There is a certain irresistible symbolism in a man from Burton upon Trent, historic centre of British brewing, opening the first alcohol-free pub in Dublin, one of Europe’s great booze capitals. We are drinking less in the UK and Ireland, young people in particular, and Vaughan Yates’ much-reported Virgin Mary seems a sober sign of the times – one that heralds a dire future for pubs generally.

Read the pub trade press and you will find a steady drip-drip of advice about how bars can woo abstinent Gen Z-ers. Only this week, Nescafé dropped a report that recommended “outdated” pubs must make themselves “more inviting” to non-drinkers (spoiler: they should serve better coffee). But in this struggling sector, where 18 boozers a week are closing, is looking at ways to draw in non-drinkers an urgent priority? Could more pubs follow the Virgin Mary’s lead and ban alcohol?

When temperance bars took off in 19th-century Lancashire, they were, arguably, a vital alternative in communities where pubs and working men’s clubs dominated social life. Church aside, where could you go without being tempted by the demon drink? However, your options are far more varied today. The retreat of retail from the high street has been accompanied by an explosion in spaces where people socialise without alcohol: coffee shops, ice-cream parlours, gyms, experiential leisure venues (bowling, crazy golf, escape rooms etc). Want to go out tonight, but not drink? Knock yourself out.

At the same time, the pub trade has proved itself nimble in embracing a world beyond pints. Food has become central to the survival of many pubs, while others host endless activities – comedy and film clubs, mums’n’toddlers’ coffee mornings, psychic nights, karaoke – where alcohol is incidental to your visit, rather than the main draw. Landlords are acutely aware that they cannot survive by serving dwindling numbers of hard-drinking regulars.

Sadly, the range of non-alcoholic drinks served in pubs is often terrible – but, then, most mainstream alcohol-free beers and wines are. With its Mikkeller beers, innovative mocktails and nitro coffee (cold coffee that looks like Guinness), the Virgin Mary is, in that way at least, inspirational. But in ditching alcohol outright, it is also ditching the very thing that gives pubs their distinctive atmosphere.

The Virgin Mary pub in Dublin: ‘Mikkeller beers, innovative mocktails and nitro coffee.’ Photograph: Alex Foster/The Guardian

“Can you lose the booze and keep the craic?” asked the Irish Times rhetorically, to which the only conceivable answer is: no. A fact that, despite reports of the Virgin Mary aiming for a “pub vibe”, Yates implicitly conceded when he told the Guardian: “By 10 o’clock in a [traditional] bar it’s very loud; there can be noise and chaos. Here you can still be having a conversation and still be making sense.”

Not only does that misrepresent pubs, which are many and varied (the thriving micropub scene is all about small, music-free venues where conversation flows over specialist beers … even at 10pm) – but it also speaks to a certain snobbery around pubs and drinking, which riles those of us who love both.

In the absence of other stimulants being legalised, alcohol remains the preferred way for British and Irish people to loosen up and enjoy a little of the silliness, exuberance and emotional openness often denied us in day-to-day life. Is that dysfunctional? Maybe. But short of starting British or Irish society all over again, this is where we are at, and we shouldn’t have to apologise for it.

Beyond loving the taste of beer, I also love the effects of alcohol, and for what it can do to a pub. I cherish that three-pint window where real life melts away. I love the warmth, the laughter, the life, the random, nonsensical conversations and soft-edged, jovial chaos of full pubs at peak hours. I like the din. I like the revelry. I like a bit of noise and chaos, frankly. And I like the sense of drinkers of often very different backgrounds rubbing along in mutual intoxicated tolerance. In an increasingly atomised society, there is value in that.

Anti-booze campaigners decry this as unhealthy, or misrepresent pubs as flashpoints of antisocial behaviour and violent disorder. But for the vast majority of us, a night in the pub doesn’t end in a fight in a takeaway or puking in a bin. At worse, you might have a sore head next morning.

Could people who aren’t drinking (much) even enjoy that atmosphere, too? Interestingly, according to Nescafé, 77% of supposedly abstemious Generation Z-ers still visit their favourite pub more than once a month. Pubs remain hugely attractive spaces and, undeniably, booze is crucial to their appeal. Cheers to that.

• Tony Naylor is a Manchester-based journalist