Alcohol and autism

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Been there, done that. Good times.

Except I didn't actually throw up, I had dry heaves all night. But eventually, I got back on the horse and learned how to ride it properly. People make themselves sick the first time out because they're ignorant of their own limits and invariably go way too far.

"I can feel it poisoning my body" Puh-leeze. I can feel it preserving my body - pickling me like an effing mummy. I'll be young-looking forever.

Gods know if it wasn't for alcohol, I'd just be awake until my body collapsed and dissolved into a pile of hyperanxious dust. Or run over by a truck while wandering the streets in an Ambien stupor in my jammies, like a friend of mine nearly did.

And there's nothing about imbibing to keep you from being healthy. I work out, cardio and weight train every single day, drink lots of pure water all day long - soda rarely passes my lips - and drink myself to sleep every night and I'm in fine shape.

So to answer the OP's question: NO. Not caring for alcohol has absolutely nothing to do with Autism. Its just a personal preference.

Except that ASpies tend to go to extremes ....
Right now I'm working on cutting waaaaay back on how much I drink. Cut out whiskey altogether. Just beer.

I don't like losing control either. I have never had nearly enough alcohol to be drunk, but I greatly dislike being sedated.

I've been drunk a few times and it was worth the experience, sure, but there are other things in life that I enjoy better. Also nowadays, even a fairly small amount of alcohol seems to worsen my depression so I'm staying off it for obvious reasons. It's a pity because I do enjoy a good chilled beer.

Same here. I've also had people tell me I don't seem dramatically different when really drunk. My father is the same way. I've never felt out of control when drunk, just increasingly double-visioned, uncoordinated and wrapped in gauze. And the room spinning and the puking all night long, of course.

When I was young I had worries about 'damaging my brain,' but at a certain point I figured the stress was probably killing plenty of brain cells anyway, so WTH. And also seeing really brainy people get repeatedly wasted and continue to be frighteningly smart.

Best alcohol joke I've heard:
"Alcohol kills brains cells."
"Yeah, but only the weak ones."

Since CFS, alcohol has basically the opposite of the normal effect on me now, so I don't touch it anymore.

I drink and it actually does make me feel more open and social for a change, although I hate the after effects of having a hangover so yea, I only leave that on special occasions, plus I don't drink in a bad mood, who knows what could possibly go wrong?

I used to drink some at social events when I was younger, but I hardly ever drink anymore. It has too negative an effect on me at my age. Even small amounts of ethanol affect me a lot. I did some research into the effects of ethyl alcohol on the mammalian nervous system. It was a real eye opener. It turns out that ethanol is a deadly neurotoxin, even at relatively low doses. The substance readily crosses the blood/brain barrier and destroys neurons, especially in sensitive regions of the brain like the anterior thalamus and lateral hippocampus. Every ounce of ethanol you ingest will permanently damage your brain in some very small way. Over a long period of use and abuse, the substance causes catastrophic liver and brain damage, which is irreversible. Something to think about.

I've only been drunk three or four times in my life. I never really liked the idea of losing control of my own brain. As I've gotten older, though, I've decided that it's OK in the appropriate circumstances, but I still don't enjoy the process that much and I remain mostly teetotal.

I don't want be a huge defender of alcohol here, it still has risks & is kind of a nasty substance, but the amounts and frequency of drinking that lead to medically serious brain and liver (and other) damage are pretty staggering by normal standards. There are some people who drink incomprehensible amounts of alcohol every day for decades.

The brain damage is actually caused by a severe vitamin deficiency, because the person is not eating enough food (since alcohol is a high-calorie substance with no nutritional value -- severe alcoholics tend to get most of their calories from alcohol and so they don't get hungry, so they don't eat much food.) Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome (the kind of brain damage people get from alcohol) is caused by severe vitamin B1 deficiency. So if you're not drinking to the point of not eating food for years, and not to near-poisoning levels, it's still a better than, say, huffing acetone, in terms of brain cell loss.

And there are substances our own bodies create which are neurotoxic, i.e. cortisol (which stress increases dramatically). So neurotoxicity is a matter of how much, since no matter what we do we're always losing brain cells. Things that reduce stress but are neurotoxic could theoretically result in less loss than otherwise.

Maybe there are other mechanisms of damage I haven't heard about, though.

</pedantic mode>

My stomach gets very irritated by alcohol so I never got the taste for it or could ever stomach it-I have been around people who are alcoholics and really dont like what it did to otherwise ok people--

"To Alcohol!! !! The cause of and solution to all lifes problems."-Homer Simpson

I don't think not liking alcohol is an Aspie thing per se - there's plenty of abstainers around who aren't on the spectrum, but abstain for the same reasons as listed already.

I think drinking moderately is fine and can enhance the dining experience by adding in new flavours. Drinking until you're blind drunk is NOT fine, on the other hand, and that's when it causes problems.

Personally I don't drink anymore either, but mainly because of medication. I actually miss drinking beer because I do enjoy it. A few years ago I probably qualified as a person with a clinical drinking problem because my goal when drinking was to get blind drunk ASAP but I'm glad I got over that mentality before I did too much damage. I did stupid things like driving while idiotically drunk and I'm lucky I didn't hurt anyone.

I've been drinking heavily for 25 years. It has nothing to do about being more social or having a crazy night out on the town. In the words of george Thorougood, "I drink alone".

Just some scientific information for apple in my eye. You are correct about the low dose and frequency effects, as well as the vitamin deficiencies causing korsakoffs syndrome. I have a friend who has this memory problem from drinking too much alcohol, and its both tragic and annoying also.
My real point: One of the studies I looked at, the researchers put nerve cell preparations in varying concentrations of ethanol. At 100% concentration, 90% of the neurons died. Even at lower, more common physiological concentrations likely to be seen from social drinking, cell enzyme functioning and metabolism was distrupted. The researchers concluded, based on their results, that ethanol alone, with no other complicating factors is a physiologically significant neurotoxin.

i used to drink in 100% of situations requiring me to socialize and now that i do not (usually), i realize my habits of stumbling into other people, trouble making sense of things in a crowded place and difficulty spitting out an articulate sentence aren't related to alcohol consumption at all. who knew.

from now on i'm going to just say i've been drinking.

Whether or not you like alcohol has nothing to do with autism except maybe we're more sensitive to the taste. I like the taste of beer though, so the relationship between our sensory sensitivity and the taste is too complex to generalize.

Alcohol isn't everyone's cup of tea, but does it make any sense to bash drinking when you haven't even taken the effort to make it enjoyable?

OMG I wonder why it feels like it's poisoning my body when I get sick EVERY TIME I drink. Damn this evil substance! You're obviously doing something wrong if you get sick EVERY SINGLE TIME you drink. Know your limits, pace yourself, and drink less. Don't drink more than 3-5 beers if you don't want to get sick.

As for the people afraid of losing control, well don't drink enough to get drunk. Getting drunk means you have less inhibitions, but it doesn't mean you lose self-control altogether so it's an irrational fear. If you're an a**hole when you're sober, you're gonna be a bigger a**hole when you're drunk. If you're a shy and empathetic person when you're sober, you will talk more when you're drunk but you won't start fights left and right since you're already empathetic.

Anyways, I like drinking and I'm gonna drink as long as I breathe. I like getting wasted, but getting buzzed is fine too. I can ride out hangovers and pukefests, but I'm not always in the mood to lol. Especially the really killer hangovers, sometimes they make me feel like never drinking again lol.