>Focus is rare; I was recently diagnosed as having ADHD by a psychiatrist, who I saw at the urging of my therapist, despite my staunch refusal to acknowledge it as a real disease. I don't Get Enough Done.
"It's not a real disease" may or may not be true, but I would argue that is irrelevant.
Speaking as someone else who has been diagnosed with ADD, who is also unsure how it differs from simply being a lazy bastard, I can tell you that the drugs they give you for that are /very effective/ if you want to get more done.
They say it's not a silver bullet, but god damn, it sure feels that way. Unmedicated, I get one good day a month; I often get more done on that day than I do the rest of the month. Medicated, that day becomes somewhat average.
For me, most of the depression issues were caused by the fact that I was very obviously not performing up to potential, and when the stimulants fixed that problem, the depression issues mostly went away.
I actually was in a pretty similar situation around your age. Right out of highschool, I made a couple brilliant career moves, but after the .com crash I ended up stagnating from age 22 or so to 25 or so. At which point I started on medication. Four years later, I'm a published author, my company is paying my bills, and I'm generally not ashamed to be where I am. (Now, I'm not on medication anymore... long story... and I'm once again /much less productive/ so it's not like the problem is solved permanently. But medication can give you some very good years- years you can leverage to build skills so that your 'down time' is more productive, too.)
I can't agree more. I had much the same story, minus the "success", and much of the same mental symptoms. Starting medication for ADD was like putting glasses on my ability to get things done.
It's not a silver bullet, but a lot of my other issues melted away once I treated my ADD, and I'm now actually starting to accomplish things I want to accomplish.
"It's not a real disease" may or may not be true, but I would argue that is irrelevant.
Speaking as someone else who has been diagnosed with ADD, who is also unsure how it differs from simply being a lazy bastard, I can tell you that the drugs they give you for that are /very effective/ if you want to get more done.
They say it's not a silver bullet, but god damn, it sure feels that way. Unmedicated, I get one good day a month; I often get more done on that day than I do the rest of the month. Medicated, that day becomes somewhat average.
For me, most of the depression issues were caused by the fact that I was very obviously not performing up to potential, and when the stimulants fixed that problem, the depression issues mostly went away.
I actually was in a pretty similar situation around your age. Right out of highschool, I made a couple brilliant career moves, but after the .com crash I ended up stagnating from age 22 or so to 25 or so. At which point I started on medication. Four years later, I'm a published author, my company is paying my bills, and I'm generally not ashamed to be where I am. (Now, I'm not on medication anymore... long story... and I'm once again /much less productive/ so it's not like the problem is solved permanently. But medication can give you some very good years- years you can leverage to build skills so that your 'down time' is more productive, too.)