Didgital said:
Aight.. just a personal experience.
I lived with a deeply autistic roommate for years. Good guy at heart, handsome, buff, intelligent, but quite shy and had zero social skills. He used dealing drugs as a way for social contact. He almost never ever took empathogens like MDMA etc. His choice was Ketamine, cocaine, and LSD...
One night we go to a rave and I eat a bunch of ecstasy. He sees I'm having fun and asks me for some. I give him a point (100mg) maybe a little more but nothing ridiculous. An hour later, I can see he is rolling his face off, dancing, huge smile on his face in a flow state. But... I saw multiple girls approach him and talk to him during this period, and he just kept dancing, oblivious and possibly straight up ignoring the opportunities that were presenting themselves for human connection.
So IME.. no. Empathogens do not really help. But I'll say that everyone's form of autism is unique it seems.
Yeah, that's happened to me too. Some girl really wanted to get into my pants after a party and i only figured it out like two months later. Whoops. But you learn, it's just that often you can't really understand cues and even if you do, you kinda think 'nah, that can't be, girls can't be into me, i'm too much of a dork' but then you realize that's the case. It still kinda happens sometimes but a lot less, even though i'm still a bit overly cautious because you never know how the other person might react. There's a lot of fear of rejection and doing a faux pas that, in your mind, can fuck up your night, the other person's night, or get you into trouble. I blame the school and early years for instilling fear of rejection for the rest of your life. But i'm getting over it, and people similar to your friend could too, but yes, it does depend on the person. Point is, you can learn this stuff over time and get better at it while still being awkward deep down, and just straight up autistic.
Case in point: a friend i have who is 24 and heavily in the spectrum is now going to parties (with his mom being there to help him out, it's hilarious) and while completely shitty at social cues and 'getting it', is still managing to get out of his shell and have fun and improve. Hell, he made friends with the DJ and are now talking often. And this is without drugs being involved at all! So a boost would definitely benefit him, but mindset is the key. It can be done if wanted.
checking back in this thread to say that everything i've said about empathogens is, for me, absolutely true and have continued to help me immensely. I like raves a bit too much now is all but i'll fucking take it.
as long as you practice harm reduction religiously (i can't stress this enough), know your doses, test your stuff, take the supplements that help (NAC, ECGC, those fruit juices that stop MDMA > MDA conversion, etc) they WILL help. It won't cure your autism outright, of course, but it will certainly diminish the emotional stunts that you usually have because of it.
Besides, the more raves/social events i go to the more i realize people have the same problems as me and i was never behind in the playing field or in life, which is something i've noticed i've always had in the back of my mind when socializing. I was always 'less', i had to prove myself worthy of social interaction, i was iffy to be around and my go-to strategy to talking to people was to fawn and then seek approval.
That's gone and done, i'm in it together with everyone else and in fact, if i do the opposite and give people that assurance that i'm happy to be there with everyone, including them, it lifts everyone up. And if you put me down or do the same to others, you're the problem, not me. It's been a net positive for everyone involved.
Also talking to girls is so fucking easy now. Not everyone is receptive, not everyone can be your friend, but a lot of them want to, so if it works out and i get friends then cool, if not, that's cool too, it's not necessarily a personal fault, it just didn't work out. But it has worked out more times than not, and man, girls can be so nice.
Life's good, yo. I'm having a great time being alive, and i don't need drugs all the time to do that, i just needed a push in the right direction, and all it took was the first time i rolled, the next ones were 'extra'. 3-4 times a year tops (so with 3-4 months in between rolls, maybe 2 if you're feeling frisky but you wanna be taking that 5-HTP and ECGC erryday, living well, doing excercise, getting fresh air, living well) and you can get away with it and have your fun those days then get something in return for the rest of the time. Also acid is way more powerful and empathogenic for me now, especially above 150ug.
Oh, and i'm also basically done with weed. I used to self medicate (read: be a stupid fucking stoner) for years and now i don't feel the need to. I'm ironically doing less drugs now, i don't need it.
The only caveat is not to get sucked into having too much fun or associating with people that aren't the best because you love them a lot during a roll, you can get dragged into things and people and situations that won't help you, especially when it comes to drugs since a lot of them do them for the wrong reasons, too much of it, and you don't want to get caught up in a hedonistic and self-destructing spiral with party guys that don't have anything else going from them. I've seen a lot of people with burned brains because of too much molly, people pissing blood because they do ketamine like it's candy, or speedfreaks zoinked out of it for days at a time, and many of them you can't even help because that's the way they want it. You don't want getting into that, and emotionally lacking people like me, i think, can latch onto that drug-fueled group lifestyle that sells you a lot of things but will leave you empty in the end.
One thing is self-medication for the purpose of improvement and a better life, another is thrill seeking. I lost an acquaintance last week to a heroin OD and that's how she got to it: stoner, started partying, got with the wrong crowd, got harder into drugs, then got into opiates, and the rest is history. Tale as old as time itself. Please take care and be discerning.
And stay the fuck away from coke, there's nothing in it for anyone.
Peace out.
(edit: wanted to reply to post above)