I attract such messed up people

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i mean:

Alcoholics
Druggies
Ex dealers
People who were abused etc

I go into social situations eager but unable to see peoples nature, what they are like etc
Its like my mum could see who she needs stay away from and uses that to navigate socially while i dont.

Im in supported accomodation and its understandable that there are druggies , alcoholics here given how soft organisations are on them. These types of people are highly vulnerable to becomming homeless so are treated gently in contrast to how they were evicted in the past.

When i try and make friends in person or via internet i am attracted to/attract the wrong sort.

I thought once: this guy seems nice so i talked to him turns out he goes to narc anonymous a recovery group for cocaine etc.

Recently i made a friend, turns out she is a borderline alcoholic with liver problems and a history of lifelong abuse.

Friend i got close to before was a bad influence and dragged me into smoking cannabis again.

Another friend i made was an ex dealer and mugger.

Im trying to stay away from people involved in drugs for my own well being same for alcoholics but they just keep appearing in my life.

My biological father was an alcoholic and smoked pot, his mum , my grandma was an alcoholic as well and ive had drinking and cannabis problems but im trying put it and keep it in my past.

Anyone else find this ? They attract wrong people?

Where are you going to meet people?

Former housemates, people i talk to randomly while waiting for the bus, neighbours in supported accomodation, friendships from a support group, even a girl off tinder who became a friend. few of my friends dont have any issues like those listed...

I wonder if i seek these people out cause of shared experiences or backgrounds...

I attract some of them too, and I am friends with a couple of them for being fun/interesting/whatever people. I say unless their problem is affecting your friendship or your own well-being don't worry about it. And you'll meet various types of people wherever you go.

Also, a lot of it is shared experiences, because most of my friends are artists. A lot of them have mental illnesses and things like that, and I can identify with that. I don't expect to meet a perfect human, and it's okay. We're all inherently flawed.

I find over time associating with alcoholics or druggies means you normalise their behaviour and are influenced by it. Its a subtle thing barely noticeable but over time you might think such behaviours are less objectionable which in turn affects your choices and decision making process.

For instance the alcoholic who is my neighbour had an alcoholic father and used to hang out with homeless people with drinking problems and drink with them...conincidence he learnt to deal with things through drink? I think this is unlikely...

An interesting video on how people affect you
https://youtu.be/OziF6lqIqWg

I find druggies try and drag you into their behaviour by influencing your views and acceptance of various drugs.
For instance by staying away from people who smoke cannabis ive been able to stay clean. When i was in the midst of them i kept relapsing.

People who have been abused...thats tricky as i think i seek them out as they are "damsels in distress" and i replay a pattern from my childhood of helping them. I dont know if this is unhealthy or not just it makes me feel so bad when i hear thei stories.

Im not saying any of these people are horrible or de humanising them. I just find they srent the healthiest people for me to hang out with

Ps: yeah people with mentalhealth issues feel like my peers

I just want to say that you're not the problem. I've had to stop being friends with many people because they kept dragging me back into their messy lifestyles. From drugs, to abuse to being abusive to sex because the worst thing about being friends with them is that they wanted my unending sympathy and then they wanted me to affirm their lifestyle, which eventually led to me accepting and conforming and when I didn't confirm in some way I was battling moral dilemmas in my mind all the time. I would get depressed because I felt like they were sapping me of my energy - I was doing all these things, using all these unhealthy coping mechanisms because I'd surrounded myself with them.

There's nothing wrong with having gone through the above but there is everything wrong with normalising their behaviour, especially if they're still addicted. Because addicts will try and influence others around them to either join them or approve of their behaviour.

I recently became friends with a girl who has an addiction and her impact on my life was pretty obvious, even though I didn't join in her behaviour and of course she's in complete denial that she has a problem. These things will affect you especially if you don't keep such people at arms length.

It's taken me a while to get used to understanding healthy boundaries but once you understand that it gets easier to stay away from such people, no matter how much you relate to them

This is quite normal, you need to filter through many people to find the few good ones.

Let's make sure that we don't do to others what we often complain is done to us.

I do the exact same thing, only mine are the "reverse" in a sense. I attract the worst of the worst manipulators, liars, con-people, pretty much all the "bad" ones. They take advantage as much as they possibly can, whenever they are around me, using a slur of techniques that I have gotten good at identifying. They are very good at blurring the lines between their freedom to express a negative view to me and actually damaging me and my property.

I am a messed up person, not as much as I used to be but it doesn't just disappear.

One of my friends is dead because he was a homeless person who used train hopping as a means of transportation and he died doing that, my other friend is in prison for something rather complicated due to someone with malicious intents exaggerating some things. Basically he's likely to be stuck with a sex offense, but he didn't really do anything wrong. I guess people with money can over-exaggerate reports to the police to get people in trouble without getting investigated themselves.

Yep. I made a really toxic friend at around age 19-22. Don’t get me wrong, she has redeeming qualities. But I felt used and attacked by her. I felt like I was constantly supporting her. I am also not even sure if we really share any interests? Her only interests seems to be herself, drinking, living in emotional despair, and continuing to behave destructively. I don’t dislike her, but I don’t want to be around that kind of behavior - and I definitely don’t want to normalize it.

But yes, I have attracted toxic people like this. Now that I’m older and have a better sense of my identity, I’m learning to set boundaries.

Back when I was working on research (I’m an autism researcher, not currently working on anything), another researcher and I noticed that aspies seem to be the target of user types.

I have seen you guys refer to them as toxic people, as narcissists, or as sociopaths, but generally it seems to be a person who has good “autdar” or “aspdar” and will try to trick the autistic person into some kind of social situation (friendship, relationship, whatever) with the goal of exploiting them. This could be as minor as just getting you to drive them around or dumping their emotions on you, or it could be getting you to pay for them, or pressuring you into sex. Autistic people seem to pretty much universally learn (the hard way) to recognize this behavior and cut off the person, but it varies on how long it takes. Sometimes people seem to get wise to it in their teens, but sometimes it takes a person into their elderly years to recognize the pattern and start protecting themselves.

I found it profoundly interesting. There has been some stuff written about user types, but as of last year I couldn’t find anything about a target population (such as autistics) adapting to the user and how they deal with them defensively and proactively.

If you have a network of "good" types of people, you are less vulnerable to be sucked into the lifestyle of someone who wants to use you. You might even be able to use the "good" people (people you trust) to help you vet any new contacts - saying for instance, "What do you think of Mike? Is he someone it would be okay to date, do you think?" or "Katharine seems like she's always using me - is that just my imagination, or do you see it, too?"