Cure?

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I would not wish to give anyone false hope. I have had repeated acquiantances with it and know it all too well, regarding hope about a different illness (I never had aspergers on the agenda as curable).

But in way of explanation, [cannot post links]. And then read the entire thread.

Sorry if I have jumped the gun, point it at me again.

(If a moderator will fix the problem I will post the link)

I'm fine the way that I am. I don't need to be fixed.

New members cannot post links until they've made around ten posts. It is an anti-spammer measure.

If you start talking cure for autism expect a lot of flack.

Maybe you can explain what you mean by 'cure'.

If you are hoping that your autism will suddenly be taken away - you are in for a very long disappointing wait.

If you are looking for treatments and therapies that can alleviate some of the the most debiliating aspects of autism - there is reason to be guardedly hopeful.

When people say 'cure' around here it instantly divided into the Hatfields and McCoy's. I'm not really sure everyone is interpretting the use of the word 'cure' in the same way. If everyone could simply explain what THEIR definition of cure is, then maybe we'd finally be able to have a civil conversation on the topic.

When people mention cures for autism, I'm reminded of the antediluvian practice of performing lobotomies to "cure" mental illness.

If I were to be "cured," I'm not so sure there would be any of me still left. Alot of my personality traits can be attributed to AS.

I wonder where this thread is going to go. It will be interesting to see what happens.

To those who don't want a cure:
Pick the thing about you (inherent attribute or character attribute) that you like most
Then do the next thing you like, go down the list of things you like, until you reach things you are indifferent to, and stop.

Being 'cured' will not get rid of a single thing in that list you just imagined. If you think otherwise, you misinterpret the nature of your condition and what it makes so about you that is so.

Furthermore, my explanation of what aspergers even is, is more valuable than the cure, I've come to realise, and I have that too.

I'm not going to try and surmount the anti-spam barrier. The information is out there now on the web and people will find it and spread the word eventually, if it's as valuable to others as I hope it is and as it was for me.

Thanks and nice day to you all.

I've changed my mind and decided to reiterate everything here in a far better format. It's being written now.

Can the people who do not want a cure please not spam every thread about a supposed cure?

I mean, I would love to have certain issues taken care of. Sensory issues for example. Others do not. That is their choice and I respect that. However I still do not understand what would be wrong with a cure for these debilitating effects of autism which is like laser surgery for people who have vision issues: up to the individual.

They'd force it.

All of us on government funds for survival would be forced, for one thing. They can make that contingent on getting "treatment".

The first thing on the list is AS obsessions, actually.

Now, if you are going to claim that you can make it so that I can turn my brain into whatever I want, pick and choose whatever traits I like, make myself a custom brain, then you're about two hundred years ahead of your time and I want to know where you got your time machine. Because that's impossible with current science.

It's not the discussion of a cure that I'm opposed to, really; it's the mentality that I can't really have a life until I find some kind of cure. It's the idea that if I need help with things, I can't have a worthwhile life. That disability is a horrible horrible thing and getting rid of it is Priority Number One. It's not. I can live my life with autism and all its drawbacks, and it will still be MY life, in no way inferior to anybody else's. When people focus on a cure, they drag with it the assumption that life with autism must naturally be inferior and that people with autism must naturally be less capable. That's the danger.

That's great, if you think that, and it is not, instead, something that you tell yourself but don't feel deep inside. No need to change what you don't want to change. No need to be moved forward if you're not being held back by anything. Conversely, I would ask that you say to those who do not feel it deep inside and do want it, that they take it. For a time I did not want it, and then even made a shining virtue out of what I considered to be my 'autistic traits'. Obviously, no longer.

The government? Where do you live? I've heard of forced abortions in China, and mandatory vaccines in various nations, but autism is neither pregnancy, nor is it contagious.

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Warning: this essay contains FLAGRANT and IRRESPONSIBLE SPECULATION, ABSENCE OF SOURCES OR CITATIONS, POSSIBLE IGNORANCE OF COUNTER-EXAMPLES and SPURIOUS AND DUBIOUS CONCLUSIONS. Viewer discretion is advised.

(I also used 'intellect' a a bit of a catch all where in some places I should have said 'consciousness' or 'awareness', but I cannot be troubled to figure out where the difference applies right now).

I'll start by saying that I'll first talk about what I believe, both in regard to what aspergers may be caused by as a root physical cause, and then as a psychological issue, and then, transcribe the personal experience that for me was evidently the cure for the physical root.

It starts with a deficit or denial of access (I'll stick with deficit) in Executive Function (EF from hereon). EF provides automatic interpretation of the world to micromanage your awareness so that your intellect doesn't have to do that (i.e. defers/delegates that activity to that faculty). The EF is the manager of your mind, where the self, the intellect, is the CEO that wants to delegate to the EF, but to varying degrees, in ASD bearers, has the EF delegate to it.

Regardless of possible physical cause, and whether or not what I am about to say is true in attempting to ascribe a possible physical cause, what I am certain of is the deficit in EF.

The root cause of this deficit may for some people be some form of repression (though I doubt it), but in my case was physical. I strongly speculate, for myself, a deficit in metabolism of glutathione, and by studies I've read this may be via the inherent (in)activities of methylation. I believe that a chronic deficit of glutathione takes the life and vitality out of you in a general sense, and makes everything more of a struggle motivationally. I believe this metabolism deficit could possibly occur at the foetal stage, but I'm not sure if that is relevent.

The main issue is that glutathione also removes metals from the body. I believe, due to physical symptoms as evidence during a therapy I applied to myself, that I had accumulated mercury, possibly in the prefrontal cortex where EF takes place, and/or possibly in the spine which may have brought on the chronic fatigue syndrome I also suffered from, since age 14 (which I am also seeing the symptoms of fade).

With the EF impaired (or even barely functioning), the intellect is left to compensate for a chronically overoccupied EFs' activites. Because of this limited resource, the self also narrows its focus, and has to forfeit concerns that would normally be taken care of by the EF and select among fewer options wherever options are presented, including activity choice.

The (possibly only) positive consequence of this is that the intellect, perhaps through being overexercised due to its overcompensation, or perhaps just a programmed response to grow the faculty and corresponding brain-region, grows stronger than it otherwise would, to variable degrees. This would account for some apparent differences in the brain that are seen in autistics (I haven't researched whether these were activity differences or structural differences, but structural differences would be more pertinent). This is also why those on the higher functioning end show up, on average, as having higher intelligence than the average that everyone else is at. It doesn't always wind up with an above average person because a person could be born who, if they were 'neurotypical', would be unintelligent, and just ends up a bit better than unintelligent.

It may also explain savantism: a wholely crushed EF down to the most incrediblely tunneled focus, raises one in however many million it is to develop an incredible aptitude at an activity due to an extremely streamlined but powerful intelligence. The result of the sun (intellect) concentrated through the tunnel until it becomes a lazer-beam of concentration. A bored, unoccupied intellect will grab onto anything, and the power of the intellect will determine whether it's a lazer or a dot that shines. It will determine whether the individual arranges books in order or stacks them, or becomes a human calculator, human time-piece or human encyclopedia.

I believe that the 'narrowed vision' or 'tunnel vision' metaphor, represents their limited EF, and there is, to use the metaphor of a tunnel further, a zone between the borders of the tunnel and where its borders would actually be if their EF were fully functional. That zone is where EF's responsibilities get delegated (back onto, in some cases) the intellect, and irrelevent, distracting stimulae gets the opportunity to enter, and that the intellect is then forced to manage. Some stimulae is just faintly distracting, others provoke more extreme reactions. The 'out of placeness' is the first determining factor, and then if they also have any emotions toward it. The level of the intellect will determine the sophistication of any emotional reaction.

To explain a separate point for a moment: In body language (aka subverbal communication), there is a crucial distinction that experts have failed (unless you know something that I do not) to observe: that there is both reading of and interpretation of body language.

For an analogy, senses don't interpret their own message. A worm can sense the surroundings, but it cannot interpret them in a conceptual way.

Similarly, body language transmits whatever it transmits, but doesn't interpret itself for you.

To be unable to read body language, is to see it but literally have it mean nothing to you--not even if it is a smile.

To be unable to interpret body language, on the other hand, is to know 'basically what it means' but not know (or struggle to determine) where it fits into the bigger picture. Those on perhaps the top quarter of the spectrum also wonder where more meta behaviour than one isolated expression of the body, fits into the bigger picture, i.e. seeing fully why the emmitter is doing what they are doing, which would then allow the subconscious to feed the mind a relevent response, instead of giving off a feeling of helplessness (and later on, other emotions such as a learned fear or panic).

The higher you are on the spectrum determines where between the poles of reading versus interpreting, you will fall. I'm not sure that anyone on earth doesn't read at all; they simply don't get very far in the delegation process and so give up after graduating to the understanding of smiling/laughing/angry etcetera, as that's all the EF can manage. Furthermore, the lack of 'natural animatedness' that I believe a glutathione deficit sometimes causes an uninterested in people generally, until and if the need to deal with others is foisted upon them (but I think the main reason is that they feel they have no chance of dealing with others rather than they wouldn't be interested if they act on that interest).

Now, the stronger the intellect is from the beginning, and its inclination to devote time to interpretation, will also raise an autistic to a higher level of efficacy and perhaps raise his theoretical placement on the spectrum, if it doesn't arrive at neurotic interpretations of things: particularly in regard to people, i.e. the social. Of course... if you were to offer to yourself enough wholely correct interpretations of the social and of other people, and uproot any neurotic ones, and your EF became physically restored to a normal persons, you might not be by any fitting definition on the spectrum at all anymore? This is what has happened to me, with my intelligence still intact. I didn't, as some of you would think, have to become 'like other people' by adopting any of the nonessential, nondefining aspects of those who are not merely the neurotypical, but also simply the typical.

But that's now. In my life before, I came to extremely neurotic interpretations. My 'theory of people' was that everyone was to some degree a bully, that both kids can be cruel and adults are just as, with a few exceptions ('I got along well with adults'... 'until they became my peers')--a very unfortunate way to think--and that was literally my whole philosophy on people for a long time. And of course that would create a desire to never be the same as they. Who wouldn't want to be, under that interpretation?

Others come to different interpratations, but the fundamental error that causes people to 'want to remain with autism' is to conflate with, or substitute for, the neurotypical and the typical. The typical means: the average person; an arch-type that is represented by every person they've met and how they perceived them and how they were treated by them and how they were made to feel by them, which stand as reference experiences.

The posture/eyes/face/chest-in-the-voice don't lie. Neurotypicals are wired to go by the subverbal. And, so are the ones (high up, and maybe even, lower) on the autistic spectrum, if you can believe it; if you are on the spectrum you have the capacity to get the measure of people through their body language, and have used it in your life, and you might have used it today. Whether or not you would consciously disdain such an idea. How you then interpret and/or respond to that measure of the person you gauge, is another matter, and another subject I'll discuss soon.

To be able to survive 10, 000 years ago, you needed good EF to be able to use the non-verbal means by which a man or woman passively, not consciously, demonstrates certainty, vitality, and more generally speaking, mettle, to other people, through their body and their voice tonality (the subverbal), which is also the only way that humans actually respond when assessing people as people and not just a bundle of thoughts. People back then were tribal, and you had to be in the game to avoid being trodden on, bullied, or even exiled, the last of which was almost certain death.

You earn recognition (in the tribe, in the school playground, wherever) through three inter-operating factors, a triangle if you like that depends on all sides to stay upright and form a circuit, which are the following: physical competence (not just strength, but reflexes which are informed/programmed by the other, mental, attributes), mental power (powerful intellect, intelligence), and finally: management, i.e. the EF, which means the swiftness to adapt, deal with conflicting information, remember short-term facts, choose among tasks, block out irrelevent stimulae, and from the opposite point: resistance to being overwhelmed by both perceptions and events.

One earns self-esteem through efficacy of their mental or physical prowess, but one earns bolstering social feedback, and a resulting place on the social ladder, through self-esteem projected through the body via a functioning EF, that has integrated the knowledge of ones worth into itself. Of course, if the EF itself becomes an incompetency, that will get programmed into it too.

In other words, one earns their place and the rewards metted to it, through unconscious display as a result of understood self-esteem drawn from efficacy (which, ultimately, is survival value).

If it were for the right reasons, as you see them to be, would any of you reject the bolstering social feedback and social position that I speak of? However, if you lack the three attributes, the triangle that completes a circuit and inter-operates, you won't be able to project the subverbal emmissions authentically (though you can fake it for a time), and you won't be able to ever win a position on any social ladder for very long, though you may get treated with measured respect from certain individuals.

That is to say, you will then not be 'socially relevent', and will not be at the bottom of the social ladder so much as you are not on it at all. And you will find it hard to deal with the onslought of continual rejection, especially when attempting to be relevent through the use of your compensating intellect trying to consciously generate EF-producing body language instead of letting the EF do it, and what comes out sounds false, stilted, or awkward; in other words, when you try to fit in, it seems to make things worse.

To fail in the attribute of EF, regardless of how strong the intellect becomes as a compensation, does not make a difference to how you measure up in a social way. You will give off the feedback that you can't manage things, and in more severe cases that you need to be managed by others, or have others interact with people on your behalf. And if you try to generate body language consciously, perhaps also give off the impression of strangeness.

Short version: if the triangle collapses and the circuit breaks, you don't feel 'upright', and you don't show it. The only thing you will project in the end is 'I'm not playing this game' (and in your mind, 'I can't play this game').

This is where the (unique to aspergers) neuroses have a chance to develop,though it doesn't have to happen, and some people have only minor issues in their social life and do win placement through hard work, though they may still carry around baggage from an earlier time when they weren't at that point, which may be what is keeping those 'minor issues' still in place. Those that do tread a neurotic path, though, will start to rationalise the absence of the deserved reward of recognition and placement on the social ladder, to preserve ones self-esteem in the face of apparently less intelligent people winning more of lifes deserts and climbing to higher places, and bombarding you with rejection and even cruelty.

Before I go on: some who are lower functioning do not have the sophistication to become neurotic or develop unhelpful ways of explaining human behaviour. But for everyone who can, this is what I'll now talk about. Just know that it goes with a qualifier, a maybe -- not everyone arrives at the same thoughts. These are the ones that are typical to me or those I've seen.

To start: some will think, as a self-defense mechanism (interpretation/rationalisation to preserve self-esteem) that they should be socially valued for the intellect and regard the subverbally social as something that should be thrown out as needless since they have the intellect and don't understand what the social achieves. This is, from their point of view, a very obvious thing to think. "I am stronger in mind, I don't act weird or idiotic like you neurotypicals do, so I should be recognised, and not you."

This will never happen, of course, even if one could get the NT person to consciously agree with you, as they wouldn't be able to put it into practice or override their instinct. That example would start with the autistic and the other person; the other person won't surrender their place for yours and say 'I'll look up to you'. They'll just say they respect you, which is the nearest thing.

Sometimes, they will go as far as regarding the social itself as vulgar, due to some of the numerous worse examples of the human race who are nonetheless socially adept (have all three sides of the triangle) and come across as vulgar, assinine or bizarre, and in too many cases really are. They come to associate the social as not just with no apparent necessity but as arbitrary and inane, or having bullies, cowards, fools and doltish conformists for its representitives.

Arriving at this, they may decide they 'know what everyone is about' and give up attempting to fit in, and discriminately or indiscriminately block people out (ignore them at the most extreme)--even if the person trying to get their attention is determined or even a threat.

They also may develop intolerances to certain sensory input beyond the mere distracting, and become distressed, upset, and/or enraged by those who show gutsy or noisy abandonment, and through it a disregard for their need (and what might be to their beliefs, THE need, i.e. one that they believe everyone shares) to not have distractions that for them is absolutely necessary to normal functioning due to avoiding overloading the EF, which causes the EF to load what it can't handle onto an intellect with ten books stacked in its hand already. They interpret the person as not caring or even punishing them cruelly, because they don't relate to the mind that has a functional EF --i.e. one that filters out stimulae normally-- and doesn't relate to their mind in turn. They implicitly, unconsciously assume that everyone feels as they, and can't understand the disregard. Sometimes it becomes as extreme as wanting to be violent to the person, due perhaps to supressed or repressed rage from being figuratively trodden underfoot by the crude and undeserving others.

They may encounter experiences where they helplessly either look up to or fear those who act more like they know what they are doing, or get the better of those who look even less certain than they do, as much as any human being ever has done. And, they will hate themselves for doing both.

The ones who succeed in withdrawing from socialising completely are protected, by a guardian or carer, or by people in the workplace who understand their need to not interact. They basically kill off social activity, since it isn't working, as one would stop using their arm because it isn't serving them properly, until it stops working at all. Fortunately, the mind has recovery potential, and so does the arm if you don't chop it off.


[That's part 1. I haven't offered any solutions yet, only explanations of the problem, and I edited this a hundred times and have become quite tired. I could have done ten times the job if I'd set aside a week for it, and probably missed mentioning some things that would have made my points more lucid, but I'd rather people read this than what I had put out on the web before, so I wanted to get it in there before they go and read that instead.

Give me your glowing appreciation if it speaks to you, and your harshest criticism if it doesn't. Thank you for reading.]

Uhm... a deficit in executive functioning has been known and defined. We call it "attention deficit disorder" and give people stimulants for it.

@caruga Forgive me but... Are you trying to sell something?

The US actually can and does force things on people with disabilities by making financial support contingent on getting treatment. If someone with schizophrenia is disabled by his illness but can be stabilized with meds then he's no longer disabled so they make SSI/SSDI contingent on getting treatment. Rightly so, imo. The risk is that treatments are dangerous but things are improving.

Why does this thread make me want to say, "Life is pain. Anybody who tells you differently is selling something." -The dread pirate Robertson (Wesley), The Princess Bride

As I understand it, SSI/SSDI eligibility isn't determined by how disabled you are or are not on medication, although I could be mistaken. I know I could medicate my ADHD but once I go off benefits (including medicaid) I have no more medication...

I do know that my benefits eligibility (not SSI or SSDI) is contingent upon continuing treatment, but also on applying for SSI.

I am extremely dubious about the idea of a cure being real as well as the explanation of how autism supposedly works given in this thread.

@Verdandi

I could well be remembering wrong and/or misunderstanding what I had read. I'll see if I can find some information about it.

From the SSA's Blue Book:

This shows they look at the severity of the condition.



This shows they look at the medication usage. The assumption is that the person will be on meds if the condition he has is treated with meds. They take into consideration whether the person still has limitations after medication. If someone is refusing medication it casts doubts on whether or not he really has the condition. There are always exceptions to the rule. Descisions are made by people who make the best judgment calls they know how to make. There are always cases where people simply don't respond to meds or the side effects are severe and can't take meds at all.

The Blue Book