ADHD, Not a Disability

I was 14 years old, more or less, when I was diagnosed as ADHD. Pretty much a problem for a perfectionist like me.

Because I am not hyperactive (but rather impulsive, and very quick to angry) I was told not to take any Ritalin. I was also told to learn geometry with a private teacher- even though I still didn’t manage to get through it. Well, time had passed, and when I entered the 9th Grade, the private teacher for geometry and hebrew grammar (which I have to learn while it is very unusable) didn’t manage to help me in school anymore. As my math class kept going forward with geometry, I failed to keep up with them, even though I stayed strong in algebra and functions. Then I started taking Ritalin. For the first week, it helped a lot. However, as time passed, it stopped effecting me. Apparently my geometry problem didn’t have any connection to my ADHD and I was diagnosed as having a learning disability in Euclidean Space. When I enter the 10th Grade I won’t be tested on geometry anymore.

However, I have come to learn about ADHD and its syndromes. I found out that many of the leading historical figures (musicians, scientists, tacticians, religious figures, kings, and emperors) had ADHD syndromes (impulsiveness, problems with alcohol and drugs, creativity, ambitiousness, not paying attention to what they dislike, sometimes hyperactive, the need of adrenalin, i.e. - need of action, anger attacks, sometimes depression, being more stubborn).

Here’s a partial list (some have been diagnosed - Einstein, Newton , Archimedes, Betthoven and Mozart, the rest is my assumption):

• King Saul
• Moses
• Julius Caesar
• Alexander the Great
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Einstein
• Cyrus
• Muhammad (about Muhammad, he might’ve been Dyslexic as well. He couldn’t read)
• Mozart
• Beethoven
• Charlemagne
• Genghis Khan
• Isaac Newton
• Archimedes
• Achilles

We can clearly see by that, that all of those people wouldn’t have achieved anything without their ADHD. Would Alexander the Great have done the impossible if he wasn’t impulsive and willing to take the challenge? Without ADHD, would Muhammad have been daring to invent Islam without stubbornness and ambition? Without his depression and creativity, would Beethoven create such things as the 5th and 9th Symphonies? Would Einstein have reached anything without stubborn ambitiousness?

The answer is - NO to all.

If so, the modern world, good and bad, has a lot to do with ADHD, or so to say, the people who had it, whom have used it toward gaining their purposes.

To summarize, ADHD is not a minus at all. It’s just another form of thinking, as well as other learning disabilities. It is nothing but another way of thinking, and if the knowledge how to use it exists, it is no disability.