A note for readers in recovery: the opening briefly describes what drinking can feel like. If you’d rather skip that, start at “A note on who this is for.”
Many people remember it happening somewhere around the second drink.
The room stayed the same. The conversation kept going. But something inside shifted. The background hum dropped. The running commentary on how you were coming across went faint. The other conversations you’d been tracking faded out.
For a little while, it felt like being just one person, in one room, having one experience.
If you have a gifted, neurocomplex mind, that moment may have felt like arrival. It also came with a bill, paid the next morning and sometimes for years.
This essay is about what you might actually have been looking for in that moment, why it matters so much to minds like yours, and how to find it without borrowing it from tomorrow.
A note on who this is for
You might be reading this curious about your own drinking. You might be sober-curious. You might be in recovery, with a long and hard-won relationship to this subject.
If you’re in recovery, please read the title gently. For some people, alcohol becomes a dependence with a biology of its own, and understanding why you started drinking can’t undo that by itself. This essay offers one lens on why minds like ours reach for alcohol. It sits alongside everything recovery has already taught you, and for many people, complete abstinence is exactly the right goal.
A lens also fits some people better than others. Some neurodivergent adults drank to feel more: braver, looser, more connected. If that’s you, some of what follows will land and some won’t. Take what fits.
Linearity and calm are different states
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