alcohol and aspergers

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The weird thing with me and alcohol is that the effect varies very strongly. Sometimes I take one sip and I'll get drunk as hell. Sometimes I drink a sh*tload and don't feel anything.

When I'm drunk however, at first I start to laugh at everything. I constantly smile, it's like I can't control my face any more. But when it gets worse I actually shut down and stop talking.

They say that there is truth in alcohol. If that is so, then I don't like people. When I get drunk I either sleep, or isolate myself in some quiet corner and stare at something.

If I'm at a party or some kind of social event where others are drinking, I'm definitely gonna have a beer in my hand.
I feel much more social and at ease around people when I have a buzz.

couple of drinks = temporarily neurotypical
beyond couple of drinks = aspergers anyone?

Drinking doesn't make me any more neurotypical that I can tell. But I do know that being drunk and then getting overstimulated is a very bad combination. The meltdown or shutdown is just that much more intense on alcohol.

I've relied on alcohol to slow my brain down and allow me to sleep without losing it completely. Overall though would say it helps me be more NT than usual

It actually exacerbates some of my symptoms, I've found. For one example, I normally have no problems detecting sarcasm, but the first time I blacked out I ended up giving a girl a rose because drunk me no longer understood she was teasing me about something and thought she was actually mad at me. But at the same time, it makes those symptoms more excusable because "Oh, he's just drunk."

In my experience, alcohol makes me lighten up and be more sociable. However the awkwardness, pragmatic speech difficulties and other sensory issues are still present. I think it is very easy for anyone to believe alcohol makes them more smooth and sometimes it might. Of course when this happens you run the risk of getting to drunk and making a bad impression or relying on alcohol to get through your anxiety.

I spent a lot of time drinking to get normal. I was so normal.

Then I spent a lot of time getting sober.

That sucked.

I've found that alcohol dulls my intensity, and it makes me far more talkative. Normally I'm quiet and awkward. Alcohol changes that dramatically. Makes me far more animated too.

Alcohol doesn't do it for me. Neither do weed or opiates. They're nice and fine as recreational use goes, but I like to do this on my own. I'm neither more social, nor less social when drunk/high.

The only substance that lowers my social anxiety is caffeine. When I'm in the middle of a social event and my anxiety kicks in, making me unable to interact with people, I take a strong espresso or a strong guarana tea and it has an almost immediate effect on me (I'm sensitive to caffeine and it kinda gets me high). The social anxiety just vanishes and I feel more charming and secure. I get confident to speak up and share my views. This transformation is so sudden, that I've noticed the people around me looking surprised to see me act differently out of the blue.

But I do not become more NT. I just become less socially anxious. And you know that there are many NTs who have social anxiety too, right? Even caffeinated, I still have no clue about social cues and still take things literally. I still engage in stimming and my passive body language doesn't get better at all. I just don't care about it. And that's fine. When I don't care about it and I don't draw attention to it, people don't care about it either...

_________________
Probably 75% Aspie, 25% NT... and 100% ADHD

Aspie-quiz results:
Aspie score: 138 of 200 / NT score: 78 of 200 => Very likely an Aspie.

When I drink I switch on my internal autopilot. I can be physically togheter with other people without being there , talking qualified gibberish for hours.

I actually think it does make me act more like an NT. It makes me focus less on the content of a conversation (because I can't) and more on the relationships between people. It also makes me uninhibited enough to do what I hear some women with AS (higher functioning than I am, I guess) do all the time: imitate NT behavior, play a role of being someone else for a while. NTs I drink with like me more from then on but tend to think, when I'm sober, that I'm mad at them or depressed when I'm just being my normal self. I wish I could imitate that kind of behavior when I'm not drunk but it only happens very rarely when I'm extremely happy or something.