Do you think having AS *feels* different?

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I don't know. I do often focus very narrowly on things. When I was younger I read a book in which one of the characters was mad. When his point of view was described it said that he saw things all distorted and out of shape and nasty. That really struck me at the time because it seemed to me that the way I perceive the world was quite different to other people. *shrugs* Maybe nonsense, maybe a metaphor, maybe real.



And how! Our vision constantly cross-references our whole understanding of the world. It's why computer vision is so difficult.

Ooh, I'm not sure I agree with House. Maybe. They've changed the character in the more recent episodes. I nominate this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfcLQqX_BFk

I don't know why I'm in here either

My parents actually told me never to talk about my synesthesia again, when I mentioned it to them, because they said it would make people think I was on drugs.

Why? Everyone but the woefully ignorant knows what synesthesia is, and knows that it's AWESOME.

To be clear, I don't think that my experiences are at all like hallucinogen use is for most people, including Huxley. The words used to describe them may be similar (which is what drove me to read Huxley to begin with, enough to know what's being referred to here), but the experiences are entirely different. I have spent a lot of time around people who were on hallucinogens, and while some of their behavior resembles some of my behavior, and some of their words resemble some of my words, I got the distinct sense that if anything their experiences were like having the idea-based mind in overdrive, rather than (as I experience the world) not having an idea-based mind at all unless I work very hard at it. So the similarities are wholly superficial and... I almost see hallucinogens as causing a counterfeit version of some real experiences I have had. The outsides are similar, the insides are entirely different.

And this is backed up by what happened when I tried such drugs after being offered them by people who thought I had already taken them... which is that I became far more "normal" on normal doses, and had the same experiences as other people do, on high doses. And I can categorically state that those experiences (on high doses) had a few superficial similarities but almost with the core removed. Distortions were introduced that have no place in my normal experience of the world. But I can easily see how someone with no common reference with me would have no clue that there was any difference at all. When I did normal doses, my ability to hold ideas in my head increased, my sensory overload and direct perception of my surroundings decreased, my degree of perceptual distortion caused by ideas superimposing themselves on perception increased as well. On high doses those ideas came so rapidly and intensely that they seemed to dissolve, but the reality was that it made me stuck in the land of ideas, rather than absent from it, it's just that when you're that far stuck in it you can't tell that ideas are distorting your perceptions (hence superficial similarity).

Some things that are absent from my experience of the world that seem to be present in the experiences of many people who do hallucinogens: Overwhelming idea-emotions of extreme "wow this is profound" sort of thing. (If I have profound experiences they don't announce themselves in that manner or any manner at all.) Tendency for thoughts to manifest more easily than usual in how one perceives external reality. (My external reality is extremely uninfluenced by thoughts of any kind.) Many people become far more language-oriented on it. (Total opposite to me.) When they lose language, they often are more like immersed in language or concept or idea so far they can't even see it. (Again total opposite to me.) Actual hallucinations, while rare, do happen. (I never see anything that's not there without seizure/migraine/etc.) Getting lost in internal or external visions of the whole universe, or things at a microscopic level, or both at once. (Totally outside my normal experience.) Getting lost in "alternate dimensions". (Same.)

To illustrate some of the difference, here's a quote I found from someone who was supposedly experiencing something "outside of language" on drugs. Emphasis (both bold and italics) mine:

Mind felt fractured because it seemed to exist in a bunch of places simultaneously? No, when I'm outside of language, I'm outside of what this guy would call 'mind' too. Completely. As in, no abstract ideas. Led him to believe that time was an illusion? No, even though I have a terrible sense of time, when I'm outside of language I don't have beliefs or any sort of thoughts along the lines of "time is an illusion". Everything he thought could be abstracted one step further? (Emphasis on abstracted.) No, I experience a loss of abstraction, not a piling of abstraction on top of more abstraction. His consciousness was a whirlwind of thoughts without context? No, when I'm outside of language, I have context without thoughts, and certainly no whirlwind of them. He learned to describe this as "ego death", but it's really an immersion in ego so deeply that you can't see that it is ego. That whirlwind is thoughts on overdrive that magnify until you are totally lost in them. Whereas what I experience without language is the total and complete opposite of that.

The problem is that both experiences are experiences there are no words for, so people tend to think that "outside words" is all the same place. It isn't.

As for what things I did that convinced people I was on drugs? Mostly I had a tendency to gravitate towards certain sensory experiences and do things like wave things in front of my face. People on drugs tend to do that because they are experiencing certain distortions they don't normally experience, that make things look really cool, or else to ground themselves because they are too lost in their own heads, or other things like that. None of which is why I do those things. Also I'm a synaesthete and most people have never heard of non-drug synaesthesia.

But I've done a lot of watching people, and a lot of reading people's drug experiences because I get curious about that kind of thing, and I still sense a huge disconnect between that and whatever it is I experience, even if words or actions sometimes coincide. And sometimes that disconnect is more like "Wow, if anything that's the opposite of my experience of the world." I understand these are very meaningful experiences to some people, they're just rarely anything like my experiences.

The tricky part of this is, though, that having AS tends to make us less able to know how others feel. How are we supposed to know if it feels different if we don't even know what being NT feels like?

By observing the differences in behaviors that result from the differences in perception.

Just as you can tell someone is tripping if you observe their behavior and listen to the things they say - they don't think and act like someone who's not high.

Its very easy for me to tell that neurotypical people aren't experiencing this world in the same way that I am. They often do and say things that make no sense to me at all. I have come to (loosely) follow their logic by watching and listening, but I still think they're crazy.

I feel different from the people around me. It's not a bad, "I'm a freak." different. It's more of a positive, Mod Of The 21st Century different.

That's sort of how I feel. I like being somewhat unusual, I think it makes me more interesting.

Before I knew what AS was I could never figure out why I felt like an alien around other people. I took tons of personality tests trying to find out what the deal was. I guessed I just thought differently from everyone else or something.

Now that I know what AS is I still feel very different.