Growing out of AS?

Sister_Ray wrote:Basically, the main cause i could argue would be the incessant hash smoking that i'd been doing from around 15.

I think there were studies done before linking hash-smoking with Schizophrenia. Now, I know that we are talking about Asperger's here but I think you should be aware of the damage that hash can do. I was in a psychological hospial once and saw peopole there that were 'victims' of excessive hash-usage. Their brains were "fried", according to them.

Asperger's, whilst being genetic, is not like diabetes which is caused by a single gene. Asperger's is caused by many genes because it is a syndrome that describes a way of living - i.e., it encompasses many, many traits. With that in mind I'd say it's possible to 'acquire' Asperger's at a later age in life like you appear to have. No doubt, the hash you have smoked has altered your brain, perhaps irrevocably.


Kevin.

Talking about visualising and writing code, has anyone heard of the British Informatics Olympiad? I entered this several years running, and got high marks. I never quite got into the second round, though - very few people did. You could get a Distinction and still not get into the second round as there were so few places available in the country each year. My programming language of choice was QBX. I was very, very good at programming in QBX back in the day. There would be a question like "Here are the rules of a board game. Write a program to simulate the game being played automatically" and often it would involve recursive algorithms. It got ridiculously difficult but if I kept my mind on what I had to make the program do, I could usually do it. I was a bit disappointed I hadn't entered the year before, as I did that as a practice test and got a high enough score to actually get into the second round. However, doing it as a practice is not the same as actually entering it!

If anyone wants to know more about the BIO, just Google for "British Informatics Olympiad" and I'm sure you'll find it. There are past papers and practice questions. You have to be of school age, though. I'm too old to enter it myself now.

Cheers,

Matt

As I mentioned before, when I was programming, if I had something I wanted to achieve and set my mind to it, I could do it. For example, I had a programmable colour graphic calculator, a Casio CFX-9850G. I wrote a few games for it, as it has a programming language fairly similar to BASIC. I called it Calculator Basic. One of the games I wrote was Minesweeper. It got deleted for some reason, and I wrote it again from scratch. My second version was not identical but I had no problems rewriting it, as I knew what I wanted the program to do, I knew the programming language and I knew the calculator's abilities and limitations.

A couple of other things, though. When I was at school, I wanted to go on a Russian trip. The teacher in charge refused to take me because of my AS, and said he thought I wasn't mature enough or something like that. Did he act illegally and could I sue him for refusing to take me on the grounds of me having AS? I never did like this particular teacher, a history teacher who happened to speak Russian.

The second thing: I applied for Disability Living Allowance some time ago, but got turned down as they decided I was not disabled enough to qualify. Does anyone know if people with AS are entitled to DLA?

If anyone can help and wants any further information, just ask. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Cheers,

Matt

avengah wrote:Does anyone know if people with AS are entitled to DLA?

If anyone can help and wants any further information, just ask. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Cheers,

Matt

Hey again Matt. I hope you're well. Regarding your question about DLA I can only speak from an Irish perspective. Here, Asperger's is listed as a disability but you would only get allowances if it is such that it prevents you from living your normal working life (or something like that!).

Considering Irish law is practically based on British law (Ye basically gave us ye're constitution and we renamed it!) I can only assume that Asperger's is listed as a disability there too.


Regarding the suing of that guy: Would you really go ahead with that? In my personal opinion - And from what little knowledge I have of the situation - I don't think you'd have a case.


Kevin.

No, I probably wouldn't. It was years ago, and typing that summary of my life reminded me of it. That's why I mentioned it, but I remember thinking it was unfair, bordering on illegal at the time. The problem was I'd taken it to the headmaster, but he'd said I'd misbehaved on a previous trip and hence didn't deserve to go - which was incorrect (I'd had an accident, being hit by a motorbike, but had not misbehaved, and I had this confirmed by the teacher in charge of the previous trip, a French exchange) and he also said it was the other teacher's final decision as it was his trip and he could refuse to run it if he wanted.

Anyway, I just did the Aspie Quiz. These are my scores:

Experimental version, release 2.0

Thank you for filling out this questionnaire.

Your Aspie score: 30 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 174 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical

Interesting, isn't it! More evidence that I've grown out of it!

Cheers,

Matt

My experience of "growing out of it" has been slow. I think I was finally able to pass socially without drawing too much attention to myself by the time I was about 30. It just takes time to become adept at understanding situations and the behavior of other people. I know now how to act - but I'm still keenly aware of some differences, like difficulties with closeness, making friends, that sort of thing.

Sister_Ray wrote:I don't want to bore you all with the ins and outs of my story but basically i'm 24 now, and for what was arguably a whole number of reasons i got what i believe to be asperger's when i was about 17.
...
The basic thing that sprung to mind whilst reading this post is that before i was 17 i didn't have a hint of the traits that gradually have come to take hold of me...

There is absolutely NO WAY to "acquire" AS or any other form of autism at that age - what you are looking at is possibly a personality "disorder" (ugly word!), most likely schizoid, especially if the symptoms you say you are lacking are to do with the more typically autistic symptoms (stims, processing differences, language problems etc.).

Schizophrenia also has some symptoms (the "negative", e.g. non-delusional ones) that resemble AS and schizoid PD, mostly the apparent lack of emotion, social problems etc. It has also been linked with drug abuse, in particular cannabis.

It *is* possible to end up with autistic-like traits through relatively severe brain injuries or through illnesses such as encephalitis lethargica, but neither of those "give" you AS.

If you haven't had symptoms of autism (however mild) from childhood onwards, you do not have autism in any way shape or form, be that "classic" or high-functioning autism or AS.

avengah wrote:Anyway, I just did the Aspie Quiz. These are my scores:

Experimental version, release 2.0

Thank you for filling out this questionnaire.

Your Aspie score: 30 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 174 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical

Interesting, isn't it! More evidence that I've grown out of it!

Cheers,

Matt

Could you post the link to that quiz?


Kevin.

You can only enter it once from each IP address, apparently.

http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Cheers,

Matt

I just did it and got the following:

Aspie Score --> 150 out of 200
Neurotypical Score --> 49 out of 200

Thanks for that. That's a very long questionaire!