Ok... cranky guinea pig is now running off his crankiness in the kitchen where he's destroying my nice, clean floor. Hmph.

Any hoo....

I have to be very careful with medications. I get symptoms that aren't listed under the "symptoms". When I really, really need something I take 1/4 of 1 mg of Clozapam (or how it's spelled) and will still be knocked out for at least ten hours. I baffle doctors and specialists.

My mom still won't believe me that I was feeling suicidal on the Prozac. The docs said my body was growing used to the meds and started piling more on. Oi. I took myself off medication when I turned 18 and have (rarely) looked back. I only take the stuff as a last resort when nothing else works.

Even now, when there are days when I forget to turn the stove off before leaving the house, I refuse to take any attention-getting drugs (I seriously forget what they're called as I'm typing this ... it's on the tip of my tongue). I'm entertained the thought of getting help for my attention issues, but I know if I just try a bit harder, I can remember to turn the stove off before leaving the house (this is one example of many). The only problem is that I keep loosing my daily planner, ugh.

- Serenity

A quick comment on "when no one is looking" part: when I was young I had a hard time accepting it whenever my code was wrong, particularly in the middle of confrontations with my parents. Keep in mind that all we have is our code, we don't have anything else to fall back on if someone rips that up. It leads to great insecurity to be without it. Changes require time to pull back and reflect on the matter while not under pressure, so the code can be carefully disassembled and reconstructed.

I never felt suicidal on Prozac, but it did make me increasingly uneasy, like maybe something bad was lurking somewhere beyond my perception. It's difficult to articulate the feeling. But it wouldn't have been apparent to anyone observing me, it was all internal. To get off of it I just said it was making me more depressed, since that's the symptom they were trying to address.

I totally forgot my point to that previous post:

Each person is unique, AS or not, each person is going to respond to a medication differently. Although there is not any medication for AS, there are medications for the "symptoms" (like the anxiety, as V-dog was pointing out). Perhaps you just need to find another doctor - one who is willing to actually listen, hear you out, and suggest other methods besides drugs. What do YOU want as the outcome?

Mister Empirical: Yeah, I told them I was still feeling depressed and anxious. They didn't take me off the Prozac: they just added crap to it. Ugh.

- Serenity

My sister has pointed out that one of the things aspies do, that many NTs do not, is over think things. The "code" for an NT can be rewritten 'on the fly' in many instances, as the ramifications are often (but not always) relatively limited, whereas the aspie has to think about a millions possible ramifications of changing. We grind ourselves to a stop, but only because part of our code, the part that says we can rewrite wrong code quickly, many times, is missing. If nothing else, make sure you write code for rapid changes into your code, without recriminations if the change you make requires another change almost immediately.

I took Max out for lunch yesterday - sometimes I do that just to get us out of the house and space to talk without video games, computers, tv etc competing with me. So we were just talking about this and that and he was telling me some things that have been going on with him lately. We go every year together to the American Idol tour, it's kind of our thing. This year I went in and found some great tickets on pre-sale but they were not EXACTLY where I wanted to be so I decided to go to the box office that Monday and get the seats I really wanted (online you just get next available and can't choose location) anyway, ALL the good seats were taken so decided to wait until a week before to see what was released. Then I found out that one of Max's best friends, Sarah was having a birthday that night and he already told her he could not go because we were going to the show. I told him that if he really wanted to go to the party it was fine with me. He said he did not want to let me down and he really liked going too but he also felt bad for not going to her party and he would also miss seeing some friends that he has not seen since school was out. He then said something that relates to this post (finally, huh?) and I hope I can remember how he said it because I think a lot here will relate. He said " I really need to get my morality on an even keel" when I asked him what exactly he meant by that ( I never assume with Max!) he said "Sometimes it's like I don't care about others feelings at all and then other times I agonize over how what I do is going to make others feel and it probably doesn't even matter. I just need to find somewhere in the middle" I told him that just the fact that he recognizes the extremes will go a long way towards him finding that middle road.

He also mentioned that he wasn't sure what his friends were doing this weekend. I told him once again he really needs to get text messaging so he can keep in touch with his friends. He said he knows that's true because no one uses the phone anymore (and he hates the phone anyway). So I asked why he hasn't said he wanted it. He said "It's probably something you and Dad are going to have to do as a surprise or something" when I asked him why he said "Because I have been dissing texting and those that do it for so long that there is no way I can accept deciding to get it now" I explained that it is ok to change your mind - and that he could just say now that it is not so trendy he will get it as he does not like to just go with the crowd. But his "code" is when he has been emphatic about something he can't back down even if he wants to. We discussed how this might have a negative impact on him and ways he might feel ok about changing his mind on certain things. He said he is going to try because it seems stupid to deny himself something just because he has had a change of heart.
Linda

Recognise the same thing in some exchanges between me and v-dog?

That's a very self-aware statement. He may be further along than I was back then.

About Bart's point that the ability to quickly revise your own code might be a desirable thing to incorporate, that's something I thought to suggest but decided against it. I'm worried about where that "build" leads. A morally flexible, socially detached person may not be a desirable outcome. I suppose the trick is to distinguish what's foundational code that you don't change from all the less important behavioral code. How did Asimov's First Law of Robotics go? Basically something along the lines of "first, do no harm"? That's a line that goes in the foundation. As long as you have that, you can only be so much of a sociopath.

I can relate to that approach of Max's, totally.

My wife is all-text, all the time, and iPhone and everything else.

I've just ignored it the past few years, but at some point I have to make the jump.

For me, it's not about minor increments.
It's more - I won't like this at first, but I have to learn something new, and make THAT the routine.

I've done it before.

And yeah, my wife's never-ending flexibility with what she's doing is a challenge to me (and not her fault).

Even today she had planned to leave at 1:30 pm, and I planned around that. I guess something changed, because she left at 3 pm, and didn't tell me of a change of timetable.

That threw me off-stride, but I recovered.

Oh god, texting, I meant to comment on that. I currently don't own a mobile phone. Should the day come when I have people constantly texting me inane things and expecting a response, I might very well blow my brains out. That's like my own personal Hell, and this comes from someone who loves email and message boards. The critical difference is, you can turn those off and pretend not to be reachable. Not a fan of Blackberries either, for the same reason. Back during the early days of the internet, I was one of the biggest techies. Now I'm practically a luddite. They took our world and turned it into a digital version of theirs, only even more hyperactive.