New Insight

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*************** Disclaimer: ******************
After lurking on these forums for a bit, I registered for the sole purpose of submitting this first post of mine. I read the forum rules, and my experience does not directly contradict or violate any of them. However, I know it is a delicate subject for myself and for others, so I will just say right now that my post has to do with insight gained while under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance. I understand all the negative associations that "drugs" carry with them, but I want to make clear that my decision to use said substance was not made with the intent to simply get a quick adrenaline rush. This experience is very close to me, and extremely personal. If this post is in error, I apologize sincerely.

Also, these ideas are *very* abstract. If I am being unclear about any particular concept, please feel free to ask me to clarify.

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I do not plan to advertise drug use in any way. Therefore, I will not explain what happens on a typical psychedelic experience or its effects, other than it is possible, and probable, that during its course you will be confronted with a lot of suppressed ideas and feelings creeping out from the depths of your subconscious. It is sometimes extremely difficult to face these buried emotions, but they are there whether or not you ignore them, and how you handle them can have a profound impact on your worldview.

During my experience, the customs and routines of normal society were put on trial. I have always been somewhat intrigued by the masks that others wear (for a great read, go to wikipedia and search for "reality tunnel" ) but at that time they were put under the ultimate scrutiny. I was able to objectively see all the arbitrary social customs and habits that people have adopted in order to acquire a higher level of comfort, and to gain security and confirmation with the rest of the blindly-acting people in civilizations of today. I walked to the gas station while I was still feeling the full effects. I was wearing a t-shirt of my favorite band, Ween, featuring the two musicians on the front.

I walked up to the counter, and placed a pack of gum down. There were several people behind me in line, so I was trying to just get my gum and get out of there. The cashier decided to engage in friendly small-talk, so she asked me what was on my shirt. I told her, "Ween." fully knowing that she would have no idea what Ween meant, and that she would probably ask soon. She did. I told her it was my favorite band. She asked, "Oh, never heard of them. what kind of music are they?"
Ween is about as unclassifiable as a group of musicians can be. In one single album, the same two people can produce one song that falls under the genre of pop, one under techno, one under metal, one punk song, one showtune, and so on. All on one album. Until you are a true Ween fan it can even be hard to believe that it's the same two people doing all of that. Anyway, back to the cashier. I am passionate about my admiration for this band Ween. I wanted to tell her how intense the warbling sound in "Did you see me?" becomes. I wanted to share with her how hard I laughed at the tongue-in-cheek humor of "Boys Club" and how closely "The Argus" touched me. But she was just a cashier at a gas station making small talk with a customer - a customer with several other patiently waiting customers in line behind him. She didn't *really* want to know what kind of music my favorite band Ween was. I told her "Alternative", took my gum and left.

My question is, what makes this mundane chit-chat "friendly"? The outcome of the conversation had no lasting consequences whatsoever on either party, so why do people engage in it? It is not comforting to me to go through meaningless conversational routines with people just because that's what you're supposed to do. I suppose the only explanation is that the cashier, even if she knew her conversation topic was arbitrary, was hoping I would be able to recognize this type of communication to be labeled as "friendly". It is not inherently "friendly", but perhaps it is in fact comforting, knowing that the cashier went through the steps to try and convey friendliness to me - using the arbitrary language of social nuances that are "just because" in our society. This ties in with the idea of language; take the word "syllable". We can break it down into syllables. Syl-la-bles. But in reality, the sounds we make when we say the word syllable might as well not mean anything. Someone just decided that when you move your tongue and your jaw and your lips in that particular way to say "syllable" that it should be an indicator for everyone else to think of "A unit of pronunciation with a single vocal sound".

I noticed that people have a limited set of responses to use to reply to different conversations. For instance, say your brain uses this rule: "every time someone says something uninteresting, reply by saying "Really?" with the same inflection as every other time you've used it in response to an uninteresting question."
or "When someone asks you 'how are you?'; 'how's it going?'; 'what's up?' you respond with the exact same answer every time, regardless of you are actually feeling."
^ that second example is a good one, its another case of people just going through the motions to go through the motions. most of the time when a stranger asks how you are, they don't really care. so you might as well not give any thought to the answer and just have a predetermined one planned out.

I don't care who you are, autistic or not, when you're born into this world you know absolutely nothing. You have no memories and no experiences. In this sense, everyone is a blank slate. Perhaps the typical "NT" (as they've been called on these forums) quickly tries to learn the mundane routines of our society. As children, they see that Businessmen wear ties. And so they think that "Businessmen must wear ties". They see that children that look like they're having a lot of fun smile and laugh. And so they think, "When you have fun, you smile and laugh". But this is just a bunch of circular logic. What about when those businessmen were babies with no experience? They too grew and saw that the businessmen before them wore ties, therefore when they grow up and become businessmen too, they too must wear ties. There is no justification for such practice other than its popularity and widespread acceptance. It is accepted, because it is accepted.

Perhaps the NT scrambles from birth to throw together their own reality tunnel, or mask, that most closely resembles the projected "normal" reality tunnel of society piecing together whatever experiences they may have had. This can allow for the child to build self-esteem, to be reassured in his actions by the actions of everyone else. Most people are not even aware of this. If you are constantly bending and breaking your own definitions of morals and integrity and what is right to more closely match their conventional definitions, you will undoubtedly have to change yourself fundamentally. It is possible to be so infatuated with changing that your old ways are discarded only to never be thought of again. Your brain simply filters it out. This is called denial. It helps a lot of people stay sane. The psychedelic experience can remove you from these denial traps so it is possible to objectively gaze into yourself. One thing I realized is a degree of OCD in myself and almost every single person I observe for a period of time, to this day. The drug did not induce OCD. Instead, it made me realize suddenly that the way I was moving my body felt immensely familiar. I had moved it in *exactly* the same routine, probably hundreds of thousands of times in the past. In the past, I had never allowed myself to realize it, as such a thing was too scary for my preferred level of security. But just like that, after looking away from these specific, repeated movements for years, it was like a slap in my face and I realized the compulsive behavior of mankind in general. The thing is, most people still won't see it for themselves. People don't even stop to think like this when they've got to worry about meeting the next deadline for work.

At first, it scared me. I was embarrassed to have been running away from it for so long without noticing. And now I was scared for its effect on my mental health now that I was aware of it. Would I be doomed to live out the rest of my life fixating and overanalyzing everything to a T? As my anxiety about this grew, so too did my obsessive compulsive behavior, which in turn increased my anxiety in a fierce spiral. Ignorance is bliss I thought.

And then it dawned on me. If it is my fate to live out the rest of my life going through pointless and meaningless dances and routines with my body movement, with social interaction, with everything else, then so be it. We are given this opportunity to be here, to exist, to live; and the last thing I want to do is waste it on worrying about the point of going through the motions. This is the point. You are never rock-bottom. You are never too late. As long as you are alive, there is always something to cherish, and that is this moment in time: the present.


That is pretty much it for my experience. I missed a lot of stuff just trying to get my ideas out, and fumbled the order a little bit, but I have a few more questions to ask you.

Is there an association between OCD and autism? Reading from the forums, I see that sometimes repetitive hand movements are symptoms of autism. Are these hand movements just a similar response stimulated in different events, or are they precise and exact with every repitition?

Some of the examples I used in the story above were directly from my own personal habits. For years, whenever someone has asked me how I am, I either say "Fine thanks, how are you?" or "Pretty good." depending on the formalness of the conversation. either way, the inflection and tone in my voice is exactly the same every time. Is this AS?

Also probably for as long as I can remember, in many scenarios I don't show my emotions hardly at all. If I am excited, i will not seem excited. If I am happy, I just won't feel the need to smile. If i am sad, even at my good friend's funeral where i wanted so badly to cry, i couldn't cry. that is not to say that I never smile or never frown. Over the years I have noticed that those close to me are concerned that I never seem happy because i hardly smile. It worries me to have them worrying about me, so I try to remember when to smile and go through the routines they expect me to so that they feel better. Is this AS?

I have always felt different from everyone else. I've always been friends with everyone but have not been in a group of close friends. I have a few very close friends, but not really anything in between. I think very abstractly, and my greatest concern is being genuine to myself even when no one is looking. I am deeply introspective, but still yearn for human connection. is this AS?

If you've made it this far, then thank you for your time. If I offended you, I apologize once more. How amazing the human mind is.

EDIT:

I forgot to say that once I accepted my OCD as a natural part of myself, my anxiety subsided and my actual OCD subsided to normal levels again.

Not offended at all, you could have reached the same place through meditation.

A lot of human interaction is like birds chirping, just acknowledging each other, in a non threating way. Some of this goes way back.

The unexamined life is not worth living, but the over anylized life is impossible to live.

We are here to play, our best learning style.

All those AS, OCD terms are confusing, and often change meaning, this site is for all who feel fine, except they are on the Wrong Planet.

So welcome, come out and play!

Nice to meet you, Emperor.

Wow, that was very informative.

At the part about the gas station:
When someone asks me about something I love (favorite show, Pokemon), I feel like I have to give a long informative answer. Otherwise I feel they won't understand what I'm talking about.
But from my experiences, they don't care to hear anymore about it.