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I’m in my mid 30’s and I have recently come to the realization that I’m on the autism spectrum and that I have lived most of my life without knowing this. I always thought I was just kind of shy. Since I wasn’t like the autistic people in special classes I never considered that I may also be on the spectrum, just to a much lesser degree.
For much of my life being on the autism spectrum caused me no noticeable problems. I was a great student and I had school, video games, and Magic: the Gathering to keep me occupied. I didn’t have many friends, but I had a close friend, and people seemed to respect me because I was book smart.
After I graduated college, the autism became more of a problem. I was behind on social milestones (only had gone on a handful or dates, no long-term girlfriend, being on a much slower career trajectory than my peers due to lack of social skills even though I had the technical competence). People in my life were becoming less centrist and more polarized and I started losing interest in trying to make/maintain friendships.
I can often think of insightful/interesting things to add to many conversations, but I mostly don’t say them due to fear of them not meeting someone’s social expectations. My body language is mostly neutral. I don’t smile much and I avoid eye contact. I think far too long about things because my brain is slower at processing social information than a neurotypical person. I use more rule-based thinking and try to model how other people perceive things. Even when I say the thing people want to hear it takes me longer to come up with what I’m going to say and I feel like I come off as unnatural. When I inevitably say/or do something that people respond poorly to I dwell on it for a long time and keep thinking about what I should have done differently. Over time I’ve learned that I can’t please most people because autism prevents me from acting like a neurotypical person no matter how hard I try. Even if I memorize a ton of social rules and prepare for many conversation paths it just frustrates me that I have to ‘pretend’ and ‘play social games’ in order to be liked. I now avoid many social interactions because they are frustrating and I gain very little from them.
Back when I was trying to improve my social skills I put a lot of effort in to trying to get better. I would go to meetups and volunteer and generally try to be likable. Nothing much came from my efforts and it just caused me to become more frustrated with social conventions. For reference, I also exercise a lot and am in good physical shape and am 5’ 11’’.
The most success I had at growing my social skills was when I moved to an apartment with a pool and I would drink on the weekends and make friends at the pool. Those friendships were ephemeral and didn’t last after I moved to a different apartment. I also didn’t like that I was drinking up to 2 days a week and was starting to get mild hangovers and alcohol was in conflict with my otherwise healthy lifestyle.
In an effort to give up drinking but remain social I switched to a Gaba-B receptor agonist called Phenibut. I only use it once a week to avoid tolerance and addiction. It is kind of like alcohol but without the impairment. It made me feel calm/relaxed and mildly more social. It wasn’t quite strong enough, and being a truth-seeker, I felt emboldened to disregard the very strong warnings about never mixing alcohol with Phenibut to find out what would really happen. Technically, this is very dangerous combination because combining depressants can lead to unpredictable synergistic effects that cause too much respiratory depression. On the other hand, most reports said the combination was usually just like every beer you drink feels like 2-3 beers. I felt it should be mostly safe to use a low dose of Phenibut and have 1 drink. It was a euphoric feeling and eventually I developed a higher dose protocol that I now use up to once a week. I never exceed .05-.08 BAC and always wait >4 hours after the Phenibut to drink. Even that could be dangerous for some people so please do not mix Phenibut and alcohol.
The downsides to mixing Phenibut + alcohol that I’ve personally noticed:
Way easier to accidently have short-term memory impairment. Even at .05 BAC I forget some minor details.
Alcohol is bad for your body.
Sleep cycle gets interrupted and I get tired out more easily on sober days.
Very unfiltered – easy to accidently say something offensive or do something you regret later.
Emotions feel much stronger and it becomes harder to regulate emotionally driven behavior. (I have a very chill personality so I never got into a fight or anything).
Sober people find your behavior off-putting and distance themselves from you. I care less and less about trying to fit in even when I’m 100% sober. I avoid sober interactions even more because they are dull and boring compared to my fun Phenibut interactions.
The Phenibut + alcohol protocol made me feel extreme social confidence (but you definitely appear intoxicated), euphoria, a desire to socialize, music sounds amazing, a calm/relaxed feeling that lasts for about 24 hours, near zero social anxiety, and a minimal hangover. In an order to use the protocol to improve my sober life I further developed an exposure therapy protocol while intoxicated. I would go to the bars to ‘esoteric dance’. To my surprise many people would appreciate my weird behavior and would say things like I gave off good vibe or they wanted to try the ‘esoteric dance’ with me. I then internalized many lessons that made sober socializing much easier:
Socializing can be fun
Being polarizing can be fun, the social limits are often way further than where you think they are
Most people aren’t judging you as harshly as you judge yourself
Bad reactions can easily be rationalized away (such as: that guy was just jealous of the attention I was getting)
If people don’t like you then just avoid them and find someone who does like you
When I sober up my social anxiety is permanently decreased from baseline, but I still overthink things and struggle with social interactions. I just now care far less about other people’s opinion of me and a social interaction gone bad doesn’t really even bother me anymore. I don’t think I’ve gotten much better at sober interactions though as most of the social skills don’t translate into sober environments. I also haven’t been able to leverage my new social skills to get a girlfriend. The problem is girls like me when I’m intoxicated but I’m only like that 1 day a week max. My personality is completely different when I’m sober.
On the other hand I feel much better now that I figured out how to connect with people and feel desired. It is kind of depressing that people like me so much better when I’m intoxicated than sober though.
I feel like I need to do more work and self-improvement to fix the issues in my life. I need to deal with the trauma of living life so long with undiagnosed autism, and to develop better social skills when sober. Continuing to use Phenibut and alcohol with exposure therapy can’t fix the remaining problems.
I don’t think regular therapy is the answer because I think I need psychoactive substances to access and modify subconscious beliefs. My rational defenses are too strong for traditional therapy. I don’t trust the medical establishment because:
Psychoactive psychotherapy is illegal despite all the research showing that it is effective.
US medical professionals don’t understand much about Phenibut and the one time I mentioned it to a doctor they are just like you should quit using it. My vitals/bloodwork are all in healthy ranges.
I have asymmetric hearing loss and I was told I’m not a hearing aid candidate. I don’t have much hope that the medical establishment can fix my issues.
I also get very frustrated that psychedelics are illegal because I think if I could legally take them under the guidance of a therapist I could fix a lot of my issues without the dangerous alcohol and Phenibut combination. I’m too distrusting of people and bad at social interactions to try to find someone from the psychedelic underground.
Anyway, I just feel kind of stuck in life and I don’t see any good options on how I can fix the major problems in my life. Any ideas/feedback would be appreciated.
I would recommend Burning Man regional events and otherwise becoming involved in the burner community. There are a lot of autists there and a lot of psychedelics. It might take you a couple of years, but you could probably find an underground psychedelic therapist. You might also make lasting friendships. You simply need to be helpful and not incompetent at car camping in the woods/desert. Alternately, you could go to Oregon and look there for different types of alternative healers that practice with psychedelics; it's decriminalized there. IIRC it's also legal in the Netherlands, or at least tolerated the same way they're OK with pot and head shops.
Unfortunately, none of this is going to be cheap or easy. It will cost you thousands. Good luck.
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