I don't think anybody should have to feel like that - like they're intrinsically unacceptable, just for being themselves.
Yes and no.
Despite my various odd challenges posed by my autism, on balance, I'm OK. However, if I was living with uncontrollable meltdowns on a daily basis, severe gastric and allergy problems and mutism in the presence of other humans......then I would be pretty damn keen to find something/anything to alleviate my autistic reality - aka life. In that extreme scenario, it wouldn't be a fear that other people would find me intrinsically unacceptable - no - it would be me, myself and I KNOWING that my life was intrinsically unacceptable..... I would be very actively be looking for "cure" type mitigations.
I don't believe it is safe and reasonable to be 100% certain of the rightness or wrongness of any given situation, proposition or circumstance surrounding someone's autistic life and aspirations of it.
Perhaps I'm just a bit too loose with my "range" but people from these pages seem to regularly confirm that variety of opinion and experience abounds. I am happy with that.
My motivation for putting that up there is not to push any particular theory but stimulate a bit of critical thinking
Well I know that, obs.....coz otherwise I would have taken a different tack with my responses herein.
I am a BIG fan of critical thinking and healthy calm debate.... but as I have said on many occasions in these pages ... I don't think it is possible to do so on an ever growing list of topics.
I believe that some autistic people are actually looking for a "cure" for themselves?!
That's probably true, sadly. I don't think anybody should have to feel like that - like they're intrinsically unacceptable, just for being themselves.
If society was more informed, more accepting, nobody would have to. Well, I can't change society, but I do my best to make a positive contribution - because I have been the 'unacceptable' one very, very often, and if there's anything I can do to help mitigate that for somebody else, I'll try.
I think the dude said it best.
It's nice to see you around the forum again anyway. And I'm glad to read you are looking after your health.
FWIW I was clearly autistic way before I ever was vaccinated.
So the "vaccination cause" hypothesis doesn't (cannot!) work for me.
My way of being is definitely alterable by means of taking things into my body, be they medicines, drugs, or even food.
It's also alterable by what I let into my mind. "Mindfood" as it were.
I've no idea what combination will work best overall, and even more scary, whether I'll even find the correct for me combination "palatable"...
But I am looking for a cure, because the alternative is trying to change society to cater for MY niche condition, and that seems grossly unfair to the unaffected majority.
Can you definitely rule out that just having a healthier diet is good for overall wellness and it's the overall wellness that reduces meltdowns, so that it is directly diet = less meltdowns, or are you in fact trying to prove that overall wellbeing is beneficial to autistic people? (Asking for clarity reasons.)
I'm not talking causative when it comes to autism, because I am firmly in the genetics camp as no missed jab as a kid stopped me being diagnosed.
But I am interested in the exacerbative when it comes to managing autism related issues. As I have a vested interest in improving quality of life for everyone.
I get close to abandoning this place quite often myself for exactly those reasons Number.
In truth I'd LOVE to be "cured" of my Autism.
It's no fecking good having a working fusion reactor, if the way you got there is so unacceptable to the rest of the world and your presentation ability so poor that no-one will give it any credence. It's no good being known for being "unreliable" etc. etc.
I can really sympathise with Caelus and Judge Dredd some days. Except for the very few who find and maintain a support network, Autism is indeed a crippling form of "social retardation" that makes everything in our lives either needlessly difficult or even impossible.
When you have a half decent life (which has to be because other people support you in your deficits) it's only because you are fortunate.
I've been both unfortunate and also blessed in this regard, at different times, so I know the difference and how it changes one's outlook.
All that I am certain of, is that I've really, really, missed doing proper "Work" this last twenty years... Unless someone else does my initial application I just get shitty low paid stuff where you get poorly treated. If someone else who has a different way of thinking and communicating does my CV and initial application letter and gets me to interview, then I used to get reasonably well paying work where my actual skills got used. But it still needed to be contract work, because no-one expects a contractor to join in with the social games.
It dismays me when people just focus on a small part of information and discard the bulk of it for "political" reasons such as the pro/anti vax paradigm that has opened up here. It's fairly obvious to a sane person that traditional vaccinations have saved countless lives around the world. BUT, it also becomes clear if you dig down past the social programming that that has not always been the case. The vaccine manufactiurers and developers have occasionally made some blunders, or encountered unexpected results. So whilst we acknowledge that Vaccines have served humanity very well, let us not fall into the trap of magical thinking that ALL vaccines are totally without risk.
It appears that some vaccines require chemical support in order to work in the form of "adjuvants" and that some of the chemicals used as adjuvants used by some companies are quite "questionable" when the details are made fully available and examined by competent people. That is a part of the real scientific debate that is done in some quarters, and which more simple minded people conflate into a wider almost religious issue.
My motivation for putting that up there is not to push any particular theory but stimulate a bit of critical thinking about what I see as a condition that needs to be "managed" very, very, carefully if one is not to have a very unhappy and poor quality life, such as many on these pages reveal to be the fate for us.
YMMV.
And in your case Pegg......"good'uns"
Everything that you have written needed to be written here and I warmly commend you for a job very well done, indeed. I congratulate you on a very fair, balanced, appropriate and necessary statement.
This applies to everything you have written above - brava.
I haven't investigated the details of the platform or insta tok web cast pod snap outlet that had this video snippet on it. I avoid doing things like that as much as I can....I view most of all of it as tainted poison.
I also feel your sense of incredulity on "cure? - cure fooking what?". I also assume, however, that many autistic folk are pretty keen to see if they can alleviate some of their autistic reality..some autists have proper trouble and would do anything to find mitigation. I believe that some autistic people are actually looking for a "cure" for themselves?!
I make the above comment devoid of any conflation to the specifics of a vaccine context.....it is important not to make those "I want a cure" souls feel too isolated from our pack. There are always a couple of them currently on these pages, and I like to keep their feelings and opinions in mind. We are a broad church of misfits and vagabonds.
Please do not post links to sites like these, they only serve to confuse the naive and aggravate the sensible majority. The vaccine hoax was exposed years ago.
Exactly so.
I feel strongly about this particular nonsense for reasons that I won't go into right now, but suffice to say, I have yet to see an anti-vaxx view of any sort that is well informed about vaccines and their development.
The other point to make about this particular site is that it presents autism as a malady to be 'cured' - a view underpinned by the premise that people with autism are defective.
How many times do we have to go there before we'll learn to embrace people as they are, instead of endlessly targeting people who don't slot into a narrow frame of 'normal'?
Thanks. I am very much aware that a lot of people coming to this site are parents of newly-diagnosed kids, parents who are overwhelmed by the news that their kids have what is commonly viewed as a "disability", and are tip-toeing through the minefield. CAMHS, SEND, SENDCO,EHCP ... even the acronyms are a strange new world.
Maybe a few of the quacks actually believe their own rhetoric. I once had a parent who was convinced that after the pastor had prayed over her child (and she had paid over a thank-offering) her child's autism was cured. Unfortunately, she was the only one who saw the miracle. The school, social services and health professionals were unconvinced. Like the Red Queen, there are those who can believe three impossible things before breakfast.
Then we have the cynical, manipulative snake-oil vendors who sell their remedies. Sometimes there is a small placebo effect, or some other minor effect from their herbs and potions, sometimes not. Then we have the dangerous clinicians like Wakefield, and the other guy who chemically castrated autistic boys. If there is a hell he should be first on the barbecue with the paedophile priests.
I think it behoves those of us who are "old hands" , whether we are professionals or experts by experience, to only provide information which is supported by evidence. And where the scientific theories are falsified, dump them. Dump on them.
Most of us have fundamental sphincters, but it is best not to talk through them.
Personally, I get a sense of someone. There aren't particular parameters that I am concious of when realising that I have started to feel like someone is a friend.....in this place, I can really only conceptualise the members here as "souls" rather than people.
Let's face it, I am a bit odd.
I've known you for ages and I consider you a friend. I trust and understand you. We are both men of a certain age from England. We PM quite regularly but you don't appear on my "friends list" coz all that type of stuff is WAY too close to social media for my taste. Yuk !! Most people with whom I PM regularly do not appear on my friend list.
There are various other souls in this place that I have never PM'ed but whom I sense as friends here too. By your mates Rik assessment......I reckon me and Roy would happily meet that test, and there are newer members here (always) with whom I feel an affinity.
We're autistic man !! This stuff of "friends" is all just agg and nonsense. That's why we struggle.
BED !
Everything that you have written needed to be written here and I warmly commend you for a job very well done, indeed. I congratulate you on a very fair, balanced, appropriate and necessary statement.
The OP has swung open a door, and the matters prompted by such a presentation are amorphous.
I speak here as neither one of the naive, nor one of the sensible majority, I am Number.
Conflation, emotion, simplification, politicisation "of the whole" are rife when even the slightest "flavours" are "spotted" within public discourse these days. I think the OP dosed this presentation with hot chilli sauce.
I personally don't think it is possible to discuss an ever growing list of topic areas in open forum. I have made my list available to the OP in the past for consideration.
I also note, however, that some souls are not immediately drawn-to-arms, ignore the chilli and have their minds taken in different directions with resultant posts that;
a) a good news story about someone's autism reality (that came from me)
and
b) constipation (that came from Deepthought)......[oh, ok, he said diet, but not as funny!]
Again, I commend you on presenting salient and important information surrounding these matters. Bravo.
Please do not post links to sites like these, they only serve to confuse the naive and aggravate the sensible majority. The vaccine hoax was exposed years ago.
From the BMJ, BMJ 2010;340:c2803 24 May 2010: "Dr Wakefield was found guilty of dishonesty and irresponsibility by the GMC, the UK’s regulatory body. The fitness to practise panel held that Dr Wakefield abused his position, subjected children to intrusive procedures such as lumbar puncture and colonoscopy that were not clinically indicated, carried out research that flouted the conditions of ethics committee approval, and brought the medical profession into disrepute (BMJ 29 January 2010, ;340:c593, doi:10.1136/bmj.c593).
After the GMC’s verdict the Lancet retracted the 12 year old paper that sparked the crisis in confidence in the safety of the vaccine (BMJ 2 February 2010;340:c696, doi:10.1136/bmj.c696).
The paper, published when Dr Wakefield was a consultant gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, caused the biggest public health scare in UK history. Although the paper did not claim it had found a definite link between the vaccine and autism, Dr Wakefield suggested at a press conference that single vaccines for measles, mumps, and rubella might be preferable to the triple vaccine."
The biggest public health scare in UK history ... or at least, it was before Covid brought out a new batch of crazies. Please do not perpetuate it. Snake oil salespeople will continue to schmooze desperate parents into buying expensive and useless "cures" for their kids' autism. Please do not encourage them!
I'm working on and testing a hypothesis on myself at the moment,
can be used to lessen the impact of my "meltdowns", with what appears to be some success.
You see it's funny ain't it..........it is actually the fact that I have realised and accepted that I am autistic that has achieved this same affect for me !
In the pre-self-aware state, I would stress, bluster and confuse myself thinking "what the hell is wrong with me and my thoughts." My alcohol intake, stress and anxiety was episodically through the roof with many internalised meltdowns and a few explosive externalised ones !
But now this does not happen because I understand my thoughts, actions and needs FAR FAR better.
Now I know, calmness reigns supreme.
I reckon my risk factors of dying of heart attack, stroke or (the other one for men of my age) has been VASTLY diminished by becoming self-aware of my autism. Oh, and lets not forget the other, other one = volumetric alcohol abuse = seems safely contained now in my rear view mirror.
Thank you autism.
Number.
I'm working on and testing a hypothesis on myself at the moment, that diet can be used to lessen the impact of my "meltdowns", with what appears to be some success.
There is a lot of peer reviewed research on supplementary diets that can at least reduce autistic co-morbidities ~ with one informative branch of which being available by way of the following link:
I got into this stuff in 2016, and it has made a big difference in terms of reducing the severity of my co-morbidities, and in fact eliminating one. Perhaps you may also find this information useful.
Bumping this up, because although Iain's rather scathing post does illustrate some unqualified thinking going on, this is nevertheless an interesting video, and does raise some questions in my mind.
We all know that Autism is on the increase, although, just as with cancer, there's a debate about how we are just "identifying it better these days", maybe there is a causitive or aggravating factor that could be identified and a simple diet change could make life easier?
I'm working on and testing a hypothesis on myself at the moment, that diet can be used to lessen the impact of my "meltdowns", with what appears to be some success.
