re: Medication for Autistic Meltdowns?

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This can be challenging at times. Sometimes they seem to happen at the drop of a dime, and it's hard to determine what the antecedent is that triggered the behavior.

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I’d definitely start charting again, particularly what he was doing, what he ate, general mood, etc before the outburst. If he has anxiety and OCD as comorbidities, disrupting a routine (even a minor one) could definitely be setting off.

Coming from someone who still has these meltdowns at 42 years old, there's not much you can do, as much as that may hurt you. All you can do is love your child.
Do me a favor and never compare your autistic child to a NT child, and never tell your autistic child to "just act like everyone else".
I am prescribed to THC and Valium right now and it helps most days, but I'm not sure that's the best path for an 8 year old.
ETA: I've tried countless meds. They all make me feel like a zombie. If he tells you he doesn't like how whatever meds make him feel, listen. The wrong meds have put me in some really bad places mentally and having communication issues makes that difficult to articulate properly.

God bless your family.

Go get a referral for the product that the dispensaries sell, if you are in Louisiana. It's much more quality controlled than what you're going to buy anywhere else in the state.
Check out Capital Wellness in BR. They will point you in the right direction
If I can answer anything you don't want on here
< at Gmail
I don't check it often, since it's linked here, but I will answer

Revisit relying on ABA "therapy", it is more about making the kid appear and act "normal" and less about adapting the environment to the child to make them feel comfortable.

Don't drug up your kid, we have been most successful with making him comfortable in his environment. If something bothers him and we can reasonably eliminate that trigger we do. We don't do ANY of the behavioral modifications that ABA therapy would want you to do.

We do use CBD, but not to control breakdowns, he shows great improvement in all of his skills when he is on CBD. It is quite amazing. My son is also non verbal and the amount of cognitive development after starting CBD has been amazing. He has gone from virtually ZERO academic progress to being able to learn 1 to 2 academic skills each month. My hope is that one day we can get him to type to communicate, he tries to "talk" but it is just a unintelligible string of sounds, but he does use inflection in those sounds just like someone who is talking normally with a rhythm that does sound like a start and stop of sentences... it's interesting.

Oh, don't drug your kid, adapt to him and good luck.

Thanks for the input. That's what I thought. I was also asking for myself. Never formally diagnosed, but I def. have some traits. I can relate to a lot of what you said. I manage okay most of the time, but if there was something that would improve my quality of life I would try it. Sounds like there's really not.

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I'm just an amateur gynecologist but you could try marijuana.

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This actually might be something to consider. My 16 yo is on the spectrum and was on medication for years. We've found that CBD gummies help smooth his moods out.

If you haven't been told, learn what rights/processes the law has in place to protect him. IEPs suck to perfect but if you know your rights you can maximize the benefits afforded by the laws governing them. Because of a bungled middle school IEP my oldest is now stuck on a remote learning (with a 1 "in person" resource period) due to the trauma from unchecked bullying.

Xanax... but there are obviously draw backs.

I had the same issue with my daughter and we ended up putting her on Daytrona, with behavioral therapy. It's an ADHD medication but it was night and day for her ability to control her meltdowns and her anxiety level. I didn't want to put her medication but the older she got, the worse the meltdowns were. It really helped her overall quality of life. She started making friends, going to birthday parties and sleep overs. She was still socially awkward and had the same struggles, but it wasn't as overwhelming for her. She aged out of it at around 12 and then went on a low dose of Adderall.