Feel sorry for people who don't have obsessions.

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I'm so damn glad for my intense interests/obsessions. It makes my life so interesting/exciting. I kind of feel sorry for people that don't have these. It feels like the strongest addiction. Some Aspies have desribed them like this:

"I have been acquainted with many addicts and users throughout my life, long before I knew about Asperger's. Recently my significant other has had some issues in this area, and I have been learning about my Asperger's about the same time...I started to notice MANY similarities between addicts and aspies...I thought, basically if you substitute the substance for the obsession they are very similar in appearance. I wondered if there was a similarity in neurological damage from use that mimicked AS or if a higher percentage of those with AS were classified as addicts? If I were to describe differences, it would be in areas involved in lying and shame associated with addicts, that I think may be alien for many aspies."

I don't know how my life would be without these but it would be pretty boring.

I don't have any "real" obesession and yes, its boring.. Very boring.

I find it very disturbing when I don't have an obsession. I am on an SSRI right now, and it affects my ability to focus on an interest.

Indeed, addictive behavior revolves around pleasure response and the production of brain chemicals that give us that feeling of pleasure, AND an inability to censor one's behavior. And yes, Aspies find their obsessions pleasurable and we often have EFD, executive functioning disorder, that makes it harder to censor our behavior.

It's nothing wrong with seeing out things that are pleasurable. But the inability to censor your pleasure-seeking behavior is not something that's gong to serve you well in the long-run. There's a saying in 12 Step Programs: jails, institutions or death. That's the three options addicts have in the long-run--they will end up in jail, or in an institution, or in a grave, from their addiction. And it's precisely because they can't censor their addictive behavior while in the throes of a full-blown addiction. For Aspies, unless you have a care-taker to care for you your entire life, your options aren't much better, unless you learn to censor those impulses. At some point you need to learn to censor your focus so you can do day-to-day tasks, from hygiene to holding a job.

Humans naturally seek out things that they find pleasurable. Most people who don't have any sort of interests are usually people who are depressed, have low self-esteem or a lack of self-confidence that impedes them from seeking out what interests them. But barring those sorts of issues, just because someone can censor their pleasure-seeking impulses better than you doesn't make them boring. It makes them more balanced. That's all.

I once told one of my peers named Dustin that my thinking tended to be obsessive, and he replied "Oh no, I heard those kind of people were likely to become druggies and alcoholics.". Thinking back, I'm wondering, do aspies tend to be druggies and sots?

My family and my therapist and anyone without Asperger's pretty much don't understand why I get so obsessed with things. They see it as bad. Where is the downside though? It makes my life magical!

Anything that pertains to obsession is anything that differs from a natural high. In other words, an obsession is what releases chemicals in the brain similar to serotonin and can cause a natural euphoria. What that said, there are a lot of ways to gather pleasure that seemingly intoxicate the mind with a very cyclical value.

After your mind is registered as something that enjoys an event, it repeats the action of it in the thought process one seemingly owns and is uplifted and rejuvenated at high levels after that desired action is displayed.

Furthermore, the mind is a very complex 'particle' of the brain and can therefore create patterns of these desired attributes to the person's life. The person must follow the paths to these claims and do them, but must watch out for over-obsessed objects.

To do this, one must simply enjoy but not use that object as something that can harm them when they do not have that object; one must desire over a variety of things with a so-called 'obsessed passion' being the exempt from other objects, but must be something that can be played throughout the mind to create 'hopeful euphoria,' but the kind that cannot harm. If it is the kind of 'hopeful euphoria,' that can only be that, and no palpable passion, then it is a claim one must simply defeat in order to attain goodwill and happiness.

The thing is, it cannot be something that can harm you, which is the danger to many behaviors passion-related.
It must be something that cannot take you away from other intoxicating substances of both the literal and figurative value, but something that can defeat the dangers of them. If this is done accordingly, you should not feel 'sick' after that so-called obsession lost, but instead create non-futile sources of 'hopeful euphoria,' in the mind. A euphoria that is created and knows itself well, but knowing it can be retrieved again.

Yep that is why having aspergers is superior to being an nt.

My special interests add personality to my personality.

I was addicted to drugs. It started out with dependence to prescription anti-anxiety meds (clonazepam) but eventually led to real "addiction" to opiates. Interestingly, even at my worst, the addiction made me spend 1000's of dollars on neuropsychiatric books. I read some of them but eventually I realized that journal articles were much better/up to-date. I didn't have much trouble quitting despite almost 8 years of use. Personally, to me it seems like my reward impulses are not turned on by social interaction stuff. Instead they are turned on by stuff, like nature/science/philosophy. People are almost like a necessary evil to get to my interests. I used to love libraries. Now it's the Internet. I remember reading an interesting article (not a very good one) on this topic but the link no longer works:

Speculations on similarities between autism and opiate addiction

https://springerlink3.metapress.com/con ... erlink.com

I have not had a true obsession in sometime now and yes, it is excessively boring.
My last was with Second life, and I seem unable to get back into it.
Before that, it was a 3-4 year obsession with Harry Potter, that really did fill most of my waking hours and offered me great solace.
I find it horrible to be without one, and do wonder what the cause is when an Aspie suddenly finds themselves without an intense interest.
Having said that, I had an intense interest in a specific real life individual for the best part of 5 years, so it is possible that they were the replacement interest for that time. I don't know.