By my rather robust caffeine consumption standards, catsidhe's coffee is toxic-strength. Would put hair on the chest of Botticelli's Venus.
I've been wondering about stimulants and ASDs myself, lately.
Stimming behaviour, stimulant dependency and overuse might constitute a form of unrecognised(?) ad-hoc self-medication. A brilliant friend of mine from long, long ago who was on heavy-duty psych meds (except when he wasn't. eek) commented on the number of drug users he had met in psych institutions (it was so long ago that there were still such things in Australia) who said that the drugs they used helped control some symptoms of their mental illness. We had long conversations about the chicken-and-egg nature of mental illness and drug use, and the likelihood of post-facto rationalisations for doing things that screwed them up. But more recently I saw an article noting the high proportion of mental patients who smoke. Again, maybe due to boredom in mental hospitals, maybe due to higher susceptibility to addiction but possibly because the nicotine or the ritual helps manage their illness in some way.
The way stimulants are used to bring about more calm and focused behaviour in people with ADHD is the closest parallel I can think of to the elusive thoughts I've been having regarding ASDs and energy/alertness/strength to cope, and the frequency of co-morbidity of AS with ADHD is sort of interesting, too.
I expect that people with AS put a lot of energy into coping with things that NTs manage relatively effortlessly, so get tired. I believe that the caffeine escalation cycle that we all know and... well, know, goes from 'helpful' to 'unhelpful' to 'actively exacerbating the problem' more rapidly.
Hrm. I think I'm going to head over to the asperger's community on LJ and ask about people's experience of stimulants like caffeine.
no subject
I've been wondering about stimulants and ASDs myself, lately.
Stimming behaviour, stimulant dependency and overuse might constitute a form of unrecognised(?) ad-hoc self-medication. A brilliant friend of mine from long, long ago who was on heavy-duty psych meds (except when he wasn't. eek) commented on the number of drug users he had met in psych institutions (it was so long ago that there were still such things in Australia) who said that the drugs they used helped control some symptoms of their mental illness. We had long conversations about the chicken-and-egg nature of mental illness and drug use, and the likelihood of post-facto rationalisations for doing things that screwed them up. But more recently I saw an article noting the high proportion of mental patients who smoke. Again, maybe due to boredom in mental hospitals, maybe due to higher susceptibility to addiction but possibly because the nicotine or the ritual helps manage their illness in some way.
The way stimulants are used to bring about more calm and focused behaviour in people with ADHD is the closest parallel I can think of to the elusive thoughts I've been having regarding ASDs and energy/alertness/strength to cope, and the frequency of co-morbidity of AS with ADHD is sort of interesting, too.
I expect that people with AS put a lot of energy into coping with things that NTs manage relatively effortlessly, so get tired. I believe that the caffeine escalation cycle that we all know and... well, know, goes from 'helpful' to 'unhelpful' to 'actively exacerbating the problem' more rapidly.
Hrm. I think I'm going to head over to the asperger's community on LJ and ask about people's experience of stimulants like caffeine.