When I was youngest, the stimming impulse was at its strongest, and my life most heavily defined by my stimulus of choice. My oldest memories are of this neck-feeling, like the tingle following a mild electrical shock, and then feeling the desperate urge to move, and then moving. Some people rock in place, some swing limbs. I paced in circles. Or I would repeat the word “if”, drawing the sharp F sound forcefully, the electric sensation traveling from my lips to the back of my neck. Or I’d press a fingernail into the gums of my front teeth, or close my fist and pull my fingers back, one by one. Special education scrubbed the more disruptive behaviors from me, but the thrum in my neck persisted.
Eventually, I learned to self-medicate through sound. Repetitious and regular sound is best for this purpose: laundry machines, police sirens, ticking clocks, ceiling fans. Sometimes I would hide in the dark of the crawlspace behind my bed and hold my enormous Manx cat to my ear as he purred himself to sleep. I liked animals. They seemed more concerned with immediate stimulus than people; they seemed more like me.
Lots going on about the inner experience of individuals with severe autism these days. Jon Stewart interviewed the translator of a great book by a 13 year old boy with severe autism (The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism, at Amazon: http://http//goo.gl/DS5SvL ), who was also a participant in "Wretches and Jabberers" (see http://goo.gl/OLyGVj, a film about the travels of two men with severe autism.