I downed an entire bottle of Tylenol to level up my autism powers before writing this blog post
(I didn’t, really, calm down)
I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.
Time and time again in this administration, we’ve been promised things that have been hyped up just for us to be let down by either learning it was a complete fib or by inaction.
”I have the Epstein files on my desk ready to be released!”
”We’ve found millions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse!”
”We will release a study finally showing the causes of autism near the end of September!”
a. apparently that was a lie
b. and we’re going to do absolutely nothing about it
c. actually we think that taking Tylenol while pregnant might have a slight chance of maybe causing a minuscule increase in the possibility of the child being born autistic. Maybe.
The cause(s) of autism has long been a topic of discussion and research. So far the only concrete cause we have is that sometimes it’s genetic. It’s been a focus for many autism researchers for decades. If we know the cause, we can develop better treatments, and better interventions, and better understanding, etc. But no, all we got is this nothingburger about Tylenol. Maybe there’s more information to come? I’m not hopeful at this point. However, it’s brought up the conversation about curing autism again, so why not talk about it.
When I was a young lad, this was a topic of conversation among autists on the internet. I was young and full of vim and vigor and had nothing better to do with most of my days than play video games and eat Doritos and chug Rockstar energy drinks. At the time, I saw autism as something that made me special and unique and therefore not something that needed curing. I was still living at home and attending school, and had plenty of structure and routine. Now I am out on my own, and things suck. I struggle with doing daily chores and making my own structure. I get very few things done each day because I struggle to plan and execute tasks. Every task I do end up completing takes hours longer than it should because of my poor dexterity, poor time management, short attention span, and my propensity for losing things which combines with my slow visual processing that makes it hard to find things. I am also less medicated than ever and learning to deal with my emotions and struggles without the often painful crutch of medication.
I think I’d accept a cure at this point.
But, honestly, it’s likely too late for me to have anything beyond better coping skills. Autism is a developmental disorder. It occurs during very early stages of development. The brain is literally made differently. We’re figuratively wired differently. There’s really no fixing that. The only “cure” would be prevention. Honestly, life is a struggle even for “neurotypical” or “allistic” people. Do we really want to put extra struggles on our children if they are preventable, just to have a label to feel special?
