The Hijacked Gate: ADHD and Addiction as Dopaminergic Signal Competition Failures

This paper proposes that ADHD and addiction are not separate conditions but the same dopaminergic vulnerability expressing itself at different life stages through different environmental exposures. ADHD is a gate that cannot lock onto task-relevant signals because prefrontal cortex cannot generate sufficient amplitude to win competition consistently. Addiction is a gate progressively taken over through three sequential stages — basal ganglia habituation, extended amygdala withdrawal dominance, and prefrontal craving hijacking — each exploiting the same dopaminergic insufficiency that makes ADHD brains maximally vulnerable. Neither condition involves a broken gate. Both involve a gate correctly opening for the loudest signal in a competition that has been structurally compromised. Fix the competition and the gate fixes itself.