After years of Ritalin.....im an Aspie!

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Hey!
Im new here, i know you guys cant give me professional advice, but im not really sure where to turn. Im 22, and was diagnosed with ADHD when i was about 15. Because i was hyperactive and aggresive, my anger was explosive. I was put on ritalin and have only just stopped taking it a year or so ago. It didnt do much for me, even with a high dose, i would go a bit zombie, i went paranoid, and i lost alot of weight, but i was still hyper and angry.
i currently am suffering with anxiety and panic attacks, and nightmares!
Now i have left home, and i live with my partner, i work with children with Autism, ADHD and Aspergers.
Anyway, my partner is finding it hard to sope with me, and my strange 'ways'. so i went to see the doctor as when i was younger i recievd therapy CBT and such. My GP had a chat with my for about an hour and said ' i do not fit the criteria for adhd, that i may have aspergers and have been wrongly diagnosed'.
After doing my own research, i can kinda see that i agree with him. I have a psychological review next week to get help. they already ruled out bi-polor and ocd.
Anyhoo, looking back i have realised that i cant have had adhd. i was never excessively hyper or always on the go, i ddnt live for high risk thrills and bounce of the walls. I was a different kind of hyper, hard to explain.
But i also dont have any special interests or obsessions that is so normal with asperegers.
I go through obsessions and then get bored, like i was obsessed with the titanic when i was younger ( the ship not the movie!) and then moved onto horses and then clovers and trees, and then the simpsons and then disney, where i would have to own loads of mechindise and know every fact that i could. but they would last a fw months.
the only talent i seem to have is with art, where i can copy a cartoon exactly to detail, not from memory much though.
Also, im not sure if this is AS or not but my imagination is so difficult to see. even if i think of a object in my head...i cant really 'see' it. like if i saw a blue dragon with green legs in my mind, i couldnt draw it at all, not how i would see it. An i confuse imagination with reality sometimes.
I just dont know what is 'right' anymore.
I prefer to be on my own, i dont care for friends, i have about 2.
I cant stand talking on the phone, i only do it if i must, i try to avoid it as much as i can.
I dont like small talk, i find it difficult when i 'have' too talk.
I dont think im that intelligent like alot of aspie's, i cant do maths very well, i forget everything, the only good thing i can do is art.
I totally avoid eyes...i get a shock when i look in someones eye. EXCEPT my partner...sometimes.
I have noticed recently as someone pointed it out, when i watch TV or go to the movies, i usually watch the bottom left habd corner. and i listen, i hardly watch.
Anyways, not sure if any of this is relatable or if im a toon! would apprechaite some advice though and what you would recommend i do, or what you think may be my diagnosis.
After this time in an adhd world, is scary to come out of the autistic closet! X!

I've often wondered about ADHD and AS... A lot of the expression is similar between the two, where the reasons behind the expression is quite different.

You could indeed be an Aspie. Incidentally, there is some symptom overlap.

So, do you have some issues you need help with or something?

Welcome. Stay a while. Glad to have you.

I just wanted to talk about it. And when you are told that 'yes you may have this' you research it. and i have looked at my life and im now thinking..'ooooooooh thats why..hmmm'
you know? it embarrased me because for some time now i believed i wasnt adhd, that i dint have the right symptons, and now the doctor believes so, i am questioning everything, kinda worrying about it...scared.

i was in the same boat as you up to a little while ago.
I was diagnosed as ADHD when i was 10, re-diagnosed one month ago for Aspergers
I responded pretty well to Dexedrine so I'm still taking it (it can help me concentrate on things that are not my interests). One thing i will say is, i never really felt right with my life before hand. I knew there was something different about me. However, my diagnosis did not change who I am, for me it was just a tool for setting guidelines on my life.
Look into it and try not to worry (i know it can be hard sometimes). These forums can be pretty good for help as well.

You picked the right place, welcome

Meh, don't be scared. It's not like you're suddenly a different person just because there's a new word for some aspect of who you are.

ADHD+Asperger's is also a possibility, of course. That's my combination, and I take both issues into account when I plan out how to solve problems.

BTW--I went "zombie" on high doses of Ritalin too. The solution turned out to be to go to very low doses--pediatric doses for a full grown adult. Sounds counter-intuitive, but doctors often forget that some people respond strongly to medication and can get an "overdose" effect from the normal starting dose!

You don't have to come out of any closets lol.

IDK...honest to god truth, I probably am somewhere on the spectrum to some degree but so mildly that I don't really give a s**t . I was told by a social worker/therpist person that I do show some traits but I was very much at my worst, at the time. I think I'm relatively *normal* 75% of the time. I am a lot like you. just with different interests. I was treated for ADHD for most of my life and medicated.

You can still call yourself whatever you want to . AUTISM is such a dirty word, almost shameful but ADHD can be so closely related in some cases that people really just need to get over it.

Having said that, I am going to be pissed when I finally get outed for being on this website since I can't change my screen name or delete my account but I guess I'll have to deal.

I wanted to read what you wrote but it was a big wall of text

I was orignally diagnosed with ADD I had to take Ritalin and I hated that stuff.

All I have learned or been told is that Ritalin is for children with ADHD... out of curiosity, what was taking this medication like, did it have any side effects, make you drowsy at all, what was it like and how many times each day did you have to take this?

i took ritalin 3 times a day, up until i was about 21, but i wasnt great with it, i would stop taking it or miss doses etc, so it screwd up! i remember just feeling zombie, and tired. and numb.
Anyhoo, i had a talk with my partner who doesnt believe i have aspergers, because she thinks i am ok socially. But does she realise its a mask? i have learned how to act and smile when needed, doesnt mean to say i get freaked out when im alone with someone i just met, and im constanly staring at there shoes while dreading small talk.
IDK, i just want answers.
Maybe i should tell you as a young child, i had a fear of sand and couldnt have it touch me, and then i wouldnt talk to people, etc - classic autistic traits. and then aged 8 i was sexually abused and froom there i went 'out of control' and was therefore diagnosed with being a problem child, as i didnt tell anyone about the abuse. Now thats what confuses me!

any advice?

Hmm, well, I don't know if you can be diagnosed officially, if you are compensating so well that your partner doesn't think you are socially odd; those of us who can compensate in public do generally have to relax and drop the facade at home.

Your "fear of sand" as a young child is a classic sensory-integration issue, and sensory integration disorder and autism are very closely related.

I was also diagnosed as being a "problem child" (they called it oppositional defiant disorder). Oddly enough, I was one of the most rule-abiding children I knew; they diagnosed me like that because they didn't realize that my executive function issues made it pretty much impossible to do some of the things I was ordered to do ("Clean your room" is about as difficult as "Do this advanced calculus problem" to an autistic 9-year-old... and no, I am not a math savant...); plus of course the meltdowns that got misread as tantrums (I stopped having the whiny sort of tantrum before I was five, but the uncontrollable meltdowns continued and still happen occasionally.) So, yeah, that's not uncommon either.

Your situation isn't unique. I wonder if maybe you were diagnosable as a child, but have learned enough coping skills that now you are no longer diagnosable. If so, you would be neurologically autistic--our brain structure doesn't change--but not impaired by autism. If you're talking to a shrink about this, it wouldn't hurt to mention that, looking back on your childhood, you think you might have been diagnosable with Asperger's back then, and still have those traits today though you've learned to make up for them. You may be right; or you may be wrong and turn out to be diagnosable after all or else diagnosable with something else. But mentioning it shouldn't hurt anything.

It does change how you think and learn, whether or not it's a diagnostic label that can be applied to you; and it might make some strategies more effective and others less so. For example, autistics can often use the tendency to fall into routines to try to establish new, useful routines; it helps me with my own tendency to be scatterbrained and disorganized if I establish routines like that. Conversely, it doesn't help me much to talk about my feelings with someone because I am already very aware of my feelings (we're not all like this, but the introspective ones tend to be extremely self-aware)--when I go to a counselor, I want to talk about how to solve problems.

Anyway, you just keep hanging out here; there's plenty of people here who are borderline or broader-autistic-phenotype or whatever, and they're here to learn and teach each other (and, granted, b***h about stuff occasionally) just like anybody else. It's really the world around us that decides whether we're disabled, anyway; we've got a lot to learn from each other.

hey!
wow thanks for the advice and support.
i guess i shall see what happens when i have my review :/

(moved)