Unlearning Sobriety: Trauma, Neurodivergence, and the Recovery Myth Kindle Edition

For seventeen years, Natalie Jane Sykes lived inside a world that promised salvation — the 12-step recovery model. Undiagnosed autistic and ADHD, traumatised, and desperate to belong, she surrendered her intuition to a system that framed obedience as healing and fear as spiritual growth. What looked like recovery slowly became the erosion of her autonomy, identity, and inner truth. Unlearning Sobriety is a groundbreaking blend of memoir, trauma psychology, and cultural analysis that exposes the hidden dangers of traditional recovery spaces — especially for neurodivergent people. With raw honesty and unflinching clarity, the author reveals the spiritual coercion, confession culture, power hierarchies, and lifelong guilt embedded in 12-step ideology. She dismantles the myths of powerlessness and “character defects,” showing how these narratives retraumatise the very people they claim to save. But this book is not anti-recovery. It is anti-fear. Anti-shame. Anti-indoctrination. The author offers an alternative path rooted in autonomy, harm reduction, trauma literacy, neurodivergent needs, and embodied healing. She explores how intuition can be reclaimed after indoctrination, how boundaries can be rebuilt after years of spiritual obedience, and how a meaningful life can be created outside the confines of a one-size-fits-all program. For anyone who has ever felt “broken,” misunderstood, spiritually pressured, or unable to fit themselves into rigid recovery narratives, this book is a lifeline. A fierce, tender, liberating guide back to self-trust. Recovery doesn’t require surrender. It requires remembering who you were before the world taught you to disappear. Read more