If there was a "cure" to autism/aspergers would u?

Post Reply New Topic

hell no. i'm glad there is no cure actually. i know there are a lot of people who want to be cured but there are also tonnes of us who dont and we all know that if we were minors at the time of diagnosis that we would be forced to take it. i don't want to be forced to conform to anyones norm. i've spent my entire life being told (belittled) by normal people that there is something wrong with me for being different. i do not wish to be like them. aspergers is who i am- it formed me. its affected the way i was treated, the way i reacted to life, the way i percieved things and so formed my personality. for example my being bullied for my stuttering/poor social skills/ formal/ expressionless speach (among other things) led me to being isolated(and paranoid) which led me to books(because theyre full of info and facilitated my desire to escape) which led me to left wing ideas/feminism which formed my morals and led me to being accepting of minority groups and other social outsiders which led to me being ok with my sexuality, gender exression and the odd bits of me that society doesnt like "just because". there are other examples like that. if i were to remove the aspergers what would be left of me? if i were to have grown up without it who would i have become?

Arguably NOT the 'you' that you are now...and...I know that's your point. Being happy with who one is probably helps one to say no to the OPs question. There are other reasons, for sure, but comfortable is a good place to stay!

Am I the only one who would take a cure? I don't believe, hypothetically, that if I were to take a cure I would become normal. Even if I gain the social abilities of an NT, my memories growing up as an aspie will still influence me. I would become something that transcends both aspergers and neurotypicality. Being an aspie taught me many things, but the anxiety and paranoia that comes with people-blindness and an overactive amygdala are not something I want to keep. It is having an impact on my life and I am struggling to keep up. Aspergers is not the only thing that makes me who I am, it's not the only thing that formed my viewpoint, and it's not the only thing that makes me different from other people.

Stop being afraid of becoming "normal" if you're cured, because it just won't happen. Neurotypical = / = Normal! Many NTs don't consider themselves normal and hate "normal people" as much as you do. Some neurotypicals are VERY VERY weird and interesting.

no

You're not the only one who'd take a cure, you're just probably the only one who's said so on this thread. These threads pop up from time to time and a lot of people are probably sick of them.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my reason for not wanting a cure has nothing to do with fear, or with the idea that neurotypical means normal or inferior or anything like that, nor do I hate nonautistic people in any way. I have my own reasons. I don't care that other people want a cure though, I think of it as an individual choice (although a semi-pointless one in a world where no cure exists).

"Make me like them? Not gonna happen."

*************************************************************************************************

Check out my IMDB page!

Even though life with Aspergers is very difficult for me sometimes I still wouldn’t want a cure, mainly for reasons other people have already said here. Also, I’m an adult now so it would probably be too late to cure me, anyway.

Absolutely

I love having Aspergers Syndrome. It gives me a unique view of life and lets me be easily entertained by 1 thing for hours on end, even something construtive like sorting pet food, writing stories, giving advice online . But if there were a cure, I'd take it. Only because my medication is really expensive, and Im trying to move out and get a place of my own.

If others are fine with how they are, why does that bother you? No one's saying they would prevent you from taking the cure if you wanted it. It's like you're going up to someone who is perfectly happy and insisting that they're not.

And I do think autism is inseparable from the person. If you take it away, you're left with a different person. Some people are okay with that, some aren't. That's their own choice to make. For myself, I don't like to dwell on the negative, but rather find ways to deal with the hand I've been dealt. Rather than speculating about something that's not likely to happen, I'm going to do what I can with what I have now. I'm not going to let you (or anyone) convince me that life just sucks and I might as well jump off a cliff.

I know people who are far worse off than me, and they aren't autistic.

All I want changed about me is the way I don't follow interests, and the way I lack confidence in speaking up, and the sensory issues. The rest can stay.

Actually, this also. The HAD (high anxiety disorder) affects almost everything I do, and I think I would be able to do so much more with my life if the anxiety disorder was cured, more than if the actual AS itself was cured. I worry too much of what other people think of me that I get afraid to speak up/join in group conversations. But I think this is because of a bad experience I had with someone who told me, ''I wasn't talking to you!'' when I was just trying to join in, and I knew it wasn't at the wrong time or anything because another NT was standing nearby and told them that that was rude of them to say that to me, and that I was only trying to be friendly, and that I wasn't doing anything socially wrong. There's more to the story than that, but I won't go into it too much otherwise I will drift away with it and end up off-topic.

So anyway, yes, I'm not too bothered about curing every single thing about me, because then I would be a very boring person. Think about all of the Aspie symptoms you can get, from the major ones to the very minor ones. An Aspie can't have all of them, but an NT can't have none at all, otherwise they would be robots, living life by the book, and being completely boring people with exactly the same personalities, interests, fears, and ect. Obviously Aspies have the main symptoms which can be grouped together, forming an ASD. So, no, I wouldn't want the whole ASD cured - I just want some parts cured.

I just wish I could follow interests, like fashion or celebrities. Or I wish I could have that much more social confidence, instead of hesitating to ask someone a question during a conversation. Even shy people can at least do that. The funny thing is, I know all these social cues, but I just can't seem to express them out in he open.

Then I start to think to myself - what's the point in worrying? Surely there can't be an exact right or wrong answer in interaction, because we are all different. It's not like, you meet an NT you've met them all. That's completely wrong. In the adult world, people come to realise that we're not all the same, and so we give everybody a chance.
My uncle has got 2 teenage sons, and both of them are 2 completely different people. And they both have been brought up the same way, but they are completely different from eachother, but are both NTs. The oldest, aged 19, is shy and serious, and is very clever. And he is into music and wants to be in a band and says he wants to get a good job, rather than have a girlfriend. And the youngest, aged 17, is cocky and enjoys football and he still likes playing in rivers and getting dirty. And they socialise differently too. The oldest would ask you a lot of questions, more than actually talking, and the youngest is more hyper - he would take over the conversation, and likes to explain every little thing in detail.

Absolutely. I hate not being able to make friends.

There's nothing to cure.

Lets just say for the sake of argument that Asperger's is infact an inherited condition. Well, some say that a talent for writing is also inherited. Or perhaps athletic ability. Would you "cure" those things if you had the chance? Probably not.

And what are the supposed options for a cure. Some have propsed disastrous side effects, but lets take another look.

1: Pills.

Pills always have side-effects. Even good old' fashioned tylenol has side effects if you take it enough times. Acetemenophine will trash your liver just because you wanted that headache to go away.

The pill at most would target the anxiety and maybe make a person more focused. But if I'm an antisocial as*hole to begin with, all that pill would do is make me a much more focused and less anxietal antisocial as*hole.

2: "Rewiring the brain".

I've seen that phrase tossed around a lot when a cure for Aspergers' is discussed. It sounds way too much like professor Eugene Perkins' attempt to "cleanse" the bloodline by finding impurities in the geneologies of boys in a work house.

The fact is, we don't know anything more about the brain than we knew a hundred years ago when doctors were convinced that diahrea was a normal function of the body. Sure, we have instruments that give us a better idea of what's going on in there, but that doesn't mean we are a hundred percent cognizant of what could happen when you start screwing with sections of the brain.

You mess with the part of my brain that, in your view, makes me an antisocial as*hole and suddenly I lose my ability to use a fork. Gee, thanks for that cure. It really helped with my social functioning.

I mean, in the end, aside from a bunch of vague generalizations that Autism Speaks craps out every day, what in your estimation can this "cure" do for us? A pill can't make me more sociable. Only I can do that and in the words of Paul Simon, "I am a rock, I am an island."

A cure isn't going to help me "make more friends". How do you imagine that's going to help you do that? This isn't a cure you're talking about, it's a magic friggen wand.

No. "Curing" me of my Asperger's would destroy who I am.

A person on the spectrum is like a PB & J sandwich with peanut butter on both pieces of bread and the jelly in the middle, the jelly being AS/Autism/PDD-NOS, the bread and peanut butter being the person's personality and everything else that makes them who they are. If you try to scrape away the jelly, you will take away a lot of the peanut butter and scrape up the bread, leaving the sandwich totally different from before. Take away the AS/Autism/PDD-NOS, and we won't be who we are, and who would want to be an entirely different person?

To start: I haven't been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (I'm thinking of seeing someone this summer about it); it's possible that I might just have Social Anxiety Disorder.

But, I feel like I am normal when I am not around other people. I don't feel terribly different or strange. It's just me in my room, reading. I like being this person. Only, I wish that I could find other people who, like me, enjoy doing quiet things. Unfortunately, my behavior around other people prevents me from finding friends. Studying in my room or taking a test, I am intelligent. In social situations or in classroom discussions, I'm the village idiot.

I don't understand many social cues or instructions or questions. I even have trouble understanding certain people when they speak. There's a girl who sits next to me in Chemistry that's really nice. I would definitely want to be friends with her, but I can't understand half the things she says. I ask her to repeat herself, and I still can't understand. Recently, I've taken to just nodding and saying "yeah" after she says something I don't understand.

I think if there were some medicine that could make me magically able to socialize normally, then I'd take it. I don't think that medicine would affect my interests, nor do I think it would affect my gifted Verbal IQ. I think it would make it so I don't always feel lost, socially.

Not in a million years... it would completely change who I am.