Hello, I (22M) recently was diagnosed with ADHD and was prescribed Adderall and after taking Adderall, my life actually got clearer. As if I was coming down from a shroom high. My brain feels faster, yet also slower. Feels as if my brain is being pressure-washed. I really wonder what my life would have been like if I had this before. Let's start from the beginning.

When I was a child in grade school, I was always fidgeting with various things. I would twirl pencils between my fingers, take my pen apart and put it all back together, and hyper-fixate on the parts of the pen/pencil and wonder how humans have progressed based on the makings of this pen/pencil. Soon, my teachers would call me aside and start to ask me "What did we learn today?" and I would be lost and I would look around and see on the board in big letters that the teacher has written "Commas and Semi-colons!" and my response would be "Commas and Semi-Colons". The teacher would chuckle a little and say "Yes and when do we use a comma?" and my response would be "when it's needed" and they would point out that they have noticed that I was not focusing in class really at all. Later, the teacher would call my parents to set up a parent-teacher conference. I wasn't in trouble, but the teacher was concerned with my learning skills. My parents agreed to come cause they were under the impression that I was the best student ever to have lived. Well, when my teacher told them that I may have ADHD and that I should get tested and have an IEP (Individual Education Plan) my parents absolutely lost it. "That doesn't exist! We ain't had that when we were growing up! You either acted right or got your ass beat!" Later, my teacher just knew it wasn't worth arguing and gave them a brochure that was titled "Learning with ADHD!" and they immediately took it and threw it away and dragged me from the meeting and we went home. I remember when I was in the backseat of the car, I had asked my parents "What is ADHD?" and my father responded angrily "Nothing! It's made up by the education system to control you. What you need to worry about is why you keep acting up!" I just looked out the window and thought "Dad's mad and that means I am a screw up"

As I got older, My ADHD got worse. My grades were average at best and I was still not having an easy time staying on task. I would start everything but never finish anything. In High School, the English teacher, who we all called "Mrs. G", had adored me. Mainly because her daughter and I dated when we were sophomores and juniors. She had pulled me aside and she asked in a worrying tone "Are you okay? Is everything at home okay?" I hesitated and discouragingly said, "I'll be fine, just a couple of small hiccups." Well, at home mom had picked up drinking again and was either drunk or hungover and my Dad was critically ill in the hospital from a horrible car accident. Mrs. G also noticed that I couldn't focus and my grades never saw anything above a 78. Although, the conversations that we had about Greek mythology would absolutely astound her. She confidently told me "Listen, you are easily one of the smartest students I've seen and I've been teaching for 15 years from all over this country. I strongly and highly believe that you have ADHD and I know if you get diagnosed and medicated, you'll easily turn your grades around" I kinda smiled to hear that because no one has ever told me anything like that in, at the time, 16 years. "I would like to see someone but my parents won't let me they think it doesn't exist" She just shook her head and said "I really wish I could help you. I see your potential, but I really wanna see it become a reality."

In my adult life so far, It has always been a struggle to keep anything together. I left for the Army at 17 to leave my hometown. The crazy thing is, my mom was okay with signing the papers to potentially go to war and die, but god forbid I see a doctor for my learning issues. The great thing about Army basic training is that they think for you. They tell you where to be, where to go, what to wear, and when to be there it was all easy mode. After I got through training, I went to go be stationed in Korea and that was a blast. I started trying to figure out what I wanted out of my life, but I was only 19 at the time so I didn't worry all that much. Shortly after I got back stateside, I fell in love. We were both 20yo and we started living together really quickly because that's just how the sequence of events went. We dated for about a year and a half and lived together for about the same time. Everything was great and all my friends and her friends kept telling us we should get married. We talked about it all night and made sure that was something that we wanted to do, and we did. Shortly after we got married, I was focusing a little more on work to help us have a better life, but she couldn't grasp that idea and assumed that I just didn't want to be around her. I was really pushing for getting a promotion. Later, I caught her cheating and we divorced shortly after. You might be asking, "What did that have to do with having ADHD?" Well, the issue with having ADHD, is that you can get very attached to someone very quickly and instead of seeing them for who they are, you start seeing them for what they could be. ADHD caused me to ruin many relationships solely cause I can't keep the focus on anything including any person I was dating. They always would assume I didn't like them anymore, but that was not the case. It's just that for some reason I am really fascinated by the invention of peanut butter.

Recently, I got my diagnosis, and the psychiatrist, who had also helped treat my depression, had said "I knew you most likely had it, but your focus wasn't ADHD, it was depression, so I treated for that" After taking the Adderall, I feel like I can finally grab ahold of my life and not have this burden of starting everything and finishing nothing. I mainly wanted to share this, because I have never had a release and I am just now realizing how much I just typed, and wow...Adderall is great lol. Overall, I am incredibly proud of myself for actually getting the help I needed.