Just wanted to make an update on how everything is going since I have been away for a long time.

Well, its going great, actually.

During the middle of July I went to a great psych and got a diagnosis of ADHD. I did explain some social problems, but I tried not to delve too far into them. I did not explain that I had illicitly taken ritalin in the past.

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if you don't care about the medicine stuff, you can skip to the bottom
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She agreed to put me on ADHD medicine (adderall) and we agreed to work through social problems if they persisted. Although mildly dissapointed that she did not prescribe ritalin, I figured amphetamine was good enough since I had been anticipating amphetamine being given and had looked into ways to curb toxicity (and in that had found that toxicity was not as bad as I had first believed). After adjusting the dosages, we ended up with 20mg Extended Release racemic amphetamine and then moved to 30mg vyvanse since my insurance covered it. I responded well attention-wise to each of them.

With the amphetamine, I was able to write a program that needed to be written and get work done. I am now able to study perfectly fine, everything like the ritalin. The major difference is that it does not make me feel mellow like the ritalin. I consider this both good and bad. There are times when I would prefer the robotic effect of ritalin because it does a much better job of making SURE I don't get distracted, but I do prefer the behavioral effects of amphetamine in social situations.

In a social context, the main benefit of amphetamine that I have found so far is that it allows me to generate speech much easier in normal flow of conversation. It is something that is very difficult to explain, but it allows me to feel much more open or wanting to share. Not that it makes me talkative, lol. I am still probably quiet, but it is easier to talk.

It is really difficult to quantify the effects it has socially, but I would say that it makes me less of what I previously have considered avoidant schizoid, the feelings of secretiveness, etc.

Despite making speech easier, though, it did not help with the actual social anxiety in the same way that ritalin did. Again, none of the mellow feeling.

However, I have known that one drug does completely remove the anxiety... although it was mostly useless to me up until this point since it didn't actually encourage me to speak or remove that schizoid/avoidant barrier, phenibut.

I was concerned about long term use of the drug due to horrifying accounts of it on the internet wherein tolerance builds quickly and the user escalates the dosage to very high levels (3-10 times the level I take it).

But after reading actual studies, it appears that the therapeutic usage of the drug follows a similar pattern to that of amphetamine: the initial effects produce euphoria, but the euphoria is NOT the therapeutic effect. In fact, with phenibut, at least one study suggests that the therapeutic effect increases as tolerance builds to the sedative/euphoric effect.

The positive long term observed effect was increase in mood and memory IIRC. Theoretically, it should have some anti-schizotypy effects due to chronic GABA-B activation.

So, I added 500mg at first for About a week after the first few days of school. Then I upped the dosage to 1g because I was lacking any positives from 500mg. 1g was great. I have been on it for about 2 weeks now I think(with a gap of 2 days for one weekend), and there are no signs of it getting any less effective. If anything, it is becoming more effective. I no longer get any sedative effect from it (at least as I recognize phenibut's sedative effects from trying higher doses). If it does begin to become less effective, I will assume that this means the medicine has failed, and I am NOT going to raise the dosage that that I have found where it is effective even if it becomes ineffective in the future.

Unexpectedly, it seems to have also made my thoughts clearer. I suspect that this is similar to the relief of cognitive deficits from GABA-B underactivation in schizotypy.

Together, the two drugs, vyvanse and phenibut, make me very functional.

I can study well, math skills as a whole have increased, I seem to make fewer errors (while I am on the medicine, probably not right now), and I can socialize fine. In fact, I have been making friends, talking to people, all that good stuff.

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end of medicine stuff
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The future looks bright. Somehow, through all my crazy, I managed to mitigate it, ha ha. I think I accomplished my goal I set forth by joining these forums and journaling on here.

A lot of my posts are really cringe-inducing to me, but I have backed them up, ha ha. Just in case I ever want to read them and they are gone for some reason. It feels really silly reading back over them and hearing how I sounded and everything.

The girl (the one who I ate lunch with)... I still like her... more or less. But I have tried to distance myself as much from her as possible. It isn't as bad as it was in the past, and it doesn't occupy my thoughts constantly. I would imagine it will completely go away when I become infatuated with the next girl whoever she will be. But right now I am not really having a strong desire to date or anything. I want to get the next problem worked out.

Anyway, now there is a single problem in full focus that I am attempting to solve. The whole GID thing. I have mentioned it a few times on here, but it hasn't been a focus, and I don't really see these forums as being the main resource for that sort of thing. I would really rather keep that a separate aspect.

Sorry for the dry tone of this post. Don't take it as an effect of the medicine (most of it has worn off by now anyway). I am just about to go to bed and wanted to provide a quick summary of recent events. Not going to post anything about this on the AvPD forum because I don't want to encourage use of dangerous/illegal/addictive drugs, and that also leads me to say not to take this post as medical advice to anyone reading it.

Instead, realize that there is hope for being functional. Disorder that has followed me for my entire life is gone. Don't think it isn't possible. I am not "normal" and probably never will be. I am still my own kind of crazy/odd ( and so is probably everyone else in one way or another), but I function well and feel like I have overcome or gotten around the mental issues that have reduced my quality of life until recently. So just keep trying to get through it. I think there are two options: get better or die trying.

So, peace. Thanks to everyone who has helped me along the way I don't know what I would have done without you.