QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
guys can we talk about this completely insane thread where oxytocin nasal spray apparently makes an autistic guy not autistic temporarily? i’m gonna be fucked up about this for days
2022-01-24
here’s a fascinating document i discovered by accident yesterday. it’s a case report written by an autistic redditor, with all the expected writing mannerisms such status imparts, of what happened after he was given an oxytocin nasal spray prescription. https://archive.is/UgNfp
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
look at this fucking shit. just this whole paragraph about him having sex with his wife
2022-01-24
he describes subjective effects like wanting to stop posting and go stare at his wife, speaking at normal volume, & suddenly making vocalizations during sex for the first time, which he assumed was something neurotypicals had just seen in porn and imitated
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-24
“I noticed my son’s aspergers bigly today. I keep looking at him when I talk to him and he’s like “what” and I’m like “what what” and it’s really awkward. I can see what NTs see when they talk to us.”
the oxytocin *opens up a new way of seeing*
2022-01-24
another thing he describes is being able to look at his son, who is also autistic, and suddenly perceive how normal people have been perceiving himself his entire life.
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
“I saw some kind of social hierarchy in some men when they were talking together. Like one would have neutral body language and the other would have forward body language.”
2022-01-24
there’s no reason for anyone to fake this kind of post and the author is an authentic and active reddit account so i believe it is real. the descriptions of a jekyll-and-hyde type switch from normal family man to cringing autist at the end of the 3-4 hour dose window is amazing
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
“I also think this hormone may be impacting my PTSD because now I don’t get grossed out when my wife does certain things that my rapist did.”
2022-01-24
also extremely therapeutically relevant is that he describes serious improvements in his PTSD and rape trauma symptoms
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
“It’s almost as if my brain is reprogramming itself to give more association in memory to these experiences while on oxytocin and less association to those old traumatic experiences.”
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
“I just caught it by accident but it seems like you could make the trauma lessened by repeating the trigger while on oxytocin but have the trigger lead to a positive outcome instead of a bad one.”
‼️
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
“I had thought of something sad and my face automatically went into sad expressions and my eyes started going into tear mode. I also was unable to stop looking at my wife’s face for like an hour during our daily sexdown.”
DAILY SEXDOWN
2022-01-24
he starts spontaneously and completely involuntarily experiencing normal facial expressions. these are all things that many “high functioning” autistics have to overcome by sheer force of will. i had to learn through practice and study how to make ‘natural’ facial expressions
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
let me say something about why i find this so exciting: the fact that a single person was able to have this experience, even if it doesn’t end up replicating easily, shows that *the neural circuitry for all this stuff is not missing*
2022-01-25
even if oxytocin or w/e doesn’t pan out as a single-use miracle i could imagine it working well in combination with other things like MDMA and good therapy. it’s already fascinating to me to know that it could work at all; that means there’s no *missing neural circuitry*
QC @QiaochuYuan 2022-01-25
and that whatever is going on it’s more like some kind of low-level global setting gets tuned weirdly. since that setting is apparently affected by oxytocin, maybe it’s something like “degree to which other people and self seem like friendly humans” but who knows