I've always been under the impression that ADD would be better named Attention Mismanagement Disorder (AMD), and then have a with/without hyperactivity modifier. Does that name jive with your experiences, those who are confirmed to have ADHD-(H|C|PI) ?
I have ADD (also known as ADHD without hyperactivity, because redundant contradictions cancel each other out, right?) and social awkwardness, primarily due to ~10 years of self-imposed isolationism.
I'm also pretty smart, and am in the 98 percentile with my IQ score. 46 percentile working memory though, which is kinda shitty because I don't retain as much as I could.
I think Bay12 has so many people with various social/mental disorders because we tend to utilize internet forums as a method of human interactions without the pesky social aspects.
The socially awkward by self-isolation and really smart bits sure sounds a lot like me. 
It's not like I was embittered by crummy social interactions (that I'm aware of affecting me, at least) or anything, so it's always been kinda weird.
In the interest of that "hopefully this won't just be us stating our problems for the record" sentiment expressed earlier, I have a question: Asperger's has become a popular (self-)diagnosis as of late. For those of you who have (someone in your life with) Asperger's, are there any novel lights you can shine on what that's like?
People find it attractive specifically because of the way it can excuse them being a jerk socially. I already know it's so much more than just being a jerk, but if there are any ways you can highlight exactly how the social part of Asperger's affects the one with it and those around them, differently than if the, er, "afflicted"* were just a jerk, I think that'd be helpful. Because the symptom lists you may find aren't always designed to explain it.
(As an aside, that link to a symptoms list contains this:
Have a formal style of speaking that is advanced for his or her age. For example, the child may use the word "beckon" instead of "call" or the word "return" instead of "come back."
Context, my dear website. You should mention age is not the only determining factor for expected speech patterns.)
*Christ, there isn't a good word to put here. Afflicted? Patient? Victim? Please don't kill me for my unavoidably poor choice of words.
As someone who has been diagnosed with it (well, something close enough, at least), I can say that it's a lot more complicated than being a jerk or asocial.
To put it simply, it lowers our ability to do anything remotely social or physical. It hits not only our social skills, but also our balance, spatial awareness, hand-eye coordination. Basically anything where we're not relying on logic. On the other hand, our ability to think logically is improved, which is great for math scores.
Along with this also comes some strange behaviour. We tend to focus on a few subjects, and devote a lot of your time to it. That could be dinosaurs, or postal delivery routes. It can also be a broad subject like computers (you see that a lot these days
).
It's also quite common to talk in a sort of monotone, since it's harder to change the tone of your voice. We also tend to have problems learning to speak, which often leads to learning your language from the dictionary, which leads to the whole "talk like an adult" thing.
Because of our problems with socialising with people, we often seek quiet places without many people, and we usually have no problems with being by yourself for a long time. That's not to say that we don't like talking with people at all. As long as we know and trust who we're talking to, we can be extremely talkative.
On a more personal note, these things have given me extreme problems when it comes to school. I'm pretty much the polar opposite of my peers. While my peers shout all the time and don't give a fuck about school, I just sit quietly and actually pay attention to class. While most of my peers are sports freaks and all play football, I prefer reading and don't give a damn about football. While most of my peers couldn't put two and two together, I frequently correct writing errors in my school books.
As you can guess, that leads to a lot of problems. I have moved school about three times, and I didn't miss a single one. I never managed to fit in to any of the schools, mainly because of my own attitude and poor decision making. Only managed to fit into the fourth school after 8 years of pain, stupidity, and sadness.
And I was lucky. My parents already knew I had it very early on, and I got a shitton of special treatment at school because of it. There are a lot of people who weren't that lucky.
I could probably write a book about all this, but it's a wall of text already. To answer your questions, being an autist or asberger does not excuse you for being a jerk, it has nothing to do with being a jerk. There's a big difference between not being good at socialising and being an asshole. Although not being good at socialising may make you seem like an asshole, even if you didn't mean to.
Also, self-diagnosis doesn't work. You can't just look at the symptom page and say, "Yep, I'm an asberger." If you think you or someone close to you has autism or asbergers, go to a psychiatrist, preferably one you trust, and get a diagnosis.
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Topic: Schizophrenia, Bipolar and other mental health issues discussion thread (Read 3313 times)