jewelweed:

• things that are very fast-paced are not “ADD”
• movies/songs/situations with disjointed themes are not “totally ADD”
• being forgetful does not mean you’re so “ADD”
• feel free to add more

appropriating experience of mental illness into an adjective is dismissive and mean. stop it.

My totally amateur take on ADD, being somewhere on the “don’t need medication” realm of the spectrum (to my very limited understanding) myself:

ADD is all about inertia — when you’re at rest, you want to stay at rest (pretty much forever). Want to stay in bed all day, even though you don’t feel depressed? You may have “attentional issues.” Can’t stop once you start working? CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP! Possible attentional issues. Can’t stay focused on a “brain thing” very long but can play Angry Birds for four hours at a stretch? Can’t write more than three sentences, except when you can write three thousand, but can re-check your email compulsively for literally one hour at a time? Attentional issues!

Not a medical diagnosis, just anecdotes from my own experiences. Note to people who live with/are partners with people who fall into these patterns: direct commands, like “Please do X” works much better than phrasing as question, “Could you do X?” In the mind of someone with attentional issues, the unconscious response to the latter is: “Well, I could do X. And I will. Just as soon as I’m done playing Angry Birds.” The response to the former is “Go do X NOW, check. Going to do X now, will pause Angry Birds since I seriously don’t actually give a shit about Angry Birds.”