Hmmm, with the risk of being somewhat controversial, is it Attention Deficit Disorder, or the more commonly diagnosed and over medicated Anti Discipline Disorder?
I have met some people who have the real deal, and I would not recomend they do anything that requires concentration. My BFF (can't believe I used that term ) was diagnosed years back, at the start of this new craze. He had trouble in school, which got much worse with his "diagnosis", couldn't study or even pay attention to the teacher for a whole class. He had a problem dont you know.
Yet he'll watch every pitch of a 3+ hour baseball game, play Playstation for hours, read every letter of every page of a book or magazine on fishing, and stare at the tip of his fishing rod all night in freezing weather waiting for a twitch.
Personally for my money with this type of ADD a boot in the arse is more effective than a shot in the arm, or a pill down the throat. And I think this is by far the most common type of ADD, and these people shouldn't have much problem diving, because they can concentrate just fine on whatever they want to.
These are un-qualified opinions, and I am not saying anybody on this board falls into any catagory, just what I have observed in the people I know personally. YMMV.
Flame on
First off there is NO FLAMING on this site. If we can't discuss a topic openly and objectively then it will be removed however NO ONE GETS FLAMED ON THIS SITE FOR A LEGITIMATE OPINION!
Now having said that you do espouse one of the issues with ADHD...the person can focus on INTERESTING things for hours...even lose sight of how long they have focused on it...i.e. hyperfocus but they can not stay on task for things that are boring, repetitive or they see no value in. However they can usually stay on task for a given period of time and if this time is used wisely they can be successful.
In fact a study was done that showed that an extremely high number of people with ADHD are airline pilots because there is so much going on that they can 'hyper focus' and stay on task easily and do a better job than many pilots without ADHD.
For example. I know a child with ADHD who has an attention span of about 15 minutes. So the mother has set up a routine where they work on a subject for 15 minutes and then change when the timer goes off indicating that 15 minutes has passed. Sometimes the child stays on one topic a bit longer but usually they switch off and can do a cycle of homework that encompasses all their subjects. I knew several college students that grew up the same way and while they no longer needed the timer, they used the same cycle in school to get thru college with nearly straight A's. Of course they did it 15-20 minutes at a time but they did it.
I know others with ADHD who use exercise to calm the mind and allow for greater focus when doing tasks they do not want to do. Or they switch to a physical task so they are not overloading the computer or brain related tasks and they do just fine. They also do extremely well in jobs that have a lot of action or change pace a lot such as customer service or sales.
I read about a parent that made a deal with thier child that said he could do anything he wanted for 30 minutes ie. play games, watch tv or stare into space but then he had to do homework for 30 minutes. Then he could switch back. The child would get so frustrated when the tv program was interrupted or his game ended in the middle that he started to finish his homework first so he would not have his fun time interrupted. He learned to stay on task for a better reward. That is not to say that meds would not have helped but certainly coping mechanisms such as these are invaluable.
So yes I think people with ADHD can be great scuba divers as they can hyperfocus on things that hold thier attention. But the disability is real and while creativity including a possible boot in the butt can be helpful, working with the disorder is very important and that means coping mechanisms and understanding the disorder rather than just medicating it. But that is true for everything.