From Struggling with ADHD to Turning it into My Greatest Gift

Get to better understand ADHD by a man who uses it to give him an edge. Thank you sincerely Connor Keppel for sharing your story.

From Struggling with ADHD to Turning it into My Greatest Gift

I’m Connor. I have been a skateboarder, aspiring pilot, wannabe palaeontologist, potential marine biologist, lead guitarist, pianist, recorder player, Irish dancer, devout Christian, pill-popping raver, debater, writer, soccer and tag rugby player, table tennis medallist, failed barely-entrepreneur, loyal employee, party animal, gym nut, smoker, book worm and public speaker.

At the ripe ol’ age of 28 you can see I have been many things, none of which even remotely hold my interest anymore. Only one thing has remained constant throughout my life, ADHD – that’s attention deficit hyperactive disorder.

The Early Years:

Since my early years I knew something was different about me. My earliest memories were the pain and anxiety of waiting for a known end result – whether it was waiting for my mother to finish a conversation with a friend in the supermarket, or sitting in class ‘learning’ things with people who could not grasp it as fast as me. It was like a form of mental claustrophobia.

In these situations I just wanted to scream and break free, and as a youngster, I often did. It earned me the reputation of a seriously hyperactive and difficult child. In reality I was too young to control an overactive mind, and I knew I was looked at differently. I had such a good heart, was a sensitive child and I remember distinctly the hurt it caused when adults disciplined me for shouting out the answer in class, or simply causing mayhem because the fun of birthday parties overcame me.

I was just being me and with the exception of my family, because I put people on edge, I felt nobody wanted me as I was. I felt they wanted to change me.

Assumptions

People always assume that when you have ADHD, you have the inability to focus on anything. That is a myth. You simply have the inability to even remotely focus on anything that you are not interested in.

Now you may say “Ya, so? Sure we are all like that?” Saying that is like saying that if you have a bad day at work and you feel low for a few hours, you are clinically depressed. In other words, ADHD takes little things we all suffer from, from time-to-time to extremes and at a constant level.

My brain has only two settings with little or no grey area:

1. UTTER obsession
2. Complete disinterest

Darker Times

Luckily I have always had a thirst for knowledge and I did really well in primary school right up to junior cert. Subjects like maths, engineering and science challenged me and made me realise just how little I knew which excited me with prospects of what I could potentially learn.

But things took a major turn for the worse in leaving cert. I picked the wrong subjects and as a result I began hating school. I simply, no matter how hard I tried, could not focus and study. I felt dumber and dumber as my results plummeted and teachers went from saying things like “you have a bright future ahead of you young man!” to “What happened you? You used to be good. Maybe think about something more ‘practical’ instead of college.” I even remember one teacher mentioning that every filling station needed someone to operate a cash register.

Now while there’s nothing wrong with that, it gutted me. I wanted to conquer the world and all I felt was self-pity and abject failure. I became a complete self-hater, self-harmer and was in an abyss of depression. I lost most of my friends and they didn’t want to hear about my troubles because they simply thought I was moaning without merit.

I would be lying if I said there was days when I thought I couldn’t go on and had seriously dark thoughts about ending it all.

Finding a Calling

I had a pretty crap Leaving Cert considering I was an A student for the junior cert and ended up with about 300 points. A few weeks before the exam, the career guidance person in our school walked into the 6th year area and said “Carlow IT now has a course in public relations. If you have to ask what that is, do not bother applying.” I had no clue what PR was. So I applied. ADHD impulsiveness at its finest!

Within the course there was a broader marketing module and that is where I found my calling. It was the first year of the course and if I had applied one year later, I would have missed it by about 150 points.

As per usual with anything that interests me, I obsessed. I regained friends, became quasi-popular with girls in the class and feeling a career-oriented purpose lifted me clean out of the depression and anxiety I had suffered for two years solid.

Albeit I wasn’t much good in relationships, and I remember one girl who I had seen on-and-off that I was smitten with really hurt me and disowned me because I was “too intense”, after making a complete fool of myself of course, ringing her non-stop and trying to talk to her. I knew no better but looking back I could only have seemed a creep. A bit like my childhood again, I felt shunned for just having a big heart and being eager to please.

I remember at almost 20 years of age walking into my home and falling into my mother’s arms crying. I was back there again – lost and perhaps, genuinely, just accidentally punished for simply being misunderstood.

Regardless of feeling really low again, I remained focused on only my grades and promised myself it wouldn’t be the leaving cert v2.0. I left top of the class with a 1st class honours and got a job as PR exec before I even got my results. I was focused and was getting better at drowning out irrelevant distractions. I enjoyed college as a whole but was so glad to move on to the next chapter.

Diagnosis and Prescription Addiction

At the age of 22 I read more about ADHD. Alarm bells rang loudly. Very loudly. I just knew that was me. I felt an overwhelming sense of relief upon knowing the cause of my energy, intensity and just generally being highly-strung.

One year later, I visited my GP and he essentially just said go see a specialist and prescribed Ritalin, an incredibly powerful amphetamine used to tranquilise adults and children with ADHD. I saw the specialist and was diagnosed. Of course, I was far from shocked.

While medication helped, I started abusing it. Taking way too much to start with led to eventually taking it at parties and in nightclubs. Of course I told myself and justified it saying it was helping my ADHD.

It all came to a head one night when my girlfriend threatened she would tell my family about my problem. That happened the morning after I had stayed up all night high, working on a presentation. Only the next day did I realise I had actually spent 9 hours working on one single PowerPoint slide.

The next day though, I said “no more!” and made myself one promise. I was going to use ADHD to my advantage and I was not going to ‘cope’ but SUCCEED! I have not looked back since.

How I learned to turn ADHD into a gift

They say ADHD is a disorder. I completely disagree. While the inability to focus on things that don’t interest you is a problem, as is how intense, fidgety and impulsive you can be, things like the ability to focus on things you are passionate about and your ability to see the big picture is incredible. I am not attention deficit, I am attention different.

I can literally see how a thousand pieces of a jigsaw come together in a second. Jet Blue CEO and Founder David Neeleman has ADHD and summed it up perfectly when he said: “I can monetise and manage a fleet of aircraft with ease, yet I cannot sit down and pay my electricity bill.”

My ability to obsess for hours on end and give incredible energy and enthusiasm to things has meant I went from a graduate to the head of marketing for a software company with my own team in just over 6 years. I am incredibly lucky to have found a passion that is nerdy, but requires creativity with a company that moves so fast I can barely keep up.

I constantly get doubters who do not believe that ADHD is real. Well it is. But unlike years ago I don’t spend time trying to convince others – instead I spend that time on bettering myself and pursuing my passions while trying to accept that some people will simply not understand me.

My dream one day is to be the CEO of a SME and take it to a global superstar company (maybe even a fortune 500). That is why I refuse to ‘cope’.

Motivational speaker Les Brown once said “Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit!” That is so true of people with ADHD.

I urge you to use it and be glad of the gift you were given. I would not take it back for the world! But remember above all, that other peoples’ perceptions do not have to create your reality. You have to be strong enough to refuse others permission to change the belief you have in you. Manage that, and you will rarely need to rely on others.

Thanks for reading.