Asperger's and Marijuana

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to teknique (sp?) i think i spelled it wrong,
well,
from what I remember you said you don't identify yourself as aspie,
well, either way, i can relate to you....being more social when high,
some problems going away, for me though,
yes
being high is nice to a certain degree,
but money, chest pains, cough, other down things make me not
want to do it, ESPECIALLY this one - KNOWING the high will go away
then im back to reality - so though it's hard, i want to adapt to reality...
and Jesus (who i believe is real) is the biggest help possible,
no, i never feel high like when on marijuana as a believer, but life
itself has new meaning, which has lifted me out of severe depression,
and many other problems.....thank you,
ttyl OP (original poster -> cuz i didn't want to mispell your name wrong again : ) ]

i did my post 2 days ago at school the librarians saw it and told my Associate Principle, Mr. Schaefer, who talked about it with my school therapist, Ms. Davis, who i talked to about marijuana and autism earlier in the year. Mr. Schaefer called me into his office yesterday morning to talk about it, he said i cant say stuff like that at school but he read my post and in my case agrees with my decision to use it and asked when i would be able to afford my card then he suggested i try edibles and we got into a conversation about his friend in college who grew pot lol it was a pretty cool day until my French teacher yelled at me for sleeping in class

I believe that much of the anxiety cause by marijuana is due to it being illegal and users being afraid of getting caught.

Hi,
Thank you all for sharing. I am 30 years and live in The Netherlands. Been smoking weed for 17 years now. Two years ago 'they' told me i have AS.
Before I smoked weed, before my 13th, I thought the world would stop if i died. I thought i was important and that others should listen to me. I had tons
of humor, acting weird and putting others 2 shame. I lead many teams in gym and always wanted to be the general when fighting with toy guns. My zodiac sign
is Leo so that might explain some of this behaviour. Extravert and confident.
Then 1 day my brother introduced me to weed. I never laughed so hard about nothing. Didn't feel like i was stoned or physicly different in any way. That was however
only the 1rst time. After that it felt like i entered another dimension. I became introverter over time as i learned that the world is much more than my own perception of it.
It gave me the feeling i was a part of a much bigger 'story'. It made me realize i am not alone leading the world, trying 2 show how i think it should work. Empathy became
more important than my own selfish thoughts. So much so that after a few years i became silent and only listened, becomming a 'shadow' of myself. Losing self confidence,
even to a point i got a lot of stress going outside, thinking people could see what i was thinking. That they could see i was just a shadow, a person lost in reality. Always racing to school having to spend less time around people, being able 2 hide in class looking outside dreaming of what could be. Around my 16th i started seeing professional help. My parents where angry almost every week because i was always sitting upstairs and that i smoked weed. ( also angry at brother ). They knew something was wrong, but thought it had to do with the weed.
Two years ago after many, many tests i got the news, AS. At 1rst i thought it might have been the weed causing the symtoms of AS, however after asking several professionals they told me it is a miracle i managed to 'survive' for so many years. The weed is only a self medication, a way of escaping from the reality i already don't fit in. However it became my passion and people with AS are great in over doing things.
Looking back, weed has helped me and it has made me the person i am today. It has destroyed many things eswell as opened many doors i didn't know excisted. Who knows what would have happened without weed. I can guess tho. I think i would have become the subject of allot of bullying. I might have had allot of fights and get thrown out of school. Who knows what then. However weed made me more introvert, thinking about life instead of living it. Only thinking about something is enough with weed, no need to do it anymore. Being so creative in my brain takes away the pain of being alone in a world full of people. Should weed be a medicine, no, should it be legal, yes. It is not harmfull 2 others, just yourself. Driving with weed makes you drive slower, driving with alcohol makes you kill others while not even wanting to do so.

We are all 1, just not the same.
Best to all

I had to drop out of college because marijuana affected my senses; I'll be returning in a year. People with AS need to be cautious. Don't smoke too much strong marijuana. I didn't even know I had AS until this incident. Because we aren't neurotypical, our brains respond differently. Be forewarned.

But before this incident, I benefited extremely from it: I was able to socialize better by conversing with others almost instinctively; my passion for math increased and I did better; my concentration increased as well as my creativity; my memory increased; food tasted better; I was happier; and it helped diminish my ocd symptoms.

I haven't smoked weed in years.I don't miss it at all.

hmmm, interesting, i find for me when i first start using it, i twitch and get paralized, cant see straight and cant breathe properly, but i learn to control those side effects after a couple of months.

once controlled, it helps me in so many areas, it dims all my senses, so i dont get overwhelmed(crowds-sound, lights, touch, temperature, hearing, ) it helps me block emotions i dont want to feel, it helps me relax my muscles, which i cant do regularly, it helps me eat foods, i usually wouldnt (meat, and textures i dont like) it makes me social( i usually dont talk and sit in corner looking at trees and flowers (i love nature!!) now i say before i think... probably shouldnt because my thoughts are very strange... :/ it helps my insomnia, it helps my anxiety, it helps my depression soooo much! it helps time go faster even though it already does....i brain washed myself,,, but yes, it has helped me in so many ways that i dont like the way i function without it (daily meltdowns, can function really, cant even think as properly)

I smoked daily for years.

It did (sort of) help with the anxiety. It helped a lot with the pain of isolation and hyperfocus. I loved to sit alone under a tree, smoke a bowl, and listen to my thoughts wander. Those were some of the best experiences of adolescence.

It improved my social skills too-- but not in a good way. I thought slower, ergo I talked less, ergo I was less annoying...

...and also participated less in social interactions even though I spent more time around people.

I quit for a lot of reasons. The guy I married didn't like it, I got pregnant and was afraid it would hurt the baby (and then that I'd get caught and lose her)...

...but most of all (I don't think the other reasons would have stopped me), I got tired of feeling like my brain was full of wet cotton. I wanted my intelligence back. So I quit, and after a couple of years, I started being smart again.

Sometimes I wonder if it was worth the trade-off...

...but on the whole I wouldn't recommend it. It's better than, say, Risperdal, but not by much (and for a lot of the same reasons, minus debilitating pain).

Amotivational syndrome SUCKS. It makes you lazy and slow of thought. It's worse than cigarettes to cause emphysema. Unless you're an ardent gardener, it's expensive. And it's illegal. It shouldn't be-- I really need to join NORML because I feel passionate about legalization even if I don't exactly approve of doing it and never plan to smoke again-- but "should" is irrelevant. The fact is that, right now, they'll hurt you if they catch you.

They may be stupid, but they're also in charge.

I smoked a lot when I was in my early 20s, especially in college. I haven't smoked in 3 years, and in the past 5-6 years I've smoked only a handful of times. I really liked it when first did it, but I would sometimes get very paranoid. I quickly settled into a stoner routine with my roomates of staying home and playing video games every weekend, and smoking all weekend. Any time I smoked with anyone else the paranoia reared its ugly head. Sometimes debilitating. One time we met two girls and went back to their place to smoke and hang out, and hooking up was almost a sure thing, but I suddenly got violent chills. I was shaking and felt really cold even though everyone else felt fine. I quit because I moved to a new place and didn't ahve a steady source to get mj from. When I did get it I would get pretty paranoid smoking in my own apartment, alone. I quit again for a year or two. Eventually I got a vaporizer, and still got paranoia. I learned that smoking a very very tiny amount was enough to put me in a good mood (think Homer Simpson in the episode where he gets a medical mj prescription). Perhaps I am very sensitive to something in mj. It's something I avoid now, though I miss how it could make things like video games fun.

I decided it was not a good thing in my life. Every single insecurity I have, every mistake I've ever made, all those things come to haunt me but magnified 100x when I smoke. Plus I start getting paranoid and thinking that all my family, friends, and coworkers, and neighbors dislike me and know things about me that they couldn't possibly know (even things that aren't necessarily even true). It's basically like entering a horrible nightmare. Sometimes I would smoke and regret it. I would have to retire to my bed and still be haunted by dark thoughts there. I'm not sure why I continued to try it. Maybe part of the high was actually enjoyable, maybe seeking it out just became a habit even though it was a harmful experience. All I know is I got nothing done while smoking the substance, and magnified my anxiety a hundredfold, and made me make a fool of myself in social situations.

There were sometimes highs that were euphoric, and there was that "golden era" of my smoking phase during which I smoked with my roomates and one or two other close friends in the safety of our apartment, during my early 20s. Those times were more often good than bad. Overall I think it would have been best if I hadn't ever smoked. It's scary because I feel like it may have given me a glimpse into what insanity might be like. I never felt like I might one day snap and become crazy, but I did feel like it could cause a gradual degradation of my mental facilities.

I think it gave me a different worldview that is much broader than the one I had. As an ASD'er going into college I was very rigid and closed minded. MJ helped me have a broader perspective. I often felt when high that each high was taking me into "weed time", in which I would rehash my entire life, from toddlerhood through childhood. During these sessions I would look back on life experiences and re-experience them in a brand new way. Sometimes it was devastating and depressing, and sometimes it was just plain "a-ha! so that's what that meant!". Its like the ASD filter that I wore my entire life was lifted and I could interpret things in a more NT way. And I felt like the more I smoked the more I was "aging" in "weed years". And the maturity or new context I was getting during this was somewhat transferring over to my real (sober) life.

I feel that I was pretty good in sports but during the times that I was smoking I was noticably more horrible at sports. I did sometimes get in the zone while high and absolutely destroy everyone in my pay while playing video games. For example I got 20 kills in a row while playing COD online and the next highest scorer had 8 kills.

Sometimes I still crave it but I dread possibly having another anxiety attack. I think if I stuck to very very small amounts I might manage to have an enjoyable experience but it's not really worth the trouble it would take to acquire and smoke undetected, and the harm it could cause to professional life, etc. I'm really curious to see if anyone else here had similar experiences. I'm sometimes surprised to read so many people saying that it relaxes them.

I will say that smoking did help me to analyze a lot about how the brain and thoughts work. It is like i traded one view of the world for another. I feel like I have lost some intelligence. I used to be very very good at math but now I have serious doubts about my ability (even though I have no actual evidence to back this up, since I haven't done math in years). My memory is definitely worse than it was before, and so is my attention span. I'm not sure if that's just due to aging or if it's a consequence of smoking.

It was always fascinating to me to see how the high affected my mind and the new ways I was seeing things, but also how it affected the others who were smoking with me. Mostly other people's though processes seemed ret*d to me but I was confident that my own were quite sophisticated. Obviously I have doubts about that now . Somewhere in there there is potential for very good experiences, but also potential for literally nightmarish ones. The good parts aren't worth the potential nightmares.

I recommend staying away from the weed.

Just like any other "self-medicating" substance, it can quickly turn into a habit, and that habit can have complications.

I knew a girl who went to nursing school and graduated near the top of her class. She was recruited by hospitals for excellent positions, but she never took a nursing job. Why? She was a habitual pot smoker, and she loved the pot more than she loved her career. I also suspect she was on the spectrum because of the way she behaved. She seemed to use pot to get over some serious interpersonal communication problems. While she was beautiful, she didn't seem to understand social interaction, spoke in a monotone, would say inappropriate things, and lacked empathy. Aside from me, she had no real friends, because she alienated everyone.

Because of the pot, she worried about drug tests and getting pulled over in her car and charged with DWI. She needed the stuff, so she was always hatching plans to get more, lying to people around the clock, etc. It dominated (and eventually seriously messed up) her life.

I know some other people with the pot addiction as well. They paid a heavy price for it: one guy was fired from Wall Street, and a girl was reported to the Department of Child and Family Welfare after her kid got injured while she was stoned.

Unlike alcohol, the stuff is illegal, and the government WILL come after you eventually. It also makes you foggy brained if you use it too much, and can lung damage.

Have a glass of wine instead, and get a designated driver if you are out on the town. It simply isn't worth it.