Would You Take the Cure?

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To add to the talk of extremes, I am also not going to the extreme of performing or supporting an abortion of a ASD (or any) fetus. I generally am against abortion.

Hell no! Nowadays things are starting to look up for this aspie. I'm like a smart Kim Peek who can play the guitar. If I became normal, hell, I'd be like my sister. I would hate that!

Of course I'd take a fkn cure. I'd give up EVERYTHING to get out of my aspie sh.thole. I'd give up my condo, my 100K salary as a fkn computer programmer. Sh.t I'd give up the rest of my sh.tty aspie life for one day as an NT!! !! For me, being an aspie means no empathy, inability to relate to others, inability to make friends, no girlfriends (despite being stunning good looking and muscular), being a total antithesis of everything that a man should be, being scared sht.ess of other guys, no passion (other than getting out of Asperger's. I have given myself 12 months to get out of this sh.hole. I'm taking transormational courses, neurofeedback training and anything else I can find. If in 12 months I am where I am today, I'm fkn done with this life. I'm not judging anyone else with Asperger's - if you can live with that and be happy then more power to you. I can't.
Tom

I think it isignorant that nt's try to cure us, they need to overcome their disability first

I think society should be cured ...

That's not really fair. It should be the person who has AS decision, which is why I prefer to ask aspies. Life is hard for us too, not just our family.

Agreed. No one has the right to cure someone against their will.

What would this so-called "cure" be "curing" me of? My intelligence? My refusal to be the "dog" of delusional lunatics? My individuality? My honesty? My lack of self-delusions? My ability to introspect? My hobbies? My not "getting it" from irrationals?

Doesn't seem like a "cure" to me, seems more like a "hallucingenic drug" that'll do me more harm than good.

If you think all of those things are dependant of your Asperger's Syndrome, then, "yes", I guess. Me, I think my individuality would still be present if I had been born socially normal- hobbies, intelligence, personality quirks and such. I wouldn't grab a cure if it were available, but I imagine that if a working cure existed, it would take care of the social clumsiness and the sensory issues that exist within me.

I don't nessisarily believe they are due to my "ASP", but I don't believe my other traits are either. I'm questioning the validity of the "psychological construct" known as ASP as well as "Nuero-Typicality". I don't really see a innate difference between "us" and "them", I think it's abunch of making a "mountain out of a molehill".



What is "socially normal"? I have yet to see a definitive criteria that has no contradictions in it that "NTs" abide by, if it's nothing more than "Rules of the schoolyard Ver. 2.0 adjusted for the "real" world" than I see no validity in the one sided hypocrisy, that's not based on any real rules but rather primitive social hierarchy. I'm not into figurative "butt humping" matches with so-called "norms" to prove "Alphaness".



Introspection (acknowledgement of ones own sins and faults) and self-doubt can be a good thing and I've noticed that many autistics seem to have it in excess (including myself). However it is probably psychologically unhealthy to have it in excess, just like lacking in it is psychologically unhealthy (Narcissism).

I think it's kind of funny how you people see autism as gift and am somewhat disturbed that so many would want to continue their life as they are now. I mean ok, I understand it for the older people, who've lived your life a certain way and now basically changing who you are would be somewhat harsh and I also understand how it's s**t card you've been dealt so yeah, you describe it as a gift and embrace because what else do you have left anyway?

But the younger people, I dunno, just seems like brainwashing to deny them a possible cure because of ASPIE PRIDE

I also loathe hierarchies and herd behaviour, and the emphasis that many people place on conforming... but that wasn't what I meant by socially normal. I wasn't really interacting with my mother when I was a baby; that wasn't normal. In my early childhood, I preferred social isolation because social interaction quite frightened me. That wasn't normal either. Neither were my tantrums, which could be triggered if someone as much as moved a small object on my table for a couple of centimeters. My mother had to (gently) prod me into more appropriate social behaviour; the rest, I slowly figured out by myself and continue to do so, but I can't look back on my childhood and say "I was at least adequate on a social level". There were things that had to be improved on before I could get to the functional level I'm on now. And I owe that mostly to a few non-autistics who stood by me.

I can get into much of what you've said in your posts so far, Demon-Chorus. I was born autistic, I will always be autistic. I don't care what others may think of that; I also don't care about the social customs that are deemed 'acceptable' or 'desired' by a small, shallow group that seems very large, and I think I share this attitude with a considerable amount of people who are not autistic.



You describe yourself as 'neurotypical' in your profile. You should know that 'we people' don't ALL see the syndrome as a gift. The spectrum isn't a hive mind. What is it exactly that disturbs you, could you explain, please? Because it rather startles me that someone would be disturbed simply because I'm following what my mother taught me: to accept myself as I am, because at the end of the day I'm living with me for my entire life. If someone would jump at a cure, let them jump, if it would relieve them of severe stress and misfortune; would you please be open to the idea that those of us who manage fine with our spectrum disorder would pass up a 'cure'?

Well, it's your decision and I don't care about that, but I've also read that some people here are strongly against any kind of cure, period. As in even if they had the choice to cure a kid from birth with it, they wouldn't do it in the name of freedom of choice I had a friend who was deaf since birth but then they found out through an unrelated operation that it was actually his hearing nerve which was just slightly separated, and they could repair it with his mother's permission. She was one of those HE'S UNIQUE, HE SHOULD EMBRACE IT kind of people so she didn't go through with it. Can you imagine it (woops, the question came kind of rhetorical), having a crippling deficiency and knowing you could cure it, but someone else deems it more wise to decide for you what it should be? Well needless to say, that friend got his operation when he became 18 and hasn't seen his b***h of a mother since

No

It's completely not the point of this thread, but as a parent of an autistic child I do enjoy reading the "I used to (...)but that got better" type of posts. My daughter is now where you were then (at least what I can gather from these couple sentences). I do try to prod her gently to be a little more flexible and tolerate some social situations. I try to be as gentle as I can with the prodding while not just sitting by and doing nothing. And here you are. Able to say "back then....but not so much as time went on". I don't want to take away her essence. I just want her to suffer less. And it sure looks like suffering from here to be so unnerved by so many things. So hopefully I am gently prodding in a style that is similar to your mother's since that seems to have been the right thing to do.

Severity is a deciding factor here. I've a relative, a cousin, who has multiple impairments in the mental area. I'd rid him of that in a heartbeat if there were a means of doing so.

The strong opposition on this forum against talk of 'curing' autism or AS, is that so many people view autism only in a pathological light. It's so often that, IF autism is brought up on television or in books or articles, that they speak of how much of a problem it is for those who 'have to' live with someone who has autism. Focus on 'treatment' of autism seems to be preferred to a focus on informing people about the nature of the disorders, so that they can better understand it; which, I think, going by my own experience, is very important in giving those who are autistic and HAVE a chance to get far in life, that very chance.

I'm aware that there are people on the spectrum who are afflicted to such a degree that they're effectively retreated into themselves completely, and will never achieve an adequate rapport with their outside world. But between there and the 'mildest' cases, there are so many different shades.


When you've posted here for a longer while, you'll notice that a great many people here yearn to be less clumsy in a lot of social aspects; but I think the one point where true 'Aspie Pride' is centered on, is that many of us here on the forum can reach a level of functioning relatively comfortably in society without having taken any cure to begin with.

I doubt anyone here is forgetting that there are many who are not as fortunate as they are; and they wouldn't be as mean as to deny them a cure, if there were one.