Alcoholism and AS: dual problem

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I just wanted to get a consensus on anyone with autism/AS that is an alcoholic as well because it seems to be somewhat rare. I also wanted anyone who is comfortable to share their story.

My story is like this. I started drinking and smoking cigarettes at around 16. At around 17 I was drinking on a daily basis (even on school nights) to the point of black-out or passing out. In the beginning, it was mainly helping me to cope with my AS and it made me not care about anything and it made me feel great at the same time. It made me more social. It made all my insecurities go away as well. I started attending under-age parties after joining a punk rock band with another student at my high school and his friend from another school.

All was going well until I got my first ticket for underage drinking and my first stint at an outpatient treatment center. Which closely followed with my second outpatient stint. Then I graduated from high school, worked for a year and started college all while my drinking continued to get worse.

Basically all the great things that alcohol gave me quickly paved the way for more and more problems. I started getting into random fights while drinking mostly verbal. I got thrown out of clubs. Eventually I was not invited to parties and I was asked to leave the band I was in. My behavior while drinking became literally out of control and I became highly volatile and unstable. I ended up with virtually zero friends because no one wanted me around.

And this all came to a head when one night at two in the morning I got in a drunk driving accident (luckily I was the only car) where I could of died. I was in the hospital for about a week with a fractured pelvis caused by the seat belt. The seat belt saved my life actually. The only area of the car that was not smashed in was the drivers side. If anyone was in the passenger seat in front or back they would of been killed instantly. After this incident I ended up being shipped off to a residential treatment center in Minneapolis about 1500 miles.

Fast forwarding to 2002 after a few treatment centers and relapses I ended up at another treatment center in California practically right next door to Disneyland called Oasis. That place changed my life and turned into the best 6 years of my entire life. I basically went through 90 days of treatment and then went on to live in a sober living house for about 6 years.

I have since been sober for going on 11 years. I still struggle with my AS and other mental conditions but I feel that dealing with the feelings without burying them is the key to a happy and fulfilling life for me. The past 3 years have probably been the darkest days since 2001. But I continue to maintain my sobriety.

Honestly in a way the drinking actually took a way my ability to deal with my AS and get help for it. Basically during my drinking I stopped living and I was just surviving. I stunted my "growth" as a person severely.

I guess this was really long but I really wanted to share this story and also if anyone else has struggled with a dual diagnosis of alcoholism and AS. It seems to be somewhat rare. Not everyone who drinks to cope will have a problem though and some get out before it becomes a problem. I came to realize that this is because I was pretty much born with alcoholic traits and it is in my genes. Once I started the addiction immediately kicked in.

Thanks for sharing man. I drink too much too, mainly to be entertained. I don't think I have a problem as you described because I never really get into trouble with it. My liver may disagree but it always comes out okay in tests! I'm an Aspie by the way.

Like I said not everyone will have a problem. Plus some people are worse off than others. I mean I had a problem with tolerance where I had to drink more to get the same effect. I was pretty much drinking at least 18 beers a night plus hard liquor at the end. In the beginning I needed less to get to the same place. Then there is the idea of drinking more than you want to. You tell yourself you will only have six and then you end up having more. Although this is not always true some normal drinkers at times drink more than they intend but not usually.

Basically one is too many and a thousand is never enough. I never ever had my fill of booze and stopped. I always wanted more regardless of how much I drank. Funny thing, that. Also I had cravings to drink it which normal drinkers do not get. Feeling like drinking or wanting to is different than actually needing it . It is abnormal for someone to need alcohol. This is based on the physical and mental dependency on alcohol. Your body actually needs it and your mind convinces you to continue. This means you have an obsessive/complusive drive to drink. And it is the same as a dog chasing its tail. You never actually break even because the compulsion brings about even further obsession. Then you need to drink more and the obsession just continues to get stronger. It is very similar to OCD. Any one who has OCD can learn from a therapist that in order to stop the obsession you have to not act on the compulsion. The compulsion just perpetuates the obsession although the afflicted usually doesn't think so.

One test is try to see if you can stop for while. Normal drinkers can put it down whenever they want and can put the desire to drink out of their mind indefinitely with a little push on their part. Basically they can stop and start because they are only doing it by choice.

Put simply the alcoholic does not have the power of choice in any way.

To compound problems there are alcoholics who actually have a disease and then there are hard drinkers who do not have a disease. If you are a hard drinker it is possible to become an alcoholic if you continue. They call it the "invisibla line" once you cross that it is too late because once you are an alcoholic it is permanent and the only safe choice you have is to stop drinking anything at all. Also for me I think I was actually born this way because it runs in families. If you are an alcoholic it is likely that one or more relatives had it as well.

So if you had relatives that were alcoholics there may be a chance that it was passed to you although sometimes it skips a generation. So if your grandfather and your father didn't than you may have the trait.

My grandfather was an opium smoker. My father was an alcoholic. I drank but never got in trouble for it. I guess my years of drugging made up for that.

I suspect I'm an Aspie. I'm approaching my mid-30s.

I started drinking, smoking, using "drugs" (Marijuana, LSD, Psilocybin, pharms) when I was 15. I went overboard during high school. At first the drugs were entertaining, mind expanding and a way to cope. Then they began to turn on me and produce a lot of anxiety. By the time I was 18 it was not uncommon for me to drink 15-30 beer in a day. I began to consume a lot of alcohol to cope with the anxiety drugs were giving me. I realized very quickly how destructive my behavior was so I stopped when I was 19.

Generally, I drank because it gave me access to a social group and allowed me to communicate in a purely social setting. Now, I periodically drink alone to knock myself out at night--typically 150ml of hard liquor which is, according to my doctor, 7.5 drinks.

From about 19 to 23 I didn't even touch an Aspirin let alone alcohol. Currently I consume about 4 to 5 liters of hard liquor a year and no "drugs". I think last year I consumed precisely 5.5 liters of hard liquor. That worked out to 15+ ml a day or approximately 3/4 of a drink a day.

I realize drinking myself to sleep doesn't give me good sleep quality and is counterproductive in a number of ways, but I don't really care. It doesn't affect my day to day life.

I also now realize smoking has been a way for me to cope, socially. My smoking directly correlates to periods of education. I absolutely despise the 5 minutes before class and the 10 minute break during class/lecture.

So, basically throughout my teens and 20s, I smoked to have something "functional" to do during the nebulous time around class. It gave me an excuse to have a conversation. Do you have a cigarette or a light? People would ask me if I had a cigarette or a light. It was an activity with a clearly defined purpose and gave me a reason to escape the discomfort around sitting in the classroom and staring at the wall. I'm glad I quit though. It's a nasty habit.

Sometimes I wish I could drink. It sometimes bothers me that others can handle it. But I know it is impossible for me since if I do I end up with nothing. My family almost had to banish me from their lives. I was a liar, a cheat and a thief and no one could trust me for anything. I was a loser back then because I literally was. I lost at everything I tried relationships. school, family. If I stay sober I have a chance to be something. And I did.

Because I stopped drinking I was able to graduate from college. And now I will be able to get the career I want. Without sobriety none of that would be possible.

Which raises an interesting question about alcoholism for me....

When I was a teenager I drank alcohol in the kind of quantities that would have made my liver shrivel if I had kept it up long term. I had all the signs of a teenager with a substance abuse problem:
1) sudden loss of interest in activities I had enjoyed 2) sudden decline in grades 3) stealing from my parents to support my habit 3) injuring myself 4) skipping school 5) irregular patterns of behavior (sleep,etc.) 6) hiding what I'm doing, where I'm going, who I'm hanging out with, what I spend my money on to my parents 7) spending my days and nights either using something or figuring out ways to get money to use something, etc., etc.

By all accounts I had what could be classified as a substance abuse problem. You seem to subscribe to the school that once you have a problem you always have a problem. You're certainly not alone in that group .

I, however, feel like I did have a problem but that I can now control it because I understand the physical and mental consequences of drinking to the extent I drank to. I feel I'm in control of being out of control now. When I'm sitting in my bedroom at night I can measure out 100 - 200 ml of whiskey mix it, drink it and leave it at that, nothing more than 100 - 200 ml, no going out and getting in trouble, etc.

An addictions specialist might say I'm in some kind of denial. I don't see it that way. My alcohol consumption is not 0 but it's extremely low relative to what I used to drink. I'm not taking any risks or harming myself in any noticeable way. I get up in the morning and I go about my daily business. I strictly control the amount of alcohol I now drink to minimize building immunity to its effects.

Why am I trying to justify my behavior to myself?

You sound completely sane to me plus your alcohol use has gone down. That usually does not happen to "real" alcoholics". You may have been a heavy drinker and usually they can stop or limit their drinks. I mean honestly you are the only that can answer this question. I mean if you are concerned go to an AA meeting but generally only people that really have a problem end up at the doorstep of AA. Ask yourself honestly if you think your drinking is causing problems, So you currently have any ongoing issues that your not quite sure about. Hey man more power to you. Like say "our hats are off to you" I am not going to stop you from enjoying yourself because you may be able to handle it where others cannot.

When I drink it just gets progressively worse never better. I think if I drank now I would probably have to drink even more than usual to get drunk because the disease progresses whether you drink or not. I could not imagine where I would be after ten years of not drinking and starting up again. I would probably wake up in a jail cell or mental hospital.

Food for thought and someting someone told me: "once you start trying to control the drug or whatever you may be doing you are already out of control." Basically this goes by the rule that supposedly normal drinkers never really try to control because they do not need to. It makes perfect sense. It is like do you eat liver? You could probably go for the rest of your life without giving liver a second thought. You don't want it and you don't crave it and you certainly are not trying to figure how to stop eating liver. I mean I tried beef liver and I hated it and have never eaten ever again. I mean I never eat asparagus because I cannot stand I have not tried to force myself to eat because I do not like it. It makes me sick actually.

I mean a question could be argued that if you actually like something you will want to keep doing it. You probably like the way alcohol makes you feel. Most people do like the effect of a few drinks. Why would you want to stop if it is not causing problems for you. You wouldn't because you actually like to drink it and are choosing to drink it. At least from what you said I think this. is true.

You might want to check out Dawn Prince-Hughes, who wrote Songs of the Gorilla Nation. She used to be an alcoholic.

Personally, I can't stand the taste or smell of alcohol, so I'll never be an alcoholic.

Yeah, I definitely think it isn't causing me any problems. I don't drink enough for it to cause me problems. If I were sociable it would be a problem because I'd be going out and doing things. I'd probably do something stupid if I were going out because 1) I need alcohol to be sociable so I'd need to be drinking it all the time and 2) I'd be interacting with people which, when combined with alcohol, only spells trouble.

By the sounds of it, you should never touch the stuff again. It's good that you got control of it before it destroyed your life. It almost destroyed mine because there was a time when I would have done anything put in front of me. People I went to high school with are now meth heads, on pills and drunks. I mighty glad I didn't go down that road.

I had a drinking problem for many years and required in house treatment to stop. I had a medical professional in my family tell me she didn't think I had the personality of an alcoholic but it was more OCD related. I don't know. My drinking started as social lubrication, which didn't work all that well, and then became a stress reliever. At the worst I was binging. I was having another one and another one because I felt driven to have another one, even when the rational part of my brain said "stop!" I started hallucinating when I dried out after a binge. I'm really lucky to be alive. Amazingly I don't crave it although I avoid situations where its abundant.

Thank you for sharing your story Punkguy. You're right on with your facts regarding alcohol and alcoholism. I started drinking and smoking tobacco around age 15 and continued for the next twenty years, always to excess. I was very definitely "self-medicating" (though in those days, neither therapy or psych drugs had really advanced enough to deal with my issues) and in the beginning it may have helped with what see to be the usual set of problems, followed by the usual decline in beneficial effects and increase in negative consequences. I've just arrived at twenty-five years of sobriety, achieved through lots of therapy, Adult Children of Alcoholics and A.A. I know a lot of people have a problem with the numerous mentions of "God" in A.A. and the dogmatic approach that many adherents seem to have. I'm not a "Big Book thumper" or religious in the traditional sense, but I've managed to make A.A. work for me, often by holding it to its own principles. While most groups do say "God", it is SUPPOSED to simply mean "a higher power" which CAN mean anything from a formal deity to simply the set of neural circuits in your brain that don't want to die, and in the spirit of "suggestions for staying sober" many groups remind you to "take what you like and leave the rest". For me, sobriety is not an end in itself, but a necessary building block in my quest for a better life. I've only recently stumbled upon a possible AS diagnosis, but I know for certain I am a VERY strong INFP, have a severe anxiety disorder, and, when I drink and/or smoke, my entire life force seems to be directed towards getting more alcohol and/or tobacco, and like many other alcoholics, I seem to be genetically adapted to have all my synapses fire BETTER -up to a point. I think that humans (even those of us with poor social skills) have a need for SOME kind of social interaction (maybe it's just the need to count heads at the end of the day to see who didn't get eaten), and A.A. has been a safe place for me to develop social skills (and if someone doesn't like me, I can always remind them "Our primary purpose is to achieve sobriety" and "Principles before personalities"), and, if nothing else, a reminder that for a person with alcohol addiction, there really isn't such a thing a problem that a drink will make better. I've had some years in sobriety (especially year #9) that were far worse than those in my drinking years, but in retrospect I can see that drinking over them not only wouldn't have helped, but probably would have kept me from surfacing again. Best.

both my parents were alcoholics. neither of them are on the spectrum except maybe my mom. i would say that AS and alcoholism is more common than you think. i think what is rare is an asperger alcoholic who doesn't die or end up in jail.

I agree, the assumption seems to be that people on the spectrum are not vulnerable because they have less interest in bar culture, but I think some turn to alcohol in an attempt to fit into that culture, to try to counteract social anxiety and to alleviate depression. It's ironic that alcohol is a depressant but initially it gives you a bit of a boost.

I've read that alcoholics process alcohol differently than non-alcoholics and that the alcoholic's reaction time performance actually improves up until the "saturation" point, whereas the non-alcoholic immediately feels the sedating effects, and I experienced a similar boost. I've also read that alcohol enters the brain as pure glucose. At A.A. meetings it's not uncommon to hear stories of people driving blind drunk, very fast, and very well but for the minor infraction they were pulled over for.

Are you saying alcohol enters the brain as pure glucose in alcoholics but not non alcoholics?
I crave sugar now that I'm sober.