I Didn’t Know I Was AuDHD. I Just Knew Alcohol Quieted My Brain.
If alcohol calms you, what does that tell you about yourself? Read about how alcohol impacted my ADHD & autistic brain to see if you relate.
Alcohol turned down the noise
When I was in my 20s and undiagnosed, alcohol became a coping mechanism.
Despite hating the taste of it, when I drank alcohol, my brain felt calm. I could hold onto one thought instead of having multiple streams of thoughts going in different directions. It was like someone turned the volume down in my brain: I wasn’t analyzing everything at once. I wasn’t anxious. I could articulate my thoughts w/o having to think so hard.
Years later, now that I know I’m autistic and have ADHD, I realize that alcohol gave me temporary relief from a brain I didn’t yet understand.
The job that gave me safety
I finished graduate school and was hired into a “Big Four consulting firm”. This meant more to me than just “having a good job.” It meant financial security—the American dream. I was suddenly working alongside people whose parents were CEOs & Fortune 500 executives—people who grew up with access to a privileged world that was totally foreign to me. Coming from a blue-collar family, I felt like I had made it into a room I wasn’t supposed to be in.
And being in that room meant safety. Growing up with scarcity, it was drilled into me that you worked hard, made sacrifices, & earned as much money as possible so you could take care of yourself & your family. And I had done it. I had something generations of women in my family before me never had—financial security, independence and options.
But it came with a cost
Consulting meant long work hours, demanding clients, Monday-Thursday travel, and enormous pressure to perform. Alcohol was normalized within that environment; it was how people socialized and decompressed after a long day.
This was a standard work day:
8am - 6 pm we were at the office
6:30 pm - 8 pm dinner with colleagues
8 pm -11 pm people continued working in their hotel rooms.
I drank alcohol every evening—not just because I was working in a high-stress environment, but because it seemed to do something else for me: it quieted my brain.
What alcohol does to the brain temporarily
Alcohol affects areas of the human brain involved in reward, stress, inhibition, and executive functioning. It can activate the reward system while temporarily reducing stress and anxiety responses. At the same time, it lowers inhibition and interferes with judgment, self-control, and decision-making (NIAAA, 2021).
So alcohol wasn’t making my brain function better. But in the moment, less anxiety, less inhibition, and less self-monitoring felt like calm.
Instead of:
Did I say the wrong thing?
What does that person mean?
Am I making sense?
Am I making enough eye contact? Too much?
Plus all the other thoughts competing for my attention at the same time. There was just one thought at a time. And that calm felt incredible.
Alcohol is short-term relief with long-term consequences
The calm comes at a health cost. Factually — alcohol is toxic to the body. It’s a known carcinogen and linked to more than 200 diseases, injuries, and other health conditions. Even one drink a day carries some health risk (WHO, 2024). The effects can also make functioning harder the next day because alcohol disrupts sleep, and impacts your attention span, memory, decision-making, & executive functioning (Gunn et al., 2018).
So I was drinking to get relief from anxiety, mental overload, and exhaustion—only to make those same struggles harder the next day.
And my experience isn’t unique. Research shows that people with ADHD are at higher risk of alcohol addiction, and that autistic adults may use alcohol to cope with anxiety and to make communication & socializing feel easier (Crunelle et al., 2018; Brosnan & Adams, 2020).
Looking back
When I look back now, I don’t see someone who was just drinking too much. I was using alcohol to cope with things I didn’t yet have names for: difficulty regulating my attention, masking, social anxiety, sensory overwhelm, and constantly monitoring myself.
I see a woman desperately trying to hold onto something generations of women in her family never had. And I thought keeping it meant I had to tolerate whatever the job demanded of me.
So I told myself to try harder. I worked 60-hour weeks. I masked. I drank.
Post Diagnosis
I rarely drink now. Not because getting diagnosed made life easier, but because I finally understand why alcohol felt so helpful in the first place. I know what overwhelms me, why my brain gets overloaded, and what I actually need. Alcohol isn’t worth the tradeoff anymore.
The diagnosis has made me look differently at the things I used to do just to get through life. If you’re late diagnosed, you may look back at your own past—drinking, overworking, people-pleasing, masking, isolating, or pushing yourself past your limits and ask: Why was I doing that?
For me, the answer is clear—I was trying to cope with a brain I didn’t understand.
So what now?
If this made you question your own relationship with alcohol, SUBSCRIBE to access a free validated screening tool to help you understand your drinking patterns.
You’ll also get resources for finding healthier ways to work with your brain—from workplace accommodations to templates for interacting with HR and your employer.
Note: This is my personal experience, not medical advice. If you recognize yourself in it, consider talking to a clinician who can help you figure out what you’re dealing with and what support fits.
References
Barber, W., Aslan, B., Meynen, T., Marsden, J., Chamberlain, S. R., Paleri, V., & Sinclair, J. M. A. (2025). Alcohol use among populations with autism spectrum disorder: Narrative systematic review. BJPsych Open, 11(1), e15. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2024.824
Brosnan, M., & Adams, S. (2020). The expectancies and motivations for heavy episodic drinking of alcohol in autistic adults. Autism in Adulthood, 2(4), 317–324.
Crunelle, C. L., van den Brink, W., Moggi, F., Konstenius, M., Franck, J., Levin, F. R., van de Glind, G., Demetrovics, Z., Coetzee, C., Luderer, M., Schellekens, A., ICASA Consensus Group, & Matthys, F. (2018). International consensus statement on screening, diagnosis and treatment of substance use disorder patients with comorbid attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. European Addiction Research, 24(1), 43–51. https://doi.org/10.1159/000487767
Day, A. M., Kahler, C. W., Ahern, D. C., & Clark, U. S. (2015). Executive functioning in alcohol use studies: A brief review of findings and challenges in assessment. Current Drug Abuse Reviews, 8(1), 26–40. https://doi.org/10.2174/1874473708666150416110515
Gunn, C., Mackus, M., Griffin, C., Munafò, M. R., & Adams, S. (2018). A systematic review of the next-day effects of heavy alcohol consumption on cognitive performance. Addiction, 113(12), 2182–2193. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.14404
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) (2021). The cycle of alcohol addiction. National Institutes of Health. NIAAA source. https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/cycle-alcohol-addiction
World Health Organization. (2024). Alcohol. WHO alcohol fact sheet. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol
Young, S., Abbasian, C., Al-Attar, Z., Branney, P., Colley, B., Cortese, S., Cubbin, S., Deeley, Q., Gudjonsson, G. H., Hill, P., Hollingdale, J., Jenden, S., Johnson, J., Judge, D., Lewis, A., Mason, P., Mukherjee, R., Nutt, D., Roberts, J., ... Cocallis, K. (2023). Identification and treatment of individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and substance use disorder: An expert consensus statement. World Journal of Psychiatry, 13(3), 84–112. https://doi.org/10.5498/wjp.v13.i3.84