Aspies and addiction.

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How would you feel if you couldn't have an energy drink?

Yea, I think this is why there is such a high rate of addiction, not because Aspies necessarily become addicts more easily. I was pretty much loaded for all of my teen years on the meds I was being prescribed for ADHD. I felt AMAZING, but I needed to replace them with something when I stopped taking them. Alcohol always made me feel "normal". I almost killed myself with that stuff at a young age, and I still love drinking but I just couldn't make a habit out of it again without feeling like an idiot. Knowing what it does to people in the long run takes most of the fun out of it for me, and I'm not good at lying to myself. I'm not really able to delude myself or be in denial.

Maybe it's just me, it does sound arrogant but I'm grateful I was able to quit so easily. I see a lot of young people who are just as bright and capable as I am and it really seems like they CAN'T. It''s partially in their minds but sometimes the genetic component is so strong that it's baffling. Very sad.

i was addicted to opiates in high school...and a year ago I was addicted to weed

opiate addiction...i would get sick- vomit, chills, and over all bad health
but I seemed to be a great person on them?
some times I still do them though its probably a bad idea...

weed addiction...started slowly and just became habittiual over time without me realizing it...slowly tapered off and now I smoke occasionally as I did in the beginning.
weed made some mundane things fun but destroyed my confidence, made me paranoid and made me even more of a shut in..

I don't think it's a particuarly Aspie trait just something some people have and some people don't. There is only one alcoholic that I know if in my family and that's my bio-dad. He's got a very addictive personality and could get addicted to water just as easily as anything and has struggled his whole life with that.

As a young adult I went through a phase of drinking, smoking and won't confirm or deny a little dabbling beyond that. One summer I did drink an awful lot, no black outs or anything. It hit me that I could be taking after my bio-dad. I moved home to be close to college when it was time for classes to start and totally forgot about drinking. It was such a relief to realize that I hadn't even thought about taking a drink for three months even though my parents had a few bottles of alcohol from parties or recieved as gifts that I could have gotten into. Later I chose to quit smoking. I had a couple of false starts but then just threw out the cigarettes and never smoked again.

I think it's because I'm very strong willed. That's a trait that has plenty of downsides to it, but when it came to quitting those things it did help a lot.

I'm told that my dad (who also has asperger's) used to drink to an unpleasant level that would have him doing things like dreaming about rats and kicking my mom in bed because he was dreaming that he was kicking rats. Or once he forgot where he had parked the car and called it in stolen. Apparently my mom had a problem with him going out drinking all the time and finally demanded that he quit. He quit drinking before I was born so I never saw what it was like for him to quit and he never talked about it to me. But I never saw him take a drink in my life, so I guess he quit for good.

Yup -- that's why I don't smoke weed any more. I used to like it all right, but my brain chemistry must have changed or something because it just makes me anxious now, not pleasant at all. That's too bad because so many people have a raging boner for pot while I'm incapable of enjoying it like they do.

Same thing with alcohol, it just stopped working for me like it did in the beginning. I can get drunk, but it's not pleasant enough to justify the brain fog, headaches, nausea, and lethargy afterwards.

Walked away from opiates, too. I chipped for a while like liveandletdie does, but it wasn't fun enough to justify the torpor that often followed. So I guess I kind of can "shut off" the addiction switch.

I remember once having a complete shut-down from just pot. I was with a guy I was dating at the time and we had gone to someone's house and a lot of pot was smoked and then I just remember thinking that if I held perfectly still and didn't make a move and didn't make a sound, everything would be okay. I guess it was a sort of paranoia and I've heard that pot makes some people paranoid. I don't remember feeling what I identify as fear, but I remember just feeling a strong urge to hold perfect still and not move or make a sound. It was sort of a feeling like if I didn't move, no one would see me.

I don't at all remember leaving their house and getting into my boyfriend's car. I kept sitting rigidly and at some point it dawned on me that I was no longer in the house and was now in the car. After realizing that, the feeling slowly seeped away from me until I realized how rigidly I was sitting and then I sort of breathed a sigh and relaxed into the car seat and then I was back with other people again. The guy I was dating said, "are you okay?" and I said, "yeah. Sorry about that." and he said, "it's okay, we were all just really worried. We'd never seen anything like that happen before and no one knew what to do. I was afraid you wouldn't come back."

ya i only drink beer now..

opiates dont work as good as they used to either...so i'm not as intrigued by them as I used to be though today I have been asking around because the two girls I was talking to stopped talking to me =/. (they dont know of each other so that wouldn't be it) Always seems to end this way, and I'm sick of it as always.

The pot experience became more of an ordeal than anything else over the course of a year. I feel terror, and often envision a hot metal needle or blade poised to plunge into one of my eyes. It might be useful as an aid in facing fear, like that blue flower in "Batman Returns." 'Till then, though, just hanging out with people is scary enough.

Dude, I feel your pain. I used for the same reasons, but I only ended up worse for wear afterwards.

I started drinking casually back when I was 19 with some friends. It was never anything serious....until I turned 21. I don't remember exactly when I REALLY jumped in but I do remember buying 1.75 liters of vodka every 4-5 days. A year later I just stopped because I hated how I felt when I woke up in the morning...every morning. But then I got back into it some time later and its been that way ever since. Except now I prefer whiskey.....or sometimes Tilt (which now comes with 12% alcohol content. yummy).

I don't know if I would consider myself an alcoholic or not. Its not that I NEED it, but....here's the thing. The thought of buying alcohol will suddenly pop inside my head, then I become fixated on it until I buy it. Now depending on what that is, I may get over it sooner or later. Like if I buy Tilts (which are basically beers on steroids) I might not drink the next night. But if I have a gigantic bottle of whiskey under my couch? I'm going to drink it every night until its gone. And then I might repeat the process when its empty.........does that make any sense?

I don't know...maybe I am an alcoholic *shrugs*

Yeah, if I buy a bottle of wine, it's pretty much a guarantee I will drink it all that evening. If I buy a bottle of Laphroaig (very nice, very peaty, single malt Scotch) I won't drink it all in one evening (that would probably kill me) but I will have a drink or two most evenings until it's gone.

I'm not the type to have bottles of wine just sitting around waiting for a nice dinner or a bottle of Scotch waiting for special occasions to toast.

Two answers to this.

Regarding addiction to substances, I have abused them and have never been "addicted" to them but some people in my life have been amazed that I even went near them because I come from such a stable family. I abused (and sometimes still do) for one reason: I can't sleep. Over the years, I've experimented everything I could get my hands on: alcohol (very tolerant to it considering my height and weight-- knocks me on my ass but the hangover isn't worth it), over-the-counter meds (wear me out but don't help me actually sleep and cause terrifying hallucinations at high doses), marijuana (has no effect at any dose), and prescription meds (working on my doc with a better combo but I don't overuse them because they're so hard to get). I've never even tried smoking cigarettes.

The other "addiction" I've had is sex, but I don't consider it as one, because it's a natural urge that's just more prominent in me when I'm going through a depression (an all too frequent occurence), which I think is pretty normal among NTs, at least in men. Some psychologists even believe in a condition called "sexual addiction," but I think that's bunk, as is any addiction, really. It's all about self-control and discipline. Any compulsion can be managed. When you're talking about someone who is having physical withdrawal from a drug they've been abusing for a long time, that's a different story, but any sort of behaviorial compulsion, gambling, sex, etc. is conquerable through willpower. When an indulgence, like sex or junk food, isn't causing me or anyone else any harm, I don't see why there's a need to label it as an "addiction" even if it takes up a lot of space in my mind. More like a "distraction."

I've been a masturbation addict for over a year, and it's starting to sicken me.

I think the only main addictive substances are nicotine, heroine, alcohol, cocaine. I am addicted to nicotine no doubt I think. But if I realy wanted to stop I think I could. I just don't want to because I like smoking. I think alcohol can take a while to develop an addiction. But I believe heroine is easy to become addicted to.

I like smoking weed but don't think its addictive. Certainly not in the way nicotine is.

ya weed is just addictive in a wierd way..

even though it was driving me insane, not getting me high, making me depressed, angry, and schizophrenic I was still smoking 3-5 joints a day...

the mental cloud makes you think that it is needed when in fact it is the cloud itself

least that has been my experience when I get deep into it..

I consider myself to be a “recovered addict” A lot of people in the substance abuse community do not like the term. They like to believe that all addicts and alcoholics are forever addicted. I bought into the concept in my early recovery and it helped to keep me away from ‘people places and things’… lol Okay I’m joking… it gave me an excuse to dodge situations and people that I have always been uncomfortable being around. I was a IV drug user for almost an entire year. It was the first drug I had ever tried and it was the first way I had ever tried doing it. I kept doing it not because I liked it. I got use to it. When I decided it was time to stop the withdrawals and the brick wall of reality was too much to be smacked into all at once… I was stuck. I couldn’t dissociate with the drug anymore the only thing it was doing was keeping me from being sick. Once I went into medical detox my problems with drugs were over. AA told me to account for my character defects and correct them… lol Sorry, but telling that to someone like myself the perfectionist that I am with the certain insight into myself that I have… it was like telling me to grow a tail and chase it for the rest of my good given life. And I’m not even going to attempt to tell you how many brain cells gave up on me and ran away when I tried to interpret the Serenity Prayer. So, I drove myself insane for awhile and listened to them tell me to keep it simple and that I was just like them. Until I stopped going to AA and just lived life instead of getting stuck analyzing it I was pretty sick. I gave up AA after 4 months clean and haven’t thought about drugs since.