I'd like to throw my 20p in if I may.
I have worked for the Royal College of Psychiatrists for the past two and a bit years, and I'm also on the waiting list for the adult attention deficit clinic, awaiting proper diagnosis after a gp referral.
I completely failed at school; I never studied and lazily handed in hastily scrawled homework and course work and this was reflected in the grades that I got. This isn't to say that I was stupid, I just literally could not concentrate on my work as I found it profoundly uninteresting, in fact at one point I was even placed into 'set 4' for English, which was one away from special needs! This was over 15 years ago now, during a time when dyslexia was about the only recognised learning difficulty and even that was never properly dealt with, at least in my school. I did get reasonable grades in science and english, but all of my tests were taken with absolutely no revision or preparation of any kind; I found revision impossible.
There is a misconception that if you are attention deficit then you shouldn't be able to concentrate on anything, in fact you are able to concentrate on something as long as you are interested, but that means a deep level of interest, not for example "I am interested in becoming an astrophysicist, therefore I know that I must study". For instance: I play the guitar, and while I've been playing for a long time I have never studied theory or even learned chord progression or names, I just learned the songs that I liked and then eventually started working songs out by ear. I would deeply love to be able to play properly and pick up a guitar and jam with someone, but I find it impossible to stay focused when trying to learn and then give up and play along to songs instead, sometimes this will drive me into a depression.
There is also hyper-focus; where you are able to be fully immersed in something, but cannot concentrate on anything else while you are doing it. Which is what I do with games, I play too many too often, but it's the only time in my life where I am completely focused on something and outside thoughts don't intrude and distract me, the only time when my mind is quiet, so I'm very much attracted to doing it as often as possible.
I often get into arguments with my other half, as I can't maintain focus when she's trying to have a conversation with me, yet I'll waffle on for ages about something like the Pandora, or joysticks. I find that having long one on one conversations is quite a battle because I try my hardest to listen and stay with it, but one word might start off a tangent in my mind and I'll suddenly realise a few minutes later that I've been staring into the corner daydreaming about ghostbusters and I have no idea what has been said. In fact sometimes I'm concentrating so hard on listening that the act itself stops me from listening.
I tend to assault people with a wall of sound when I'm trying to explain something too. In fact I prefer text as I am able to reread and edit out what would normally be a chunk of verbal diarrhoea. I sometimes speak like I think and jump between ideas as I'm explaining them, and then go off on tangents when I hit a side issue and jump back into the original topic again where I left off. I did this to a friend once and he had a horrified look on his face, and after a minute of stunned silence he said 'Whoa... what. the. hell. were you just talking about?'.
Anyway, I have been able to make it this far in life without any major problems, but the issue for me is that I'll get to old age and have a complete breakdown when I realise that I have never done any of the things that I wanted to achieve, and this is largely due to my not being able to study. In fact it's gotten worse as I've gotten older, to the point where I can't read books anymore. I used to be able to get through them, but now I can't read a single page without discovering that I've been daydreaming a few minutes later, even if I really want to read the book.
I also bounce my legs constantly, drum out tunes with my fingers, human beat-box, and blurt out random, usually made up words (eg: I might just come out and say "Finkleschtein" for no apparent reason other than that it occurred to me to say it). Also I saw a therapist for an assessment session recently after I was diagnosed with severe depression after Christmas, and she thinks that I also have obsessive compulsive disorder, so I'm also waiting to hear back about that, lucky me!
I can understand why a lot of people think that it's a hokey condition, and in fact if you explain symptoms to most people they will interrupt you with "yea I do that too". I often feel like I'm a charlatan and I shouldn't be wasting people's time with this crap, like I don't deserve to have special attention, but it is genuinely upsetting to have the attention span of a child and puts a great strain on your relationships.
