"Aspies don't smoke"

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Why would they do such a terrible thing?.......oh well I guess I can still buy an energy drink and mix it with alcohol.

Last time I checked I could still get alcoholic energy drinks in Missouri. Though, I do not drink them often, they are too sweet for me.

I started smoking because I had a smoking fetish. I guess I still do but it's not as strong as it used to be. A paraphilia as a reason to start smoking, I bet you didn't see that one coming.

I smoke, I like smoking. Not because anyone told me to, not because I'm an aspie even IMHO. I just do it because I like it. I know it makes me sick, I remember that every time I lay down at night and have to get back up and hit an inhaler before all that gunk settles in my lungs and makes me wheezy when I lay down. I like smoking anyway, it gives me something to do. I kinda think sometimes I do it these days because it is another thing to occupy my time. I also do it because it's addicting as hell. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it. I don't know why I do, I just do. And I will quit, because me doing it just because I like it is pretty selfish in my book. And I don't like being selfish. I gave myself till 2012. I got tired of saying "Oh next week" and not sticking with it, so my new years resolution was to give myself a whole year. HA! If I quit before that, great. If not, I'll beat the crap out of myself on 1/1/2012

some aspies do smoke.
my mom did. and I used to. gah, dang Pall Malls were some of the worst ones.
being a aspie does not mean that we may or may not do something.
to think that all aspies do not smoke. is like thinking that all aspies do not drive. just because some famous aspie did not drive a vehicle.
we are all individuals with individual likes and dislikes. the main common factor for us, is our area of autism. and not all aspies are gonna be the same on that either.

Bethie, you are my new virtual heroine

I have to agree with that. I don't laugh about it and merely see it as an attempt to find common lifestyle traits and common ground among aspies, but I also think it's a futile effort to look for similarities beyond the key diagnostic traits.



I used to smoke a lot until I gave it up five years ago, although I swore myself to never start this habit. I only started to smoke around age 18 because I experimented with hashish, which is usually mixed with tobacco. Before I knew it, I was addicted to nicotine, and it has greatly increased my productivity over the years. I was able to work ten hours straight back when I smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. Now that I've given it up, I find it much harder to focus and motivate myself.

I view nicotine and caffeine as productivity-enhancing drugs. I would even speculate that the increasing popularity of these drugs in the 17th and 18th century kickstarted the Age of Enlightenment and the industrial revolution I'm only half joking. It really is interesting that as soon as tobacco and coffee became widespread in Western Europe, cultural and technological evolution went into overdrive. But of course nobody should take that as a reason to start smoking

If you find it impossible to give up, you might want to look into electronic cigarettes and other replacement products such as nicotine nasal spray. E-cigarettes are also cheaper than tobacco products. They contain no tar and produce no carcinogenic hydrocarbons, so the only remaining health risk is that nicotine slightly increases the blood pressure. But that can be offset with a healthy diet.

Not that I want to defend smoking, but we all risk cancer by breathing and eating. Free radicals produced by metabolic processes are the main cause of cancer, so you can't ever get your risk factor down to zero.

There are many things that increase the risk of injury and disease. For example, you risk life and health every time you enter a car. Cars kill, maim and injure more than 50 million people world-wide every year, and street traffic is among the top 5 global contributors to death and injury. It's right up there with poverty, famine, infectious diseases and natural disasters. Traffic has been predicted to be the third-leading contributer to injury and disease by 2020 (source).

Of course cars provide a greater economic benefit than cigarettes, so the trade-off is easier justified. It was just an example of how many people risk their health and lower their statistical life expectancy for the sake of convenience. Diet and exercise are other examples. How many people live on (and can afford) a really healthy diet and exercise enough? Most people do things that feel good and make their life more comfortable, without thinking too much about the long-term consequences. And those who try to live as healthy as possible might be missing out on all the fun

That's an interesting reason I wouldn't call it a paraphilia though, unless you absolutely need your partner to smoke a cigarette during... erm... recreational activities. For a paraphilic person, the fetishized object is more important than a human partner, to the point where a human partner is entirely optional.

Medically there's no standardized definition on that. An "optional paraphilia" can be one that is preferred but not absolutely necessary for copulation.

And I haven't smoked since Halloween, I've been using personal vaporizers (some people call them electronic cigarettes) instead.

I smoked cigarettes on and off in my late teens/early 20s, but I was never addicted. I haven't smoked tobacco in almost 15 years.

I'm a former smoker, dopamine enhancement/elevation/it's subsequent addiction are quite a standard preference/desire/trap for pretty much anyone who has a brain IME, so if there were a correlating factor for AS and not smoking, I would assume it would be a secondary effect i.e. greater parental intervention in personal life/less time alone with peers for folks with an early diagnosis...

Aspies don't smoke? News to me.

*is smoking a cigarette this very moment*

I definitely don't see the appeal.

I can't stand the feeling you get in your lungs and throat after smoking.

Although I understand that once you're addicted it's hard to stop, I really can't understand why anyone would smoke enough to become addicted to it in the first place.

It's because when you first start smoking you get a high from it. At least that's what got me hooked on cigarettes.