I think socializing changed my brain chemistry

Off rip: I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm talking off my ass. I'm probably wrong in many ways. But... I have been hearing people talk about their "brain chemistry", especially in the context of depression and anti-depressants. And I am not nor have I been depressed, but that sentence -- "brain chemistry" -- sounds relatable to me.

So, hello, I have never been tested for autism or ADHD, I totally might not have either, but I do relate with both. I feel a lot of people relate to various things with ADHD, maybe I do more than normal, maybe not, idk. I certainly relate a lot to many autistic behaviors. I do have some of them, but more often than not I just very deeply "get" why an autistic behavior is the way it is, and the only reason I don't do it is because I have rationally understood that it is somehow going to decrease my overall happiness.

This can be in many ways, big and small (most small), but really almost always it's socializing. Socializing is good. I think it makes my overall happiness increase in so many ways. Even if you don't "like people" (I get it, trust me), it's useful because you generally live in a society (insert joke haha very funny). You're going to have coworkers, or you're going to have to talk to somebody at the bank, or the cashier, or ask for help or so many other things.

My past self would try to disagree but unless you can make a damn thorough argument as to why socializing is good and then do a counterargument to that, I'm afraid to tell you (that is, my past self), that you're the one missing something. It's kind of obvious in retrospect that any kind of analysis that concludes that "socializing isn't good, actually" generally crumbles when presented with the real world.

When I was about 14 or 15 I sort of realized this. I don't know exactly how, but I did. In fact, I might have realized before, but I never acted on it because it's just so hard. You have a lifetime of momentum of being a certain type of person and that's hard to change. So, when faced with outside friction to socialize more and better, and internal friction because I didn't like it... of course I didn't do anything about it. And probably since it's so hard to change, you fall into the confirmation bias and start rationalizing that socializing is unnecessary.

But that changed when I was 15. I was born August 2004, so August 2004 + 15 means I was 15 from August 2019 to 2020. Indeed, it was quarantine.

I'm so grateful for quarantine. Of course if I could make it to not have happened I would, for the world. It was very bad for many many people, and I am acutely aware of that. But I don't think it's bad to admit that for me it was quite literally a turning point in my life (in a good sense). It might be the single point in time where I can point to and say "that's when I became me". That will change as I get older surely, but it's been going strong for 5 years. To some extent I felt that was my exit from puberty and the moment when I started being comfortable with myself again (in a certain sense of the phrase).

And yes, it was also the moment when I stopped being constantly a nervous and awkward wreck and started being able to incorporate into society more properly.

The thing is that when I started to socialize I... started to not have the same "discipline". In the beforetimes, I could easily just say "I will put an alarm for 7AM and get up even if I don't want to", and I did! I put the alarm, I woke up, I didn't really want to get up but I just shrugged it off and did it anyways. In the aftertimes, I put the alarm, I woke up, I didn't want to wake up and I just... stayed in bed? And afterwards I wondered why did I do that, I felt bad in many ways but the next day I would do the same.

Of course, this isn't even close to depression, but the characteristic of not doing something that you want to do, that you know it will make you happier (or that it will make feel worse if you don't) does seem pretty depression-ish to me. Is it not? The waking up example is just an example, I feel this change occurred across so much of my life. The phrase "changed my brain chemistry" just... rings a bell. It sounds like such a good way to describe how I felt this change. It deeply resonated with me the first time I made that connection.

I wonder if this is a necessity. When I was young I always observed that there were the "good students" and the "social people". That's an extreme generalization and I can think of so many people that are both or neither. But. I do see to this day a correlation between, like, "deep" knowledge and curiosity with some sort of lack in social ability. And conversely too, the more a person is good socially, the more I find something lacking in their rationale, or some weirdly superficial aspect of their model of mind.

This is super general, I know, and... well, I've already said it in the first sentence. I don't really think that the "changing of brain chemistry" of depression/anti-depressants is the same as what I'm describing here. But there was a change in socializing and a change in "discipline" and they were pretty darn coordinatedly opposite. It's at least interesting. I'm sure I'll find a sweet spot. Or some other way to look at it entirely. Or a diagnosis lol. Or some other kind of paradigm shift. After all, I don't want "me" to be stuck in my 15 year old self. We'll see what happens.