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Have You Forgotten How to Have Fun?

by

Harold Robert Meyer -The ADD Resource Center
www.addrc.org
Reviewed: May 25, 2026​  Published: May 25, 2026

Listen to understand, not just to respond

Somewhere between the unread emails, the laundry, and the next dopamine scroll, fun quietly slipped out the back door. If you have ADHD, you may not have noticed it leave—because “productive” became the only setting your brain knew how to run. This article shows you how to invite play back in without turning it into one more thing on the to-do list.

Key takeaway

Adults with ADHD often abandon play not because they stopped enjoying it, but because their brains learned to chase urgency, novelty, and screens instead of slow, satisfying hobbies. Reclaiming fun is not about scheduling more activities—it is about deliberately rebuilding the muscle of unstructured, low-stakes enjoyment. When you give your brain genuine play, you stop relying on impulsive substitutes (shopping, doomscrolling, binge-watching) to deliver the dopamine you have been quietly starving for.

Why this matters

Play is not optional decoration on a well-lived life. Without it, adults with ADHD are more likely to drift toward burnout, depression, and behavioral addictions—since the brain will get its stimulation somewhere, and screens are the path of least resistance. As research from the National Institute for Play puts it, the opposite of play is not work—it is depression. The cost of a fun-deprived life shows up as flat moods, frayed relationships, and a quiet sense that something essential is missing.

Key findings

  • The ADHD brain is novelty-hungry but commitment-shy. Hobbies often die at the moment the dopamine rush fades.
  • Screens have replaced play. Trait boredom is a documented driver of problematic technology use, which means scrolling is filling the play vacuum, not relieving it.
  • Play is a public-health-level need. Psychiatrist Stuart Brown found that adults who do not play show higher rates of stress, depression, and disengagement.
  • Childhood is the clue. What you loved at age eight is usually still close to what your brain wants now.
  • You do not need to be good at it. Performance kills play. Permission resurrects it.

Why fun disappears for adults with ADHD

Play does not vanish overnight. It erodes. Deadlines, parenting, masking, and years of “I’ll have fun when I finish this” quietly retrain your brain to treat enjoyment as a reward for productivity—rather than a need on par with sleep. For people with ADHD, that retraining hits harder. Your dopamine system is already under-rewarded by slow, mundane tasks, as explained in Why You Can’t Start Boring Tasks—And 5 Dopamine Hacks That Work. So the brain shortcuts: phone, snack, online cart, repeat.

The cruel twist is that these shortcuts feel like fun without actually being fun. They deliver a hit and leave you emptier than before. Genuine play—the kind where you lose track of time—does the opposite.

“If the only fun you’re getting comes from a screen, your brain isn’t playing. It’s foraging.” — Harold Meyer

What play actually is

Fun can be defined as play as voluntary, intrinsically motivated, and pleasurable—activities you would do even if no one paid you, praised you, or posted about you. That last part is where adults with ADHD often get stuck. We have been trained to monetize, optimize, or document everything. The hobby becomes a side hustle. The walk becomes a step count. The drawing becomes content.

Real play has no audience and no productivity goal. It is the puzzle that nobody sees, the song you sing badly in the car, the model trains in the basement. It is the thing you used to do at twelve—before anyone told you it didn’t count.

Reclaiming play without making it a project

Adults with ADHD do not need a thirty-step hobby plan. You need permission and a low bar. Try this:

  • Mine your childhood. Make a list of five things you genuinely loved before age fourteen. Pick one. Try it this week for fifteen minutes.
  • Lower the stakes radically. Buy the cheap watercolor set, not the expensive one. The cheap set means you are allowed to be bad.
  • Pair it with movement when you can. Active play is a double win—exercise alone reliably boosts dopamine and mood.
  • Schedule it like a meeting. “Play” on a calendar feels silly. Do it anyway. ADHD brains rarely choose play in real time.
  • Let yourself quit. If you try pottery and hate it, that is data, not failure. The hobby that sticks is rarely the first one you pick up.

“Play is not the reward for getting your life together. It’s part of how you get your life together.” — Harold Meyer

When play helps your relationships too

Couples who keep a sense of shared playfulness weather difficulty better. If your relationship has slid into logistics-only mode, fun together is not optional—it is structural. Boredom in a long-term partnership often signals understimulation rather than incompatibility, as discussed in Bored in Your Relationship? Before You Walk Away, Read This.

Moving forward

This week, pick one thing you used to love. Do it for fifteen minutes. Do not photograph it. Do not optimize it. Do not tell anyone. Notice what happens to your mood, your sleep, your scrolling. That is your brain remembering. Visit https://www.addrc.org/ for more strategies on rebuilding the small daily structures—including play—that make ADHD livable.

Bibliography

Resources

External: National Institute for Play — https://nifplay.org

About The Author

Harold Meyer founded The ADD Resource Center in 1993 and has spent more than 30 years as a leading advocate, coach, and educator in the ADHD field, translating the lived experiences of people with ADHD into practical guidance for individuals, families, and the professionals who support them. He co-founded CHADD of New York, served as CHADD’s national treasurer, and served as president of the Institute for the Advancement of ADHD Coaching. As an author and international speaker, he has presented at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, CHADD national conferences, and at NYU Langone and Weill Medical College.

Reach Harold at haroldmeyer@addrc.org.

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