Would you take a pill to cure autism?

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Me too

Yeah? I'd get high off that pill. 90% of my problems with life have been caused as a result of being autistic, the anxiety I feel every day is a result of being autistic, I'd be thrilled to get rid of it. My life would be infinitely better than it is now.

Look, I'm all for self-love and acceptance of autism, and I'm fully aware autism cannot be removed from my neurology, but if it could, I'd be all for it.

This question pops up from time to time, and over time my response has changed from “hell no” to “yes please”, depending on which phase of the process of dealing with my diagnosis I was in.

Now I am ambivalent.

Having Asperger’s gives me no super power, no savant ability, no advantage. It is something that limits the things I can do. I don’t like having something that is considered wrong with my brain.
I don’t like going through my life feeling no connection other than to my immediate family. Actually that didn’t bother me one bit for my first 30 years. But having experienced a sense of belonging, of community, online, I assume that I’m missing out IRL.


OTOH, there is nothing about NTs that impress me, which is no doubt why I have never mimicked people. I have never looked around and wished that I was more like the people around me. I have never regretted being me. If I took a cure I would lose my deep love for turtles, I would be unable to get really into things.
I don’t know who I’d be if I took a cure. Maybe I wouldn’t be too different (after all, I do have things in common with my NT family). But I don’t know that.

And at 37 it’s not like I’m likely to suddenly drown in job offers, or start a family.
So what would my advantage to a cure really be? I might lose everything I hold dear now only to find I am in no better situation. Likelihood is good that I would feel more miserable about all I’ve missed out on and milestones I’ll still never reach if I was cured now. The advantage of staying the way I am is that I am able to lose myself in my interests and experience happiness with my interests and in my interactions with family IRL and on here.

If I was a child or a teen, I think a cure would be a good thing because it wouldn’t come too late for me to make something of myself. At this point, it’d be pretty useless in my case.

There have been a lot of these threads, and my answer remains the same, "No, I would not take such a pill to cure my autism." I am satisfied with who I am.

Nah; I quite like the way my mind operates most of the time. But then again, who is to say that's an exclusive AS manifestation?

Me having AS is the least of my issues; it's the fact that society can't deal with people that are "different" (and to add, don't look different) and how we're growing towards this standardized way we want to enforce on peoples functioning that's a problem. Quite sure I'm not much of a conformist beyond my AS to actually support that notion to begin with.

In a vaccuum, as it is now, most issues I have going on are already past a point of no return and the solution to fix them isn't a cure. It would change very little in the scenario.

Probably won't be long before a pill like that becomes available. Be prepared for a whole host of side effects though :/

I refuse to cure autism for myself. Autism is basically the majority of who I am, and I do not see it as a disease. If I never had it, I would be a nobody and I would not have what I have today. I have a novel-worth of reasons for that I will never take a pill to cure autism. Most "pills" today are pathetic, especially psychiatric medicine and I'm against people being overmedicated because then people are like lifeless organisms and do not know how to solve their own problems.

I cant marry and take care of kids too, and never made a friend in my life.

For which they sell you more pills. *cough*Big pharma*cough*

Not only would I take it, I would use the dosage of everyone else who loves having autism. Then, go back to the pharmacy for more.

I've had it with autism. If you like having autism, fine by me. It's been a living hell for me.

I grew up in a family of sadistic monsters. I am not a monster. I have always wondered if I would be a malignant narcissist,constantly creating chaos and suffering, as they do, if I were not Autistic. My life has been difficult [yet in many ways, incredibly wonderful] painful, and sometimes I am so lonely. Though I do not like the difficulties, I love who I am. A cure would be too much of a gamble for me to seriously consider.

This is a very fair point.

I'm not really worried about feeling more miserable than I am now - hardly think that's possible. But yeah, even if I was "cured" tomorrow, I'm not going to be drowning in job offers or suitors either. It probably isn't worth it now. Ideally I'd have taken this hypothetical pill as a baby. Still would have had my messed-up family to deal with, so it wouldn't have been all unicorns and rainbows, but at least I might have stood a fighting chance of coming out "normal". Fair play to the people who manage to love/accept themselves for who they are, but I've never been able to do that. I'm not at peace, I'm constantly struggling with myself and the world.



Sorry about that.

No, I wouldn´t - as it is now. It has been rather hard work being me with all my anxieties, depressions and whatnot, - but the very qualities I like about myself are related to aspergers. As I have only tried to be me, I can´t know, if, perhaps I would have wanted to be NT, if I could try it, - but It´s OK - as it is now.

No, I'd take the whole bottle.

I'm not sure, I mean I probably would take it, but I'm scared on how I would be after I take it.

I think I MIGHT take a pill if the result (being NT) was transient in nature, and meant I could get a job that I could keep even after the pill wore-off. I don't think I'd want to PERMANENTLY change----I'm just too old and too tired to start all over, again----besides, the likelihood of just exchanging one set of problems for another set of problems is probably inevitable.