I have unusual symptoms similar to being drunk (although I've never been drunk) when my attention is split while I'm trying to focus. Can anybody tell me if there is some kind of a condition related to these symptoms that I can learn more about?

For example, if I try talking to someone while I'm driving (or they try talking to me) or try listening to music while playing chess (it seems related to my hearing somehow) I can experience these symptoms. Groups settings where there's a lot of noise and different things happening all at once can also be problematic.

The symptoms include dizziness, blurred vision, an inability to focus, severe headaches, and in some of the worst cases I experience a ringing in my head, "see red", and have trouble walking or driving. Twice before it has gotten so bad I couldn't walk straight and needed to ask other people to drive me home.

My balance is negatively affected and things I would normally do by habit I no longer have the mental acuity needed to perform. I have trouble narrowing my eyes and it's like a cloud comes over my vision. It's not so much exhaustion as being "out of it" and it can take me hours before the symptoms wear off.

I'm sure it's linked to my ability to focus, because I have an abnormal ability to "zone in" and narrow my concentration. I'm very single-minded and can focus all my concentration on single tasks very well. But I have zero ability to multi-task and I think that's behind this problem. I'm also extremely absent-minded. It also seems linked to hearing for some reason.

I also notice that while my "hearing" is very good, and I can hear conversations all the way across the house, I have trouble interpreting sounds when people are close by. For some reason I am better able to comprehend what people are saying and actually make sense of the sounds so I know what is being said when people are closer rather than farther away.

I'm 23 years old now and until the last several years when I've had to do more driving it hasn't really affected my life, I've just worked around it. But I'm coming to more fully appreciate how devastating it can be if I'm not careful now. I'm gaining enough respect for it now that I'm considering not allowing people in the car when I'm driving and have often told people not to talk while I'm driving. I'll even wear earplugs if I'm doing a task involving a lot of focus. What is odd is that I can still hear what people are saying with the earplugs, but the noise no longer seems to bother me when the earplugs are worn.

One final thing, I have heightened awareness and at one time in my life tried to be constantly aware of everything happening around me. Any little sounds or movements I tried to constantly be aware of. I notice even though I don't want it that way, I am now constantly aware of everything. I wonder if some of these problems could be because of too many things happening at once for my mind to keep track of?

When I'm trying to focus on something and any kind of noise interference forces me to try multi-tasking, it's almost like my mind overloads and the symptoms occur. I have no idea whether there's any condition for this but if so I would really like to know what the condition is so I can learn more about how to deal with it.