also, like... I personally think the reason there's a lot of AuDHD people is because... the whole thing is kind of one big Venn diagram. like the spectrum should probably be an AuDHD spectrum and not just two separate things. I think this is both nature (the baseline presentation of symptoms/traits) and nurture (or uh. lack of nurture; people with ADHD tend to get traumatised by caregivers, society, etc in very similar ways that autistic people do -- so a lot of our trauma-response traits are similar)
but like, you say things like that and people think you're trying to invalidate one or the other as a discrete Thing and like... I understand that people get really attached to these psychological schemas but at one point someone invented them. they're not carved in stone by the finger of God and handed down from the mountaintop as infallible truths about our bodies. hell, at one point Asperger's was a thing, remember that. a lot of people were upset that their label was retired from use, because they thought of themselves as aspies and not autistic people, but like... that's all just fluff. your symptoms and traits and whatnot didn't just magically turn into something else. they always were what they were! the DSM is not the creator of you!
anyway. ANYWAY! what I was going to say was that "I don't have ADHD" is kind of a nothingburger of a statement because if I'm autistic then I'm already in the Venn diagram that is The Spectrum of AuDHD, and I will naturally share traits with others under that spectrum, even if they're considered "strictly ADHD". I feel like our cognition in particular is wired similarly -- I have very little trouble following the thought patterns of people with ADHD or comprehending why they do x or y or z, even in the case of competing access needs ("it's annoying/stressful/whatever, but I get it"). so all things considered, why wouldn't stims also affect me similarly to ADHD people, even if it isn't a 1:1 exact replica of experience
tbh once you remind yourself that The DSM Is A Book Some Guys Wrote (that's a reductive conclusion for the purposes of brevity but I trust that the reader can fill in the nuances themselves), a lot of other shit in the psychological house of cards starts to fall apart too













