Hi, nice to meet you. I was just watching a video online. A word was used that I'd heard before but never knew the exact definition. So I paused the video and opened a new browser window to google it. When the window opened I noticed I had some unread emails, so I clicked to see what they were. While I was in my inbox I happened to notice the "Thanks for subscribing" email from psychcentral I received the other day. "Oh yeah!" I thought to myself. So I came here and was looking over the posts when I noticed your reply. AND HERE I AM!!! Hahahaha.

I was the "problem child" growing up. I have 2 brothers and a sister who did everything the way they were supposed to. I was the one always in trouble, never listening, never "paying attention." My mother had saved all our report cards and sent mine to me a few years ago. I got mostly C's and D's - 1st grade to 10th grade - with some F's and a few B's. I got 1 A in art. I dropped out of school in the 10th grade when I was 15, and officially quit school when I was 16. I got my GED when I was 18: 6 months before the rest of my class graduated.

I later enrolled in college, (when I was 28), and did well at that. I think because each sememster was only 3 months it was easier to stay focused. I was also taking classes because I wanted to, not because I had to, so that helped.

I've had my IQ tested twice in my life; once in my late teens or early 20's, and again in my late 40's. It was 128 both times, so the C's and D's were due to a lack of production, not a lack of ability.

I read all the time and always have 4 or 5 books bookmarked that I'm involved in at any given time - yet I can count the number of books I've actually read cover to cover in my entire life on one hand. Not only can I count them, but I can vividly remember where I was the moment I finished each of those books, all the way back to when I was fifteen and finished Jaws, (1975).
(The realization that I can remember every book I've ever finished, the moment I finished them, and that there really isn't that many just occured to me the other day).
I too prefer non-fiction: primarily philosophy, history, biographical, religion and theology.

I was always musical, where my 3 sibblings are not. My parents put me in piano lessons when I was 5, and I switched to guitar when I was 6. I've been playing the guitar ever since and, aside from breathing and eating, it's the ONLY thing I've ever stuck with for more than a month or two.

I've always been outgoing and popular and always had a lot of friends around, but looking back it seemed to be a revolving door of "friends." Most of the friends or people I hung out with only lasted 6 months to a year.

Now I'm 52. I've been enrolled at 4 different colleges over the years, honor roll, dean's list . . . but never received a degree from any of them. I literally can't count (or remember) how many jobs I've had in my life. I started working when I was 16, (1976). I've actually had jobs that only lasted a few minutes before I walked out.

I never put much stock in ADHD. No one even knew what it was until 1987, and the majority consensus at that time seemed to be that it was just a way for schools to medicate kids into zombies to control "normal" childhood behavior. That's pretty much what I believed too, even after I was diagnosed in 2001.

It wasn't until the past few years that I've actually started looking into it. And like I said, it's been a bitter/sweet awakening. I went to a psychiatrist in 2010 to get help. The visits consisted of me going in, he'd ask if the medicine was working, I'd say "No", he'd write a new prescription for a different medication and say, "See you in a month." That's not an exaggeration - those were the visits. I never went back after the fourth visit.

I saw a psychiatrist a week ago. I was excited about going to him. With everything I've been reading about new research, new breakthroughs, new advances, new ideas, new treatments . . . I couldn't wait. I asked him about some of the things I'd been reading about. He never heard of them. "Aderall is really the only medication that works" he told me. "If Aderall doesn't work, there's not much else we can do." I said, "What about that Concerta OROS I've heard about?" He never heard of it. He took a book off his shelf and said, "I recently read this, it's the latest and greatest information available on the subject." The book was Understanding and Treating Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, by Brian B. Doyle. I opened it up to the copyright and said, "2006?" He didn't respond. He wrote me a prescription for Aderall. I told him I've tried Aderall and it didn't work, but he said "We need to try it again."

I took it for two days, and it was probably the worst brainfog I've ever experienced. Like everything was right there on the tip of my brain, but not quite close enough to grab onto. Just a hazy fog is the only way I can describe it, accompanied by major frustration and irratibility. I kept snapping at my wife for everything, knowing that it wasn't her, it was me - but I kept snapping anyway. So I stopped taking that, and today, when I'm done typing this, I'm going to look for another doctor.