Aspergers/Autism and psychedelics.

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Was wondering if any of you have had experiences with psychedelics and how it effected your traits.

I've tried a few, but mushrooms made me feel more NT in a sense that I could see how empathy existed and such. I still thought logically, but I felt a sense of another way of thinking.

I have never tried psychedelics (yet.) I was actually talking to a few people with Asperger's/Autism on Reddit's Drug Subreddit. You may have more luck posting a thread about it there.

I really want to try pure MDMA though. I've heard that has the potential to help a lot of people.

I always thought my change in visual perception would be hard to deal with. I have anxiety disorders and sort of avoid most drugs.

I didn't find Psilocybin shrooms did anything to lessen my autistic tendencies, other than reducing anxiety. In fact, the thing that bothered me most during the experience was that I was interested in the mystical and spiritual journey and there were people in the room who just wanted to giggle and be stupid.

I did enjoy the sensation of being able to commune with muses, in the sense that when I listened to music, it was as though I could actually experience the spirit of the music as a living creature. I don't think that had anything to do with neurotypicality, though. It was the NTs who were only interested in giggling.

Marijuana, OTOH seemed to bring everybody else more to my level, in that nobody else was processing any faster than me, but I still had the same tendency to sit and listen to everybody else until a subject came up that was related to a personal interest. Fortunately, most of the stoners I hung out with were into the same things I was: music, movies, philosophy and the paranormal.

I've eaten San Pedro cactus and mescaline is my favourite substance, but I'm not sure how it affects my traits.

I currently know of a few places to buy San Pedro Cactus (that contain mescaline), but I'm too frightened to eat it if by the very small chance I become psychotic. According to the reader experiences on Erowid regarding San Pedro Cactus, the majority of experiences were relatively positive, and brought the person into greater awareness with Mother Nature along with increased visuals (similar with LSD and Psilocybin), but I just don't want to risk it until I'm more "emotionally mature", perhaps when I'm age 30+.

I am also very interested in pure MDMA because it is well documented as having therapeutic qualities. My studies of autism have led me to believe it would work very well as a potentiator of empathy, as it is an empathogen after all. It probably brings us to an NTs level of empathy or more or maybe just bypasses the idea of a spectrum completely. Looking back I can see how psilocybin worked at helping me to understand how others are in existence apart from me. It gave me more insight into the theory of mind beyond empathy.

I wonder what working with LSD would be like, though I think it would increase processing power as well as sensory issues. Those would be of concern. Soon I will be working with mescaline containing cactus and I'm going to keep this in mind.

From several ancedotal reports that I've read, if you've never used meth/amphetamines (through ADHD medications or illicit synthesis) before, your first 10 or so early doses will feel very similar to MDMA in which you feel extra "intuitive empathy" and social warmth for other people even if they don't socially please you or share any common interests with you. A hypothesis was that the initial doses (when you are pretty much amphetamine-naive) is that serotonin is also released in large amounts, however this never ever occurs again after this "glorious period" of MDMA-simulation disappears, and no amount of abstinence from amphetamines will ever let you get the same MDMA-like high as in your very first few doses.

I too suspect that pure MDMA (50-150 mg) once a month may have therapeutic qualities in socializing, but unfortunately there seems to be no government approved double-blinded trials doing such research of MDMA on ASD individuals. MAPS was conducting MDMA trials on people who had PTSD however and results look promising.

Psyechedelics like marijuana and LSD generally make me more empathetic - but at the same time more self-critical. They sometimes make me feel awesome but othertimes make me feel like a douchebag. They basically change the way you think about things, and it's hard to predict whether it will be a positive or negative experience.

For a while when SWIM(someone who isn't me) was on shrooms they thought that they were NT because all of a sudden they could see other people's perspectives in a strange meta/psychic sense. It was very peculiar for SWIM.

MDMA is awesome. Everyone with AS who's taken it has said that it was the best thing they'd ever tried. Such interesting emotions one feels....

LSD is probably a lot better for AS than shrooms, shrooms are a lot more intense and potentially scary. LSD is probably equally scary, but in small doses it's a lot less intense and a lot more person oriented. At least that's my opinion.

I did read a study where they gave a bunch of teens with AS, Acid every day for multiple weeks, and apparently it was relatively successful. The power of psychedelics as therapy is well known, but also well hidden from the general public thanks to DARE propaganda and the 60's/70's. The gov't needs to take another look at hallucinogens and ethneogenics as medicine and unschedule them. Except PCP, that should remain illegal, there's nothing good about dissassociatives that powerful.

I'm honestly convinced that if I had never taken mushrooms I would've never became self-aware of just how far away from normal I was. Ever since then I've found my life more on path and so many of my AS tendencies have been minimized. Mushrooms in low does to me are absolute sobriety/mental clarity. If you have asperger's and a strong desire for self-improvement/an open-mind, it's life-changing.

First off, I should explain that I am a seasoned Alchemist in the Jungian sense, frequently participating in Alchemical Fire Circles (check out the video on YouTube) and have applied these principles to my use of psilocybin mushrooms. I had the usual miserable childhood of being ostracized and bullied, and was still having serious issues socializing in adulthood. I moved to Las Vegas to expand my studies, but I was hearing back that some people were uncomfortable around me, that my behavior was not understood, and that I basically annoyed a lot of people from time to time. Roughly six months after my first dose of shrooms, a member of the alchemical community approached me, and told me she had seen a change in me, and that I had become quite pleasant company. That was in '07/'08, and while I still tend to be a bit of a hermit and don't fully grasp conversational skills, I am a well accepted and even appreciated member of community. Gosh darn it, people like me!

The mushrooms seemed to awaken awareness of what it was that made me different from "normal", and allow me to see past the superficial reaction of NTs and glean a better understanding of what the individual thought of me and my behavior, helping me to identify the things others found annoying. I started to understand that, for example, my chatter was being perceived as egoic and self-centered. Then I would analyze my own motivation behind the behavior, and separate the subtle from the gross. To return to the example, I found that I told stories about things I had done and were interesting to me because I wanted to reach out in friendship to the other individual and didn't know what else to talk about. I talked too much because I was nervous. I would tell stories about me in an attempt to relate to the things the other person spoke of. But clearly these communication techniques are ineffective in dealing with NTs, because they interpret our behavior based on their own thought processes. It took me two years to fully integrate these lessons.

Shrooms seem most effective for this purpose in low doses, just enough to alter perception, and when socializing with NTs. I became aware only of the issues that arose during my trip, and didn't fully retain the extra awareness after the effects wore off, but the fact that only a single dose was required for such positive effects made it quite worthwhile to me. Subsequent trips (frequenting only twice a year or so) had mixed results in this regard, as I didn't always have a social issue arise.

LSD was not helpful to me in this area, but I wasn't fond of the drug overall.

I dropped acid every other day for 2 consecutive years, 11th & 12th grade high school, 1976-77. Activity of choice was headphones (the band Yes in particular), drawing pad and colored pencils. Hundreds of private world pictures. Did not graduate high school. LSD got me even less social than usual. As much as I loved it, that sense of childhood fantasy recreated large, I have my regrets about embracing such dropping entirely out. This is not moderate experimentation I am talking about of course; I've never done anything in moderation.

I've taken shrooms a few times before. One time, I spent the night over a friends house and I SWORE that aliens had come and wanted to kidnap me so that I could teach their friends the wonders of music... lol It was flattering but made it VERY difficult to get to sleep. Usually on shrooms, I just relax and space out (deeply think about things like life, evolution and such).

I've taken Ecstasy a few times and I'll never forget the time that I went to Starscape Music Festival (18 hours of non-stop music...!) I purchased it from someone that was at the festival and I had an amazing time. I was with 4 of my friends and they completely lost me for maybe 3 hours, and then another 2. I always thought that I was a very quiet person but now I understand that the world doesn't understand me when I say things so I choose not to talk. Well, on ecstasy, I tried to meet as many people as possible! lol I took TONS of pictures, listened to AWESOME music, and had a great time just being "me".

I'm a musician/song-writer (not professionally though) and marijuana helps SO MUCH with my ideas. I can heat up my vaporizer and start writing music. Four hours later, I feel like I "am" the music lol It helps me relate to the feelings that I attempt to portray in my songs and make it easier to just relax and filter through the good ideas.

Marijuana doesn't really affect me. I just feel more relaxed.
I've only tried acid once. The best way I can explain it is that it let my autistic traits take over. I didn't talk for like 8 hours (felt like i forgot how to talk) and barely responded to anyone.

As a teenager I took LSD several times. These were truly mind-blowing experiences, expanding my creative and perceptive powers. The downside was that I was in bad company the last few times I did it. Hanging with a group of people who you're uncomfortable being around is a terrible idea under these circumstances. These were really bad trips involving paranoia and accompanied by objects that transformed themselves into skulls.

As an adult, I think I'm in a much more confident and stable place psyhologically now although I probably will never touch LSD again - wouldn't know where to find it anyway. Cannabis has proven to be a wonderful way to reduce anxiety in small social situations. Under those conditions, I feel like I'm able to interact with others enthusiastically and amicably where otherwise I'd be aloof.

I was going to go on a long diatribe, but needless to say I've taken my share of MDMA when I was younger.

Due to it's short-lived effects, of which are different, and far milder on us than NTs, it's really no solution.

I believe would be highly effective for NTs with PTSD and for Couples' Therapy, as well as can help with quality of life for those ending their lives in pain.

The rest, I posted here, before: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp4949401 ... t=#4949401