I had a realization the other night while having a long, languorous dinner with old friends. It was the kind of dinner that I love - where there are appetizers and drinks before the meal, where people are so interested in conversation and catching up that they forget how hungry they are, where everyone is able to deeply connect over a shared meal and pass hours without realizing it. The pre-dinner drink was a delicious combination of iced hibiscus tea with a splash of lemonade. Toward the end of the meal, the hostess suddenly exclaimed, “I forgot the wine! Would anyone like a glass of wine?” She had bought two wines for the evening, and literally forgot about them. And nobody asked. And they were never offered. And nobody noticed. The realization I had was something like, “Huh. Not everyone thinks about drinking all the time?”
I thought about drinking several times that evening. When the host greeted us and asked if he could get us anything to drink. I immediately thought he was going to offer beer or wine, and I started to think about how I was going to decline, but instead he offered the ice tea. About halfway through dinner, I looked around the table and noticed that nobody was drinking alcohol. At first I was kind of shocked, and then I thought, “Does nobody actually drink? Are all these people sober?” Then I realized, no - they are not sober, and yes they do drink alcohol. They just don’t feel the need to drink at every meal, or during every social occasion, or on a daily basis.
Realizations like this are important for me to have. Until this dinner happened, I struggled to imagine that it was possible to have a long, engaging, genuinely fun evening as simple as dinner with friends that didn’t involve drinking. This is the kind of evening that I looked forward to for my whole adult life because it involved unchecked drinking, and it’s exactly the kind of experience I was sure I would never have again if I ever decided to stop drinking. That certainty is one of the reasons I was afraid to admit that I was an alcoholic - I knew that if I said those words aloud, that I would never be able to drink again. And that meant I would never have another evening with friends like the one I experienced the other night. I knew that other people were able to have fun without drinking - but I also knew that I was different from those people. I was not the kind of person who could do things with other people while sober and be happy about it.
For my first year or so of not drinking, my prediction about what it would be like proved true. In order to not drink, I had to avoid doing things with other people. The suggestion of an evening event with friends didn’t feel like something to look forward to, it felt like something I would have to get through, something I’d have to endure with great discomfort and annoyance. My wife went to a lot of social engagements by herself. You’ll have more fun if I’m not there, I thought. And it was probably true. If I went, I’d be irritated, unhappy, and anxious to leave. My unpleasant demeanor would probably rub off on others, and I’d be imagining them thinking, “I wish he would leave”. When I did leave, I would be doing it as a favor to everyone else. All of this, of course, was in my head.
What I’m thinking through now is, what has changed? Why am I starting to feel like I can hang out with other people, and be happy about it, and not drink? One thing that has been hard for me to untangle is the fact that my decision to stop drinking followed my late diagnosis of autism. I realized that I had been using alcohol as a way to cope with the social challenges that I’ve had my whole life. In deciding to stop drinking, I was also deciding to lean into my autism and not use alcohol to try to change who I was. For me, that meant being upfront about my need (and preference) for a lot of time alone rather than putting on a “mask” (with the help of alcohol) in order to navigate the social arena. But I do need social connection with others, and living in relative isolation is not a sustainable approach to life. I realized that I was good at doing life on my own terms, but I didn’t know how to do life as part of a community (unless I was drinking). That is what changed for me - I admitted to myself that I needed help.
During that first year of sobriety, where I tried to avoid anything that involved other people (with the exception of my family), I was lurking around Alcoholics Anonymous. I was listening to podcasts of AA meetings, reading the AA literature, and finding a lot of resonance with the words of people who had been changed by the program. It took a long time for me to get comfortable with the idea, but in June of this year I finally started going to meetings - first on Zoom, and then in person. I asked someone to work with me on the twelve steps, and I am making my way through them now. What I have found is that AA meetings themselves are the perfect kind of social engagement for me - time bound, highly structured, and very predictable. I have also found that I relate to people in AA very easily - we seem to have a lot in common even when we are very different people who have led very different lives.
My story is different from other people in AA, but it’s also the same. There are meetings where I listen to other people share, and I get filled with self doubt. Wow, nothing like that happened to me. Am I really an alcoholic? Do I belong here? But there are other meetings where I hear my story told by someone else and I think, My god, I’m so glad I’m here. These are my people! But no matter what, I feel welcome and accepted in AA. I never feel judged or marginalized. That in itself is instructive for me. Learning not just to accept - but to welcome - circumstances (and other people) as they are, is something I’ve never been able to do. The voice in my head that is filled with judgment and skepticism could only be silenced by drinking, or by isolation. I am just starting my journey, but I can see that many other people who have had the same challenges I’ve had have found another way to approach things. That in itself gives me a kind of faith that I can also learn, despite whatever diagnoses I have or circumstances I find myself in.