I've had a similar experience. It's hard sometimes for me to reflect on all the wasted time, but what's gone is gone. I do my best to try not to ruin today thinking about yesterday.

Just keep putting yourself out there, focusing on what you do have, and taking it day by day friend.

The opportunity cost is something I've never thought of before. Thank you for that insight because it has made me start thinking about things I'm doing that, while not necessarily harmful, may be coming at the expense of things I'll regret deferring when I'm older.

Congratulations for putting that behind you. If you were raised with church as part of your life, you may actually have an advantage when it comes to developing friends at this point in your life. I've seen some strong atheists say that they envy the way churches can help one create strong friendships and community. That isn't to say it isn't still a lot of work on your part, but there may be a lot of opportunities if you can find a good church community to participate in.

You will find your people. You looked underneath a stone not many people turn over.

I don't have such a drug story, but I do feel like an alien often. I tend to only be capable of socializing with people who deeply align with my goals and ambitions. Those being: calisthenics, software, fitness, coding, cooking, being organized, etc.

I don't give myself a hard time for seeking a 'strata' of people, etc.

Be selective. Find the people only you want. Be an alien.

Fellow alien here. Agree with Andre. Just embrace who you are and give it time. You've got a lot of life left to live and plenty of time to find fellow aliens to hang with.

Yeah, similar but not so bad. Spent a lot of nights and weekends with drinks and friends. Now I'm finding we're not so well connected if we're not all drunk and you can't keep on like that too long without great cost. Too many of my friends have slipped into alcoholism or major health issues.

I'm in a city so there are options, but figuring out the social world without booze is a lot.

Yeah I used to go out a lot, even alone. Realized I was just spending money, beating the hell of my liver and occasionally talking to a crazy person.

It’s never too late. I consider myself very isolated and introverted, but over the years collected a small circle of friends who accept me for who I am and also have gone through similar things. I have an old coworker, a couple of friends from the gym, and someone I met at 35 that may become my best friend. I ask I don’t say this to brag but that just because you missed out before does not mean you have to stay lonely.

Just be open, put yourself out there, be polite to everyone but respect your own boundaries, and don’t take it personally if things don’t pan out right away. A lot of my close relationships are ones that were background characters for a long time too , but randomly we were brought back together. There’s no template to life and it’s poison to compare yourself to others. Just start taking control of what you want your life to be like and I promise it is a skill like anything else, you just gotta practice even if you fall

i feel like an alien too but without the drug part (maybe the internet). Not hooked on anything yet still unable to pursue meaningful relationships outside the preexisting few I have left. Lately I stopped expressing ideas to people, since most of them are just rejected or get swallowed up by the void. All i'm trying to say is that there *might* be something more to the social part.

You gotta keep trying. Also could be you’re in the midst of a social circle that isn’t empathetic or just doesn’t click. I had to move and explore until I found people I connected with

Promise you that it is never too late. Speaking from experience. You've accomplished more than you realize. Stay straightened out and get out there.

Regarding social skills, I feel like I can relate to how you describe your situation. I was extremely socially anxious when I was younger and basically avoided any social interactions I could. Throughout highschool and college I never had any friends to speak of or dated. I mostly shut myself away with video games and other solitary interests.

I moved to a new city away from my family when I was 27 and that was when I finally pushed myself to start changing things as the loneliness really hit me. I started going to meetup events and work lunches with people. I started reading up on social skills and trying my hand at dating. Roughly 5 years since then I've actually done pretty well for myself, made some good friends, had some good experiences with dating, and I'm rather happy with how things have shaped out. I'm still kind of awkward socially but gotten more comfortable with putting myself out there anyway and found that a lot of people don't really mind.

Just chiming in to say how proud I am of you, as I’m went and still going though something similar. Its scary and hard and you get burned a lot but I wouldn’t trade the friends I made and the relationships I’ve invested in since becoming more in touch and open, including my family, are my absolute proudest accomplishments

I am of the opinion that people who have gone though this are more empathetic caring people

Since I'm getting out and working on something similar right now - is there anything(s) you'd recommend in particular for the reading part of learning?

> I started reading up on social skills

Could you recommend some of the resources you read to learn social skills? I'm currently fighting the same fight you did, and maybe it could help.

There are a lot of people like you. Adults looking for friends out of college or work. Just expanding the social circle, hanging out online and if possible IRL at times.

I suggest joining communities for topics that interest you, for starters. You're likely to meet some like minded people and make a few a friends. This happened for me every time I tried a new hobby.

Hi there, you're kind of me but in reverse. Raised Christian, initially very socially awkward as a kid and even in high school, it wasnt until my junior year in college that i really opened up and now that i'm "established" professionally and socially, I've been looking into dipping my toes into the world of psychedelics.

I'd love to chat more if you're interested. You can find my email in my profile.

Do you have snapchat? I'd have to create an email that doesn't dox me.

Replace drug use with I’ll-fated literary projects, and I am much the same.

Fwiw it's hard to make friends for everybody after college life

+1

Not in my experience. You just need to belong to a group outside of work. It might be a church, a volunteer group, a community group, whatever. I have so many friends from outside of work groups.

For me, hockey was the biggest help.

I met many friends through having season tickets for my local NHL team, met friends playing adult "beer league" hockey, met friends traveling for away games in different cities, and I even have friends internationally whom I've never met in person but still remain in contact with.

Me too, mostly. At least... in a lot of ways. It's weird having lived a whole life and done a bunch of crazy shit and then listening to people and realizing how fucking droll most of their lives are even at 30, how narrow are their experiences, even the ones that are "woke". I find it hard to relate. I even find myself condescending sometimes.

But nobody knows how to meet people, nobody has some magic playbook. You've got to press, and you've got to deal with rejections, because most people are too afraid.

Yeah I feel that. When I was into the shit, I thought it made me interesting. Now though, I feel like its mostly lame, and maybe a bit embarrassing.

I would love to hear your list of 40 drugs because I did a lot of them in my 20s but I still couldn’t name that many. My list would be nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, LSD, shrooms, ecstasy, adderall, oxy, dmt, 2cb, tramadol, percocet, ayahuasca and mescaline. Other than that the only things I can think of is heroin, crack and meth. That’s only 18.

weed, oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, tramadol, kratom, lorezepam, klonazolam, alprazolam, etizolam, phenibut, coke, amphetamine, 3-fma, 4-FA, ethylphenidate, hexen, NEP, benzedrine, 5-MAPB, 6-APB, 4-aco-dmt, ETH-lad, AL-lad, LSD, DMT, 5-meo-mipt, deschloroketamine, dextromethorphan, 4-HO-met, LSA (morning glory), benedryl...

That's just from memory. I know there's some ketamine and psilocybin derivatives I'm missing there. I also counted alcohol, psuedophedrine, ephedrine, nicotine, and caffeine.

The list of "designer" drugs is endless. There are hundreds out there and more discovered each day.

If you're interested in learning more about this sort of thing lookup Alexander Shulgin. He wrote some books documenting his experience as a chemist synthesizing novel psychedelics. Many of these have since seen mass production in china and distribution in the western world. For a while there you could just straight up buy most that shit from the internet - not even the dark net.

(Please ignore my following questions if they make you uncomfortable or you find them offensive)

1. What was your favorite drug you ever tried?

2. What was your least favorite drugs you ever tried?

3. What was your best combination of substances?

4. Do you feel like any of your drug usage has affected your cognition in anyway?

5. Do you ever miss it?

I only ask these questions out of pure curiosity, and I do no intend to change behaviors with the information that you may provide -- as in, I am not going to try new substances depending on your answers. I personally use Cannabis, and I feel like I have definitely noticed both benefits and harm from it. There are no free lunches after all.

Anyway, as some random Internet stranger, I am proud of you, and I hope you are proud of yourself for how far you have come. It seems like you went to a version of Hell and came back, and that is not something many can say. I wish you the all best.

1) Good cocaine is hard to beat. 3-HO-PCE is the craziest I've done. Extremely powerful drug. You know the wolf of wall street scene where they OD on quaaludes? It was like that + psychedelia + constant distortion of time and space perception.

2) Plenty of real shitty ones. You eat the cotton out of a benzedrine inhaler and it gives you an amphetamine type high. constricts your blood vessels, makes you sweat bullets, and the taste and smell of it emanates from every inch of your body. Its awful. 3-FMA was awful as well. 0 euphoria or otherwise positive effects but was absolutely fucking wired for like 3 days. Hexen and other cathinone derivatives absolutely such. speedy high for 1 hour and then you feel like shit and redosing only helps like 50% so by the end of the day you're a shell of a person.

3) In general psychedelics + dissociatives was a favorite: Deschloroketamine + a synthetic tryptamine or phenthylamine. low dose benedryl and low dose cough syrup was crazy. Acid and cocaine was awesome, and one of the only experiences which I don't really regret at all. I don't wish, or feel the need, to replicate it though.

4) Yes, but not in the typical way people think - e.g. its not like I feel less intelligent or clearheaded. instead, the biggest effect is that I've basically hijacked my reward system. I suppose you could call it anhedonia, but not to a clinically significant degree. Additionally, I feel like I've made connections in my brain that were not previously there. Like sometimes seeing certain patterns or hearing certain music will briefly remind me of a feeling I had at some point while high. It's hard to explain, its not like a "flashback", but more like a traumatic stress response? its very uncomfortable, but its brief. Also my night vision is significantly worse.

5) No. When I think back to the type of shit I got up to all I feel is regret and disgust. I don't remember times that I was high fondly. And the thought of doing it again is repellent to me. A while back, a friend of mine got their hands on Ketamine, which I never got to try while I was in my hay day. I thought, what the hell, I'll cross it off the list. I did a dose of it and immediately regretted it. I just kept thinking "what the fuck is the point of this?" gave the rest of it away.

Just as a disclaimer - a lot of the shit I mentioned here are designer drugs. These have very little history of human consumption and as such are inherently very unsafe, because long term effects cannot be evaluated. I expect I will have some health complications later in life as a result. I cannot stress enough that doing this shit is a bad idea. I know you said you didn't plan to try anything, but to any other reader. Really. Stay away. Not worth it.