 And I think, if we're going to tie in the autistic piece to this, which I think is the important component for this podcast, is the association and reliance upon something to feel a different way. Because so often, autistic people, like ourselves, are struggling with our nervous system or our anxiety, or sensory overload, or being able to feel social, or feeling connected, or feeling too tired, or whatever we are feeling on a magnified level, and reaching for something that can quickly soothe how we're feeling or help us feel social in the moment or able to unmask in the moment because you've had a few drinks and now you feel more comfortable. That's why this stuff can get out of hand so quickly and become problematic so quickly. And I'm a firm believer that addiction is the opposite of connection, that the more connection we have, the more security we have, the more healthy relationships that we have, the less susceptible we are to these things. But as we know, autistic folks and social struggles and isolation and bullying and all the things that come with it, the experience, I think it really pushes in the other direction to create a lot of destruction and damaging behavior. You know, I don't think the fact that some substances are promoted socially is obvious, like there is a big culture, I know that the US does have in the UK, there is just a ridiculous lack of awareness about the effects of alcohol, even in the short term, because people think, oh, just don't have it a lot and you won't get fatty liver disease and you won't get all of these kind of dependencies and you won't have to drink it to feel like to not get ill. But actually with the binge drinking of it, I didn't know that you could die from having too much alcohol. It's served in a pub, in a restaurant, I can just have it, I can just get it from Tesco, as I can like... Yeah. And it's... What's the latest? Is it in the UK, 18? Yes, 18, which, you know, you have all those things of your brain developing and stuff and that just kind of magnifies the neural effects that that kind of stuff can have, even things like marijuana is, I think, can have impacts on your brain's development up to a point on nicotine, I think, as well. Hey, up! Just popping on to say thank you for listening to this podcast this far. If you could do me a real solid, please make sure to rate the podcast if you're in a podcasting streaming service and do all that like, subscribe, comment stuff on YouTube. Don't even send a heart in the comments if you don't feel like typing. Make sure to check out my link tree, which is always down below in the description or head over to my Instagram page at Thomas Henley UK for daily blogs, podcast updates and weekly lives. This podcast is sponsored by my favourite noise-canceling, noise-reducing earbuds that you can adjust the volume on. Really, really great thing. They're called D-Buds and you can find the affiliate link down in the description of this podcast for a 15% off discount. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of the podcast. That's all from me. I think definitely one of the negative life experiences that I feel very, very strongly about is the social isolation aspect of being autistic. To a certain extent, we struggle with isolation at school, like being isolated from groups and people, but in adulthood, especially that transition from school to adulthood or school to university, you are not put in scenarios where you're around people like you used to. It's such a difficult experience. You're like, okay, I need to find people. When you've had all these negative experiences with people in general, when you're younger and even in adulthood, it's very, very difficult to feel like people will like you or you couldn't find a friend or someone. Also, there are those people out there. I remember for the longest time, I didn't think anybody was worth investing in because I just had such a negative bias on my experiences with other humans. I was like, neurotypicals, I can never talk to them. I can never have any kind of trust in them at all. It was only until I started to push myself to get out in the world that I experienced some positive experience with it. I consider myself quite a driven and motivated person despite my mental health conditions. I just can't fathom just how difficult it could be for a lot of people to find that sense of connection and fun and doing activities with people. It's so easy just to have a dependency on something instead than doing that. I think that's really the crux of the issue is that it's a lot easier to rely on something that you can easily access to change how you feel. You can't always, even if you organize something, it could be delayed, it could change, it could happen. You just don't want to invest yourself emotionally in stuff and it's like, or I could just have this thing and then so I don't feel bad about the other things. I can just always have this when I want. It's much easier to slip into that when you are isolated, you don't have friends, you don't really talk to your family much. Absolutely. I think you're spot on and I think that if we polled people and looked at research that you would see that the statistics would be alarmingly high for those of us who are neurodivergent or those of us who really struggle socially in relationship and the correlation between substance use and it's just increasingly high because what you're describing and so many of us experience is that loneliness, that constant longing for belonging but the inability to access it. It's a lot easier to drink a four pack of cider and dissociate from that or disconnect from that or numb that out temporarily and then not acknowledge the physiological and psychological effects of relying on something to feel differently. Definitely. I think as you said about the mental health aspects of it, there's like a ton of cross-overs between autism, ADHD, mental health and also mental health and addiction. I suppose you also have the aspect of routine to things that was a big thing for me like with alcohol. I had a routine that I did each night that even when I wanted to stop doing it, it just felt wrong and it caused me anxiety to not do the thing. Not necessarily just because of the feeling that it gave me or anything like that, just the fact that I was changing my routine from something that had been a part of me for months. That was so much harder and then obviously going with the withdrawal and stuff from having those things, it's like a double whammy. Disregulated and also you don't have your regulating thing. Yep. I think you just explained that pretty perfectly. We all know how important routine and structure and sense of familiarity is for autistic folks and it can be a routine that revolves around something that you know is not healthy for you and that can make it even more complicated to change that behavior because it's just an extra layer and challenge to making any sort of adaptation or change to that because of the transition, the structure. I know at 4 p.m. I do this thing. I know at 4 p.m. I go to this place and that for a lot of us is very comforting even when it's something that isn't useful or healthy. I think there definitely is another element which I think we talked a bit about on a new pod about like a lexifier and stuff. It's very much the case that I feel like a lot of autistic people, we tend to gravitate towards these blanket regulation methods. Some of them are good, some of them are bad, obviously like for me blanket regulation would look like going to the gym you know like just regulates me something that I do and not necessarily bad for me and actually quite good for me but it's you know if I'm feeling something that's negative or experiencing something that's negative it's not like I'm tackling that at the cause or identifying, how do I feel about that, how do I feel and what is causing me to feel this way and being able to make that connection between them to like process things and do things that actively will make my situation or my feelings about it better like it just sometimes feels easier just to have all of these different blanket regulation methods that I can use to make myself feel better you know it could even be things like stimming or like eating some food that I like or you know all of these things that make me feel better but not necessarily like it's not necessarily like taking time aside to process and get through things. Yeah I think that's where the really deep challenging work happens right is when we're really getting into the what's happening behind the scenes why am I feeling this way how can I change this behavior that's a lot of mental energy and I think it's a lot easier to default to just what you're saying blanket behavior to say I know this works you know like I don't have to think much about it I know it makes me feel better I know it makes me feel different than I'm feeling right now and life is so hard that I think it's always a lot easier to reach for the thing that we don't have to exert the extra effort or mental energy in into yeah it's like having a button like you can just push this button feel good yeah yeah just keep pushing that button when you feel bad like you know it might make you feel good and you might have a good like feel like you have a good life but like you pressing that button all the time and it's for everything and you're not like letting yourself feel bad about things you're not like you know really tackling things at the root I think as as well like one of the things that kind of drew me into I'll call like and I know you're saying that addiction can be like cause like suicidal feelings especially when it's like an impact in your life a lot and you feel a lot of shame about it but also like I think there was kind of a point in in my life where I kind of I was sort of using my ideation for it as like a crutch it's like okay this is going bad I can always just just not be here if I want to as soon as I stopped doing that like obviously that's great like I'm not complaining about that but then there's like okay there's a lot of options like I could drink instead of like I had this crooks gone now even though it's a negative crooks it's like but now what like and now now what do I do to if I don't have that option how do I feel good and it's like you know if you're kind of in deep depression and you don't have the energy to do things and you don't really feel like you have the supports around you you don't feel positive about things in your life you don't experience pleasure from things it's like supplementing with different neurotransmitters by the form of substances or processes it's just very attractive like as something else of a you know obviously mental health like you generally just don't care about yourself as much as you should as well so it makes it quite easy to damage yourself I guess. Yep yeah that kind of circles back to what you were saying before of when you're in a bad mindset when it's easier to just say screw it I'm gonna do this thing and I think we so often not just autistic people just people in general just want to change how they feel we don't you kind of just alluded to that like a lot of us myself included like we don't want to feel bad we don't want to feel pain we don't want to sit with a negative emotion and we want to change that very quickly and I know that's a generalizing statement I think a lot of people would opt to not sit with the discomfort and sometimes we do just have to sit with how it how bad and how painful things can be because trying to change how you feel trying to alter how you feel with a substance it's just a band-aid fix it's not something that's a long-term solution it is a very temporary short-term solution to to to an experience and I think we lose sight over that because we just have such a hard time in those spaces and I suppose that kind of goes around to like this idea of like delayed gratification and stuff like it's just you know pretty much everything in our life is like kind of design to hook us in and like get us to say like screw it and do something it's like you have all these adversities say oh be impulsive do these things and just go on holiday then you might not be financially sound just do this just do that you'll feel good from having this and eating this and you know like I don't I don't think it's a it's a sort of illogical assertion to say that you know people don't want to feel bad like is it's I don't think anybody likes the nature of it is that we don't like it but you know so I think there is a lot of use in having that kind of delayed gratification mindset to things about you know life you know life is not a movie all the time you know you go to the bathroom you have times where you can't do things you you have to brush your teeth you have to get up in the morning you have to go to sleep every night there's all of these kind of boring monotonous self-care things that you do that just don't have any like apparent benefit in the the short term and like you know it's it's it's difficult and I think you know in a lot of areas of life people can kind of get fed up with things and not having this kind of glamourized idea of what life should be like you know it's it's it's it should be your kind of default mode your default kind of feeling should be just feeling meh I guess just normal like and that's not fun yeah that's not good like sometimes you want to feel the high and you'll feel great and you're gonna feel lovely and usually doing that kind of thing you even even if it's something like an eight like socializing with people like you or watching some watching a movie like once that goes down you still you'll always feel worse than you did like after so it's I don't know I think there's a lot to do with expectations and kind of like the culture that's that's formed at the moment around that kind of mentality of you know just screw it and have fun and you know it's it's it's fun it's exciting and it's nice to think about that but it's not like it's not going to like change your life like because of that impact negatively yeah well yeah because the neuro is chasing the next thing right like that vacation is never as good as the next vacation that's coming up and that meal is never as good as the next meal that you're romanticizing and I think we want to do that like we want to escape I think that's reality um we're right I mean oh I think I think a lot of existence is just like meh like existence and yeah um and I think for autistic people who are deep thinkers and like analyze a lot and and feel at a very intense level that existence is not always a pleasant place to be so it's it's kind of like how the hell do I change what's happening for me if this is kind of how I feel all the time it's like I could get better but then you know why why would I get better if it's just like this all the time it's you know you see on social media people posting like all the highlights of their life you know you only see the the athletes on the podium you don't see like the getting up in the morning and going to training and waiting for things like the little and struggling to yeah yeah yeah which is like 90 percent of the battle yeah to get onto that podium um yeah it's an interesting topic you know and I don't know I I think that we could explore this in so many different arenas and and vantage points and yeah it's it's something to just be mindful for to your listeners like really pay attention to when you reach for something why you're doing so the why behind the action is important what it's making you feel like during the experience and how you feel after 90 percent of the time 99 percent of the time the after effect is is not good we're talking about a lot of regret and shame and depression and all sorts of stuff that we're trying to run from or avoid or change that actually get amplified post substance use or post drinking or post gambling and and all of that stuff comes flooding back and that's that's again why you have to reach for it again because you're like wow wow this is even worse than before let me try again I think not that I don't want to leave on a message of hope but I do want to just be really honest that you know this is very this is cyclical behavior it's just it exists in a loop a lot of the time so it's really about really examining this stuff and stepping back and talking to someone and and getting some support around it if you feel like you are struggling if you feel like you have behaviors that feel like they're out of your control or you start to notice that they're becoming harder to resist I think be proactive you know like reaching for support before it gets to be too late because once you're in the thick of it it's very hard to to climb out of