Do you want to be 'cured' of Asperger's Syndrome?

Post Reply New Topic

No. I'm not broken and I've learned to adapt, over the years.

Last edited by CockneyRebel on 20 Aug 2010, 9:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If there was such a thing as a cure, sure I would want it. I have been struggling and it's been f***ing miserable. I would also love a cure for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and depression.

A big fat NO for me. I like being who I am. (sorry if I accidently answered this question twice.)

I'd love to be cured if the cure was simple enough. Preferably an over the counter pill.

A cure for the way that God made me? No, thank you!

I'll watch others take the 'cure', wait it out, analyze the side effects, and then make my decision from there.

This. Almost 47 years of being me - I don't think I could handle suddenly being someone else.

Always we are judged by how we’re seen by our peers.
One would think that it would dull with all the gaining of years.
YEAH RIGHT!
Another misconception of life…
- Beefy, “Nerdcore for Life”

It’s with a heavy heart that I have to declare my allegiance to apparently what is the least popular attitude of those on this forum. Such a declaration comes about with no belittlement or disrespect of the members of this community; for being a silent member here these past few months has given me a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that so many like-minded peers not only exist but share in the same otherwise-unique perspectives that I’ve held over the years. Likewise, the knowledge that so many suffer the many insults and wrongs that our disease forces upon it suffers provokes in me a great unrest. But to find such effortful apologies for the many pains we share and glorification of the few triumphs we gain amplifies that unrest to the point of indignance.
Incidently, at this time I'm reeling from yet another trivial atrocity that will again test my dedication to the never-ending struggle that is our search for the good life. This is obviously tainting any honest answer to such an inquiry into deeply held beliefs. Regardless, this is question that I have asked myself continuously since my formative years, when I learned that I was different from everyone else. And the answer has always been the same.
So, to the question made by the OP: YES! Absolutely, I do indeed concur wholeheartedly! I want a cure for autism. Period. Likely, if such a pill should ever come into existance, I’d claw down everything separating myself from it and wind up shoving it in my throat so hard as to cause severe esophageal damage.
It is not simply the fact that I have to answer this question that provokes me, but the concept that any should answer otherwise. How could anyone refuse a cure? Who would accept idleness in the face of pain? Why would anyone not wish to improve themselves?
Now, I find myself in something of a tiff from having to confront such obviously self-evident truth. I can not help but ask, why does this question bother me so much? Why does the popular negative answer disturb me so?
In looking quickly for a cause for my own answer, I’m rather surprised at the grandness of the justification for it, in both its reasonableness and its comprehensiveness.

I want a cure because I’m tired.

I’m tired of always obsessing over my losses and deprecating my many successes.
I’m tired of being exhausted by pretending to be NT in public.
I’m tired of not knowing how to stick up for myself.
I’m tired of being pushed around because of the above.
I’m tired of having a childhood where I was greatly rewarded for my strengths and having an adulthood where I’m severely punished for my weaknesses.
I'm tired of not being able to create witty responses within the 800 millisecond cap.
I’m tired of the only affect that I can natively read being when people are angry or disappointed.
I’m tired of having learned much of the NT non-verbal communication protocols, but not being able to implement them in real-time.
I’m tired of not being able to understand advice. [“Just be more confident!” “OK. How?” “Well you…. you just do!”]
I’m tired of having to translate old truisms and morals of wisdom into my own pattern/anti-pattern language. [“The perfect is the enemy of the good” equals “do not waste time resolving a problem to more accuracy or extraneous detail than is required.”]
I’m tired of never being able to read in between the lines, except for public relations/spin-doctoring.
I’m tired of public relations/spin-doctoring pissing me off.
I’m tired of oftentimes feeling like there’s a conspiracy being planned.
I’m tired of having to make “BUT NOBODY CARES!” my mantra.
I’m tired of over-preparing for everything.
I’m tired of being unable to cope when my preparation fails.
I’m tired of being called lazy and depressed because of the above.
I’m tired of being called shy.
I’m tired of being called arrogant.
I’m tired of being called both shy and arrogant by the same people. [I’m confident that the way to finally solve how the human brain works can be found in resolving how the brain is able to hold such contradictory ideas simultaneously.]
I’m tired of always being alone.
I’m tired of having people tell me that I have some of the most awesome stories they’ve ever heard yet never having them bring them up again.
I’m tired of missing movies because nobody will go with me.
I’m tired of being too self-conscious to buy a single movie ticket.
I’m tired of having half of my family blocking me out of their lives.
I’m tired of irritating everyone I know into using Facebook and Twitter, then not having anyone ever ‘like’ or comment on anything I write.
I’m tired of people having go out of their way to avoid talking to me.
I’m tired of having to go out of my way to avoid talking to others.
I’m tired of at least 50% of impromptu conversations ending in the other person walking away without bothering with the required conversation-ending procedure.
I’m tired of getting older, having single members of the opposite sex starting impromptu conversations with me, and winding up with even worse results than above.
I’m tired of sometimes wearing a fake wedding ring to minimize the above.
I’m tired of having testosterone ruin any chance of talking to singles members of the opposite sex.
I’m tired of obsessing over ruining my chances with the few of the above I could actually connect with.
I’m tired of building sex up to be the greatest glory that one can achieve, only to inevitably be disappointed.
I’m tired of writing reams of lurid poetry to imaginary loves.
I’m tired of turning to robotics as the only hope to find a significant other.
I’m tired of remembering that I hated middle school and longed for high school as my redemption.
I’m tired of remembering that I hated high school and longed for college as my redemption.
I’m tired of remembering that I hated college and longed for money as my redemption.
I’m tired of knowing what it’s like to have loads of money but having nothing of value to spend it on.
I’m tired of writing this post.
I’m tired of it being a Friday night and finding writing this post as the only way to entertain myself.
I’m tired of wanting to play NHL 10 instead.
I’m tired of having XBox Live as my only consistent socialization.
I’m tired of not having anyone on this forum ever respond back to my posts.
I’m tired of reading a letter of advice, brilliant and volumetric, that I received from a well-known member of this community soon after arriving, yet being unable to actually implement any of its suggestions.
I’m tired of having helped organize a tribute to a long-dead sports team that turned out to be unbelievably popular yet not having anyone to talk to all day when it went on.
I’m tired of being a near-world-expert in a second career at my age yet nobody cares to know what I do.
I’m tired of publishing 3 PRJ articles but not being invited to any symposia.
I’m tired of having engineered a near-impossible-to-reject application to graduate school yet being rejected anyway.

More than any of the above, I am tired of the damage that all of this has caused to my psyche.
I’m tired of being insecure.
I’m tired of being afraid of going out in public.
I’m tired of being unable to take a compliment.
I’m tired of assuming compliments are made in preparation of a round of insults.
I’m tired of being so defensive all the time. [Looking back now on the posts I’ve left on this forum, this is painfully obvious. At least I now know why nobody ever responds to me. Bleh…]
I’m tired of accepting less than I deserve.
I’m tired of being afraid of love.
I’m tired of remembering what it was like to be so compassionate for the world yet being so bitter at it now.

But most of all, I’m tired of knowing all of the above and being powerless to change any of it.

Having enumerated all possible logical reasons for my answer, I find myself lacking the certainty of unassailable rigor. In previous attempts to solve such important questions as this one, I’ve always attempted to look to a deeper reason than the potentially ephemeral results of experience-based judgment. Attitude is always derived from power. But truly, power is derived from emotion. And in this case, I can’t help but find my emotions drawn inexplicably to a vignette of wisdom I recall from my early (and otherwise wasted) religious education, one "Serenity Prayer":
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Courage has never been a problem form me, and the wisdom that I have has been justifiably hard-won in the field of experience, but it this concept of serenity that I find completely baffling. Is serenity not cowardice? How can one ever accept inaction in the face of doom? How could I not desire to better myself? What do I find in this that angers me so about the popular negative answer?
Looking inward, I find that at the deepest part of my soul lies my defining quality: never accepting good enough. More than any other property, opinion, belief, or emotion, my insatiability for self-improvement defines me. And certainly no disease or social status could possibly change that. I will never find serenity. And I will never change that, apologize for it, or tolerate it in myself.
I realize that my anger at the popularity of accepting autism as permanent is really the craving I have for evolution. For good or ill, I can not accept autism. Ever!
Yet in this situation I find myself in a trap. If I can not be satisfied without improving myself, yet am unable to improve myself, how can I be satisfied? What’s the point of continuing on when my defining motivation is gone? As I noted above, this has been my problem since middle school. What is there to hope for?
Whether good or bad, I have found a short-term hope, daft though it may be: sci-fi. Were it not for the hope that science-fiction has given me, I would have crawled into a corner and given up the ghost long ago. In its current incarnation, this hope is personified by Ray Kurzweil. I write this in full realization of how fatuous this seems—especially in the light of the recent ad-hominem war between that man and P.Z. Myers. Regardless, Kurzweil is an ersatz prophet, a provider of hope that, though improbable it may seem, may provide us all with a new forgiveness of our original sins: the curse of genetics.
As a previous poster mentioned, the conventional wisdom is that a cure for autism will not be available until after the year 3000--and until then, we will all be subject to the impotence of science to help. Kurzweil prophesizes otherwise; we who are alive today may really have a chance of freeing ourselves from the cruel judgment of genetics. By his law of exponential growth, we could have a cure within 15 years—the cure being in the form of a computer-human implant that offloads our ability to socialize and increases tolerate to sensations, resulting in the ability to maintain our strengths and overcome our weaknesses. At that time, the question posted by the OP would cease being rhetorical and become directly personal. (Pill form of the cure presumable being optional.)
But is this not just theory? How could I be satisfied by simply waiting for years in the vain hope of my problems being solved by a deus-ex-machina? Isn’t this just cowardice by other means?

Well, it just so happens that I’m a computer genius.

I plan to spend the remainder of my life laboring on the above cure. Based on some work I’ve done so far, it looks like 15 years is far too conservative an estimate. Giving reasonable room for error and over-confidence, it looks like a real, actual cure is within striking distance--possibly in as little as 2 years. (My recent rejection from the academic world not withstanding.)

So, as it turns out, not only would I take the pill to cure autism, there’s a slim chance that I’m going to be the one to hand it out.

To complete the verse from the Beefy song:
…if you want change to happen, make it happen tonight!

Last edited by AdmiralCrunch on 20 Aug 2010, 11:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Only death can cure me.

And I hope I'll stay around a while longer.

I think I wouldn't want to be cured because of a few things. I like who I am. There are things about me I hate but they don't have much to do with AS. I'm not uber social, I like a lot of time alone, so I don't suffer from not having many friends. And also I do have friends that more than I need it satisfy my social needs. Sure I have some issues with social stuff but not as much as some others, I'm more AS in other areas I feel sometimes. Also I have a lot of talents and some are connected to AS and ADD and I really want those talents.

No. Never ever. ever. it would change me fundamentally.

No! I'm looking at this diagnosis as a RELIEF! Though they call it a dysfunction, it's more like having a different personality. Communication by the deaf is done in sign language, and they don't consider themselves dysfunctional. People with autism communicate well with literature, drawing, music, and their own hands. They help the world become a better place for the rest of us! Though we may have to help ourselves learn 'two different languages' it is alright to try and alright to fail. Because Failure is SUCCESS if we learn from it, and I have failed a lot, and I plan to use what I know from my failures to make myself better. No matter what, there are people in the world who have SOME KIND OF DYSFUNCTION, SOME KIND OF COMPLEX, PROBLEM. Those who say they don't just haven't discovered it yet, but others will see it.

Nope not really. BUT I would like to be cured of the anxiety/depression that has followed me along with AS. It is brutal. I got it under control with SSRIs though at the moment, which I have mentioned a few times now on WP.

I have to admit that I used to seek a diagnosis of learning disorder in order to be "cured" and have a normal life. Now, I just want a label to understand my history but I do not feel happier when I act more normally. I enjoy being aroung intelligent people and exchangind informations on an interesting subject, I do not enjoy talking with acquaintance about the weather but I can have "normal talk" with close friends (though we tend to tranform it into an intellectual conversation ), I have met intelligent people and befriended them thanks to my difference.
I have also a special interest I am good at and need thanks to my difference.
I have learnt the braille system at 7 thanks to my difference.

Sometimes I hate the way I am because I feel terribly lonely and it is like almost no one can truly understand me (but one of my friends who is the most intelligent person I have ever met) even among my family, but most of the time I love the way I am because I need that. I need intellectual activity, I was bored before I went to the University, I am almost a psycho whenever I talk about something I find inteteresting but I feel so much better that way.
I have lived like this for 20years and 8 months, I cannot think of any other way to live.

By the way, many people in my family have learning disorder or a "dysfunctional brain" (giftednedness, memory issues, AHDH, what else ?) and have embraced their life without have a cure nor a diagnosis, the only one who has been diagnosed decided not to improve and has done nothing impressing in comparison to the others. I am not saying that having a diagnosis prevent you from learning or anything of course, it may just be her personnality, and i am not saying that NTs are nothing or that they are not happy.

My dyspraxic uncle (the one who has been "cured" -meaning he did reeducation during 5 years) feels much better since he became more normal but still has pecularity he embraces (hypersensibility to sounds and great musical earing).

I don't think there is a single person on earth who truly feel or is normal, some would like to be normal, other areh appy the way they are.

I cured myself, or I was misdiagnosed to begin with.

It depends on what mood I'm in.

And further; how is AS a disability? Last time I heard, Bill Gates is functioning just fine, and I'm not in too bad of a spot myself. Higher intelligence, which is commonly believed to be a prerequisute to AS, is indeed often a disability when stuck together with NT people in public schools, but beyond that, I find it to be an asset.

Charles