Why Alcoholics Anonymous Works

Many people don’t have a good group of friends who all meet together and look at each other and talk, smile, laugh, connect like this. 

And when you don’t have that, when you have no tribe, no group, no love, you feel like an alien everywhere you go and you get anxious and so you try drinking and that seems to quell your anxiety so you drink all the time around people and that gets to be the only way you can stand to socialize and what alcoholics anonymous does is it forces you to be around people who are sober while you are sober so that you all might learn to love soberly together.

And if you keep showing up, the animal part of your brain that really runs the show learns to love the tribe it now finds itself in without the supplement of alcohol or any other funny substances and so maybe you can function somewhat comfortably in the human social world.