my journy until now: Does this sound familiar to you?

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Does this sound familiar to you?
I was diagnosed with “Autistic spectrum disorder” in 2004. Doc was convinced I have some sort of autism. Tried to treat me and then moved to overseas. First she had to do whatever doctors do in Cambridge university and then moved to Austria or whatever.
So I was forced to go to other docs. The first told me I have Schizophrenia and no Asperger’s / autism what so ever. So he prescribed me Antipsychotics. Which didn’t help at all.
I went to a different doctor and he said I have bipolar. At times, I was on 3 different bipolar medication. Which didn’t help. (max doses of Carbamazepine, Valproate and Zyprexa).
At some point I was feeling bad and as Psychiatry/ists couldn’t help me that much I went to a Psychosomatic clinic to figure out whether I have regular life situation issues. At first they kinda said I’m simulating my illness in order to not go to work (HUH?) and then they diagnosed me with “Student-Syndrome” (they said I’ve read too much about Asperger’s and therefore I believe it. Which is not really true because I got actually diagnosed without reading about it much). After 6 weeks of them screaming at me why I don’t want to go to work, they finally diagnosed me with depression and Schizoid and Narcissistic personality disorder, and a Derealization/depersonalization syndrome, “which the patient feels internally” (meaning they didn’t buy it I suppose).
Then I thought I might have derealization syndrome and as the clinic mentioned above was ran by docs and therapists so obnoxious I could puke, I went to a major and very well known Psychiatric clinic for a talk, and the doc there diagnosed me with Undifferentiated Schizophrenia. She insisted that I don’t have any personality disorder or Autism, and am very Schizophrenic. She told me to go on taking the Abilify which I was prescribed, which caused me the semi psychotic behaviour she diagnosed in the first place. Of course later I stopped Abilify and the craziness also stopped.
Again, I felt pretty bad and went to the local psychiatric clinic (inpatient) and asked them to put me on Clozapine. My doc at the time said I might have Schizoaffective disorder, and Clozapine might help me but it’s to hot for him to give me that. (Clozapine is a very nasty drug with the recognized side effect “death”). So they put me on Clozapine, for what they said is Undifferentiated Schizophrenia. A certain therapist of the clinic kept saying to me “you are not schizophrenic, are you?” but she didn’t have that much power over there and again I wanted to tale Clozapine and I thought that I’m actually schizophrenic (well I’m very gullible apparently).
So they put me on clozapine, which is the strongest antipsychotic by lengths and again, absolutely nothing positive or negative happened. So I’m there, taking Clozapine for 6 months and getting bloodwork done every single week (the veins in my arms are destroyed, like those of junkies), and no improvement at all.
So I ask my doc to stop it as it doesn’t work, and he puts me on Zyprexa again. Note: If you give Clozapine to a Schizophrenic and then stop it, there will be a rebound effect so bad that he will be multiple times more psychotic that before he started Clozapine in the first place. WHICH DIDN’T HAPPEN to me.
So then I moved for reasons I don’t know really, to a different city and thought maybe I try the docs and clinics over there.
The first doc insisted I’m a Schizophrenic without insight, so he kept telling me I’m schizophrenic. (based on my own words. I went to him the first time and said I was diagnosed with Schizophenia) He kept prescribing me Antipsychotics to treat my supposed Thought Disorder, which of course didn’t help a bit.
So I switched docs, and the other also stated that based on my documents and past reports, I must be schizophrenics. He said “people with Dr. Titles are saying that so it must be true”. He kept telling me that I have “Reality-missinterprations” But failed to tell me what he means. When ever I asked him what he means he changed the subject to news or my home country or politics.
So I tried to find a clinic that can test me for Asperger’s. I went there and they tested me. They say all the tests they’ve done indicate Asperger’s, but the impression I make on them in the “therapeutic conversation” is the impression of someone with a personality disorder and not Asperger’s. On top of that they also were very rude.
I tried lastly to talk to a doc in the local clinic who did asperger’s assesments, but he actually didn’t. His college gave me lots of questionaires to fill out and failed to say that one of them is for my parents to fill. So the doc said most of the Questionares point to Asperger’s but the part which had to be filled by parents is not suited to be filled by the patient. So the whole test is faulty. He also said that it’s absolutely impossible to have Schizophrenia and Asperger’s at the same time. And as I have a diagnosis of Schizophrenia hanging on me, it’s not possible for him to diagnose me with Asperger’s. He also diagnosed me with “a dissociative disorder”.

The problem is, I’ve always believed to have a certain disease. But Asperger’s just makes sense, and believing the other diagnoses didn’t. Like whenever I believed I have Schizophrenia, I’d get anxious that the voices I’m hearing are hallucinations. Guess what they never were. There was actually a phone ringing. Or actually my sister talking on the phone. Or actually someone screaming on the street. Or just an ambulance rushing bye.

So wtf am I supposed to do? Just believe I have Asperger’s, regardless what everyone says?
I mean this is the only way my life makes sense…..

I'm sorry that you have gone through what sounds like a nightmare to me. I have no training that would be useful and have never experienced anything similar to you but I was wondering what were the original issues that led you to seek help?
I am asking because your answer may sound similar to others on the forum with aspergers or autism or it may sound very different. Everyone is unique and has their own expression of any condition but there do seem to be lots of shared issues as well. That might lead you in a certain direction for help. If you prefer not to share that information, I apologize in advance for being intrusive.

What lead me to seek help:
As a teenager, I had what was diagnosed as anxiety and depression, while no therapy and medication help with that. I also went to therapy as a teen (CBT) which was pure nonsense (Walk upright and your self confidence will grow eh?)
I was very bad with social stuff at school and experienced much bullying, but I don't know whether was because of my victim-personality but due to racism. (Me and my family moved to Germany as refugees when I was 15, and with 16 I went to school in the 9. grade).
When I finished highschool after 5 years (9-13. grade) I went to a university rather far away from home and my dad rented a room in a flat with another student. I couldn't manage to stay away from my family and I was kind of manic at that time so I made bad decisions (like giving up university (informatics) moving to my parents again and starting to study physics at my home town. I had mood swings at that time but none that would justify bipolar. And the study was so hard, and I started in the summer which meant I had to do math 2 and physics 2 before doing maths and physics 1. which was pretty hard and I didn't understand s**t about what was being thought there.
At that time, I somehow concluded that I might have ADHD, because I totally couldn't concentrate at the university, got the semester off from the university and went to a doc to get Ritalin or something. She sent me into a psychiatric clinic for people between 14-28 yo and I was there in the day clinic for 3 weeks.
The doc there, who was a children psychiatrist and an autism-expert, diagnosed me with Autism-spectrum-disorder plus ADHD and prescribed me Stratera, which was hell.
At the beginning of the next semester, while my doc was in cambridge university or whatever, a very dumb doc thought I'm just depressed and prescribed me a "hypertherapeutic dose" of Lexapro, which made me totally unable to stay at the university. It gave me huge anxiety but not yet paranoia. I had what you might call the worst version of social anxiety you could ever imagine, and I was sitting in this room with about 200 other students, and I couldn't stand it so after the first day of the new semester, I took the train to go to france to my uncle. I wanted to be as far as possible from the university (anxiety, probably also failure-anxiety, because I figured out I can't do math anymore).
after I came bach to my parents, the stupid doc then gave me Risperdal to take with the 20mg of lexapro (I waighted 50 kg. Other doc said it's been very irresponsible from him to give me this much lexapro).
At some point I finally realized that the lexapro is BS so I stopped both, then figured out Risperdal is good for Autism and started taking it. And immediately the cloud of confusion and anxiety lifted and I felt pretty good for like 5 day. But the effect with the Risperdal was not reproducable and at some point, after an increase in the dosage just gave me side effects, it was stopped.
So that's why I got help in the first place, with ridiculously much detail.

Wow, that's an awful series of events! Thankfully, I haven't gone anything like that.

"De-realization syndrome" sounds like a ridiculous piece of psychobabble to me. I hope you can get the right kind of help and get off this horrible medication merry-go-round.

Hi. From what I can understand and if I may recommend you anything, you should give up all the medication. If it were me I would confront your professionals saying that they can't offer a proper diagnosis and are thus experimenting until they find the right drug but this has gone too far. Think about this: they've been prescribing every controlled drug there is and you never seem satisfied, you don't feel ok, the medication isn't effective and so on. Whatever it is that you may have, ask your psychiatrists to gradually take you off any medication. Stick to a psychologist.

I'm sorry I can't read that entire block of text, but from what I can gauge, yes, that is common. Psych professionals are honestly jokes and I don't understand how they can go through years of studies and still screw over patients the way that they do. Most that I've encountered, know less than I do even about disorders that I don't have. Luckily, though I have episodes of mild psychosis, the woman who diagnosed me ruled out schizophrenia after lengthy discussion with another professional due to the definitive autism. To cut the industry some slack, symptoms overlap greatly and comorbidity is all very confusing. Still, the process is far more miserable for us, I daresay.

And I agree with the previous answerer, get off of the meds. Antipsychotics only made me feel horribly worse.

As for stopping antipsychotics, I suppose I'm meanwhiles addicted to them. I mean if I stop them I won't feel psychotic but very bad and edgy.
Oh and I forgot something completely! It turned out I have Pseudotumor Cerebri, as they call it here. In US and such it's called idiopathic intracranial hypertension. It means that I either produce too much Cerebrospinal Fluid or for some other reason the pressure in the skull and spine is too high. They wouldn't believe me at first after I had great relief from headache and mental symptoms after I got a random spinal tap to rule out subarachnoidal bleeding (while the ass who did it didn't measure the pressure because she didn't feel like it.) They would say it's placebo effect or whatever
After I called the hospital like 5-6 times, went there, made a scene and what not, they did a spinal tap and measured the pressure and it was high. So they gave me medicine for that, which isn't working to be honest.
I had another therapeutic spinal tap and the pressure was still high despite medication, and the spinal tap a month before.
When I read this thread myself I feel like I'm a very poor piece of f**k.
Oh and I also have aches all over my body. and without the antipsychotics they get worse. And I can't take brufen because together with the furosemide that I take for the pressure in the head I'd get kidney failure.
I went to a rheumatologist and he did some tests. Maybe the results of that will explain what's wrong.
BTW as for psychologists, my current one says everything comes from the family and parents and such, including the pseudotumor cerebri. I suppose he is so deluded with the freudian crap that he can't even acknowledge that I (or any random person) may have actual physical illnesses (like Pseudotumor cerebri, or in my view, autism which I cheerfully classify as a physical/neurological illness)
f**k this s**t. I've never seen that the way I put it in this thread myself. Obviously my life sucks.