I Have ADD/ADHD, and It’s a Blessing

I’m Not Medicated, and I Don’t Need to Be

Robyn Sinead Sheppard
3 min readSep 5, 2023
SOURCE:

And it’s also my end. I was born in 1950, a time when no one had even heard of ADD/ADHD. Today, at the age of 73, and looking back, I can say it was a blessing, and not the “disability” so many people seem to consider it today.

This attitude was only strengthened when I attended a lecture given by — and I’m sorry I can’t recall her name — the woman who at the time was recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on the issue. Like me, she also had been diagnosed with it.

“I don’t have ADD,” she said. “The rest of the world suffers from AED: Attention Excess Disorder.”

At last! Vindication!

School Sucked

All through my school days, when my parents were called in for those torture sessions laughingly called “Parent/Teacher Conferences,” they were treated to a never-ending litany of “Your child is extremely smart. She’s just lazy.” “Robyn would do well in school if she would only apply herself.” And so on.

The funny thing — or sad, depending on your point of view — was that no one ever asked me what I thought was going on. If they had, I would have said something along the lines of “Mom, Dad, school is boring. There’s nothing to hold my interest.”

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Robyn Sinead Sheppard
Robyn Sinead Sheppard

Written by Robyn Sinead Sheppard

A happily retired technical writer, I write in order to understand what I'm thinking.