Would you want to be cured if you could?

Post Reply New Topic

Honestly? I don't know. I mean sure it'd be lovely to do away with meltdowns and social issues and the like but Aspergers has become a large part of who I am, a large part of what makes me, well me. I don't know if I'd want to get rid of that.

I wish I had a quid for each time I read the words ''who I am'' on this thread...

I'd like that, too. If anyone could contact a mod to have this poll (or another thread alike to this) made sticky that would be great.

The subject of a "cure" is really prevelant right now, and getting the community's response is incredibly important.

No, AS is so intertwined with my personality, so if I take it away there won't really be any personality. So no, I wouldn't want that.

There's a reason for that, you know. For many of us, autism is part of our identities.

I'm not commenting about the meaning of it, I'm just saying about the words. When I read those words, the tone of voice in my head says it rather loud, as though when people say something like ''Asperger's makes me who I am'', it sounds like there shouldn't be any arguments following.

I absolutely agree upon your attitude. While I realise that curing autism is probably impossible because it's "hard-wired" in the brain, I would still prefer not to have it.

Why would you prefer not to have it? Can you explain your reasons?

Okay, so maybe it's become a cliche. I'll try to be a little more interesting about my self-advocacy.

The "hard-wired" argument, for me, is mostly that if something is intrinsic to the structure of my brain, it's not something that can be changed easily. At my age, it probably can't be changed at all, short of brain surgery to simply cut it out. I can learn new things, and that changes my brain subtly, by changing the amount of and sensitivity to neurotransmitters, and sometimes even forging new connections between neurons. Call that the "software" I'm running on my brain. My knowledge of the multiplication tables, for example, is only a very peripheral part of my identity. However, my ability to process numbers is "hard-wired". Very early in my life--perhaps even prenatally--I got the foundation for understanding the concept of amount. On that, all of my knowledge about mathematics is based. (I say this because experiments on very young infants do show that they have a concept of amount, a very rough one, to start out with.) How I process ideas about amount is much closer to my identity than my having memorized the multiplication table.

Now consider that autism doesn't just affect one such tiny hard-wired thing, but all of them. Not just amount, but language, sensory processing, cognition itself, is different because I am autistic. We're not talking about learning multiplication tables here. If the brain were a computer, curing autism wouldn't be a matter of installing new software; it would mean replacing all the circuits with different ones that work differently. If you know computers, that means that essentially you have a different computer. And good luck keeping the software you used for the old computer to work on the new one. It won't work--you won't be able to access the data. In terms of the human brain, with hardware and software all interconnected, the old data would simply have had to be destroyed. You would be a blank slate--a neurotypical infant in an adult's body. You would no longer be yourself.

Even if I hated being autistic, even if I thought it was the worst thing in the world, I still couldn't choose that sort of a cure. It would mean destroying the person I am, and I prefer existence to oblivion. Thankfully, our scientific knowledge is nowhere near that advanced, and quite possibly never will be.

There are solutions other than "cure", which we should be pulling for. Better education. Better accommodations. Acceptance.

For those of you who want a cure, I ask: If you could be happy, accepted, doing useful work in a world where you could fit in, would it really matter if you were still autistic? Because I find that a much more reasonable goal.

THANK YOU. I asked Joe90 if they would still want a cure if there wasn't a stigma against us. That's something I want everyone to think about when they say they want a cure.

I don't know really. If I think hard I can really imagine myself as an NT, but I can't imagine what you said about for some reason.

I know people say ''how do you know who you would be if you weren't Aspie?'', but I can actually imagine what things would be like a little. I am only mild, so I still do the things the majority of people do; have a job, have friends, desire a relationship, etc (I do have somebody that is very close to asking me out, which I am so happy about. I just hope my horrible AS doesn't spoil things). But the vast majority of all the people that I know are NTs (I only know about 2 non-NTs), and so I can kind of put myself in their shoes and see what I would be if I was NT like them, but still being in my skin. It's complicated to explain, but I can kind of imagine it, maybe not exact because I don't know how I'd be. It's a bit like trying to imagine myself as a boy, what it's like to have extra bits down there, and having a deep voice, beard, etc. I can imagine a little. I suppose a lot of Aspies lack imagination like that, which is why they don't always think about what the grass would be on the other side of the fence, but I don't have that stereotypical trait. It's not good really, because then that makes me wonder what I would be like as somebody else, rather than just concentrating on my real life.

It's mainly the discrepancy between my social needs and my social abilities.
That is, I do like being with and around people (even though it's quite stressful for me), but my lack of social skills keeps me alone at home in front of my computer... which sucks.

Come to think of it, I think I would be more happy in myself if I were more popular and socially accepted. It might even help me change and become more confident in myself.

I remember once when I was about 11 (in my last summer at primary school), I suddenly had a random surprise one lunchtime, and to this day I don't know why this happened. I volunteered to stay behind in class an extra 10 minutes through lunchtime so the teacher can help catch up on my sums, then when I went outside on to the school field, all the girls in my class suddenly made me the most popular girl in the class. Three of them ran up to me, linked arms with me and lead me to the rest of the group and we all sat on the grass. Then the other girls offered me their crisps, sweets and chocolate, and just talked to me and made me the center of attention. I handled it well, and I didn't feel overwhelmed or overloaded. I really don't know why they suddenly acted like that towards me, but after the week-end it was all back to normal again and I didn't ask them about it and they didn't mention it. Perhaps they were just seeing what I would do if they made me popular, I don't know.

But if that happened to me more often, I probably would improve a bit more because it'd give me a boost. Say if all the girls at work came up to me and asked me if I wanted to come out with them to the bar, and then said they were looking forward to me coming, and they will help put make-up on me really good and so on. Personally I don't like bars, but if I had an opportunity to go to one due to feeling included, and I wasn't made to feel left alone in a corner once I'm there, then yes, I would enjoy myself socially more.

you cant cure something that isn't an affliction.

I really like that perspective.

There is only one cure! Eradicate NT'S...

But seriously,

I believe it is genetic, is getting a boob job 'curing' small breasts?

I think being Aspie is perfect. Wouldn't change it for the world, had I answered this question a few years ago
I may have said otherwise.