What damage can ADD/ADHD do?
You are typing an important report that is needed today. The phone rings, you answer, and an email alert pops up on your computer. You read the email, and it prompts you to call someone so you can meet in a few minutes, even though the subject is not high priority. You leave for the meeting without finishing the report. (In this case, your prefrontal cortex has failed to filter out the non urgent issues, that is, the email and meeting, and and it has failed to filter in the important issue, completing your report.) Tomorrow is no different for you, and the pattern continues. Eventually, you lose your job and you feel angry. Sadness sets in and gives way to thoughts such as “I’m a failure,” or “I will never have a steady job,” or “No one likes me.” You become depressed. You seek shelter from these self-defeating thoughts in drugs and alcohol. Such self medicating takes hold of you and becomes a compulsive habit. The mission to obtain drugs at any cost eventually subjects you to the crim
