Is giving in to medication a weakness?

Sorry to hear you're in that situation.    It would annoy me to see abused animals.   I would feel compelled to act.

It is possible to just walk away from all stress and anxiety - but obviously, there are consequences to every decision - it all depends on your ability to accept those consequences - whether they be financial or spiritual.

Yes re-jigging your life to reduce anxiety is better.

I live in the middle of no-where . i have 16 acres and live in the middle ,the nearest house is 1/2 a mile away ,the next house is 1 mile away.

Yet i see the sheep neglected in the field next to me ,14 are on 3 feet with foot rot ,a couple have died and there carcasses are left. I see the 300 year old oak that has been cut 3/4 through the trunk so the wind brings it down .Then the farmer cuts it up for there eco boiler 

In this society it is so hard to escape  stress, perhaps it is just me .

mael said:

All well and good but living in a sensory void would create anxiety itself.

What?

The symptoms of anxiety are real - but treating symptoms is not solving anything - just delaying fixing the real problem.

I'm suggesting that if you find something stressful, stop doing it.

Re-jigging your life to reduce the cause of the anxiety is surely much better than just doping yourself up to go back into the fire?

Plastic said:

but a broken leg is real

Are you saying the symptom's of stress and anxiety aren't real

Plastic said:

Stress and anxiety are self-created and so just walking away from the source of stress would stop the stress and anxiety.

All well and good but living in a sensory void would create anxiety itself.

The point i was trying to make was sometimes you need a crutch , i to have been on diazepam and various things ,yes they do make you foggy, so i don't take them know .But sometimes and for some people it is the only way to cope 

Hi - sorry if you took it that way - it wasn't intended - but a broken leg is real and needs pain relief.  

Stress and anxiety are self-created and so just walking away from the source of stress would stop the stress and anxiety.

Most ASD people are so tied up with their symptoms that they are totally blind to the cause of those symptoms.

BTW - I'm not NT - I'm very, very Asperger's.

Just wondering why you jump in and criticize and put words in my mouth .I didn't say fixing a broken leg .

you have done that several times now . [ do you realize you are doing it?]

i suppose its a nt status thing .

I'm on a low dosage of anti-depressant and have been for years, at this point I doubt if it's actually doing anything.

My diagnosis grounded me a lot - as it helped sort out the confusion in my life over the years, broke down some of the guilt and brought me to a place where my place in the world made sense. I'm still re-evaluating and re-processing but I'm grasping how much I need to maintain lifestyle changes to lessen the more unpleasant feelings I can have.

My anxiety and associated foibles are still there though. The time they disappeared completely was when I had a set daily routine, was left alone (no work) and I could manage what, and how much, information I was exposed to. How long that would have lasted beyond the two weeks I enjoyed it, I don't know.  But even if stuff does get overwhelming I seem to manage it slightly better - I can think of a few episodes where, if the same had happened a few years ago, I'd have been signed off again.

The medication took the edge off for me. And that's all it did/does. For a while I did wonder if there was any scientific basis for it at all  - Joanna Moncrieff of UCL is highly critical of their use, but like any discipline, there are tensions in the field as to the direction it's going.

I found being able to engage with my diagnosis has given me more of a sense of control over my life and having the option to offload to a therapist and change my worldview helped tremendously. As Plastic mentions, understanding autism how affects you and then adjusting your life accordingly is a good way to go.

I'm too much of a pragmatist, I can't align myself with the idea that using medication is "weakness", although in the same breath I'm not always comfortable with the idea of medicating emotions. Sometimes they are trying to tell us something - mine started to dissipate when I felt listened to. My anxiety now I can link with events and situations instead of that all encompassing generalised sense of anxiety which is there from waking up to going to sleep. 

There are some things which means for those of us on the spectrum there will be a heightened anxiety response. The "intolerance of uncertainty" concept is one I really relate to. Even when I moved city/job because I wanted to, my anxiety (no excitement, no optimism, no looking forward to it) was overwhelming and my brain/feelings just shut down to manage it. Some things, I'm thinking, I'm going to be stuck with. 

This is really interesting. Perhaps most GP’s should read this. I don’t know about your surgery, but we have to tell the receptionist why you want to see a GP before you can make an appointment. If you say anything about feeling down or anxious, the GP has the prescription half written out when you walk in.

Yes, blur is exactly what I was talking about. It’s horrible. Terrible really that products can be sold as a “fix” that make anyone feel that way.

I found CBD oil pretty useless and expensive. Kanna tablets are a bit better.

I was interested to read the anxiety guidance section on the advice and guidance site here and also the NICE Guidelines, which caution against use of medication for sole autistic problems. Check them out and see what you think.

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/mental-health/anxiety/autistic-adults

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG142/chapter/1-Guidance#interventions-for-coexisting-mental-disorders

Having said that the question is "do they work"? And I am trying to look more into the studies that look at this.

I also have Bipolar and am on a range of pills which have helped me to some extent. I am also going for some CBT (with a pinch of salt Plastic). This is on top of immersing myself fin every self-help book I can get my hands on.

Whatever you decide, don't judge yourself if you can avoid doing so. Everyday is a Winding Road as Sheryl Crowe would sing.

I'd be careful - taking things that affect who you are means you would not be yourself.      I was put on antidepressants many years ago and I remember just walking around in a fog - you can't be depressed because you can't be anything - life becomes a blur of existence.    I hated it.

It's absolutely not like fixing a broken leg.

Homeopathy really is just a scam - at best, it's a placebo.    Many people believe in it but people also believe in UFOs and ghosts.

Herbal effects can be marginal - at least increasing the margins for Holland & Barrett - 99% profit margins.    Again - some people 'believe' but don't understand the dosing levels that you'd actually need - the classic is Turmeric - you need to eat pounds of it every day to have any measurable effect.

You'd probably do better knowing more about the way your ASD actually affects you and then engineer your life to be kinder to yourself.

No using medication is ok ,If you broke your leg would you take pain killers ?

Sometimes life gets to much and taking the edge off helps .

I think it isn't good to pop pills over a long time frame ,using meds to cope over shorter events is ok.

But it is pros and cons ,