Re: Can we stop being negative?

[Wgreen]

Librarian_chef: you make a great point. Maybe we’re talking about apples and oranges here. If that’s true, we’re in the wrong forum.

As I have said before, I understand the upside. I personally have been extremely successful by the lights of others over the years—I’ve invented and brought to market innovative products. I’ve founded and run international businesses. In fact, I’ve been places and done things most people can only dream of. But, as you have suggested, it was partly luck; and with that “success” has come considerable collateral damage to myself, my personal affairs, and my family.

Others in my family with ADD struggled daily and left nothing but wreckage everywhere.

It has been said that people’s strengths are their weaknesses. And vice-versa. I think that’s generally true, and often true of ADD. We’re very creative. We are innovators—sometimes. Some people with ADD become Hollywood stars or find there way into Wikipedia. Hey, some people win the lottery, too.

Once, several years ago, a saw an adaptation of R.L. Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In this film, Hyde is not deformed or ugly. He is handsome and charming. I thought, “How brilliant!” Charisma and “creativity” also can be projections of a dark, menacing inner shadow. And, in fact, the tragic end of the story remained unchanged.

I won’t bore anybody with my life’s story. But I’ll say this: all the success I’ve had as a result of a creative streak (and luck) has been conjoined with other debilitating personal issues. And the tradeoff is not one I chose. It’s one I inherited. To be honest, even with “the upside” I’ve had the good fortune to experience, I don’t think I’d ever wish ADD on anybody. Swapping self control and neurological equilibrium for “magical thinking” is, in my experience, a Faustian pact.

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