I'm 52 years old and have had ADHD as long as I can remember. The APA didn't list it as a disorder until 1980, (I was already 20 years old by then). It wasn't in DSM-II, which came out in 1968. It first appeared as ADD in DSM-III, (1987), and the term ADHD was introduced around 1990.

So I've always known I didn't quite see things the way most people do, and vice versa: the people I've been in contact with throughout my life have also known I didn't see things the way they do. That caused a lot of frustration on both ends - but no one really knew why.

I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until 2001, (I was 41 years old). In 2001 I still had kids in school, and what I knew about ADHD was what I heard through the grapevine in normal daily converstaions. That "All of a sudden" ADHD appeared on the scene, schools were diagnosing kids with it left and right, and thousands of kids were being medicated into zombies to control "normal" behavioral problems. So I was one of the millions of skeptics back then when ADHD came on the scene, even when I was diagnosed.

It wasn't until the past two years that I actually started educating myself on what it's all about, and it's been a bitter/sweet awakening. On the one hand it has been extremely encouraging to finally understand why, for all those years, I didn't see things the way others did. But it's kind of like failing a test and then finding out years later the teacher used the wrong answer sheet to grade it. That's a weak analogy, I know. But that's kind of how it feels. It's nice to finally know why you failed the test, but just knowing it does not change the years and years worth of consequences you've endured as a result of failing that test. You can't unring the bell.

It's estimated that only 4% of the adult population has ADHD, to one degree or another. To those of us who have it, and for those closest to us, it is an extremely important concern and a huge part of our daily life. To the other 96% of society, it's as irrelevant as knowing the chemical composition of moon rocks.

Psychiatrists treat all kinds of people with all kinds of issues. They obviously have to have a better understanding of ADHD than the average Joe, but again, it's an issue of numbers. They, like all of us, only have so many hours in their day. How much time are most of them going to seriously devote to thinking about, reading about, and keeping up on the most recent advances in the area of this one, small, disorder? I spend a good majority of my time trying to learn about it. I want to find a fix. I want to see things the way "normal" people see things before I die. I want to start a project and finish it, read more than a page at a time, and not feel so frustrated, angry or hopeless when everyone around me is laughing. I would love to have a converstaion with someone and not string together 6 different fragmented thoughs into one incoherent sentence and have them laugh and say, "WOW - ADHD kickin' in is it?" Or start a sentence and then have to stop and say, "Never mind, I forgot what I was trying to say." I would like to sit down at the computer to look up an address, and not catch myself four hours later with 15 webpages open, reading about the eating habits of the black rhinoceros.

Thanks for letting me vent.