Kristopher Skinner / Contra Costa Times Blake Taylor, a freshman at UC Berkeley, has written a first-person book about his experiences with ADHD.

New Harbinger Publications

From hyperactive, special ed kindergartner to UC Berkeley honors student — it's the kind of journey that one normally sees on the silver screen, not in the nonfiction section of a bookstore. But Cal freshman Blake Taylor's new memoir — one of the first penned by a youth with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder — offers a fascinating and ultimately hopeful glimpse into the childhood challenges shared by 4 million other young Americans.

Given the headlines of the past decade, attention-deficit disorders often seem like the diagnosis du jour for every child who ever wiggled or daydreamed through class. But real ADHD is no faddish syndrome. Distraction, Blake said, turned his brain into "a television with the channel changing uncontrollably."

Looking at Blake now — a UC Berkeley Leadership Award-winning college freshman chatting amiably between classes, a fraternity rush party and a quick workout at the gym — it's hard to imagine him as an impulsive, unintentional arsonist.

Of course, it took a while to get to this point.

Nadine Taylor-Barnes knew that something was off when her son was just 3, and she found herself on the receiving end of every conceivable critical remark. Help arrived via a Vassar College classmate whose son had been recently diagnosed with ADHD. She took one look at Blake, then 5, at a Vassar reunion event and told Nadine, "Get him to a specialist and get him treated. Don't go through what I went through with my son."

Nadine never looked back. She called the pediatrician, then a specialist and laid a plan that would be tweaked innumerable times in the years to come. One of the first things she did, over the objections of some family members, was get her son on ADHD medication — Dexedrine, then Adderall, now Strattera — and start trying to channel that relentless energy into academics, music, sports and community service.

Funny thing is, the very solutions that Blake's family concocted to deal with his extreme hyperactivity, disorganization, ADHD and an intellect that was off the charts ended up landing him an enviable college resume, laden with honors classes, foreign languages, community service, music and sports extracurricular activities. Oh, and that newly published book, "ADHD & Me: What I Learned From Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table."

"I want to change the view that ADHD doesn't exist or that it's solely a disability," Blake said. "It's a gift."

The Hillsborough youth was applying to private high schools in San Francisco when the book idea first struck. He was writing the classic admissions essay — describe a challenge that you've faced — when it occurred to him that his ADHD essay might become something more.

"I wanted to help a lot of other young folks and teens," he said, "advise them on what worked for me."

The awful day he forgot his meds and spent an entire English exam period chasing thoughts about sailing, skiing and other distractions instead of Homer's "Odyssey"? That became a chapter on one of the primary symptoms of ADHD and how medication can help a patient focus.

Fire a near-disaster

The night he accidentally set fire to the kitchen table — he lit a yogurt container on fire to see what would happen, then poured on alcohol-based eyeglass cleanser, which turned a small conflagration into a near-disaster — led to a chapter on impulsivity, a classic ADHD symptom. Among his tips: Beware of boredom and fatigue, both of which affect self-control, and learn from your mistakes.

"I rarely make the same mistake twice," he writes. "I will, for example, never pour flammable liquid on a fire, shoot a crossbow near a painting, or launch a rocket near a tennis match."

It was author Edward Hallowell, who wrote "Driven to Distraction," and Walnut Creek ADHD expert Lara Honos-Webb, who penned "The Gift of ADHD," who gave the Taylors hope so many years ago. And it was Honos-Webb who wrote the foreword to Blake's book.

"I think many times parents look at (a child's) behavior almost as an attempt to make them mad," she said. "When you see it from the inside, what you get is, it's the hard-wiring. This is the way the world works for him. He's not trying to make anyone angry."

Blake's book, she said, is like seeing ADHD under a new lens.

"When you look at some of the behaviors, they're experiments gone wrong," Honos-Webb said. "Breaking things, fire-starting, this drive to see what happens if I do this and this — you see the gifts underlying it. Even the distractibility, the couldn't-focus-on-the-test, you see the creativity, the curiosity, and you realize that putting that into a multiple-choice test has its problems."

120 students in Cal program

Blake is one of about 120 students involved in Cal's Disabled Students' ADHD program. Students with ADHD can arrange for additional exam time and other accommodations from their professors. But Blake's book has drawn other professorial attention, too.

UC Berkeley psychology professor Stephen Hinshaw, a national ADHD expert known for his studies on boys and girls with ADHD, is considering using "ADHD & Me" in a future class. It's one thing to read clinical observations, he said, and quite another to hear a first-person account.

"Adding the personal really brings the issues home for students," he said. "It's amazing an 18-year-old wrote not just poignant and honest, but gripping material. He really talks about both the difficulties he had because of the symptoms (and) the hope that treatments can really bring."

And hope, Honos-Webb said, is a powerful thing.

"(Blake) was in a special ed class at one point," she said. "To go in 13 years from a special ed class to a published author, to me it's what can happen when you focus on the positives and you have a parent who's willing to go to bat and advocate for that child."

— Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.