I've worked in direct support for (mostly) autistic adults for the last little bit. I have no formal education in the field and only minimal certification, it's a calling i discovered a couple years ago when I was looking to add service to my recovery plan.

I have had diagnoses for mental health conditions, some of which i agree with, some of which i deny, and so do the majority of my customers and we share some other similarities as well. In fact, since doing this, I've recognized more similarities than differences between us. The percentage of the population  with whom I fall into the same IQ range is the same as some of the more severely disabled ones- 5% on either end of the scale. I'm not in any way saying that i have similar cognitive challenges, just that there is some isolation in that.

For whatever reasons, there is a lot of overlap that i think allows me a unique perspective in working with them and an ability to empathize from my struggles with everything from addiction to mental health to blindness; the PTSD and feelings of marginalized powerlessness especially.

Anyway, I feel comfortable with with my performance to be open with my fellow staff more or less about the practice that I've developed for myself that along with a full time, holistic approach to recovery includes integrated intentional psychedelic experiences, microdosing for symptom management and regular cannabis use to replace all pharmaceuticals (except for a very low daily dose of methadone, but that's another thing) because of intolerance for the side effects of nearly every pharmaceutical psycholotropic  I've ever taken.

Okay, SO, what I'm getting around to is that I've had exactly one conversation with a co-worker who is sympathetic and who shares a similar worldview who told me that she has heard of THC and CBD being used IN PLACE of certain psych meds, opiates, muscle relaxing type drugs, anxiolytics, anti-psychotics, etc (some of my people are on over a dozen hardcore meds). They didn't have any resources for further information and not much on the efficacy. I don't know if the person had never been introduced or went through a titration process, and if so what challenges presented during a change over period and how it was dealt with.  These are some of the particulars I'd like to know about from other people's stories of their lived experience in work or with loved ones.

I have a personal grievance against the over use of these drugs and a dim view on the over reliance on white coats as authorities to decide, but despite my ideology I would never, ever suggest that any of the people I work with change their regimen whatsoever, that is not my job nor my prerogative.

I would just like to know if any of you have personal experience with using psychedelics or cannabis to address some of the symptoms that they deal with. I wish I could put forth some easy examples, but as I was told, if you"ve met one autistic person, you've met exactly one autistic person. The constellation of symptoms and range of severity makes it such an individual equation, i could only answer questions of any of you have specifics. There are other diagnoses among the people i work with but the vast majority are autistic rather than presenting other diagnoses like Down's, and are mostly male. These factors are due in turn to the funding streams in my county and genetics. So these are the people I'm most familiar with.

Forgive me if this sounds ridiculous, pompous or otherwise egregious- and I'm not even really sure what it is I'm thinking, only wondering if there's some novel ideas out there that have some anecdotal evidence of efficacy behind them. And pitfalls and dangers and failures are equally important.


I've had some remarkable breakthroughs recently with a couple really hard-to-handle folks, using techniques like guided meditation and earth-grounding. I have one particularly awesome individual who drinks Monster energy drinks because he is literally feeding the monster within him. You can maybe see how this could be difficult! I chased him into a park and led him through a grounding exercise, framing it in pseudo-wicca-shamanic language to appeal to his inner lycanthrope. Soon he was caressing the grass and smiling, and after running a lap around the park, laid down with a calm smile on his face. My co-worker that day told me that he told her that nobody had ever done anything remotely like that with him and that it worked! Yeah my ego is proud of that, but it shows me that something could work to deal with severe behaviours that isn't necessarily more meds.

I know I'm asking about using substances, but i know that in my case irregular symptom-based non-dependant use has not only been an (the only) effective medical approach and has mitigated or totally avoided all of the negative side effects that often require MORE meds to stabilize the patient, reduce quality of life, cause dependence and are essential often nefarious chemical restraints.

Oh man, and diet is such a huge, primary problem too, I'm forever worrying my customers about their bad diets, and feel really bad for the ones in homes with no say in it who are fed un-nutritious processed garbage by their caregivers....sorry, angry tangent...


For some reason, I'm wondering about the psychedelic amphetamines, MDMA, mescaline?

Any ideas, experiences, general thoughts?

LSD and MDMA are probly two that have helped me the most in this area socially. I dont have full blown autism. I have a diagnoses of pretty bad social anxiety, and probable "aspergers" which is not considered a thing anymore. My mom always figured I had the OCD traits, and she works with autistic children. I am HLA-b27 + and have a severe type of RA(ankylosings spondyliti) which is heavily associated with autism. Most people don't know this, but there is a lot of studies now showing a correlation between autism, auto immune diseases like RA, MS etc and neurological inflammation. I have spoken directly with a few Dr's who agree with me now that autism seems to be like a type of neurological inflammation, or brain arthritis..or has this as a contributing factor. There is mounting evidence this correlation is present in many cases of depression, bi polar disorder and other personality disorders. There are hormonal changes as well, and often suppressive of testosterone in men due to such high levels of cortisol.

Knowing this, some sort of protocall to counteract the neuro inflammation should be a no brainer. I think it is of no coincidence that when my AS is flairing, my social anxiety will also be at its highest and my stress, fatigue and just crazy manic behaviors all increase, until I take meds(steroids) or I am living on some sort of auto immune lifestyle protocall to stop it.

I also have 2 cousins, on the same side of the family(my moms) who are fully autistic. The HLA b-27 + marker is from that side of the family. I would have full on meltdowns as a kid in school until like grade 2 or 3. I couldnt be there and would freak out and have panic attacks and leave the school. My mom had me at like 20 and was so stressed out. Noone ever really did anythying for me, and I was constntly at the school councellors for a while. Some tried to tell my mom I needed meds and for whatever reasons she was into not having me properly diagnosed because some dr tried to put me on ritalin and other stuff. I was never on it, and never had a proper mental diagnosis until an adult when I had to go myself. Years and years and years and years of severe anxiety and not being able to look other people in the eyes will screw a person up if they never talk about it. I would and studder too and not look at people, and my mom would get frustrated and yell at me.

Im 1000% sure I am like 10% autistic and most of my close friends would agree. I have so many of the genetic markers for symptoms of high functioning adult autism. I wish more people understood this connecton to certain genetic markers and inflammation..its huge.

anyway..on to psychedelics. LSD and MDMA, in the context of raves, are what opened me up socially.
I took a lot of DMT, aya, mushrooms, 5meoDMT etc..these things all helped me, but I also find in retrospect, these things also boosted my ego. I probly needed an ego boost in my late teens through my early 20's. My anxiety made me really secluded and I did not have many friends. At one point I took off to the west coast of vancouver island to live in a campsite in the woods to escape...what? Mostly escaping the stress of having to be social? I lasted a season there in a tent.

After that I came back to the city and began spending almost all my time in a weird subculture on a nude beach. Psychedelics were openly used there, esp mushrooms and I began eating a lot of them. It did change my life, but I also began sleeping on that beach, in hammocks in the trees etc..I ended up spending a lot of time hiding from police officers, hiding my sleeping bags etc because police and parks ppl would come and steal my camp stuff etc..I always had family or somewhere to go if I had to, but I was living a half homeless life.

It's only now years later, at 34, way more stable and with this disease under controll that I can see how sick I actually was back then. I was taking a lot of tryptamines, in a context of isolation from having to face my life.

It made me feel spiritual. I mean..I was having spiritual experiences, but I felt angry and all these things gave me reason to maybe then feel superior and look down on other people. I felt at the time that was all other people ever did to me.

This is real long and jumbled I know..but this is what it's like I think for some people. Many people would just figure I was a bit awkward, but nevertheless together. For me, there was all sorts of things going on in my head that were just self fulfilling delusions. I wish I could make all of this make sense to someone, because I know other people experience this also.

Acid somehow woke me up. It woke up my higher self actually the first time I took it almost 3 years ago. I began experimenting with LSD and MDMA both around 3 years ago, in sort of a last ditch effort to help myself.

When I took MDMA I got really sick with nausea the first time, and then had a bit of a panic attack. It was really strange. I was at a rave with people who are very close now, but new to me at the time. I broke down. I thought about myself and my life that night in ways I had never before and was able to stop looking down on life like some observer and exist in my life. It's the degree of seperatness that I think many people who sit somewhere on the spectrum feel, like you are just a fraction of a degree out of sync with the majority of the population. Imagine a species wide internet system we are all plugged into, with software updates etc..well it's as if some of us are getting internet 1a and the others get 1b..and it's almost identical, but the updates that drive social cues etc are just the slightest bit shifted etc..down the line it can end up feeling like diff data streams, and your forced to try over and over to integrate with 1b.

Now I go to outoor forest raves with friends I really love, at least 2-3 weekends a year, and take a combinaton of LSD and MDMA. This whole culture, not just the drugs, has saved me..and I think the music and the dancing are just as important for me. My brain needs it to sooth itself. It took all of about 5 seconds at a rave to realize I really wanted to dance..and by morning I coould not stop and had discovered how much I love DNB and trance...and that pretty much I was like soothing all this anxiety I had built up for years. To this day I am convinced that dancing is almost like an autistic person stimming for me. I carry stress balls around a lot now and always have headphones with EDM, or else I grind my teeth real bad.

I have all these little tricks, and these 2 molecules..It's not about being fixed. Everyone who I really need in my life knows this about me because I told them. Before all of this, I never would have spoken to them, or even looked them in the eyes.

I honestly feel that what most "know" about the autism spectrum is bs and outdated, and in the not too far off future autism will be understood to be an auto immune disease, actually something like brain diabetes and requires special individual diets to controll. It sounds far out, until you become familiar with the research, then the correlation is clear. Causation is a bit murky. I also feel that the trend of calling this just "neurodiverse" is going to end up hurting people. I def think autism is a disorder and a lot can be done to improve or remove symptoms.

a bit unrelated but I found some benefit in creatine supplementation. Its not a fix but I do find it helps.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih...pmc/articles/PMC5578055/

ps I should mention, I use cannabis daily and 10-15 mics of LSD once a week. It helps greatly.

Hey null24, this may be a bit of topic, but i wouldn't take that "falling in the IQ range" thing very seriously.

In the first place because IQ tests aren't like brainscans. They are by far not as "scientifically accurate" as many people think they are, because things like upbringing, education and familiarity with certain kinds of problems simply affect how well people do on these tests. So they cannot actually measure how smart someone is. Only how well someone performs on a test for smartness that was standardized to fit the ideal average person. So if for instance, an IQ test would contain a linguistic element, the test does not fit people with an immigrant background, as they do not have the ideal average familiarity with the language being tested for.

But secondly, because in as far as IQ tests ARE accurate, a persons intelligence itself can be affected (temporarilly) by things like depression or low self esteem.

And with everything you've told about yourself here on the nexus, i think it's fair to say that those things have been serious issues in your life.

I think you where probably tested once, at a time you wheren't doing to well and all of your intellectual abilities where way below what they currently are.

The average person in the lowest 5% range would not use a word like "anecdotal" correctly, to begin with.