Thought-provoking photographs capture what it feels like to have ADHD

These dreamlike images offer a view into one person’s experience with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Last year, one week before visual artist Daniel Regan turned 40, he received a diagnosis of ADHD. Soon after, he started taking the ADHD medication lisdexamfetamine. The drug transformed his experience of the world, helping to ease his symptoms, such as being easily distracted. “I tend to describe [ADHD] like you’re watching five projected films in your mind, all over the top of each other, and they all have their own soundtrack, and they all have their own subtitles,” says Regan.

“The medication is like turning down the volume on that, so it’s like you’re just watching one film or two films at the same time,” he says. “It means that I’m much calmer and more present.”

As Regan experienced these changes, he used a Polaroid camera to photograph himself and his surroundings while hiking in Australia. He then submerged the images in varying ratios of his ADHD medication and water for up to three months, distorting the original images. “It felt very natural for me to start processing this kind of new experience of a diagnosis, of taking medication, by engaging with the medication as a kind of creative collaborator,” he says.

In one self-portrait (main image), Regan’s body appears to be wrapped in a silk shroud. “There’s something really beautiful in that image of being held by this very sort of fragile texture and material,” he says.

Another image (above) captures greenery in the Australian bush, surrounded by bubble-like structures. “What I really like about this particular image is that it is very chaotic, so as I was describing earlier, it captures how all the dials and sliders are turned up [when experiencing symptoms of ADHD],” says Regan.

This vivid blue image (above) was originally a self-portrait, but submerging it in the medication and water has given it a “kind of biological, cellular and molecular effect, which I find interesting considering I’m putting a chemical into my body that affects the neurotransmitters in my brain”, says Regan. Lisdexamfetamine works by raising levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain.

Silhouettes of leaves and trees are enveloped by luminous yellows and greens in the final two images, above and below. The last picture, below, also reminds Regan of his late mother. “I often look at it, and I wonder what she would have made of the late diagnosis and whether she would have thought that explained previous difficulties that I’d had in the past,” says Regan.

The images, collectively titled “C₁₅H₂₅N₃O”, which is the molecular formula for the medication, will be displayed as part of Regan’s (be)longing exhibition at Bethlem Gallery, London, between 22 April and 11 July 2026. His work comes amid growing awareness of ADHD. There are multiple types of ADHD, but it commonly involves persistently experiencing symptoms such as being forgetful, finding it hard to manage time or follow tasks, and being impulsive, with these beginning in childhood.

“It’s kind of hard sometimes to describe or find the right analogies for people to get what an internal experience is like, but I think that the images represent some of that internal kind of chaos and layering,” Regan says.