guy_xyz wrote:
I took metoprolol, a beta blocker, for anxiety and it worked great. The weird thing is when you take it for an anxiety provoking situation once or twice after that you don't feel anxiety in that situation.
I think autistic anxiety in social situations and crowds is a reasonable and intelligent reaction to our sensitivities and the fact that we easily and often find ourselves unexpectedly in difficult situations. I have found Doctor Burns techniques (book Feeling Great) of appreciating our difficult emotions (it's smart to be nervous when you're doing something you're unskillful at) along with acceptance (it's unreasonable to try to be great at everything, etc etc) to be great help.
His book "Feeling Good Together" has excellent techniques to improve conversational skill and understand things we're missing in our speech patterns.
I believe drugs should generally not be used for aspergers, anxiety, or depression which are 99% of the time reasonable reactions to situations that can be massively improved with modern techniques. Check out the Feeling Great podcast.
I'm not anti drug, schizophrenia definitely, maybe paranoia need drug treatment. I'm inclined to believe ADHD as well but the drugs are not very good IMHO (serious side effect issues, haven't done research lately though).
When I smoked pot many years ago I didn't have social anxiety but I was high and out of it.
The social anxiety I have now seems completely reasonable since I'm so unskillful socially and don't consider it of concern and it's almost helpful since it reminds me to pay attention to social issues.
Best of luck.
To perseverate a bit, having experienced both drugs and TEAM CBT therapy techniques, I believe understanding anxiety and depression in the right way is a clear and somewhat easy path to overcoming it while suppressing it with drugs leaves a feeling of heavy inadequacy and just feels off.
To my surprise, after decades of not finding the right answers, due to these techniques I am no longer depressed or generally anxious. I experience appropriate sadness from time to time and anxiety in places I know my unskillfulness can try me up as would anyone.