Dealing with addictive behavior.

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Most treatments of addictions focus on social support groups. Not really my thing. I analyse, I read and write about it, making it a special interest and studying it. . But the most effective has been transparancy and support. Truth and acceptance. That combination works best for me.

What works for you???

AA and NA didn't work for me. Psych institutions and drug rehab didn't work for me.

I stopped about two years ago because I just don't feel like doing it anymore.

I have a car, and I have money, so I can easily take myself to the bad parts of town to score.

I don't because I don't feel like it.

I have a feeling, though, that if I lived in close proximity to the bad part of town, I'd be off to the races again.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for the madness.

The novelty wears off eventually - well It did for me anyway - took an incredibly long time though

Totally agree about acceptance- for me, it's awareness and acceptance then, weirdly, it isn't as strong as it was. I don't like support groups or anything that focuses on the behaviours themselves because, for me, that reinforces it.

IMO, many Autists misinterpret their special interests as addictions.

For me, the difference is that special interests make me feel good and calm me down in a good way (most of the time), but addictions are something negative that only makes me feel better temporarily but then makes me feel worse or is unhealthy. It's like something I do even though logically I know I don't want to or shouldn't.

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My proposition is that neurologically they are very similar. And that we can learn from the positive ones how to manage the negative patterns. They also overlap. When does a special interest become an obsession? Sometimes I have to slow myself down on something, e.g. recently geneology after spending weeks uncovering thousands of ancestors on all sites of the family. There are diminishing returns in going from discovering a mayflower ancestor to documenting just one more link to charlemain - our ultimate common ancestor!

How we manage the special interests over time could be of great value to people dealing with addictions.

Last edited by aspergerplus on 08 Aug 2013, 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Once I get going on anything its hard to stop.
I used to think I just had an addictive personality.
Then I got diagnosed at it all makes sense.