Driven by Lemons & Autism, Part 1
Warning - The below is written in a candid manner with mentions of depression and suicidal ideation.
In 2006 my mind hit an impasse, I couldn’t move forward mentally or physically. I had taken a few left turns and I was losing the structures in my life that had been offering me stability. While I personally did not want to die, suicidal ideation became persistent, so I sought help. I wound up in the blue ward in a Chicago hospital, was given an incorrect diagnosis and released as promptly as possible with a bag of psychiatric meds in hand.
I didn’t have the language for what had just happened to me so in an attempt to better understand I filled up a sketchbook during the aftermath and eventually released it as ‘Driven by Lemons’ in 2009 with AdHouse Books (currently out of print, may go back in print some day, who knows). After it was released, quite a few people who’d connected with it would write me about how having similar experiences, though still uniquely their own. A lot of others assumed the book was the result of drug use. It wasn’t, although Seroquel is a hard drug in its own way.
In 2022, thirteen years after the release of ‘Driven by Lemons’, I was officially diagnosed as Autistic, Level 1. Since I had self-diagnosed a couple years before, the revelation wasn’t enormous for me, but still important. It has helped those closest to me to better understand what I’ve been dealing with. What’s most significant for me is I now have the language to speak about what I’ve experienced and continue to experience.
Unknown to myself at the time, ‘Driven by Lemons’ was about the autistic burnout and meltdown I went through in 2006 that was caused by and led to a number of personal crises. ‘Driven by Lemons’ helped me to recover, but I’ve had meltdowns since and they’re getting more intense as they come with greater frequency. I can better deal with them with the language I’ve recently acquired. ‘Driven by Lemons’ was another instance of artist using art to understand self, I didn’t find it at the time but it helped me to start the inner conversation that led me to my current understanding. At the time it kept me pushing forward. It pushed me forward. ’Infinite ©uck’ was a burnout/meltdown recovery comic. Comics push me forward.
Autism is being diagnosed at a higher rate due to people like me having access to online communities and vocal individual autistic humans and activists, etc. Information. The DSM-5-TR. And since we’re going by an ever-changing document diagnosing such a complicated and misunderstood physical and mental state with something as limited as words, the name of what I and many, many, many others experience is likely going to change in time. Understanding increases with information. Book it.
There’s a lot more that can be written about it, but for now I want to post the entirety of ‘Driven by Lemons’ here on this blog, so others who may be experiencing burnout and meltdowns can maybe find some solidarity.
Here’s Part 1.
Continued in next post.
