Exploring Sobriety on the Spectrum: An In-depth Interview with #ActuallyAutistic Coach Matthew Lawrence – Unraveling the Complexities of Twelve-Step Programs, Part Two

The Autists Opinion

Interviewer’s Note: We autistics may well have a remedy for thousands of such situations.

You may rely absolutely on anything we say about ourselves.

Very Truly Yours,

Rebecca Rush

Please note: The following interview was edited for clarity and length.

CONTINUED FROM PART ONE: Sobriety on the Spectrum: What Do You Want Autistic People to Know Before Going To 12 Step Recovery?

SOTS: I logged in to hang out with a “friend” before a meeting recently, and there was a third person there. I listened to their conversation for a polite while, then thought I had an opportunity to jump in.  I said, “I like the intuitive eating book,” and he took that to mean, “You are bad and wrong for going to Overeaters Anonymous.” He got very defensive, which was so confusing. I tried to apologize, explain, and he screamed, he actually screamed, “CAN WE HAVE THE FLOOR BACK, REBECCA!!”  Sir, first of all, this is an ALCOHOLICS Anonymous meeting. Second of all, did you just yell at me for apologizing to you for adding meaning to what I said? And the third person, my “friend” who claims to care for me and love me? She just sits there silently. The best part? I’m in my first 90 days. The newcomer. The “most important person in the room.” I–

Matthew: You’re a woman, you’re a Jewish woman, you’re an autistic Jewish woman. You don’t deserve to have space. I mean, that’s the reality, right? That’s–

SOTS: –Why they are like, “You just come in and take up space…” 

Matthew: Yes. So continuing on all the shitty steps. Step six.

SOTS: We’re ready. Really ready to have God remove all these. Yeah–

Matthew: –remove our defects. So you realize, first of all, from a creative myth standpoint, you can tell a fucking WASP created this because all these things are more or less the same fucking thing which is that you are, again, and let’s use this word, you can put that in bold, we are not fucking morally corrupt. If I have a defect in character, it has nothing to do with my being autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. I might just be a schmuck. Any critical defect in character is also going to have an explanation, which is probably rooted in the trauma of living in a society that is making us have to drink alcohol in the first place or to do coke in the first place or whatever it is right? 

Seven. Shortcomings, again? Things like this, and this is as a pseudo-Rabbi, annoy me. We’re taught that we are created in God’s image. And God created us the way that he intended to. So if you say that I have a shortcoming, because I’m optimistic, you’re saying that either A, I chose to be autistic, B, that I’m cursed, or C, that God is an idiot. We’re autistic. I don’t have a shortcoming, and this is how I was created, actually, like an image. God has created us in His image. Then God is also autistic, and I think that’s okay. I thought about our shortcomings.

 Step eight. Yeah, amends are good. In Judaism, we have this concept of Juba, and apologizing to people to return to a good thing before Yom Kippur. Making amends is good. I’m sorry. So, eight and nine, make a list of things you need to make, right? If–

SOTS: –you make a list of all the people you have harmed. As an autistic person, you have to know that a lot of people just misunderstood you. And then you have to apologize to them for them misunderstanding you. Sorry, the pain and–

Matthew: Yeah, what about the list of the people who put us here in the first place? Where are their amends for the abuse? From our teachers, parents, cousins, grandparents, the rabbi, and the cantor, from all of them, where’s their amends? Where are the amends from society? I need to make a list of all the people I’ve wronged because they didn’t like my tone, because they didn’t like how I behaved because I played with a toy at a meeting?

Eight & nine are fundamentally missing the point of why we’re addicted. And this is the biggest thing, right? Because these programs are meant to get us out of addiction. And these programs are valuable. I don’t want to be on record as a person who’s saying 12 Step is evil and fucked up, and terrible, but we need to look at it in a different way. 

 I’m addicted because of my own kind of trauma being an autistic person or whatever person in the world. By you guilting me more than I already am, that isn’t going to actually help me get out of it. That’s going to make me relapse. Real fucking quick. If I’m the problem. Yes, we all have our own personal accountability and things like that, for sure. But this idea of guilty and guilty and guilty and not of love, but out of guilt, out of fear. In Hebrew, there’s this term, Yirat HaShem, which means fear of God. Or Awe. I’m much more into this; let me be in how awesome the world is. That’s how I look at things as opposed to being afraid of everything. Eight and nine, for me, is putting it on me that I’m the one who’s fucked up. I’m the one, and everything is my fault. And again, morally corrupt. 

Step 10 is the same idea. We should make inventories of the things that we’ve done wrong. Where we are wrong, we should admit it, and that’s totally fine. Like, is that making–

SOTS: You’re doing four through nine on the mini. So–

Matthew: –Step ten… I think, in general, we can make it, but again, not connecting to addiction. Right? And then eleven and twelve for me, okayyyyy, but also, it’s a really important thing, and this might be a curveball, eleven and twelve. A lot of autistic people have a lot of spiritual trauma as well because of having to grow up in a traditionally religious home. As an autistic person, you probably have a lot of trauma also from not being in your community, and eleven and twelve are really hard to swallow if you’re coming from a traumatizing situation when it comes to issues of spirituality. It doesn’t matter if you say the universe or you’re praying to that God in you; it’s still that; it’s just semantics. That is ultimately what it comes down to. All the steps teach us to fit into a neurotypical white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant stereotype of how we should live. They don’t honor our autistic selves. I find that the 12 steps promote masking. The end goal of it is to mask, and that’s the issue. Do we need a new thing for neurodivergent folks? We can get into the whole social aspect of it, going there to be with people, and people aren’t friendly. Like the things that you just described as the neurotypical people not being friendly to autistic people. Sponsorship homework, right? Executive function, executive dysfunction, inertia, accountability, PDA, we can talk about that for an hour? With PDA, I know I have to do this, and I have a sponsor who doesn’t understand PDA, doesn’t understand autism, doesn’t understand that sitting on me like that’s– forget about that it’s morally corrupt– not really good for recovery. 

In the next & final installment of this conversation, we cover a few more related topics.

XOXO,

Your Neurodivergent Sponsor

Sober Curator Pro Tip: Follow these two on Instagram: @sobrietyonthespectrum and @theautisticcoach

SOBRIETY ON THE SPECTRUM: Exploring Sobriety on the Spectrum: An In-depth Interview with #ActuallyAutistic Coach Matthew Lawrence – Unraveling the Complexities of Twelve-Step Programs, Part One (thesobercurator.com)

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

SOBERSCRIBE & BE ENTERED TO WIN!

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