Late-onset Asperger's?

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I understand where your coming from. I am 36 now and only after my son was diagnosed did my mother share that his behaviors were identical to mine at his age, did I even think about the possibility that I might be on the spectrum. in the 70's they were quick to call it ADD or ADHD if you were intelligent and/or extroverted socially. I have always been social but never have I been very good at it. my only real social successes were when I was in the Army and discovered how large quantities of southern comfort calmed the world around me down to were I felt half way comfortable. In retrospect I now understand this "social comfort" I felt was merely the sedative effects of alcohol. I am finding now, in my 30's, that since I am living the "family man" lifestyle and I am not the party boy anymore, I feel more and more uncomfortable around groups and crowds.

yeah, alcohol worked for me for many years. then it became really problematic. i know this makes NO sense to anyone but I have lost 50 lbs on hcg in the last year and it has completely reset my metabolism AND some of my brain functions after decades of abusing myself with "self medication". I have been "working out" for the last few months, even with a bad fall off my bike - and I feel physically like a teenager (most of the time). My symptoms - fight or flight, irritability, impatience..ect
at least I understand the neurology behind them and can "adjust" as needed. But Social Interaction without booze inside me is very different around people who are drinking. i'm going on a cruise in two weeks, and it's going to be VERY interesting. Zig

I have heard of late onset twatspergers, not to say that this is the OP issue, its best to have a proper diagnosis as
aspergers is not like developing an autoimmune disease when your in your 30's. I think alot of people who start their
out lives normally are just victims of the age we live in, socially isolated agoraphobic cubical dwellers, it may seem
similar to having some of our symptoms, but its just not the same as being born with it, seems like ASD's are the
hypochondriac's choice condition for self diagnoses.

hey just because i wasn't diagnosed because i'm in Grandin's generation does NOT mean that my childhood was "normal". And maybe being on Grandin's end of the spectrum, being the youngest with a stay at home registered nurse mother "socialized me" to attend school. But I've always been "different" since I was in grammar school, and high school was sheer hell both socially and academically. Please don't discount me just because I was NOT born after 1990. lol.... it really is an eye opener for me that aspects of my diagnosed ADD as an adult DO have very specific aspergers "characteristics". Zig

Seeing as alcohol coping has been mentioned… does anyone go to AA… I have for 8 years. However I do not go as often as I used to and am having difficulty. I always had difficulty but was less aware of it, however after my diagnosis of ADHD and then Asperger’s Syndrome I am having even more difficulty as I do not get as much out of it, I cannot talk about AS. I did after all use alcohol as a coping mechanism. Has anyone else run into this problem and any suggestions. I take a sketchbook with me and sketch when I am in meetings, usually no one troubles me over that but one dude did last time and I ignored him but it did upset me. He was quite strange and was worked up over it. If he does it again I will completely shout him out.
Although I was diagnosed at age 58 in January of 2009 I never was normal, even though I used Facades to cope or fit in. I thought I was fitting in but I was always thought of as odd at best. So my best attempts at using Facades never worked anyway. I was just deluding myself, what else could I do anyway.

i am not sure what you mean by "Facades"... yeah, I am totally familiar with AA. my fascination and dependence on alcohol as a "coping mechanism" has a LONG history. But the big thing for me, is I FINALLY quit for good after 40+ years and NOT thru "WILL POWER" method that AA uses. i can't explain it fully here. but if you would like to PM me, maybe I could explain it to you. I am the happiest I have been in 50 years, because I finally put down my eating disorder too (my first addiction). OH also, I am "normal" body weight for the first time in 50 years, and don't have to worry about what I eat anymore.

I was a "little professor" which allowed me to fly under the radar through much of childhood. Many people took this to be an "outgoing personality."

With the higher expectations of social sophistication reaching and passing puberty, that no longer worked.

And then, with the complexities of adult life, it really didn't work.

So, although it may seem like a "late onset" what was really happening was falling further and further behind in an NT world.

Until I was around 7yrs old, I was just as you describe your younger self. I was extroverted to the extreme. I then became very shy and was like that until about 6 years ago. I was never any bother to anyone (my parents still say I was a perfect child) and I performed well at school, so no-one saw any need to have me assessed for anything. I now believe that I was under the radar.

My almost 6yr old daughter is also extremely extroverted. When we go to a museum or park, she'll go up to other people and join in. She appears to forget she's with us. But, she also has obvious behavioural concerns and concentration difficulties (I had the concentration problem too, but no-one recognised it). Had it not been for the issues, I think I would be oblivious to the possibility of AS in either of us. She's on the waiting list for autism assessment. I don't know if she'll become shy and withdrawn at some stage (that's my dread). At the moment, she doesn't appear to care what others think of her. It might be that she's lower functioning than I ever was (although she's also highly intelligent), or, more likely, she just has the right attitude.

When I read about AS and realised that kids with ASDs are not all introverted, shy or loners, it suddenly dawned on me that AS was a very strong possibility. The extreme extroversion is actually quite significant. Perhaps, you're a little like us and became aware of your differences later than I did. I realised I was being made fun of and treated poorly. I'm pretty certain that's how my confidence became knocked and I withdrew into myself. In other words, if you do have AS, you've always had it.

For me, as a kid, I never got diagnosed with anything. I think people vaguely thought I was weird, but as a kid, I didn't care. A lot was probably the fact I went to a Christian school, my entire grade was 20 people, so I'd only ever see 20 other kids ever in all of elementary school. So, even if people thought I was weird, people were sorta forced to play with me. As a kid, I always loved talking to adults, I loved being around adults. The other thing, too, though, no kids lived in my street, and I'd only play with kids for 1/2 hour at recess at school, and they'd be again, those same kids. And as far as the rest of my NVLD, I had problems with math as a kid, but again, due to Christian school, the teachers worked with me well, since they're motivated to since my parents were basically paying their salary. But yeah, being brought up like that, yeah, people thought I was weird or whatever, but because I was capable, it didn't really matter. The big issues came up in public school, really, in public school, I kinda lost my moral compass compared to Christian school, as in Christian school, even if the kids were mean to me or whatever, the teachers would be nice to me, as they thought I was like, Godly I guess.

One thing I remember when I was a kid, I walked funny. Like, nobody's brought it up now, as far as I know, but I distinctly remember my sister's physical therapist or something giving me a lecture about how bad I walked. That, and teachers dissed my posture, too. The posture I can speculate was the "low muscle tone" thing. But, I remember one guy at a vitamin shop ended up giving me a lesson to improve my posture and walking, too, and he showed me that I should walk with a broomstick on my shoulders or something. I took slightly longer learning to ride a bike, too, BUT at the same time, I really wanted to ride a bike, so I'd practice like hell. That's kinda been the way it's been in my life, I've just had to apply myself like 10 times harder than a normal person to just do simple things like that.

But yeah, as a kid, everything was great, and I talked to everyone and I guess was quite extroverted, but then middle school and high school came, and life got terrible. Now I got like almost a decade worth of crap to fix in my life. It's hard, because now everyone sees me and thinks I should be in school and/or working to make lots of money, and to me it doesn't matter anymore. I just want to fix the specific things I see wrong in my life right now, and until those are fixed, I can't pursue the other things.

It's pretty not cool...

I don't think aspies are inherently non outgoing. Some of us withdraw later in life as a result of negative outcome from social situations. We are born aspergian but the resulting behavior can change with environment, experience and choices.