This might be the third or fourth time I've been asked so I'm going to write about it on my website tomorrow and share it here once I'm done. Apologies.
I'm interested too; feeling described to a T by your post. I struggled heavily with focus issues as a child / teen but it was never diagnosed far enough to try and medicate me out of it. As an adult with improved awareness of my attention issues, the prospect of pursuing a prescriptive fix that might just make me feel worse is intimidating.
I got diagnosed with ADHD at 31 and got a prescription for methylphenidate (Ritalin is the most known brand name for this)
I think medicine should be used as a last resort and it is not a "fix" or "solution". Dealing with my ADHD is still a daily struggle and I didn't transform into a better person by taking the medicine
What it did was to turn my experience of my life from a large overwhelming interconnected problem into small doable issues. It made me able to pick up each of the many broken aspects of my life, fix it, and move on to the next
I'm afraid of the notion, I often hear, where medicine "fixes" something. My ADHD didn't go away with the medicine, but it did make me able to take responsibility for my own life and feel confident enough in myself, that I don't want to apologize for needing a different environment to be productive
The good thing about methylphenidate is that it works quickly (20 minutes or so after taking it), so you know pretty quickly if it's a good fit. It wears off after 4-8 hours depending on the formulation, so if you feel worse it'll only be for a short period
For me, my add has been made much better with aggressive weight training. I started doing "Starting Strength" and transitioned into the Texas method but three pretty heavy workouts a week really helps.
Normally I feel like I see the world through the narrow end of a funnel. When I get done with a big workout, somehow for the next day or so my brain is chilled out and I can concentrate again. After two days or so I start to regress a bit but another bout of lifting resets me.
I only really need medicine during periods of bad health or incredible personal stress now.
Interesting, I've recently started committing to a hard 10-minute workout each day of the week, and it's been helping me focus through my ADD a lot better too. I feel so much more alive.
I've also picked up meditating 10 minutes a day and that's been helping as well, but I don't think as much.
I've got a theory about why it works. Basically you're tiring out parts of your brain when you exercise and activating others. Somehow that regulates the neurotransmitters at the heart of add for a while. If I only lightly exercise, I don't get the same effects. The workout has to be strenuous and I need to feel like I worked both body and mind (finishing that last rep under heavy load takes willpower and concentration).
I bet that HIIT could be as effective as weights for me because the curative part seems to come from exhaustion and exercise of will.
Meditation may or may not be as mentally strenuous, I am not really familiar with it.