Wednesday, May 21, 2008

AUTISM AND ILLEGAL DRUG USE: CONNECTION!?!

The causes of Autism outside of the obvious genetic realm are primarily speculative in nature. Many parents attribute the cause to be directly related to injection therapy of vaccinations. I have directly been involved in the care of children with the spectrum disorders. I am curious at what scientists use as criteria for possible causes prior to investigation. Many studies done have stated no link to vaccinations while others done by institutions outside traditional groups have stated a direct connection. And no other causes have made news.
What about other possible causes? What I propose is an alternative view of a possible cause partially involving genetics and partially involving parents behavior. While I believe some portion of the populace is predisposed to having a child with these spectrum disorders, I believe illegal drug use is a major contributor to the problem. Illegal drug use causes the brain chemistry to be altered in such a way that communication is dramatically affected. The different types of drugs alter brain chemistry differently and therefore manifest in behavior patterns differently. Anyone who has spent time exposed to people with drug histories can see abnormal communication. Now run a timeline with 2 or 3 generations later. People have been using "hard drugs" in great numbers since the late fifties and early 60s with dramatically increased rates since then to today. Not everyone's family is affected by this group of disordered but the dramatic rise is in line with the rise in recreational use of drugs.
The average American has been brought up in the last 20 years to deal with any problem by blaming someone or something else. Therefore, the unpopular belief that a problem is the fault of themselves has guilt implications. I am not accounting for every scenario either. Many cases probably have other root causes, but to dismiss the possibility of illegal drugs is ridiculous. So we have another strong arguement not to legalize drugs. I pray everyday that the lives of our most vulnerable, the autism spectrum disorders, adult and child, gets better and better. I will leave you with a story I remember about a child that forever touch my life. A child with Autism was playing in a playground with other normal children. I watched as the normal children were stepping on bugs. Then the Autistic child notice a bug near him. He crouched down, picked it up, examining it, and slowly,..ever so carefully...placed the bug back down on the ground avoiding injury to it. Wow! They are truly special!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Drugs should never be leagalised; but it is clear from looking at how the USA deals with people with drug problems that locking them up is not working, these people need proffessional ongoing assistance to give them the live skills to deal with life without the drug and to get over the hold the drugs have on the user, among many other issues. Noone is born a drug addict, an addict is made. Sending non violent drug related offenders to jail obviously doesn't work otherwise the USA would have won that war decades ago. Legalisation is not the same as decriminilisation, where the individual received the treatement they need instead of treating them like dirt and throwing them into a jail. All you are doing is setting them up for failure when they are let loose back into the community, hence turning to stealing, assault etc to get their fix and the whole process starts again. We all know that prisons are crime universities, as George Jung put it "Danbury wasn't a prison, it was a crime school. I went in with a Bachelor of marijuana, came out with a Doctorate of cocaine."
Enough said. We will be doing things differently here in AU.

Unknown said...

*life skills*

Anonymous said...

Woah, this is the most retarded thing I've read. You're saying that 1 mother out of every 88 used illicit during their pregnancy??? Absolutely fucking ridiculous. Also, to that other person, look up how great Portugal's policy and its results. Jesus christ.

Nick Branson said...

Could be even illicit use before pregnancy... and besides, yeah I'd say its possible that 1 in 88 may have used some sort of drug while they didn't realize they were pregnant yet... Hell... Maybe its not a direct factor, but a risk factor. It makes more sense than saying its the vaccines that cause it, but only in some kids.