The Session Zero

You know, whatever, but, you know,

And then D&D is a different thing because I'm not an obsessive kid. I'm not as obsessive person, but man, one thing that kind of stuck for a good solid five formative years was Dungeons & Dragons. And I am old enough to remember. The red box. I don't think that's actually first edition. It is first edition. And then I, you know, I guess I left. Let life scrub away my dreams and my, my enjoyment of fantasy. I'm kidding. I took a break. I took a turn, took a turn.

I just, you know, put my energies elsewhere. Until 2020, where the pandemic kind of forced us all inside. And I had been talking, my brother and I had been talking about. You know, getting back to D&D. You know, it has had a resurgence for sure. No one can deny that. And so we kept talking about it and talking about it, talking about it, Alison was sick of us talking about it. But I had so many different things I was trying to do that. I, I, I just never made it a priority.

And then the pandemic happened. I was like, let's do it. And I didn't really expect for it to be as all encompassing as it has become. I know for sure you didn't expect it, that it would be, but for me it has rekindled so many things, not just my childhood joys of creating worlds and characters and, and, and situations. And then running my brother, I only had one friend, my brother. He has the only person I've played with. Running Evan through these, these situations.

Not only did it bring me back to that, but you know, this is a performative joy for me, it's a, it's the creative joy. I've made really great friends doing this. And I kind of imagine that moving forward in life, I will continue to make great friends doing this. It really solved almost every pandemic issue that I was experiencing, perfectly. And that's and that's me, Matt Bivins. Is that good? I'm married. I have dogs…

I consider Matt not only one of my best friends, but also like the ultimate influencer in my life as I think you were actually one of, and we'll get to this later in the episode, I'm sure. But I think you were one of the first people that made me realize that I have ADHD. Many, many, many years ago. And you're the one who got me into D&D really? So these two big parts of my life, you, you influenced.

And then like, once we needed something to do, I was like, hey friend, Jeff is his name, do you want to do this? And then, Hey, Matt and Evan, you guys keep talking about wanting to do this again? Are you in? And now it's turned into this like all encompassing thing. That is all I want to do, all I want to think about.

And so it's like, I did realize a couple of weeks ago and talking to somebody else about this, I think Dungeons & Dragons might be my first hobby in the like very traditional sense of the word. And so it's interesting. Yeah. Like I've never really had a hobby before I have interests. I have loves and passions. But I don't have, you know, repetitious things that I do for the sheer joy of both doing them and improving at them. But I think there's a little bit of ADHD at play in there too.

Like maybe my ADHD is why I never had a hobby until I found the hobby that really complimented my ADHD. Right. It's weird.

One of my grandmothers was a beautiful painter. A couple of my aunts are beautiful painters. And I was always just bad at these things because there was a missing link that like, I just, I didn't want to practice. If I'm not immediately good at something, I don't want to do it at all. And I think that's how you get a hobby as you start being bad and then you gradually get better.

Yeah. And so I didn't have that same, I mean, I wasn't good at D&D at first, as we can all attest, I had a lot to learn. But yeah, it has become it's my first hobby and I love that about it.

Especially the fifth version of this game. I think, I think that if you had started in fourth edition, we wouldn't be having this podcast right now. And that is no, there's no real knock for 4e, I haven't played 3e or 3.5, but like 2, and, and definitely 4 the one time that I've played it, it was like so many rules so much, but 5e is just the kind of thing where you don't have to know anything. If you can sit around a table.

And have a conversation, carry on a conversation with people, and then your Dungeon Master's good, or trying to be good, and therefore can bring things out of you. You don't have to be an actor or an improviser. You don't have to know rules. Because people just tell you what to roll. That doesn't matter. So I think, I think that is, that's interesting that you say that because I feel like this game even more recently, it's the most accessible approachable version yet.

I mean, everyone says that, but I really do believe it. And I love that about it.

And if you guys would play with me for six hours at a time, I would. Without question. Again, you know, like I think, I think our longest game was probably around four hours in the beginning. Again, when we had less to do than we do now. But like I play a Thursday night game and I it's for it's about four hours, you know, with a break. And I like, and it ends almost midnight my time and yet I always want to go longer.

Which is fascinating to me and I don't pay attention to every second of every game. Obviously there are times when I get distracted by something shiny. And that's fine. You know, I can usually get reeled back in pretty quickly though, but it's the fact that I even desire to sit in a place and do a thing without doing other things at the same time. I frustrate my friends, cause like, when we like hang out and like watch movies, I'm like playing on my phone or like doing something in the kitchen.

Like there's always a, like at least two things at once I have to be doing. D&D is really one of the first things that, yes, there are moments of distraction, but for the most part, I just want to do that thing.

Because really watching television with a group of people is only social in that there's multiple people in a room. It's not necessarily a social endeavor. D&D has to be. And so I think that anytime that your focus does wane, you're brought back in by a player, by the DM, by something else that you've done. And. I don't know.

And I, you know, I was beginning to wonder, is there a limit, is there, is there a point, and so apparently the limit is five days a week. I was asked by some friends, if I would DM for them. And it's funny because I've been begging them to get into D&D cause I feel like they would love it. And then, you know, finally they turned it back on me and I said, okay, great. Yeah, we'll do this. If you'll DM. Oh, crap.

And as you know, DM-ing is a whole different battle map ball game, whatever, than showing up as a player.

I like being a player, too. I do, but I really I'm really, really, really like that part of it. Myself. Now the interesting thing for me is that you didn't grow up being a dark fantasy or scifi fantasy person.

And they were very different and they did not cross pollinate. And, and first of all, it was, you know, Alabama in the nineties. So I'll let you sit with your own visualization of that. And it was all dudes. And so I was a nerdy, nerdy girl. I mean, one of my favorite things about becoming yours and Evan's friends is that you have really like pulled out my inner nerd. I think that was the nerd I was always meant to be. I just didn't know how. I needed my nerd Jedi master.

You know, I wonder if I had been friends with different people, I guess is what I'm trying to say, if maybe I would have felt differently because I do love it so much. And it does feel so like core to me now that I'm like, how did I ever exist? I just think in high school, I was my own brand of nerd. I was a theater nerd. You know, I was the kid who ran around the halls, you know, singing every word of Rent. You know, I was that of nerd.

Which I guess we'll have to explore if that's a component of ADHD.

This is your first hobby and for me, this is something I really just ache to be better and better at, right? To achieve an effortlessness that, that a Mercer does or. Or a Brennan does, but for me, fantasy and sci-fi was actually my first love. So I think it's a very fair correlation to go from theater nerd or a music nerd to D&D and like how they match. But for me, D&D was the way to officially, with rules, act out these fantastic things that I was digesting.

The stories and the Knights and dragons. Horses. I was like, wait a minute, there's a game that you can get that you can, you can then create whatever you want? Which, oh, here's another topic for the future: I want blank slates. And I want to create them from scratch. That's interesting. Okay. Side note. But…

And especially funny, given the conversation around like, oh, we both have ADHD. Like it's, it's to me how like wild and different our brains work in those ways, because I'm the opposite. I see a blank page and I'm like, Nope. And I I can't get out of that space fast enough.

But that is a good segue though. Another thing that I really want this podcast to delve into is the sciences and the understandings of our different types. And I think there used to be more types of ADHD, but the main three are inattentive, impulsive, and then combo. Which I've met some combos. And those people really, they really are like the full on, you know, television cliche version of ADHD. We're relatively functional. And I, and I feel like the, the combined type, that's that's a lot.

But what I really want with this podcast is to learn more, because apparently the impulsive type of ADHD doesn't necessarily happen that much in women. That's the type that I should have. I wasn't really a hyperactive kid. I was never diagnosed as a kid. And so I struggled in silence. And I would cry when I had to you know, write out dictionary words. Oh my God. Seriously. I remember the tears. It's so depressing. yet it's so true. So I suffered in silence and I learned how to, you know, get by.

And, and it's funny when you talk about your inability to watch TV. So the way that I've had to cope is to be like a iron fist, I have to be like a fascist watching TV, because if they don't pay attention, I can't pay attention. So I've had to learn all these different, I have all these weird personal rules and regulations to overcome these difficulties.

I was not a great I though I was very intelligent, I know. So I had tons of difficulty there. But, but yeah, I then just took jobs, i.e. full-time musicians where you put me in a van and tell me what to do and get me there on time. And, and then I know what's next and la la la. The only time that it became an issue was when I wasn't on the road. And then suddenly I was super depressed because I could not motivate to do anything.

I knew I had to do all of this stuff, like go to the doctor or post office or anything. And I, I just thought I was broken. If I ever had to live, you know, I've tried to fit into the nine to five world. And then luckily I had a roommate that had a book on ADHD and I read it. And I'm not joking, while I was reading the book, I literally dropped the book in shock. I was like, Oh, my God. There are other people that are like me. I don't understand. That's normal? I mean that other people, what?

I mean, there were kids, there were kids that had ADD but I just, you know, these are the ones bouncing off the walls, literally.

And again, growing up in Alabama and the nineties with, I think a lot of misinformation and Ritalin being really the only care plan for people with ADHD at the time. I have a cousin with some developmental behavioral disorders that was on Ritalin, and so I think that there was just a lot of negative stigma and misunderstanding around that. So my parents opted not to medicate me.

And so then I just kind of like pushed it down for a really long time for the rest of junior high and high school and coped and got horrible grades, even though just like you, I was perfectly smart. I just was not, you know, challenged in all of the right ways. Got through high school really by the skin of my teeth. I mean, I think I have like a, like a 2.1 GPA graduating high school. It's a wonder I got into college. Thrived in college though, because the setup was completely different.

I went to a very small college, Queens University of Charlotte, that was all discussion-based classes. So now I'm sitting in a circle with people on my level, talking about the texts that I just read and I'm interested in it, so I want to be an active part of that conversation. And you know, suddenly I'm on the Dean's list. You know, with my lousy 2.1 from high school. And so I think that that was when, you know, like I started to realize I'm different.

You know, but there are other ways to not just cope but thrive, you know, with, or without medication. But I mentioned at the start of this, that you were actually one of the people that made me have that same aha moment that you had with your book. You wrote a blog like at some point when I was in college, for the band. And talked about your struggles with ADD.

And it was, it was definitely a light bulb moment because all of the different symptoms that you were describing were like things that I thought were wrong with me. I especially didn't know other women like me. My only frame of reference for add was the hyperactive boys who had nervous ticks and couldn't sit still and people blamed their sugar intake, you know?

And it really wasn't until I started a more focused therapy practice in my early thirties and began to address some other issues in my life that my therapist brought it up. And that, you know, had me talking to my doctor which, so it was. It was, I was probably around 34 when I got officially diagnosed. And then say, it's like, you know, okay, now I'm now I'm part of this community.

And in the meantime, I think, you know, somewhere between my mid twenties and mid thirties I'm in my late thirties now for anybody listening to this. I, you know, I think that ADD and ADHD and whatever we want to call it became more talked about more publicized. You know, more people started to come forward and share memes about it. And once something goes to like meme state, like that's it, it's no longer a stigma, which is great. This is one of the upsides of social media.

This is one of the reasons I will champion various platforms is that it does help you find and belong within your communities. And so watching friends of mine, who I would consider a successful by all counts, talk about their mental health or their ADHD struggles has been helpful for me. And then I've tried to pay that forward by being open and honest. I have nothing to hide. I have nothing to be ashamed of.

It's just a part of who I am and to a similar, you know, a note that you made, like I've, I'm now happy that I have ADHD. It has led me to success because of my abilities. You know, it can be a super house, super power when harnessed correctly.

Because they realize, okay, well, this is actually a serious thing. I didn't necessarily feel comfortable calling it a disability until somewhat recently when I was involved in a disability community. My wife is deaf. And it was the the people with other disabilities that, that kept urging me to talk about ADHD as a disability.

And if I were to create a mind map, which I often have to do just to get something out of my head, I could easily point to things where this disability has you know, affected my day to day life. Which is the definition of a disability. Right. So I'm, I'm on board with calling it that I, I, you know, I, I certainly, I do have, you know, full ability to hear things. So my disability is very different from my wife's. If you were to talk to her, she would say, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

He has a disability. He has a disability. And I think you're right, now more than ever is the time to talk about this because, you know, I am medicated. I have been on and off of it since 30, but I've been really trying to be super diligent and learn about medication for the last, you know, maybe five years. There's a, there is a ton of full-on ableism in the pharmaceutical world when it comes to this.

And it's funny because you would never not give a deaf person a cochlear implant if they wanted one, but they, they try very hard not to give me Vyvanse. Really hard. So I would love to talk about some of those things coming up. You know, whether or not you feel comfortable identifying as this disorder as being a disability or not, that's not the important thing, but. I think you're right. The more people talk, the better it's going to be. The more comfortable people will be.

Nothing you could ever say to me could mean more to me than the stories that you just told me, where I was honest about something. And that something is something that you heard. And then you went on a personal journey. That will make all those years, all that time in a rock and roll band be so worth it in my life. And so I'm hoping maybe even this podcast could be something similar for other people.

It's funny when you mentioned that, I don't necessarily want to talk about that band too much, but one thing that I discovered the last time I was on tour is that there was a song that I had to learn. And it was a song that I wrote about a visit to Prague that I took with an ex-girlfriend. And I was learning these lyrics again and going. Whoa. I had ADHD and I wrote about it. I literally wrote about it and I did not know.

And when I see people just kind of leaning into these stigmas and pushing on these boundaries, especially on social media, I'm excited to kind of get to be an active part of that. Hopefully with this conversation. And of course have another platform to talk about Dungeons & Dragons.