Have you ever agreed to a social event three weeks in advance because, at the time, it sounded vaguely possible, in a “future me can probably handle that” way?
You have? Rookie mistake.
Future you is not a trusted adult. Future you is a hypothetical figure who lives in a state-dependent, interdimensional timeline where you are well-rested, emotionally stable, wearing comfortable socks, and have an unshakable optimism that, this time, you will be able to manage it.
By the time the event arrives, however, future you has become present you, and present you is standing in the hallway trying to remember why past you was allowed to make decisions unsupervised.
Welcome to The Social Hangover.
The Social Hangover does not require alcohol. With autistic socialising, you start with a cheeky “pre-event warmup” (which is really a precisely drafted plan and script, designed to look natural and effortless).
You then flawlessly execute your plan, taking care to drink no more than three units of lemonade (usual brand, tall glass, exactly 3 ice cubes measuring 2.5cm square, no slice of lemon, no straw), behave politely, laugh at appropriate intervals, constantly analyse your performance, engage in real-time self-criticism for a mistimed comment, and leave before 10pm, or, at least within the two hours you had allocated.
Despite the meticulous planning and Award-Winning performance, you get home, engage in the “post-match analysis”, before going to sleep and having anxiety-driven nightmares about the event, and wake up the following morning feeling as if you were emotionally folded into the cargo hold of a budget airline.
Problem: The Freestyle Improvised Drama Aka Socialising
Social events for most people are as natural as a sunrise, and as effortless as breathing. It seems most people are born with a Masters Degree in Socialising, while others were accidentally enrolled on the wrong course and missed all the lessons.
If you are one of those who missed the lessons, or simply don’t understand those lessons, then fear not! It is never too late to learn, and help is always at hand.
All you have to do is follow the simple steps from our Good Autist Keeping Approved guide below.
Solution: The Three Steps to Success
As with every self-help programme worth its salt, there are always three steps. Our simple, easy to remember, recipe for success is the “Three Ps for Peace of Mind”:
Step 1: Preparation
Before any significant social event, the autistic person must enter training. Not casual preparation, but Olympic, Autism Academy Award winning levels of preparation. The kind where an autistic person later tells an interviewer they got into character by method acting and “becoming one the bowling alley.”
Creating a Pre-Social Event Training Programme is essential, and one must remember the sagely advice given by Sensei Cappare – “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”
Part A – Deep Dive on Current Topics and Event Specific Small-Talk
Hyperfocus activates like a classified intelligence operation. Within hours, you know the local weather, parking, price of bowling alley nachos, three facts about professional bowling, and enough trivia to survive precisely seven and a half minutes of conversation with almost anyone.
These facts are organised into mental cue-cards: a joke about bowling shoes (with 2 variations per joke), a comment about bowling balls looking like rejected planets, and one-liner facts to drop in for expert-level kudos.
Part B – Learning the Script
You practise “Hi! Good to see you!” until it moves from too flat, to too intense, to somewhere between mildly enthusiastic gameshow host and haunted children’s television presenter.
To avoid monotone delivery, you rehearse as a BBC documentary narrator, medieval town crier, and someone who definitely has not spent the afternoon practising how to say “I’m fine, thanks.”
Part C – Emergency Exit Protocols
“Sorry, I need some air” invites follow-up questions. “Look over there. Is that King Charles?” is high risk, high reward. If successful, everyone turns and you vanish like a Romulan Bird-of-Prey engaging its cloaking device.
For advanced users, there is the Fake Call App. Answer with a serious expression and say, “I’m sorry, I have to leave immediately. My dog sitter has accidentally sat on my dog and he has become lodged in a position requiring urgent multi-agency intervention.”
Step 2: Performance
The big day arrives, with a virtual tape playing in your head which reminds you that tonight’s mission, should you choose to accept it—which you apparently did, because you were the idiot who booked it—is a “quiet night” bowling at Dave’s Multi-Bright Lights with Random Flickering, Booming Dance Music Rave-Up, Foot-Crippling Tight-Fitting Shoes Bowling Alley, which you had been successfully avoiding visiting for the past 5 years since it opened. At the last outing, during a vulnerable moment at an equally overwhelming Laser Tag excursion, you finally succumbed to peer pressure and agree to the group consensus of “we should do bowling next time.”
Not only did you agree, you volunteered yourself to arrange it and book the tickets. People heard you. People remembered. The tickets are in your name. There is no escape.
You get into character and set off with the outward confidence of Batman and the inner stability of an unset jelly. Upon arrival, you engage the Ritual Greeting Protocol:
Facial expression: warm and engaging.
Smile frequency: occasional, but not maniacal.
Eye contact: not prolonged, approximate nose-bridge method.
Voice tone: avoid monotone robotic, load approximately human.
The bowling alley commences the expected attack. The lights are performing the “interrogation disco.” The music makes your brain wobble, and someone drops a bowling ball behind you, making your nervous system attempt to jettison itself through your spine.
At the shoe counter, you order a size bigger than usual, yet the shoes are still somehow too tight and too loose, causing a duality of sensory issues. You make a casual comment about them looking like clown trainers from a witness protection programme.
Someone in the queue laughs. Danger. A nearby stranger laughs too. Extreme danger.
You have now created shared amusement with unknown persons in a queue. The risk of accidental friendship is imminent. Abort protocol kicks in and you swiftly move to a cubicle in the toilet, ending any potential opportunity of follow-up dialogue.
When the coast is clear, you move like a ninja to your lane, resume casual behaviour, and awkwardly say “let the bowling begin”, only to find the bowling had already begun and everyone had been waiting for you to take your turn.
Your first throw is acceptable, which is terrible because it raises expectations. Your second travels sideways with the confidence of a shopping trolley with one broken wheel. Everyone cheers anyway, because social encouragement is compulsory.
You laugh. Too late. Too loud. Possibly wrong.
Your friend’s ball slides into the gutter. You consult the mental cue-card system. Cue-card three flashes green. You seize the moment.
“Well,” you say, “it’s not the first time your balls have been in the gutter.”
Unfortunately, at that exact moment, the music drops. Silence opens across the lanes like a trapdoor. Your voice carries beautifully, as if performing a solo at an opera.
Due to a last-minute directional change of eye-contact, the joke appears not to land on your friend, but on the eight-year-old boy in the adjacent lane, who has indeed just thrown his ball into the gutter during what appears to be his first ever bowling game. He begins to cry. His parents turn slowly. Your friends laugh, then slowly stop laughing as the glare from the parents reaches laser-intensity. Your brain opens the “Post-Event Regret Folder” six hours early, files the incident under “Epic Fails”, ready for heavy rumination later, and periodically for the next 6 years.
Step 3: Post-Event Recovery
Having survived the bowling experience, and assuming you enjoyed yourself—which you probably did, but cannot be sure of at the moment as you haven’t completed the “Post-Event Analysis”—you return home, and The Social Hangover creeps in.
First comes the Post-Event Replay.
You lie in bed, exhausted, ready to go to sleep, except your brain decides to replay the evening in full 4K ultra-high-definition embarrassment, with slow-motion replays of every facial expression, pause, laugh, suspiciously ambiguous “no worries.”
You open the Standard Performance Criteria Scoresheet.
Greeting Protocol: 8/10.
Shoe Counter Interaction: 6/10. Possible accidental friendship risk.
Bowling Performance: 4/10, but with strong comedic movement.
General Masking: General Masking: 7/10 until lane seven incident.
Mental Cue-Card Delivery: minus 400.
The gutter joke is replayed from seventeen angles, including slow-motion shots of the exact moment tears burst forth from the boy’s eyes, close ups of the parental disapproval, and an imagined director’s commentary from future you saying, “This is where the whole operation began to collapse.”
The incident is refiled into the Epic Fails database, where it will be referred to before, during, and after every social event involving the same group of friends, and retrieved periodically as intrusive thoughts at random and inconvenient times.
Next comes the physical hangover. Your body hurts, despite the event involving only light recreation and nachos. Your face aches from smiling. Your voice feels like it has completed a half marathon. Your hearing is still processing the bowling alley soundtrack, and your brain is echoing the wobbles of the night.
The masking bill has arrived, at the exact same time as the sensory overload bill, the executive function bill, and an “overdue” reminder for the outstanding emotional analysis bill.
Your nervous system enters Energy-Saving Mode.
Responding to messages: unavailable.
Making decisions: unavailable.
Social engagement: absolutely unavailable. If disturbed, you may enter Hyper sleep, known in some circles as “burnout” or “shutdown”, which involves lying under a blanket in a dark room while making minor adjusting movements like a cat attempting to become furniture. This is not laziness. It is essential, mandatory recovery.
At this stage, the only response available is to do as little as possible, avoid bright lights, complex tasks, and unexpected visitors, especially anyone who starts a sentence with, “You’ll laugh about this.”
You will not laugh about this. Not yet. Perhaps in three to five working days. Perhaps longer. Perhaps never.
Final Guidance: Respect the Hangover
The Social Hangover is not proof the event was bad. The problem is not enjoyment. The problem is cost. For an autistic person, socialising can be meaningful and exhausting, fun and overwhelming, wanted and punishing, hilarious and neurologically expensive. You can enjoy the event and still need recovery from it. You can love people and still need silence after them. You can perform brilliantly and still collapse afterwards.
Eventually, The Social Hangover wears off. Normal service levels resume. The cue-cards are updated. The Epic Fails database is archived. The nervous system reboots and life continues. You feel as relaxed again (or, at least, less anxious than usual), and, one day, when you least expect it, someone says: “We should do something again soon.”
Before you know it, the lack of 14 days’ notice of the request, and the immediate social pressure of being asked, has bypassed all security safeguards and you hear yourself say: “Yes, definitely,”, followed by a growing awareness that somewhere, deep inside the autistic operating system, a tiny alarm has been activated and is reminding you to avoid spontaneous agreement to social events until full consideration has been given.
Join us next time as we explore the mystery and unpredictability of Socialus Expectatum – The Power of Social Expectation.
