Aspies and auties in pubs or restaurants

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I don't think i'm too bad with picking up speach in crowded places, though i do have some problems. But i have a much bigger problem with sensory overload in pubs/clubs( not so much restaurants, unless they very busy/loud or dimnly lit. These sensory problems will make it very difficult to follow conversations or even think as I often phase out.

I have terrible trouble with this. It's caused me a lot of embarrassment and stress. I generally avoid crowds for a lot of reasons but this is one of them.

If it's a noisy or echoing place, I really struggle to keep concentration. I also have huge difficulty in understanding more than one person's conversation at a time, so whilst i love seeing just one person for a social event, if I have to go out with more than one, I end up absolutely exhausted from trying to work out whose turn it is to speak, what they think of each other etc. It's hard because a lot of my work means I have to attend meetings where I face this sort of problem, and I can manage to do the work, but I come out of them and just collapse for several hours. Hubby's the same - he actually goes to sleep during social events with more than one person to talk tol

Sirens, alarms, ringing phones etc make it impossible for me to concentrate too. When I'm driving and an emergency vehicle comes up behind me with its siren going my brain turns to jelly, which really doesn't help me to concentrate on pulling over and let the vehicle past. Noises like this always make me very irritable and snappy as well.

I can listen to people in the noisy situations, but I am annoyed by the general commotion, and tire very easily with the situation, so I tend to give up.

Where my Aspie trait really shows up is when I find the conversation boring, and I am in a crowded, noisy establishment. Then I just zone out and stop paying attention to the speaker - until something about the convo sparks my interest again.

Another irritating situation is large group lunches at work, often the 'going away' lunch stuff with a large, long table. I can only hold a conversation with the 2-3 people in my immediate vicinity anyhow, so the other 15 or so people are just excess baggage. But if I like the person who is leaving or being honored, I put up with it to show support for them. If I don't like them, I'll just skip the event all together.

According to this from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect), most people should be able to tune out the background noise thanks to the "cocktail party effect":

"The cocktail party effect describes the ability to focus one's listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises, ignoring other conversations. This effect reveals one of the surprising abilities of our auditory system, which enables us to talk in a noisy place."

Yeah I can say that I've had these problems usually in a small resturant with the noise level way over what I can handle. I never do go into pubs or bars so I wouldn't know about them.

I've had this issue quite a bit. The worst bit is when I do get to speak to someone one-to-one, someone else gives us a guilt trip for ignoring the rest of the group. I'm often OK if the group is talking about something I understand (it's no co-incidence that I tend to make friends on the basis of common interest). If they don't, I lose track of things immediately and can't piece things together. Conversations about people I don't know/have never met are the worst. Things get particularly bad in clubs when backs are turned to me and I just seem to turn invisible, and can't join a conversation as I have no idea what anyones talking about. Dosen't happen as much as it once did, though (I have better friends these days).

My dad often critised me for this - he goes 'why don't you just LISTEN to peoples conversations?' he says. Because I can't understand them most of the time, that's why!

In social events at pubs, restaurants and the like, yes I do tend to drift off. Hard to think of a situation that highlights my AS traits more negatively. Lack of common interests, compared to what 'most' people are likely to talk about on a night out e.g. sport, music, movies, showbiz makes my conversation very, very, very, very limited. Usually I find I've virtually nothing to contribute. And of course there's communication difficulties, exacerbated in the complex dynamic of conversations this way and that. On top of that, these conversations will always be full of banter. I find banter particularly difficult. And there's the interactional side, I always get on with some people but not so much with some others.

I have a friend (who first picked up on my AS) I meet regularly for lunches, we go to pubs/restaurants but that's almost the only time I go to such establishments these days.

I have APD, and the only way I can focus and understand people is either by speech-reading, or by standing right next to them, with them talking practically into my ear, and focusing my vision on something else entirely, eg the floor.