Yup! I was told that I was ADD and needed some help in elementary school. My parents got angry at the teachers and would not hear of it.
I got diagnosed officially in college. I have been told that addicts often have ADD. I like this discussion and learning more about it. The connections thing makes sense.
I am a perfectionist in relation to my work, not neccessarily other areas in life. I am really hard on myself if I get a tiny amount of criticism or if things don’t go as expected. Then I shut down. Or I start over and over on a project because it isnt perfect, then miss deadlines.
Am I also guilty of not organizing my time very well and putting off difficult tasks when overwhelmed. Sometimes I cannot even read when I am feeling my brain spin. Like I am looking at words that do not go together.
I am learning how to deal with it better without the booze.
I don’t know your age but I can agree with that teachers focused on the kids who could focus and accel, while the ones who lagged behind for whatever reason were ignored
In my days I’m late 30s ADD wasn’t really at the fore front, and it was believed ADD was just for bad kids who needed their ass whooped, when I hit high school it started to become a hey look their not bad kids they just need to be educated in a different way, but for many of us it was already too late.
I’m resurrecting this thread because the perfectionist voice has been loud in my head recently. I’m writing to get it out.
My addiction thinking flared up today as I was doing the books for my business: gathering statements, submitting them to my bookkeeper, and I just started feeling like I was swimming in quicksand. I felt almost like I was suffocating.
To me, money management, cash flow management, debt & debt repayment: all have been land mines, in my family (for my father and for his father - both very likely had ADHD and, as a result, time and money management were not things they did, or at least, not things they could do on their own).
I fear sinking in the same financial hole, and my fear paralyzes me at times; my fear makes me live in one of two fantasy worlds:
the fantasy that “things will work out” in some magical way (which is a common fantasy when not directly dealing with statements & documents), or
the fantasy that “everything will fall apart” (which is far from likely; with reasonable, consistent effort, my business has very good chances)
The world I need to live in is the non-perfectionist world, the non-fantasy world: I need to live in the world of…
Things are not falling apart
I am not getting more than I can handle
I have these tasks to do today, I will do them, and that is enough
Things are not falling apart. One task at a time: that is what I can control. The big picture and the overall effect is not really in my control; there’s a lot of other moving parts.
The similarities 
. For me it was unheard of until I was ending university. I never had a chance.