01 Feb 2010, 12:17 am
16 Sep 2010, 4:42 pm
16 Sep 2010, 5:27 pm
COMMENTS ABOUT THE CURE
- The cure behaves like a wave, with ups and downs: you become the most normal you've ever been and then drop halfway into autism again, but each high is farther than the previous. It's like a sine wave tilted 5 degrees. My lows of today are like my highs of a year ago.
- Individual changes, on the other hand, arrive suddenly and in full strength, then fade away almost completely and then slowly start gaining strength again.
- All the pains i've felt have been mild, i was never screaming in agony, they were barely there and i wrote them here not to complain but because of their value as scientific clues.
- I took the cure slowly due to my interest in the details, future cure-takers should have a much quicker ride than me, especially if they have all this information at hand.
- I only treated myself as a research subject from March 2008 to February 4, 2010, i was doing only what my instincts told me to do, so i could claim every change i felt was caused by the cure and nothing more. After that day i took control of my life, so with new changes causality is hard to identify, i go: why did this happen? was it the cure? was it the mental silence? was it my neurological breakdown? was it my keeping my hands away from my brain? is it part of my aging? is it stress from my job? is it my reluctance to buy glasses? is it anything else? Or worse, is it normal and everyone goes through it? And that is the main reason why this thread must end. I have been on the cure for four years now, it's effects are blending in with everything else and my memories of autistic days are too faded. Hopefully future generations will complete this research. And so here goes my
FINAL UPDATE
--- The Loss of Beauty:
In January 2010 I went an entire week without seeing pretty girls. I thought it was odd, i thought they were all hiding somewhere. But when next week came, I didn't see any pretty girl either. I noticed that known girls who i used to like a lot were looking ugly as well and eventually i understood... all the pretty girls where not hiding anywhere, they were out there as usual. These ugly girls i was seeing everywhere WERE THEM!! ! I don't like girls anymore. Alpha males, girls and gay guys (and maybe spoiled kids too) have this in common, we can tell which girls are "pretty" but we don't feel the attraction. I don't feel like staring anymore, let alone stalking them. Beauty, i now know, is a feeling, an emotion in the observer's brain, just like empathy.
There is a good side, the tension is gone, i am now very calm around girls. It is awesome to stand near a former "hot girl" and be completely immune to her. But on the bad side, my world felt empty after this, so much beauty just disappeared, it's like being taken from a cabin in the woods to a crappy apartment in the bad side of town. Girl's breasts used to be the most important thing in the universe for me, now they are just... nice. I miss stalking pretty girls. For months i was still staring at them out of habit but that ended by early June.
Now i understand why alphas are so confident around pretty girls, they don't like them as much as aspies do. There was never any magic, they are no better. What aspies feel when seeing a girl is somewhat what an alpha would feel when in love. It's as if aspies were constantly falling in love at first sight, with people who haven't been nice to them or done anything cool.
But i still like girls, i like their eyes now and i'm attracted to their personalities. I feel this impulse to smile at them in the streets and be playful. It's been 8 months now and i've grown used to it to the point that my subconscious thinks it likes girls a lot, but consciously i know, what i feel now is like 20% of what i used to feel. What i feel now for "pretty girls" is another type of liking, it's a bit like pity. In fact, further research has shown that i perceive a girl as beautiful whenever she is in trouble. As soon as her problems go away i start noticing her ugly features again. I theorize that the concept of damsels in distress was so popular in old ages because men had stronger personalities back then so they responded to this behavior in girls.
So, there are three ways to be attractive to me (pay attention ladies 
): Looking like any of the girls i've liked before, playing a damsel in distress or sharing positive emotions with me (i.e. being an alpha girl). I am learning to spot alpha girls, they are short, with lite athletic bodies, flat chest, they move a lot, dance even without music, tend to feel cold, have high pitched voices, they like sports and frecuently say funny things. Also, they seem to come from spoiling parents, but instead of entering the spoiled kid neurostate they go alpha. Famous alpha girls: Milla Jovovich and Natalie Portman. Yet, these are not fully alpha, they don't seem to have a maternal side in the same way that i have developed a paternal side, they don't care about others' feelings the way an alpha does. I believe full alphaness can only be reached by artificial means.
--- 20th Century Psychology:
A lot of hidden psychological traumas have been surfacing now that they collide with my new personality. I wasn't aware of them when i was autistic, but they shaped my life:
- I see everybody as extremely rich, capable and lucky, while i see myself as the poorest, useless and ugliest. It is a lot like anorexia, where my perception of reality was distorted.
- I see myself as a bad person who hurts people and nobody wants him around and i end up playing that part. Even if i now feel impulses to go talk to people, this stops me. I believe this self image started on 2006 and it's not common on aspies, it was caused by my research.
- It used to hurt me to see a pretty girl talking to males. The more i like the girl, the more it hurts. I see girls as monsters because of all the pain they cause me by being social when i am not. And even if i now can be social i still don't wanna make those monsters happy by being friendly to them. Now, on 2010, i am not hurt by social behavior anymore because i'm a bit social myself and also i don't like girls that much anymore. Therefore, girls i meet this year are not monsters to me, but those i met before this year will always be.
- I hate all people for being so nice to everyone else but me, for talking to everyone else but me, for laughing with everyone else but me. Those who can chat are to me like superior gods, with perfect lives who have never known pain. Whenever one of them claims to be suffering, my brain interprets it as a spoiled kid crying because there is one more toy he still doesn't have.
- It wasn't until i went for mental silence that i noticed that most of my thoughts are about how much people hate me, how perfect their lives are, how they never make the mistakes i make. I brainwash myself. I have been doing it all my life.
All these psychological issues were not confronted and healed the way a therapist would recommend, instead they were forgotten as new memories of me behaving and feeling normal kept building up and replacing the old autistic ones.
--- The Second Puberty:
My beard grows twice as fast and it's thicker, there used to be a lot of space between individual hairs and now new hairs are growing in between. Hair keeps getting longer and thicker on my chest and belly. An interesting bit: the hair on the left side of my belly is growing faster and is thicker than on my right side. Also my arms' hair is getting longer. The hair on the back of my hands and fingers is increasing and also here the left hand is advancing faster than the right one. There was an itch that eventually became pain in my left ear for the first half of the year. It kept getting worse and worse and was starting to happen on my right ear as well but then it stopped suddenly in NZ. My walk has changed again, now my shoulders stay still and just my lower arms swing back and forth. One thing i've noticed about this new walk is that my center of mass doesn't swing left to right, it moves in a straight line forward and that feels very stable, as if nothing could make me fall. My handwritting is changing, my hand moves differently. I've been through a general loss of flexibility, my wrists don't bend as far as they used to and some complex sitting postures are now painful after a while.
I am still having issues with my rising body size, for example i can't eat too much because there is no room for more food inside my body. By march i had pain in my ribs, on my back. It's gone now. By June I was one inch taller than pre-cure, and ten pounds heavier but i lost height, volume and weight in NZ. Lately i've been growing again, in all dimensions. By August 2010 i had pain in the front outline of my ribcage, also because of my widening, i think. It went away, got replaced by a vibrating feeling in the same spot. If i try to sleep on my side, over my left arm, the vibration is so bad that i can't sleep. If it starts happening on the other side i will be forced to sleep only on my back.
My jaw was still moving forward in February and to this day i still keep my mouth semiopen all day because my teeth don't match, although it has improved. My tongue has grown wider. On late april i had an episode where my jaw muscles somehow weakened or maybe my jaw was pushed down so they had to stretch. I could only chew a few times before my muscles start aching, feel tired and makes noises. This lasted less than a month. On the other hand, those painful cramps i used to get on my jaw muscles all my life, about once a month, haven't happened since my jaw started relocating. This means those cramps were indirectly caused by autism, my jaw wasn't where i was geneticaly supposed to have it.
On Tuesday 27, July 2010 my voice started changing. My new voice is deeper, i felt like darth vader the first night i used it. By mid september 2010 the voice in my head is starting to change to this new voice as well. I seem to be making a subconscious effort to keep my old voice, but that effort is becoming more and more difficult as time goes by and makes my old voice sound fake. This is true of many behaviors, i subconsciously keep acting as "old me", even though it looks fake due to how normal i am inside at this point.
--- Being Tamed and other happenings:
- I became hypersensitive to phant again in early June. Last year it developed slowly through months, now it was fast, it took days and it felt stronger on my left eye. This also ended suddenly with NZ.
- I feel like a prisoner if i have to stay in bed because i'm sick. In aspie days i used to love it. I'm gaining speed while talking, i don't stutter anymore. I am learning spanish and english at the same time, because it is not the sounds and the meanings that i need to learn, it is communication itself. Just learning how to greet people has taken a year, i started experimenting by mid 2009 and i'm still no expert, it is amazingly complex. I feel an impulse to smile to people in certain situations, for example after they or i just made a mistake. It is slowly becoming a habit. On Tuesday 30, March 2010, i for the first time used facial expressions as a means of communication. Yes, i've had this ability since early 2008 but never used it in front of people until that day and haven't again ever since. I don't plan my words, actions or attitudes anymore and things do come out alright. My body pulls through very well on autopilot. I seem to get my emotions through empathy, from people, whatever emotion they are feeling, i'm likely to feel it too.
- Around the same time the loss of beauty happened, I gained the ability to masturbate fast for a long time without reaching orgasm, and when i do, it feels different, as if my mind was boiling. Not my brain, my mind. I feel happiness after that, an unexplainable smile.
- My reading changed around early August, i no longer need to imagine everything i am reading, i just read the words, which means i only grasp the superficial meaning of what was said. My visual imagination is pretty much dead anyway, it's in a state of deep atrophy and has carried away my memory with it. I think i reported in a previous update how the cure changed my childhood memories. Well, now that has moved to a whole new level, i don't even have memories anymore. I remember data, numbers, facts, situations, information, but if i try to relive a moment i end up playing a poorly faked scene in my head.
- Becoming social feels a lot like you are a wild beast being tamed. And they are all in on it. And you hate them for that. But then you love it when an old acquientance sees you behave normal for their first time, the face they make... priceless. Their eyes wide open, they stand frozen, looking at you.
--- The BreakDown:
By mid February my brain was tired. I tried sleeping more but it didn't get better. On February 25 it finally collapsed. I had a major neurological breakdown with loss of body control and brain functions. It wasn't until March 8 that it became evident that i was going to survive. I posted the details in the random thread, here i just want to add some theorycrafting: While the main cause is proven to be the constant lightbulb moments i was having at the time, there's a chance the cure weakened me and made it worse. It makes a lot of sense that an alpha male would be incapable of the level of deep thoughts an autistic can have and trying to do so...... would hurt his brain. I believe the breakdown healed completely because i was able to have strings of lightbulb moments in NZ with no pain, and yet, one symptom didn't heal at all, it's been getting worse, which implies it was caused by the cure: random parts of my body start giving sudden jumps whenever i have deep thoughts. If i think too long i also lose some degree of control over my left foot. Now that it has gotten so bad, my brain is automatically learning which thoughts cause this and is starting to avoid them, all other types of thoughts seem to be harmless. I'd love to be specific but i don't know which types of thoughts are bad or good, only my brain knows.
The good news is that this forced me to go back to mental silence, after two years since my first approach. Being in mental silence feels like your mind has moved to the lower back area of your head, behind your mouth. Also your brain feels fresh, as if a dark cloud hanging over it has just dissipated.
--- Effects of Mental Silence:
- Early March, girls stopped running away / turning away from me and began acting friendly. The causality is clear, the reason why girls were running away from me in 2009 was because of my thoughts, either directly, by organic force fields or indirectly, by way of body language. This led me to conclude that having a silent mind is a requirement in order to be social. Early September, I tested again, results are the same: people become friendly to me when i enter mental silence, unfriendly when i am having deep thoughts.
- Electric shocks stopped suddenly. For at least the last 15 years i had an issue with electric sparks when my skin makes contact with someone else's, like in handshakes, or when i touch metal. When i became a researcher this started happening more often. When i started fighting for mental silence it stopped suddenly. The causality was clear: excess of mental activity causes the electric shocks. Further research shows that romantic daydreaming doesn't cause electric shocks, only analytical thoughts.
- Hand flapping stopped by mid march, as i predicted based on my January 2008 observations 
. Lack of instinct to imitate my peers is now officially the only remaining symptom of autism in me.
- I sleep about one hour less everyday.
- All my emotions became more intense, even my laughter. I was worried because it felt like my brain was melting on every emotion, they were so strong. I was theorizing that i was either going to develop some resilience to emotions or i was going to die from them, because i don't think it is healthy to feel happiness so intense as i was feeling those days. Whenever something good happens i have to clear my head off it because if i think about it i get so happy that the skin on my face starts shaking and my brain feels like it's spilling chemicals out of control and starting to melt, specially the lower back side of my brain. My eyes feel like boiling. And right then, NZ happened.
--- Environments Theory:
I crossed the Pacific Ocean one night, into New Zealand for 22 days. Not for fun, but for research.
I was still emotional when the plane took off and i even cried and i was expecting to get more emotional on landing, but i didn't. I made it out of the airport and still no emotions. It had begun. I felt no emotions the whole time i was in New Zealand, no happiness, no anger, no beauty, no sadness, except for the day i went to the cemetery and cried, but then i was sick that day so that may be the reason. The food all tasted like paper. I didn't like any woman. The loss of beauty is now affecting landscapes as well: I stood before the most beautiful landscapes and felt nothing, like standing before a gray wall. I walked dark, surreal, scary places alone and i felt no fear. Consciously i knew i should be feeling fear, but the emotion never came. This explains why alpha males seem to be brave, it is part of their general emotional impairment. Even my territoriality while peeing is gone.
One of the factors that made me unemotional was the lack of time alone. In autistic times, emotions could only be felt when humans were not around, when i wasn't being watched, because my emotions were weird. As soon as a human came into view i had to act serious. In NZ i was always alone but surrounded by people, so i couldn't go into emotional behaviors. I couldn't use the NT kind of emotions that can be shown to people because i haven't developed them yet. But i should, I do feel the need for social activities these days. Even when watching movies, i wish i had someone by my side to share the moment with. None of my fantasies are about lonesome activities anymore. Notice that despite an absolute lack of loneliness for three weeks, i never felt the need to "recharge my social batteries" like aspies do.
I miss knowing what to do to manipulate my emotions. My ability to think funny thoughts to entertain myself is almost gone. I don't know how to use money to buy me happiness. Ice cream, chocolate and pizza are things i still look for but then i end up dissapointed after eating them. I don't know what to buy.... which is working wonders for my finances, I barely manage to spend like 30% of my salary, hence the trip to NZ.
- Hollow Habits: You develop habits about the activities that fulfill a need in you. When that need goes away and the good feelings you used to get disappear, the habit remains. A habit only stops if it becomes painful or it gets replaced by a more fulfilling habit or if you remove all the environmental triggers that remind your brain to perform it.
Only after coming back i realized the amount of crap i do and put up with because of hollow habits. When i landed here and began doing all that stupid stuff again I realized that i was free from all of it while in NZ, that a life without all that crap is possible. When i was there, i thought Environments Theory had failed, because i wasn't the alpha male i was expecting to be, but when i came back i realized what a huge success it actually was. Being alone in a new place did undo my hollow autistic habits. But it didn't build new habits to replace them. Being an alpha male is not just following your instincts, you also have to slowly build up alpha malish habits.
- I discovered i have a new attitude towards sports, i get all "GOTTA TRY HARDER!", "GOTTA BE THE BEST!".
- My procrastinating behavior finished dying shortly after arriving in NZ and never came back. It had been dying since 2009 as i started feeling an impulse to get things done quick.
- I am starting to sleep in a straightened posture. I slept in fetal posture pre-cure.
- I bind to people so quick these days. A few moments listening to someone talk are enough to make me miss them when they are gone. I don't remember the landscapes in NZ, i don't remember the moments alone, what i remember is the people i met.
THE END
As "new me" and "old me" start becoming just "me", traumas are healing, old habits keep dying and my personality and my neurological state are no longer at odds with each other, i look back and I feel like i stepped back in evolution, i became simpler, more animal, mental abilities are diminished, compensated by an enhancement of my emotional behaviors, which are archaic. I consider autism a step forward in the evolution of lifeforms, but it is a step forward that our bodies and society are not yet designed to withstand. I don't want to go back.
"And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events, may in fact be the first steps............ of a journey"
