being intelligent with adhd gives you what we might think of as functional narcissism narcissists struggle with emotional instability because they think they are the best people ever yet know they are not at the same time this divide tears at them and causes them to indulge in grandiose fantasies and to use other people as a means to bridge that divide  when you are adhd and also intelligent you have a lot of evidence for your skills - you know that you know a lot and could do a lot - yet you also have a lot of evidence that youre a lazy and useless piece of shit this divide tears at you and causes you to indulge in cheap sources of reward like fantasy games porn drugs etc etc  this is what gets me the most i got my phd in 3 years because all i had to do was work on what i found interesting every day with a few nightmarish paperwork scenarios mixed in formatting a dissertation lol fuck when i went into the working world and had to listen to other people telling me to do obviously suboptimal and also boring work i failed utterly and that hurt a lot  your results in the world will not match who you know you are what you know you can accomplish being intelligent is not worth anything on its own but it is an incredible resource for playing the adversarial game that is adhd  you need to apply your intelligence to manipulate your immediate environment to produce the immediate behaviours you need you can see ahead think ahead and then tricknudge your lower brain into doing what you want you have to outsmart your condition by understanding its weaknesses and exploiting them for your personal gain