I kind of wish I've done drugs

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I'm not really planning to do drugs, but they would be a good excuse for some of my quirks. If people ask me why I'm like this, I could just tell them that I did drugs and ended up like this.

You could still tell them if you want. Sometimes it's funny to see their reactions to something like that. You could come up with all kinds of hilarious and ridiculous cocktails and tell them you just took one. It might be fun to freak people out like that.

Ended up like what?

You're only 18; you have a long life ahead of you.

I hope, some day, that you will go back to school.

Yep, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day long. But, he learned to go with it; we all do.

I hate school. Everyone asks me if I'm okay and gives me way too much pointless work.

College/University is not like high school. People couldn't care less how you're feeling. All they want you to do is hand in the work and participate in class a little bit.

Some of that pointless school work might not actually be that pointless. You might not see the point of it at this moment but sometimes years later you realize that what you learned doing that pointless assignment really comes in handy. I remember when I was in the seventh grade our social studies teacher gave us an assignment to do over the weekend. We had to rewrite then entire US Constitution, every bit of it but in our own words. Many people found it very difficult and I was actually the only person in the entire class who actually completed the entire assignment. Of course I got an A+ and I was very happy with that but I was upset when I realized that no one else had been able to finish it or even to come close to finishing it and even though they had not finished it they all got passing grades. In fact, I think anyone who handed in anything at all got an A. That really upset me since I had worked for three almost three days, Friday night, Saturday all day, Sunday all day and all of Sunday night to complete it. And this was before the age of personal computers and I did not have a typewriter so it was all hand written on loose leaf notebook paper and every time I made an error I had to rewrite the whole page. But completing that assignment and not only completing it but doing an excellent job with it gave me such a huge boost in my confidence and self esteem. It was the first time in my life that I had tackled such a huge task and I did everything in my power to do it and I did it. It was the first major successful undertaking I had ever had. The effort it took to complete it was beyond astronomical but I refused to give up until it was done. And that lesson was priceless. It changed my character and made me a different person.

I now knew that if I persevered I could do it. two years later at the age of 14 I completed my first 26.2 mile marathon which I ran with both of my parents. The next year I ran another one with my dad and then that same year I completed a relay race around the island of Oahu, Hawaii also with my dad. And these marathons were some of the most defining moments of my life as well as some of the most precious bonding times I have ever had with both of my parents. We all still remember those runs so vividly and so fondly even though they were almost a half century ago. They really did wonders to bring us closer to each other. But once you have done one huge thing, it teaches you that many other huge things are possible and then you start to accomplish things you never imagined you could before.

And of course at the time we all thought it was a pointless assignment. I mean really, if we wanted to look up an article in the Constitution there were copies everywhere and we could just look up and study the parts we wanted. But the teacher later explained that the reason he gave us the assignment was that he wanted us to be able to have some kind of appreciation for what it took to put that document together in the first place and to have a little understanding of what it might have taken for those men to get together and have the discipline and fortitude to draft that document and to make it work. He wanted us to have a little experience in what it would take to undergo such a huge project and to put out that kind of effort. Well every time I had to write a research paper or a term paper in high school and college, I remembered that experience and I knew that all the work I had done doing that seemingly pointless assignment had prepared me in many ways to be able to put in the time and discipline to write those huge term papers. And having that kind of experience taught me to do effective research in many kinds of topics. And guess what all that learning to do research in high school and college prepared me for? Yeah, all the research I have done over the past couple of years to learn and confirm about my being on the Spectrum. And learning to put all that research into an organized, concise portfolio will end up saving a doctor many many hours in putting together an official diagnosis for me thus saving me tons of money since many of these people are actually paid by the session hour. So if I do end up seeking a professional diagnosis that will definitely help.

So, seventh grade social studies teacher, if you happen to read this post, thank you for that pointless assignment. It changed my life. I think you knew it would or at least hoped it would change at least one of us.

I have also had pointless homework assignments come in very handy with different jobs I have had because they taught me skills that I could use to relate to the task at hand in the job.

So you never know when something you learn now might serve you later in a greater capacity even if you can't imagine how it possibly could. But learn all you can while you are in school. When we are lucky enough to be there we really take it for granted. But once that opportunity has been taken away from you, you may regret not having taken full advantage of it.

And if people keep asking if you are okay, just say, "yeah" and move on.

What exactly would "doing drugs" actually equate to for you?

When people say such things, they often have zero understanding of what drug addiction entails and the effects it actually has.

"Quirks" doesn't fall under that category.

Here's the thing about drugs: they're f*****g amazing the first times you do them. Then they turn absolutely s**t and you grow to hate them. I genuinely believe they've opened my mind to things I thought never possible. They've made me more confident as a person and more able to relate to others. They've made me more artistic. But they've also made me depressed, given me anxiety, made me paranoid and all sorts of other awful stuff. That's legal drugs as well as illegal ones that have had the bad effects, by the way. Illegal drugs are actually usually not all that different to the legal ones. Ritalin has basically the exact same effects as cocaine, for example. But seriously, no one who has never done drugs should ever attempt to understand what they're like. Both anti-drug and pro-drug talk a lot of BS about them. Plus, blaming your quirks on drug use makes you look a lot worse in the eyes of society than saying it's just how you are. Drug use is demonised horrendously in society these days, where anyone who has ever tried them is made to look like an evil scumbag instead of someone who wants an escape from reality. Kind of ironic considering the most evil drug is the world, alcohol, is legal

Dillogic is right. Drug addiction is a very nasty and ugly thing and has destroyed and even killed many people. One of our friend's buddies lost his life to a heroine overdose a couple of years ago at the age of 21. It's really horrible.

But I think I understand why you feel the way you do though Dkisses and that is why I made light of it in a previous post. I know that sometimes I feel so out of place that I would love to be able to just say "Yeah, I'm on something." In fact people have asked me more than once before if I was on drugs because I was so out of it. I used to space out a lot more than I do now when I did not know I was on the Spectrum and I have had a few public meltdowns. Sometimes it's just easier to want to blame it on a drug or something like that because then we feel like if it were from a drug we would have the power to stop having to go through it. But we don't. It's just who we are. It's very difficult sometimes but even if we had something else or even if we were just regular people with nothing we would still have challenges.

Everyone has insurmountable challenges. Some are physical, some are mental or emotional, not a single human being goes through life without something to overcome and work through. That's just the nature of life. Some people's challenges are just more apparent or more frequent but everyone's challenges are as challenging them as yours are to you. And some can be less severe than others or have different severities of consequences but I can almost guarantee you that no one lives to adulthood without complaining about something.

But you can do it. You really can. And if we continue to support you and support each other it makes it a little more tolerable.

That is also really scary when we consider how many have lost their lives to alcohol abuse. The hardest thing about it is that in small quantities certain alcoholic beverages like good red wine, for example, can be very healthy. But it's hard to figure out what to do when there is so much abuse of alcohol.

Drugs are no joke.

I also lost people to them.

I wish I could counsel you, DevilKisses. You have lots of potential. Maybe take a class or two?

I don't really want to do drugs. I just want to be able to use them as an excuse for some of my quirks. It seems like most people like to have explanations for quirky behaviors. I'd rather say that I'm on drugs than say I have some disability.

It's better to be quirky than to be a drug addict.

I think it's better to just be honest. I would respect you a lot more if you told me you had quirks from a disability than from drugs. And if you did say you were on drugs then people will start trying to deal with that and that becomes a whole new can of worms that you do not want to open. Remember that most people who are on drugs are very deceitful about it. So if you say it and you sound convincing then people might believe you and then if they try to deal with that with you they might have a hard time believing you if you then try to retract and say you are not. You really don't want go that route. It's not a game. It's a bit like making a joke that you have a bomb in your bag when you are at the airport. People take those kinds of things very seriously and you could find yourself in a very stressful situation if you tell people you are on drugs and you sound serious.

It's the same for all drugs. Opium is a great painkiller, yet it's horrifically addictive and destroys your respiratory system. Methamphetamine and MDMA are great for treating PTSD and ADHD, yet meth rots your face and both rot your cardiovascular system. Mephedrone, I imagine, is great for PTSD too, but that s**t is pure evil when abused...

To summarise, all drugs can have good effects. But wishing you'd done drugs so you could claim your quirks are related to that and not just how you are... that's really worrying. It just proves how negatively difference is portrayed in the media these days. Drug use is still portrayed as the work of bad people, but psychological difference is presented as something almost alien