The question you have to answer is, "Is your autism getting worse or is your self-awareness improving?" I think it's the latter. I have always had a low tolerance to bullshit, and I remember, and I was only talking about this to someone a few weeks ago, on the school cross country, in 1988, yes, 35 years ago, some kids who weren't particularly interested where pretending to smoke cigarettes (as in, having nothing between their index and middle fingers and holding them up to their lips, like five-year-olds pretending to smoke) and one of them said, "Here, have some of this. Real good shit." And I told him to get lost. I knew that teenagers didn't go on drugs because some stranger forced them on them, but because friends thought it was cool. I wasn't a follower of trends and just wanted to be left alone. If you have to mask, your friends don't see the real you.