Call Two Alcoholics Every DAY?! | The #ActuallyAutistic Guide To 12 Step Recovery by Rebecca Rush

December 16, 2023

When I got a year sober, I stood in front of 300 people in West Hollywood, making a one minute speech I had been scripting since day one.

“Hi, I’m Rebecca, I’m an alcoholic. I really thought I’d be famous by now.” 

They all laughed. I wasn’t joking. I thought if I just did AA hard enough, Sky Daddy would appear and hand me my fame & my fortune. That is what I had been told. Just focus on the program, and everything else will ‘just work out.’ Not exactly! Apparently you have to put effort into the other things, too!

A few years later I discovered my autism. The program I’d built for the person I thought AA would turn me into crumbled. I drank. For fourteen months I went back and forth between failing to make drinking work and failing to stop drinking.

A year into this struggle, an online autie alcoholic friend went to AA for the first time, against my advice. I had warned her it was not a neurodivergent affirming space. Yet she had tried and failed with me all year too, and she was tired.

I watched her get more days in a row sober than ever before. I watched her life improve. I followed her back in. Perhaps the problem was not being autistic in AA, but not knowing you’re autistic in AA. 

I watched her launch herself toward burnout by making the same mistakes I had. She knows she’s autistic. So, self-knowledge is not enough. This needs to be explained in a way that makes sense to people that say what they mean and mean what they say. 

Who is going to translate twelve step recovery for neurodivergent folx, newly identified and otherwise? I wondered. Several weeks later it hit me. It’s me. I’m your neurodivergent sponsor. 

Here’s the thing. The language of twelve step recovery is not direct, yet it is presented in a way that sounds very serious. When things sound very serious, autistic people are even more likely to take them seriously. For us seriously often means literally. 

Oftentimes, however, what is said means some other thing. There is always a reason for it, but it’s not easy to get a straight answer. And the thing has a lesson under it, or a resource it is meant to provide you. They don’t tell you any of this. I spent a lot of time frustrated that people were keeping these answers from me until I realized that they don’t even know why! They don’t even care! Blindly following suggestions works for them! 

Underneath all that confusion, the lessons or resources they want you to have, the intention behind the rule they call a suggestion, are usually pretty good. And by that, I mean they can save your life. I wouldn’t be back there for anything less.

One of the first suggestions you get once you have braved SO MUCH to show up at your first meeting is to get a phone list and call two alcoholics every day. Strangers. Call them. On the phone. Strangers. Every day. ON THE PHONE. (Strangers)

My AAA friend (anonymous autistic alcoholic) wanted, like many of us, to get an A+ in AA. 

She would call and call and call people thinking she was supposed to have two entire conversations every day.

She lives in the English countryside. There aren’t many women in her small recovery community. She felt she was falling short. Every late identified autistic I know is constantly receiving this message from the world.

Nobody expects you to call two people every day until you have two conversations every day! First of all, most people ignore the suggestion entirely. They don’t even feel bad about it! The ones that do it, they aren’t doing it every day. When they do, they are making the effort of the two calls. That’s all you have to do to satisfy the suggestion to the letter. The effort. Whether or not someone picks up or calls you back is on them. If you experience PDA or RSD (I have both) this becomes more of a minefield. Just keep going. 

The reason they are telling you to call two alcoholics every day is a good one. They want you to have people you can reach out to when you feel like drinking. People that you feel comfortable reaching out to when you are in a crisis that may lead to drinking. 

That’s all. They are telling you to call two alcoholics every day so that you have people you feel comfortable calling before you drink.

Now you get to make that work for you. What do you need to do to have enough people that you feel comfortable with ENOUGH to reach out if you feel like drinking? For many of us this is going to look like online support groups and community, places you can text instead of talk, zoom rooms where you can stay off camera and stim, etc. 

Should you decide to try making calls, I recommend watching and listening to people a few times in meetings before asking for their number. The most confident people in the meeting are often not what they appear. 

We may not always know what we did, but we can always (eventually) tell when people are being weird to us. This is the great fact for us. Fuck those people. Find another group.

— Your Neurodivergent Sponsor

SOBRIETY ON THE SPECTRUM is a guide to recovery, twelve steps, and otherwise, for and about #ACTUALLYAUTISTIC alcoholics. This guide will cover everything I wish I had known during the fifteen years I spent in and out of twelve-step recovery with undiagnosed autism. Explainers, translations, workarounds, and suggestions intended to make getting sober more neuro-affirming.

By Rebecca Rush, your Neurodivergent Sponsor

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