BPD or misdiagnosed?
Hmm...if you have a lot of friends, and people like to be with you, how can you still be having social problems?
Maybe being stoned makes NTs more autistic, and autistics more NT??
Well if you're stoned, and your friends are too, or know that you are, they just might not see anything odd about autistic behaviors. People normally say silly things when they're stoned, so if you say something silly, or take something literally, or over-analyze something, they won't think anything of it. That's not you being different because of pot-- it's other people taking it differently because of a different context. Likewise, people are likely to be kinda thought-y and cerebral (um, I'm not sure if that's the right word... but that mellow thinking about things...) so if you say something wrong, they're less likely to hate you for it and more likely to let you explain what you meant. Again.. not actual differences in your behavior, but differences is what's expected and considered acceptable. When people are high, things don't seem like such a big deal. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. That exact effect could be the cause of the whole "amotivational syndrome" thing. (Depending on who you ask and who is being affected. Some people do MORE when things seem like less of a big deal.) Either way, though, if you say things that people might normally be offended by, but they're not because it doesn't seem like such a big deal to them, it's because of them, not because of you.
If you combine that effect with just being more relaxed because you're stoned, does it start to explain what you're talking about?
Edit: If I haven't explained myself properly, perhaps we should start a thread in the adult section about this..
I've found that I self injured less and less after I started smoking and drinking more. These are my coping mechanisms as well as keeping myself shut off from others. Obviously you don't have to have mental health/ neurological problems to indulge in these things but I know I cling to them despite the damage they will inevitably cause as they dampen down feelings of being overwhelmed/ overstimulated. I had stopped smoking for nearly ten weeks but after some disruption in my life found myself reaching for the tobacco again. When I was trying to act like a healthy twenty-something and would go out to pubs/ bars I'd find that even when I'd had a fair bit to drink I was still analysing other people and trying to work out what the hell was going on. It's always quite the ordeal!
Sinsboldly's comment made me think I finally understood this. Now I don't know. Apparently my self-image is rather fragile when exposed for long periods socially. Anything more than brief friendly encounters, and I have trouble maintaining. Too much socializing may temporarily or permanently damage the autistic's nervous system, at least for some of us on the spectrum. That which induces us to be friendly and popular (over-socialize), could be taking a hidden toll on our well-being. For me, I believe that toll was expressed as BPD, and it may have been due to trauma from over-socializing.
There's also this moderation thing. I either don't talk at all, or monologue... So there's not much balance, but rather extremes. Either very very alone, or too popular....
Do you think it's trauma, or burnout? Any effort that is unnatural for you can't really be sustained long-term. That's why people get burnt out.
And was it a "toll being expressed as BPD" or was it inability to properly connect manifesting as something that looked like BPD? Also, pot can mess with your judgment, and increase the likelihood that you end up with bad social role models, especially since so many people with BPD do drugs. So, if you're stoned, and meet someone with BPD, and don't have the judgment to at least keep a bit of a distance from them.. you can end up having a BPD type relationship not because you're BPD, but because they are, and you just don't know how to regulate social situations. Then you end up learning that interaction, because you just don't have much else to work from. The difference is that it's not your own internal dynamic... it's lack of social experience coupled with bad social role models.