Oh we are full of surprises.
And functioning labels do not mean SHIT. Not as far as intelligence goes, not in the fucking slightest.There are those of us who are noverbal, or almost completely so, or nonverbal at some times, verbal at others, and stim a lot, more than I do, and who would be/have been/are judged mentally retarded, but when they have access to the right means of communication to let their ideas loose on the world, be it a voice synth, computer, PECS board, by writing or sign, there is creativity, insight, intelligence, and a deep personality, usually with an awful lot to it there.

Take amanda baggs, autistic blogger, she has been called low functioning, MR, etc, she is totally nonverbal almost, although she can sometimes speak a little, at the expense of hugely taxing her resources, sometimes catatonic and communicates via voice synthesizer, and posting on a computer online, she might look MR to some people who don't take the time to read or listen to what she has to say, and there are those who judge her still, but plenty of people have been totally shocked when they find out just how insightful and intelligent she is. Indeed, more than one have then called her a faker, and said she isn't autistic at all when they find out the truth. Patronize her like that, and damn, she would tear strips off you and make you feel like such a fucking idiot.

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/

Quirky, but no shit? what do you mean. Oh, and I am not entirely sure I would call myself high functioning. When asked about that, I usually just..well...answer in a nondescript fashion, I'm on the fence there really, not quite sure where I would pigeonhole myself....truth be told though, I probably just wouldn't.

not to mention enough to buy some Pd, Ir, Rh, or something along those lines, and some nice stones,

Ya know you're it's love when....
   He brings you a nice bottle of dry IPA or if you're really lucky dry EtOH....
   He designs you a power supply dashboard for your chemistry setup
   He drills a cork for you....
   Oh and he spends 3 days and counting making silver nitrate by dissolving silver in Nitric acid so he can silverplate your favorite necklace....


Salat

I'm working on a necklace at the moment for her, its her xmas gift actually, she knows why its taking a while (getting tools, teaching myself new skills, figuring out how to put shit together etc.) but has no idea WHAT I'm doing.

She told me not to buy her any xmas gift at all, didn't want me to 'waste' money (as if, that woman is truly priceless) on her, but said that making her something myself would be ok, and would mean a lot to her.

So thats exactly what I'm doing. Got a great deal on a couple of nice sapphires, direct from the cutters, avoiding paying any greedy lil fuck middlemen who don't really have any good justification for being permitted to continue breathing, and paying just above the pittance the cutter gets, who in turn, gets a little above the bowl of rather rancid looking beans and rice a week that your average miner gets

One of them came from, I think, thailand, or possibly burma, can't remember where the other is from.

Bigger one of the two is 10.6mm across, I think, smaller is 4mm. Had to order a special pair of gemstone setting pliers, for mounting stones in claw/prong settings, that got here just recently, now I need to figure out how I am going to get from silver bars and stones, to end product.

The AgNO3 thing....awwwww....that is SUCH a spesh sort of way to say 'I love you'

You never know....you might just be one of us!

We are taking over, y'know, kids, adults, guys, girls...hell I even saw a cat flap the other day.

(deadpan autie humor)

My formal education, as taught to me by another, as part of a lesson to be delivered to me, extended to secondary school (high school for you seppo fuckers ) In my case, two schools, the first of which was a 'LFA' school, for kanner's-autistic kids, and some with mental retardation, they did, as long as I was there and could remember, ONE chemistry demo, that of the colorimetric rxn between starch (in the form of a cut potato) and tincture of iodine....teacher didn't even know that iodine does not come as a brown liquid, but is in fact a volatile silvery grey, metallic-looking substance, which evaporates and produces a purple colored vapor.

the second school was a boarding special school, for 'HFA' and AS, and they had a decent education programme where science came into it, but not to my personal specifications...I spent more time reading and memorizing the teacher's set of hazardous chemical interaction cards, than watching the lumps of Na and K get tossed into water etc. Although I was at least entertained when at one point, a LARGE chunk of metallic potassium was tossed into a fishtank full of H2O (sans fish of course), I think, possibly, the teacher might have believed it to be the bottle of Na, at any rate, the result was a stupendous BOOM!, and a blob of molten potassium violently ejected from the tank, only to hit the roof (literally) of the converted portacabin that was used as a science lab and then drip flaming liquid K back into the water.

I remember that day distinctly. I was, I think, the only one stood there grinning like a cheshire cat, while the rest of the students were busy cowering/momentarily recovering bowel control

Did get, what was perhaps a rather odd look, when I at one point, after the teacher had trouble getting a thermite demo to ignite using Mg ribbon, and I suggested a fuel/oxidizer mixture to set it off instead. Not sure why on that, hell, it gets the job done better than magnesium wire any day, if one uses a bit of permanganate and glycerol, or chlorate/salt/sucrose mixture (the salt slows the burn rate and stops it going off in your face)

The entire of the rest of my chemical and pharmacological education has consisted of starting as a little kid, the likes of slaving my nuts off over multiple test tubes full of iodine tincture, slowly distilling, concentrating, redistilling, etc until just a little was left, from whence pure iodine could be sublimed off, in small quantities. Attempting to prepare permanganic acid, and ending up instead with the green manganate salts, heating red phosphorus in the abscence of air, and distilling over the white P, cursing and swearing and legging it out of the garage after discovering the wonderful (mis)useability of acrolein and the chloroacetones, electrolytic alkali metal production, experimenting with the production and use of chromyl chloride, production of pyrophoric compounds, etc.

If any of you guys had been playing santa when I was at the age of 8-12 and upwards, if you had asked me whatever did I want, it wouldn't have been the usual kids fare, at any rate. I would sooner have had a couple of liters of hydrazine, a decent DC power supply, some HNO3, or a good microscope than an entire shop chain full of toys, clothes and sweets. As it happened though, microscope aside (albeit it was one sold for kids, which while a good thing, nevertheless, was not MY sort of thing) I don't think my folks knew what sort of things I would be after, and if they did, they would likely have shit brass bricks



As for what I'm doing for the hopefully future mrs.toad-god to be, what can I say, other than she is worth it. If it would make her happy, hell, I would  WALK the non-sea portions of the journey towards a mine, and sift dirt all week until I found something worth cutting for her, if I had the means to do it. I haven't ever in my life thought of a cause, ideology, or other reason or motivation to die for something, but in her case, I would completely willingly give up vital organs, if ever she became ill in a way that could fix, then to me it wouldn't matter weather it was something I could survive or not, I would give it her, without a second thought..

Feelings? no fucking shit....we aren't pieces of meat. Well we are, but pieces of meat that fthink and feel, like like any other ambulant meatsack of the kind generally known as 'human'. I've been engaged twice, one of the girls was LFA/classically autistic, and would she have literally thrown herself at me the moment we met, more or less, and pinned me to a tree at paintball gun-point, if she had no feelings? oh I think not

Stuff in the 80s...well, it wasn't good, that much is for sure. Autism rights issues were effectively not even thought to exist, let alone worked on, and I don't think there was much, if any at all, of an internet-based communication network to allow a community and culture to grow, with people seperated by distance who otherwise would not have been able to contact or meet each other. I've (unfortunately) read research papers published in actual journals (using ABA....how fucking surprising..I do not think) assessing the effectiveness of punishment, including electric shock, to rid autistic people of stimming and other integral behaviours most of us display, and to instill fear of not socializing.

Unfortunately, this is still going on in the US to this day. Look up the judge rotenberg center, dreamed up by a bastard by the name of matthew israel. This is a residential facility with a couple of hundred captives, that claims to be educational and to have therapeutic value. Inmates are forbidden to talk to each other (those who are capable of speech, of course), as indeed, are the staff, of which there are nearly a thousand, to a couple of hundred inmates. The entire complex is monitored, even the damn toilet facilities, by cameras and microphones, which are watched constantly. Punishments used for the slightest thing they disapprove of, include withdrawal of up to 75% of the daily food requirement, full-body restraint on tie-down boards, for many hours, or even days, forced inhalation of NH3 fumes, feeding nothing but food calculated to be revolting and nearly inedible, and many of the prisoners (I won't use the term 'students', they are that in name only) are forced constantly to wear a GED, or GED-4, devices the JRC invented that are remote-activated electric shock devices, the latter of the two being much more powerful than the former. Some of the prisoners there have been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and repeatedly shocked, in one case over 80 times in a row, which put them in hospital in a burns unit. The two shock devices they use (they abandoned the use of an earlier, commercial device called SIBIS, because it was too weak for them) output quite a lot higher current than a pig-issue taser pistol, but at a lower voltage.

They have killed quite a few people too in various ways.


As for drama between me and my lady....lol. Not likely. She is not a person who DOES drama, fuck around, and your gone, basically, threaten her...and she wouldn't hesitate to shoot someone, she almost did before, for coming to her house when told not to. I like that in a girl, doesn't fuck about, and is strait up front, down to earth and completely honest about things. What I see, is what I know I'll get, and for her, the same in return.

Asking if we like all/any drugs is like asking if jewish people like eating carrots, or if computer programmers prefer quilted loo roll over regular

My girl, for instance, has never once smoked, and never done any recreational substance, opiate painkillers yes, but even in pain, she does't take them as a rule, she would have to be in absolute agony before she did, I would sooner have both my kneecaps caved in with a hammer, then see her get to the point where she was in enough pain to take something for it. She is a VERY independent person and won't tolerate weakness in herself, to the point where she tries to avoid even taking the corticosteroids for her adrenal insufficiency.

As for me..I've quite possibly done most things going Quite a few of us do have wierd reactions to some drugs, one of my most valued friends unfortunately had her GI system wrecked by reboxetine, left her with something similar to IBS, permanently
I have a paradoxical reaction to oxazepam sometimes, but not always, where it appears to act in an excitatory manner, my probation officer once said she was going to go to my doctor and tell him I was having problems, until I in no uncertain terms said words to the effect of 'do it, and there is a lawsuit coming' after I'd taken a dose of some benzo or other that metabolised to oxazepam, and it started making me shake all over and caused quite pronounced myoclonus. MDxx to me, feels empty and fake, all that encouraging social behaviour, and 'opening up', it does that to me, sort of, but I know it isn't who I am, or what I am really about, and after it kicks in and has been going for about half an hour at most, I just want it to end, I don't enjoy it much at all,  because it feels hollow, forced and false. Another one is that I am very, very sensitive to stimulants, which seem to last longer  in me than they do in other people, stimulants, or indeed any other drug with  any significant noradrenergic release activity cause severe akathisia and generally make me want to die, unless that side of its effects are squashed into the ground with a heavy dose of clonidine, tizanidine or other alpha2 adrenoreceptor agonist.

And I am not very sensitive at all to benzos, I have always had trouble getting to sleep, since I was a little kid,  before I got on my tizanidine script it would take me 6-8 hour of lying awake at night, tossing and turning before I had any chance of sleeping, thats sorted now thanks to the rx, but still, just occasionally I get episodes of insomnia that are nearly completely unresponsive to benzos. I have a script for nitrazepam, and on those nights, well, I was scripted 5mg/night, recently upped to 10mg/night for use as needed, as mant refills as I want, since my doc knows I know  exactly what benzos are capable of if misused, how, and why they work, how long they can be used (in me personally) without causing untoward effects, and on those nights, even 85mg+, does absolutely nothing at all, unless taken with repeated plugged shots of tizanidine at a pretty high dose,  10mg or more (2mg would put pretty much anyone to sleep, 4mg rectally would knock you out cold within 10 minutes) when those nights happen, often it takes that, plus necking 3-4 cans of super-strength lager, or several shots of whatever spirits are on hand, usually vodka or dark rum given of course, that the latter is one of my favourites, before I actually sleep.  And then still, I seem to wake up repeatedly, and have to KO myself with tizanidine several times during the night.

I can state with complete certainty that this is NOT due to tolerance built up through regular use, I get my scripts for the benzos  fortnightly, and almost every time  get them, when I go back to my doc for a refill, they  have just been stashed and saved up, I don't even use the moggies on a weekly basis regularly, occasionally I will even use twice, or very rarely, three times weekly, hell, i don't always use them every fortnight, a good many of those  scripts just get put in my bedside cabinet and left for when I just cannot sleep at all, or have a comedown of some sort, or some  sort of hideous awful day, etc.

And just today,  minus 2-3 shots, I've had 3/4th of a 70cl bottle of navy rum, on top of a good handful of painkillers, and I don't even feel any effects of the EtOH, maybe a little relaxation but thats it. Again not tolerance related, I don't drink all that often, I find it really hard to drink enough within a sufficient space of time to actually get drunk, I literally have to work hard to neck shot after shot after shot before that happens and I get any more inebriated than a light relaxation or tipsy feeling.

Other GABAa agonists do work though as normal, muscimol does, as do chlormethiazole, and barbital. I have been meaning to make some chloral or  chlorobutanol to use instead.

So yes...odd pharmacokinetics and wierd ass metabolic profiles are pretty common amongst my people.

Everything chemistry and physics that was available in high school was studied. Decided against pursuing a career in chemistry.
 One fuckup like getting caught manufacturing or using drugs could wreck one's career and that would be it.
Better pursue a career in something other interesting and keep chem as a hobby.

I think he was saying that getting caught would fuck up his career in something like chemistry as a professional as opposed to being a programmer or some such thing, although truthfully there ain't many careers you can pursue once you've been caught.  Maybe if you avoid jail.

Salat

Yes, that was exactly my point. Anything drug related and any chance of getting any job with proper pay in the field of chem would be gone.
Around here it takes five years or so for the said offence to disappear from one's record IIRC. But that would be five years with no work experience in the field.
But a mfg. bust would be highprofile, there has been like 1 or 2 in the last 5 years, so even if your record is clean, they might remember you from news.
Thus it is just better to pursue a career in something else, if anything else there might be a better chance of getting a proper job even if busted.

Interestingly the busts ware for GHB & Speed in one collage student groups lab and other one was mCPP and homebrew bromodragonFLY IIRC, there was like +10kilos of mCPP. The only drug that is not imported here is cannabis, everything else is imported and even the domestic cannabis supply is supplemented with imports.

hey Toadgod, mi amigo,,   " A belated reply, yes,
    "So yes...odd pharmacokinetics and wierd ass metabolic profiles are pretty common amongst my people."
            this IS what I kinda wanted to hear.....thanx 

   hyppy