Overwhelmed by Special Interest?

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Do your special interests ever just drain you? For example, I've talked about mine for six hours straight today, and have been thinking about it for eight hours more, and I am so exhausted and my chest and back hurts and I want to cry. I've done this before. I'll just get so intense about my interest I'll almost have something similar to a shutdown because I'm so overwhelmed. There's so much to say and learn and yet there isn't, and nobody cares but I keep saying it, and my special interests aren't ever anything tangible and I get so angry that I can't touch it or see it or talk to it and that just turn off.

Anyone else know what I'm talking about? I'm so tired right now. I want to go to sleep, but I want to keep reading about my special interest too.

Sure - I think that's part and parcel of being autistic --> being obsessive about one's own special interests.

I think a bigger question is how does one manages one's special interest obession. I know for me sometimes it can be a problem.

Yup but that is natural because you are expending energy and effort at doing something.

Carry a bottle of water to drink, that should help with the physical issues.

Six hours straight? Hold cow.

No way would anyone have let me to do this as a kid, I would have been told to shut up and walk away and my mom always told me she didn't want to hear it and would get mad if I continued. I would just go to other kids about it and people but I wasn't around anyone for six hours straight. Plus kids made fun of the way I talked so I dared to not speak to them.

How do I manage mine, I try and do other things that need to be done and I get out of the house for a while and that helps. I do not want my life to be run by it and have it be the only thing I ever do. I still have to force myself to go to bed of course and have gotten myself so overtired from it. I want to be in control of mine, not have them control me. But if you have to fight it, I guess that is why it's a symptom lol.

I understand how you feel.
I have days that i am so anxious to put the information about my interests out (i'm not sure if what i want is "talk" about it) that i start writing (on paper, not on pc) until i feel my hands in such a state of pain that i can't write anymore.

The idea of going on about my special interest for 6 hours straight seems foreign to me. My parents chastised me for saying anything about my special interests. I wasn't even supposed to share my special interests with my aunt, her partner and my cousins. I remember one time when countries were my special interest and we were going to play Balderdash. I couldn't make up anything about countries that one evening. The next morning when I woke up, I asked myself "Why in the f--- do I stay here?" I was 11 at the time.

I haven't really told any family members about my special interests since than. I told strangers about my special interests until my mum broke the news to me that I'm on the spectrum two days after I turned 15. I remember the last time I talked to a stranger about my special interests. My mum asked what I was talking to that woman about at the campsite pool and I told her that I was talking about music videos. I also told my sister a half an hour not to tell my mum the other things I was talking about. I haven't talked to anybody about my special interests since I found out about my AS at the age of 15 and if I would have found out sooner, I would have stopped talking about those interests sooner.