I'm 26, and I was diagnosed with ADD last year, at the suggestion of my dad, who was not diagnosed until his 40's. It took me almost a year to start actively r

I'm 26, and I was diagnosed with ADD last year, at the suggestion of my dad, who was not diagnosed until his 40's. It took me almost a year to start actively researching ADD, because I grew up in an upper-middle-class community where it was primarily over-diagnosed in unmotivated kids whose parents were convinced that brain dysfunction was the only thing that could possibly keep their children from being A students. To say the very least, I was skeptical. When I finally began learning about ADD, I was startled by how standard my story was. Reading Driven To Distraction was a watershed experience for me; at times I was convinced that they had simply copy-and-pasted my academic transcript: "Dreamer," "Has a creative mind that would produce incredible results if he applied himself once in a while," "Inconsistent. What happened to the A student sitting in my classroom last year?" In perspective, so much suddenly made sense; not just my experiences in high school, but beyond that as well. I failed only one class in my entire academic career, a programming course in my second year of college. How ironic and confusing that my only failure would be in the subject for which I had the most passion. Now it made sense. Only two or three years ago from today, I almost lost my job because my output was so inconsistent. I barely scraped by and recovered, but the experience shook me. Now, I understood. There are many forms of treatment, all of which I have experimented with. When it comes to medication, it took me a long time to settle on Adderall, which lets me focus like a normal person without any appreciable side-effects. The drug was a game-changer for me, like the first time I put on glasses. I think I'm glad that I wasn't medicated as a kid, if only because of a deep uncertainty about medicating something as malleable as a child's brain. Conversely, going 25 years without diagnosis has also drastically affected every part of my life. (I have no idea how my dad dealt with it for almost 50 years.) This was also something that I grew to understand as I learned more about ADD; undiagnosed, it can lead to perennial struggles with depression, self-esteem, poor impulse control and a host of others. I think the most important thing about ADD isn't necessarily medication or even "treatment" but simply awareness. "Laziness" is a symptom, not a root cause. If we can be mindful about the signs of ADD in childhood, we have already taken a huge step towards improving the quality of life for people with the disorder, and everyone they interact with. I'm sure there will be debates about how to treat it for many years to come, but simple awareness can only help.