squeeg

Anyone tried or had experiences with noopept? You can read about it here: http://examine.com/supplements/Noopept/

I’ve had some crappy days recently so I haven’t been around but I intend to return and contribute my thoughts and ideas. I’m sure we’ll be able to work things out.

Ah balls. This is a good point. There could be a number of people in this situation. That pretty much applies to me too. I have one good friend but she’s often busy and I don’t get to see her very often.

The standard advice for these things is to meet in a public space—we nailed that one—and bring a friend. So anyone who has hesitations about their safety for whatever reason could have someone they know come with them. Minimum number of people is a nice idea but would be a shame if we didn’t meet minimum and then had to cancel. Personally I’m confident enough to meet one person on my own. In the end anyone who doesn’t feel comfortable won’t attend no matter what we do. I agree this is a nice goal but may also be hard. One thing we could do is post photos of ourselves on here. Might help for people to know what we look like before turning up in person. Also makes it easier to find each other. I don’t know if some people might be uncomfortable posting their picture on here and might prefer only to share within private group of serious possible attendees. Hm, sorry if creating more questions than answers with that one. Another thought: some kind of structure to the meetup might also help people feel more comfortable. Unstructured getting-to-know-you situations can be particularly difficult for aspies. I was thinking it might be nice to have a whole bunch of silly questions like What is the strangest item of clothing you own? If you were a pizza what kind of pizza would you be? And people could answer as many or few of these questions in advance on paper and then read out as many or few as they like. If people prefer to say nothing that would be fine too. Maybe people could bring things that they like or made and could talk about them. Perhaps we could do some simple games. Part of ASD? A lot of us don’t feel much sense of community and so don’t value it. I can be like that sometimes but something changed in me a while ago and now I want to reach out a lot more. Do you think some ground rules might also be useful like the same ones used to keep this forum a civil place? Not sure if creating rules might seem off-putting and imposing or comforting and reassuring. I think if we had any rules one of the rules should be to be nice about anyone who breaks them cause, you know, they probably don’t mean to and just screwed up. I think it is really great you started this idea Laddo and I’m very enthusiastic about it. I can see there being quite a few potential issues with making this work but I don’t think you should give up on the idea without a fight as the rewards for getting it right could be very great. Persistence is key! Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. Another thought maybe this is actually something you can’t organize in a general way i.e. not one size fits all and instead you will actually have to think about how you can best integrate each individual who wants to attend and be mindful to their specific needs. What I’m saying here is that maybe this is perfectly possible but just requires a bit more effort and commitment than it would do for NTs.

I’m in the south east and I’m up for a meet up. I’m recently diagnosed. So that’s 3 of us now?

One thing that flawed study on gluten and casein free diet does prove is that you have to be strict on it for a long time for it to work. My belief is that the peptides from gluten and casein that disrupt brain function are only removed very slowly so if you are putting more in at any point you set that process back significantly. There's no casein in eggs so I'm eating plenty of eggs but I'm certainly not eating any cheese. Where do you go to get those?

Came back here to say this. I've been off gluten and casein for 6 weeks now and noticed definite improvements. Since I was having a diet heavy in gluten and casein I've seen a change from being near useless to now functioning pretty well. There's a really definitive study on this diet that says it doesn't work but the whole study is completely ill-founded because none of the kids on it are actually gluten and casein free for any longer than 4 weeks and improvements in other studies are shown to build slowly over course of a year. I'm seeing a nutritional therapist soon to try to heal my leaky gut and find other food intolerances. I also found I had candida overgrowth and have been trying to kill that off with coconut oil and one dose of thrush medication. There's also some stuff saying autistics are vitamin B12 deficient and need to have injections for it.

Finally managed to track down a PDF I read on 2e that’s pretty good at describing the issues. I’d like to draw attention to this part: You can read the whole thing here. I’d probably be the 2nd category.

When you say "it" are you referring to ASD/Aspergers? Because only a very small minority of those with ASD/Aspergers would qualify as 2e although AFAIK there’s no official line for what qualifies as 2e or not. If you are 2e you should have something that you are really good at such as maths or musical skills. Although your ability could be somewhat hidden due to learning difficulties that overlay. Not quite sure what mind is some kind of conceptual reasoning / ability to find insights. Although I don’t really know if I qualify but I did email someone who runs a 2e school in America and he agreed I "fit the profile". I don’t actually like the term very much personally because on first impression it sound like you think you are really really awesome. I would prefer gifted and handicapped or something like that. Even then I’m not sure about the word gifted because I certainly don’t feel gifted. My life has been . I am good at coming up with insights but I don’t really remember them so I can’t integrate them together very well which makes the whole thing kind of pointless. I’m long term unemployed. You can absolutely have social difficulties and have a marked strength. I’m like that, I think. Also just because you fit a label doesn’t suddenly change your life although it might change what you think is possible. For me I lived most of my life thinking I was very clever and then not understanding why I struggled so much. When I got test results showing my appalling processing speed my response to that was to give up my plans to start a business and enroll on an art course which I then went on to fail and drop out of.

Hey dotmarsdotcom. Just had a look at the situation here. Are you sure you weren’t trying to reassure OP (Immortal Sin) that it didn’t matter what he did in college on the basis that he was dropping out early? Because it isn’t completely clear whether OP is finishing a course successfully aged 20 or dropping out for some reason.

Google it. There’s quite a bit about it. Are you saying you think you might be 2e?

Thank you for that Special Talent. Incidentally I just read on Wikipedia that you can get vision therapy to help with Irlen to make it so that you see well without any colors. That 4th centile score on processing speed worked out at IQ 74. Overall IQ was 111 but my therapist explained that number is basically useless as a metric of my ability because my intelligence is much more polarized.

I like Foo Fighters. Used to listen to them a lot. The Colour and Shape was the first album I bought.

I agree with Shnoing. You have to be very delicate and patient and try to show her things she can’t deny rather than having to face the scary notion of being autistic. For instance you could try to get her to see things about that might be related to Aspergers/ASD but you don’t have to tell her that they are. Hypersensitivities are probably a good start. You could just make her aware that other people don’t have the same experiences that she is. I’d also explain a bit more about labeling. Labeling is a form of judgement and judgement can be both cruel and kind. It is cruel when it is used to limit, say that you cannot do things, and that you must be something other than yourself. On the other hand it can also be used to better understand, relate, and appreciate an individual. The difference is in the accuracy and rigidity of the judgement meaning the more accurate a label is for a person the more beneficial it will be to accept it (provided other people also have an accurate understanding of the label). Anyway forget about labels for the time being. Focus on a greater understanding and awareness of her as a person. Over time a label may become a useful part of that.

Hi there, I’m currently waiting for an ASD diagnosis on the NHS. I’m 28 and living with my parents living off savings as I’m unemployed and neither of my parents work and live off pensions. My whole life has been pretty joyless and unsuccessful so far. In 2011 I was assessed with Weschler Adult Intelligence Scales and found to have: * Verbal Comprehension: 96th centile * Processing Speed: 4th centile, yes, 4th * Perceptual Reasoning: 77th centile In the US the have this term for people like me 2e, which stands for twice exceptional meaning presence of marked strengths as well as disabilities. I’m not sure I really like the term though because I don’t feel like there’s anything all that great about being the way I am: just very frustrating and confusing. I’ve been seeing a psychologist privately for counseling and support who has reasonable working knowledge of learning difficulties and is going more deeply into an autism speciality. She is brilliant and very supportive and is very generous with her time and help. Anyway I believe I have a range of overlapping disabilities of which autism is a part (dyslexia and ADD are also possibilities). What I want to do is do some detailed research into conditions and the treatments available on the market, with a very critical eye, to see if I can make some improvements to my processing speed and also my memory which is very bad. So far I’ve had treatment for dyspraxia with one organization which was about 50% effective and I’ve also been doing brain training from BrainHQ which made some things better and others worse! Clearly there are things out there that do stuff so I am encouraged by that and of the research I’ve done there are loads of different treatments available but it has to be done carefully with all the appropriate information and facts and you can’t really trust the providers of the treatments. The problem I have is that I can‘t really do the research myself because I’m too slow, forgetful, and I get stuck. I have a little bit of money so I’ve put some ads on job sites to try to find someone who would help me with the research. Guess I’m posting here to see if anyone else has tried to do this sort of thing before or if anyone has any ideas where I might be able to find someone to help me with this research or any general thoughts. Anything will be appreciated.