This morning I painted with The Boy. Will share our masterpieces later.

For now here is one he and Iaia (his name for my mum) did on top of my sincere attempt to draw the sea with his felt tips.

I'm still quiet on the newsletter front, while working on my new novel. But there are new podcast episodes to listen to while I'm less here.

In episode 5 of Drinking to Mask and Unmask I talked to Autism researcher and associate professor Dr Felicity Sedgwick at Bristol University about the link between undiagnosed neurodivergence and addiction, especially drinking.

Felicity has such a lot to say on the subject, and her knowledge and insight really informed how much book on this topic has taken shape.

She shares what brought her to the field of autism, what her research and experience has shown her about the connection between autism and addiction and other understandable reasons why autistic people turn to booze.

If you'd like to hear more from Felicity then read her fantastic book Autism and Masking: How and why people do it and the impact that it has.

And if you enjoy the podcast or even just wish me well, generally, please share with anyone who might be interested and leave a five star review. Apparently they really help.

I'm taking a break from podcasting to focus on my novel. Such is the life of a creative with fast cycling interests over which she has very little control.

Tell me how you are.

Hard to write on neurodivergence in the current climate. It's a bewildering topic and the lack of funding for rigorous research doesn't help.

RIP Jason Arday. You seemed like an extraordinary person.

Sending love to everyone. I hope you get time to stop performing today. And I hope the people around you are understanding and kind.

Episodes 1-5 are now available for free wherever you get your podcasts, so please have a listen and let me know what you think.

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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. Her first non-fiction book, Hiding in Plain Sight: How undiagnosed neurodivergence can lead to addiction is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers in Spring 2027 and she is working on her first domestic noir.

Chelsey is currently working on an immersive audio experience funded by the DCRC that takes place in the forest, as well as launching her first podcast.

Drinking to Mask and Unmask, episode 5 out now!

My friend and colleague, Katy Mahood, is working on a new novel in which the protagonist used to be a tightrope walker, so we decided to do a little scholarly research.

We both imagined we would be naturals. Perhaps a new career beckoned.

One second on the slack line freed us of these illusions. Why were our legs wobbling like that? How were you supposed to walk?

I arrived a bit after 9 am at St Andrew’s Park to find Katy with her dad, looking extremely proud of having set up the line.

We took it in turns to wobble aggressively for a second or two before falling off the line. Katy berated herself for ‘cheating’ by holding onto her dad’s shoulder. I gratefully did the same when it was my go.

We were not able to walk for even one step or balance unsupported for the next hour and it was so wonderful.

Years ago, when I was still drinking, still undiagnosed and still deeply masked, I'd watch people on slacklines in the park longingly.

I always wanted to have a go but never dared ask. People making things happen seemed so alien to me. How did they manage it?

It was glorious to finally be with a friend, just playing around at something.

We took turns trying to suddenly be able to do something we absolutely could not do.

“Okay, now I’m just going to walk to the end of the line.”

“Right, I’m just going to step on.”

We watched a YouTube video on slackline for beginners, and felt inspired to try again with what we had learned.

Wobbled violently then stepped straight off again.

After an hour or so, when I went to the loo, Katy took four steps. (Allegedly.) She attempted it again to show me, and managed three. It was thrilling.

Katy’s lovely dad Jim stood nearby, providing a steady shoulder and occasional ratcheting skills, while Katy and I stared at “our anchor” (the tree) and said, “Just STEP on,” in a tone casual enough that it might fool us into being capable of doing so.

At one point, I found myself singing the theme tune of Thomas the Tank Engine as a means of focusing/balancing.

Eventually, we admitted defeat for a bit. Jim went to get coffee and the three of us stood looking over the park together, slackline waiting patiently behind us.

Katy grew up near this park, and her daughters went to nursery nearby. I’ve spent hours here too, in the years since I moved to Bristol. Drinking beer on a picnic blanket over a decade ago, or following my toddler around the sandpit last month.

Katy had lost her mum recently, and her absence hung over our adventure.

Later, when the conversation somehow turned to farts, Katy told a story about her mum staying beside a friend who had cleared the room with a particularly impressive ripper.

“It was a powerful show of loyalty,” she said, and I laughed, sorry I never got the chance to meet her mum. From the stories Katy tells, and the person Katy is, I’m sure I'd have liked her very much.

I left Katy slacklining with her dad and headed home, still surprised not to have been able to just walk along as I had in my imagination.

Of course, on a day like this, proficiency isn’t the point.

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If you haven’t already, read Katy Mahood’s gorgeous debut novel, Entanglement. You can read one of her short stories here, and a new piece of non-fiction about losing her beloved (and fiercely loyal) mum.

Watch this space for news on Tightrope. I read an early draft a while back and it’s shaping up wonderfully.

And if Tightrope ends up containing an unusually accurate description of what it feels like to spend an hour stepping onto a slackline and immediately falling off, you'll know why.

Writing news and releases

Podcast episode 3 - Masking is Real, with Dr Laura Hull

Last week on Drinking to Mask and Unmask, I talked to an academic whose research centres on autism, masking and mental health: Dr Laura Hull from University of Bristol.

Listen if you would like to know more about the phenomenon of masking and/or if you would like to support my work.

New episode out today!

Also, my pre-order link is available!

But I am still struggling to settle on a title for the book. Help!

Drinking to Mask and Unmask: the neurodivergent addiction crisis hiding in plain sight.

Hiding in Plain Sight: the neurodivergent addiction crisis we need to face.

Please take the time to send this newsletter to someone you think might enjoy it.

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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. Her first non-fiction book, Hiding in Plain Sight: How undiagnosed neurodivergence can lead to addiction is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers in Spring 2027 and she is working on her first domestic noir.

Chelsey is currently working on an immersive audio experience funded by the DCRC that takes place in the forest, as well as launching her first podcast.

Drinking to Mask and Unmask, episode 4 out now!

I’m super excited to share episode 2 of Drinking to Mask and Unmask with you. I had the best time chatting with Rosalie, and I think you will all want to be pals with her after you listen to the show.

I know that producer of the Autistic Podcast Culture Network, did.

Rosalie and I are old pals that have been out together drinking together many times, and always had a lot in common, but didn’t have the same language and understanding back then as we do now, so it was really wonderful to catch up.

Rosalie talks about the double-edged sword of being an artist, the difficulty of all the stuff that goes around Making Art and her special bond with TV. If you have any TV recs, put them in the comments - she NEEDS them.

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Oh and we have a fun talk about borrowing the executive functioning of our boyfriends too… Do you relate?

You can listen to her beautiful album here.

Follow her on insta:

Watch her music video Girl I Was.

In other news…

Earlier this month (or last month?) I had my portrait taken by talented photographer and lovely person Jason Dimmock as part of his collaboration with Auti-ms, a local charity that supports Autistic women and girls.

For someone who cannot easily keep her eyes open when a photograph is taken, and generally freezes up in front of the camera, it was a really positive experience and I made a new friend and collaborator : )

If you are high-masking/late-diagnosed Autistic and female, then Jason would love to photograph you. Check out his fabulous website, and leave a comment here so I can put you in touch.

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He is happy to travel, and this is his Instagram.

Like me, he’s fascinated by how appearances can be deceiving, and I was really happy to hear about, and be included in his project. As the father of two Autistic daughters, he deeply understands the invisible burden of masking.

We spent an hour or so together, and he never mentioned that he had photographed some of the coolest people in England. Not only me, but Paul Whitehouse and Dame Sheila Hancock! What an absolute dude. I really liked him. We are looking for a way to work together in future, and he is hopefully going to take portraits of my podcast guests that fit the brief.

Watch this space!

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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. Her first non-fiction book, Hiding in Plain Sight: How undiagnosed neurodivergence can lead to addiction is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers in Spring 2027 and she is working on her first domestic noir.

Chelsey is currently working on an immersive audio experience funded by the DCRC that takes place in the forest, as well as launching her first podcast.

Later today my podcast, Drinking to Mask and Unmask, launches on the Autistic Culture Podcast Network, and I am so excited to finally share it with you. Here is the trailer!

For the last few years, I’ve been having conversations about the role alcohol plays in late-diagnosed Autism and ADHD, and this podcast shares some of the highlights of those conversations with you.

Drinking to Mask and Unmask grew out of my own experience of getting sober, then getting a late diagnosis, and then trying to understand why alcohol had felt so necessary for so long.

It feels like this conversation is really gathering momentum, and I hope my research can contribute to it – and help people who have long felt overlooked feel a little more seen.

I have a book coming out early next year which explores this topic in much more depth (as books can) and shares a lot more of my own story. Hiding in Plain Sight: the neurodivergent addiction crisis we need to face will release early 2027 from Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Ironically, for a podcast about masking, I edited a lot of my own story out of the final episodes. Possibly too much, on reflection. But I am still learning this medium, and one thing I already know is that in season two I want to leave more of myself in the show.

I learned so much creating this first season – about interviewing, audio, storytelling and scheduling (I’m still awful at scheduling) – and I know I can do an even better job with the next one, so please give it a listen.

And if you’re free this afternoon, come along to the launch at 4pm UK time today.

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One episode a week will be airing on the Autistic Culture Podcast Network from this week onwards, so please follow, subscribe, share, and tell a friend who might like it. Do all the things that help a podcast find its audience in a very crowded and glittering field.

I’ve loved talking to people about how drinking featured in their Seeming Fine Years, and how they are finding healthier ways to access whatever alcohol once gave them. Which, it turns out, was Quite A Lot.

Not all of my guests are autistic either, though most are, and many have ADHD as well. But whether academic, clinician, sober, still drinking, neurodivergent, neurotypical or simply trying to make sense of their own life, everyone had something interesting and illuminating to say about the complicated and often misunderstood relationship between late diagnosis, masking, unmasking and alcohol.

Season two will launch in September. I’ve interviewed Professor Tony Attwood and have a conversation with lined up, too. I’m so intrigued to see where the next round of conversations will lead!

Thank you so much to everyone who has listened, shared their story, encouraged me or helped make the podcast possible. I really hope you enjoy listening to my show!

Chelsey x

In other news:

This month I had my portrait taken by a talented photographer and very lovely person Jason Dimmock as part of his collaboration with Auti-ms, a local charity that supports Autistic women and girls. I’ll write another post about this soon, as it was a really positive experience and I made a new friend and collaborator : )

If you are high-masking/late-diagnosed Autistic and female, then Jason would love to photograph you. Check out his fabulous website, and leave a comment here so I can put you in touch.

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He is happy to travel, and this is his Instagram.

ICYMI: Autism and alcohol use, a really fantastically comprehensive article by Jenna Demmer.

And the difference between social anxiety and Autism, another article to which I contributed by Jenna Demmer.

📚 Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. Her first non-fiction book, Hiding in Plain Sight: How undiagnosed neurodivergence can lead to addiction is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers in Spring 2027 and she is working on her first domestic noir.

Chelsey is currently working on an immersive audio experience funded by the DCRC that takes place in the forest, as well as launching her first podcast.

It’s a podcast called Drinking to Mask and Unmask, and each week, I talk to someone who came of age with a serious lack of knowledge about themselves, and used alcohol and drugs to cope with the discord and bewilderment that brought.

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Thanks to for all her help and encouragement in making this, I am so excited to be part of this talented collective, and excited to help launch my fellow creatives shows next week, too.

Thanks again to , and who were among my first guinea pigs, guests.

Here is the trailer for series one Drinking to Mask and Unmask.

Let me know what you think!

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And come to the launch party if you want to hear more about my show and all the other brilliant Autistic-led shows that are launching.

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Over the next weeks I will be sharing clips and out-takes, so please follow along, and share and like if this is something you want to support. I am also looking for guests for series 2.

Did you drink to cope before you understood what you were even coping with? If so, you might have a story that can help others make sense of their experience and feel a bit of sweet solidarity.

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Thanks for being here!

Chelsey x

In Other News

A few months back, I was interviewed in support of these excellent articles by Jenna Demmer.

Understanding the links between Autism and alcohol use, and the difference between social anxiety and Autism.

Please share with anyone you think will find them helpful. They are detailed, well-written, and deserve to be read by many people.

Also, my book finally has a publication date: early 2027. Preorder info and final title to share very soon!

When I first started writing online, I thought getting sober was the story. Then I thought getting diagnosed was the story. It turns out the story is still unfolding.

Thanks for sticking around while I work it out in public.

😅

📚 Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. Her first non-fiction book, Hiding in Plain Sight: How undiagnosed neurodivergence can lead to addiction is forthcoming from Jessica Kingsley Publishers in Spring 2027 and she is working on her first domestic noir.

Chelsey is currently working on an immersive audio experience funded by the DCRC that takes place in the forest, as well as launching her first podcast.

It’s actually happening.

After about five years of talking about making a podcast (ADHD optimism meet Autistic inertia), Drinking to Mask and Unmask launches on 22 June as part of the Autistic Culture Podcast Network and the first episode of the pilot will air on 22 June.

Drinking to Mask and Unmask is a podcast where I talk with other late diagnosed folk about what we did to cope (spoiler alert: it was drinking shedloads of booze), what it cost us, and what we are trying now instead.

Come to the online launch party!

There are 22 other brilliant podcasts being launched, including AI.tism by my new pal and gorgeous star of episode 1 of my show, fellow Au-dhder, ex-heavy drinker and total babe, .

Sign up to come to the launch and hang out with all of us here.

Thanks also to who is VERY FUNNY and VERY HONEST in episode 2, academics Dr Laura Hull and Dr Felicity Sedgewick and who you will have bumped into on here. Oh, and of course, the ultimate show stealer, my Mum.

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I’m really excited about moving into audio, and I hope you will listen along as I learn this new medium.

So far it has been a wonderful mess of scheduling mishaps, accidentally sending a very personal email to someone’s shared work inbox (OUCH, FOREVER) and saying dumb stuff while recording live.

What a learning curve!

Can’t wait to see what absurd mistakes I make while Mr Beaning my way through season 2. Leave a comment if you want to be a guest

: )

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I’m so grateful to the Autistic Culture Podcast Network for giving me the chance to finally actually make the podcast I’ve been promising to make for, um, well, quite a while.

Executive dysfunction is real. So is having a three-year-old and an almost full-time academic role. Between all of these lovely things, this podcast has only been delayed by... Maybe five years.

But who’s counting?

Please listen to my shows as they are released, and share them widely. I feel quite shy and also very delighted to have Made Something.

This conversation we have been having here for a while is expanding, but there is still a lot of misconception and shaming around late-diagnosis, and it’s really important for female voices to be a part of it.

At the moment, conversations about late diagnosis – especially in women – seem to generate more criticism than support. Depending on who you ask, we’re either ‘overdiagnosed’, ‘TikTok deluded’ or just ruining Autism more generally.

The reality is a bit more complicated.

Which is why I made this podcast.

Here is the latest promo image. What do you think? Is it too Mr Tumbles? Or, given who I actually am, irl, perhaps just Mr Tumbles enough?

If you’d like to support the show, the biggest thing you can do is listen to Episode 1 when it comes out and share it with one pal who might recognise themselves in it.

Shout out to my darling Tom who when asked if he had any decent portraits of me didn’t reply to my message, but just sent this batch of absolute belters.

In other news:

A few months back, I was interviewed in support of these excellent articles by Jenna Demmer.

The first is about understanding the links between Autism and alcohol use, and it’s really fantastically comprehensive.

The second is about the difference between social anxiety and Autism.

Please share with anyone you think will find them helpful, they are very detailed and well-written, and deserve to be read by many people.

Also, my book finally has a publication date: early 2027. Hopefully, I will have preorder info and final title to share very soon!

A few years ago I thought getting sober was the story. Then I thought getting diagnosed was the story. It turns out the story is still unfolding.

Thanks for sticking around while I work it out in public.

😅

📚 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.

Summer time and the weather is… rainy.

But!

I have more freedom than the rest of the year, so wellbeing is HIGH.

We currently have a round of academic promotion at UWE after it was frozen for a while, so I spent the last few months reviewing my ‘output’, after it dawned on me that promotion is something I probably need to be thinking about. 😅

[WHY DIDN’T ANYONE GIVE ME CLEAR WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW ACADEMIA WORKS???]

I’ve written thousands of words online now, and so I’ve been working on articulating WHAT I’m trying to say.

Or maybe WHY I’m trying to say it.

Writing here, I share the realities of an experience that is still largely undocumented: the female neurodivergent experience.

The high-masking, low support needs (pah) female Autistic/ADHD/Au-DHDer experience, to be more specific. And what it costs many of us, this Seeming Okay, malarkey.

The research is in its infancy as a whole, and it doesn’t reflect women adequately. AT ALL.

Which is what has driven me to share my experience of those lost years when I was masked and heavy drinking to ‘cope’, stuck in a loop of unnecessary suffering, because I didn’t know I needed support, nor how to ask for it.

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Since 2018 I’ve been mining my experience to give voice to hidden experience – first to ‘grey area drinking’ and the ‘almost alcoholic’ and then, after diagnosis, the masked and drinking to cope female/gender non-conforming person who doesn’t have the language to understand that they are disabled. (Not everyone sees their neurodivergence as disability but I have come to.)

It’s important to share this hidden experience, because we – and there are a lot of us [read , , , , , (new find, hi : ) ] – need and deserve to be seen and read. There is some excellent knowledge emerging from these writers, and I love the way that research is changing to incorporate lived experience.

As well as observed by clinician experience.

Over the last (can it be?) seven years I’ve mined my experience and educated myself (and others, ahem) about addiction and neurodivergence.

More recently I've begun interviewing experts, too (including Dr Felicity Sedgewick and Dr Laura Hull, Professor Tony Attwood, Artemisia Xene {Was Rudy Simone} all in order to give voice to something that happens behind closed doors, behind pleasantly smiling faces.

(Ouch my face.)

Behind ‘Seeming okay’ (new name for newsletter?).

This work has resulted in a book.

Forthcoming (such a lovely, grand publishing term) in the Autumn, and I’ve just finished the first series of a podcast for the Autistic Culture Podcast Network too. How???? No idea. I’m worn-through. And definitely need a big rest.

I will share more about the podcast soon, but for now, it's called Drinking to Mask and Unmask, and it's just been renewed for a second season.

🥳 🥳 🥳

In the pilot, I interview late-diagnosed people (and academics) about the relationship between being undiagnosed neurodivergent and drinking/using substances to cope. We also talk about creativity and finding less costly coping strategies.

Let me know in the comments if you’d like to be a guest!

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So yes, over the last month's I've worked out that I write about something systemic and hard to see, a form of social exclusion that thwarts identities in the process of being formed, keeps people stuck in unfulfilling lives, prevents them from finding and being useful members of their communities, and leads, at best, to unhealthy coping mechanisms and relationships (already bad enough) and at worst, to suicide.1

I believe this work is important, but I’m not always clear where it fits within academia.

I am having to learn a whole new language to convince people that it does. It's hard, and having secret but fairly high levels Comms issues poss doesn't help. 😅

But!

My best friend has trawled the charity shops to create some killer outfits for me - dressing for the job I want - and my hair - wayward, typically, perma-Mum-bunned, at best - has, since submitting my application, been looking *much* better.

No matter the outcome, there will always be that.

Sometimes it feels quite scary to have a book coming out on this topic, because books falsely finalise thinking in a way that can’t be undone. And for me this is still very much in process.

But this is something I teach my students, since learning it from Dorothea Brande in Becoming a Writer. We cannot wait until we make up our minds about something until we write, or we will never get any work done. Instead we have to have the courage to share our thinking-in-process, knowing it will inevitably, change.

Reading some of the recent debate around masking in Autism, including comments from Uta Frith, I can feel my thinking shifting in real time.

Part of me agrees with her. And part of me disagrees.

I have been trying to read more widely about neurodiversity and the idea of overdiagnosis, to get a better sense of the side of the conversation that I am not so used to hearing.

Uta Frith is a hugely important and well-respected figure in the field of Autism. Her thinking paved the way for someone like me to end up with a diagnosis in the first place. She helped people to understand just how various Autistic presentations could be.

And now she’s had to admit that she’s alarmed at where that has led. She is very respectful in her contribution to the discourse, but seeing the headline (why I no longer think autism is a spectrum) still made me feel a bit panicky. Illegitimate. Foolish. Fraudulent.

She writes:

I think at least we have two big subgroups: the people who are diagnosed in early childhood - usually before age three or age five, depending on things like their intellectual abilities and language - and another group, diagnosed much later.

This population is different. It is made up of a lot of adolescents, and among them, a lot of young women. These are people without intellectual impairment, who are perfectly able to communicate verbally and non-verbally, but who might feel highly anxious in social situations. They are perhaps characterised mainly by a sort of hypersensitivity.

Yes, that’s me, Uta! Only I’m not so young. (Though still very beautiful.)

Perfectly able to communicate verbally, yes, but I would disagree with the non-verbal part. I get myself in endless trouble with being blunt and abrupt, not dressing things up with the niceties that make humans more able to listen to and like each other. I am also prone to discussing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

My deepest grief over a casual lunch with rarely-seen friends, for instance. Or my scorn about women marrying just before the speeches at a hen-do I wasn’t even officially invited to.

(Two classics of this particular genre that refuse to leave my recall.)

I’m just as prone not to discuss the thing that needs discussing, too. I left asking my dad certain important questions so long that he died before I managed it.

Ouch.

And yes, highly anxious in social situations. But it’s a bit more than that.

Or is it?

I am trying to leave room for cognitive bias here, because I know that I will badly want to prove my own thinking and beliefs.

And honestly, I would be fine using another word for my experience, as she suggests later in her article. I have only used Autistic because that is what was given to me as a framework, and the spectrum concept she helped create allowed me to make sense of my experience.

I can see how some of my experiences could be framed as sensitivity — to noise, to atmosphere, to other people. But that word doesn’t quite reach the centre of it. It doesn’t explain the most disorienting part: the way my thinking changes in the presence of others.

Alone, I can think. I can decide what I want, or at least get closer to it. Or if I can’t, and I really need to, I can write.

Around other people, this changes. I lose the ability to think for myself at all. It’s as though all of my cognitive energy is simply taken up by being in relationship with the person.

Describing this experience was one of the things that led to my diagnosis. It’s not that my mind goes blank, more that my brain seems taken up entirely by the interaction I am having. I can’t remember what I was doing before or what I had planned to do after. I can’t even reliably remember what I had hoped to do or say during.

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The amount of times I’ve gone into class with a wonderful plan (a box of paper and pens to use while thinking together about story structure, for instance) only to see the box at the end of the session, and realise I entirely forgot to make use of it.

This is why ‘masking’ when I discovered it made so much sense to me. Gave me language for a way of being that had been with me for years.

The name is misleading, because ‘masking’ suggests agency, and in my experience that simply isn’t there. In fact, for me, that is the defining issue with masking, that I have seemed to do it without having agency.

I’ve read two pieces now that seem to misunderstand masking. One in the Uta Frith piece, where writes:

“I expect we could say we are all masking, all the time, trying to adapt to our society’s norms. So, from this point of view, I’m very critical of this idea.”

And she’s right, of course. But she’s talking about the normal range of masking, that which humans must do in order to collaborate and work together, and make each other comfortable. ‘High-masking’ autistics like me do this, but we don’t do it intuitively, it seems. And we are so exhausted by it, that after the fact we need recovery time. Lying down in a dark room, rather than pursuing our own interests.

At another point in the piece she frames the ability to mask as evidence of social skill that discounts the possibility of Autism, writing:

“To me, for example, it’s a contraindicator for the diagnosis of autism if the person can interact smoothly with you in conversation. If a person is autistic, the conversation will often feel stilted or abrupt.”

I am not sure whether this is the case for me (if you know me, feel free to let me know in the comments.) I’m very articulate in writing, but in speech, I can be quite halting and abrupt. At the same time, I’m perfectly capable of interacting smoothly enough to ‘go under the radar’.

Price writes about the cost of this ‘coping’ strategy in a chapter cut from his 2022 book Unmasking Autism shared at his Substack:

“As they grow older, Autistic girls run the risk of being abused by romantic partners, or of not knowing how to maintain healthy boundaries in any relationships, because their supposedly higher ‘social skills’ are often just an elaborate system of appeasement and agreeableness.” (Price, 2023)

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Autistic masking isn’t the same as adjusting your behaviour to fit social expectations, because yes — that’s just being human. We are social and collaborative. We want to be liked and we want to be given things and we follow scripts. We all perform versions of ourselves depending on context. If that’s all masking is, it’s hard to argue that it’s uniquely exhausting or even particularly remarkable. But that isn’t what Autistic masking is.

Anyone that wants to educate themselves on the topic can do so: Dr Felicity Sedgewick and Dr Laura Hull have written a brilliant book on the subject. They include a kind of brainshadowing exercise describing the experience of a conference for an Autistic and a non-Autistic person.

Both women perform excellence, giving an insightful speech, but only one has to lie down for 24 hours afterwards. (So lazy.)

I understand where some of the pushback comes from — a concern that the concept has become too broad, too elastic. That it risks meaning everything and therefore nothing.

But the more I think about it, the more I realise that for me when I talk about the cost of masking the issue isn’t primarily even the exhaustion that comes with it.

It’s the lost agency.

This is where the conversation about masking, outside of Autistic circles, misses something important.

If we frame masking primarily as “hiding traits” or “performing normality,” we risk overlooking the internal experience that sits underneath it. The part that isn’t visible. The part that isn’t just about presentation, but about access.

Because for some of us, the issue isn’t that we are constantly choosing to perform.

It’s that, in certain environments, performance becomes the only available mode — not because we are strategically masking, but because we can’t access anything else.

That feels quite different to ordinary social behaviour.

It’s not a flexible shifting between selves. It’s more like having no option except survival.

Because agency — the ability to choose, resist, assert — depends on being able to think in real time.

If I can’t do that, my options narrow very quickly. In those moments, I don’t have the luxury of choice. Because if I get it wrong, I lose important relationships. Or possibly even employment. So I have two options. Or that’s what it feels like.

I can malfunction.
Or I can go along. Mimic. Adaptively morph. Mask.

And most of the time, until I had the language for what was happening, I went along.

And for a long time, until I had the language for what was happening, I interpreted this as a character flaw. A lack of confidence. Weakness. Fickleness. Insert other negative labels.

It was never that I didn’t have opinions or preferences. It was that I couldn’t always access them when it mattered.

Looking back, I can see how this shaped my life — particularly in relationships. Because if your thinking becomes unreliable in the presence of others, it becomes very difficult to set boundaries, notice red flags, act in your own interest.

You default, again and again, to whatever is easiest in the moment. And that is how you build your life.

And then you look back later — alone, thinking clearly — and wonder why you didn’t do something different.

But at the time, you didn’t have the choice.

I’m still thinking this through. I’ve just written a whole book about it.

And I suspect I’ll keep revising my understanding of it.

Just as Uta Frith has done over the course of her career.

Feel free to share your evolving understanding and questions in the comments.

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And thank you, as ever, for reading and being here, for letting me share the things I do.

📚 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. 📚

About me

Hi. I’m Chelsey Flood.

I’m a novelist, teacher and researcher, and I’ve spent the last decade or so writing books, teaching fiction and creative non-fiction, and thinking deeply about how stories work – and why they matter.

I’m the author of two novels, including award-winning YA, and I’ve taught creative writing in the community and in universities across the UK. Along the way, I’ve helped hundreds of people find their voice, shape stories, and actually finish the things they start.

Writing – and teaching writing – has been one of the most reliable, sustaining forces in my life.

It makes me so happy these days to share my love of books, and inspiring people to write their own stories is a feeling that never gets old.

Overthink Tank is where all the different strands of my work come together. My fiction, teaching and my more recent move into non-fiction.

Here I write about:

creativity and identity

writing as a way of coping, thinking and surviving

neurodivergence, addiction, masking and unmasking

motherhood and the (for some of us very hard) work of becoming yourself.

The writing here documents my own struggle to understand (or become) something. It’s research-informed and playful and serious and sometimes polished, but usually, rough. A way to escape the perfectionism (and isolation) that book-length projects demand.

Teaching and learning

I’ve created a free online course on writing YA fiction, originally developed for the National Writing Centre. It’s a practical, accessible way into novel writing, whether you’re interested in YA specifically or just want to strengthen your storytelling muscles.

You can take the course at your own pace, in your own time, even in your pyjamas if you like. (That’s what I’d do.)

👉 Write YA fiction

I still love YA though I haven’t written it for a while. I love its intensity, the search for identity and the fast pace. Even when I’m writing adult fiction and non-fiction, YA is part of my DNA – voice, vulnerability, propulsion, emotion.

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If you’re taking the course, let me know.

I hold monthly office hours, where you can ask questions about writing, publishing, creativity or story structure.

I look forward to getting to know you and your writing there and in the comments.

Writing YA fiction.

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Thank you, as ever, for reading and being here, for letting me share the things I do.

📚 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. 📚

I’m sorry I’ve not been able to write on here. The deadline for my book is fast approaching, it’s supposed to go to copyedits in January, and I still have so much to do!

I am going to pause paid subscriptions for a while, and will return once I can actually find the time to give this and you the attention it deserves and requires!

Thanks for bearing with me, those of you who have, and I will be back soon!

Chelsey x

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And if you’d like me to send you the questions I sent Ren, then let me know in the comments. I would love to give space to more voices with experience of this wonderful trifecta (drinking, masking, ND) in future editions…

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I prefer Sober Me

Throwing Drunk Me Overboard

‘I prefer drunk you. Drunk you is more fun.’

I will never, ever forget these words as long as I live. I’ll never forget how they cut through any mask I had consciously or subconsciously tried to piece together like a child’s paper mache project. Drunk me is more fun, I thought, fucking brilliant. It crushed me.

Then I poured myself another glass of wine. Time to have more fun.

Like a lot of things, I was late to the party when it came to drinking. With the exception of a Christmas glass of Cava, I didn’t touch alcohol until I turned 18, living up to my brand as a Good Girl™. My friends had already gone through the whole swigging-cheap-cider-in-the-park initiation, a trope as British as apologising for something that isn’t your fault. I’d skipped the park phase, mainly because I was too busy reading Wikipedia recreationally. By 18, alcohol still had that enticing mystery vibe to it that my peers no longer felt.

I discovered wine while sat at someone’s 18th birthday party. More importantly, this was where I discovered the persona of Drunk Me. I loved that booze made me talk. It was probably a load of rubbish, but talk I did.

It was probably a bit weird for people to see this Cinderella-like transformation of the mute oddball from school (if Cinderella was Back to Black era Amy Winehouse). If Regular Me was a quiet, socially inept space cadet with the self-awareness of a plum, Drunk Me was, for roughly about two hours, P!nk rocking up to the house in her car to Get This Party Started.

I later discovered alcohol’s other uses. The unease I felt at living away from home without my familiar routines and any sort of external structure or consistency while at uni meant that alcohol became something to fall back on. The university I went to was a binge-drinking hothouse so we all blended in together.

Were you drinking to have a good time or were you drinking because you felt you had no other choice?

Hard to tell.

It’s hard to think about that time without feeling awful for that kid struggling to make friends and get their head around the newness of everything, beating themselves up about being a misfit.

I graduated from uni into a world where it was normal to commune with alcohol at the end of the day. The days were a mess of work, office environments, small talk, unwritten rules and expectations, social situations, people’s motives, money troubles, you name it. It was never drinking in the morning, hiding it or anything like that. But it became something I looked forward to. It became something that was part of the structure of my day. I realised that this had the potential to go extremely west if I left it unchecked.

After writing notes to myself in my phone whilst drunk that said ‘Please stop drinking’, I finally listened to myself. Quitting drinking felt easier to me than moderation, a binary yes/no switch firmly set to ‘no’, rather than a ‘maybe’ or an ‘I might have one’ (it was never just one). Communities like r/stopdrinking massively helped me to open my eyes and see how much worse it could potentially get if I didn’t stop now.

The first round of sobriety lasted for two years. I was very loud and very smug about it online. Insufferable. Then, having completed two years, I managed to convince myself that this arbitrary figure proved that I didn’t have an alcohol problem actually and I could in fact control my drinking with ease.

Nope. I’d fallen for my own bullshit. Typical.

In the liminal space between sobriety and ramping up again, I learned that I am in fact autistic and I have ADHD. All of a sudden it was blindingly obvious that my penchant for booze was related to how it helped me in social situations, and how it helped me recover from any kind of overstimulating environment. It settled the bees in my head and made them sleepy.

Bizarrely, alcohol did provide a little window into what life would be like as my unmasked AuDHD self. Drunk Me very happily recited internet-meme songs on video at uni parties in a way Sober Me could only dream of. (For what it’s worth, if I ever do find myself at karaoke nowadays, which is extremely are, I am a sober, unmasked, karaoke queen).

Wavy Thoughts

Hi, I'm Ren and I write about my wavy life as an autistic and ADHD mess. Come join me!

By Ren Riley

Of course, Drunk Me wasn’t the Real Me. It was a superficial spark that died after a few hours to be replaced with a day or more’s worth of hangover. Gross.

A year and a half ago I swore Drunk Me off again. Hopefully for the last time, though I can never bank on it. The unmasking process, getting comfy walking around in this meat suit with this wavy brain, has slowly empowered me to be the weirdo I was born to be, no alcohol required. I’m lucky in that somewhere along the way I simply lost the last fucks I could give, truly. I’ll behave when I need to, I’m not completely un-self-aware. But I know that most of the time I need to be me, undistilled, desperately, authentically myself, sans any stimulant besides Pepsi Max, else my mental health tanks. I’m grateful for the privileges I was born with that make this unmasking possible, I’m acutely aware of how different this all could be had I had a life of different circumstances.

I don’t go to many parties now as a general rule.

I’m not much of a socialiser and have few friends.

It sounds sad but its not for me and it never has been. It’s frowned upon by society, sure. But that doesn’t bother me anymore.

I keep my world deliberately small - a small world means it’s easier to control, fewer surprises and more consistency. My fun is found in reading and writing mainly, as well as connecting with the large community of neurodivergent folks I have come into contact with through my newsletter.

I experience a peace now that I didn’t know was possible ten years ago. Drunk Me could never.

© 2025 Ren Riley

📚 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. 📚

I’m so busy trying to finish my book for my editor, working 4 days a week at the university (which to me feels like full-time due to the Being Perceived hangover which demands 2 hours of rest for every hour of Being Perceived) and raising The Toddler, that I am not getting much time to write here.* SINCEREST of the SINCERE APOLS.

Also, fun fact, did you know I spend 23 hours a day apologising?

Yep. This is mostly due to ADHD, which causes me to inconvenience myself and others all day every day, every single day of my life.

GREAT for developing compassion for self and others, TERRIBLE for being viewed as competent.

Anywho. I have no choice but to accept myself. I tried the workarounds (I’m looking at you, beer) but all paths, it seems, lead back to mmeEeeeEeEeeeeee. For me, at least (lol).

ALAS.

*Last week/month(?) I decided that this newletter will be mostly paid from now on. This is because I believe artists deserve to be paid for their work.

I’m sorry, but I do! Not much - don’t worry! I’m not a monster. But a little. It’s only fair.

So, the schedule is three paid posts a month and one free essay.

I don’t have the wherewithal to come up with a consistent posting strategy, which might mean that this newsletter never ‘pops off’ as the kids say. But I cannot become a completely different, infinitely better person. Believe me, I tried. This is me, working at Absolute Capacity. Like it or not.

(I return you to my earlier self-acceptance spiel.)

And so this week, like all the other weeks has seen me fucking up all over the shop. Fighting cats, literally. And toddlers. Not even my own.

Let me explain.

In the last week I’ve been in two scraps. Just now with my neighbour’s cat - fuck off, Keddy, you vicious fuck! - and in soft play at the weekend with a cluster of rabid toddlers.

Perhaps my testosterone levels are up, since I finally finished breastfeeding. (Crying face.) It was an incredible thing, to make food with my body, and I felt keenly aware that I was a God. Something I had foolishly never realised before.

I’m still a God (obvs) but I feel a bit lowlier again now. Maybe that’s why I am out on the streets of Pill, fighting cats. (Keddy is a monster, mind you. I’ve had to take Ted to the vets twice after he showed up here, running his mouth.)

The Toddlers deserved it, too. My wrath. Actually, they were Bigger Boys, not toddlers. And they had gone completely Lord of the Flies.

Some parents at David Lloyd leave the children to ‘play’ while they drink coffee or catch up with some work which leads to survival of the fittest pretty quick. Luckily, this doofus (I mean, me) was there to wreak justice. Or whatever.

A small boy called the alarm, crying at the edges of soft play, and his dad came over and told him, essentially, as dads are wont to do, that he needed to be a bit tougher, that life in soft play (and out of soft play, frankly) is a free-for-all and you just gotta suck it up.

But the sweet little boy couldn’t get over whatever it was that was happening. And soon I saw why. As the sweet boy’s dad wandered back to his latte I heard the braying.

LOCK HIM OUT! LOCK HIM OUT!

From deep within the darkest bowels of soft play, where the cushion cubes and triangles lie in wait.

LOCK HIM OUUUUTTTT!!!!

Paddy and I went to investigate and we could hardly believe our eyes. The Bigger Boys (plural) clustered around a zip, clinging onto it together, while a Bigger Boy (single) fought on the other side, with an air of resignation, to open the thing.

Reader, the boy had been Cast Out.

He was - trigger warning - OUTSIDE the soft play area. The Bigger Boys had pushed him out of one of the zip pockets, and he now resided n about four inches of space, along with all the dust, ancient crackers and abandoned toys that had met a similar fate.

The Bigger Boy within me arose.

I found myself joining in the tussle. Paddy, always eager to be hospitalised, started whacking the ringleading zip-holder over the head, and I had to pull him off him, before returning to wrestling the zip out of these feral children’s hands myself.

With Paddy now trapped in my arms for his own safety I released the lone Bigger Boy. He squirmed out of the zip, with the effortfully blank expression that announces the onslaught of toxic masculinity.

The other Bigger Boys roared their disappointment and the gang dispersed.

Spell broken.

It was like that bit at the end of Lord of the Flies where an adult appears, and suddenly you remember that these terrifying tyrants are simply little boys, a little too unsupervised, in a David Lloyd soft play.

Everyone has ADHD now corner

Okay, so this is where I prove I am, in fact, SPECIAL and DIFFERENT.

OR where you tell me, nope I do this much stupid stuff all the time, too.

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This month I accidentally:

1. Let the dog eat raisins. Cue £900 vet’s bill.

2. Smashed my new phone in the same hour that the phone case my partner bought me arrived (he forsaw this outcome AND my inability to get one myself, and took pity on me, but no one can save me from myself)

3. Am awaiting a court summons for refusing to pay a fine I think unfair (I paid for parking for car I was not driving)

4. Have had to use Find My Phone to find my phone every day. Sometimes more than once. (I’ve given up blind searching and just go straight to the laptop {if I can find it})

5. Had to rearrange student tutorials due to child sickness and forgot to let 50% of them (all my second years) know : (

6. Organised ALL my student feedback tutorials for 1am in the morning. (wtaf?) Still have no idea how AS I SWEAR I CHECKED and RECHECKED MY SETTINGS but ALL - YES ALL - of my students booked a time using Canadian time. 😳

These are just the things I remember. Imagine how many errors I forgot.

So I don’t add to the bleak suicidality statistics of ADHDers, here is a list of some of the things I got right this month.

1. I am very close to completing my first book-length non-fiction project and I handed the draft in early. (Whaaaat)

2. I have written 40,000 words of the domestic noir novel.

3. In the tutorials with my students, when they finally happened (crying emoji) I was able to offer helpful feedback about their work. I read tens of thousands of words worth of work and helped most of my students.

4. I spoke at an online Alcohol Change conference yesterday - Changing times Women and alcohol through the life-course - and the audience sent many many love hearts as I finished speaking. It was lovely and reminded me why I keep trying, because I really do have something to say.

5. I was on time for my service post, got a new sponsor and have committed to re-doing the steps.

6. I had the day off with Paddy, took care of him, AND had hours of fun with the little beast.

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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 book for Jessica Kingsley Publishers about the connection between undiagnosed neurodiversity and addiction + her first domestic noir. 📚

The months before I got sober, I became obsessed with survival. Hungover, my boyfriend and I would watch Ed Stafford get dropped off, naked, in wild places and then slowly build himself the beginnings of a life.

We were enthralled. Something about it was irresistible, though I had no idea what it was. The simplicity, perhaps? Lack of life admin? No plastic or laundry or pubs?

We were trying to live better, trying to drink less. Had recently found our way back to each other after a few years apart. Maybe the appeal of the wilderness was not having to manage your appetites?

I don’t know what it was that drew my attention, but I was struck by a powerful longing to be surrounded by forest. Impulsively, one night, I emailed a local bushcraft outfit, asked if they would like a writer-in-residence, hoping (as ever) not to have to pay the substantial fee attached to going back to the Stone Age in the woods.

They didn’t want a writer-in-residence (why would they?) but they offered me a discount, and so I booked myself on to their course. Wilderness Awakening, it was called: green carpentry and wild butchery, foraging and tracking. I would build a lean-to where I would sleep, and hopefully get some perspective on my life and what I wanted. I couldn’t wait. To be alone in the woods, without the temptation to drink. Bliss.

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Ted was hungover, but he drove me to the woods as he’d promised he would. it was a nervewracking journey, one I’d experineced many times, when the person driving you is clearly well over the legal limit from the night before. But beggars can’t be choosers: a lift to the forest is a lift to the forest.

We hugged in the car park, surrounded by ancient oak and ash, and as he breathed in at the top of my head, kissed me on my brow the way he had since I was in my twenties, my heart melted and I thought maybe we were going to be okay.

I needed to be stronger, that was all. More independent. Less pathetically easily led. If I didn’t want to drink, I didn’t have to drink.

This was the story of my life back then: if I could just be better, maybe I could be loved.

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I drive up to Derby, turn down the potholded road that leads to my dad’s pebbledashed old farmhouse. Reach around the outdoor toilet door to grab the key from the hook where we have always kept it. The present I posted for his birthday lies on the floor.

What was I thinking? Avoiding him just before his seventy-first birthday. What kind of a selfish idiot would do that?

My guts drag at my stomach. Guilt claws at me, wishing to devour.

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In 2011 I got a letter from my doctor saying I’d been screened as drinking too much.

At the time, I thought it was funny.

I was 28, and living at my dad’s in Derby after splitting up with the insta-boyfriend I’d moved in with (far too quickly) after finally managing to leave the ‘love of my life’. I use quotation marks here because this great love of mine had been making me miserable for years. More on that, later.

28 and just beginning to seriously worry about the way my life wasn’t coming together, still hopeful I was going to turn it round.

A sense of doom was courting me. My local friends were all married with mortgages. Most of them had a couple of kids.

I was lonely, but I didn’t understand how to be friends with mothers. I was used to meeting in pubs, and they were rarely able to do that. So, I drank with whoever was available. Went on dates when I wanted friendship. Drank with single men I’d gone to school with.

I knew my biological clock was ticking, in theory - how could I not when people pointed it out so often? - but I didn’t feel it. Other people’s babies left me cold. They were beautiful and miraculous, sure, but the way life revolved around them, how you suddenly saw loads more of your parents… I didn’t want the lifestyle that came with it.

Mind you, I didn’t really want to be binge drinking in the village pub on random Tuesday nights, either, so I felt at an impasse.

I’d almost finished a novel - the first one that ‘had legs’ after abandoning dozens - and landed a literary agent, which allowed me, after a drink to believe I was on the precipice of greatness. A woman who had resisted the call of motherhood, the lure of home comforts in order to pursue her dreams. I just hadn’t quite reached them yet.

“We’re trailblazers,” I remember saying to a friend, around this time. “There’s not many of us still, this path is untrodden...”

Yes, it was just bad luck, I told myself, my loneliness. My doomed great love. It wasn’t my fault that the hilarious, talented man I’d been wild about had turned out to be a Jekyll and Hyde problem drinker unwilling to work on himself.

With hindsight, all the signs were there from the three-month mark. A few of my friends mentioned that he seemed a little… off. Christ, even one of his ex-girlfriends sidled up to me in a bar and warned me I should be careful with him. One of the women in his own friendship group refused to talk to him because he was a bully.

And yet, I loved him. And he loved me.

🖤 🖤 🖤

Looking back, this person’s actions made it clear he wasn’t interested in the conventional loving heterosexual partnerships our friends shared - staying out until the early hours without texting, flirting with other women while I sat beside him, steering clear of events where I could have done with his suppport - but he also said he loved me more than anything, that he wanted to be with me forever, so somehow, I let it slide.

Red flag after red flag… He started a fight with a good male friend of mine, tried to kiss my best friend, tried to kiss my good friend’s new girlfriend… the repeated humiliations were almost too much to bear, but somehow I continued to forgive him. To believe he was it. My great love.

His misdemeanors only happened when he was drinking, and so they didn’t really count, right?

And each time I reported his latest crime, he was deeply remorseful. Mortified. Ashamed. And I would take pity on him. Comfort him. Promise to help him become a better man. Ah, the exquisite agony of doomed love!

At a deep level I must have understood how fucked this was, that I couldn’t trust him the way I needed to in order to build a real and meaningful life, but I’d never been in love before. Not like this. Because when things were good, we laughed so hard people envied us, and he had taught me so much, about art and music and film and nature.

I still wasn’t used to men like him - educated, handsome, sophisticated (when sober) - paying me attention. And I was out of my depth. Drunk a lot of the time myself. Increasingly separate from my family. My mum had moved to Spain and my brother was away travelling. My dad was always at home, but he had his own routines, and we never talked about anything real.

My uni friends had all moved away and over time I’d joined this person’s friendship group. I’d come to love his family. He had become everything to me.

And so I kept forgiving him for his drunken mistakes - it really didn’t feel like a choice. He needed me and I needed him - and this, our ‘great love’ went on for five years.

🖤 🖤 🖤

I share all this as context. The background of my life, into which this letter arrived.

I finally managed to leave my ‘One True Love’ via the well-known and despicable method of ‘The Overlap’. Falling madly in love with the first cute man that made a play for me.

Inevitably, I was too fucked up after my torturous years with ‘The One’ to make it work with this wonderful person, and so my rebound insta-love/escape hatch fell apart, slowly and painfully. I have never been a quick learner. And I must acknowledge that I was a terrible girlfriend myself at this time. Selfish, self-centred, narcissistic. Critical, unhappy and unfulfilled.

And so after moving in temporarily with a beautiful life-saving friend (bless her, supporting me to the last as I rampaged around causing drama) I went home in a blaze of glory — i.e. a bewildered shame cloud — to lick my wounds at my dad’s.

And soon after, received the screening letter from the doctor.

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It’s funny being almost alcoholic. There are so many signs that your drinking is a problem (like all the problems related to your drinking, and your, well, you know, drinking problem).

But somehow none of these signs get through. Or not consistently.

At the time I thought my alcohol consumption was more manageable, because I blacked out less, but in hindsight I can see that it was just more constant. It had become daily by then.

Now I see my disregarding of that letter as evidence of the power of denial and how normalised problem drinking is in our culture. And how convincing our own lies can be. And I wish things could have been different. That I could have seen it for what it was: an invitation to change.

Life at Dad’s

[The rest of this essay gets more personal — about my dad, what I lost and gained in sobriety, and what that letter really meant. It’s for paid subscribers.]

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This Saturday I went to see Self Esteem with two of my best friends. My partner was supposed to come, but changed his mind — his gigantic loss — and I wish I’d used my influence (something I’m not good at) to persuade him.

We arrived early, possibly for the first time in my life. It was calm, almost empty — I actually wondered if we were at the wrong venue.

Moonchild Sanelly: “I’m undumpable, bitch!”

Moonchild Sanelly opened while the crowd was still small. She deserved a bigger audience and acted like she had one, gave it everything.

Moonchild was fabulous, in a frilly kinda flamboyant office-style top (revealing my lack of fashion knowlegde here) and pants, with stocking garters ariound her thighs. Halfway through the set, it turned out her DJ was wearing similar. He emerged from behind the decks wearing the same stocking garters and they danced together, twerking and twirling, and basically blowing my tiny white-girl mind.

Next came Nadine Shah — stunning, with a beautiful voice and real stagecraft, but just not my cuppa tea sound-wise.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor - “if I’m so empowered why’m I such a coward?“

And then: Self Esteem. Everything I’d hoped for — smart, sexy, warm, accessible. Part theatre, part sermon, part communal therapy.

I’d read the reviews before going and was shocked to see Pitchfork had given A Complicated Woman 4.8. They slated her for overusing the choir (“You’re occasionally struck by the sense that it’s trying a little too hard to rouse its audience into a mass singalong.” — Alex Petridis, completely missing the point in The Guardian, 2025) and sending “mixed messages.”

Said she was reaching for catharsis she hadn’t earned — but if they’d looked around that night, they’d have seen catharsis galore. Mainly for women, and those who’ve resisted/defied socialisation as men.

The Pitchfork reviewer called her “joyless,” accused her of “harping on old feminist arguments” but you can’t blame musicians for the slow progress of deconstructing centuries of a patriarchal culture.

Self Esteem makes unapologetically female music.

She courts and gives to the female gaze — with occasional violent knocks towards the male, and it’s so refreshing. My friends and I danced and hugged each other.

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I’d had a terrible weekend. My phone broke and my life immediately fell apart as a result. ADHD forgetfulness and unmanagableness causing me to (temporarily) lose trust in myself and dread the future with myself at the helm. All this was forgotten.

I jumped down from my perch (Accessibility note: There is a side stage at the Bristol Beacon, where you can sit, in the standing area) and went wild, waving my arms in the air like I actually didn’t care.

And it was wonderful, beautiful, unforgettable.

Evolving together

I first saw her with Slow Club at Latitude, maybe 2007 or 2008. The same blonde-blonde hair, but with a thick primary-school fringe, drumming on a chair, singing something about apples and pears. Very cute. Very talented. I fell in love with her then.

She was maybe in the wrong place — as I would come to feel I was then — surrounded by self-centred artists (like me) and heavy drinkers (also me), when I really needed kind, diligent, sober people.

I’ve listened to all her albums since, and her experiences have often run parallel to my life. I once saw her with someone I was in doomed love with. Afterwards, he said he liked it, but that the band “weren’t actually good.” He was kind of unmoved. A lot of men maybe feel that way about her music.

That was typical of him — and, of me too, back then: critical to the point of missing opportunities for connection.

I used to call my ex “the tastemaker” because he was so sure of his opinions. So sure he was right! Though as my friend pointed out recently, he was also one of the coolest person she’d ever met — coolness always comes at a cost. It did for me.

It’s hilarious I ever tried to be cool; I wonder if I ever pulled it off.

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Self Esteem Knows Neurodivergence and Addiction

My favourite lyric: “History repeating without the learning” — that’s basically ADHD life.

“I wouldn’t do it if it didn’t fucking work” — she nails alcohol abuse.
“Sexting at the mental health talk — seems counterproductive.” — a classic, though I don’t relate (too prudish to sext, too lazy to go to talks).
“Are you interested in growing?” — ultimate zinger for millennial men.
“If I’m so empowered, why’m I such a coward?” — eternal question for ‘emancipated’ people everywhere.

Critics Gonna Criticise

“No one album or musician should be burdened with solving systemic injustice,” wrote Laura Snapes in Pitchfork. “But A Complicated Woman’s myopic focus is stuck in 2013 — girls, you got this; men, do better.”

Maybe that’s why I love her. Because she’s unafraid to confront the bleak truth: feminism feels stalled. Maybe in reverse, even. (Now men, too, can obsess over their bodies; empowered porn stars can be hospitalised for their antics.)

And she does it with joy, humour and vulnerability.

Amen

No one should have to bear the burden of feminist catharsis — but for this Saturday eve Self Esteem almost made it feel and sound like fun.

The choir in their closed circle, singing to each other radiated the sisterly solidarity that always has and always will get women through, an intimacy many men can only glimpse through their relationships with their girlfriends and wives.

📚 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. 📚

Today I sat at the bottom of the stairs repeating, I need help, and there is no help.

If you’re sick of toxic positivity, read on baby, this one’s for you.

This week I had to contact the Citizen’s Advice Bureau to appeal a parking ticket appeal rejection. (I paid for parking, but for our other car. DOH.)

They’re charging me £100 for this and I’m not paying because I think it’s unfair. How many ‘silly mistakes’ like this do you make because of neurodiversity?

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Last month I started a petition about this. End the ADHD Tax! I just went to find the link and discovered it’s been rejected. Ouch. Apparently, it’s not clear what the petition is asking the UK Government or Parliament to do. Story of my life.

Also this week, I found a £99 monthly payment for something I’d signed up for impulsively, never used, and forgotten to cancel. Naturally, it was something that promised to help with my executive functioning and memory struggles, which I immediately forgot I’d bought.

Luckily, they took pity on me and refunded it when I explained that I was their target audience, because otherwise their business model would look flipping dodgy.

It might be worse lately, because of my hormones. Am I perimenopausal? Who knows. But the mistakes, my god, the mistakes.

Post-diagnosis blues

If you read my work when I was getting sober, it was rainbow-riding unicorns compared to how I’ve been post-diagnosis. I believed things were going to get better and better.

“This is going to be a real levelling up for you,” a dear friend said to me at the time, and I thought, wow, she’s right.

And she was right. Life improved a lot, and I still LOVE never ever having a hangover. It will never not be wonderful. But a lot of the stupid shit I used to blame on drinking was actually just me.

Being inattentive, losing things, making dumb decisions and daft mistakes… All just me, it turns out. Whoopsie!

I live with a poltergeist

I live with an invisible presence who moves my things, unplugs my appliances, wipes my brain, sends inappropriate comments flying out my mouth and retrieves the wrong items when I’m focused on a task.

Before I was diagnosed, I lived with this infuriating poltergeist but I didn’t notice so much.

Booze helped distract me from the stress of it. Since I didn’t know what it was, I guessed maybe one day I could shift it. And while drinking didn’t exactly take away the stress of living with the poltergeist, at least it offered some respite.

It soothed me SO MUCH. To drink. To know I could drink.

Writing my non-fiction book about the connection between addiction and undiagnosed neurodiversity, I’ve revisited my drinking a lot. Developed a better understanding of what booze gave me. Reframed, with the lens of undiagnosed neurodivergence, I sometimes question whether my drinking was even truly addictive.

Anyone who read my work during that period will know I had to do a lot of mental gymnastics to identify as an alcoholic. I did it, because it was the only thing that had ever succeeded in stopping me drinking.

But I stopped long before I was physically addicted.

Don’t get me wrong, my drinking was not normal.

I LOVED alcohol from the very first time. It lit me up, and filled me with confidence and joy, allowed me to stop worrying so much about all the ways I struggled socially. It gave me so much! And I became obsessed with it.

And it took from me, too. So I quit.

But lately I’ve realised that I mainly just was not a highly functioning enough person to be able to get away with drinking the way I did. Being this neuro-hot, and functioning at this level (mortgage, job, pets) for me, demands sobriety.

How can anyone have kids and drink???? Impossible.

I remember, before diagnosis, saying this kinda thing in AA meetings. That I’d recognised an inability to drink the way I was used to drinking and manage my life at this new level, as a writer and author…

Drinking felt like peace

I am still assimilating my diagnosis. I thought I had accepted it, but recently I’m realising I’m still right in the thick of this acceptance.

To be clear, I don’t want to drink. I prefer my life without alcohol.

But drinking gave me peace or the illusion of peace, from the infuriating poltergeist experience that is daily life with almost no working memory, and honestly, I miss it.

Not drinking, certainly not hangovers, but peace.

OF COURSE, I MISS THAT.

“It’s like ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back six times a day at the minute,” I told my partner today, trying to apologise for the nightmare I was being/creating in our lives.

He gets upset with me for being hard on myself, but honestly, anyone living the way I have to would be hard on themselves.

It’s probably self-indulgent to post this when there are wars and famine in the world, and here I am, just not managing my safe and privileged life. But I’m sharing this anyway, in case anyone else needs the solidarity.

Because losing track of your shit all day long is boring.

Forgetting your belongings all day long is exhausting.

Making daft, impulsive decisions all day long is dispiriting as hell.

Anyone would feel frustrated with themselves if they let themselves and their loved ones down and caused themselves inconvenience multiple times a day.

I need help, and there isn’t any help, and honestly, sometimes - today, lately - it just really fucking gets me down.

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Truth is the way to change

A good friend just read the first draft of my book, and confirmed that it is, in fact, sad.

“Grim, isn’t it?” I said, mildly embarrassed. “I think the contextualising voice and the research might lighten it a bit…”

“But you have to write it as bad as it was,” she said. “You have to tell the truth. It’s the only way to change things.”

And she’s right.

So here I am, from the messy middle, telling the truth.

Which is: I got sober and everything got better and then it got worse.

And then I got diagnosed and everything got better and then it got worse.

I’m still hopeful it might ultimately get better.

But right now, I’m struggling with the idea that this is it. Poltergeist every day forever. (F U C K.)

And so I post this for the ones also struggling with facing their own limitations.

Know you’re not alone. Many of us are haunted by poltergeists.

And don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you to love the poltergeist.

But I am going to have to ask you to try again to be kinder to yourself. I need to take this advice, as all my self-compash seems to have jumped out the window in exasperation.

Also, remember the good times, like the kitchen disco with Baby Boy and the patience and attention and care you showed when he wanted to race his cars for the billionth time. The presence and joy you are capable of, generally, I so love how you are capable of presence and joy!

I still haven’t tried medication, maybe that will change everything. [PLEASE, FOR ALL THAT IS HOLY.]

Until then, I will continue to Mr Bean my way through existence.

Maintaining a sense of humour in the face of all my fuckwittery might be the only thing I can control.

So wish me luck. Yeeeesh.

Chelsey xx

📚 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. 📚

Hi everyone, how are you this week?

This is an experiment with writing a less polished, more personal, post, just for my paid subscribers.

Honestly, it means so much to me that I have you.

So much in fact that sometimes I don’t know how to thank and talk to you.

From my mum’s best friend (hi Kaz!) to writer friends I’ve made along the way to total strangers doing this for their own reasons. Thank you and I hope you enjoy my experiment.

1. It feels like Especially Terrible Times in the world. And I can’t understand how we got to this place. I’m not smart enough. Dont have the intellect or attention span for politics or history or geography.

At school I struggled to pay attention, for reasons I now understand as undiagnosed neurodivergence. So there’s a lot to catch up on.

Trying to fix my own ignorance recently, I watched a Louis Theroux documentary about Gaza. Immediately I remembered why I’m so ignorant. Heartbreaking, despicable situation.

A friend I Iook up to recently admitted he hasn’t engaged with the news for a while either. That made me feel a bit better about my shameful news ban.

Perhaps it’s ok when its a matter of survival? (Please say yes.) But also obviously no because then who is going to change things?

We cannot possibly process all the information available. I’m back to keeping it out. Tell me how you handle it. Does your work allow you to tune out? Are you active in any causes? As an academic I ‘should’ be up to date-ish.

How do you manage?

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Drinking allowed me to tune this stuff out. To forget my powerlessness. Forget my shame about my ignorance.

I hoped by now to have worked out how to be more helpful. But my struggles with daily life make activism seem out of reach. For now, at least.

A lot of disabled and nd folks are counted out of a fight we care about because we already can't manage the baseline of our lives.

2. The way I experience the world is like living with a poltergeist.

Someone is with me always (it is me) and they are moving my things. They are retrieving the wrong item from the fridge. They are opening the wrong application, on my phone, and on my work laptop. Again and again and again. They waste so much of my time!

Before I was diagnosed I lived with this poltergeist but I used to drink often enough that it helped to distract me from the stress of it. If it didnt exactly take away some of the stress it at least offered respite.

It soothed me so much. To drink, to know I could drink.

But of course, when I drank, I struggled even more in the moments when I wasn’t drinking. Aka my actual life.

The poltergeist became more active and ubiquitous. And my anxiety was often unbearable.

I feel self-conscious to write about ADHD and Autism all the time. I would prefer not to. But my experience is so driven by them! Perhaps now so much because I am still assimilating my diagnosis.

3. For my own self-esteem and wellbeing, I try to take time to think about the parts of my perspective and way of experiencing that I enjoy.

When I am not overwhelmed and stressed by the simple activities (leaving the house, choosing appropriate outfits, parking, navigating, cooking, tidying, etc) I have a grand propensity for joy.

I laugh easily. Too easily! And too loudly. I embarrass myself with laughing too loudly and then feeling self-conscious about it all the time.

But I like that about myself, too, the openness to joy and connection. That i cannot suppress it. There is so much to enjoy here on earth. Its unbelievable.

Do you see the beauty of the world, clearly? Do you feel the strange thrill of being alive, deeply? Daily?

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Strangely it’s another reason I drank. It felt right to mark each day with a drink, to celebrate the basic miracles of being born, the sun having risen, the sun existing.

All of it too strange and miraculous at times to bear.

4. Today I called a beloved friend and the day before I video called another. It is dawning on me that I don’t hate the phone.

The understanding of why things feel uncomfortable has helped to free me from or perhaps reframe the discomfort.

I’m making more effort to talk to the people I love and it feels really wonderful.

5. For the last year or so, I have been working on the novel I secretly think of my last chance at being a novelist.

It might not be helpful to think like this. But I can't help it (yet).

But my last novel was published 9 years ago. My best novel, the first one, Infinite Sky, was published 12 years ago. That is a long time to write, by anyone’s standards.

My diagnoses have thrown my struggles finishing novels into stark relief.

This latest one, I’ve taken a different approach. I’m considering the market as much as my own interests and abilities, and trying to plan rather than just making it up as I go.

I did this in the hope of speeding up my writing process. I’m not sure it’s worked. But it has taught me a lot of necessary information about story structure.

And it’s enhanced my teaching. So that’s something, I guess.

After a year, I have a detailed outline and the aim is to write now, with this map, and all this understanding of the characters and their motivations to help whenever I get stuck.

Who knows? Maybe it’ll even work…

There are lots more things I’m thinking about. If you feel like it, let me know whats on your mind.

Chelsey x

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The truth is I actually got sober by mistake.1 After a couple of sweet, wholesome and varied near-fortnights of not drinking - thanks Dry Janiary! - I wanted more. My initial goal was to steer clear of booze for a year. I knew quitting for good wasn't possible. But a year...? Maybe.

After a dozen false starts, beginning New Year's Day 2016 (after yet another dreadful NYE, which one day I might immortalise in a personal essay) I realised I was going to need some help.

I had plenty of knowledge about what didn't work, now I needed some knowledge of what did.

I ploughed through memoirs about women who had gotten sober and listened to hours of recovery podcasts. (Recovery Elevator was a particular favourite, as the Americorns seem to require less significant rock bottoms and so I found their stories very relatable.)

I began to fill my head with counter-perspectives to the pro-drinking crowd that I was used to, and tried to tune out or at least ignore the booze-loving lager lout chorus residing in my head. I hunted for phrases with the same levels of authority as the time-honoured tradition of: "one won't hurt."

When books and audio still weren't enough to keep me out of the wine aisle, and I ended up in black out again when I’d sworn I wouldn’t drink anything, I found a community of women who were managing sobriety, contentedly, and asked what had worked for them.2

Accountability helped, apparently3, but I daren't tell the people closest to me what I was doing. What kind of weakling needed help sticking to their own decision?

Thus began my Entirely Accidental Addiction Education.

Lessons began with online Am I Alcoholic? tests and moved through to cricial thinking inspired by the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I absorbed podcasts and Ted Talks and the latest academic research. I was obsessed.4

The curriculum was compounded by my new sober women friends who listened to my questions, accepted my confusion, discussed theories and laughed at things I hadn't realised were funny yet. They said things I wasn't used to hearing, that stopped me in my tracks. Like:

What's the worst thing that would happen if you aren't alcoholic and you stopped drinking anyway?

Epiphany klaxon!!!!

They nudged me to call other people and see how I could be helpful to them, instead of hiding away and feeling sorry for myself all the time. They told me I was doing great and encouraged me to keep going, and I LOVED the praise! They said it would get easier, and promised it was worth it, and sometimes I actually believed them.

Still, I had no intention of quitting for good. Long-term abstinence was unthinkable. Gruesome. Shudder. Yuck. Gross. Etc.

This was just an experiment, something I would do for a year. If it was interesting, maybe I would write about it. I actually said that in AA meetings. Lol.

As I practised, at their suggestion, observing or sharing my alcohol-seeking thoughts rather than acting on them, another voice became prominent, one that had been calling to me for years about yoga and gardening and climbing and nature.

I made plans to do activities that didn't feature booze and grew to understand the point of cake and coffee. I created space for a new narrative around alcohol to bloom inside my psyche.

Instead of thinking fuck it, one won't hurt when a free glass of cava was offered on entering a fancy restaurant, I left the room and called a sober friend almost crying with anger and embarrassment. Why on earth couldn't I just drink it? Because it is never just one, she reminded me. Because you are trying something different.

Aaaargh. She was right. It took everything I had not to drink it, but I managed it, and I learned that I could still enjoy the delicious meal that followed.

I acted as if one would hurt, even though I didn't entirely believe it. Partly just because I didn’t want to let my new gang down, if I’m honest. And I began every day with the decision, a reminder, that I would not drink today.

You can drink tomorrow, I told myself, if it got difficult. And I never woke up the next day and thought, God I wish I had drunk last night.

More evidence that this was a good path.

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Almost three years later,5 and still surprised by the ways my life changed as a result of removing this one thing, I can see I was incredibly lucky.

Nobody suggested I should stop drinking. My life wasn’t in tatters.

The message just rose up from within me, a deep sense that my life would be better without this drama, these hangovers, this absurd financial, emotional, spiritual tax.

My drinking was interrupted by me (thanks me!!! <3) at a time when I had the ability to stop with relative ease. Probably because, for that first year, I honestly had no idea I was genuinely stopping.

If I had known I was stopping I would have lovingly said goodbye to all of my favourite drinks. But no such careful planning was to be. I really had no intention of quitting for good.

Ironically, the relative ease with which I was able to stop would become the greatest hazard to me staying stopped. Did I stop too soon? This question has haunted great swathes of my sobriety…

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Reading Sarah Allen Benton's book, Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic [HFA], Breaking the Cycle and Finding Hope, I began to better understand the particular difficulties I experienced getting and staying sober. I was perhaps, an HFA, for whom:

"the level of their own denial is heightened by the denial of society, their loved ones, and their colleagues." (p.109) she writes.

As well as an unwillingness or inability for loved ones to see the problem and the tendency of HFAs to drink in private, there is the fact that drinkers tend to gravitate towards people who drink like them. As Benton writes, "it becomes easy to be 'compared' out of having a problem."

I knew plenty of people (mostly men) who drank more than me and weren't trying to cut down. They made my drinking seem very tame. Not only this, but I'd seen 'real' alcoholics at close quarters – most notably my uncle – and my drinking was nothing compared to his.

He kept drinking in spite of losing his job, health, and in the end, his life. Anyone could see alcohol was ruining him.

I was a socially anxious wine-drinking lightweight in comparison. A binge-drinker overreacting to a non-problem. I needed to try a bit harder to control myself, perhaps, but that was all.

It never occurred to me that my uncle's drinking had shifted from one style to another, that he had once been a sweet lil binge drinker like me. I had no concept of 'alcoholism' as progressive,6 before I began the quest to manage a year sober.

My uncle was taken over by his addiction so gradually, over fifteen or twenty years, that even from close hand it is difficult to say when he crossed that invisible line from 'liking a drink' into true dependence. When did it become apparent that he was dependent? I'm not sure he ever realised.

Addiction changes its argument to keep you captive. What begins as ‘drinking is fun!’ shifts to ‘you deserve it!’ shifts to ‘life without it would be no life at all’.7

As they say in AA, addiction is ‘baffling and cunning’. It is as smart as you, and it can come up with the perfect argument to get you to undertake the action it requires.

Did my uncle go through a period of promising himself today he wouldn't drink, only to find himself drunk yet again?

Was his booze-parasite's grip so great he never asked for help?

I didn't witness any efforts to quit, but I know how pride can stop a person from revealing the conflict within.

In the 90s, in my small town, I suspect AA attendance was more shameful than showing up for the morning session at the local pub.

I didn't see that my drinking related in any way to my uncle's until I started trying in earnest to stop. Desperately wanting to stay sober, and drinking anyway, I began to understand his predicament. I saw how a person could lose the power to choose, in spite of what it cost them.

Having fought to get and stay sober, in spite of frequent suggestions from myself and other unhelpful sods that sobriety was impossible/dumb/boring/unnecessary, I find it remarkable that anyone ever manages it, especially those already gripped by a physical dependence.

The early days of sobriety are such a leap of faith, and alcoholism (for want of a better word) talks to you in your own voice, using your best arguments, tailor-made for you, by you, to get you drinking again.

Just one!

Yolo!

This is why it's so important to find people who will help you stick with your decision when you lose track of why you're doing it, which those of us harbouring a booze-parasite tend to do after two or three days/weeks of healthy living. Do you have these people yet? If not, begin to find them. I promise they are around!

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Almost three years sober, and content with my decision to keep not drinking, a day at a time, I wonder for how many decades my drinking might have been minimised by me and those around me.

I think of my uncle and wish I could have understood his predicament better and helped him.

I wonder how bad it has to get these days before people intervene.

And how many people never stop drinking, although they desperately want to, because those around them reassure them they aren't that bad?

A simple truth that helped me is this: if you think your drinking is a problem; your drinking is a problem.

If booze is stopping you from living the life you want then that is good enough reason to make a change.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to take action.

Find people who will challenge the booze-loving narrative in your head. AA worked for me. Smart is also brill.

Tell the ones closest to you what you are doing and why, and ask them to help. If they love you, they will want the best for you, whether they lose a superfun drinking buddy or not. Take yourself seriously today, because there's a good chance it won't be any easier to stop tomorrow.

I’m sorry, but it’s true!

And if your experience is anything like mine, you'll wish you quit years ago.

I’ve tried being diplomatic. I’ve tried saying “some of us” and “in my experience” and “I wonder if” and all the other things that make people feel comfy when I make a wild claim.

But I can't hold it in anymore! I’m saying it.

I think everyone in AA is neurodivergent.

I'm sorry! I can’t help it. Maybe it’s my tendency for black and white thinking, but hear me out…

The scripts. The rituals. The laminated guidelines. Who else could return three times a week, week after week to hear the same readings and shares?

Don't get me wrong, I love AA.

At best, it’s kind like a drinking-themed alcohol-free version of The Moth. I have heard profound stories, and been transformed by attendance and sponsorship and friendship. I have a kid with an AAer. We are some of the best.

But also, I have been astonished that AA continues to exist. It’s the strangest, weirdest, most wonderful organisation. And only a crew of thoroughly obsessive neurodivergent weirdies could keep it running for this long.

Only those who know the deep, aching confusion of being human and not understanding how to behave in society could create such a refuge. To escape an unbearable reality through booze and then create an escape from that escape in the form of AA.

Just, wow.

And for it to continue. For this long?

Of course, another reason AA has lasted, is that addiction continues to destroy lives. And those who escape its clutches are rightly motivated to help others escape. It’s an effective and meaningful pyramid scheme-style model that is extremely effective.

I’m planning to return to meetings, if I can just wrangle myself to get there as I miss the relief feelings of being around others who admit they don’t know what the feck is going on. That their whole life is a bodge job and they have no clue how to manage it.

AA always gives me a sense of perspective. Something I can struggle with, by myself.

But every time I go, everyone just sounds Autistic and ADHD to me. And it is increasingly clear to me that AA has been such a haven for me because of my neurodivergence, particularly the ‘tism.

Always unsure when it’s your turn to talk? Don’t worry! We have strict rules about this here.

Struggle not to interrupt? (Yes, very much, ordinarily.) Well, we have strict rules about that too. It’s literally banned. Show up drunk, sure, but DO NOT interrupt someone who’s sharing.

Perfect for ALL THE AUTISTIC monologuers in the room!

Yes, my friends, you never need improvise again!

(Apart from the terrifying minutes before and after meetings. But even then, there’s a theme and a purpose (help the newcomer) so you’ve got GUIDELINES. You’ll be FINE.

And if not, you can always do as I still often do: arrive and leave with only minutes to spare to avoid social awkwardness.)

We don’t call it masking - we call it “being of service.”

And we don’t call it burnout - we call it a “rock bottom.”

So if you can’t tell how you feel unless someone else tells a story and it hits you right in the guts and suddenly you’re crying and don’t know why, don’t worry.

Me too.

Welcome.

I’m not saying AA is bad. It taught me how to enjoy my life and risk vulnerability and admit what I wanted and look forward to the future.

But maybe what so many of us recognise in those rooms - the feeling of coming home or ‘finding your tribe’ (I don’t like tribes, fwiw) that people talk about - is about more than sobriety/freedom from addiction. Maybe it’s about finally getting some concrete guidance.

One of the key findings of researching and writing my book has been realising that the experience of being actively addicted and the experience of being deeply masked can look and feel eerily similar. This has come from reading the work of Dr Price - particularly Unmasking Autism, which I can’t recommend enough - and having an email conversation with him, too.

I can’t wait to share it in more detail with you all. Pre-orders will be available soon, and I just sent the manuscript to my wonderful editor.1 🎉 🎉 🎉

Recovery from addiction seems to be a long, slow, awkward process of unmasking. Beginning with removing the ultimate mask: alcohol.

So maybe AA’s appeal is due to finally being somewhere the mask can drop. Without the safety net of booze to unmask with, maybe we need a new safety net. And AA provides it.

There is also the fact that trauma can leave an impact that looks the same as neurodivergence. Autism and ADHD, particularly, I believe…

What do you think? Am I talking absolute nonsense? Or am I onto something? Tell me the truth, but be kind. I have severe RSD over here.

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Maybe not everyone in AA is neurodivergent or traumatised to the extent of seeming (even being, via a different route) neurodivergent. But the experience of being in addiction is so similar to being masked neurodivergent that they might as well be.

Black and white thinking? Check!

Narrow interests? Check!

Difficulty in relationships? Check!

Challenges with recognising, understanding and articulating your feelings? Check! Check! Check!

Low self-esteem? Check!

Inexplicably mixed with a superiority complex? Check!

But then, also… And this is a real concern. What even is neurotypical?

Whenever I write the word I go into an absolute tailspin about what it even means.

Do neurotypicals really exist?

I’m not sure I’ve ever met one…

I'm not saying everyone in the world is a little bit on the spectrum (though it sometimes feels like that round my way.) But might we be looking at a spectrum rather as though it is a binary?

AGAIN.

Will neurodiversity continue to expand to include everyone like the LGBTQIA+ movement did?

And if everyone in AA isn't neurodivergent but active addiction presents so similarly to neurodivergence that they might as well be, then that is even more reason for an organisation like AA to signpost services for neurodivergence. Such that they are.

This is my new mission, by the way. To get these pamphlets made and included at meetings.

So welcome to Neurodivergents Anonymous.

Bring the feelings you don’t understand and the stories that help strangers almost feel them.

📚 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. 📚