Thanks again for sharing your wisdom. I've never been one to write such long posts here but...

I was very fortunate never to have been hospitalized for any reason until, at 39, I suffered a collapsed lung and spent about two weeks in the hospital. I was totally lost. The staff had no idea I had no experience with how things worked at my age and I had no idea how to tell them. By, "the way things worked", I mean I was in a kind of shock where I could not articulate my needs; I was afraid to bother the nurses; I had a paranoid delusion they all disliked me a lot. I felt like everything I did was wrong, e.g. when it came to requesting pain medication. I would wait until the pain was unbearable before calling for a nurse when I could have had it every 4 hours, just because I was afraid of offending them with neediness.

This diagnosis of ADHD at my, now 44, years of age just blows me away. I've always bemoaned and regretted all the blown chances I've had, beating up on myself and making it even more difficult; now I'm not sure whether to be happy that there may be a medical explanation for this, or angry because if I had been diagnosed at a young age I'd have achieved happiness and success instead of the constant drumbeat of self-defeat.

I've never so much as written, let alone posted in a forum, anything like the original post. There is a lot of it that I have never shared with anyone because I felt weak and embarrassed, a failed human being because I could think of no other explanation for my behaviour.

For a long time I blocked out the idea of seeking help from a mental health professional out of denial, then actively shouldered it aside out of fear. So I have yet another thing to blame myself for. It was up to me to seek treatment. I have a really hard time taking ownership of that when I'm down, and use it as an excuse for everything when I'm angry -- which is a great deal of the time lately.

So, the way I act can be explained as the effects of a chronic disorder but I still feel weak, ashamed, and pathetic.