Are the effects of alcohol on the Aspie brain the same as...

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I drank for 35 years, from 18 up till last year. That's a lot of beer. Yeah, at the risk of losing my intellect it made me social and "turned down" the world, that is, make the sounds & lights tolerable. Now that I've stopped I feel as if I'm a kid again, newly discovering the world. It's been fascinating so far.

Alcohol doesn't make me social at all. It just makes me tipsy and want to fall asleep. Certainly not worth paying money for in my situation. Stimulants on the other hand make me social and out going.

I used to drink but I quit . I started drinking on my 22nd birthday. I have a high alcohol tolerance. I got buzzed once. But when I did drink I felt the same as before I started. I didn't really see a difference.

In my family we have a mixed bag: one known alcoholic who died of alcoholism, one person with "a drinking problem" who stopped drinking in his 30s and AFAIK never drank again, social drinkers, very occasional drinkers and people who never seem to drink at all but don't moralize about it or anything.

I'm the only person in my family who really NEVER drinks for any reason other than feeling one has a problem with it/alcoholism. Or at least, I can say the last drink I had was 13 years ago when my husband simply couldn't believe I'd never tried tequila and asked me to try it because tequila is "so good" (it wasn't), before that it had been about 7 years since I'd had a drink at my sister's wedding as part of the toast and before that, I drank a handful of times in high school because all the other girls were drinking.

It's not on moral principle, and it's not due to fear of becoming (being? I guess you always are, right?) an alcoholic, and it's not for health reasons. It's simply because when I drink, I feel like things are really funny for 20-30 minutes or so, then I get SO exhausted that I have to lie down and go to sleep. Where's the fun in any of that? It doesn't taste good, it doesn't feel good and therefore I see no reason to do it.

If other people do it never bothers me, I don't even think about it, really, when someone has a glass of wine when we're out to dinner or when my husband has a beer watching a football game.

Alcohol usually makes my hypomanic (I'm possibly bipolar). Alcohol has a lot of positive effects for me in certain situations. I can be very productive, enjoy myself more (in a manic way), and be a better billiards player. I believe a lot of the reason for this is because of my very overactive, analytical mind. I'm more productive because I just do things without overthinking them. I enjoy myself more because I'm less inhibited and, well, giddy. I play better billiards because my mind is more focused on the single task at hand. Of course, there's also the typical effect in social situations. I do better around crowds, noise, etcetera to an extent.

That being said, I don't like to use it to self-medicate. Sometimes I may, but not much. I also drink very little, generally never more than three beer. Anything more and I do not like the feeling. I don't understand why people enjoy getting drunk, I find it disgusting. I'm definitely a "light-weight", and one beer is enough to start to have the above effects.

As for drinking it for the effect versus the taste, I agree that most people do, and I will too, but two of my favourite drink are alcoholic. Their being my favourite drinks has nothing to do with the alcohol.

When I have had alcohol in the past, I acted more NT. In fact sometimes I would purposefully drink because I could tell I was overstimulated. While it is true that alcohol acts as a social inhibitor, I think the real action going on is that it is a depressant and reduces the underlying anxiety of most ASD symptoms.