Ask HN: If you used to be socially awkward and shy, how did you improve?

I became a teacher. More generally, having a job that interfaces you with people will help.

- Saying "yes" to a dance with someone is a very bounded commitment: it's 3-4 minutes of their time, and consent to physical contact with the shoulder blade and hands/arms (more for embrace dances like Balboa, but still everyone comes in knowing exactly what to expect).

- The basic moves/steps are all well understood; it's pretty easy to assess the skill level of a new partner within the first ~20 seconds and find common ground in terms of what will work to do together, how much you need to stick to the script vs being novel and playful, etc.

- There isn't much unwritten etiquette, and what little there is usually communicated clearly in beginner classes or non-judgmentally at the dances themselves. As one example: don't try to "teach" on the floor; it's okay to ask for tips or feedback if you want to, but no one wants to receive unsolicited corrections.

- In most well-run scenes no one is there to hook up and any attempt to do so would be regarded as creepy and result in the person being asked to leave. But you definitely can make same- and opposite-gender friends, and often there are opportunities to meet up beforehand or afterward, or to share travel/accommodations when going to larger events.

So yeah, my experience as an awkward engineering student in a mostly-male environment at school was that dance communities (I was connected to several of them due to traveling for internships) were very much a safe space in which to acclimatize to being around—and in limited physical contact with—women, and practice the meat of socializing in terms of how to carry a conversation, tell stories in a group, listen actively, etc, without the weird pressure of everyone suspecting everyone else's motives or like, wondering if they have some kind of agenda as far as trying to "close" or if they're going to get the wrong idea, etc. This really frees people up to be extremely friendly and have fun, and when in doubt, you're literally just there to dance and enjoy the music. :)

Sorry to be blunt, but this is clearly the morally infused cliché of "healthy people do not take drugs because drugs are bad mkay.". Cliché which seem to automatically give people the status of the most responsible person in the room for some reason.

Well I'd like to give a rebuttal. Saying no to drugs is saying no to the risk of taking the drug, that is true. But it is _also_ saying no to the potential benefit.

If, for the sake of argument, someone took that risk at 20, but had some incredible epiphany and radically changed their life for the better during the 30 years following the experiment, you can't say in good faith that it was _bad_. You _have_ to take into account that a better quality of life was exchanged for that risk. And in my opinion, refusing to see that is not automatically the responsible position, even if it is always portrayed as such.

This isn’t a very good argument. Table salt is literally Sodium and Chlorine, both of which are extremely toxic to humans but that’s irrelevant to anyone who understands that molecules have different effects than other molecules that share part of the same name.

Again though, mdma can kill you even if it’s completely pure. This is especially true if you take MAOIs or drink not enough/too much water or take any other meds that mess with serotonin. Please research things carefully.

Meth will most likely ruin your life and you will want more and more.

MDMA is simply not very fun if you try taking it over and over again. It stops working and you just feel shitty for longer and longer periods without any feeling of getting high.

The problem is that a lot of molly that is sold today is full of things other than mdma. Meth is one of those things. You should absolutely use a test kit if you plan on taking anything.