I call it “alcohol based therapy” and it’s not what you might think it is, based on what it sounds like.

Imagine that when someone asks you what you’re feeling when your body is shaky, as my therapist did today, and you can only say, “I don’t know, anxiety, maybe.” Imagine that you’re presented with a color-wheel-like “emotions wheel” that lists common feeling and emotions (what is the difference between them, anyway?!) that might, just might, help you give words to the feeling (or emotion?) of, what, frustration? Imagine guessing what the right word is from that wheel.

Now imagine that your answer to “what does that feel like?” is “it’s only a mental experience”, time and time again. Maybe that’s normal. Maybe that’s what neurotypical, or allistic, people say in response to that question. Then again, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a relatively unique answer that says that you just don’t experience the world as others do.

Now imagine that a new world opens up, at least a little bit, when you have a drink or two of alcohol. That when the dis-inhibitory effect of it actually take effect and you can finally feel alive and experience more than something “just” mentally, that you feel tears slowly falling down your cheek because some music you’re listening to taps into something inside that moves you enough that you can feel more than just thoughts and words in your mind.

That’s what I call alcohol based therapy. And as bad as it is on my body–I feel my heart beating all the fucking time and alcohol makes my heart pound and it’s annoying as can be–it’s almost always worth feeling alive.

I can’t say I have a weakness for alcohol–in the end I don’t think I do. The taste of wine, almost any form of it, is so repugnant that I avoid it; the sweetness of various liquors is almost too much to bear–I think of all that fructose permanently damaging my liver, but never mind the effect of the alcohol on the same organ!–so I feel this twinge of guilt when I have something too sweet. What I’m after is the effect of the alcohol and its ability to let me feel alive and human.

Alexithymia. Austism. (C)PTSD. Introversion. “Putting up a wall.” Single nucleotide polymorphisms that reduce dopamine or serotonin. “Simple” trauma. A combination of all those. Or not. I don’t know why I can’t feel in the way that most people appear to feel alive or to experience life. I just know that it feels good to experience something other than just thoughts. A “unit” or two of alcohol, wait, then something like music, then feel alive. Usually.

My father was an alcoholic. He didn’t admit it but he didn’t seem to see anything wrong with starting drinking late in the morning, or before driving us somewhere. Because of this I didn’t have any alcohol until I was forty years old, scared to death that I had the suspected single genetic mutation that would predispose me to being like him, scared to be like him in any way at all. Now I see him as probably having been on the autism spectrum, see him as a having survived a traumatic childhood and doing the best he could (but also not enough for his four children), and as being a (tremendously) flawed human. But still human. That’s hard for me to admit. And it’s hard for me to use this device of alcohol that somewhat defined him as a way for me to feel better, somehow.

But that’s where I’m at. I want to feel alive. I want to have tears down my cheeks while listening to music or recalling scenes of altruism (a soft spot for me). I want to close my eyes while the world is dizzy and slightly disconnected from normal reality and have the rush of something flow into me and move me. Just move me. Just a little bit more than when I’m sober.