EXCLUSIVE StephDavis77_ exclusively reveals autism diagnosis
For years, Stephanie Davis had attempted to self-medicate her crippling anxiety with alcohol until a stint in rehab led to her being diagnosed with high functioning autism - age 26.
“That’s why I’ve brought Joe with me. I call myself Dory the fish from Finding Nemo because I’m so terrible. I get lost and I get really, really anxious. I can’t get trains on my own any more. “Before I was diagnosed with high-functioning autism, drinking was the only thing I knew,” she says. “I needed to drink a bottle of wine before a night out because of my severe anxiety in social settings. I also needed to know the layouts of places. So when I’d walk into somewhere new I’d go, ‘Right, the toilets are there, the bar is there.’
“When we get into bed at night we always say, ‘What are we doing tomorrow?’ We talk through everything, from the time we’ll wake up to when I’ll take Caben to school, do the shop, get a haircut and go to the gym. We plan it all out meticulously just so I know what we’re doing, then I say, ‘Night, love ya.’
But out of her darkest time came her diagnosis, in 2019. This finally helped her understand herself and turn her life around – and she went on to win Best Actress at the Inside Soap Awards in October later that year. “One of my exes cheated on me and that’s a big thing with high-functioning autism – I don’t understand how people can lie,” she says. “I’d sit there trying to analyse, how can you lie? I just kept bringing it up all the time, like they’d murdered someone. It was a f***ing disgrace but I just couldn’t understand it. It really hurt me. I’m very black and white – there are no grey areas.”
“TV is fast-moving – we had a lot to learn every day, often 40-50 pages and 10 scenes,” she says. “I can memorise easily but if someone called in sick, they’d change the scenes around and I’d panic. In the end, I asked for my whole week’s scripts in advance so I could learn them all. I didn’t realise then I had HFA.”
Stephanie isn’t the only celebrity who has opened up about their autism diagnosis and the condition’s impact. Others include Prison Break star Wentworth Miller, singer Susan Boyle and TV presenter Melanie Sykes, who was diagnosed at 51. And last November, Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Christine McGuinness shared her autism diagnosis aged 33, reassuring Stephanie she was not alone.
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