Is it common for people with AS to have ADD?

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I've been trying to figure this out about myself. I fit all the criteria for (inattentive) ADD - I've been taking online tests and getting this result for years, but always dismissed them because "Psh... I'm the least hyperactive person I know." Ha. I could have avoided wasting at least a few years of my life. I've only just started to wrap my mind around the fact that not everybody has thirty different thoughts racing through their head at once. I thought it was normal. I couldn't understand how others are able to live out their lives with such ease, while I've struggled with basic tasks. It baffled me that I could be in the gifted programs and understand the material, yet fail at all things academic. And it's deeply embarrassing that while the majority of my classmates got their driver's licenses at 16, several years later, I'm still hopeless at driving a car or crossing a street without nearly getting hit. I'm sure that I should be medicated for this - it's beyond the kind of inattention that comes with AS. And yet I can relate to so much on here lately that it makes me wonder if there might be more going on. I'm great at observing (an ADD thing), and because of that, I learn social rules quickly and well enough to fit in. I've still never felt like anything more than an observer. It's like I study for and play a part. I'm good enough at this to fit in with the right people, but not good enough to fit in with the majority, with whom I can't relate anyway. I think very logically, but I get carried away with the amount of information I have and overanalyze everything. I do have specific interests, and the "hyperfocus" thing applies for a while, but none of them ever last more than a few days. I'm a terrible perfectionist, yet everything is always "cluttered". I don't really fit into any single category.

For those of you who have been diagnosed with both, does any of this sound familiar? Do some traits on either side cancel each other out?

I was diagnosed with ADD at age ten but the treatment I was getting for it wasn't working so my mother knew I had something else.

From the current diagnostic criteria for Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:



The wording is odd. During the course of? Like PDDs and Schizophrenia go away?

Given the nature of PDDs (including AS) seems to me that means you can't have both.

'In the course of' is what I was talking about in my long post in length.... AS attention deficit vs. AD(H)D attention deficit.

But anyway, the DSM-IV-TR may say what it does. But before 1994, the DSM also said AS didn't exist. And in the upcoming DSM-V they might want to allow an easy co-morbid diagnosis of PDDs and AD(H)D.

Criterias are bull. Remember they are just made up by a group of doctors. See them as a guideline more than something that tells you you have to have this or have that to the condition.

Hey, I was just answering the question. Didn't mean it as an opinion either way on the validity of the diagnostic criteria.

Also, I think that last sentence I wrote was unclear. What I meant was, given the nature of PDDs, and given that statement in the ADD diagnostic criteria, it seems to me that that sentence does mean one can't have both diagnoses officially, if following the diagnostic criteria.

I wasn't intending to attack you. I was just saying the criteria is bull. I think they all are. I think that's why lot of doctors ignore them when they give a diagnoses. They use them as guide lines.


Same as I was diagnosed with AS despite my development delay but to them if you are no longer delayed in development except for social skills or emotions, then you now have AS. Or you have other conditions like excutive dysfunction so it makes it hard to take care of yourself so they still lable you AS.

One of the many ways I've described myself as having ADD with focus. I have a terrible time filtering out what is going on around me and in my head, but I'm usually able to remain focused on what is at hand well enough to operate effectively in the environment. I can keep my primary attention on the primary objective compulsively noting the spider on the wall, the butterfly going by, the cracks in the wall outlining the window that was walled over years ago, the jackhammer down the street, etc. Of course once I fall into obsessive mode, everything else goes away.

As far as ADD and the Autistic Spectrum, I think that either the two really need to be truly recognized as related, or else duel diagnosis should be allowed. Currently it seems to be "you can't have both because they look alike", but without any thinking that they are alike.