Are you missing out on life if you don't party ?

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@OP.
No.

I grew up in a small village so had no access to night life, and I lacked confidence and didn't understand myself so spent the whole time trying to fit in so the few times I went "out" I didn't enjoy, didn't know how to fit in, I absolutely couldn't dance or handle being on a dancefloor.

I figured myself out in my mid 30's and realised I LOVE the release of being out and dancing, being in crowded clubs, dancing like an idiot, mosh pits, 3am basement clubs. The only thing I avoid is the blingy mainstream image conscious type places, where you're judged based on "the rules" and everyone tries to fit in. I joked for a while that I was just having my student phase 20 years late, which was partly true as I experimented and experienced for the first time, but it's lasted for like 6 years so far so I don't think it's a phase!

So party if you want to party, don't if you don't, try it and see. But don't let age get in the way and f**k what anyone else thinks (I get that it's not that easy...)

Probably not.

I thankfully didn't have sensory issues, if anything a proper noise wash and flashing lights actually chopped up social tensions and made me less self-conscious, particularly if there was a band, dj, or anything else worth paying attention to for it's / their own sake.

As far as club and party culture goes though? I stopped going to the glitter and alcohol-vomit desert when I figured out that it was the glitter and alcohol-vomit desert.

I laugh actually, listening to one of the skits on A Tribe Called Quest's 'Beats, Rhymes, and Life' where Q-Tip's complaining - he gets crazy ret*d high hoping something interesting will happen socially or with the ladies but never lives up to the hype despite all the promise and he's already too old for it at 22. Lol, I think that's a really common feeling when you've been there a few years and get to see what it both is and isn't. The promise that you too can go Dorine Gray or be chopping lines of yay with Flash Gordon if you're in the right place and the right time is just a great way to sell alcohol and admissions.

Also a good way of sorting someone out if they try to slap you with FOMO:

'Do you know where I was last night? I was at ____ and hung out in the VIP room'.

'Ah yeah? Well I took the best s--- in human history. Sorry you weren't invited'.

In my little town, nobody knew anything about autism, so I came to believe that I had to be like everyone else, smoking, drinking, vomiting, dancing, etc. So yeah, I went to a lot of parties in my youth, especially the first three years of uni as I ended up in the popular kids group. Even went to the first dubstep party in my country (way before anyone else knew what it was, let alone Skrillex knew what a DAW was).

In conclusion, it's boring and overrated, but pre-Tinder it used to be the one way to get laid and/or hook up which meant all adolescents with boiling hormones had no choice but to down the bottle. Some also became alcoholics, some didn't know how to socialize without drinking (social ineptitude is not limited to ASD), and some just partied because otherwise people would think of them as, god forbid, "weird".

And to answer the question: yes, you're missing out. Just as those who go to parties miss out on things we do. It all depends on what you want to do, yourself.

I don't see it as a must-do, or even as something particularly interesting. I've never gone to a club or party expecting to be particularly interested or entertained by proceedings. I've never been drunk and don't really see the point - if I want my brain to not work properly I'll just stay up for three days straight.

While I have gone to nightclubs once or twice, and endured social occasions at bars, it was purely in the spirit of wondering what the appeal was supposed to be, and I inevitably came away with nothing more than a pounding headache from the noise and a strong desire to wash everything I was wearing twice to get the cigarette smoke out.

I don't see partying as having the appeal that people seem to like pretending it does (in particular, businesses which own party venues or sell supplies... hmm... and people who don't seem to be able to entertain themselves). While there are, no doubt, people who really do enjoy it, it by no means makes the appeal universal. It's just that people who prefer other, quieter forms of enjoyment don't seem to have the corresponding need to blather about it to every corner of the universe. Thus, if all you can hear is people blathering, the prevalence of and desire for parties is going to seem somewhat exaggerated. People don't tend to gush on and on about (for example) libraries, or interesting philosophical books, or museums, or solo nature walks, or hobbies like painting, even if they're personally far more likely to enjoy those things.

I find clubs a bit annoying. I used to go to them with my friends fairly often when we were younger but while everyone was bouncing around the room I was pretty motionless wondering what and where all the fun was supposedly coming from. An entire night where it's so loud you can't even speak to anyone. I never saw the point of it.

The cinema, a trip to the high street, playing pool or bowling, doing doughnuts around roundabouts in the early morning when nobody is on the road? Now that's a lot better when friends are around.