Driven to Distraction (Revised): Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder

I don’t think I’ve ever really been happy. For as long as I can remember, there’s always been a sadness tugging at me. Sometimes I forget about it. I guess that’s when you could say I was happy. But the minute I start to think,

paying attention to other people. He appears to be wrapped up in himself, preoccupied with his own place in the world, and incapable of genuine empathy or love.

subsiding, but always in motion. Such hyperreactivity enhances creativity because it increases the number of collisions in the brain. Each collision has the potential to emit new light, new matter, as when subatomic particles collide.

Nowhere is where many ADD people live all the time. Neither here nor there nor anywhere in particular, but rather here and there, not in any one place, but all over the place, nowhere precisely. And it is out of nowhere, on the wings of impulse, that creativity flies in.

behavior that seems narcissistic. The narcissist, in simple terms, has trouble

It is important to keep true ADD separate from pseudo-ADD for the diagnosis to retain any serious meaning. If everybody who gets distracted or feels hurried or gets easily bored is diagnosed with ADD, then the diagnosis will signify nothing more than a passing fad.

phobia. Only if the symptoms are more intense than is normal, if they last a long while, and if they interfere with one’s everyday life, only then can one entertain an actual diagnosis.

frequent ear infections in childhood,

Second, one of the cardinal symptoms of ADD is impulsivity. What is creativity but impulsivity gone right? One does not plan to have a creative thought. Creative thoughts happen unscheduled. That is to say they are impulsive, the result of an impulse, not a planned course of action.