I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was about 7-8, by advice of a teacher. If I had to put a severity to it, I'd guess severe. When I was in young, it was a physical feeling of pain in my stomach when I fought against the urge to stand up and walk around. Before I was diagnosed, I literally couldn't write my own name without help, because I wouldn't sit and do it. After being put on medication, I basically got straight A's and B's through to high school.
Half way through high school, I started to hate the medication, I was depressed and tried to take myself off them secretly. Within the first week, most of my teachers started raising eyebrows and the school called home to see what was going on. After a few trips to the paediatrician, psychologist, and agreeing to weekly therapy at the school, I was taken off the medication.
It got pretty grizzly. One of my teachers would routinely send me out of the classroom for entire periods because he figured I wasn't going to learn anyway, and I was disrupting everyone else. I started to struggle in classes I loved, which got incredibly frustrating, I remember clearly knowing the answer to a problem in math class, but struggling to actually write it down, or being in music class (I was the school bands drummer), and struggling to to finish a single song because I couldn't help standing up and stepping away from the drum kit half way through.
It was devastating to me to find I couldn't do these things I knew I was good at without the help of the medication I fought to get off. I'd get off of school and just walk around town. Somehow, one day, I ended up walking into the local TAFE/Curtin (This is in a town in Australia), and for some reason started looking at their class lists. One of the admin's started talking to me, and convinced me to go talk to one of the teachers, who convinced me to give it a try.
Being a small town, the classes were basically empty, so I was almost one on one with the teacher, who let me work through at my own pace. I ended up powering through all the work for the Certificate III and Certificate IV pretty quickly, and he asked me to enrol in the Diploma (For those that don't know, here in aus a Cert/Diploma is under an undergraduate degree), introduced me to the teacher, and she gave me the entire course load in advance, which I also powered through.
They called me in and sat me down and told me I should apply for an undergraduate degree program in the city, and wrote letters of recommendation for me. I did, not really expecting anything to come of it (Remember I was about 14-15 at the time, and still attending high school, and basically failing), and after a few weeks of frantic phone calls, and incredible support from my amazing parents, I got accepted.
I ended up graduating just after my 18th birthday, with an award for grades.
I think about it pretty regularly, what my life would have been like if I hadn't discovered programming via TAFE. I'm 100% certain I could not have finished high school without medication, with high enough marks to get into Uni. And even if I could have, I probably would have assumed that my body would fight me every step of the way just like high school, and opted not to go. I wish I could tell all the people who are in the position I was in at that age, terrified of the future, feeling trapped in a body that won't let them be normal, that, hey, maybe there ARE things you can do. I've described programming as a 'blind spot' for my ADHD. And if I have a blind spot, maybe others do to. I'd like to hope that everyone has something they can do that helps them feel better.
I still struggle with ADHD, I still have trouble sitting through a movie, I get frustrated at myself at the drop of a hat, hell, to be honest, theres a part of me that's proud I managed to type this story out in only one sitting. But I can program, and I honestly feel like that saved my life.