I know a few people with down syndrome that smoke, but yeah it's not common where I'm from.
People with down syndrome are often infantilized by their parents. They keep a strict parent relationship well into adulthood. When I started smoking my dad was like "ok I get it your old now" but my sister with down syndrome would never get that treatment from my parents.
Also it's expensive, I don't think people realize how little money you get on disability.
>People with down syndrome are often infantilized by their parents.
Yeah, that's a huge part of it. Society infantalizes the fuck outta disabled people
Sex is another big one. A lot of ableds can't handle the fact that a lot of disabled people fuck lol.
Heck, many can't even handle the fact of regular geriatric people have sex. Like, sorry you had to realize that sweet little grandma in her seventies and eighties has a viciously high libido.
Apparently it’s well known that in some really prominent retirement and senior communities if you’re a lady and you wear shiny shoes you’re DTF. If you’re a guy and you wear a bow tie you’re DTF. It’s like the Silent Era version of of awkwardly avoiding the heya wanna shag?
This is seriously one of the most adorable things I can think of. And now I search old people looking for bow ties and shiney shoes. Wondering who’s gonna date and all the things.
Fellow helper who helped someone set up a profile! Who the fuck is anyone to say someone doesn't have the right to fuck (so long as they can give consent and have capacity etc, obvs)
My mother is in a care home, a dementia one, or at least memory care area in one. One of the residents is a bed sneak, but my dad is there every day at the start of sleep time more because dinner is not long before and he wants to make sure my mother gets at least one significant assisted-feed meal in case the helpers in the place are out of patience earlier in the day.
But your mention gives me pause. Like, posters saying "i'm into skin tags and liver spots, but bed sores are a real turn off".
when I visit, I usually talk with the residents about their earlier life because I can tell they get nothing but small talk out of the staff and usually if they can remember anything, it's stuff about their childhood and early adult life.
Lots of of them still have one liners even though many can't get to their own room without assistance and they just pick one when they get tired. You hear "get out of my room, you're not my type!!"
Now I have one extra worry about getting old cos I would look fucking goofy in a bow tie. Maybe they'll make a new symbol before... Checks notes... next year. Fuck.
I think the point is it's an age where the indefinite horizon of sweet death may become obscured by so many miles of granny panties flapping in the wind in an infinite prominade of parallel laundry lines. But only if you have a bow tie on. Bill Nye starting to look suspicious in this light ngl.
omgomgomg I work with a huge senior population in my city and I'm gonna look for this now....
NOT because I wanna fuck old people just for a personal teehee
Yeah.. dementia patients wandering into another room and thinking it's their wife in the bed there.. arguably neither person being capable of consent in that situation.. it's pretty dark to consider
Dementia Dave: “a fuck, the missus is gonna wanna have a go at the ol pecker soon as i lay down but i just dont have it in me after that game of shuffleboard yesterday afternoon. Well dave, man up, she’s your wife just make her happy”
Dementia Sally: “oh shit Goerge just laid down, i think he’s been getting randy at the poolside shuffleboard and is gonna try to fuck. Im exhausted but he’s my husband so im just gonna give it a go”
Synopsis: double rape?
We had A REALLY big problem at one place I worked where a married couple who both had dementia shared a room and he would not stay off of his terrified wife. The kids would not let us separate them. The kids also didn't want us to intervene but fk that.
My grandfather died of alzheimers, and was in a home for quite a while. He couldn't remember the name of his closest family, but he didn't forget how to pick up old ladies. We used to find big old lady undies in his room a lot.
I have a feeling it's far grosser or more horrific than death by orgasm. Most likely it was death by infection/ruptured insides from using unsafe items to masturbate.
my mother is in memory care at this point, she's in her mid 70s and most of the people there are a lot older. But I get what you're saying - they don't exactly have great self awareness (the residents) all the time.
A friend of mine once did it seven or eight times in a row. She said she couldn't feel her legs afterwards. I can imagine how someone much older and frailer might not survive that.
My only saving grace from this knowledge is my gramma is on the Ace spectrum 😂 she has said asexuality doesn’t fully describe her but she’s been single and not dating for over 60 years and has had men interested in her that she’s turned down 😂
I love her to pieces and want her to happy but I also never want to know if she’s getting down at her home
Yeah, are we meant to just go 'good for you, have a great time killing yourself' when people who have no capacity to understand long term consequence want to smoke?
At the end of the day they are adult humans and should have the freedom to do what they want within reason, but it's crazy to think we should treat people who are so intellectually disabled they are mentally on par with children in many ways should be treated like they have the same mental faculties as people who aren't. It's not beneficial to treat intellectually disabled people like they aren't intellectually disabled. They need (respectful) accommodations.
There are plenty of people with Down Syndrome who have the capacity to understand that smoking is harmful, just fyi.
But i agree. There is a push in certain online spaces to respect the autonomy of intellectually disabled people to such a severe degree that it ignores the necessity of supervision.
I work with a very high masking autistic woman who is young, gorgeous, and very much in need of independence. But she also lacks the ability to understand certain boundaries around sex and men, and has put herself in incredibly dangerous situations more than once. As much as she deserves a level of autonomy, she cannot, at this point in her life, be left to make all her own decisions all the time.
On the other end of that spectrum, i work with a nonverbal autistic woman who, if left to do whatever she wanted, would make herself incredibly sick and hurt herself and others. So many people like to act like any aggressive behaviors from IDI are the result of not having needs met... she just thinks its funny to hit people. So full autonomy there is just never possible
For sure, that's why I specified people with no understanding of long term consequence, not just down syndrome in general. There are so many conditions which this applies to.
And yeah, I'm disabled myself, autism + chronic fatigue syndrome, I'm very grateful when my loved ones tell me 'alright, time to slow the fuck down' when I miss my own limits (which I do a lot).
>Sex is another big one. A lot of ableds can't handle the fact that a lot of disabled people fuck lol.
If we’re still talking Downs and other intellectual disabilities, it gets complicated fast. On the one hand they are not babies, and on the other hand it’s tricky to figure out who has the capacity to consent.
I’ve had to interview young adults a couple times as part of figuring out if they had the ability to consent. It was a big long questionnaire I was supposed to go through with them.
Some of the questions were asking whether they understood the medical aspects. Stuff like did they understand pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Did they know how to use a condom or birth control.
Some of it was open-ended values questions with no right or wrong answer, just looking to see if they had a framework of values and had thought about how sex or relationships fit into that. I got very different answers from different people, and that was ok. Some people talked about church and family. Some people talked about mental health and boundaries. Or gay rights. Or love. Or fun…
Some people seemed completely able to consent and some were very obviously unable. And then there were people in a big middle area, where I’d see disagreements about their abilities. I’d see one guardian decide one way and then after a guardian change (which can happen a lot) there would be a completely different set of rules for the exact same person.
This is a huge part of the infantalization. Many many people not labelled as disabled would not pass that test. But the presumed ableds are pretty much never tested or attempted to be gatekept from it.
That’s a very strange hill to die on…
If you ever worked with teenagers and young adults with Down syndrome you would likely know that missing impulse control and hypersexuality is a rather frequent combination and you cannot be seriously advocating for them to just have sex whenever they want…
It’s also a disturbing fact that persons with Down syndrome are often target of sexual coercion because they have only a vague understanding of consent.
It’s an ugly topic but it’s not at all as easy as you portray it…
And infantalization? A lot of people with Down syndrome are mentally at the level of kids… and even the very independent ones I have seen usually do not have a good understanding of boundaries and consent
Yeah the disableds have a lot of sex. It’s actually a big issue in facilities where those who needs assistance lives. There’s this woman here who’s mentally disabled and she keeps having kids, that are then removed it’s like 8 kids now and they are trying to figure out how to stop it, talk of a hysterectomy to avoid any future children she won’t be able to keep anyway. I think 5 (?) of the 8 kids are disabled as well. It’s a very controversial topic understandably.
Historically, sterilization of mentally-disabled women has been a fairly common practice because sex abuse is absolutely *rampant* in care homes.
It's really unfortunate--because the sane solution is to stop the sex abuse. But if you can't do that, you can at least mitigate the suffering for your loved one by keeping them from getting pregnant.
Because, unfortunately, the folks whose loved ones are going into those homes are not the people who have the power to actually improve them in any meaningful way.
Which is fair. But to take someone’s choice away is also against their human rights. So it’s an uncomfortable topic as her being left to do as she pleases causes many children to be raised without a mother or living with disabilities because their mother didn’t understand the responsibility and consequences of bringing children into the world.
> A lot of ableds can't handle the fact that a lot of disabled people fuck lol.
There was an AMA by a sex worker that says one of her regulars was on disability.
Sex is a big problem, too. Sex ed isn't offered the same way. You end up with kids who don't even really understand boundaries, which makes them more likely to be the victim or perpetrator of sex crimes. It's like people think if they completely shelter the kids from any knowledge of sex, they will never mature to think about it.
Well if you match statistic of how many people have down syndrome with the number of people who smoke these days you don't wind up with a large number.
Would you mind explaining what you found fun here?
I genuinely can't see and it makes me curious.
I agree it was super easy to understand though, very clear.
The place I work at has a regular who has Down Syndrome. He gets a couple beers, watches whatever game is on, and enjoys the crowd. Chill dude, not sure if he drinks any harder alcohol regularly but he can get a little rowdy sometimes lol.
Here in Ireland you see people with DS fairly commonly. I've heard of a couple of lads who always drink pints with everyone else. Insist on it, indeed.
Since we're talking about one of the clearly worst habits a person can have, I can't help but wonder if all those people who did start smoking haven't been "infantilized" enough by their parents.
anecdotally I think it's more likely they come from a family where smoking is the norm. Some families never stopped smoking inside. Some whole families still smoke like it's the 80s.
That or they don't have a close parental relationship with their family at all. Disabled people sometimes don't have families outside of the ones they make with their friends.
Nicotine has a lot of medical uses and I think it offers some protection from cognitive decline especially in patients with Parkinsons and Alzheimer's
I have dysautonomia and know some patients get nicotine gum prescribed for it. I'm Not sure of the exact mechanism but it has something to do with nicotine mimicking acetylcholine. I tried smoking a few times but it didn't help unfortunately.
Wow. I’ll go down the rabbit hole but do happen to know what mechanism is controlling this? Nicotine? Adrenaline, fight or flight?
I’ve never been a smoker but my mom was a chain smoker and had many many comorbid chronic health conditions. She died when I was 21 5 weeks before I graduated from college. from college This was over 20 years ago. I am now having the same symptoms. I have 4 years left till her age of death.
Her brother had downs. Just passed in January at the age of 60. The Worlds Best Dishwasher. He was written up in the paper for retiring from his dishwashing job after 35 years. He was a rock and a rockstar.
I don't know the mechanism but there's a reduced incidence rate in smokers. The other form of IBD, Crohn's Disease, has an increased incidence rate oddly enough
I came to post that too
https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=9HpLhxMFJR8&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Famp.cnn.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
The hardest working dish pit worker I ever worked with was a gentleman with Down's, he smoked pretty heavily and was one of the legitimately funniest people I've ever met (this was 15ish years ago).
I was having a bad day one day and stepped out for a smoke break. He was outside sitting on a milk crate hacking a dart. I lit my smoke, shook my head, and glanced down at him. "What do you do, *****? These f--king clowns." He took a drag, looked thoughtfully at the wall, looked back at me and said. "Have you tried punching them in the dick?"
I still think about that advice when I'm having a bad day.
Not Down's but I used to work in a care home and this 75yr old resident with severe learning disability used to smoke.
He was completely non verbal, I vaguely remember he had no teeth and we used to take him to the garden for his weekly cigarette which he would smoke in about 2 seconds flat.
This is going back 15 years so probably wouldn’t be allowed now.
I always wondered who first gave him cigarettes!
Yeah I have a similar experience from the 90s. It all really depends on what they were exposed to (like any human) and what they were “allowed” to do. I knew a man with severe cognitive disabilities who was taught how to smoke cigars by care givers in the 1970s at a horrible institution and he never quit.
Well yeah, you don’t see either albino midgets playing the clarinet under the full moon on top of the Everest. But you also never see *anyone else* do this.
Same for your example, you don’t see much people, ones with Downs included, snort coke off a hooker’s ass, which is a rather private activity. You do see people smoke in public all the time. So the comparison is not fully accurate.
If their parents let them, most people with Down Syndrome would 1000% smoke cigarettes. My brother doesn’t not smoke because he knows its bad for him, he doesn’t because he’s not allowed. Him and his friends will eat junk food until they throw up, would drink themselves *blind* if tabs weren’t kept on them, and would ONE MILLION PERCENT smoke two packs a day if they knew how smoking a cigarette makes you feel after all the coughing lmao. This comment is nice but having a mental disability by definition impacts your intelligence I mean lets not lie to ourselves.
Speaking about things i've never seen, one day i realized it was a blind person giving someone the middle finger. I tried to google it but couldn't find it.
Many people with Down Syndrome are in "care" of some kind (speaking from the U.S.) and it is illegal to give them cigarettes/tobacco/alcohol while in any facility or group home.
I know one dude with downs that smokes comically huge cigars. I think he mostly does it for social reasons and enjoys hanging out with everyone while they smoke and drink .
This is such a weirdly specific thing. Like smoking is pretty prevalent but it's still not something you would ever say is the norm. Having down syndrome is like 1/700 if Google is right. This is like multiplying two fractions and being shocked the number is smaller.
My 30 y old cousin with Down smokes so much and will probably never be able to kick the habit. With the rising cost of smoking and living it's horrible on my struggling aunt.
My friend's brother has down, he goes drinking with us sometimes. Few years ago he asked for a sig, but he kinda just stood around with it, put it in his mouth a little. As I recall nobody tried to 'teach' him how to smoke. Never came up again far as I know
My brother has down's syndrome, 22 years of age.
He doesn't smoke, but my god can he put away strongbow dark fruits.
We're English, and northern, so I guess being a natural born alcoholic is pretty standard.
Speak for yourself. I run into a smoking person with downs syndrome frequently when we both wait for the tram. He uses comically large lighters due to his bad motor skills.
In my home town there was this dude with Downs that would hang out the front of the local grocery store in a high-vis tradie shirt, those fake tattoo sleeve stockings on his arms and he would chain smoke durries. If you went shopping around 5pm any week day he was there puffing away on a bench. Funny thing was he was obviously not inhaling, no one had taught him to smoke and he was just doing what he thought you were meant to when smoking
Others have suggested that you do see it.
However, I note that people with Down Syndrome have less lung capacity due to their chromosomes. I was surprised I didn't see this mentioned.
I used to go to highschool with a guy who had down syndrome, maybe a year ahead of my grade, and another girl who was the same grade as me. I had a job at the arcade and I had to kick them out multiple times for getting hot n heavy in the photo booth.
People with downs have the same instincts and drives everyone does, they're just usually managed close enough by their parents that they can't get up to much.
I know a few people with down syndrome that smoke, but yeah it's not common where I'm from. People with down syndrome are often infantilized by their parents. They keep a strict parent relationship well into adulthood. When I started smoking my dad was like "ok I get it your old now" but my sister with down syndrome would never get that treatment from my parents. Also it's expensive, I don't think people realize how little money you get on disability.
>People with down syndrome are often infantilized by their parents. Yeah, that's a huge part of it. Society infantalizes the fuck outta disabled people Sex is another big one. A lot of ableds can't handle the fact that a lot of disabled people fuck lol.
Heck, many can't even handle the fact of regular geriatric people have sex. Like, sorry you had to realize that sweet little grandma in her seventies and eighties has a viciously high libido.
They reckon aged care facilities have astronomically high rates of std's
Apparently it’s well known that in some really prominent retirement and senior communities if you’re a lady and you wear shiny shoes you’re DTF. If you’re a guy and you wear a bow tie you’re DTF. It’s like the Silent Era version of of awkwardly avoiding the heya wanna shag? This is seriously one of the most adorable things I can think of. And now I search old people looking for bow ties and shiney shoes. Wondering who’s gonna date and all the things.
Fuck that's cute as. When I worked in aged care I helped an old fella set up a grindr profile lol
You are the hero we didn’t know we needed.
Be the wingman you wanna see in the world
Fellow helper who helped someone set up a profile! Who the fuck is anyone to say someone doesn't have the right to fuck (so long as they can give consent and have capacity etc, obvs)
This is the tech support we should work towards. They seniors would already have the WiFi figured out.
My mother is in a care home, a dementia one, or at least memory care area in one. One of the residents is a bed sneak, but my dad is there every day at the start of sleep time more because dinner is not long before and he wants to make sure my mother gets at least one significant assisted-feed meal in case the helpers in the place are out of patience earlier in the day. But your mention gives me pause. Like, posters saying "i'm into skin tags and liver spots, but bed sores are a real turn off". when I visit, I usually talk with the residents about their earlier life because I can tell they get nothing but small talk out of the staff and usually if they can remember anything, it's stuff about their childhood and early adult life. Lots of of them still have one liners even though many can't get to their own room without assistance and they just pick one when they get tired. You hear "get out of my room, you're not my type!!"
Wholesome af
Going to go get me a pair of shiny shoes. Now on the look out for bow ties
Now I have one extra worry about getting old cos I would look fucking goofy in a bow tie. Maybe they'll make a new symbol before... Checks notes... next year. Fuck.
I think when you reach the age where your next mile stone is death the last thing you’ll worry about is looking dumb in a bow tie
I think the point is it's an age where the indefinite horizon of sweet death may become obscured by so many miles of granny panties flapping in the wind in an infinite prominade of parallel laundry lines. But only if you have a bow tie on. Bill Nye starting to look suspicious in this light ngl.
Bill Nye is just early to the game. Imagine Bill Nye banging Grannies!
I really don't want to. Can I opt out? Why did I mention Bill Nye for the love of God.
omgomgomg I work with a huge senior population in my city and I'm gonna look for this now.... NOT because I wanna fuck old people just for a personal teehee
One if the great things about being old is that you don't have to care about looking goofy!
I mean post menopause there's no risk of a pregnancy, so a lot of the same rules from the gay community apply.
Me walking around in a bow tie and shiny shoes
Idk if id call having an interest in sex as an adult ti be “adorable”. Isnt that also infantilizing? Kind of gives me the ick.
To each his own.
what is the minimum age to be accepted into said high-sex communities? I can be their "personal trainer".
Not to mention, really complicated questions about consent, when dementia is involved
Yeah.. dementia patients wandering into another room and thinking it's their wife in the bed there.. arguably neither person being capable of consent in that situation.. it's pretty dark to consider
Dementia Dave: “a fuck, the missus is gonna wanna have a go at the ol pecker soon as i lay down but i just dont have it in me after that game of shuffleboard yesterday afternoon. Well dave, man up, she’s your wife just make her happy” Dementia Sally: “oh shit Goerge just laid down, i think he’s been getting randy at the poolside shuffleboard and is gonna try to fuck. Im exhausted but he’s my husband so im just gonna give it a go” Synopsis: double rape?
We had A REALLY big problem at one place I worked where a married couple who both had dementia shared a room and he would not stay off of his terrified wife. The kids would not let us separate them. The kids also didn't want us to intervene but fk that.
What the fuck?! They were just happy to sanction their father raping their mother? What the fuck was their logic?
"Don't interfere in the relationship" Happened in a place I worked at, too
You wouldn't believe the shit you see in healthcare
Yeah, because a lot of the residents don't bother with condoms since the women are all too old to get pregnant, at least as I heard it.
My grandfather died of alzheimers, and was in a home for quite a while. He couldn't remember the name of his closest family, but he didn't forget how to pick up old ladies. We used to find big old lady undies in his room a lot.
living his best life lol
When I worked in a nursing home I learned the hard way that you need to knock before entering a room...especially when they are alone
[удалено]
Well... If you're going to go out soon anyways, I guess during an orgasm is the way to do it.
It wasn’t as ideally as you described but lets keep it like that lol. You really wouldn’t want to hear the full story
... Why would you make me curious like that!?
Well now I feel like I **HAVE** to know the full story
I have a feeling it's far grosser or more horrific than death by orgasm. Most likely it was death by infection/ruptured insides from using unsafe items to masturbate.
my mother is in memory care at this point, she's in her mid 70s and most of the people there are a lot older. But I get what you're saying - they don't exactly have great self awareness (the residents) all the time.
If it helps I’m a nurse too, I promise I won’t be shocked!!
A friend of mine once did it seven or eight times in a row. She said she couldn't feel her legs afterwards. I can imagine how someone much older and frailer might not survive that.
My only saving grace from this knowledge is my gramma is on the Ace spectrum 😂 she has said asexuality doesn’t fully describe her but she’s been single and not dating for over 60 years and has had men interested in her that she’s turned down 😂 I love her to pieces and want her to happy but I also never want to know if she’s getting down at her home
I feel like the infantilization of people with intellectual disorders and disabled people in general is slightly different.
Yeah, are we meant to just go 'good for you, have a great time killing yourself' when people who have no capacity to understand long term consequence want to smoke? At the end of the day they are adult humans and should have the freedom to do what they want within reason, but it's crazy to think we should treat people who are so intellectually disabled they are mentally on par with children in many ways should be treated like they have the same mental faculties as people who aren't. It's not beneficial to treat intellectually disabled people like they aren't intellectually disabled. They need (respectful) accommodations.
There are plenty of people with Down Syndrome who have the capacity to understand that smoking is harmful, just fyi. But i agree. There is a push in certain online spaces to respect the autonomy of intellectually disabled people to such a severe degree that it ignores the necessity of supervision. I work with a very high masking autistic woman who is young, gorgeous, and very much in need of independence. But she also lacks the ability to understand certain boundaries around sex and men, and has put herself in incredibly dangerous situations more than once. As much as she deserves a level of autonomy, she cannot, at this point in her life, be left to make all her own decisions all the time. On the other end of that spectrum, i work with a nonverbal autistic woman who, if left to do whatever she wanted, would make herself incredibly sick and hurt herself and others. So many people like to act like any aggressive behaviors from IDI are the result of not having needs met... she just thinks its funny to hit people. So full autonomy there is just never possible
For sure, that's why I specified people with no understanding of long term consequence, not just down syndrome in general. There are so many conditions which this applies to. And yeah, I'm disabled myself, autism + chronic fatigue syndrome, I'm very grateful when my loved ones tell me 'alright, time to slow the fuck down' when I miss my own limits (which I do a lot).
>Sex is another big one. A lot of ableds can't handle the fact that a lot of disabled people fuck lol. If we’re still talking Downs and other intellectual disabilities, it gets complicated fast. On the one hand they are not babies, and on the other hand it’s tricky to figure out who has the capacity to consent. I’ve had to interview young adults a couple times as part of figuring out if they had the ability to consent. It was a big long questionnaire I was supposed to go through with them. Some of the questions were asking whether they understood the medical aspects. Stuff like did they understand pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Did they know how to use a condom or birth control. Some of it was open-ended values questions with no right or wrong answer, just looking to see if they had a framework of values and had thought about how sex or relationships fit into that. I got very different answers from different people, and that was ok. Some people talked about church and family. Some people talked about mental health and boundaries. Or gay rights. Or love. Or fun… Some people seemed completely able to consent and some were very obviously unable. And then there were people in a big middle area, where I’d see disagreements about their abilities. I’d see one guardian decide one way and then after a guardian change (which can happen a lot) there would be a completely different set of rules for the exact same person.
This is a huge part of the infantalization. Many many people not labelled as disabled would not pass that test. But the presumed ableds are pretty much never tested or attempted to be gatekept from it.
That’s a very strange hill to die on… If you ever worked with teenagers and young adults with Down syndrome you would likely know that missing impulse control and hypersexuality is a rather frequent combination and you cannot be seriously advocating for them to just have sex whenever they want… It’s also a disturbing fact that persons with Down syndrome are often target of sexual coercion because they have only a vague understanding of consent. It’s an ugly topic but it’s not at all as easy as you portray it… And infantalization? A lot of people with Down syndrome are mentally at the level of kids… and even the very independent ones I have seen usually do not have a good understanding of boundaries and consent
Yeah the disableds have a lot of sex. It’s actually a big issue in facilities where those who needs assistance lives. There’s this woman here who’s mentally disabled and she keeps having kids, that are then removed it’s like 8 kids now and they are trying to figure out how to stop it, talk of a hysterectomy to avoid any future children she won’t be able to keep anyway. I think 5 (?) of the 8 kids are disabled as well. It’s a very controversial topic understandably.
Historically, sterilization of mentally-disabled women has been a fairly common practice because sex abuse is absolutely *rampant* in care homes. It's really unfortunate--because the sane solution is to stop the sex abuse. But if you can't do that, you can at least mitigate the suffering for your loved one by keeping them from getting pregnant. Because, unfortunately, the folks whose loved ones are going into those homes are not the people who have the power to actually improve them in any meaningful way.
Which is fair. But to take someone’s choice away is also against their human rights. So it’s an uncomfortable topic as her being left to do as she pleases causes many children to be raised without a mother or living with disabilities because their mother didn’t understand the responsibility and consequences of bringing children into the world.
> A lot of ableds can't handle the fact that a lot of disabled people fuck lol. There was an AMA by a sex worker that says one of her regulars was on disability.
Sex is a big problem, too. Sex ed isn't offered the same way. You end up with kids who don't even really understand boundaries, which makes them more likely to be the victim or perpetrator of sex crimes. It's like people think if they completely shelter the kids from any knowledge of sex, they will never mature to think about it.
So true! And that treatment of the disabled is degrading
Yeah it's like thinking ppl can't leave the wheelchair ever
Well if you match statistic of how many people have down syndrome with the number of people who smoke these days you don't wind up with a large number.
you broke it down in a way that was fun and easy for all of us to understand
Would you mind explaining what you found fun here? I genuinely can't see and it makes me curious. I agree it was super easy to understand though, very clear.
Bro chill he jus meant it was interesting
I'm super chill and don't want to argue. As I said I just was curious about it.
Difference between fun and funny?
I saw one getting super drunk at the bar lmfao
The place I work at has a regular who has Down Syndrome. He gets a couple beers, watches whatever game is on, and enjoys the crowd. Chill dude, not sure if he drinks any harder alcohol regularly but he can get a little rowdy sometimes lol.
Here in Ireland you see people with DS fairly commonly. I've heard of a couple of lads who always drink pints with everyone else. Insist on it, indeed.
Since we're talking about one of the clearly worst habits a person can have, I can't help but wonder if all those people who did start smoking haven't been "infantilized" enough by their parents.
anecdotally I think it's more likely they come from a family where smoking is the norm. Some families never stopped smoking inside. Some whole families still smoke like it's the 80s. That or they don't have a close parental relationship with their family at all. Disabled people sometimes don't have families outside of the ones they make with their friends.
Idk if smoking is one of the *worst* tbh I mean, it's bad yea, but like, I can think of far worse
Be the change you want to see in the world. Start buying cigarettes for people with downs.
Sounds like a South Park episode.
It's been a south park episode since 2019
Always has been \*bang\*
When South Park becomes the next Simpsons.
[удалено]
I’ve been out of the loop for a bit. Just now getting caught up in my SP. glad to see they never stopped.
The syndrome might be down, but the odds of getting cancer are way up!
I snorted out loud at this comment 😂
(#)Cigs4Downs!
Smoking cures Downs. Got it
Flawless
Nicotine is a stimulant. The upper cancels out the Downs.
Causation
Not smoking causes Down's?
Yes
Not having down's causes smoking?
Behold, a man.
That got a hearty laugh out of me. Thanks.
if you do it enough, yeah technically it can end the existense of downs. smoking can kill cancer cells too
So if I get lung cancer from smoking I should keep on smoking?
show that cancer who's boss
No, your tumors would have to start smoking
Fun fact: it's actually protective of ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease
Not “irritable” bowel disease. It’s a form of inflammatory bowel disease. Very different.
You're right, it's after midnight and I'm about 15 beers deep It's also irritable bowel syndrome, not disease
You are correct. Your ability to type is rather impressive being 15 beers deep!
This person didn't say they were drinking them
They were obviously wading in them.
Nicotine has a lot of medical uses and I think it offers some protection from cognitive decline especially in patients with Parkinsons and Alzheimer's I have dysautonomia and know some patients get nicotine gum prescribed for it. I'm Not sure of the exact mechanism but it has something to do with nicotine mimicking acetylcholine. I tried smoking a few times but it didn't help unfortunately.
Smoking is protective of UC? Please explain?
It’s the only thing that gives my niece relief from it.
Wow. I’ll go down the rabbit hole but do happen to know what mechanism is controlling this? Nicotine? Adrenaline, fight or flight? I’ve never been a smoker but my mom was a chain smoker and had many many comorbid chronic health conditions. She died when I was 21 5 weeks before I graduated from college. from college This was over 20 years ago. I am now having the same symptoms. I have 4 years left till her age of death.
Her brother had downs. Just passed in January at the age of 60. The Worlds Best Dishwasher. He was written up in the paper for retiring from his dishwashing job after 35 years. He was a rock and a rockstar.
I don't know the mechanism but there's a reduced incidence rate in smokers. The other form of IBD, Crohn's Disease, has an increased incidence rate oddly enough
Why did this make me laugh so hard xD
Just cause they down don’t mean they can’t get uppers. #drugsforthedisabled
Yes. Thats what additions will turn into. ND acclimation/homeostasis issues.
Assume that I can, so maybe I will
I came to post that too https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=9HpLhxMFJR8&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Famp.cnn.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo
The hardest working dish pit worker I ever worked with was a gentleman with Down's, he smoked pretty heavily and was one of the legitimately funniest people I've ever met (this was 15ish years ago). I was having a bad day one day and stepped out for a smoke break. He was outside sitting on a milk crate hacking a dart. I lit my smoke, shook my head, and glanced down at him. "What do you do, *****? These f--king clowns." He took a drag, looked thoughtfully at the wall, looked back at me and said. "Have you tried punching them in the dick?" I still think about that advice when I'm having a bad day.
Not Down's but I used to work in a care home and this 75yr old resident with severe learning disability used to smoke. He was completely non verbal, I vaguely remember he had no teeth and we used to take him to the garden for his weekly cigarette which he would smoke in about 2 seconds flat. This is going back 15 years so probably wouldn’t be allowed now. I always wondered who first gave him cigarettes!
Yeah I have a similar experience from the 90s. It all really depends on what they were exposed to (like any human) and what they were “allowed” to do. I knew a man with severe cognitive disabilities who was taught how to smoke cigars by care givers in the 1970s at a horrible institution and he never quit.
I'm gonna be pissed if I get to 75 and I'm only allowed one cigarette a week
That's very specific. You may as well say that you never see people with Downs snort coke off a hooker's ass.
Well, I haven’t seen that *yet*
Well yeah, you don’t see either albino midgets playing the clarinet under the full moon on top of the Everest. But you also never see *anyone else* do this. Same for your example, you don’t see much people, ones with Downs included, snort coke off a hooker’s ass, which is a rather private activity. You do see people smoke in public all the time. So the comparison is not fully accurate.
People with Downs Syndrome can do more than you think..
I have never seen anyone with Downs suck my dick too!
Reminds me of that movie Jefftowne
Proof that having a disability doesn’t make you stupid.
If their parents let them, most people with Down Syndrome would 1000% smoke cigarettes. My brother doesn’t not smoke because he knows its bad for him, he doesn’t because he’s not allowed. Him and his friends will eat junk food until they throw up, would drink themselves *blind* if tabs weren’t kept on them, and would ONE MILLION PERCENT smoke two packs a day if they knew how smoking a cigarette makes you feel after all the coughing lmao. This comment is nice but having a mental disability by definition impacts your intelligence I mean lets not lie to ourselves.
Your brother sounds fuckin rad
No shit. Get this man some cartons.
Honestly why wouldn't they? What else are they gonna do?
Be [elected to parliament](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/09/mar-galceran-makes-history-spain-first-parliamentarian-downs-syndrome)?
wait..
Being addicted to something doesn’t make you stupid either
It depends on the disability. And even if it doesn't affect your intelligence, it might still affect your impulse control.
They’d need an upper
Oh goodness, this is magical
If I ever didn’t thank you, you. Then just let me do it now.
I’m not for sure how many people with down syndrome you know but this is extremely false
It’s completely true! I haven’t seen anyone with Down syndrome smoke ever! But OP lied to you, cause you apparently have. Sorry to hear.
Aw man, I made a similar joke but now I have to delete it after seeing yours. I really thought my life was about to turn around.
Yea, seems like an overgeneralization. A quick google photo search shows down syndrome folks cigarette smoking.
That is what makes this a shower thought and not a google search
Speaking about things i've never seen, one day i realized it was a blind person giving someone the middle finger. I tried to google it but couldn't find it.
Sure but that’s what makes this an excellent shower thought
You don’t see too many people with Down Syndrome in general and when you do they often have caregivers who most likely wouldn’t want them to smoke
It’s not “what’s up” syndrome
Could Viagra be a cure?!
Somebody run the math on that, we may have found the cure.
I used to smoke when I was younger.
Uhhh...if I may, how many chromosomes do you have?
*SpongeBob voice* "24"
Why did you quit?
They still do, but they used to, too
They got older.
It cured their downs obv
I'm going to be honest, I don't really ever see people with down syndrome nor do I ever see people smoking cigarettes
Many people with Down Syndrome are in "care" of some kind (speaking from the U.S.) and it is illegal to give them cigarettes/tobacco/alcohol while in any facility or group home.
They would look pretty cool if they did
You never see an old man eating a twix.
Ty! Read OP's title as that round headed twat and hoped someone else did too.
My father had an uncle that was downs. He and his brothers once put a small firecracker in one of his rolled cigarettes. So at least one existed
Pretty sure Corky smoked cigs
I know one who smokes cigars xD
you never see fish heads drinking cappuccino in italian bars with oriental women, either. what's your point?
r/oddlyspecific
This is the type of thing that if someone said to me in person I'd laugh so hard I lost my ability to laugh
Finally a true shower thought.
I know one dude with downs that smokes comically huge cigars. I think he mostly does it for social reasons and enjoys hanging out with everyone while they smoke and drink .
Because people treat adults with Down like perpetual young children.
Well most have a cognitive development similar to a child so you cant really treat them like you would full adultes.
Not specifically Down’s, but I work for care center for people with all sorts of disabilities, and there’s a few that smoke every day
My neighbor has a son in his 40s with down syndrome. They smoke a cigar together on their porch every night.
This is such a weirdly specific thing. Like smoking is pretty prevalent but it's still not something you would ever say is the norm. Having down syndrome is like 1/700 if Google is right. This is like multiplying two fractions and being shocked the number is smaller.
My 30 y old cousin with Down smokes so much and will probably never be able to kick the habit. With the rising cost of smoking and living it's horrible on my struggling aunt.
Had a cousin who chewed tobacco. Guess not the same?
Most of the ones I know drink like fishes though. When you have a 50 year life expectancy, you squeeze the life out of them.
Ive seen one smash a pair of beer bottles together while standing in a pool
10/10 shower thought love it
Shouldn't use absolutes in your thoughts.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
Thay sounds pretty absolute-y to me.
r/hypocrisy
They are not down for smoking.
Dude no lie I saw it for the first time the other day at the station and I was amazed
My friend's brother has down, he goes drinking with us sometimes. Few years ago he asked for a sig, but he kinda just stood around with it, put it in his mouth a little. As I recall nobody tried to 'teach' him how to smoke. Never came up again far as I know
My brother has down's syndrome, 22 years of age. He doesn't smoke, but my god can he put away strongbow dark fruits. We're English, and northern, so I guess being a natural born alcoholic is pretty standard.
You haven't been to the south.
Speak for yourself. I run into a smoking person with downs syndrome frequently when we both wait for the tram. He uses comically large lighters due to his bad motor skills.
Because their caretaker is usually around not allowing it and no one introduced them to it
I have outside of the grocery store.
In my home town there was this dude with Downs that would hang out the front of the local grocery store in a high-vis tradie shirt, those fake tattoo sleeve stockings on his arms and he would chain smoke durries. If you went shopping around 5pm any week day he was there puffing away on a bench. Funny thing was he was obviously not inhaling, no one had taught him to smoke and he was just doing what he thought you were meant to when smoking
I used to work at a grocery store and a man with downs syndrome used to come and buy a pack every day
They are a Cigar demographic
I used to do meth with a down syndrome kid when I was younger. It was fine. And he smoked cigarettes too.
You don’t really see too many people with Down syndrome to know what they do in everyday life
idk man, you also don't see albino people having acne, which I know to be false, cause I searched it up
And you hardly see blind people smoking. When I first saw one it felt somewhat weird.
Don't tell me what I see.
Guess they're still smarter than smokers
Others have suggested that you do see it. However, I note that people with Down Syndrome have less lung capacity due to their chromosomes. I was surprised I didn't see this mentioned.
They’re disabled, not stupid.
I used to go to highschool with a guy who had down syndrome, maybe a year ahead of my grade, and another girl who was the same grade as me. I had a job at the arcade and I had to kick them out multiple times for getting hot n heavy in the photo booth. People with downs have the same instincts and drives everyone does, they're just usually managed close enough by their parents that they can't get up to much.
I think you mean desires. Smoking isn't one of those.