Autism is a disease

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I disagree it shortens our life expectancy. Maybe it does due to suicide because of society, maybe lack of self care might shorten your life if you make poor choices like drugs or drinking or if you avoid going to the doctor and if you avoid working out and eating healthy.

You are in control of yourself. If autism shortens your life due to these things, then so does poverty.

We don't need to tolorate anyone who is toxic, neurodiverse or LGBT or not. Also men who go on a killing spree due to not being able to get laid are incels. Most incels are on the autistic spectrum but most people on the spectrum are not incels. Those who pose a danger to others need to be locked up so they can't hurt anyone ever again.

I refuse to coddle anyone who is toxic or a villain. I don't care what mental illness they have or disability. If they are out hurting people and have opinions that are very harmful to other people, they should not be coddled for it.

Adolf Hitler was abused and mistreated throughout his childhood and young adulthood, no one ever coddled him when he committed gynecide and became a bigot before he got elected into power. I will not coddle anyone when they commit crimes and go on a killing spree. I don't care if they were abused or mistreated, there is never an excuse to hurt innocent people. We even lock up child predators and we don't care if they were also victims of sexual abuse, we don't coddle them either. Only people who should be coddled are kids because they need need a chance at life so they can grow up to be great people so they don't grow up to be monsters and be locked up and so they won't hurt other people.

I can remember my mom telling me when I was 8 years old "It's BS to throws scissors in school just because you were having a bad day." It didn't matter if another kid had upset me that day over a name they called me, I still had no right to throw my scissors in class out of nowhere couple hours later after the incident.

I would like to suggest that trying to establish autism as a disease or as not a disease is a matter of over exaggerating facts to support an opinion - and doing so results in an unrealistic all-or-nothing view of a complex topic, and found so does no-one a service.

It calls to mind the phrase “if-by-whiskey” and the associated 1953 speech that inspired the phrase:

[Quoting Wikipedia . . .]
If-by-whiskey

In political discourse, if-by-whiskey is a relativist fallacy in which the speaker's position is contingent on the listener's opinion. An if-by-whiskey argument implemented through doublespeak appears to affirm both sides of an issue, and agrees with whichever side the listener supports, in effect taking a position without taking a position.[1] The statement typically uses words with strongly positive or negative connotations.[2]

Origin Edit
The label if-by-whiskey refers to a 1952 speech by Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat, Jr., a young lawmaker from the U.S. state of Mississippi, on the subject of whether Mississippi should continue to prohibit (which it did until 1966) or finally legalize alcoholic beverages:[3]

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
The American columnist William Safire popularized the term in his column in The New York Times, but wrongly attributed it to Florida Governor Fuller Warren.[4] He corrected this reference in his book Safire's Political Dictionary, on page 337.[1]

Yep, that thought does happen.

I think I have just decided to not publicly document its frequency of happening.

Anyway, the scientists seem to be uncertain whether or not autism is best defined as a disease in and of itself but they certainly do talk about autism in a way which connects that question.

For instance;

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... 00015/full

Society can impose differing levels of hardship for an individual.

Both poverty & disability make life harder in every way imaginable - but a persons response to those things, mostly on an emotional level, affects happiness levels and in turn, life expectancy.

An unhappy mind breeds a failing body.

It doesn't say anything about parents of autistic children having a shortened lifespan due to the stress and burden autistic children can bring on them. I think I caused my mum to stress and worry and despair more than myself. I think I descended her into madness with my emotional and behavioural challenges. I drove her round the bend and she sometimes even self-harmed to deal with the stress I caused. She loved me of course but I was a troubled brat to bring up.

If I were born normal she wouldn't have died from cancer and would still be here today. I'm a murderer.

No you're not.

While all the different things we experience in life can impact our overall health very little of what your mom experienced was a direct result of your actions, even less was a result of conscious and informed acts and I'm willing to bet none or virtually none was ever a result of malicious acts.

You didn't choose to be born with any issues you've had to deal with, none of us did. You didn't choose to exist or to have autism and ADHD or to be impacted by them in the ways they do. You're you because she chose to bear you and you were loved you as you are, but if that's not entirely true that's not a failing on your part. You're not less deserving of love and acceptance simply due to neurological differences even if they can potentially have impacts beyond yourself.

It's bad enough to be burdened by the direct impacts associated with ASD, you really shouldn't feel the need to blame yourself for every ripple effect as well.

I do blame myself though. I'm angry that I've lost my mum already and she didn't deserve to suffer with cancer and die in her mid-50s.

If stress causes early death then my mum's early death was obviously caused by stress and the stress was me. I was constantly on the go as a child and teen, not necessarily jumping on the furniture, but like being unable to control my emotions (frequent temper tantrums even at the age of 12), arguing and bickering, being bad-tempered and taking it out on her, crying and whining about everything, and lots more. It might sound like normal kid behaviour but trust me, it was more persistent than the average child. And all the social isolation I suffered through my teens and early 20s also caused me to feel depressed and angry, which triggered outbursts.
My behaviour affected my dad too. He dealt with it by going out and getting drunk as a way of escaping, which my mum didn't like and caused them to divorce. I think we would have been a much happier family if I was normal like all my cousins.

Again though, nothing about the way you are or were was intentional or malicious which makes it unfair to yourself to place that responsibility on your own shoulders. Even if there's things you'd change maturity plays a role and it's not fair to blame yourself as a child just because as an adult you realize you could have done better.

You're consistently a very compassionate person and I believe you currently and you as a child are both deserving of the same level of compassion you have for others.

There's lots of instances where I won't feel like making an effort to try to offer comfort or argue when people beat themselves up irrationally but it genuinely hurts when you're stuck in those loops because of how undeserving it always feels, no matter how well you frame things as being your fault.

Depression is really good at tricking us into reframing things as being our fault when it's simply not but I don't expect arguing it from that angle provides much comfort. I do this to myself with issues, we've both seen people we know with their past trauma, insecurities, etc too. It's another way of hurting ourselves, even if it isn't physical like most self-harm that people pay attention to.

The people around us aren't always as strong as we perceive them and sometimes their issues have more to do with them than one can know. It's quite possible other issues were much more important to your mom's health outcomes.

Last edited by envirozentinel on 17 Feb 2022, 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.: name edited out

Dear Joe, my BF's mom also passed from cancer in her mid 50s. Although I never got to meet her while she was still here, she was a happy and compassionate soul who took all things calmly. There are others I can think of too. Cancer (and many other diseases) are often genetic, but sometimes random. We cannot blame ourselves for these tragedies. I don't believe your behaviour as a child made a difference, as there are many parents who went through far worse - think parents of juvenile offenders, serial killers etc and these parents didn't get cancer. Then there's the ultimate tragedy for parents - cases where their son or daughter goes missing and their disappearance is never solved. I can't imagine how they must feel.

Damn, girl, you have some seriously abnormal stuff under your hood.

1) Cancer usually surfaces on its own or due to genetic predisposition. Even prolonged exposure to seriously cancerogenic substances do not guarantee that one develops cancer. Stress is one of the factors which can make disease to develop more rapidly as a side effect, but chance that it will trigger cancer is so statistically slim, that betting on it is pure lunacy. Your mother had a higher chance of developing cancer because of breathing as oxygen is highly cancerogenic factor - our bodies have a whole biochemical machine evolved to combat and repair damage from oxygen, but sometimes it fails on many levels and result are various forms of cancer. You are beating yourself over something that is of so low probability that winning a lottery sounds guaranteed in comparison.

My mom also died of cancer, glioblastoma to be specific and she was healthy person for majority of her life, without particularly stressful life. Something went wrong in her brain and that's it. She died in less than a year even though she had a tumour removal surgery, radio and chemotherapy. It was painful to experience and painful to watch. Me and my wife also lost a kid in second pregnancy, in sixth month of it, due to triploidy. What else can I say. s**t happens. We have no control over it.

2) Ultimately, it was your father's choice to go out and drink. I have a daughter who is most likely on the spectrum (too little to get diagnosed yet) and past 4 years were hard, it is still hard to take care of her. But the solution to this is giving kid parental love and seeking for means of help to make kid being able to cope with their own emotions better. Not grabbing a bottle. Plus, there are loads of people who act irresponsibly even though their children are NT and do not cause more stress than average kid.

I've seen people becoming alcoholics even though they've lived relatively stress-free lives. Prime example is my flatmate from my university years, who wasn't working, got money from his parents who basically gave him allowance - all he needed to care about was studying.

Guess what? He was occupied with partying, sitting on his ass, playing videogames, watching porn and masturbating in front of his PC. Soon, he started drinking a lot of beer, like even 10 of 5-6% alcohol beers daily (he was a big guy with height over 2 metres so he was able to pull it off), then vodka, then it came to the point he was pissing his bed and puking around his room, living like a total bum. I had to make an intervention with his parents, who lived in another country, to fly over and get him, then put on rehab.

Your dad was obviously going out and drinking because he liked it and most likely became addicted down the line. He could cope with stress in multitude of other ways, like going out for jog or exercising. Reading books. Whatever.

Your mom was right to ditch his ass for yours and her own sake. There are absolutely no guarantees that he wouldn't do the same things if you were like your cousins. You are no Jesus to suffer for wrongdoings of other people. I mean, you may be even a co-addicted person, as a behaviour of seeing one's fault in addiction of others is typical for it. Don't beat yourself over what could have been, because you have no proof and will never know if it could be any different. What's gone is gone.

Thank you for the reassurance.

It's just that when I see things like "stress causes cancer" written, it makes my heart sink. Also I worry about myself too. I don't want an increased chance of getting cancer just because I get more anxious than the average person.

It's way more complex than that - people who are never stressed often develop cancer and many people who live with constant stress don't, although they might develop ulcers, heart problems or strokes but even then, those conditions depend on a good deal more than stress on its own.

I developed prostate cancer.

“Stress” had no role in it, I don’t believe.

The other posters are right in saying don’t blame yourself for what happened to your mother.