Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been diagnosed earlier. Not as I would have liked my life to have been any other way that it's been, but it's a bit of a revelation that I now have some insight to why I found for example, learning from a teacher at school impossible. I remember their mouths opening and closing, it was making sense while they were talking but after the lesson I couldn't have told you what it was about. My notes were my lifeline.

Now I have to read a book two or three times for it to sink in, I can read paragraphs the words are making sense but my mind is doing something else, I have to go back and re-read.

When I discovered Alcohol at 14 and Valium at 20, in sensible balance I found I could concentrate, think laterally and manage my time efficiently. By the time I was twenty five I was project managing multi million pound corporate relocations and obtained a good reputation in the square mile, work didn't stop flowing toward me. At the time I was drinking a bottle of Champagne lunchtime, couple of large gin and tonics on the train home and four pints of good quality cider in the evening. The Valium intake was between 6mg 12mg a day, nothing outrageous but mixed with the alcohol just perfect to calm me down and function. That lifestyle nearly killed me by the time I was thirty two so had to kick the pills n' booze.

To my surprise after the initial honeymoon period of being sober I was forgetting stuff, losing keys, putting things in 'special places' so I wouldn't lose them then forgetting where the special place was etc.

It wasn't until I went back to work sober that I knew something wasn't quite right. The first job was working with homeless addicts and was very in the moment, first aid crisis, stopping fights, crisis counseling, I was in my element, quick intervention notes and diarisation. It wasn't until I started working in the next position where you had to document a fart, follow a routine and hold information in the brain that the holes started to appear. Once a year we were audited, everyones client files were up to date and my procrastination meant many late nights updating my out of date admin leaving it to the very last minute.

It was during my last job when I was told quite categorically by my boss one day, 'look Dug, we've got to chat, you have ADHD, I know, I have it too'. It was during a period of high anxiety due to one of those years when you get drilled in the cerebral cortex with an array of different sized drill bit problems that eventually lead to malfunction. When I get anxious my ADHD gets worse and my mismanagement at work was atrocious. To be useful in this job that run on a strict daily routine, one had to be able to hold a magnitude of information and usually there wasn't time to write anything down, I was fucked.

The more I delve into the medication for controlling ADHD Ritalin is obviously well up the list, a stimulant that increases extracellular dopamine, another: alcohol and anxiolotics which also increases dopamine levels, funny that.

Perhaps I self medicated by accident all those years ago which led to addiction, I'll never know but another piece of the jigsaw is falling into place.