Both are real conditions. I had a severe case when I was a child. The nuns beat me until I was able to cotrol the symptoms. Now they use medicine.
In other words, once you were capable of SELF-discipline, you were no longer a pain in the butt.
No, I couldn’t control all the symptoms, I spent most of my early years in the slow class, special ed if I were in school now. I could never keep track of what the teacher was saying more than a few words at a time. What I learned was that the pain of sitting still was less than the pain of distracting the teacher. I moved around inside my head rather than physically moving around. I created stories, learned to count in other number systems before I knew what they were and otherwise occupied myself. Even as an adult, if I am not careful, I can easily lose myself in numbers rather than taking care of what needs to be done around me. I suppose they turned ADHD into ADD if that is what you want to call a cure.
I remember my first IQ test when I was about 9, we had moved and I was enrolled in a public school. They knew I had learning problems and they set me up with the district psychologist to see where they needed to place me. She asked me to start at 1 and double it and keep going as long as I could, I rattled off numbers, she stopped me somewhere in the millions with a funny look on her face. She asked me some word games and had me solve some problems for her. She stopped after about 10 minutes. She was shocked, the thing she did not know was that I did those games in my head for hours a day to keep from acting out in class.
They put me in a self directed learning class, gave me books and teachers that would explain things when I asked and direct me in my learning. Say what you will about public schools but they did me a great service. By the time I was in junior high, they had me functioning at a college level. We moved and I spent a couple of years in a regular high school, I couldn’t stay out of trouble there and upon administration request, moved onto college when I was 16.
I still can’t control the symptoms, but I have found a job that requires someone with ADD to survive and I have a very understanding wife.
Beating me down when I was a kid made me look like I was functioning better but they weren’t teaching me anything other that to turn inward other than outward. If I had gone 12 years that way, I would have graduated high school as a barely functional adult.