Avant Tard

I think I may have described here before that I think of 12 step recovery as Spirituality for Complete Idiots. I may also have said ‘total retards’ but that really isn’t correct, politically or any other way. I’ve had cause recently to rethink the moniker. I can’t recall exactly why but for some reason I started exploring other, perhaps more accurate, descriptions. Angry Barcode has done this thing before where she takes a phrase or sentence and deconstructs it, looking at each word individually and carefully, extracting the full essence of meaning from each one and then reconstructing the original sentence. It’s an analytical tool I became rather enamored of and I’ve found that it works quite well on extracting the full meaning of a single word, too. So that having been said;

Retarded is not the word I would pick to describe my own spiritual malady. Retarded implies that, given time, my own power, as marshaled by my will, shall be enough to lift me out of the condition I found myself in last year; that armed with proper knowledge and training I have, of myself, the power to transcend my drug problem.

Yeah, right.

But let’s shake out the pertinent parts of the various definitions of autism, shall we?

It appears to be a lifelong, pervasive, chronic brain disorder with an unknown origin that begins in early childhood and and persists throughout adulthood. Autism is not a mental illness. It affects the functioning of the brain. Some theories suggest that it may be caused by genetics. It manifests itself in marked problems with a person’s ability to communicate, form relationships with others, and respond appropriately to the environment; in which a person is dis-associated from the reality around them. It prevents individuals from properly understanding what they see, hear, and otherwise sense. Some adults with autism function well, earning college degrees and living independently. Others never develop the skills of daily living, and may be incorrectly diagnosed with a variety of psychiatric illnesses. It is actually a morbid, pathological self-absorption marked by lack of awareness of the feelings of others. Autistic people often have little or no social interaction or communications with others. Their subjective, self-centered behavior is not altered by external influences and they withdrawal from contact with people.

That’s it! Exactly. For me anyway that’s exactly right. I was locked into exactly that type of syndrome, with full knowledge that there was something wrong and not being able to see the way out. It was like being locked in a black box and the instructions on how to open the box were printed on the outside. I was stuck in there, screaming, until I was exhausted enough to hear the voice on the outside of the box reading the instructions to me.

The 4th step is really like listening carefully and transcribing the combination to the lock on that box. 5 through 9 seem to be turning the combination and unlocking the box and stepping out of it. Once you’re out you notice there are locked boxes with helpless people inside them everywhere. Steps 10 - 12 are the opportunity to read the instructions to anyone locked in there that’s ready to hear them. You can’t make a spiritually autistic person listen to the answer any more than you can make him follow the instructions on the outside of the box he’s locked in. You just have to wait till they’re worn out from trying to beat their way out on their own.

Which reminds me, I need to buy aspirin.