Hi butterfly
Wow reading this really made me identify in certain aspects, I feel for you.
I have a 6 year old who was diagnosed with autism at a young age – I’m still not fully convinced, as he has got older alot of the traits have gone away and I’m not sure people on the outside would know. I did however throw myself into learning about it and went to see a guy called Tony Atwood recently do a talk on autism and his son is autistic and also had a drug problem.
From what I can gather part of autism is struggling to get that sense of your place in the world. I imagine certain drugs would put pay to that for a while and probably help him to feel somewhat normal. The problem is that using always comes at a price and you usually have to pay it back ten fold. Another part of autism is emotional regulation and struggling to understand or see things from others perspective. I imagine this is why he is so angry to some degree, from the outside looking in why on earth wouldn’t you be worried to death about him? That’s natural.
There are studies and increasing evidence linking autism to addiction on the web now – this is purely my opinion but knowing that the neuro diverse moms is wired differently, I imagine substances would help with feelings of being different, separate, outside of the world and would be really attractive to someone on the spectrum. Additionally moderation is also a know struggle for people with autism.
As people have said the first thing is to build support for you first if you are going to tackle this – I imagine the worry and fear around uncertainty is overwhelming, support and sharing is key. There is also a ton of advice and other resource on the web too which will show you aren’t alone.
The good news is that he can recover if he has had enough. It wont be easy with his situation, but it is possible and many people have done it.
Please stay in touch on here and stay strong