Has anything actually 'worked'?

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Cutting out gluten & most refined carbs.

I've done low carb dieting before, which naturally eliminates gluten, but never put 2 and 2 together on why I felt so much mentally clearer until my most recent attempt at changing my diet. I think if I were to take tons and tons of social skills classes and other sorts of things to learn about what it is we miss by having a processing dysfunction, that I would more than likely still miss many more things because my brain is all fogged up by A) the effect gluten & high carb foods have and B) the quick blood sugar crash that occurs after eating carbs which makes me so ravenously hungry that I can't think straight.

Also, melatonin has been HUGE for me. I used to have absolutely terrible sleeping problems, to the point of not being able to function in society properly. No 9-5 jobs would work, school was dicey (dropping my earliest class was a guarantee), etc.

Not really. But there is a small crew that surfs regularly on all the Great Lakes. And I vacation on the East Coast.

This is Lake Erie:

I know..was being sarcastic...we have decent beaches here in jersey...or as we call them the " Shore".

I take Concerta. It works for about eight hours to reduce my stimmimng behaviors, but after those eight hours are up, there is a rebound effect of sorts where the stimming is temporarily more noticeable than if I hadn't taken the Concerta at all.

I figured as much. But I can't let a jab at us lake surfers go my unnoticed.

Which part of Jersey? I've surfed a few spots there.

What helped me most was, ironically, deciding to stop being normal.

Let me explain. Often times, when they treat autism, they try to make you "indistinguishable from your typical peers". (They use that phrase all the time.) The problem is that if you're autistic, your brain works differently from your peers' brains, and you literally weren't made to do things the way they do them. So, as a result, you have to work with your different brain the way it was made to work rather than assuming the best way to go about learning things is to mimic the typical folks. Often times, people will assume that the autistic brain is a damaged version of the typical one; but it's not--it's a healthy autistic brain. It's wired differently.

Okay, so what does that mean, practically? It means learning how you learn, how you do things best. It means stopping the recordings that are likely in your head of people who have said you need to "try harder", "stop being lazy", "grow up", or "stop being rude". It means taking the world on your own terms, learning to truly communicate rather than just faking what the NTs do when they communicate. It means, often times, being willing to be embarrassed at least occasionally when you mess up. It means accepting that sometimes you need help from someone else, or you need to do things differently, or you need outside reminders or aids like schedules, a planner, or even a communication device or "I'm autistic, here's what to expect" card for those non-verbal moments.

Bottom line: Don't let your learning be limited to "faking NT". Instead, pursue true competence in skills that will help you do the things you want to be able to do.

This.

I'm unwinding all my fake NT layers. It's getting weird though. I've been in a decades long shut down. My only way of controlling anything about my behaviors was to wrap myself up really tight and never let go, never let anything leak out. Now that I'm exhausted, and I just don't care anymore, I'm noticing a lot of things manifesting themselves that are obviously autistic.

I had a very weird sensory thing happen last night. I was walking into a room and my wife turned off the light. It's an old wall switch that makes a loud snap when you flip it. The combination of the noise and the sudden loss of light caused a really sharp, almost physical reaction and I jumped like I'd been poked with a stick. Stuff like this hasn't happened in as long as I can remember. I would like to think it was because I have been thinking about sensory overload a lot lately, but at that moment it was not even on my mind. Is was a very visceral response, completely separate from cognition.

Unwinding that extremely tight control and just not faking it anymore is having some unintended consequences.

Short answer: no.

At least, nothing that can even remotely be medicalized into "treatment"-esque language.

I relate to this post so much. I've been doing the same thing with the unwinding. One thing I've been realizing is that I've spent a lot of time in partial overload without even realizing what it was. As I've removed sources of overload from my life, I've found I can't easily get back to functioning at that same level of overload for even short periods (this only came up because my hobby is overloading). I am also much more instinctively reactive to sensory overstimulation like sudden loud noises, bright light, and strong smells.

But I also find that I have a lot more energy to function in different ways - in ways that I find pretty rewarding on occasion, and that I have more time, energy, and concentration for other hobbies, or even doing things I found difficult to initiate or sustain for lack of energy or apparent motivation (I say apparent because in my brain the motivation was there, just couldn't leap the gap to action).

I don't really have an interest in "being like NTs," as I spent a lot of time pushing myself into that box and that was the way of burnout, depression, anxiety, frustration, and overload.

I also vote for "not sweating 'normal'" (or at least not internalizing it) as the best thing I've found.

For some years, I was seeing a doctor who was not shy with the prescription pad, and I did trials of about 80 drugs. I was trying to address some some specific cognitive changes, but I could also see if made other things easier, of course. The short answer is that no drug was a magic bullet (for either the cognitive stuff or other things). Sedatives felt nice, but there are obvious problems with using them long-term. And, I also did a number of "alternative" things, and the result was the same.

I will say that getting food sensitivities nailed down helped, in that if your senses are cranked up and/or you are easily prone to 'discombobulation' (to put it scientifically), and you're itching everywhere, it may be pretty deleterious to your functioning. And I do take some things now for sleep (tricyclics) and calm (magnesium), but the difference is I only expect them to help "around the edges," as opposed to fixing the bulk of certain problems.

It's kind of embarrassing how long it has taken to really get down the 'bedrock' so to speak, about overload and such; how to adjust to life being aware of and managing such things. But, I've realized that I spent a long time intensely learning how to 'stuff' feeling overloaded, overwhelmed, exhausted, ill, and on and on, so I guess it's not surprising it's been slow going.

(I.e. I'd found ways to suppress rocking and other stims quite a bit, and only lately is it naturally happening. For a while, I pushed it some, but now it seems to happen pretty naturally (and it isn't a huge amount or anything). The payoff is my brain gets jammed/frozen-up less often; I used to have really bad spells of no emotions, no thoughts, no nothing, just total brain-lock. And also more access to the feel/flow of things, which I missed very much during the years when I was overloaded pretty much all the time.)

Meds are the answer for me...I have Aspergers and Bipolar...or bipolar features at least. I've been on everything. I recently switched from Depakote, Lithium, and Abilify to Lamotrigine and Haloperidol (at a very low dose). These drugs are much cleaner and I can't tell you how thrilled I am to be off Lithium (that drug just reeks havoc on your body). It has helped me tremendously in all areas of my life. Before meds, I was a college drop out, barely making it at my job, and after a suicide attempt, completely incapable of functioning with everyday life. Now I'm in college with a 3.7 gpa. Unbelievable considering where I came from. Things aren't perfect. I still have significant social issues and obsessive tendencies, among other things, but all in all meds been a miracle. I've said it before on this forum and I'll probably say it another ten times, lol.

According to my doctor, and he worded it much better than me, the haloperidol shuts up my basal ganglia. People with autism are known for having their frontal lobes slightly disconnected and combining that with my over active amygdala makes a nasty combination. I struggled the most with hot cognition. .

social skills groups helped me A LOT as a child. Judging from accounts and reports of what I was like as a child I'm not sure I would have been aware of the world around me at all if it hadn't been for them.

Ritalin makes me talk to people. It doesn't give me better social skills. In fact it makes it much more harder to control what I say. I just want to say anything and everything to anyone. But I don't mind because it makes me talk more. It also makes me switch more easily between tasks and I'm less obsessive. I take time off of it to become more obsessive and hyperactive though.

I don't want to control stimming. It happens for a reason and anyway I seem to leave the big stims for when I'm on my own.

People can think what they want about me. I don't want to please them or fit in to any group. The few friends I have accept me for me. I have very little social anxiety because I'm more focused on my sensory issues. Sometimes it's even hard to notice other people are there.

A good diet helps with my symptoms too. Nothing too fancy, just eat healthy and drink mostly water. I find that I have more energy, mental power and feel physically fit. There are some things that make me feel ill and lethargic and I do my best to keep away from them. Or I limit my intake of them.

All of the above, and CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Best thing for anyone, anywhere, for any reason! <-- lol not kidding! It works for modifying obsessive thinking, decreasing depression, and improving social skills, whether one has Asperger's or not, and since those are three big issues for us, it's a great modality to try.

I brush up on my CBT skills every couple years - google it, there are forums, sites, and of course the best way is to find a therapist who specializes in it to get started, since there is a lot to learn. It is work, because you have to really analyze your thinking and there's "homework" every week, but it's the only thing that has enabled me to have a career, a long-term relationship, stop stimming so much, and basically function as an adult in a society that is not very autistic-friendly.

I just googled CBT worksheets for aspergers and quickly found this: http://www.specialtybehavioralhealth.co ... l-therapy/ - I'm sure you can find better things, but these worksheets are similar to the ones therapists use.

Good luck friend!! <3

I spent 5 years seeing psychs & taking meds when I was suffering from a psychotic depression. I didn't feel truly better till I weaned myself off all the meds. A few years later I started doing research on how to treat some of my comorbids when I realized a couple of em were causing me to screw up my 2nd relationship & had contributed to my depression. Buspar helps my Generalized Anxiety & keeps me from having panic-attacks. Neurontin/Gabapentin helps my OCD & keeps me from having obsessions & compulsions. Trazodone helps a minor depression that not sleeping well was contributing too; it's an antidepressant but it's used more often in lower doses for sleep. Klonopin/Clonazepam helps prevent me from feeling claustrophobic like when ridding crowded buses & helps me feel less anxious when I take it ahead of time before an anxiety situation but I don't need to take it often.