finding the nuclear option.

Peter.  I would simply encourage you to try some of these things that may well, on the surface, be tedious or uninteresting.  What do you have to loose?  Sometimes, you have to be tenacious...try, try and try again. 

Your current feelings, beliefs and thinking are making you miserable - so just try to suspend your disbelief that ANYTHING will help.....and try SOMETHING(s) again?

Sorry to bang on......but I genuinely share your desire for you to be happier.  You are valued here.

Very best wishes - Number.

Fair point. I think the issues are soon becoming apparent even in this short conversation! I still don’t think it’s an impossible thing to set up though. 

I can only speak for myself but I can't imagin much as tedious as walking. I think a lot of autistic people are indoors types. It's usually a special interest that brings us together. A particular kind of tv show, or an obscure topic of study.Video games etc. The emhasis is on the 'special' in special interest. How many special out door activaties can you think of? Not a lot I'm guessing. And the ones there are tend to require special equipment like say rock climbing. About the only out door 'special intrest' thing that comes to mind is quidich.

What about walking groups? Where people could meet up outside? 

Actually I think the problem is that it requires a local approach. In much the same way but student unions are local organisations. Most student unions offer two things to the students. A set of centralised services quite a lot of which have an overlap with the university services or the services of local business. And secondly they offer support to special interest groups run by students for students. That’s where a lot of the social side of student unions exists in these clubs and societies.

The most important thing that they provide is a free venue in which the club or society can run its meetings. they also provide some free administrative assistance, liability insurance, if the worst comes to the worst legal assistance, free marketing and publicity.

but as someone has tried to set up a small club themselves I’ll tell you the hardest thing is the venue. Especially venues available in the evening when a lot of community centres have either closed up shop or are fully booked.

I go to a monthly local autism meeting which is basically just a handful of autistic people meeting around a desk chatting about random stuff. But they’re only able to get that room for just over an hour and only because a local counsellor made a fuss for them.

to make the student union model work you need to either rent or buy a local venue that you can make available for special interest groups.

Some creature comforts are divine sir - Hope !

Desmond79 said:

This World believes that faith is an obstacle, due to the fact it challenges dependency on the State.

I think it goes deeper than that. For millenia the Church was an organ of control, using elements of faith as its ways to control the masses for its own furtherment.

Think of the absurdity of catholicism that an innocent, unbabtised baby would have its soul go to hell if it is not promised to the church through babtism if it were to die.

It also promises damnation to the followers who do not routinely confess their sins to the priests so the goings on of all are kept in the knowledge of the Church - and the constant guild laid on the flock through their doctorine is cruel.

The "God shaped hole" you refer to is an artificial construct pushed on you through fear by the Church and its followers to make you like them, to make you feel the same guilt they do and to be saved from some vaguely unspecific damnation in the afterlife.

This reflects my beiief that faith is a good thing, but organised religion is a terrible thing.

No one could accuse you of not trying. At least you made some friends - that’s certainly worthwhile. Seems to me you’re doing all you can. But that person who you might click with might still be out there. 

That sounds like a great idea to be honest. I think maybe what’s needed is a national organisation that has good safeguarding etc that autistic people can trust. Ironically we are conversing on the website of an organisation that could do exactly that - or at least have some involvement in such a thing. And funding should be achievable if the right people were involved + some government funding. It can’t be completely beyond the wit of humankind to get such a thing up and running. 

Blaise Pascal's 'God-shaped hole'.

Faith was the one thing keeping me sane. This World believes that faith is an obstacle, due to the fact it challenges dependency on the State. Creature comforts are good, but not the be-all and end-all. 

He could but groups of kids are A. crap company & B. horribly exclusive.

I suggested creating an autistic union. Something patterned off a student union but open to all autistic people. But when I tried to get other autistic people interested I was told no charity would possibly fund it and even if they would it’s a waste of resources which should be spent on people who have real needs like learning disabilities and getting out to the shops.

Thanks Iain. Yes - I hope he will eventually be able to take steps towards that. At the moment he’s so averse to even the idea of contact with other people. But I’m hopeful because I know he wants to connect with people - and that’s the start isn’t it? As a family we get on so well - but of course one day (far off in the future hopefully) we won’t be here - and I can’t bear to think of him not having love and friendship in his life. He’s such a wonderful person, bright, funny, so kind and such wonderful company. He has such a lot to offer as a person - he just needs to find the courage to get out there.

Kate Kestrel said:

He definitely wants friends and a girlfriend - he doesn’t want to live an isolated life. But how? If I suggest volunteering and things like that he finds it really intimidating.

The trick is to make him think it is his idea, then he will be willing to take the intimidating steps.

Maybe sit down and have a brainstorming session with him to talk through options - you can research local charities that align with some of his interests (if possible) and in the discussion get him to list things he is interested in and if he is able to come up with something that aligns then say "thats a good idea of yours - there is a charity that might just be a match.

Get him to do some general research into them while you actually talk to them, see if they have someone on the team who has experience with autism who could speak to your son and you can get the together for a chat somewhere he feels comfortable.

Try to treat it as it it is all his doing and you are just helping things along - this should give him the feeling of ownership that will be important for it to stick.

All good old fashioned "headology" as Terry Pratchett would put it.

Yes - I think sometimes it’s more tricky to find support/groups etc at the ‘high functioning’ (for want of a better term) end of the spectrum - my youngest son is in this position really. My eldest found a neurodiverse group of friends at Uni (and a girlfriend in the same group) - and has continued to keep friendly with them. My youngest did not manage to form friendships at school/college - largely due to having Selective Mutism in addition to autism. And now he’s left college he has no way of meeting anyone. He’s very bright and has a great sense of humour, but has extreme social anxiety. He definitely wants friends and a girlfriend - he doesn’t want to live an isolated life. But how? If I suggest volunteering and things like that he finds it really intimidating. It’s very difficult. 

So services like this do exist but they’re very sparsely dotted around the country and almost exclusively aimed at low functioning autistic people people who would struggle to say go out to the shops without someone to hold their hand.

A lot of them are really aimed at people with learning disabilities and I run by non-autistic people.

people with Asperger’s/higher functioning autism typically fall into one of three camps. 1: people who are found a social niche that allows them to socialise with Neurotypicals, 2: people who are so introverted but they’re happy living in a state of extreme social isolation. 3: autistic people who desperately want to social life but are so weird that they just don’t fit in in most places and for that same reason struggle to galvanise other people to cooperate with them to make anything happen in terms of community action.

I would classify myself in group 3. I’ve suggested before that an organisation run by autistic people for autistic people could operate the sorts of services but I don’t think that will ever get them otherwise. And peoples responses to my suggestions have largely been but even if we could find the resources it would be a waste of resources.

The nice thing is that once you’ve made some of this really expensive material it is often possible to keep it alive and multiply it with homebrewed stuff. But of course that would be highly legally questionable. At least in the UK and most of the EU I believe America has slightly more relaxed laws.

It’s tempting but unless you happen to have  MegaBucks and a couple of shell corporations to funnel them through that’s not really very plausible.

getting hold of the rare chemicals and biological materials to make even the simplest gene therapy products is like pulling teeth. and just the process of making gene therapy products requires a government license. Which means in practice if you want these rare chemicals and DNA samples delivered to your address it needs to be a company or university that looks legit enough for the suppliers to want to do business with you. And even then they are very very expensive.

I put a grant application in for some fairly basic gene therapy lab work recently. working with cells not animals. it was rejected. but as I did the budgeting the cost went up and up and up. you can end up paying thousands of pounds just for a little vial of liquid. my boss said £10,000 for Materials for a basic cell culture experiment is generally not a bad ballpark figure to start from but because we had something creative stuff in mind it’s soon grew.

I’ve tried tinder. I’ve tried OkCupid. When it used to exist I tried FlirtOMatic. I’ve tried Hiki, i’ve tried bumble, i’ve even tried Facebook dating.

ironically FlirtOMatic was probably the most successful. In terms of meeting people communicating with them and getting them to actually talk back to me and eventually making some friends. Although it never translated into a long-term romantic relationship.

I've noticed you. It's not a meaningful thing I guess in the grand scheme of life, but I find you interesting and you add value to my experience here. 

If you want t come over to the dark side and bring some of that mouse juice with you, we''ll do some much earlier than would be expected human trials maybe? I have a slew of would be test subjects lined up for you... 

That nuclear enough for you?