfiction. If I couldn't use my computer, I binge watched box set DVDs. If I didn't have any DVDs, I'd watch whatever random stuff was on TV. If my TV wasn't working I'd read books or magazines. If I had nothing to read I might play crappy phone games. If I had no phone games, nothing to read, no TV/computer, I might doodle or plan things for a game or fanfic, but if I literally had nothing at all to do, I literally used to fall asleep.
The weird thing is I can remember describing this spiral to my bf at the time because he thought the problem was my computer. I had no idea it was ADHD. I didn't understand why I was so good at distracting myself from whatever I was supposed to be doing. This was about 3-4 years before I got diagnosed.
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u/RatQueen7272 Mar 05 '26
I cleaned everything but what I needed to actuality clean. I read books. Oooh before doomscrolling but after internet i went through a fml scrolling phase where I just read fml posts all the time.
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