Is Chewing A Stim ?

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I have had trouble with chewing for a long time. By trouble I mean I cannot stop. It is mostly food which causes trouble, of course. When I was in my 20s I would chew about 500 pieces of gum A DAY because if I did not, I would eat.
Why is this? Had anyone else been able to STOP chewing? I tried other things. It has been decades but I need to stop because of TMJ and other issues.
I would love to hear of other chew-ers who stopped. If I do not do it, the anxiety is so bad I feel like putting my head through the glass window for real or banging my head.

Let's assume it is a stim.

Many people with autism have success substituting a different stim, and there is advice in the forum about stim toys. I suggest you try some of those to see if it reduces your chewing. Don't insist on eliminating the chewing right away, but just reducing it, by use of a different stim. Let us know how that works.

I have experienced this, I had to to stop because my already 'injured' jaw was taking a beating. I still chew on occasion, but not all day everyday anymore.

Not sure if it is a stim, but I do notice I chew more aggressively when I am anxious or upset and I tend to chew in a rhythm.

I started by reducing the amount of gum I had in a day, but then I ended up just chewing one piece all day, then when I ran out I just didn't buy anymore not so much through choice, but I couldn't find my brand. So it was almost a forced cold turkey. The more time that went by the less I craved it. Eventually when I did find my brand, I could just have some after meals.

When I was in school I went trough a whole lot of gum. I damaged my jaw from too much mastication , it now constantly clicks and gets painful if I chew for too long. I replaced chewing with smoking.

Of course it's a stim. I've been doing it everyday for all my life, I'd say it's my main stim. I've injured my jaw a bit a lot of times, but it's never been such a serious problem as the rest of you say. I mostly enjoy it, I think it's one of the easiest stims to hide.

This thread has got me thinking whether I "stress eat" or "stim eat." It makes sense of a lot of what I now know about myself.

As my sig says, I wasn't diagnosed until 51 and in fact my diagnosis didn't even exist effectively until I was almost thirty. Just one more thing to look at through the new lens of my diagnosis.

Thanks WP!

I love that. Am I stress eating or stim eating? Ha! Yes, for me it was early, this insane need to chew. In fact they thought I had that thing called Prader Willis. (This was all late in life, as I was dxed late). But I am not overweight because of the chewing. I literally would start at 6am and chew gum till 11 pm on a bad day. Wrappers everywhere and do you know not ONE THERAPIST EVER thought that was anything other than a mild eating disorder or OCD? To me now , that seems absurd. You could not even chew that much unless you had a neurologcal problem. I mean, really, NT's .......Try it!! It would dive an NT nuts, but it gave me comfort. I was really abused (non family) so it comforted me in that time. If I did not chew gum, I did want to eat but it hurt my stomach. I have the GI issues that a lot of autistic people have. Man, those early twenties sucked so bad!!

I tend to chew on non-food items. I'm known for chewing on things like plastic water bottle caps, pens, or straws.

It can be a stim. But most people I know about who stim chew don't do it because they would eat otherwise. They just do it for the sensory stimulation of chewing. If I were you, I would want to look into why you need to eat all the time. That could be a physiological problem that needs to be addressed or it could be psychological. But I would definitely try to find out what is happening with that.

It certainly is. I do it all the time.

From my understanding about chewing/eating for the human species is that as an evolutionary point of view the process of eating triggers a psychological reaction of safety. As when the catch was killed and hunted a safe area to consume the catch would entail. So humans will often only eat in a safe environment... I have also caught myself doing this, if i am going for a meeting with people, doctor, meeting i will often try to subtly chew gum as it help relaxation a little more. So would make sense from an evolutionary point of view that chewing/eating creates a form of inner calmness/safety.. which is evident no mater on the spectrum or not, hence the expression, 'comfort eating'. I think many on the spectrum would be more prone to this and eating in itself is a form of calming and if stimming is evidently based on calming factors then logically and evolutionary speaking would be classed as a stim especially if it is more frequent than is usual for most.

I chew small pieces of wood broken from toothpicks which I keep stashed in my mouth and periodically swallow.

Oh yes. It is definitely a stim. They make things just to satisfy that chewing urge. I used to chew my fingers raw.