If I had to summarize my life:
gifted nerd weirdo growing up in the hood, 8 years of severe bullying, dropped out at 15yo, stayed +/- completely socially isolated until I was 18, couldn't talk to a girl until I was +20yo
Still managed to get into a good CS/SWE school and get a decent job despite dropping out of high school, since I've always been teaching myself stuff since I was a kid.
Never been able to form long-term relationships/friendships.
During the last 2/3 years, my only social interactions, were at work(remotely), and a few extremely brief flings, with women that only seemed interest by my money, desperate or too mentally unstable to be tolerated by anyone else.(often all of that at the same time)
Socially I feel like a freak/alien/monster, who missed most of the normal social experiences normal people seems to have, and who can't seem to fit in anywhere.
I've tried about 15 shrinks through my life, meds(prescribed or not), psychedelics, nothing seems to have a significant/lasting impact on my ability to have a normal social life. Even other weirdos don't seem able or willing to put up with me.
If you were in my shoes, what would you do? I'm open to any suggestions, even extreme ones.
You've lots of company. More by the day, surveys say. You may be suffering more, but the suffering is incredible ubiquitous now. Worse in Japan, a very well-run society.
Marx's principle concern about capitalism was that it created loneliness. Yes, near-starvation, but also, "alienation" from other people as a result of the commodification of labor (people) that removed them from community.
New brain research shows we tend to pick as friends those whose brain works like ours. In a mass society people get spoiled early, they can choose close similars, but evolutionarily that's weird. Brains of rare use gather few friends.
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/5/1993.
"we resemble our friends at a genetic level that’s akin to being distant cousins."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02722-7
The novel Watership Down says that none of us deserve friends, we all have sharp edges and that only when we, collectively, have a dangerous task can real friendships form because our few virtues become extremely valuable to others. But modern society is designed to eliminate this circumstance and pretty much has. Even so, finding a task or cause for which cooperation matters is a path, or the start of one.
Friendship is convenient, but the chance to help others is important.
Traditionally in the East those who attain enlightenment aren't surrounded by friends. They're too unusual for that. They become hermits. Hermits that are very useful when needed, but hermits.
Re that brain research, there's an alternative to finding peers (when that's all but impossible) and that's to help children. Children aren't peer friends but it's important to help them and they are grateful for those who can entertain them and help them learn at the same time. It’s possible to learn how to do those two things at once. Learning through play is their job and they like those who can really help them do this. In modern society children are truly starving for the amount of interpersonal interaction that their brains need for proper development.