MISFIT

Stolen cars. Thirty-seven jobs. Three microbreweries. A cease and desist letter from the FBI. And at forty-nine, finally, an answer.

Rich Catlin spent his whole life being told what he was. Naughty. Lazy. Disorganised. Too much. The kid forever on report, the employee who walked out mid-shift, the man who could design a factory but couldn't open his post. Then his young son started getting into trouble at school, a teacher gently suggested ADHD, and Rich laughed out loud. ADHD wasn't real. It was an excuse for naughty kids.

Then he started reading. And he wasn't reading about his son anymore. He was reading about himself.

MISFIT is the brutally honest, frequently hilarious and quietly heartbreaking story of a life lived with undiagnosed ADHD. From the classrooms that wrote him off to the careers that burned bright and collapsed, from the chaos of money, relationships and self-medication to the friendships that saved him, Rich tells the whole story, the brilliance and the wreckage, and shows how the same brain produced both.

But this is more than a memoir. Every chapter ends with two practical sections:

• ADHD Unlocked, the science behind the story, explaining what was really happening in plain English
• MISFIT Hacks, honest, hard-won strategies for people with ADHD, and for the parents, partners, teachers and employers who love and live alongside them

If you've ever been called lazy when you were trying harder than anyone in the room. If you've watched your child be labelled the naughty kid and known, deep down, that the label was wrong. If you love someone whose brain seems to run on a different frequency. Or if you've reached adulthood with the creeping suspicion that you've spent your whole life masking, this book was written for you.

You are not broken. You are not lazy. You might just be living in a world that wasn't built for you.

It's never too late to find out who you really are.