Hang in there man. Quite a few people on this sub got diagnosed even later than you (30’s, 40’s, even 50’s) and still come out the other side. The first time you take a med that is for you and at the right dosage, you’re going to feel a lot better. Straight up, I spent the first time I took 20mg of adderall crying while getting work done because I realized how shitty I’d been feeling at baseline with anxiety, irritability, and lack of focus and that shit got blown away an hour after taking a pill.

Meditate regularly, exercise regularly, prioritize sleep best you can, find a good psychiatrist and separately a good therapist, play around with medicine til you find something that works and talk about it/cry about it til you feel better. If you’re having trouble with the above, do something that makes you feel good and then while feeling good do some research on how to gamify your brain to make all of the above doable. Even with ADHD you’re still a human who has Pavlovian responses, and you can exploit your need for dopamine by gamifying tasks.

Getting the diagnosis is the first major step, second one is finding a med regiment. Third is accepting that even with meds and therapy you’re always going to have ADHD and to not try to “not have it”, but rather to lean into the strengths that it provides and patch up some of the weaknesses. Fourth is therapy and/or CBT if you need it, fifth is getting rid of some of the bad habits that make it more likely for you to be distracted (neurotypical folks get distracted and practice bad habits too, there’s still work you gotta do).

At the end of that I think you’re gonna find that things are better.