How on earth do you survive with Asperger's/HFA? (Poll)

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wish you lived in washington state. the heat in florida would literally kill me, having suffered heat stroke in my youth.

...Even were I cleaner , at 50 , fat and diabetic (Type 2) would even the Berkeley Navy recruiter be desperate enough/needing to fulfill his quota ? Ha ha ha .

diabetes is no fun. my late father had many complications from it. the thought of getting it myself scares the bejeez out of me.

You probably already know this, but it seems that diabetes, like overweight and obesity and practically every other chronic diseases, is essentially caused by addiction to simple carbs: sugar and/or grain products (flour and everything made from it - bread, pastries, noodles, dumplings, whatever).

Supposedly even people who already have diabetes (and pretty much everyone eating any kind of a modern Western diet is on track to get it, unless you die of something else first) can reverse the disease with a radical change of diet - i.e., no sugar, nothing sweet, and nothing made from grains either - so essentially vegetables, protein and fats (healthy ones - from fish, nuts, olive oil, etc.). Maybe some fruit is allowed?

This is pretty much the South Beach Diet. It's how we were supposed to be eating all along. Human beings evolved eating fresh produce and protein - we only started eating grains and sugars a few thousand years ago (a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of years we've been evolving), and these foods have only become a cheap staple of our diet in the last 100 years or so. Gary Taubes recommends the same diet in "Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health" and "Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It".

Of course, since simple carbs are highly addictive (and cheap), this won't be easy, or cheap. But some people apparently do it. That's gotta be cause for hope.

i take in oxygen to break down glucose to release atp to run cellular metabolism. thanks for asking

...That aside , I do , still , wonder whether I might , if cleaned up , get by a Navy recruiter ( My father was Navy . ) if I did sufficently well on the written test , if they were , as I said , a little desperate...They do give out a lot of " waivers " these days , and perhaps I'd get a healthy diet while I was in , anyway ! !! !! !! !!
I'm SEMI-joking here , especially noting your own caution...I mean , I'm tending to think in a 1960s hipster/1970s student/" Easy Rider "-era sort of manner there , " aahh , f**k it , I'll up and join the Army " , even if that was a pop culture era before us .........

wow, you are a piece of work dude.

You have been whining on about not being able to walk - on another post where you have been complaining about being homeless. And now you want to 'up and join the army'?

You have fraud written all over you.

I go to college full time but I'm being supported by family. Before I went to university, I worked part time during CC but was still being supported. It was very very part time, like 1-3 days a week. A lot of hours makes me go crazy so the less I worked the better.

I'm not very optimistic about what happens after graduation because I know that me and gainful employment do not get along, plus there are so many things to keep track of and pay for when I'm officially on my own. I don't care if this sounds anti-feminist but I think I'd prefer to be a housewife, or married and working (freelance) from home.

I voted "other" because I'm supported by friends and family and I qualify for disability services.

I should of chosen on disability pension but I thought that was misleading as I arent on one for the Asperger's but rather for other severe physical illness.

So anyway, Im an Aspie on a disability but on one for other things (It wasnt even know I was Aspie when i had to apply).

Ive never had full time work for longer then 6 weeks due to my very bad health.

I attempt to look after myself but dont well (i forget everything and cant organise), currently a friend is helping me. I dont know what i'd do if he wasnt about (he's married to another so Im having an affair.. without him, I wouldnt be hardly surviving... im not coping even with his help). Without him, things would currently be a big disaster as there is no other help available for me (the Autism society tells me they dont really get funding for adults).

Actually....I think i'd love everything about Washington state save the weather. I'm sure the cultural/musical/intellectual scene would be much more appealing to me than what S. Florida has to offer (generally speaking) in those areas.


I'm just pretty unwilling to pick up roots at this point. My aging mother lives here and so does the only close friends I have. The rest of my family lives in Pittsburgh, but i'm not prepared to move back there at this point even though I love that city as well.


Still.....S. Florida isn't all that bad really. I like the heat and humidity, so long as i'm not doing serious physical labor out in it (I have before and it nearly killed me) and subtropical/tropical (depending on who you ask....even climatologists seem to dispute this) natural environment greatly appeals to me as well. I love all the exotic plants from tropical areas all over the globe too. It is always a joy to look at the beautiful tropical plants/trees/flowers like Bougainvillea, Jacaranda, Bromeliads, Orchids, Areca Palms, Bird-of-Paradise, etc....

When I look at them....I dream of all the places I love to visit someday which I may never see in this lifetime


Places like French Polynesia, The Tropical Andes, St. Lucia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Madagascar, Brazil, etc.....

I have a great passion for all things tropical....from coral reefs to Andean cloud forest and all the splendid flora and fauna that dwells within such places.



It's actually unseasonably cold right here right now though. A strong cold front moved in on Friday and its dropped down to the low 50's (it feels colder with the wind chill factor and with the high humidity we usually have here) over the past few nights. We usually don't see temps this cold until at least the first couple weeks of December.

That may not sound too cold for you northerners, but keep in mind our average temps for this time of year is a high of 82 and a low of 70. Such temps will return on Tuesday and since i'm so acclimated to the more common hothouse conditions down here, I welcome them.

I get disability benefits. Specifically, disabled adult child benefits. Because I was already proven disabled since childhood and my parents retired. (You can also get it in similar circumstances if your parents die or become disabled and unable to work themselves.) This gets me both Medicare and Medicaid. (Because I used to be on SSI, and because DAC benefits are, in my state, part of a small group of benefits that are "deemed equivalent to SSI for Medicaid purposes" even if they put you over the income limit.)

I live in subsidized housing. And I receive services from a local developmental disability services agency and a local visiting nurses agency. They help me with pretty much everything. I've been receiving such services since shortly after I first moved out on my own. First in another state, then moved to here and got them here. In my state people in my position get money instead of food stamps so I get money instead of food stamps.

Oh and my dx is technically neither AS nor "HFA". (I don't believe in "HFA", or "LFA", anyway, just autism.)

Hi It looks to me that unless we are savant, we are kicked out of society. People only want us if we are hyper intelligent. If we are intelligent but not overly genius, our novel ways are truly not welcome. This is probably why I have struggled. I have been talented and smart, but not a prodigy...so therefore my lack of perfect social skills is a bad mark against me. However if I were hypergenius, no problem! The problem could also be geographical. Some places are very small town attitude-like and expect everyone to have the same brain, ways, and gestures exactly like clones. And they just say hi and bye and hows the weather to each other. So my life have been yucky. I've spent so much time trying to get myself extablished, and people are pressuring me and I can't get things underway.I could lose my roof over my head as easy as a blink. People are swift to rid me, I'm the first choice out the door in workplaces, no matter how good i am. People are very mean to people who struggle socially, as if we grew ourselves like this on purpose, and they keep on trying to teach us hard lessons, when it's their reactions that are more evil since they ARE deliberate! I have tried to hold down a job,, gotten yelled at by parents...and because people know there are some ASpies out there that do well, such as Einstein or Bill Gates, no one believes my struggle.

I'm self employed, I design and make jewellery and have my own business. I have had a job in the past when I was younger but I can't imagine doing it now so I developed my hobby and became self employed last year

I'm currently supported by family, and have been since 1995. Even when I've had jobs I haven't managed full independence, despite managing to live on my own (or at least with housemates) for a good four years (2002-2005).

I'm currently receiving state disability benefits as well, but these would never support me. I am also applying for SSI/SSDI. Despite the fact that I have been disabled since childhood, I am not sure how to prove it without my primary diagnosis even officially existing before I was 24 years old, let alone having any treatment history for it. Unfortunately, a side effect has been I've been terrible about managing my own health care, which means I have very few records relating to anything but acute (and often mild) conditions.

No idea.

The closest thing that applies to me in that poll is family support, even though it's mediocre at best. Currently living with parents who at the very least don't kick me out into the street is the only reason why I'm not dead yet from homelessness or starvation.