For all those ADHD folks.

About five years ago, while in the pit of my online gaming addiction, playing 6-8 hours a day, I finally broke down and realized it was time to get my act together. I was in the worst shape of my life, physically and mentally. I had spent the last 3 years of my life hiding from all the responsibilities I could hide from and I let my work go to hell and things seemed to be crumbling around me. Aside from regular counseling, I decided to finally get evaluated for ADHD, something I've always felt I've had after a lifetime of unfinished projects, disorganization and lack of focus and purpose.

I searched for a counselor here in Orlando that was familiar with adult ADHD, since ADHD is much more difficult to diagnose in adults. It seems as we get older, we learn to compensate for many of the symptoms associated with ADHD, or we learn to hide them or combine them with other problems. So it had to be someone who was familiar with adult ADHD, and after looking around, I found him. John McDonald, as it turns out, is ADHD himself, so the old adage of 'it takes one to know one' seemed appropriate.

We discussed my life at length, my unfinished projects, my piles of stuff everywhere around my house, my extreme enthusiasm with starting a new project and the eventual lack of interest in it which would eventually ensue adding yet another line item to my list of 'things I'll never finish'. We talked about my lack of ability to focus on things which didn't interest me, my difficulties in school, not with understanding the material, but with trying to stay focused on it. We talked about those occasional days where I have so much stuff to do that I would just sit down in my house, exhausted after contemplating where to start and just feeling completely overwhelmed to the point where I would just shut down for a bit. And we talked about weird things like me seeing a piece of paper on the ground knowing I need to pick it up but just continuing to walk over it for a week. Strange stuff.

By the time we were done talking, he and I could both relate to probably 95% of these things which we had in common, and which, apparently, most adults with ADHD have in common. This epiphany helped me understand many of the shortfalls in my life and almost immediately, years worth of guilt and lack of self-worth and feeling bad about job performance reviews and elementary school teachers notes that said, "Ron is very smart, he just has trouble paying attention and likes to be the class clown" suddenly came into perspective. But where did I go from here?

Having grown up from a long line of pharmacists, medicines in the house were not uncommon. It's just that I never wanted to be dependent on them. I saw how my mother and father in their later years, and how many older folks, have a literal rainbow of pills they take for this or that. Taking meds persistently for a condition was a sign of a chronic sickness or disease. And the thought of having to take meds for my ADHD was not something I was looking forward to. But remember by this time, my life was already in chaos from three years of 'chronic' online gaming. I had to make a change, so I succumbed and tried the meds.

The first day I took my Adderall, I felt focused. I mean really focused. I'm not talking 'hyperfocused' or anything, just focused to the point where I could sit down and actually work on something boring like finances and finish what I was doing without interruption. Typically, someone with ADHD will sit down to do or read something boring and get distracted 18 different ways as the brain flitters from this thought or that and before the person knows it, he's doing something completely different than what he was supposed to be doing. Then, this happens over and over again until the unfinished task is buried among other unfinished tasks.

As you might imagine, a lifetime of this is devastating to one's self esteem; another hallmark of adult ADHD- a lowered self esteem after many years of being haunted by so many unfinished accomplishments.

So there I was, finally seeing what it was like to be 'normal.' To make a list of things to do and actually do them. To see a piece of paper on the ground and pick it up. To open my mail and deal with the contents of it immediately instead of piling it up was something foreign to me, but I liked this new resolve. Adderall, while being a legal methamphetamine, helps a person with ADHD be, well… normal. Someone who doesn't have ADHD and who takes a stimulant like this, will usually be wired. That's one of the ways that a psychiatrist evaluates the effects on someone who is prescribed Adderall or other stimulants. At least that's what I was told by my psychiatrist.

It was shortly after I started taking this medicine that I really looked at all the unfinished things in my life. There was a huge list. I looked at all the symptoms typically associated with adult ADHD, and I fit the bill, not the way a hypochondriac believes he is sick when he's not, but especially with the strange things that ADHD people do and don't do, and with the associations that ADHD people make with their environment. I was devastated, but I was relieved and now to a degree, unburdened.

"So again, where do I go from here," I thought?

That was when I picked the most difficult challenge I could possibly think of. What better way to exonerate myself of the guilt associated with a lifetime of unrealized achievements and tasks undone than to pick something so uncharacteristic of me and amazing, beyond anything I could ever expect of myself? What one thing could I do that would challenge my resolve more than anything I have ever done and really make up for all those difficult things I never finished in my life?

It was around the end of July, 2002 - I had just returned from a trip to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park where I just discovered the Appalachian Trail with my "Calendar a Day" page saying,

"To Learn to See, To Learn to Hear, You Must Do This: Go Into the Wilderness Alone."

It was clear - For me personally, the Pinnacle of achievements after a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams would be to do something that required a tremendous amount of focus and commitment beyond anything I've ever done.

And it was then that I decided that I would hike the Appalachian Trail.

I could have used my diagnosis of ADHD as an excuse, but instead it's helped me understand a lot about myself, and how I perceive the world. Because indeed, people with ADHD see the world differently and with much more apprehension, than people who aren't ADHD. We will often fear new projects, not because of the projects themselves, but because we have conditioned ourselves to the idea that we might not finish them. After all, many of us have long track records of not finishing things.

While not everyone with ADHD sees the world this way, many do. In fact, ADHD can also manifest as ‘hyper-focusing’ where people can be so focused that they have trouble shifting their focus to other things and are not easily affected by stimuli that might cause a normal person to hear a knock at the door or have something catch his eye from the side. Some folks like this actually achieve many great and wonderful things in their lives because of this ability to focus. But intangible things like relationships might suffer as a side effect.

In 5 days I begin my walk, not just for myself or for the Russell Home for Atypical Children. I am also walking for all those other folks with ADHD and who have a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams, to show them that it is possible to break from this cycle and achieve greatness, when often, we doubted it was ever within us. It is within us, all of us, no matter what our handicap or challenge. We just have to start by believing and finding that one person to inspire us to become more than we ever thought possible. I found this quality in people in history that have inspired me and in other hikers who finished the 2,100+ mile Appalachian Trail hike who by all rights, never should have.

Perhaps, if I am lucky, I may even inspire someone else who will go on to achieve greatness in something. Not to sound too cliché, but if I can do that, then that will be even more significant to me than finishing this hike.

To achieve greatness is one thing. But to inspire others to achieve greatness is really the miracle, in my eyes. After all, all I’m doing is going for a walk in the woods.

Ron