ADHD or Aspergers? somebody please help me out

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so, I've been diagnosed with adhd for about two and a half years now.

I always had difficulties in school, despite being a pretty good test-taker and having a 133 iq. A lot of people would tell me that I was able to focus, but just on what I wanted.. which is basically their way of telling me that I'm lazy.

I have a tendency to go on about stuff I care about (music, politics, architecture.. I'm really into architecture and graphic design) to people, all the while just kind of not knowing how to respond to people when presenting their interests to me. I (and everybody else) just chalked it up to me thinking I was somehow above their level of thinking, rendering what they contribute to the conversation unimportant.. so I always just thought that was a personality thing.

I've noticed recently that I have real trouble with keeping and maintaining eye contact.. so much that I can specifically recall three separate incidents (one when I was about 10, and this guy is telling me that "real men look one another in the eyes".. and recently in a dorm, when this kid tells me that "cecil, its just the way you look at people sometimes.".. and then my grandma noticed it.)

I'm VERY sensitive to criticism.. and there's nothing more I'd want to get rid of. Basically, I will say something (or not say something)... or respond inappropriately to something, and another person criticizes me for it, after which I severely strain myself to try and make a comeback. For the next few days or so, I'll replay that conversation in my head over and over again.. so much that I get seriously depressed about it and it ruins my day. It's like.. I never really remember the compliments (I do remember a few), but I ALWAYS remember the bad things people say about me, and I hold it in and sort of promise myself to pay them back in the way I treat them in the future. Friends have told me a lot to just "stop worrying what others think about me", and I just can't, and because I've always thought that was a character problem, the pain I derive from it is just exponentially bad - I feel bad about the incident, beat myself up about feeling bad, and so on.

I'm pretty uncoordinated. I played basketball with a group of friends recently - I'm an excellent shooter; I'd hit threes all day, but my dribbling and navigation was horrible.. so much that I'd have the ball stolen from me, and, of course, get really mad and embarrassed about it, so much that its visible to everybody there. People would literally have to tell me "everybody makes mistakes, man" and stuff like that.. which just added on to the embarrassment for me.

I've got an intense interest in architecture and graphic design. You give me a picture of almost any major city's skyline, and I'll tell you where it is. You tell me any team, I'll tell you what stadium they play in, etc. I play the game simcity a lot, and I design buildings and houses on sketchup. I applied to syracuse for architecture, only to get denied by the arch school but accepted by the info studies school, which just isn't my passion. I could spend hours drawing and designing stuff, and did it as a job for a long time in high school - playing with photoshop and designing logos, retouching photos, etc. The way I've always seen it, if I'm not able to be an architect or a graphic designer for the rest of my life, then I might as well be homeless or dead.

I have a lot.. a LOT of obsessive, pervasive thoughts that I really just can't explain. For example, regardless of where I am, I always see the imaginary protrusions of things and their extents on the ground.. the pic below explains.

(can't show since I'm new here.)

also, when I'm walking down the stairs, for each one I step on, I can't help but say "red" or "blue" in my head. So, everytime I'm going downstairs (this never works for upstairs), I'm going "redblueredblueredblueredbluered" to myself..

I also have developed sort of a smoking/drug problem. I never really saw it coming, but I went from being an occasional pot smoker to a full out pothead in a matter of months. While I don't really wanna give it up completely, I definitely want to curtail my usage.

I had a lot of social problems that I didn't know existed until my first year of college. I was raised by my mom as an only child, so I didn't have much interaction with other kids besides school, where I was considered "different" and a "loser" up until about the middle of high school. I grew up in the south, and I never really had the stereotypical accent that southerners had, so I think a lot of times people were giving me hell for not being "one of them". I always felt like I wasn't good enough for any group of people, and by the time I got to college, I had developed what I thought was this fear of rejection. There'd be groups of people hanging out.. all of them I knew, and I couldn't bring myself to hang out with them out of fear of having to talk to everyone. My shyness got really bad, so bad that I started skipping certain classes, just because I knew that the professor would ask me why I hadn't been to the previous classes... and thus, I got pretty awful grades.

Basically, I've been told I was ADHD for a while now, been prescribed ssris, stimulants - you name it.. and yet I still feel just as depressed and unsuccessful as before. I feel like the suicidal ideations are getting more and more frequent.. the only thing I'm missing is the courage to actually hang myself... or pull the trigger or take the pills out of fear of pain. I've been told that I'm just looking for an excuse for my laziness... that I've jut got to "grow up", that I just need to accept religion... but I know deep down that I've always felt disconnected to the rest of the world, and have tried to use my intelligence to make myself feel superior to them. I just wanna have good relationships, and to be able to look somebody in the eye and tell them exactly what I think, without fear of lack of reciprocation.. or rejection. What do you suggest? therapy? meds? I'm just tired of swimming around in my head and thoughts all the time.

I've read a lot of people ith AS is misdiagnosed with ADHD at some point. My own daughter was diagnosed with ADHD before she was finally diagnosed wih AS. I do not know much about ADHD, but I knew one boy with ADHD, and he was not able to focus on anything. He was not even capable of reading because concentrating enough to read was difficult for him. If you are able to concentrate on the subject you are interested in probably it is AS. If you feel the treatment you are receiving for ADHD is not working for you, you should continue looking until you find the help you need. Maybe you can approach to a center specialized in autism and get tested.

Obviously no one can tell you for sure on here, but I do think you have reason to suspect AS. Perhaps you want to make an eye appointment with a psych who is specifically qualified to diagnose ASDs and get another assessment done there.

Okay... so I just see a lot of stuff going on here, and I'm going to group it by which disorders these sound most like. I should stress: I am not a doctor. I cannot diagnose anything. Having traits of a disorder doesn't mean you have the disorder.

ADHD traits:

Autistic traits:









Traits of social anxiety disorder:






Traits of OCD:



Traits of depressive disorder:



Traits of drug abuse:


Totally normal stuff:





Hopefully that helps you direct your search. My recommendation is that you take your post, print it out, show it to your counselor, and ask what s/he thinks might help you learn how to cope with this stuff. I'd also recommend--but you know this--cutting back on the pot, because you need to be able to think clearly to learn new things; and if you're going to be trying medication, you need to stop self-medicating so you can figure out how the medication affects you.