Why Some Moments Feel Like They Need Alcohol
episode
Journey to the Sunnyside | Mindful Drinking & Alcohol Health
11 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, the podcast that helps you build a better relationship with alcohol and uncover the secrets to mindful living. Each episode brings you real stories, expert insights, and practical tools to support your goals. Whether you're cutting back, taking a break, or thinking about quitting for good. I'm your host, Mike Hardenbrook, best-selling author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert. This show is brought to you by Sunnyside, a personalized science-backed program that helps you to drink less through habit change, coaching, and community. And for added support, we now have Sunnyside Met. A clinical option offering access to compounded naltrexone. A prescription medication that reduces cravings and helps prevent binge drinking.
Ready to start your journey? Get your free 15-day trial at Sunnyside.co. Hey everybody, welcome back to another one of these 10-minute Mondays. I want to start off with something that I've been kind of just thinking about. And that is, nobody ever really sat me down and taught me. what a drink's supposed to mean. But somehow I already know that wine
Why do we automatically link celebrations and drinks together?
is the end of a hard day. I know that beer Is a football game. I know that champagne is a celebration. I know that cocktails means it's vacation time. And I also know that a drink in my hand means that I'm relaxed, I'm social, I can be easygoing. That's all included with that drink. Here's the thing, is you probably have very similar identifications as well. You learned all of this probably without anyone ever saying a word. And that's cause it's just basically everywhere. It's in commercials and weddings. We see it On vacation in our backyard barbecues, the moment we check into a hotel, there's a bar right there. That actually is separate from a craving. That's separate from willpower. That's actually a script.
And when I say script, I mean the invisible rules that we inherit about how alcohol belongs in moments and what we think it'll give us once it's there. Basically, sometimes the thing pulling Towards a drink is not the drink. It's the meaning that we were all taught and attached to it. And that's not just me theorizing here. There's actual research on how alcohol gets marketed. And I'll give you the short version. The ads, they were never really selling the drink. They were selling what the drink is supposed to mean. So what do I mean by this? They don't just sell beer, they sell the game. They don't just sell wine, they sell the exhale at the end of the day. They don't just sell margaritas. They sell that feeling that, hey, it is vacation mode and it has officially begun.
How does advertising turn a beverage into a cultural script?
And when those messages get repeated enough, they stop feeling like advertising and they start feeling like Culture. And culture, repeated enough, is starts feeling like reality. It feels like the truth. And that's how the script gets written. Not all at once, but instead line by line, scene by scene. Now, here's where I want to slow down. Because when we think of where did we learn these things, people often hear this and immediately go to the source of most of our learning. And that is our parents. But You might be surprised. Mine, for example, my parents didn't drink, rarely, and I actually don't have any memories of my dad ever drinking a beer. It came more from the background of my adolescence in the movies, seeing kids with red cups over the big screen.
It came from the ads. It came from seeing older people partying and then moving into college. party days myself. These were all versions of adulthood that I thought I was supposed to grow into. I didn't really need somebody in my house pouring a drink every night to learn that script. Culture did a pretty good job on its own. And at this point I'd invite you to look back on your own history because I think this part is worth sitting with for a second or a couple minutes. Because a lot of this actually isn't personal. It's not some flaw inside of you. It's not always something that your family did either. It's more like default settings that we grew up around.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:11
2
Why do we automatically link celebrations and drinks together?
1:11–2:49
3
How does advertising turn a beverage into a cultural script?
2:49–5:54
4
What role do family and media play in shaping our drinking habits?
5:54–8:14
5
Why are our drinking “defaults” actually learned programming?
8:14–10:10
6
How can we recognize and start changing the inherited drinking script?
10:10–11:02