How to get yourself to open up to friends in person?

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This has been on my mind for a week or so. When I'm talking to friends online or through text, I can easily open up and discuss my thoughts and feelings. In person on the other hand, I'm usually pretty quiet and find it very hard to have, and join in on, conversations with my friends. Just the thought of having a face to face conversation (about a subject I don't know well) with someone without having a pre-planned "script" in my head baffles me. It's as if my thoughts have to go through several translation processes before the words come out of my mouth.

To me, verbal conversations seem to go too fast for me to easily keep up with. By the time I have something to contribute to the conversation, the subject has passed and they're on to a new one and then I feel like I have to catch up and try and remember what was said while I was thinking about what to say. If the conversation is about one of my interests, I don't really have a problem with this because those subjects are already going through my head all the time and because I like talking about my interests.

Sometimes I wish I could have all conversations through text.

Was just wondering how many people here experience this communication difficultly and if anyone has any advice for participating in conversations on subjects that you don't know too well, or are not too interested in.

I certainly have the same experience where people feel connected with me when the communication is via text or email, and I am unable to communicate at the same level during face to face conversation.

I think this has to do with instinctual decisions vs. decision-tree decisions. Instinctual decisions require little thought, and a person is usually considered to be either good or bad at instincts in a particular category. Since feelings and social topics are typically difficult for someone on the spectrum, the ability to make good instinctual decisions is poor and more time is needed to work through the decision-tree method with all of its analysis.

I don't have advice for conversation about topics I'm not interested in. If I do become interested in a topic, I'll research it quite a bit and then have too much to say about that topic the next time I talk to that person.

Weed and/or alcohol slow everyone's brain down to the same speed, numb sensory hypersensitivity, lower social inhibitions and make it easier for the quieter types to speak up and insert their two cents.

That's not a recommendation, just a statement of fact.

I know all about alcohol. It does help with socializing with people. Weed doesn't seem to affect me that much. It just makes my body feel very relaxed. Other than that, I don't feel any different.

I definitely don't see alcohol as a solution. It does, however, make parties much less of a headache. On the rare occasions I do go to a loud party, I usually get wasted.

I don't think that it's a good idea anyway.