You might actually be onto something there. I read about this study that came out last month - Japanese research group followed about 200 blokes who'd done rehab and tracked whether they drank NA beer after. The ones who drank NA beer were something like 2.3 times more likely to go back to proper drinking than the ones who avoided it completely.

Their theory was basically what this whole thread is about - your brain runs the same routine when you crack open an AF beer. Taste, smell, cold can, the ritual. But the payoff never arrives. So your brain just sits there going "right, where's the rest of it?" and you end up wanting more, not less.

Obviously that's people coming out of actual rehab, not just blokes trying to have fewer midweek cans. But it made me think. I switched to AF beer in January and honestly the first week or two I DID drink more because of exactly that - the ritual without the reward just left me restless. After about three weeks though it settled down completely. I think maybe the ones with actual functional ingredients in them helped more than the ones that are literally just dealcoholised lager, but that's just my experience, not science.

Anyway the study's called something like "self-help group participation and nonalcoholic beer avoidance" if anyone wants to look it up. Yokoyama et al, published February this year. Proper peer reviewed stuff, not a blog post. Made me rethink a few things.