I am a 49 year old male who has just recently been diagnosed with AD/HD. All my life I knew that there was something wrong with me. I thought it stemmed from my screwed up childhood. My parent’s separated when I was very young, In fact I don't remember them being together. I remember being used as a pawn between them. My Father remarried when I was 7 or 8 and the real hell began. My father and stepmother would get drunk have knock down drag out fights ending in blood or broken bones. Being the eldest I would protect and care for my younger sister. Eventually my Stepmothers aggression turned to me and I would get beat daily because I forgot my books at school, I lost track of time and came home late and so forth. She eventually sent me away to a boy’s ranch where I spent three years; I won’t go into what happened to me there. I eventually left there and came back "home" when I was 16, but nothing had changed. I left when I was 17 and got a job and supported myself. I joined the army for three years and got married, the marriage lasted about 2 years and the army lasted three years. (For the past 24 years I have been in a relationship with someone, it has had its ups and down but we are still together) I came back to the states and never stayed in one place for very long, always getting bored and moving on. My father eventually killed himself and I have had not contact with my stepmother or sisters since. Needless to say that I thought that my problem stemmed from my childhood and being ACOA (adult child of Alcoholics). I have gone to counseling to work on issues from my childhood for many years, problems such as procrastination, my mind constantly racing with a thousand thoughts, going full force into a project only to eventually get bored with it and having a hard time if ever completing it., always fidgeting and having to stay busy (I cannot ever remember only having one job), compulsive spending remained. I eventually stopped the counseling. My last Job was one that I had for five years, being in charge of 50 employees in six different departments in two different facilities. This was a job that was able to hold my focus because I had to work on so many things at a time, what finally did me in was my mouth. I also have trouble screening my thoughts before I blurt them out. It is never good to tell your COO that the person they hired to be your new boss that this person is unqualified to do the job even if they are, what made it worse (if that’s possible) is my new boss was sitting there when I said it. So you can imagine how that ended, even though I was excellent in my job something’s some people can't overlook. Anyways I went back to counseling last year before all this happened because I was headed for a breakdown and last week I came across an article on adult AD/HD and at the end of the article was a 21 question profile to see if you have the signs of AD/HD and out of the 21 questions I was able to answer yes to 21 of them. So I am happy and sad about this discovery. Happy that I finally understand what is wrong with me and there is some help and sad that half my life is gone and time has been wasted. I have not started on medication yet (I had to be cleared by a Cardiologist), But what I have read about it from your post it sounds encouraging and so yet another journey in my life begins. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts and journeys. I was nice to finally find out that I am not alone in this and wish all of you the best. Thanks for listening to my babble.

Quote