Feeling lost, confused, upset, anxious and in need of help

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Hi, haven't used this website in quite a few years and i doubt any of you remember me anyway (couldn't remember my old account so i made this one). I've returned seeking guidance and, hopefully, reassurance...you might want to put the kettle on first...

A few months ago, my girlfriend who i had been with for the past year and a half, and for whom I was head over heels in love with broke up with me. Since then i was diagnosed with depression (which i'm all to familiar with from my past).

More recently my anxiety (which i've never before had any real problem with) has been utterly debilitating. I can hardly speak to anyone i don't know well because i can't think, and when i do speak i just make stupid faux pas, and I have trouble holding conversation with anyone for extended periods of time, i just seem to run out of things to say and don't know what to do, or i get anxious about running out of things to say and my mind goes blank, i don't know which one. I've never had trouble with these things in the past, just months ago, not even before the break up, i was confident and engaging, i never had trouble meeting people, making friends, talking to girls and i had a great attitude of "i'm me, i'm a bit weird, and if you don't like it you can f*ck off!" and now i'm a complete fool every time i open my mouth. In the past new people just thought i was a little weird, now they know theres something up after talking to me and some are even acting inappropriately towards me, speaking to me like i'm ret*d or something (probably their own misunderstanding of autism, but degrading and embarrassing for me none the less).
Anxiety is affecting my sleep; for a while i would go 5 or 6 days with no sleep, then crash out for hours just to wake up and do it again (I'm back to sleeping most nights now though). Its affecting my diet; i'm lucky to be able to eat 1 small meal a day.

I realised the other day that my ex-housemate, someone i thought to be a close friend, had been taking advantage of my anxious state (in which i have trouble communicating, concentrating etc) and was making fun of me by saying off topic things at random times (like the typical asd trait), to which i would reply positively, something like "Oh, thats really interesting", not realising what he was doing, or that he was laughing at me behind my back.

I don't know if i'm simply becoming more aware of my autistic traits or regressing, and both scare me. On a recent LSD trip i SOMEHOW became aware of all (or at least some) of the mistakes i make in conversation after listening to my friends chatting for a while, which lead to a meltdown and a mental repression of the trip. It's started coming back to me although i can't remember the specifics which is frustrating me and making me more anxious. I worried that the recreational drugs could be making things worse (although i've always been careful not to over-do it, i only take other drugs in place of drinking, with friends on weekends and such), so i've cut them out completely but it hasn't helped so far.
Some other strange things have happened recently that i think might be related to all this in some way; my musical ear has improved without practice and seemingly over night. I can learn songs by ear in seconds now. And when the anxiety isn't getting to me my school work is much easier (audio engineering, electronics and such). I feel like i just understand it better and my work is actually improving, but my creative abilities for the multimedia classes i do are diminishing (photoshop stuff & web design), and i haven't been able to write music lately either.

I don't know what to do to regain my former self. I don't know what to do to feel good about anything again. I don't know what to do about my anxiety. I don't know what to do about my friends. Am i regressing or becoming more aware? How did that happen on LSD? Was it the LSD that made me aware? I don't know if i'm painting a clear picture of whats going on in my life or not, feel free to ask questions if I've been unclear. I just want to know i'm not going insane at the very least. Has anyone else had similar experiences or am I the only one?

Hello Joel...,

I don't think you're going insane but anxiety can spoil life quite a lot.
And the sorrow as well.
You had a hard time since your girlfriend left you and now, maybe, you're going a little better.

What I think is that, possibly, the LSD made the recovery, the starting of it, too fast for you?
(Be cautious with it)

And also, I don't think you'll ever be the one you used to be: people change and there is nothing you can do about it, it's the way it has to go.

But at least, obviously, you had the chance to gain something, new skills and talents, or better ones, in the changing.

LSD probably made you very aware of what you had been doing. Maybe in a truthful way, I mean, I've had experiences like that where I realize, not on LSD or anything, then i become very self-aware and depressed. but, the only way you can work with it and do anything about it is to learn from the situation. i mean you can be like me and obsess, but really, that accomplishes nothing. most normal-ish people (center of standard distribution) forget anyway in time.

That whole LSD thing sounds very familiar to me. One thing that LSD and similar drugs are great at is shaking you out of your learned perspective or bias. They can definitely make you see things from a new angle. I had a similar experience on a different drug before I ever learned of AS. It was just like you said... I was listening to my friends talk and I suddenly knew that they were all connected in some way that I wasn't. I had known I was different and that a lot of conversations that they had didn't really interest me, but right then what I saw was the connection that they had.

anyway... as was said above people change and I've started to come to terms with the fact that I'm never going to be like I used to be...a lot of the old me was just due to blissful ignorance and self-delusion. I can't unlearn what I know....

I hope you feel better soon.
When all else fails I try to remind myself that running to exhaustion always puts things in perspective.

I don't think you're regressing, or becoming more aware of anything. What happened is that when something goes wrong, it often breaks your confidence, and everything goes down with it. It's happened to me before. It happened to me two years ago when my first stay at a psychiatric institute ended. I lost my job, and the girl I was in love with (mutually) had to go away and I never saw her again. I became more stressed and disorganized, my grades went down, and I started having fits of mania due to the antidepressant I was on. Everything just fell apart. I feel as if there was some sort of invisible divide between before then (too good to be true) and now (sh***y reality). Recently I've more or less been able to pull everything back together - I got my job back (same place) and my organizational skills are improving. It's a shaky start, but I'm finally going somewhere.

Confidence is hard to gain when everything is going wrong. Once things become bad, they tend to stay that way, I've found, and it takes tremendous effort to bring everything back to the way it was. I've found that when I was mutually in love with someone, my happiness and self esteem were much higher. I felt valued, and I felt like I was important to someone else. After I started college, and girls stopped paying attention to me, it hurt my self esteem. Maybe that's what's happening to you.

I would suggest you stay off the acid. It can only hurt. My mom said that people with AS are more mentally unstable, so psychoactive drugs can mess up our brain chemistry, sometimes permanently. You could go on a bad trip and never come back. I went on an inhalant binge about three years ago, and I think it did some damage to my brain, damage from which I will never fully recover. If you want to do drugs, just stick to marijuana. That's all I can say.

Actually i've found that weed just makes my anxiety worse these days. And i'm not sure i was clear enough about what happened on acid, I sat listening to my friends talking for a while and i was then able to regognize several mistakes i make in conversation that i was previously unaware of. I stated them to my friend who was sitting next to me and asked him if it was true, to which he replied, reluctantly, yes.