Rabid Sharks
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Prison Blog

In which Possum recounts his experiences as an offender in the system.

Possum Bones is autistic. He has identified as a dirty kid in the past, and he’s attended multiple rainbow gatherings. He has several years left to serve in the Washington Correctional system.

He has been making art since he could sit up. He communicates better in writing than speech. If you are interested in the experience of an autistic person doing prison time, check out his Prison Blog. If you are a fan of comic art, underground/outsider music, Lovecraft, Clarke Ashton Smith, Murakami, Cixui Liu, etc.

Is Asperger's real?

According to the current DSM, there is no aspergers. There is only an ASD spectrum. I've been diagnosed as ASD 2/3. One of my mental health providers who is autistic and diagnosed with aspergers expressed the opinion that the removal of a distinction between aspergers and ASD was a largely political decision. I dont wholeheartedly agree with his assessment. I feel it is worth noting that I can think of an example off the top of my head of the DSM being influenced by politics. That is the example of psychopathic/sociopathic disorder which, I believe is not in the DSM for political reasons according to a book on psychopathy I read at shelton. Anyway. Back to the subject of asperger's and ASD, I get the sense that maybe the mental health professional I mentioned feels more secure separating himself diagnostically from those individuals with ASD. He believes ASD and aspergers are diagnostically different enough to warrant a separate classification. My feeling is that ability to function with autism which seems to be a major hallmark that makes people call one person aspergers and another ASD is influenced not by a separate disorder but by the degree to which the individual has integrated healthy coping mechanisms into their lifestyle, and also by their age and experience. Finally, I think that if you're either very stupid or very smart, it will effect your percieved ability to cope with your symptoms and therefore the diagnosis of ASD or aspergers. I think people with autism who arent very smart sometimes have an easier time than me, but also, it is because of my ability to think critically that I've been able to mitigate the symptoms of a condition that could be more severe on assessment of all the variables.

Essentially, it is possible that the distinction between aspergers and ASD is kind of an elitist, uppercrust "Oh, I have ASPERGERS, not AUTISM" . Autism is still perceived as being somehow related to down syndrome, isn't it? I mean, It does suck. I am basically a total shithead, but I'm not that dumb.
Last, this applies to most disorders of the mind: We just dont understand it on a complex enough level yet. There seem to be so many different subtypes of autism to me, which as far as I know are unnamed. I see the archetypes in the autistic people I meet. A lot of it has to do with the numbness/hypersensitivity principle. Some people are very numb and sensory overload is often not as much of a problem for those people. I only have two minutes left to type, but suffice to say, there are many different types of autism. You can be numb to one thing but hypersensitive to another, and you never see autism in a vacuum : it could be ffected by any number of other extant personality ,mental, or mood disorders in any given individual.

Elisa Carlson