(By the way, I LOVED the Percy Jackson series, about a boy with ADD who struggles against the confines of modern society, but we discover a mythical reason behind his ADD that makes him a hero, not the zero he had thought himself! Even as an adult, it made me feel a little better about my own struggles.)

You said: “…people with a legitimate and diagnosed condition are often trolled and harassed by those who claim to be self-diagnosed”

JD said: “I totally disagree with self-diagnosis of such a serious condition”

Byron Visconti: “I think if I had self-diagnosed I would not be able to take myself seriously, I would be trying to convince myself everyday till I was professionally diagnosed.”

Nate said: “I know quite a few self-diagnosis folk, find some of their claims absurd on the face of it, others, not so much….I just refuse to self-diagnose due to the experience with the people I mentioned at the beginning of this message.”

David L said: “I was one of many who self-diagnosed, but I realized that I could have been on the wrong track. So I sought out and easily got diagnosed by more than one professional, although one diagnosed AS and the other PDD-NOS.”

Catana said: “I agree that there’s a lot of self-diagnosis that’s very questionable. And I say that as someone who is self-diagnosed. I think that the younger the person, the more likely they’re going to self-diagnosis incorrectly, usually on the basis of limited information.”

CS said: “I do think there is a danger to self diagnosis.”

But me using the word ‘dreaded’ is “an attack in itself”? Isn’t that somewhat of a double-standard you’re displaying?

Zack please publish my comment in the other section.

Exactly why I have decided to stop visiting certain sites now. Discussion I can handle, but personal attacks are quite another thing altogether, especially when the one insulting me is the dreaded ‘self-diagnosed’.

And interesting thing is that NMDA antagonists such as DXM in low doses are shown to cause heightened social awareness, more decisive(robotripping is sometimes described as going on autopilot) behavior, less ability to form memories (Aspies often have great memory), and less awareness of the phyiscal senses. At high enough doses the effects of these drugs causes hallucinations from sensory deprivation because you are that desensitized to the world around you. These mental states have been compared to schizophrenia. Ketamine, one of the drugs at high enough doses can cause a “K Hole” experience which is similar to severe schizophrenia and has a variable reintegration process where the person thinks and acts like they are in a different state of schizophrenia. One man was even wearing a wedding dress and gluing flies to his face for 9 whole months after his K Hole experience.

I heard about a severely autistic woman who was under care as an adult and accidentally ingested too much DXM cough syrup and while she normally kept to herself and rarely ever spoke, she was friendly for awhile under the influence of DXM.

NMDA receptors are also important in learning, more active receptors generally leads to higher IQ which might explain why Aspies are so smart. But on the other hand many schizophrenics have high IQs, take what’s his name the guy who won the Nobel Prize. Still NMDA is not the only factor in intelligence and NMDA antagonists do sometimes help people think of things in different more creative ways(opposite of the thought processes that would lead someone to be highly organized and develop a rigid routine, and also schizophrenics do tend towards more creative thinking), by dissociating aspects of the mind from each other the person becomes more aware of the inner workings of their subconscious, its not hard to think how taken to an extreme this understanding of the subconscious could blur the lines between imagination and reality. People even philosophers have gone insane just off of thinking too much about their subconscious and about how it ties in with the nature of reality. People question their very existance, whether the world is actually real, it can get pretty crazy.

Taking all this into consideration schizophrenia may be the other side of the spectrum(s) and the NMDA receptors might be the key to understanding both autistic disorders and schizophrenic disorders.