An adult with autism faces different struggles
A lot of girls grow up thinking, “I wish I was normal,” however this is usually referring to beauty and popularity. I grew up wishing I had the same brain, that I could join this foreign wavelength that everyone else seemed to gravitate towards; I was battling an autism spectrum disorder. The autism spectrum is a series of developmental disorders ranging from having a low-to-high ability to function as “normal” in society. As a young child, I only crawled backwards. I didn’t walk or talk at a normal age. When I was able to talk, it took a number of speech therapists to help me speak in a way that people could understand me. I needed an immense amount of help with motor functions like holding a pencil or feeding myself, but at this point I didn’t care. Normal had not yet appeared in my personal dictionary.
I was ten years old when all of this really started to affect me. While other kids were socializing and being kids, I was on the computer. I didn’t use AOL chat to talk to friends about boys and I didn’t curate my collection of Neopets. Instead, I did “research.” I had folder within folder of evidence on a myriad of conspiracy theories. I wrote links and connected photos or anecdotes until I felt that I had truly uncovered something – then I would move on to my next piece of research. It was an obsession. This is what, in the autism community, has been coined as a “special interest.” I tried to bring this obsession to the children around me, but people saw it as strange and unusual.
It spiraled as I got older. As time went on, conspiracies lost my interest and I had nothing that I could do long enough to hide from the world. If I did research I was a weirdo, and if I read a book a day, I was also a weirdo. Everything I did to mask my feelings of inadequacy only strengthened my differences. When it came time for high school things became dark. I was bullied every single day through purposeful exclusion and short essays by classmates disparaging me on Tumblr. The administration at my school wouldn’t attempt to mediate, and I was left to fend for myself. I frequently used hall passes to leave class to sit in the bathroom re-reading what my peers thought about me. It felt like there were always eyes on me. It was as if a wave of energy would course through me, I was filled with manic thoughts that I didn’t know how to deal with, and the immediate default was self-harm. I would bang my hands against my head until it finally felt like an empty slate. This became a habit for every form of stress in my life: if a class was too stressful; if there was too much noise and I became over-stimulated; if my family was fighting etc. it always led back to self-harm. It was my escape from the intrusive thoughts. It was my way of challenging the words that I repeated to myself in my head, and the only way I felt I could regain control when nothing else was within reach.
I would like to say that things got better as soon as I left high school, but learning to work with what you have been dealt is a long and strenuous process. If nothing else, my issues have only increased with each added responsibility of the world. Leaving high school meant leaving my rigid four-month-long schedules, leaving the dependability of my parents’ house and losing the social structure that I had clung to since middle school. A large issue for those with autism is an inflexible adherence to schedules, something that has increased my anxiety tenfold since adulthood began. My sanity became at the will of my employer, and of the people around me; one unexpected change could destroy my composure and cause me to have a meltdown.
The day that I knew I needed to seek an answer was the day that I had my first public meltdown since leaving high school. I came into work ready to start at noon, only to be told at 11:58am that my entire schedule for the day was changing. I locked myself in the bathroom at work, crying and shaking. It felt as if my body and mind were failing me. I went to a psychologist and got diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, level one.
This means that I can function mostly on my own but I still need quite a bit of help.
The time since my diagnosis has been a battle of figuring out how to help myself without self-harm. For eight months, I was on mood stabilizers. Although they were meant to curb my anger problems, they only halted my creativity. These medications destroyed the person I had built myself to be, and caused more frequent meltdowns and episodes. I realized how I had been treating those around me and it needed to stop. My parents suggested that I begin treating my troubles with medical marijuana.
An adult with autism faces different struggles, and each struggle varies depending on the person. This is why modern medicine encounters so many issues trying to medicate people with this disorder. For me and many others, the different aspects of cannabis help nearly all of the problems that we battle on a daily basis. A big factor in my recent success, and why I am able to write an article, is CBD. Cannabidiol [CBD] is a part of cannabis that is known to help pain, but also has an antipsychotic effect.
Before beginning a regular dose of this popular cannabinoid, I was in a deep bout of depression due to my diagnosis. I had gotten to the point of being so afraid of becoming overwhelmed, that I would sit in my car crying for an hour rather than entering a store without my boyfriend. I allowed myself to succumb to my weaknesses, and lost the power that I had always strived for. I was weak. I won’t say that CBD was a magical fix for all of my problems, because I still work hard every day to overcome the obstacles surrounding me. What CBD has done for me, is give me the stepping stool that I need to think myself out of the problems that my mind has created. Lights and noises are still a problem for me, but I am able to take a dose of CBD before going out in public, and get through leaving my house without a meltdown. I still strive for perfection, but am able to calm myself down when it can’t be reached. Unlike the mood stabilizer, cannabidiol allows me to retain my ambition but also have the sanity to strive for my dreams.
The more popular part of cannabis is THC, which is the chemical that makes you feel high. It’s a popular image: five young adults huddled in a bathroom smoking out of a forty dollar bong. Everyone is laughing and muttering about existential realizations and just how high they are. Although this scene is portrayed across television endlessly, it is a common occurrence for most – yet for me it is one of the many miracles that cannabis has given me. Since leaving high school, I have lost all social structure that is normally an integral part of a twenty-year-old’s life. I have spent my free time watching my peers’ lives spread out on social media, while mine just passed me by. I have intense social anxiety and am easily overwhelmed, making it difficult to remain sane in group situations. Cannabis allows me to not repeat my sentences ten times in my head, and miss my opportunity to join in on a conversation. Cannabis dims the paralyzing way that my brain takes in sensory information, and allows me to just sit and enjoy the moment going on around me. Since I began smoking a number of months ago, I have made an entirely new group of friends, something that I have not done since middle school.
Despite the information spread by popular organizations, autism is not a curable disease. There are many positive aspects of the disorder, and those traits are not worth losing to the grasp of pharmaceuticals. Every day I struggle with the hand that has been given to me, but each day with cannabis my life becomes easier. Marijuana has given me the tools to help me live every single day, but it has also helped me create a life that is worth fighting for.
Originally published in Weed World Magazine Issue 131
