Medication

I wouldn't touch the stuff, but others must make their own minds up.

Basically, doctors have been trying to peddle anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds to me for years. I'm a medical phobe and not one of them seems capable of bending their heads around the fact that logically you can't give a medical phobe a prescription for something with potentially horrible side effects and necessitating more contact with doctors without giving them another very real reason to worry and actively increasing the anxiety. Doh! Nevertheless, my resistance results in further deterioration of my relationship with them because I won't jump into the box they want to put me in. And that was before I knew the source of my 'medical anxiety' problem was actually my sensory system, not my thought processes or my brain chemistry.

Now that I know, I am so glad I was so intransigent in the face of the bullying of the medical profession. As others have said, no one understands enough about how these things affect the autistic mind. We're not wired the same way. All the research appears to be telling us is that many autistic people report no benefit and many autistic people report more side affects. I haven't thus far found an explanation as to why. Is it because our anxiety isn't always to do with brain chemical imbalance in the first place, or because a healthy brain chemical balance means something different for us, who knows? I'm not pretending to have an answer and I don't think anyone has one yet.

But meanwhile, personally, the medical profession can shove those things where the sun don't shine, because they actually have no more clue than I do as to what they would or wouldn't do to me as an autistic person, let alone the inevitable exacerbation of my medical fears.

I wouldn't touch the stuff, but others must make their own minds up.

Basically, doctors have been trying to peddle anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds to me for years. I'm a medical phobe and not one of them seems capable of bending their heads around the fact that logically you can't give a medical phobe a prescription for something with potentially horrible side effects and necessitating more contact with doctors without giving them another very real reason to worry and actively increasing the anxiety. Doh! Nevertheless, my resistance results in further deterioration of my relationship with them because I won't jump into the box they want to put me in. And that was before I knew the source of my 'medical anxiety' problem was actually my sensory system, not my thought processes or my brain chemistry.

Now that I know, I am so glad I was so intransigent in the face of the bullying of the medical profession. As others have said, no one understands enough about how these things affect the autistic mind. We're not wired the same way. All the research appears to be telling us is that many autistic people report no benefit and many autistic people report more side affects. I haven't thus far found an explanation as to why. Is it because our anxiety isn't always to do with brain chemical imbalance in the first place, or because a healthy brain chemical balance means something different for us, who knows? I'm not pretending to have an answer and I don't think anyone has one yet.

But meanwhile, personally, the medical profession can shove those things where the sun don't shine, because they actually have no more clue than I do as to what they would or wouldn't do to me as an autistic person, let alone the inevitable exacerbation of my medical fears.