Hi! From Ghosthunter in St.Paul Minnesota!

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1)...The Question?

Do you REALLLY NEEED THOSE mEDS?
And are you REALLY AS?
Do you think you are a hypocondriac?


2)...Statements by Ghosthunter!

I don't take any meds, I never have. Do you think I should start?
You sound like you had a lot of fun GH! Ugh about the flie's piss! I can't believe you were up so early watching Futurama!

Ghosty did you get my PM?

Ghosthunter, you know that I mean you well. Please forgive me going against the flow and saying that I am not a fan of your writings. Specifically, I find your attitude "I - HFA, them - ASers" inappropriate, offensive and belittling to others. You are not a yardstick to compare to and measure other people. If you need to assert your identity this way, I would appreciate if you could refrain from doing it here.

Some neurologists believe that there is a wide gulf between AS and HFA, others believe the gap is so small and debatable as to be hardly worth mentioning.

I agree with you Magic.

Ghosthunter I am a little hurt and feel I need to defend myself, which I shouldn't have to do here on this message board.

I am indeed AS and I don't take medication for it. I don't feel I have to. I am a citizen of this society and I want to be accepted. If I can't be accepted , then I just move on to other things.

In this post you have alienated me from a majority of others on the spectrum.

I feel you are looking down on me and I also feel you are creating a HUGE chasm between HFA/AS. That should not be necessary.

I had a lot of respect for you GH, but; now I will back away for awhile and rethink so things that have been said here.

Tom, I am aware of that and in principle have nothing against a debate on the subject. What I oppose is the way Ghosthunter judges people by their labels and very superficial observations. This, unfortunately, pervades his writings, despite my many attempts to let him know that it is in fact hurtful. At least I feel this way.

Tere, thank you for your post. I am so glad that there is someone who feels like me. I wrote previous paragraph before reading your post. Yes, it is this "looking down" that I complain about. Ghosthunter, maybe it's not your intention, but it still hurts. And I am not talking only about this thread.

I apologize for my bluntness, but I just had to say what I said. Ghosthunter, I really wish that you could change your attitude on this matter, because you are such a nice and good guy otherwise.

I was on a form of prozac for a short period (~6 months) during high school; basically cos I had absolutely no idea what was different about me and absolutely nothing I could do, to try to improve my relationships to others and my general disinterest in school, seemed to work. I actually am very resistant to the idea of prescription meds like prozac... I sometimes worry that people are so pressured to conform to an acceptable level of happiness and that by taking drugs like that you kind of give up a part of your own personal identity, part of what makes you you. But then that might just be cos I read too much science fiction stuff like "Brave New World" Anyway, the prozac did help a little but didn't really have a lasting effect, and I sometimes felt a little too unnaturally happy (Its hard to describe). I haven't been on anything like that for a long long time now.

((FYI, GH I personally didn't take your comments to be attacks but I can kind of see where people are coming from))

Sorry Magic. I know that was a bit of pointless thing to say ...I was just thinking out load, not trying to argue with you.

I always wanted to pet stingrays.

Alright, everyone. Let's give peace a chance, y'all.

Ghosthunter, I know you mean well by trying to inform people about AS/HFS but does it really make a difference one way or another? Either way it goes, whether I call myself an "aspie" or "autie", I will never the less, be autistic, period. I'll still have the same symptoms, the stimming, hypersensitivity, same social issues and constantly having to find ways to cope. So the label won't matter, anyway.

Now as for the pharmacuticals, whether people choose to take meds to cope with co-morbid issues is their business and no one else's. We all have different neurological makeups and autism, as we know already, is not a one-size-fits-all condition. As I've mention before, I do take two anti-depressants, Klonopen for anxiety and Lithium as a catalist for the anti-depressants. Yep, that's a lot of medicine but about a year ago, I was in a mental hospital following a suicidal attempt due to a break-down and severe depression. I was also hopitalized when 16 for the same thing so this is something I've dealt with for years.

Being on meds has allowed me the freedom to deal with my life in a more constructive manner. I don't have those constant thoughts of wanting to die or that feeling of gloom anymore and no, none of what's "me" was altered in any way. I also go to therapy and that enables me to find strategies for dealing with my emotional and personal issues. Finding out that I'm AS(or HFA) was the missing piece of the puzzle that helped me move along with healing myself.

I'm normally angry when people make blanket statements about others who take meds but I've learned to not judge them and instead, keep listening to myself when it comes to what I need as that comes before anyone's opinion of myself or how I live my life.

I think psychiatrists can often be med-crazy, doling out left and right. I think it is a valid point to be aware of this.

However, this doesn't mean that meds are not necessary nor that they cannot be helpful in any way. Some people need to take them for the rest of their lives, some people need them for only a little while until they've gotten over rough spots, and others really don't need them at all-- or are prescribed too much medication or even the wrong med.

I believe medications have value. Treating them like cure-alls is inaccurate, because they often don't cure everything. But note, please, the decrease of people going into or even living in hopsitals... and I can guarantee you it isn't because of therapy.

Meds aren't perfect. Psychiatrists aren't perfect. But I'd rather take a little imperfection to no medications at all. Unless anyone else wants to give lobotomies and Metrazol or Insulin shock therapies a try again?

Hmm.

Magic: I agree on the idea that calling oneself "HFA" and then deciding based on arbitrary characteristics that the reasons others differ from you is really that they're "AS" is a problem. It's something I've seen happen a lot before though -- and also in the reverse direction, with people calling themselves AS, or also people calling themselves LFA. (Actually the worst form is when people call themselves "the real autistic people" and act like nobody else is or few other people are.) I don't like it, but I'm used to it. At one point I wrote this because I kept seeing it everywhere:
http://www.autistics.org/library/aspieautie.html

At any rate, I do also find it alienating when people run around classifying people in that manner, whatever their intent. It actually reminds me a lot of being in the system, where everyone else gets to tell you what you are but you don't get to make up your own mind. I respect people's decisions on what to call themselves, but I do not like having my actions dissected by others to see which parts are AS and which are HFA and which are PDD-NOS and which are LFA. I've lived under too many nonsensical labels already and my own choice is to refer to myself as autistic with no qualifiers (including no "functioning level"), I prefer that to be respected. And I don't like being under anyone's magnifying glass.

This of course is in no way unique to GH. Lots of people do it. I don't normally let on exactly how much it bothers me on both a personal and political level to be dissected or watch people being dissected and categorized that way, but it does. No matter what the intent of the person doing it is.

Sophist: The reason so many people are not living in one particular kind of institutions anymore is economic as much as anything. Many of the people who were once living in large institutions are now living in small institutions (including "mental health housing", group homes, and the like), with their families, or on the streets. Others are able to deal with the world on their own (as much as any other person is) and always were. With or without medication. The condition a person has does not make an institution grow up around them, any more than the absence of certain drugs makes insulin shock reappear. When funding shifts from large institutions to other things, you see less people in large institutions. The exact same thing happened with people with developmental disabilities at about the same time, but you don't see that being blamed on "better medications", because there are no drugs for intellectual disabilities for instance. I think you're getting trapped in false dichotomies. When there's less funding to a place, less people will live there, no matter where they go.

None of this is to say nobody should take medications, but I don't think medications can be credited and/or blamed for the trend towards deinstitutionalization (or at least the trend towards smaller institutions), which was mostly political and economic in nature.

For the record, I do take something that could be viewed as psych medication, but given that it's over-the-counter and herbal, it's certainly not a product of the pharmaceutical industry. The most important thing, whether it's from the pharmaceutical industry or not, is that it's my choice. Nobody forced me into it. Nobody even coerced me into it by promising that if I didn't, all kinds of dire things would happen to me. I researched and chose it of my own free will, and monitor its effects on my own. That's the most important thing. And no, I don't take it "for autism". I just happen to be an autistic person who takes it.

(I have a policy of not naming it in public because I don't want parents to give it to children against their will, and because there are health risks related to some forms of it that can be avoided, but they require a lot more explanation than I'm willing to deal with every time I mention it.)

I think it is a natural stage probably too. I did it too along with someone I know who was diagnosed around the same time I was discovering my diagnosis. (I'd been diagnosed earlier but had no chance to think about it at the time.) Neither of us do it now.