The Pub or the AA Meeting: what we're really looking for
Because it isn't alcohol.
I’m currently working on a book about addiction and neurodivergence, and the stories we tell ourselves about both. As part of my research, I had a brilliant, meandering conversation with Andrew Misell from Alcohol Change UK. My plan is to share some of my research as I pull the book together, but bear with me on this, as I am juggling so many things, and these letters are still rather sidequesty (though I’d love this to be my main quest!)
We talked about everything from the pleasure many of us get from drinking (a topic that feels oddly off-limits in recovery spaces), to the comfort of structured socialising, to why so many of us end up swapping one tribe for another.
It wasn’t a formal interview (I had written out about twenty questions, but I forgot to look at them once we got started talking, an executive functioning issue classic 🤦♀️). More like two people thinking out loud together - agreeing, laughing, and recognising ourselves in each other’s half-formed thoughts. I came away with so many sparks of insight, I knew I wanted to write some of them down, so here I am.
What Executive Functioning Is and Why It Matters
Until I was diagnosed with autism last year, I didn't know much about what executive functioning was. This is pretty ironic since I’ve been struggling with issues around this for my whole life. My family found me hilarious because I had no ‘common sense’, and I learned to laugh at my frequent mistakes too. I was academic, not practical, we thought. And …
Over the next few posts, I’ll share some reflections from our chat - on the beauty (and danger) of pint number one, the quiet grief of not drinking them in beer gardens anymore, and the strange/comforting overlap between pub sessions and AA meetings.
Talking with Andrew, we realised that neither the public health sector nor AA talk enough about one of the crucial elements of drinking: pleasure. “It’s just so easy,” he said, at one point. He was talking about settling in at the pub with a friend, and how you can just let the evening roll. How well I remember that! Sitting down with a friend, chatting and laughing away, and then suddenly finding it’s last orders and you’ve both had four or five pints when you swore it would only be a couple. It just happened like that. No particular plan. No great drama. Not even a wild night. Just a kind of comfort and ease that nobody wants interrupting.
We talked about how it wasn’t even about getting drunk, or not always. It was about being together and relaxing, forgetting all the constraints and issues that might abound outside. I think we can forget that in AA, and Andrew felt like it might get overlooked in his field, too. I’ll write more about this in future posts, as it seems really key.
It struck me, too, as we talked, how a session in the pub gives social interaction a shape in the same way that AA does. There’s a kind of (okay, less formal) script, a definite rhythm. You go to the bar and order a round, drink it, then repeat. Occasional toilet breaks. Maybe the whole thing interspersed with the rolling and smoking of cigarettes. The pub is a shared activity that lets you simply be with other people in a low stakes kind of way.
“That’s why you find men in Wetherspoons at 11am,” Andrew said. And he’s right. I mean, it’s addiction, sure, but what these men are seeking is company. Connection. What they are trying to solve is loneliness.
Both AA and the pub give you a reason to leave the house.
Both provide a structure, a container for connection.
Both say, in their own way: you’re allowed to be here. You belong.
A pint and a rolly gives you something to do with your hands in the pub in the same way coffee and biscuits do at AA. In the pub, lovely alcohol takes the edge off the uncertainty of socialising or awkward silences. In AA, the meeting format helps to inoculate against these. (Not as successful for this Autistic dreamboat, I gotta admit.)
The pub provides a rhythm (rounds, top-ups, toilet breaks) as does the meeting (shares, readings, the serenity prayer).
For people who are neurodivergent, or socially anxious, or just human and overwhelmed in a messy, broken and overstimulated world - that kind of invitation is really important. To my dad, who believed himself to be antisocial and who was almost certainly Autistic, it mattered so much. The pub was crucial to him. It was the main way that he connected with other humans.
It wasn’t about the alcohol. This seems profound to me. In the same way that AA isn’t (in the end) about the alcohol. Though both places really seem like they are on first inspection.
Was it Johann Hari about connection (not sobriety) as the opposite to addiction?
There are major differences too, between these two spaces in which people come together. Outcomes, rituals, rules. But emotionally and socially, there’s a kind of overlap. Both spaces try to meet a need we rarely talk about directly: the need for contained connection. For socialising with boundaries. A salve for loneliness.
This is why giving up alcohol can feel so disorienting. It’s not just about the substance - it’s about losing the framework it provided. Like I’ve said before, getting sober felt less like quitting a habit and more like joining a new culture.
I wasn’t just navigating sobriety - I was navigating how to live and enjoy life and hang out again. How to be in a room with other people. How to feel like I belonged. How to kiss someone or feel awkward or feel embarrassed or be disappointed. How to love. How to grieve. How to have fun. How to celebrate. How to mark a special occasion. Without alcohol. I had (have) to relearn all of it.
Part of recovery is about building new frameworks. Ones that feel safe, but not stifling. That don’t rely on alcohol, but still offer structure, rhythm, a reason to show up.
Honestly, some things I still haven’t found an adequate replacement for. I’m still rarely in the mood to socialise - alcohol used to provide that. I still struggle to relax in company. Something beer used to fix wonderfully. The idea of a party still freaks me out, though I really love (and miss) dancing.
Will there always be gaps in my enjoyment of life, in this path I’ve chosen? Or if there is another solution I am on my way to…? The latter, I hope.
Sometimes I feel like a weirdo or saddo to still attend AA meetings, but I know that really I don’t need to apologise for needing/enjoying it. I always enjoyed structured meetups, it was just a lot less formalised in the pub.
I asked Andrew what he thought a neuroaffirmative recovery space looked like, and I’ve been wondering about it ever since. I’ll share his answer in another post. Until then, do you have any ideas?
Good things I read this week:
This personal essay, Life Writing Diaries by a talented student of mine, Ayla Melville, in Oranges Journal.
And this paper, recommended by Andrew:
📚 Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a book for Jessica Kingsley Publishers about the connection between undiagnosed neurodiversity and addiction + her first domestic noir. 📚
I stopped going to AA last year as I found it still a bit overwhelming (no thank you, kind stranger, I would not like to hold your hand whilst reciting the Serenity Prayer), but it was a great help in the beginning for putting my drinking into perspective. Totally get the ‘somewhere to be’ ritualistic elements of it tho - especially on the (very, very rare) times I went to fellowship hangs after at a café or whatevs. Still felt uncomfortable the whole time like, but that’s autism for ya. If you want any totally unqualified perspectives for your book, let me know!
You'll more than likely remember this. Back in school, I watched a certain sci fi show obsessively. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, the specialist asked me if I became fixated on things aa a youngster. When I mentioned that, he said the magic words 'coping mechanism.' I was using it as an escape from looking after mum and dad.
And I realised he was right. Now, I watch the odd episode (I have the DVDs) but I'm over the obsessive phase which is fortunately nearly 30 years in the rear view mirror.