I had undiagnosed ADHD for 35 years and I suffered a lot. When my future girlfriend came to visit my place for the first time, I feard that we would not have electricity because I did not pay the bills. Not a money issue, but between all the daunting daily tasks I just was not able to accomplish that task for MONTHs. I was working on my PhD in CS and didn't get anything done at all. I was in constant fear of getting a task related to Excel, because all these little cells have always made me nervous and furious. I would invest 2-3 hours working around a repetitive task of maybe 20 minutes, because doing it was unbearable. I had always been socially anxious, because for being socially active you need that type of attention that is just hard to maintain. I love being in nature, but going for a walk through the woods? Not possible, because it's "not exciting" enough.

Then a friend gave me some of his pills. I took them for a few days and for the first day of my life I understood how everybody else was feeling, how everybody else could be so confident, behaving confident, just being and feeling normal. I knew that feeling from rare occasions, the absence of all that struggle you are constantly feeling in your body. I had my first normal workday ever. Just going to work, doing work, having a break, later going home. I had never experienced that ever before. And still I didn't believe I had ADHD, never slipped my mind, lol. But then COVID hit and we went into lockdown and homeoffice and I could not work at all and I suffered immensly. I knew that feeling of "I want to do it SO hard, but I just CAN'T" very well, but this time it hit me very hard, for weeks. She convinced me to get diagnosed and here I am, it feels like a distant past already. It was like an instant switch, even though it's a journey to retrain my brain after for decades it had to come up with mechanics to deal with the disorder.

I know there many out there that are/were like me and I know there are many out there that had a quite different experience with their ADHD. Please don't walk around saying society is the problem. Society is not the problem when it comes to depression and it's not the problem when it comes to ADHD. A lot of people would benefit from a different society for sure, but for me and many others it's nothing more than a disorder. It was a miracle I could start a PhD to begin with (and of course getting my Master's was a constant struggle, just as my whole life had been miserable and a struggle). Many others end up drug addicted, dropping out ot school, having a clinical depression, and other nasty stuff. As all mental disorders, we do not know too much about it, but as a matter of fact the medication helps greatly and I am so glad I got finally diagnosed. Some that have ADHD do not suffer that much as I did, but a lot of do. I only wish that my disorder does not get misrepresented as "wouldn't be a big deal in a more open society".