Time to say goodbye? (Or just tweak your settings…)
A note from the hinterlands, and a little inbox housekeeping.
I started writing about getting sober on Medium in 2019.
The blog was called Beautiful Hangover.
I was maybe eighteen months sober, and my mind had been blown by how much quitting booze improved my life, even though I didn’t drink that much by lots of people’s standards.
I wrote hundreds of posts. Thousands of people followed. And then - things changed.
I took a full-time job in academia, and started working towards having a baby. Then COVID struck and my dad died.
I’d been sober for a while by then, and insights were coming thick and fast. But I needed time to process them. Writing on the topic of booze started to feel forced and effortful, and I was burnt out, so I stopped writing so much.
That burnout led me to getting diagnosed as Autistic and ADHD.
Why I Paid £700+ For A Private Diagnosis
Autism was first suggested to me as an explanation for my difficulties in November 2020. I had been signed off work for a couple of weeks in March because of stress (which I now recognize as autistic burnout) and suspect I only made it through the subsequent term because lockdown enabled me to work from home.
Suddenly, the story behind my drinking made a different kind of sense.
I Was Everyone’s Favourite Drunk, Except Mine
I’m trying to stop drinking, but alcohol won’t let me.
It wasn’t just about addiction. It was about masked neurodivergence, and the self-loathing, shame and identity-crisis that comes with it. I drank to manage an invisible disability, and yikes, after a strong start, it really did not work.
Cue many more revelations and a huge amount of motivation, as ever, to PREACH, S I S T E R. Medium had become a pyramid scheme cycle of doom and so I moved to Substack.
I started a brand new newsletter, mainly about Autism, called Polite Robot. It was declared a Substack notable publication, which I didn’t realise at the time was kind of a big deal.
Lots of lovely people signed up. And I should have continued, but I was afraid of pigeon-holing myself.
Do You Ever Act Like a Polite Robot?
Polite Robot smiles small and listens intently. It asks questions and doesn’t talk too much. It walks with dainty steps and tries to be quiet.
I can’t remember what happened but I think someone made an offhand comment, and suddenly I felt like my topics were depressing. (Internalised ableism? Sane? Or a fair shout? Still not sure.)
Also, around the same time, my book proposal finally went on submission and was rejected (praisefully) by a flurry of talented editors.
Oh, and I had a baby.
So I stopped writing again.
Motherhood without alcohol
People aren't wrong when they say that after a baby they have no time. Or sleep.
Along the way, I was getting to grips with how Substack works, and I think I messed up having sections, and possibly merged lists and so you may find you are getting content you are less interested in. (I’M SO SORRRY. Did I mention I have ADHD???)
But my mum says I need to separate out the drinking content from the neurodiversity content - maybe even separate Autism and ADHD and I want to take her advice. (I often don’t, and I often regret it.)
Is she right?
Most of you likely started reading when you were struggling with drinking or aiming for sobriety… ‘sober curious’ or mindful drinking, maybe…
BUT drinking/sobriety and neurodiversity are so intrinsically connected for me. My identity has shifted, post-diagnosis, whether I like it or not. I can’t write one without the other.
So: if my newsletter’s no longer so relevant… then I understand.
I still think about sobriety all the time. I had a sip of cava last week, and then just stopped, which I’m still kind of amazed about. I’ll definitely be writing more about this in the coming weeks. I finally spoke to my sponsor about it, and am still reflecting on what it means…
9 Years Sober and I drank Some Cava and Here's Why I'm Not Making a Big Deal of It
Last week or the week before, I went to my third-year students’ graduation. This event is the highlight of the academic year. It’s wonderful, and I LOVE seeing my students, finally getting a sense of what the hell we have all been up to for the last days, weeks and months in the seminar rooms (or not).
I hope that if you signed up for sobriety stuff, you might still enjoy what I’m sharing now - it’s so important that the general understanding about neurodivergence improves - but if you don’t, then no hard feelings.
Please feel free to unsubscribe, and thanks for supporting me along the way.
Go forth and find new writers to love! : )
Or, better yet, just change your settings (instructions below) to suit your interests.
Change your settings to suit your interests…
Go to your Substack profile (top right corner).
Go to “account settings” where you'll see your subscriptions. It should look like the image below. (Mine says “Lifetime membership” but yours could say “Paid” or “Free.”)
If you're mainly here for sobriety, toggle Beautiful Hangover. I plan to update some of my pre-diagnosis writing about alcohol and I will post it there.
And if you’re okay with the neurodiversity leakage or interested in learning how to manage and accept neurodivergence in yourself or your loved ones then toggle Overthink Tank.
If you want the neurodiversity-led stuff only, then toggle just Polite Robot.
And if you are happy with all of it, keep them all toggled. : )
No need to save these settings, just exit and your inbox should be a little lighter.
You can always opt back in if you change your mind (or get a late diagnosis, lol.)
Apologies for the chaos, and I hope this helps.
And thanks, as ever, for reading! If there’s anything you want me to know/cover, write to me here.
📚 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 book for Jessica Kingsley Publishers about the connection between undiagnosed neurodiversity and addiction + her first domestic noir. 📚
Settings tweaked. I did not get it that Overthink Tank is a wraparound publication that includes Polite Robot, Beautiful Hangover and Secret Diary too. I assumed they were all separate in SubStackLand. Getting notifications on all now.
I don't care where you draw lines around your writing or if you ever draw lines and attach labels at all. They allegedly have drawn lines to mark how much of the woods out back that I own, but I have yet to actually see one of them. I think they are fantastical creations codified into law but that does not make them any more real. Real life doesn't have lines, though sometimes we must draw them (ooh, boundaries). But I think if it doesn't need a line, then don't draw it.
I write about the same two topics (plus many other random things that pop into my head) so I am here for it all. Plus, I'm not really about those perfectly branded Substacks that speak of one topic and one topic alone for the rest of eternity. I want the messiness of being human and all the thoughts that come with that.
Saying that, I do have my own sections but often my letters end up encompassing multiple facets so it's hard to know which section they should go so I don't put them into one.
But, you do you, Chelsey! No matter what, it will be grand. 🖤