The Laura Dowling Experience

Daniel Buckley was thirty-two before he had a name for what was going on in his head. For as long as he could remember he had been restless, discontented, unable to sit still or hold his focus on anything that didn’t grip him - and he had simply assumed that was him. That was the way he was, and the way life was.

His wife Simone saw it long before he did. For more than a decade she told him something wasn’t right, that he couldn’t rest, that he had no structure. He wasn’t ready to hear it. The day before she died, after years of illness, she went through his symptoms one by one and asked him to get help for his ADHD.

Daniel tells Laura what happened next - the newspaper article that felt like a tap on the shoulder, the Irish clinics that never rang him back, the trip to England to be assessed at all. He is open about drinking to escape thoughts he had no other way of managing, about the day he stopped, and about the ordinary moment months later when he heard his son laughing outside an open window and realised he had never felt peace before. It’s also the story of what he built out of it: a service designed, in his words, to get people to a clinician in weeks rather than years.

🔑 Key Points

He spent thirty-two years assuming that was just who he was
Restless, discontented, unable to focus — Daniel had no framework for any of it until he was assessed at thirty-two.

Simone saw it more than a decade before he accepted it
He only heard it the day before she died, when she went through his symptoms and asked him to get help.

Undiagnosed ADHD and alcohol are closely linked
Daniel describes drinking to escape feelings he couldn’t regulate. He stopped in August 2022, so he could be the father his son deserved.

There was no route to a diagnosis in Ireland
Public waiting lists ran to years, and not one of the private clinics he rang or emailed came back to him. He was assessed in England instead.

He chose therapy and coaching over medication
Having stopped drinking, he worked weekly on emotional regulation, learning to recognise emotions he’d never had names for.

Peace arrived as an ordinary moment
Months after his diagnosis he heard his son laughing with friends through an open window and felt, for the first time, that he was all right.

A diagnosis is a turning point, not an end point
The piece of paper changes nothing on its own. What matters is the understanding and the support that come after it.

He built the service he couldn’t find
ADHD Now offers access to a clinician within seven days and has grown to over a hundred clinicians across ADHD and autism care.

📚 Resources

ADHD Now
Daniel’s online ADHD assessment and support service

AutismCare
The autism and AuDHD assessment service built alongside it

ADHD Ireland
The national charity, with support groups and information

Samaritans Ireland
Free, confidential support, any time, on 116 123

⏱️ Timestamps

02:54 — Diagnosed at thirty-two, and the bottlenecks he hit
03:38 — “That’s the way I am, that’s the way life is”
04:24 — Illness, Joey’s arrival, and Simone going on dialysis
07:33 — Drinking to escape, and the day he stopped
09:38 — A decade of Simone telling him something was wrong
10:05 — The day before she died: “please get help for your ADHD”
11:45 — The newspaper article that felt like a tap on the shoulder
12:23 — No one called back, so he went to England
16:55 — “A diagnosis is not the end point. That’s the turning point.”
19:35 — Hearing his son laugh, and feeling peace for the first time
21:12 — The stranger outside the hospital who became his business partner
40:00 — Advice for young people, and what he thinks life means
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, comedian and content creator Dympna Little shares how humour helped her family carry her mother's terminal illness and final days.

She describes laughing together even in the palliative care room, the moment her mother noticed and said "it's lovely," and the voice message her mother recorded that became her legacy. Tender, warm and bittersweet.

🔑Key Points
• How humour can hold a family together through the hardest time
• Why laughter and grief are not opposites
• The moment her mother noticed them laughing and said "it's lovely"
• The voice message her mother left, and what legacy can look like

💛 If you're grieving, be gentle with yourself. There's no right way to do it.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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Anna Lechleiter works with people who have never been able to speak, and who have spent their lives being treated as though they had nothing to say. She is a Spelling to Communicate practitioner, and her job is to give non-speakers a way to tell the world what has been going on in their heads all along.

She explains why speech is a motor problem rather than a thinking one: the words are there, but the brain cannot reliably drive the body that produces them. That distinction changes how non-speaking people are assessed, educated and spoken to, because almost every standard autism assessment measures motor control and reports the result as intelligence.

Anna talks Laura through what happens in a session, from stencil boards to a keyboard, and tells the story that changed her mind completely: a young man called Caoimh, a letter board, and a freezing afternoon when he spelled out that he hoped it would snow. The last stretch belongs to the spellers themselves, as Anna reads the words of Max, Caoimh and Megha in their own language.

🔑 Key Points

Non-speaking is a motor problem, not a thinking one
The words are there. The difficulty is the brain reliably getting the body to produce them, which Anna describes as a brain-body disconnect rather than an absence of understanding.

Spelling to Communicate moves communication out of the fine motor
Speech, writing, texting and sign language all depend on fine motor control, so S2C uses the gross motor instead: a pointing motion towards letters on a board.

Assessments measure motor control and report it as intelligence
Because the tests need reliable motor responses, people who cannot produce them are recorded as profoundly intellectually disabled, and that label follows them for life.

Most non-speakers can already read
Text is everywhere, on signs, subtitles and packaging, and spellers have usually absorbed far more than anyone assumed. That is why sessions start with age-appropriate material rather than the basics.

Progress is built like any other motor skill
New neural pathways are created and then myelinated through repetition, so lessons change every session and words are never spelled twice, keeping the focus on the motor rather than the answer.

The spellers make the argument better than anyone
Max, Caoimh and Megha describe apraxia, sensory overwhelm and their own ambitions. Keith's line, that his mind works perfectly but the messages get mixed up on the way to his body, sums up the conversation.

📚 Resources

PALZ (Play and Language Zone) — Anna's hub in Naas, Co. Kildare

Spelling to Communicate at PALZ — how the method is taught in Ireland

I-ASC — the International Association for Spelling as Communication

Elizabeth Vosseller — the speech-language pathologist who developed S2C

AsIAm — Ireland's national autism charity, information and support line

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Max's message to the world
02:18 — The colleague's brother who suddenly had a voice
03:05 — What Spelling to Communicate actually is
07:24 — How assessments measure motor and report intelligence
09:37 — How many non-speakers there are in Ireland
10:10 — Inside a first session at the hub
17:21 — Neuroplasticity and building a brand-new motor skill
24:50 — Stencils, letter boards and moving to a keyboard
36:23 — Anna's ABA background, and why she moved away from it
44:01 — Keith, the letter board and "I hope it snows"
48:55 — Max, Keith and Megha, in their own words
53:54 — Art, an exhibition and the meaning of life
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, preventive cardiologist Dr Paddy Barrett argues that most people chase health without ever defining it — like a blindfolded archer aiming at a target they can't see.

He lays out three things actually worth optimising, and tells the story of walking away from the peak of his career when he realised he'd climbed the wrong mountain.

🔑Key Points
• Why "I want to be healthy" means nothing without a target
• The blindfolded archer, and aiming at something you can actually see
• Three things worth optimising: how long you live, the quality of those years, and how you spend your time
• Why it's never too late to climb back down and start again

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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Vicki Notaro is back! Her new novel, Anywhere but Here, follows three friends all hovering around 40 and living completely different lives. As Vicki puts it, you can be 40 and you can be a granny, or trying to conceive, or single, or divorced. She and Laura talk about the pressure women feel to have everything sorted by a certain age, and why marriage or a mortgage was never meant to be a finish line.

Vicki also gives an honest update on her women's health journey: years of very painful periods, a suspected endometriosis that turned out to be ovarian cysts, a PMDD diagnosis and cyclical depression alongside lifelong anxiety, a coil, surgery, a recurrence, and the oral progesterone that cleared her brain fog within two days.

From there the conversation turns to what young people lost when magazines disappeared. Vicki spent four years at Kiss from the age of 22, acting as a "big sis" to teenage readers, and she makes a warm case for edited, expert-checked advice over the "wild wild west of TikTok" — before Laura hands her a pile of anonymous listener confessions to answer.

🔑 Key Points

Women the same age are living completely different lives

"You can be 40 and you can be a granny" — Vicki's novel follows three friends around 40 at entirely different stages, something she sees as new in Irish life.

Milestones are a beginning, not a finish line

Vicki talks about the pressure to have the house, the relationship and possibly a baby sorted by a certain age, and why she has never seen those moments as the end of the story.

Writing about being child-free by choice once brought hate mail

She first wrote about not wanting children at 22, when it was still taboo, and was told again and again that she just hadn't met the right man.

Years of pain, and a diagnosis that came later

Suspected endometriosis turned out to be ovarian cysts, and a PMDD diagnosis explained the low, cyclical days sitting on top of lifelong anxiety.

Hormones can lift brain fog within days

After a cyst returned, her consultant added oral progesterone alongside the coil she already had, and Vicki describes her brain fog clearing within two days.

Magazines did a job nothing has replaced.

At Kiss, Vicki answered readers' questions about periods, spots and first kisses as their "big sis" — advice that was edited, curated and expert-checked.

Confessions, answered without judgement

Laura hands Vicki anonymous confessions from the Love Your Vulva live show — desire, hygiene, being left out for not having children, Botox and breast reduction — and the answers stay kind throughout.

📚 Resources

Anywhere but Here
Vicki Notaro's fourth novel, published by Penguin

Endometriosis
the condition first suspected behind Vicki's years of period pain

Period problems and PMDD
HSE guidance on severe premenstrual symptoms

Love Your Vulva Live
Laura's live show, where the anonymous confessions were gathered

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Vicki takes over as host for the summer
06:23 — Anywhere but Here: three women, three different lives at 40
09:29 — The pressure to have it all sorted by a certain age
10:34 — Writing about being child-free at 22
13:30 — Kiss magazine and being everyone's "big sis"
21:51 — Writer's block in her mother-in-law's spare room
24:50 — Painful periods, suspected endometriosis and ovarian cysts
25:50 — A PMDD diagnosis and cyclical depression
26:39 — Oral progesterone and brain fog lifting in two days
28:27 — Listener confessions, answered honestly
35:40 — Botox honesty, and why Laura stopped
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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