I dreamt that you were twisting through seven suns of gold and the gypsy was insisting

their story must be told I came two in the morning but I took it as a warning That you might be a treasure

I could touch but never hold

Hey everybody and you are listening to the Soberful podcast

And I am joined today by Dr. Ben Walden.

Hi, Ben.

Hello, hello. And Ben's all the way over in East Anglia,

which is the part of England that I'm from. Are you Sophoc or Norfolk? No, I'm Norfolk, yeah,

very Norfolk. Norfolk. Very Norfolk. So Ben's joining me because very kindly, I wanted to do something around neurodiversity and particularly autism.

And it's not my area of specialism.

And I wanted to get somebody who had greater experience than I did to just so we can just have a conversation about it.

And it was prompted by a question that somebody,

and this was a while ago, so hopefully they hung in there until this episode came. But I'm going to

read what this listener sent in. Would it be possible to talk about autism and alcohol and

sobriety? I understand you may not have much knowledge on the subject, but honestly,

just something small on it could be a lifeline for people. I had quite the sobriety journey and felt that AA was difficult to relate in and

stop going. I continued being sober but was unhappy after 18 months, did a lot of diagnostic tests

and realized I was autistic. It had been joked about in my family before, but I never took it seriously

until the dulling effects of alcohol were taken before, but I never took it seriously until the

dulling effects of alcohol were taken away and I had to face social situations without it.

I honestly felt I was going mad before my diagnosis and I haven't seen or heard anything about

alcohol and autism and it would really be a massive help to me at the start of my journey. So that's kind of

...