Did your doctor pick up on your autism on their own?

Not one, I was 27<28 when I was diagnosed. I would go so far as to say that they inhibited my diagnosis, by trying to throw Depression and Anxiety drugs in my face, the reason being that they were trying to deter me from getting in the waiting lists.
My advice is to go to those early GP visits with your: Empathy, Systemising and Autism Quotients; in hand. Do your research!

I have been on meds since 2001. At the time, I convinced myself that I had schizophrenia. However, it seemed to be Autism traits acting comorbid. 

Ah.. the old schizophrenia blunder.  
They never once stopped to think that maybe you’ve just got a strong imagination. Maybe you’d just been so hampered by alexithymia and [place social impairment here], that you’ve just developed a rich inner-world, instead of developing a social skill to rival your intellect.  
Im glad those days are over, they used to just pin autistic people with psychosis.

Ah.. the old schizophrenia blunder.  
They never once stopped to think that maybe you’ve just got a strong imagination. Maybe you’d just been so hampered by alexithymia and [place social impairment here], that you’ve just developed a rich inner-world, instead of developing a social skill to rival your intellect.  
Im glad those days are over, they used to just pin autistic people with psychosis.

Paranoia from school bullying taken as societal norm?  Proportion of bullying  Adults is not the same percentage as bullying school children 

What about the symptom of Poor imagination of autistic people? 

*physiological

Yeah man, just walk through the list of acute mood and stress disorders, and you’ll have a list of all the ways that autistic people have been ‘fixed’ in the past. 
And that’s just the psychological stuff, I’m not even gonna dive into the neurological and psychological stuff, it’s been a long road to autistic people are ‘wired differently’..

I'm guessing lots of people get wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia instead of autism? This is all a big learning curve for me since December