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[Samio]

Hi, my name is Sam, and, well, I'm autistic. Minor autism, mind you, Asperger's Syndrome to be exact, but I'm not exactly what you'd call "normal". I'm 15, and in my Freshman year of highschool.
What is autism?
Autism is a social disorder with symptoms like not being able to look in someone's eyes. Mind you, I CAN, it's just not exactly the most comfortable thing in the world to me. It's hard to explain; I look in someone's eyes and I sorta just have to focus on looking in their eyes. Another symptom is not picking up social cues. It's taken practice for me to get sarcasm and the like. But it's getting better.
For more information on Asperger's Syndrome, go here: http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/tc/aspergers-syndrome-symptoms
Is there any medication/cure?
No cure, which is why it's a syndrome. But it's treatable with medication like Abilify and Zoloft and the like.
Worst moment with autism?
Probably 1st or 7th grade as a whole. In 1st grade I started hallucinating. It was, from what I recall, seeing flashes of some dude in a black leather duster who wanted to pull my heart out or something. Really creepy. In 7th grade I started throwing up because of anxiety. That year was particularly hard because the teachers there were morons. There was one teacher I recall who would yell at kids for laughing in the lunch room. During lunch.
What do you think of autism?
A mixed blessing. Perhaps the most interesting part of autism is the ability for me to excel in some areas while being absolutely terrible in others. Ex: English as opposed to Art.
Are you mean?
Just because I have autism doesn't necessarily mean I am a bad person. It's more awkward for me to chit-chat, for sure, but that doesn't mean I'm mean.
What can I do to help autistics?
Well, I absolutely HATE to ask for donations on my fellow bay12ers, but here goes:
http://www.autismspeaks.org/
There. 

I hope this post is informative. Any questions? If you feel like it, give an experience about autism.

[Aqizzar]

At this point, most people with Internet access have some idea of what Autism is, or at least "low level" Autism like Asperger's Syndrome, through Google if nothing else.  Indeed, for many people, Asperger's is Autism, which is a gross misunderstanding of a whole range of genuine mental difficulties.

However, the problem is, the reason many people (with Internet access) have heard of Autism, and more especially Asperger's, is because it's frequently claimed by self-diagnosis, with people who for one reason or another are looking for an excuse to continue being anti-social electronic shutins.

I suppose the obvious question is, do you have an actual medical diagnosis, from an actual doctor?  If so, I'd be very interested in hearing about the medical process involved.

[Ultimuh]

Hmm.. Interesting to see another than myself.

Yes I have bee diagnosed.. with Asperger's.
Tough aperantly, it were worse when I was a kid and I have kinda.. grown out of most of it..

Or that's what the doctor/psychiatrist told me.

[Vector]

The diagnostic process I went through:

Sit in a room.  Talk for a while about how you feel about social situations and attempting to get along with people.  Be told that you have Asperger's.  In my case, flail around a little, say "... are you sure?" and force the psychiatrist in question to go grab the DSM-IV and sort of stare at you as she reads off the checklist.

Proceed to be told that your social skills are too sucky to be helped by them or any other normal person (because you're a year over 18, so they aren't going to send you to the child specialist), so you're expected to go to a group for schizophrenics once you're good enough to be with them and you've figured out the rest of it on your own.

As for what I did about that... I played mafia for 8-12 hours a day, every day, for about a year, until I could understand motivation and lying.  I spent hours watching television until I could pick up minor vocal and physical social cues, freezing, rewinding when I had to.  I forced myself to socialize through whatever methods I had to, read books, researched.  I managed to figure out when I could feel my total social shutoff point coming, so that I'd be able to ditch ship if it started creeping up on me without offending everyone; same thing for the moments when I started thinking exclusively in pictures, rather than any language, and thus became incapable of communication.  Nowadays, I don't always fall asleep just from talking to someone for two hours.

I believe that I can happily say that I'm now officially "over it," thank goodness.

[Rysith]

Hmm.. Interesting to see another than myself.

Yes I have bee diagnosed.. with Asperger's.
Tough aperantly, it were worse when I was a kid and I have kinda.. grown out of most of it..

Or that's what the doctor/psychiatrist told me.

I rather suspect that the Bay12 forums have a higher percentage of people on the high end of the Autistic spectrum than the general population. It seems like the sort of game that would attract them...

I've found that it's less about 'growing out of it' and more about learning the stuff that doesn't come naturally (social interaction, speech patterns, etc.) just like you would learn anything else that was difficult for you but that you practiced and studied and generally worked to learn. So, it's no more growing out of social difficulties than growing out of woodworking difficulties or some other skill, it's just that most people (seem) to not need to think about trying to learn a lot of the stuff.[1]

As to the medical diagnosis - It's a psychiatric diagnosis, so for me it was a question of a few questionnaires and several meetings with a psychiatrist, who after talking with and observing me for a while basically said "I think that the best label for what is going on is Asperger's". I find it vaguely funny that even though it's my official diagnosis, I seem to put a lot less faith in it than many of the self-diagnosed Asperger's people that I've met.

[1] From my understanding, though, this only really applies to people in the Asperger's range, not out into the Autistic end of the spectrum. It seems like a reasonable characterization is that people with Asperger's have trouble interacting with people but still desire to, whereas people with Autism have the same kinds of trouble but no desire to really interact with people, and thus no need to improve their social skills. This, of course, doesn't include the Internet Asperger's people who are just using it as an excuse for their social failings.

[Taricus]

Alright, You've forced me out of the hole again Bay12

[Cthulhu]

Nope, none of that.  Supposedly I have "sensory integration disorder" but as far as I'm concerned the doctors told my parents that to make them go away.  I'm your run-of-the-mill geek, in new environments around new people I'm quiet and awkward for a while until something clicks and it's like I've always been there.

[forsaken1111]

I'm color blind but quite well adjusted socially. Does this mean I don't fit in at bay12?

[squeakyReaper]

My brother has Autism, and he's 7.  Love him to death, that little Pokemon-loving Pirate.  He's been taught to read by using Google to search for toys, learned simple math through playing Pokemon, and has a hell of a personality.  He just gets unreasonable and out of control when he doesn't have his medication on time, to the point that he will tell us he needs his medicine or he'll "go crazy".  He gets picked on at school, because he's good enough at math that he's in "normal" math, and the kids there seem to enjoy telling him to go back to the "retard" class.  =/

[Ultimuh]

Hmm.. Interesting to see another than myself.

Yes I have bee diagnosed.. with Asperger's.
Tough aperantly, it were worse when I was a kid and I have kinda.. grown out of most of it..

Or that's what the doctor/psychiatrist told me.

I've found that it's less about 'growing out of it' and more about learning the stuff that doesn't come naturally (social interaction, speech patterns, etc.) just like you would learn anything else that was difficult for you but that you practiced and studied and generally worked to learn. So, it's no more growing out of social difficulties than growing out of woodworking difficulties or some other skill, it's just that most people (seem) to not need to think about trying to learn a lot of the stuff.[1]

Well I may have made a poor choise of words, I dont remember exactly what the doctor told me, but it were something along those lines.. Or atleast that was my understanding of what she said.. oh well..

[Vector]

I find it vaguely funny that even though it's my official diagnosis, I seem to put a lot less faith in it than many of the self-diagnosed Asperger's people that I've met.

Yeah, I find this interesting as well.  I don't even consider myself socially disadvantaged anymore, largely because nowadays it's just a matter of making observations.  And, since I spent so many years working only from textual information, I get stupidly large advantages in courses that involve the interpretation of text.

For a while, I'll admit that I was pretty obsessed with getting a yes or no answer, but it turns out that a lot of the emotional problems I was having back then were due to a really horrible vitamin deficiency =/  Fixing that didn't toss the social problems, but it did get rid of the anxiety that was making it so I couldn't apply anything I knew (and most of the manic-depressive symptoms, which was also good).  And then, doing that gave me enough other things to focus on that I could stop obsessing unproductively.

The one self-diagnosed person I know, though... she is really into her "autistic identity" and still does stuff like hiding under tables when she's nervous, screaming when she gets overloaded, and remarking on how "weird" and "unusual" she is.  My hope is that she'll get over it eventually, but given the other things I know of her it seems rather unlikely =(

Haha, I guess the weirdest thing about all this is that I still don't feel at all unusual or distant from the rest of humanity.


Actually, since you've added the "worst" experience you've had, OP, I'll put in one of my best ones.  Erm, outside of various math-related things, where my skill could probably be attributed to some sort of weird mental wiring >_> <_<

I recently rewatched a movie that I last saw a few years ago, and for the first time I was able to easily process all of the body language, vocal cues, and subtext without having to struggle with it.  There were so many jokes I'd never noticed, and so many places where the acting was saying something I'd completely passed over... it was kind of sad, since I've seen it loads of times and it's one of my favorite films =/

I dunno.  I was unimaginably relieved.

[Samio]

I suppose the obvious question is, do you have an actual medical diagnosis, from an actual doctor?  If so, I'd be very interested in hearing about the medical process involved.

Yes, I do. I was kinda young when I was learning about it though. But there was this lady, she went through the usual you'd expect. (Ink Blots, Question and Answer, etc etc.) I actually remember it being kinda fun. But then she told my mother, who is dyslexic. They kinda knew I'd be somewhat off. My dad has depression, and is doing great.

Also: Sorry about not being around, I was at school. Which brings me to my next point: School is kinda hard for kids with autism. As SqueakyReaper said:

He gets picked on at school, because he's good enough at math that he's in "normal" math, and the kids there seem to enjoy telling him to go back to the "retard" class.  =/

My teachers, as I mentioned, were extremely untrained in how to deal with a kid with autism. There was only one teacher in the whole of seventh grade that I enjoyed, an algebra teacher. Then I got a 1 on 1 to help me through. The 1 on 1 was AWESOME. The thing about this one on one, though, was that he was MINE. I, and ONLY I, had him as an aid. It was pretty revolutionary at that time.

The teachers I have at school know are awesome. The one on one changed though... They essentially said "Here's a new one! Have fun!" And put me with this guy. He's an awesome dude and all, but the problem was that he was not who I had before. Here's a timeline.

Early 7th grade: Throwing up begins.
Middle 7th grade: Throw up nearly every day now.
Late 7th Grade: 1 on 1 appears!
8th Grade: HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY. 1 on 1 tells me he's there for next year.
9th Grade: One on One changed. This one's only sorta awesome. Needs to learn how to treat Autistics.

Question: How is school/work for you? How are you treated by the adults/coworkers?

[Taricus]

School was so-so for me, got better when I had a good teacher's aide. Still failed school though, but that was laziness instead.

[Vector]

Question: How is school/work for you? How are you treated by the adults/coworkers?

Excellent.  I tend to get along really well with most studious people, so I feel like I have lots of friends most of the time.  At the very least, I have two people I can chat with in every class.  We don't do things outside of school, but I don't have much interest in that, and my roommates are better guinea pigs =)

A professor recently told me that I was "violently sharp" but obviously couldn't communicate my ideas clearly outside of the most logical math fields, so he's giving me extra help.  Wonderful man.  Other professors have also been very helpful when I came by to figure out precisely how their question and my explanation interacted with each other.  I'll often have to take hits in my grades for poor communication, but at least I don't feel like an idiot anymore...

Never told any of them about my diagnosis, though; only seven (non-medical) personnel really know about it IRL--my cousin, ex-boyfriend's family, and two friends.  I've always done far too well in school for anyone to figure out that anything was up, and most people tend to say something along the lines of "What do you mean, you have problems?  You're so much smarter than I am!  You always seem like you know everything!"  That, and I basically didn't talk unless absolutely necessary or figure out how to create facial expressions well until I was 19, so no one knew when I was distressed about anything.

Meh.  I'm happy with my childhood, and I'm really glad I didn't wind up with aides and therapy growing up, no matter how rough it was for a while there.  I feel much better about myself now.

[Assassinfox]

One of my best friends has Aspergers and I never actually noticed until he pointed it out.  What does that say about me? 

I remember the only reason it came up was cuz Rev. Moon put him into an arranged marriage, and when his fiance-to-be found out about his aspergers, she moaned and cried "Oh, woe is me.  I have a retarded fiance." and dumped him.  Her next ten matches dumped her for being a fat whale, so I guess karma's a bigger bitch than she is.