substance use - Emergent Divergence

Jun 1 2023

Being sober isn’t a competition

Today, I received my first 1 star review for one of my books on Amazon. Within the review, they stated that my 6 years of sobriety (it’s actually 7 now) was merely a blip, and that I would not be sober until it was at least 60 years. Attitudes like this are incredibly dangerous.

Early sobriety is complicated and messy. At times you are clinging on for hours or even minutes at a time. Setting yourself goals and hoping that you can stumble painfully across the finish line. For me, those early days were spent in a psychiatric ward. One might think that’s a safe place for someone getting sober, but trust me, there isn’t a lot that doesn’t make it’s way past security checks in those places.

Drugs and alcohol were readily available.

I remember celebrating one year of sobriety. A friend and I went to London and saw Lindsay Stirling perform live. It was a huge moment in my life, I had managed to go 365 days without getting drunk or high. Had someone like the aforementioned amazon reviewer spoken to me then, they way they have today, it wouldn’t have gone well.

When someone is getting sober, they need support. It’s likely they have done things they are not proud of, they probably wish that life could be as simple as switching of their emotions with a drink or a pill. Invalidate a person at the wrong time and they might just throw it away.

When you’re a sober addict, you live with the knowledge that your brain will find any excuse to go running back to its addiction. It doesn’t just go away. Anyone claiming it does is lying to you. Telling someone they’re not sober enough is gambling their life. This doesn’t just apply to length of time as a sober person, I have seen people be told they can’t be sober because of medicine they take or the way they have separated themselves from the harms of addiction.

Quite frankly, if you are sober, I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it; I’m proud of you. Even if sobriety has been an on and off affair; I’m proud of you. Perhaps you’re just thinking about it but haven’t quite started; doesn’t matter, I’m proud of you.

Every time a person makes the decision to heal themselves, the world becomes brighter. We are the cycle breakers. We are the one’s who stand proud and say “this suffering ends here, I choose to live”.

So, people like my Amazon reviewer can take their crappy opinions and keep them to themselves. I am proud of everyone fighting this battle.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

May 21 2023

Autism and addiction: co-existing with a mind that seeks oblivion

The narratives around autism and addiction are both peculiar. Things are the same while appearing different. On the one hand, autism is viewed by wider society as something that happens to a child, as if an unseen force has stolen their humanity. On the other hand, addiction is seen as a moral failing. We are often told that we chose that life.

The one thing they both have in common? People see you as less human than they are.

There are a multitude of reasons for this, but at the core of this experience are the power dynamics within a person’s life. You could be forgiven for believing that the power horizon within and Autistic or addicted person’s life can only be felt in the immediate vicinity, but it stretches much further. Both autism and addiction narratives are controlled and perptuated by governments and media.

The public views us through the information disseminated by those in power.

This makes for an upsetting experience when we are both Autistic and in the throws of addiction. Autistic people are infantilised and mourned as tragedies, but addicts are positioned as hedonistic and selfish. They contradict each other. Most people don’t understand how an Autistic person could become the monstrous embodiment of addiction (and there have been times when I was in active addiction that I was monstrous).

In a study from the University of Cambridge, Autistic people were less likely to report recreational drug use, but nine times more likely to report self-medicating with recreational drugs. Specifically, we were more likely to report using drugs for behaviour management and alleviation of psychologically distressing experiences.

There is a significant link between trauma, addiction, psychological distress, and perceived challenging behaviour. Trauma underlies all of these things. At this point I feel it necessary to highlight that Autistic people are More likely to experience PTSD. I have also explored our relationship with trauma with Tanya Adkin in a wider context here.

The real issue is that addiction professionals tend to lack cultural competency with Autistic people, meaning that they lack the nuanced understanding of the reasons why we use drugs and what that use may look like. This results in an environment where Autistic service users are seen to not engage well or even resist treatment. Rather than consider how to adapt the environment to suit the Autistic person’s needs, we find ourselves left out in the cold.

For me, this meant that once I was a few months sober, I was left with nowhere to turn but twelve-step programmes that really didn’t meet my needs well. I eventually realised that if I was going to stay sober, I had to learn how to do it on my own. Yes, I had supportive friends and family, but no peers to support me from addiction communities.

This is ultimately how I ended up doing g the work I do. I had to learn to co-exist with myself, and part of that process was to use my suffering for something positive. I can’t take back the pain and the wrong turns, but I can hone them into something that can make a clear path for others to walk. I can’t undo the past, but I can make sure that others don’t have to struggle the way I did.

I had to become altruistic. It was a difficult process because the addicted mind is focused on one thing, instant gratification, instant relief from the pain of existence. Existence can be so very painful. Through altruism, I had to teach myself that not everything pays off immediately and that the time I spend working towards something good will often be far more gratifying than popping a pill or smoking a pipe.

I still battle with myself from time to time. Addiction doesn’t just disappear. I have moments where my brain tells me to throw it all away, but co-existence has taught me that I don’t have to listen to the self-destructive thoughts. I have learned it’s okay to pause and wait.

Addiction is one hell of a fight, but coming out of the other side of it is a beautiful thing. It doesn’t make us less valuable to the world. It gifts us a determination to achieve our goals that nothing else can. Recovery is not a straight path, and there are times when we feel like turning back. The journey is worth it. The grass is, in fact, greener on the other side; I know, I’m here.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

May 14 2023

What is it like to need mental health services when you’re Autistic?

According to statistics, 70% of Autistic people have a mental health condition. This is deeply concerning compared to the 25% of the general population that will experience a mental health problem in a given year. Autistic people are also much more likely to die by suicide with current statistics suggesting that the National Autistic Society assert that there is an increased risk of suicide mortality with the Royal College of Psychiatrists suggesting we are nine times more likely to die in such circumstances.

Given these deeply concerning statistics, the causes of which you could author several books on (I know because I wrote some of them), it is no surprise that Autistic people often find themselves in contact with wellbeing and mental health services. Personally, I have been under the care of secondary mental health services (CAMHS as a child and ATS as an adult) for over half of my life.

Both services had their failings, and CAMHS has been in crisis seemingly since it’s formation.

The first thing you need to understand about specialist mental health services in the UK is that they don’t really use a prevention model for intervention. Instead, they use a crisis-driven intervention model that only begins work with you when you are deeply suffering. This was particularly problematic for me as a drug addict; I was perpetually in crisis, but the wrong sort of crisis for professionals to take me seriously.

In my early twenties, I was under the care of a Substance Misuse Service alongside my mental health support. This was remarkable to be between. Like many others, I found that services were never quite sure who should take the lead. It became a self-sustaining cycle of “treat the mental health issues to fix the addiction, fix the addiction to address the mental health issues”. I have witnessed many of my peers fall between the cracks and disappear because of the back and forth of treatment and support.

What has always been quite remarkable for me is the complete lack of understanding of autism in just about every person who said they were prepared to work with an Autistic “service user”. Professionals were often unable to understand my experience, even with the best of intentions behind them. It complicated the feelings of alienation and isolation.

Therapy was always a tricky affair. More or less every single therapy I was offered was based in behavioural methods such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT); despite it’s widely known lack of efficacy in the Autistic community. At best, therapy has been moderately helpful, and I have benefited from being able to just talk about the horrible things that have happened to me.

Autistic people experience ALOT of trauma over their lives.

From a more practical standpoint, trying to engage with services has been deeply problematic. I am Schizophrenic. I need to engage, but as an Autistic person, I need predictability and accountability. Professionals are often spotty in their communication, disappearing for weeks at a time, not fulfilling appointment I have made, or being late. This has made engagement quite an upsetting process for me.

While I am “treatment-compliant” I have also found that my medication gets fiddled and altered very regularly. The problem with psychiatry is that it’s so inexact that it barely seems like a branch of medicine at times. Side-effects and constant worry of change sometimes make you feel less willing to engage. I am no exception. Sometimes I have to wonder what’s the point?

Services feel very impersonal. It seems that case-loads for those coordinating our care are so high that we’re lucky that they even remember our names at times. As a person under these services, it is very evident to me just how much they have been defunded by the people in charge. I have to wonder if there would be as many issues if the government appropriately resourced the mental health sector.

There is a point to this. It’s May. Mental Health Awareness Month. Now is the time (apparently) to open up. Autistic people deserve adequate care for their mental health and are not receiving it. Most of us either go private, or accept that things will never be quite as smooth sailing as they could have been. If you’re going to raise awareness of anything this month, think about the Autistic people who are being shortchanged by a service that could very well save their life.

For more of David’s writing, please consider purchasing a subscription to David’s Divergent Discussions.

Don’t forget to head over to the CAMHS resource page and sign the petition to get proper support for Autistic children.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Apr 7 2023

The nature of sobriety

Today marked seven years of total sobriety for me. For seven years, I have been drug and alcohol free. While abstinence is not suitable for everyone, I decided, on April 7th, 2016, that the consumption of mind-altering substances was not safe for me.

I will say I have never approached it through the guise of eternity. “Never say never”, as the saying goes. Instead, I have woken up each day with a commitment to remain sober for that one day. During the challenging times, I have committed to hours and minutes. Whichever way I approached it, I have accumulated almost ¾ of a decade.

Addiction is peculiar. So many think that the focus of the addiction is the issue. We are easily fooled into believing that stopping behaviours such as drug use solves the issue. I lament the fact that it is not so simple. The addicted bodymind is more complex than compulsive behaviours.

I am an addict. I hate drugs and what they do to me, but I adore the feeling of being high. The ability to enter oblivion through a pill or a line is an all too attractive concept to me. Even now, closer to ten years sober than to zero, I find my mind craving it. It’s insidious. Little thoughts of the ways I could get away with it. The ways I could covertly enjoy the feeling of not existing.

I am happy with my sober life. I would not trade the life I have now for something so meagre as drug induced euphoria. That doesn’t mean that living in my Autistic, ADHD, and Schizophrenic mind without switching off for years has been easy. At times, I have been exhausted. An exhaustion I can’t put into words.

I am committed each day to just one more day of sobriety. Because each subsequent day of sober existence brings with it the truth of existence;

Life is a gift. It is meant to be used and spent. The bitter and painful lows only make the highs even more beautiful. Every time I survive a new challenge while maintaining my sobriety, I am able to enjoy the good in life in a vividly high definition.

Sobriety to me is a matter of life or death, and I, for one, choose life.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Feb 26 2023

CAMHS nearly killed me, and it’s not okay.

I don’t talk about my childhood much. Partly because I don’t want to upset my readers, but also because it is not my story alone to tell. The people who did so much harm to me as a child also caused harm to others that I love immensely. A sad part of my life is that as a result of the harm done to me, I made choices in my life that hurt those people I loved. I don’t blame myself, but I also haven’t quite reach the point where I can release myself from the sense that I need to make reparations.

Something that I think is really important to talk about however, is the way I was failed by professionals who very well could have turned my life around. I am happy with my life now, but I do wonder what it might have looked like had I not been left to drown by a service that was meant to be my saviour. That service was the UK’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

The worst part isn’t even that they ignored my mother’s pleas to assess me for autism. It’s not the time that they tried to put me on Ritalin after a five minute conversation. It’s the way they were nearly complicit in my surrender to the suffering that I experienced. I’m a suicide survivor, and CAMHS didn’t care.

I came to them, beaten and bruised, I laid before them my trauma, my pain, my isolation, my disdain for every aspect of myself. I told them that I couldn’t cope, that I was scared to wake up each day. I told them things about my past that I can’t bring myself to say publicly, even to this day. I was met with silence. Cold, uncaring silence. They did nothing. They labelled me a school refuser. They still refused to assess me for autism.

Is it any wonder then that I found solace in the steel trap of drugs and alcohol? What can one do in the face of unending suffering than desperately scramble to drown out the noise. The noise was inescapable. The voices in my head would scream at me daily. I was paranoid and distrustful of everyone, even those that I loved dearly. CAMHS allowed my psychological wellbeing to deteriorate to the point that I could no longer cope with existing. I resigned myself to an early grave.

Some might ask why this is relevant, I am a man in his thirties, surely this was a long time ago?

No.

This is still happening. Everyday, thousands upon thousands of families are forced to watch on as CAMHS allow their children to suffer. If you want to know why so many Autistic people die by suicide, start by taking a look at this (dis)service. CAMHS are complicit in an untold number of deaths. Each data point in those statistics represents a story untold. A future unrealised. With each child lost by the negligence of those meant to help them, our future becomes a little bit darker.

I am happy today, but it hurts. It hurts to know that my child and millions like them do not have this service in a good working order should they need it. I want a world that protects my child and seeks to heal wounds and change worlds. It’s the least they can do for our precious children.

My name is David, and I’m a CAMHS survivor.

Please help us change children’s lives by signing this petition.

David Gray-Hammond 9 Comments

Feb 10 2023

Drug use, addiction, and neuroqueering

I have extensively explored my Autistic relationship with addiction thus far. I have considered and lamented the inappropriate treatment services, the suffering, and rejoiced in the moment that I came out the other side. I have listed numerous reasons that contributed to my active addiction, but what I have not done is really drive home the core point of why I kept coming back to drugs. I need you to know what gave me that drive to persevere with something that could have very well cost me my life.

I was undiagnosed Autistic for the first 26 years and 7 months of my life. I know that many, if not most of you, will understand the isolation and alienation that comes with such an existence. It seemed as though everywhere I turned, I was met with condemnation and assertions of my inadequacy. It extended far beyond bullying. It was more than abuse. The world taught me that who I was, the very essence of me, was only as valuable as my ability to assimilate into the culture of my local environments.

I had never wished to enter into the culture of normality. I felt that my lack of desire to fit in reduced me to a non-person. In a world where I could be anything, I would give anything to not be me. My fluid identity was more akin to vapour at this point than it was to any tangible form. Society constructs our sense of Self through our interactions with the environment. My environment rejected me like a gangrenous limb.

Perhaps then you can start to see where the twisted beauty of drugs seeped into my life. Not only could I alter my perception of the environment, but I could also alter the way those in my environment perceived me. Different drugs allowed me to put on and take off identities like clothes. They allowed me to explore the inner workings of my mind. I could manifest the Self in whatever way I saw fit.

Much like the sculptor trying to free the art from its marble prison, I was able to shed the constraints of human thought. Drugs allowed me to rewire my bodymind. I was no longer the necrotic manifestation of the universe, but instead the explorer. I was attempting to neuroqueer without even knowing it.

Sadly, this lifestyle was not sustainable. In order to explore the fluidity of one’s identity, it is necessary to be at some level of peace with your Self. At least in my experience. My attempt to neuroqueer my way to peace was fundamentally flawed. I wanted to subvert myself, not normative attitudes. I was trying to diverge into neurotypical performance.

Perhaps that is why I kept returning despite the dangers. Neurotypicality was a performance that I could never manage. What is it they say about try8ng the same thing over and over and the definition of insanity?

The irony in this story is that at almost seven years of tee total sobriety, I can now see that my journey through that time has actually made assimilation not just less possible; The thought is abhorrent to me. For my safety now, I steer clear of “recreational drug use”. My days as a self-confessed psychonaut are over, and quite honestly? I’m okay with that.

Some people falsely believe that addiction is an illness. Personally, I believe that given the right environmental ingredients, it becomes an inevitability. For me, addiction has been a necessary evil. It was necessary for me to deconstruct the Self that had been built on the rotten foundation of subjugation and childhood trauma. That deconstruction allowed me to make space for the infinite possibilities that lay within my neurology.

The world needs us to regularly deconstruct that which society has built. It’s often a violent and painful process, but necessary as we explore what it means to be neurodivergent. Perhaps more so, what it means to be human.

If I could ask one thing of you, dear reader, it is this; when you see a person suffering, do not offer them vague pity and generic platitudes. Offer them your hand to place a new foundation, upon which all can stand to explore the fluid nature of human identity.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Jan 15 2023

Drug-use and harm reduction: what does it look like?

When we consider harm reduction strategies for drug-users, we often think about education on the safer use of drugs. Things such as safer injection practices and “tasting the hit” to reduce accidental overdoses. While things such as safe consumption rooms and needle exchanges can reduce a lot of the surface level harms, there is a wider conversation about the factors leading to drug-use and the fall out from drug-use once it has initiated.

Here are some of the things that, in my opinion, are important factors to consider when trying to reduce the harms from drug-use.

1. Trauma-informed practice

First, we need to stop viewing trauma through a normative lens and realise that trauma can be experienced from just about any source. As I discussed with Tanya Adkin in the Creating Autistic Suffering Series, trauma is a subjective experience.

Once we have shed our misconceptions of what constitutes trauma, we need to recognise the role that traumatic experiences play in the harms associated with drug-use. Anyone supporting people around harm reduction needs to remember that they are more than likely working with traumatised people.

2. Responsible prescribing practices

The pathologisation and subsequent medicalisation of distress has done many people a great deal of harm. For many people, myself included, it has meant trading addiction to illicit drugs for addiction to prescription drugs. In my case, prescription drugs were more dangerous than the illicit ones due to ease of access.

People don’t like to admit it, but doctors often end up being a person’s main supplier of drugs.

3. Move away from current diagnostic models in psychiatry

Distress doesn’t have to be centred as a problem in the person. In fact, I would argue that it’s necessary to externalise it by looking to the environment, and subsequent experiences of people in distress. We need to consider that if we want people to be safer in the use of drugs, we need to think about what in their life has brought them to using them.

For a good example of this, check out the power threat meaning framework.

It is also important to embrace neurodiversity models. It’s not just Autistic people that are Neurodivergent. Neurodivergence can be acquired in a number of ways, or you van be born with it. It is important, though, to recognise that “mental illness” as a concept has not improved outcomes in psychiatry in over 50 years. Recognising Neurodivergent people in distress will take you much further.

4. End prohibition

The war on drugs is a lie. It has not stopped drug use, and neither has abstinence-based education. Making drugs illegal does not stop their use, it empowers clandestine markets to exploit the distress of vulnerable people, for profit, and increases harms through the lack of regulations around purity and age restriction.

This is a non-exhaustive list. We need to have a wider conversation about racism and other bigotry, socioeconomic status, housing, access to healthcare, and myriad other factors. I do not believe I could do this justice in a short blog.

I hope that we can move into a world where we support people rather than criminalise and institutionalise them. I hope that medical professionals can take a moment to acknowledge the harm their profession has done. I hope that we can all assess our own internalised ableism towards drug-use and addiction.

We may not be able to solve this issue over night, but little by little, we can make the waves that will sweep away the old models and make space to replace them with something that works better for every one. The greatest thing we can do is have a little compassion for others who are suffering.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments

Sep 15 2022

Ben Nelson-Roux and Chris Nota: Two tragic tales of systemic failings

This article was Co-Authored by Tanya Adkin and David Gray-Hammond

Trigger Warning: Death, drug and alcohol use, suicide, systemic failure, mental health crisis, inpatient psychiatric care.

The 13th of September 2022 saw the opening of inquests into the deaths of two teenage boys.

Ben

On the 8th of April 2020, Kate Roux forced her way into the room of an adult hostel where she found Ben Nelson-Roux, her son, dead, having been there all day. This happened despite multi-agency involvement and repeated attempts to seek help for her son. Ben was known to be “high-risk” of child criminal exploitation. He was 16 years old. What “high-risk” actually means, is that he was being exploited criminally, and services knew about it. There was no “risk”, this was actively happening. Consultant Psychologist, David Loveday-Simms described him as having a “chaotic and risk taking lifestyle”, this being part of a long history of victim-blaming. He also stated that Ben had started smoking cannabis at age 12. Where was the support for a psychoactive drug user at such a young age?

Loveday-Simms interviewed Ben shortly before his death, and concluded that “he was not a slave to anyone”. Demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of child exploitation. It is frankly terrifying that a CAMHS consultant psychologist demonstrates so brazenly, a lack of understanding around power-exchange, coercive control, modern day slavery, and child exploitation.

That’s not the worst bit.

Loveday-Simms said “I agreed with Mrs Roux that Bens accommodation posed a significant risk to Ben” upon his final encounter with Ben’s mother, before his tragic death. It appears that Ben had been housed as a known child, vulnerable to exploitation, with a history of drug use, and documented attempts to take his own life, in an unsupported hostel for homeless adults. His mother feared that he would die within weeks if correct support was not put in place.

The consultant psychiatrist told the coroners court that Ben would use cannabis and other drugs heavily, which left him paranoid. The night before he died, Ben’s mother had begged for him to be sectioned under the mental health act.

Ben was Neurodivergent, and according to his mother had been struggling with “ADHD, severe mental health issues, and drug and alcohol abuse for years”.

Chris

On the 7th July 2020, a young man fell to his death from a bridge in Southend-On-Sea. It is reported that following a deterioration in his mental health, due to the death of three relatives, he had turned to cannabis to calm himself. It wasn’t Chris’ first visit to this bridge. Paramedics had previously found him at this same bridge on June 27th 2020.

“Coroner Horstead said to Dr Ball: “On June 29th your colleague said you couldn’t keep him [Chris] safe. Was that a view you agreed with?” Dr Ball replied: “That was a view of the whole team that we couldn’t keep him safe at the time.” The coroner said: “Your colleague said there needs to be a hearing for funding. It was unanimous as a team that you couldn’t keep Chris safe in the community?””
Essex Live, (15/09/2022) Click here for more

Chris was Neurodivergent. It’s reported that Chris’ mother Julia had expressed concerns that she felt they were not meeting the needs of her son. She felt he needed specialist autism services. His mother feared that he would die without the correct support. Specialist services were not made available to him.

Chris was Autistic with a learning disability, a drug user, and had previously been sectioned under the mental health act for psychosis. He was 19 at the time of his death.

Discussion

These two deaths were almost three months apart to the day, and 231 miles in distance. Two neurodivergent teenagers. Two vulnerable people who tragically died.

Stories like these are not news to us. They don’t always result in death, sometimes it results in prison, sometimes in long-term hospitalisation under the mental health act. They all follow a similar thread. I don’t think we would be doing either of these young people justice, or the people we work with, if we didn’t acknowledge how far back the misunderstanding of neurodivergence and systemic failings go. It starts in healthcare with lack of healthcare access and a lack of up-to-date knowledge. Parent and victim blaming plays a big part. Discrimination based on stereotypes surrounding young males with “behavioural issues” also play a significant role.

The mess and the underfunding in the education system. The minefield that are Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCP’s). Lack of social workers with specialist knowledge in neurodivergence, or indeed ANY professional with specialist knowledge.

This should not have to happen in order for people to realise that the system is broken; but that isn’t even happening, there seems to be no change on the horizon. We have a national problem, loads of Neurodivergent people are suffering unnecessarily. In our experience, services just don’t know how to support neurodivergence. Services aren’t designed or accessible for neurodivergent people.

But what would we know, after all, we are just neurodivergent people.

To read more about issues raised in this article, please see the Creating Autistic Suffering series on this website, the first article of which can be found here.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Jul 10 2022

Back to the corner: Psychoactive drug use, my Autistic experience

Some 4(ish) years ago, my debut blog post on this website was Standing on the corner: Where autism and addiction meet shortly covered by Recovery services as an Autistic adult. Back then My writing was merely an attempt to scream into the void, offloading my frustrations. Little did i know that in 4 years, my articles would have garnered over 25,000 views, and that people would ask me to go places and do things. I was also pretty surprised to discover that for the most part I don’t mind going places and doing things.

With that in mind, I decided it’s time to take another crack at this one, seeing if 4 years of experience makes for an improved experience for you, my wonderful readers and followers.

So here we are.

I’m David. Born Autistic at the dawn of the 1990’s. My life was pretty standard for what you’d expect of a truamatised, psychotic, recovering addict. So let’s consider where this particular part of my journey started.

October 2008.

My long term relationship came to an end (mutually, but still painful none-the-less). On that very same day, I had a peculiar experience. I heard a number of voices calling my name, but it seemed that it wasn’t the people around me that were doing so. Interestingly, this was the day of my first ever cigarette as well. Hindsight tells me that the fact that my first cigarette led to me smoking an entire pack in a number of hours should have been a huge warning for what was coming. Sadly, hindsight isn’t good for much, and I have a traumatised AuDHD brain that at the time was going through what some might term a “prodromal phase” for the psychotic condition I would later be diagnosed with.

Over the next week I discovered that smoking cannabis really helped my growing paranoia and auditory disturbances chill the f*ck out, and that when drank a litre of vodka, I just didn’t give a sh*t. Just a note here for anyone who can’t see what’s coming; drug-use and trauma is a volatile mix. Some people use psychoactives safely and medicinally their whole lives, with no real negative outcomes. I on the other hand came to resemble one of those warning videos your school would have shown you about the dangers of peer pressure and drug-use.

So, naturally I did what any normal AuDHD’er would do when they discovered something that makes them feel good. I did it again. And again, and again, ad infinitum. Each time I used, my consumption grew. Each new environment I entered I would break down another boundary in my life. First it was cannabis, then alcohol, and I figured that since these two weren’t the dangerous and hellish things my school had made them out to be, perhaps other psychoactives would be okay as well. Side note: this is why using scare tactics and abstinence based approached to stop young people from getting high is f*cking irresponsible, because when they find out they’ve been lied to, they don’t truat you on ANYTHING.

My time at university can be summed up by quoting myself “I don’t think you’ve ever seen me this high, have you?” and the phrase said to me most often “How the f*ck are you still alive?”. You see, I hadn’t noticed it, but I was taking drugs by the shed load. I was out of my mind on pretty much anything I could get. It’s easier to list the drugs I haven’t used than the drugs I have used; To date, I’ve never used “street” heroin, or crack cocaine. More on this in a moment.

What this meant was that when I ran away from my environment, making the 300 mile journey back to my mother’s house, I swore I would never use again. After all, I had nearly died on a couple of occasions, and found myself on the radar of what one might describe as “less than savoury people”.

Autistic Substance Use Survey 2022

Below is a survey on Autistic people and substance use. The aim is to collate data anonymously on the use of drugs and alcohol in the Autistic community, and use that data to write a report that will be published on this website.

The hope is that these insights may help Autistic people better advocate for themselves with regard to this topic.

None of the questions are mandatory, but the more that you can answer, the more data we will have to look at.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments

Tag Archives: substance use