Need emergency advice with brilliant aspie inventor spouse.

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I'm so sorry; from what you've written, you've been through plenty. Your exhaustion shows through. I do hope you're alright. Maybe time to focus just on yourself right now. Fortunately, there are always options.

To Overstate the obvious, he has more problems than his Asperger's. This sounds definitely Bi-Polar to me. Remember, that manic states do not have to be excess happiness. They can be anger just as easily.
And your brother did not do him any favors.

Sincerely,
Matthew

Thanks guys. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and input.

There are an uncountable amount of thoughts that are streaming though our filter continuously like the bytes “the data” on a DVD. If you get a section on the disk bad enough then it can only play when repaired if it can be. Our gray matter is in constant change and repair sometimes it just has to play its self out whatever the outcome maybe. Religion says ”let go and let god” I’m not religious but I do know that when we finally let go we back off from all the insanity and can see from afar or just let it play out and let it be as it will be and continue ahead

Yes, zooguy, this is very wise and true.

He had his chance. There are very few times in this life you get these type of chances. Honestly, I do not trust him to make the right decisions with anything. And this has gone on for a month, he has had the support and opportunity to get traction---I honestly do not feel that he has a bright prognosis at this point. He wants to be an psychotic as*hole, and ultimately he will feel very, very painful consequences of his decisions. I mean like death or the babbling homeless man arguing with ghosts in the alley.

I am about one inch from quitting. Lucky, lucky b....terd just flushing it ALL down the toilet.

He sounds like my husband, who was not an Aspie (probably) but a Paranoid Schizophrenic, diagnosed (and probably difficult to diagnose, because he was also a Master's Degree Psychologist). Stress broke him up too, and I divorced him long before things got to the point that they have with yours, because I was afraid for our baby daughter as well as myself.

That was what I wanted for the three years that it took me to get to that point, my dear sweet husband back. I finally decided that it wasn't going to happen, or even if it would happen, I couldn't take any more.

sibyl, what ultimately ended up happening to him?

Psychosis is just a symptom, not a mental disorder. Your description sounds as if he suffers from either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Schizophrenia is a lot more likely imho, and would explain his paranoia. The antipsychotics that he was prescribed (risperidone / Risperdal?) also suggest schizophrenia, as does the late onset of his symptoms. Bipolar disorder is often diagnosed at childhood age, whereas the onset of schizophrenia can be as late in life as age 30.

Alas, there is no cure for either disorder. Antipsychotics can only suppress the manic and paranoid symptoms, at the cost of an increased loss of cognitive abilities and other serious side effects. Which means that even if he does take his medication, he will sadly never be the person that he used to be. And if he refuses to take his meds, things will progress the way they are now. I'm afraid that your support couldn't help him either if he has paranoid delusions about you and sees you as an enemy, so there is not much that you could do to help him. His best option might be a stress-free life with relatively little social contact, since social interaction can trigger paranoid episodes.

After the divorce, he spent a few months in the state mental hospital, calmed down a lot, and got Social Security Disability (bought a house with it and some veteran's programs, and what he could scare up.) He was always afraid of earning money, for fear he'd earn too much and lose his disability check. He did do quite a bit of productive work on the barter system. (He also managed a small check for our daughter in lieu of child support, which I didn't even ask for: I had wanted to cut ties as much as possible in the hope he'd forget about us) as his dependent, which did help. He started having delusions again, and one night "heard" some people in his carport, arguing over who was going to get his stuff that was in the carport, ran outside barefooted and locked himself out (winter), and had to beat on his neighbor's door. He had hassled various city services and cops before that, once trying to get them to turn his water off when a pipe froze and broke under his house (he should have known how to turn the water off himself, but at least it was a real broken pipe). Anyway, the bit with the nonexistent thieves in the carport got the cops to take him to the hospital. By that time, our daughter was old enough to be his responsible adult next of kin, and since she was young, his uncle helped her with it. That time, he was diagnosed with dementia, and while not particularly violent, the doctors didn't think that he should be discharged to live with her, because he was entirely likely to turn on the gas in the stove in the middle of the night and forget to light it. So he spent the rest of his life in a very nice nursing home where at least there was someone awake 24 hours to keep an eye on him. At that, he walked away once going to town to a dental appointment that he didn't have. He was on one psych drug or another all of that time. He kept going downhill physically, and then it was noticed that he had extremely brittle bones and was living with several small fractures. What with the meds, it was difficult to tell just how he might be mentally. He kept having "major" crises, and our daughter was the only person who could calm him down. He died, apparently of something like old age (cardiac arrest), at the age of 61. He was five years older than I.

He seemed normal, if a bit charmingly (to me) quirky, when I met him when he was in his midtwenties, and had done a hitch in the Navy, then started to college. He didn't seem to get really crazy until our daughter was born: stress of responsibility, I think: he knew that I could take care of myself, but with a baby too, he felt responsible for both of us. Or it might have been just the age that he was. Frequently schizophrenics have it coming on badly in late adolescence or young adulthood-- or mid-thirties.

I have manic depressive and schizophrenic friends (thankfully not in the same person) These episodes are sadly quite common, they can usually only be resolved by a spell in hospital and released when the doctors have managed to "reset" them. There is no reasoning with these people when they are in this state.

This isn't your husband right now, he can come back, but he needs help. It is the kind of help that isn't realistically going to happen with talk therapy either.

Tbh I'd call the police or hospital and ask for help. There is no purpose putting yourself, others or him at risk.

Jason.

I really think that you aren't dealing with an aspie anymore. He may have another neurological disorder. Ohh and just because someone flaps their hands doesn't equal aspergers. I've been diagnosed and I don't flap my hands.

I also thought of bi-polar when I read your original post.

I know this is easy to say, but there is only so much you can do for him - he needs to recognise (and acknowledge to himself) that he needs to address his problems. If he is happy as he is, or doesn't recognise that there's a problem, then he won't consider changing in any way.

I can only imagine what effect the stress has been having on you. Please, think about yourself and do what you need to do to feel calm and safe.

Well, he has classical aspie traits when he is well. He does not read social signals, very compulsive, very single minded. He has a couple of interest that he drills like a madman in. After a number of years, he can finally get jokes. He is pretty cute little aspie, when well. You have to understand, this man built a factory with over 300 people working in it. He had a chain of very uniquie stores stores. terrible with customers, but brilliant selection of merchandise. He has a lifetime of hard work and achievement, responsibility, and giving nature. many people problems because of not reading signals (like me), but certainly not this.

He is 50. This would be atypical for onset schizophrenia. This could be bipolar, but he doesnt really slow down---it's lile an ultra rapid mixed state bipolar. he has not gone nuts and slept around or spent money.

Guys, this may be a different pathology showing. This could be a lesion or tumor of some sort.

It could well be, and it is old for Schizophrenia. One of Tom's brain tests showed signs of an ancient stroke, and our daughter thought that might have been when he changed personality, but there was no way to date it, and he was pretty classic schizophrenic.

OH poor me, my money maker brilliant husband has gone crazy again, what should I do?

I could be reading this wrong and sorry if I am, but the OP has repeated again and again, how brilliant her husband is when he is not gone crazy; he can make lots of money.

Just wondering who's side the OP is really on?

It sounds like the poor man is in desperate need of someone to advocate for him and get him back in the hospital where he can recover if possible.

Just about every person who has responded has noted that Aspergers does not cause you to act like this man is acting.

None of us are professionals, none of us can diagnosis this man, other than to scratch our heads and say, sure does not sound like Aspergers or anything on the autistic spectrum.

I feel sorry for the OP and the husband.

It sounds like a complete train wreck for both of them. I hope the man gets help, if his brilliant career is over due to severe. intractable mental illness, then the OP has a choice, stick with him or divorce him....

No...I have made the money---lets get this straight. When he met me, he had lost everything and was flat broke. I was the one who built the business from nothing. I took over the business responsiblities so that he could just focus on the technical. So basically, everything that I have worked for is going down the toilet. 7 days a week, for years. And the partner whom I worked side by side very closely for 7 days a weeks for years, whom we would laugh and plan together---is gone. GONE.

So you are incorrect.