'Drank to try to cope': Melanie Sykes on how she dealt with BS while undiagnosed
Quitting drinking and being diagnosed as autistic have helped her to build a better life.
This week, my book proposal is out on submission (Beautiful Hangover: how a late autism diagnosis helped me make peace with a drunken past) and so I'm thinking even more than usual about the connection between drinking too much and autism.
Today a pal sent over yet another article which touches on this link. Melanie Sykes in the Guardian, discusses how she struggled with sexism and coersion while working in TV, and how she drank to cope with some of it.
“In her TV career, Sykes struggled using the earpiece needed for producers to talk to her due to the heightened sensitivities from her undiagnosed autism and drank to try to cope.”
So many people use alcohol to deal with these difficulties and sensitivities, and for a number of us, this also includes those related to undiagnosed autism.
I’ve written a lot about the way that alcohol helped me in life, before I got sober. In fact, how much I depended on and loved it was a part of what convinced me I needed to quit. Booze made me as sociable as the people/culture around me seemed to prefer me to be; it helped me to join in with the small talk and chatter that are essential parts of socialising.
It made me lose my inhibitions, which could be a gleeful blessing and a shameful curse, which any drinker will know all about.
It’s interesting to see Melanie talk also about ‘coercive and abusive boyfriends’ as these are something a majority of heavy drinking women likely have to contend with. And especially if they are autistic or undiagnosed autistic. Many autistic people rely on people-pleasing and adapting to others preferences as a way of masking their struggles or lack of understanding about what is expected.
Melanie hopes writing and publishing her memoir “helps women recognise if they are in coercive relationships”, and I hope so too. The sad and slightly extraordinary fact is that it’s something that women can and do need help to recognise, and this is often more likely if they are autistic.
Women are praised as kind and sweet and nurturing and good for putting up with men’s/society’s/their family members’ bullshit, and it can be difficult for some of us to tell when enough is enough. Or to speak up about that.
Many of my female friends - some of the kindest, most charming people to walk the earth imho - are chronic apologizers. Many of my female students give disclaimers before sharing their work. This is something we are conditioned to do, that we learn to do because of the way the world treats us: to pave the way for others, try not to bother anyone and take up too much space.
It is a dangerous and insidious kind of conditioning, and many of my friends are still working hard trying to free themselves from it. I’m nervous as I approach motherhood about the new dimension of this BS I am about to have to contend with. The disparity between how society views/treats mothers and fathers is another post entirely! (Watch this space.)
But when a woman is undiagnosed autistic she is even more vulnerable to this sort of dynamic, where a relationship is one-sided or she feels less powerful and valued than her male counterpart. It can be difficult to tell what is the usual systemic infrastructural power dynamics that can play out even at home, and what is that stuff, but being massively amplified by the fact that your partner prefers it that way.
It’s complicated stuff. Or it is to me, as a recently diagnosed autistic woman.
We are all coming to understand is that domestic abuse exists along a spectrum, and increasingly we are growing aware of the damage that coersive control can do to a person’s wellbeing, spirit and mental health.
As more comparatively powerful and successful women speak out about the BS they have had to contend with in various industries due to their gender, the rest of us get a little more freedom or a little more education on how systemic inequality works.
I still wince at the levels of sexism and misogyny that women of my generation went through. The sexual assault and the backlash against feminism. The lads mags and constant gaslighting. We had no language to discuss the inequalities we were facing, and were mostly told, if we attempted to articulate it, to shut up, or that we were inventing issues where there were none.
Apparently, Melanie is sober now, and I wonder how she came to that decision. Hopefully she talks about it more in the book, which I hope to read at some point.
Read the full article here, and let me know what you think.
If you’re ready to try something different, try Smart, AA or Soberistas.
Listen to Recovery Elevator and SHAIR podcasts. Read This Naked Mind. Try Moderation Management.
There is a whole community of people waiting to help you. Reach out. Something better is waiting.
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Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a literary memoir about getting sober and then finding out she’s autistic - Beautiful Hangover: how a late autism diagnosis helped me make peace with a drunken past, and a new YA novel.
A really thought-provoking post, Chelsey. Good luck with the book submission!