Jon Wood, the third-generation member of the legendary Wood Brothers Racing family from Stuart, Va., has spent his life in and around racing -- most recently competing at NASCAR's highest levels.

Wood progressed through the ranks of karts and Late Model stock cars to the Craftsman Truck Series, where he won races for Roush Racing. He moved to the Busch Series for the current family conglomerate, Wood Brothers/JTG Racing, and earlier this season made his long-anticipated Nextel Cup debut in the famous No. 21 Wood/JTG Ford.

Stock-car racing has been very good to the 25-year-old.

But throughout his life Wood has also battled Attention Deficit Disorder, a condition that only recently has begun to be dealt with in a more orderly, but at the same time an almost unavoidably uncertain, fashion.

Wood experienced that first-hand earlier this season when, while under a doctor's care, he experienced symptoms that were arguably much worse than what he'd battled with unchecked ADD.

With the full support of his family, including father and team co-owner Eddie Wood, and his team, Wood stepped out of the organization's Busch Series car and, several weeks later, was ready to step back into one of its Craftsman Truck Series Ford F-150s -- in effect swapping roles with young Kelly Bires.

Wood's return, which came with a sixth-place finish at Kentucky Speedway in July, has resulted in five top-10 finishes in seven starts, including a dominant run at Las Vegas where Wood led the most laps before finishing third.

Wood is responsible for half of the No. 21 team's 10 top-10s in 20 starts.

Q: In June at Dover, you took an abrupt break from the sport. From your perspective, what happened to make you step back and regroup?

I know a lot of people looked at the way this happened and think it's real shady because there wasn't a lot of explanation given. I don't want this to appear as though I had something to hide.

Basically it was a lack of knowledge of what to do in this type of situation. I woke up that Friday morning with an excruciating headache, which we're not sure if it was related to the medication I was on at the time. But Scott Zipadelli, my crew chief on the Busch car, actually asked me if I was feeling OK, and I wasn't. Something wasn't right, and it was terrible that it had to happen 15 minutes into practice. It would have been so much more convenient if it had occurred during the week, even.

But there's a reason everything happens. I was 24th in the first practice, out of 43 cars, but I realized it just wasn't going to work, and I had to come up with a solution. And there isn't a textbook for dealing with a prescribed medication that wasn't working out -- there's no hotline you can call and say, 'I'm having headaches and mood swings, what do I need to do?'

Q: This brought to light an aspect of NASCAR that people might not be aware of, didn't it?

First and foremost, once you get to the top level of motorsports in this country, which obviously is NASCAR, specifically the Busch Series and the Nextel Cup Series, you subject yourself to a lot more criticism and opinions.

When you're a driver it's not like going to a normal 9-5 job. Your 9-5 job is viewed by a massive amount of people, all at once. It's very difficult to keep a private life and to keep a lot of things that would be considered personal, personal.

I would say that someone's medical history is something that's personal. But with the way events unfolded, and the fact that I do suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, I guess carries a certain stigma -- it just makes you different. It looks like you can't pay attention and that you can't function in a normal society because your mind is just so scatterbrained, which is far from true. Attention Deficit Disorder is a new type of disease that there isn't a lot of knowledge about and I think that's why some of the side affects that are brought on by some of the medicines that are taken for that can be misconstrued as some sort of illegal street drug abuse.

A lot of times when you are diagnosed with Attention Deficit you're put on a medication that would be classified as a stimulant -- and stimulants are something that in the older days were classified as illegal drugs. But for someone who suffers from what I suffer from, they have the opposite effect. They make it to where you can concentrate, focus and perform better in society. (Continued)