Avoidant PD vs. AS

I have a few official diagnoses.  I have chronic depression, generalized anxiety disorder, attention deficit and avoidant personality disorder.  The only one I really take issue with is the avoidant pd.  The social manifestations of the disorder definitely fit me, except that I've had the social manifestations of it since I can remember...since I was really little.  Before we started moving all the time and before any trauma I experienced happened.  I think by definition, personality disorders can only be applied to adults, or at least adolescents.  And Asperger's shows up early in childhood.

I was always very shy and timid.  I've always been afraid of people and of "putting myself out there".  I'm not sure if this is because I have/had a fear of rejection or if I have/had a fear of rejection because of countless failed attempts at "putting myself out there".  I was always considered weird by my peers...always.  Even before I really understood that they were considering me as anything but a regular kid.  After I realized that the others thought me odd, I started using my oddities to get attention, because that's the only way I knew how to get my peers to pay attention to me.  Thankfully I moved about every nine months, or I think some serious ostracizing might have occurred.  Well, a different sort of ostracizing then what may have happened.  I was ostracized but that was because I was constantly a new kid, and unfamiliar, not because I was seen as incredibly odd (which I think may have happened if the kids at their respective school might have had more time to spend with me--I was just regarded as quirky, weird and quiet).

Both conditions say that there's a lack of eye-contact, the want to spend a lot of time alone (though avoidants isolate in a different way than I think I do...I just don't want to be around people but I interact with people online and stuff, just not in person that much). And it's not that I'm asocial.  I actually go through times when I'm really social and I really long to connect, on some level even if superficial, with other people.  I usually have to be drinking alcohol to do this though.  And I don't form lasting friendships, I basically think I'm kind of using people on a very shallow level to meet some sort of "human-connection quota" that I've failed to meet in months prior.

The people I form actual connections with are few and far between.  I've recently made some new friends...but after hanging out with these people for a few months, I'm still not sure if I've made good connections, which probably means that I haven't.  I feel kinda bad about that, but if it's not going to happen, it's not going to happen.  I may never feel comfortable around these people.  When I meet someone that I "get" or that I feel like I already know, it's usually instant.  There's no pussyfooting around it.  In the past ten years, I've met maybe 5 people like this.

I do have the added fun of having obsessive interests, though my interests seem to rotate around a lot.  I've been obsessively interested in time travel since I was a little kid.  And pseudoscience. :)

I don't know.  I know that whatever I "am" is just a label...but goddammit, I like things to be ordered and categorized. Including myself, I guess.  I'll figure it out some day.

eye contact

I went out to coffee with a new friend tonight that I like.  Because she's cool and I want her to like me, I've been trying to remind myself to make eye contact occasionally.  I make eye contact with people I've known for a long time but not usually with new friends.  Anyway, I've noticed that when I'm listening to something she's saying, and trying to make eye contact at the same time, I stop thinking and listening completely.  I missed a few things she said tonight because they didn't anywhere near register with my brain.  I was concentrating so much on making "normal" seeming eye contact that I couldn't focus on anything else.  And I didn't want to ask her what she said, because since I was making eye contact, I figured she thought I was listening.

Maybe I'm overly aware of it because she's a woman and attractive.  I'm going to try to start making eye contact with other people I don't know and see if the same thing happens.

Week One

The week of taking the Piracetam has gone nicely.  I suppose it's been a bit more than a week though.

Things I have noticed so far:

General comprehension has improved. 
Visual learning has improved.
Auditory sensitivity has become more acute.
Concentration has improved a bit.
I get kind of aroused shortly after taking it. 
My memory has improved.

The only bad thing that I've noticed is the way sound affects me.  This may be bad news for someone who is very sensitive to sound, but everyone works differently and it may not affect that sense in someone else.  But yeah, sounds are definitely more acute.  I hate the sound of squeaky, wet shoes on hard floors.  It makes me shudder and last night, somebody on the bus kept making the terrible sound and it took everything in me not to have a meltdown and say something rude to them.  I was grinding my teeth the whole time.  It was horrible.

The benefits of Piracetam are supposed to really shine after the first week.  Last night, I was messing around with my Rubik's Cube and found that it was much easier to visualize the groups of squares and where they were and where they needed to be moved to.  It took me a quick minute to get the green side and align the edges of colors of the other faces.  It was much easier.  So I think my visual-spatial and abstract reasoning have improved some.

I haven't noticed any social aspects.  I'd read that in some people it makes them less anxious and more sociable, but not me, so far.

Other than what's mentioned, that's about it.

I am done with the "attack dose" and am now taking 1000 mg 3 times a day.  Orange juice is the best vehicle, as its bitterness covers up the Piracetam's bitterness pretty well.  I am also supplementing with Choline. 

interesting side effect

I am not quite sure how to say this without being blunt:  the piracetam seems to make me...um, horny.  That's interesting.

things clicking, aha! moments

I wasn't going to write anything about the Piracetam, I was going to wait until I'd been taking it for a week.  I just want to mention this that I noticed:

I have a Trigonometry class from 8:00 to 9:30 pm every Monday and Wednesday night.  We're doing the unit circle right now, and for the past two days I have been really frustrated and confused...there's something about diagrams and picture instructions that really overload my senses.  I've just realized that this is probably why I get overwhelmed in class sometimes.  Pictures stress me out, which is weird because I love art and I love to draw.  I suppose when it gets mechanical though, it is different. 

Long story short, I was sitting in class, taking notes and keeping up just fine.  Perhaps this is because of my previous exposure to the unit circle, but something clicked in my head tonight and I was able to think about it more abstractly...I understand it now.  I had been doing ok on tests and quizzes, but I was just regurgitating information and pictures from the book that had been committed to memory.  I wasn't understanding the material.  It was like I was able to come up from the sin x and cos x problems from behind, seeing all the other angles (heh, angles.  get it? math?).  It was pretty amazing.  There was more clarity to my thought process.

Of course, this could be attributed to the placebo effect.  But I was feeling pretty doubtful yesterday, and doubtful up until tonight.  I don't think the Piracetam was a waste of money.  Also, I haven't been yawning as much.  I have to compulsively yawn because of the Wellbutrin.  I guess it's one of the side effects...so I yawn a lot.  Probably at least once every 5-10 minutes, all day.  It's weird...I am wondering if it is in response to the increase of oxygen being used by my brain.

That's all I've noted so far.  I may or may not post about things when I notice them.  I haven't decided.  I am going to try not to make lots of smaller posts and instead aim for longer, more significant posts with this blog.

Also I wanted to mention that for practical purposes, even though I have no actual diagnosis, assume I have Asperger's.  It's just easier than always adding in that I don't have an official diagnosis yet.  Anyway, I'm pretty sure I have it.

Mozart and the Whale

I watched "Mozart and the Whale" last night about two aspies that fall in love.  It was really good.  The characters were depicted positively and it was touching.  I found myself relating to it in several ways...the biggest thing I noticed though, is that the way the main male character walks, his odd gait, is almost exactly identical to mine.  I have been teased about this before, even by girlfriends.  Sometimes it is more pronounced, like when I am uncomfortable and nervous.  I thought that was funny.

He is a savant, which I don't really relate to.  I am pretty run of the mill when it comes to numbers and stuff, I just like them a lot.  I don't think I have any special talents.  I related, on some level, to the math stuff though.  He also had a lot of exotic animals, which is a personal dream of mine.  I'm getting a bearded dragon soon, for sure.  I don't like birds though, because they are loud.  I also related to a lot of the compulsions that he had...like calling over and over and over.  I control that, mostly, and I prefer email to the telephone.  And the general awkwardness of the guy, not so much the girl, really drew me in and I found that in scenes that were particularly anxiety-inducing for the characters, I was also getting really anxious. Anxious enough so that I started unconsiously picking at the sides of my thumbs (one of the ways I stim) and stiffening up quite a bit.

 I highly recommend the movie.

I'm not going to report on Piracetam day 2.  I will report after I have been taking it for a week.

Piracetam, Day One

I got my shipment of Piracetam in the mail today. I am going to document any benefits or other effects I notice as a result of ingesting it.

Piracetam is a supplement that is used to improve cognition and cardiovascular health. It seems to be very powerful and is even considered a drug only available by prescription in some countries. It comes either in capsules or in its bulk form, as a fine white powder (as a result of my past encounters with drugs, it looks like cheap cocaine that's been cut a lot.) I got the bulk sort. It works by increasing blood flow and oxygen consumption to the brain and shows low toxicity. It is neither a depressant nor is it a stimulant. It is hypothesized to act on ion channels or carriers, increasing neuron excitability. Piracetam is said to have a positive effect on learning and memory functions. On the cellular level, the increased oxygen consumption by the brain affects ATP metabolism. Piracetam increases the production of cytochrome b5, an electron transport hemoprotein that is part of the electron transport function in mitochondria. It increases the permeability of mitochondria of some intermediaries of the Krebs cycle. In short, it increases communication and efficiency at a cellular level as well as at a more tangible, human experience level.


Piracetam has been used in elderly patients with dementia, and has been shown to increase alertness and perception of reality. It has also had beneficial effects on patients with chronic alcoholism, repairing the brain that has been damaged by extensive drinking. It has been used on patients with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, and has been found to be helpful as a treatment. There have not been many studies on its effects on people with normal cognitive abilities. And only several studies on people with Asperger's Syndrome (my interest in experimenting with Piracetam), however, I could not find these studies myself.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam (I know, it's Wikipedia...but I'm too lazy to go find all the scholarly articles that I'd hunted down online.)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f1j6p5j4t0671p72/fulltext.pdf


I ingested my first 3 g dose of the Piracetam this morning. This is a large dose, to be taken twice a day for the first week before tapering down to a smaller dose of 4 g or fewer total grams in a day.

I have had pretty significant insomnia lately, so my experience might be clouded by my general tiredness. My experience thus far has that I do have a noted increase in alertness, though not that much. Again, this may be because of my exhaustion. I am interested in the effect on me when I am not sleep deprived. The very first thing I noticed about the Piracetam, is that it has just about the worst taste ever. Very, very, very bitter. I mixed it with some very sugary soda and it wasn't too terrible that way, but when I took my second dose a little bit ago, I experimented with putting it in yogurt. That was a bad idea and I will not be doing that again. I plan on incorporating it into fruit and green vegetable smoothies in the morning very soon. (I have to get a blender!) I hope that putting it in a larger amount of food/drink to be ingested will disperse the terrible flavor a bit.

Piracetam's effects are said to be maximized by also ingesting choline citrate, which is easily found at a nutrition store. Lecithin contains choline and I will be getting some in the next few days to add to the regimen.

As an afterthought, I should add that one shouldn't drink alcohol when taking Piracetam.  Since there is increased blood flow to the brain, it would follow that more blood alcohol would get to the brain as well.  

Day one: 3 g at 10:00 am, 3 g at 5:00 pm