Shall I mention about my Asperger's?

[Found]

Locally in AA groups I wonder if there are blind spots about recovering when one has various disabilities e.g a form of autism with some characteristics of Asperger's plus various other small disabilities and chronic ailments which overall I am grateful for, expect for the misunderstandings. It isn't as if these things aren't extremely common anyway, so I think my experience, strength and hope could be identified with by many more recovering people too. Some people in the rooms say over and over that alcoholism is our only illness. Obviously it is the one that our primary purpose is about, I couldn't agree more with that.

We all made excuses for self pity. Further than that on the rare occasions I make passing mention of my differences - as if they aren't glaringly obvious anyway - I am nervous of being accused of touting excuses for something.

I will add there has been no remedial support lifelong hence I was always brought up to pretend to be the same as everybody else. One of my main drives is to stop that. Whilst 100% highlighting that it doesn't make any difference to my actual alcoholism. Only to things like body language, and reading between lines, and style of taking things in.

How does my condition affect me?

- slowness. I will think of one aspect of a thing one time and another aspect another time. I work hard to see an issue globally but so far have rarely expressed an issue as a whole issue all in one (unless I work from notes), so have misled people. This happened in 1-to-1 with some sponsors as well as - occasionally - in the rooms.

- incompatibility with gun jumping and guesswork. For me there is no such thing as over-analytical or thinking too much. Logic and reason are essential tools for me and ought to help me with inventory making.

Some people complain about Step 4, that it hurts them. But I have seen that pain is a given in this world, I didn't grow through it per se. If I am not drinking or dry drunk I am starting to face up to all the sadness and loss but I need to go through the inventory in a systematic way to exploit major benefit. There has also been a lot of people reporting that their sponsor told them their step 4 & 5 was rubbish, I have to busily read a lot into the situation to avoid the temptation to be put off by it. I would welcome people saying how refreshing it was, etc etc but hey I'm verging on keeping someone else's inventory there, so now the penny has dropped at last I can at least tell myself I am going to have a good experience doing it!

I've noticed about a third of people in the rooms at any time don't happen to report having made progress on the steps, and subsequently haven't been seen for years after they stop coming (allowing for some who move away). I wonder how many kidded themselves they ought to be put off? The rooms sow a good seed for who knows how much later - we should try & not sow a bad one too. And how many were those who appeared in a space of mere three years from about 1936-1939 to be constitutionally "incapable of honesty"? Even we have a good chance the book hastens to add. Also, inventory making is described as "fearless", that sounds like a liberation from the start.

Has anyone else in this forum got some constructive experience to share on this?



In other words, I would like to develop ways of making passing mention of disabilities that will be helpful to future sponsors, as well as people in the rooms with both more and less recovery than me.

[sct]

I'm currently working on my 4th step in NA... and I totally know where you're coming from on the methodical organized approach. My specific 'uniqueness' comes from ocd- which extends much beyond addiction, but damn... am I organized.

One of the things I did write about is that I have to do this, and be thorough about working my steps because I've seen people come back who said they skipped a step, or didn't work it thoroughly- and it left space for their addiction to get back in. I'm trying to learn from their example to make sure that I work my program as deeply as I need to in order to recover. It means looking at stuff I would MUCH rather leave buried... but I sure as hell don't want those to be the things that run my life anymore.

I realized, that whether I talk about them or not, the issues I don't talk about are the ones that have run my life. And I don't want that to be the case anymore, and the only way out-- is through.