January 13, 2025 • 49 mins
Alcohol is one of societies most highly accepted and used drugs. But what is it's actual impact on our brains and our bodies, and what is the psychology behind why we use alcohol and why it makes us feel so good? In today's episode, let's break down the true psychology of alcohol, including:
- Why we feel drunk and how alcohol is processed
- How alcohol influences our neurotransmitters and brain communication
- Why we experience hangxiety + blacking out
- What makes alcohol so addictive
- When to know you have a problem
- How your health and your body changes when you go sober + what to expect
- The link between socialising and alcohol + more
Listen now to learn the essentials about the relationship between you, your body, your emotions and that cheeky glass of wine.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. I just want to say
a huge, big fool thank you to all of the
(00:20):
love and support that you guys have shown my new podcast,
Mantra so far. In case you haven't heard, I launched
a new show. You know, I just wanted to spend
even more hours behind a microphone. One podcast wasn't enough.
But Martra is basically a weekly podcast that I put
out every single Monday that gives you a phrase and
(00:44):
affirmation for your week to help you guide your week,
whether it is I release the need for external validation,
I cultivate peace within I create my own reality. We
go into what each mantra means at the start of
every week to kind of give you some guidance and
some inspiration as you start things off and as you
(01:06):
get into it whatever it is you are going through.
So the first episode was released yesterday on the thirteenth
of January, and the love that you guys have poured
into that show already left me kind of speechless. So
thank you so much for those who have already listened,
already rated the show, who are following along on Instagram,
(01:27):
every single little two second act, whether you're rating it,
whether you're just playing the first you know, thirty seconds,
whether you honestly just hit follow, means the world. So
I really really appreciate it. But with that aside, just
to say a big thank you, I want to talk
about today's topic, because today we are talking about alcohol,
(01:49):
specifically what alcohol does to our brains, how it impacts
us emotionally and psychologically, and also this shift we're kind
of seeing in society today towards sobriety, especially in our
generation of twenty somethings. A lot of us are starting
to question whether our current drinking habits, both individually and
(02:10):
as a culture, are really what's best. And this has
been a big topic of conversation in my life at
the moment. It's been coming up everywhere I look because
I'm doing dry January, and you know what, I just
kind of said it as a personal challenge, and if
I'm being completely honest with you all, I did not
expect it to be as hard as it was. It
(02:32):
honestly shocked me a bit because I'm not someone who's
ever had a problem with alcohol. I could always stop
drinking when I wanted, But suddenly these thirty days have
been hard, and it's really got me thinking about, well,
the psychology of alcohol and the role that it plays
during this decade of life. I think it's been so
(02:53):
difficult because every social event or thing that's happening, every
interaction or opportunity to out with my friends kind of
has alcohol at the center. Maybe not every single event,
but probably every second one, whether it's going to the pub,
going out for drinks, going to a party, a birthday
of celebration, dinner, alcohol is very much at the center.
(03:15):
And honestly, as someone who actually does like the taste
of wine and who will have a few glasses of
wine or a beer, I never really noticed how dependent
those situations felt on drinking until I put myself in
a position where I couldn't participate in kind of the
group activity. What I have noticed has been really interesting
(03:37):
as well, both health wise, mental health wise, brain wise,
but also social wise. So I want to not only
discuss the role of alcohol on our brains and our bodies,
because I think that's just something we should all understand.
But also what happens when we quit alcohol, what changes
you're likely to notice, how to deal with things like
(03:59):
hangs out, and the rise of sober curiosity amongst us.
Also some of the things I've learned going out sober
that might surprise you. I also want to go kind
of more in depth into the psychology of dependence, substance abuse,
why we do feel like alcohol is so conditioned into
(04:19):
how we socialize, and so much more. I think this
episode is really important and it's essential listening if you're
in your twenties and beyond, because how often do we
really pause and consider how big of a role this
substance plays in our lives. You know, until recently, I
hadn't really done that thinking. So this is also such
(04:40):
a really richly and deeply researched area.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I do.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
You just want to say, the evidence and the science
is constantly evolving when it comes to alcohol, Like a
paper literally came out yesterday that I didn't get a
chance to put into this episode, So as of right now,
hopefully it is accurate, But maybe in a couple of
years the research will change again and I'll have to
revisit this topic, but for right now, this is what
(05:03):
we know about the psychology of alcohol, specifically in our twenties.
So let's get into it. Let's get some basics down
pat first. How is alcohol process by the body? Why
does it make us feel the way it does good
and bad? What is the impact on the brain. Three
(05:25):
things we really need to know. So first thing to
know when you have a glass of wine, when you
have a little apparol, sprits, your martini, your shots of vodka,
whatever it is, insert drink of choice here. The key
chemical or substance that we are interested in that makes
alcohol alcohol is ethanol. This is what is going to
make you feel tipsy or drunk. And ethanol is really
(05:46):
just a byproduct of the fermentation of a plant. So
for wine, it's grapes, For beer, it's barley, for vode curates,
potatoes or sugar or rice gin it's juniper berries. And
fermentation basically just means that the fruit is rotting, it's fermenting.
(06:07):
So when you drink alcohol, you're basically just drinking some
really funky juice. You know, something that is rotten. And
it's important to note that our body actually sees that
in some ways as poison, like it's not meant to
be here, even if it feels nice. If you, for example,
see someone throw up from drinking too much alcohol on
a night out, that is basically your body being like,
(06:29):
oh my gosh, we have been poisoned. Get this stuff
out of me. And I remember someone telling me that
when I was at Uni. Actually she was like, that
is your body responding to an overdose, a poison overdose,
And it really changed my whole perspective on how much
I would drink on a night out. Like binge drinking
was just so casually prevalent in my university experience that
(06:51):
hearing that person explain it that way like kind of
really shocked me. So, you know, on a less extreme note,
when our body metabolizes alcohol ethanol, even in small quantities,
a number of things happen. I'm not going to get
too scientific, but essentially it can only be processed by
our liver, which essentially does see ethanol as something that
(07:13):
is harmful and it tries to clear it out of
our system. It tries to clear it out of our
body by processing it. But when we have more than
the liver can process at any given time. This excess
alcohol in our body is what starts to give us
that loose, drunken, tipsy feeling because the alcohol is not
(07:34):
being processed as fast as it's coming in. That's not
necessarily a problem at low levels. Only at high levels,
and all those feelings that we are going to be
experiencing occur because alcohol is not only a drug, but
it's what we call a depressant drug. So in comparison
to stimulant drugs like MDMA, cocaine, that sort of thing
we have to press in drugs like alcohol marijuana. Now
(07:57):
they're called depressants because of the impact they have on
the central nervous system. And the impact that alcohol or
ethanol has is one of basically sedation. So your central
nervous system, hear that come up a lot. It is
made up of two things, your brain and your spine,
your spinal cord. And alcohol is actually one of the
(08:19):
few substances that can cross the blood brain barrier, meaning
that it can almost reach into our brain cells and
impact them directly.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And when it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Does that, it slows everything down and it disrupts normal functioning.
So basically, at any given moment, right now, you right now,
listening to this podcast, all of your neurons in your
brain are chattering away. They're sending information back and forth
like little workers in a big warehouse, and they're thinking, oh,
this is interesting, this is an interesting. Pay attention to this.
(08:53):
While you're watching the road, while you're cleaning. They're sourcing
all this information. And alcohol is like going into that
warehouse and slowly turning down the lights so that none
of those little worker neurons can see where they're going,
and they can't talk as easily. That is basically alcohol's effect.
It is kind of shutting down the systems, making it
(09:14):
harder for your neurons to talk. Now, this, this depress
an effect on our brain is what creates so many
of those typical effects that we associate with drinking. So
big one feeling a little bit clumsy, a bit slower,
but also less inhibited because all of those parts of
your brain that would normally tell you to hush or
(09:35):
would respond to physical stimuli, they are kind of quietening down.
They're finding it harder to communicate with each other. Think
about like, in a normal circumstance, you go to say
something embarrassing or weird, and your brain goes Okay, let's
read this, Let's read the cues. Let's think this through.
We're not going to say that, but when you're drinking,
your brain gets to that realization a little bit too slow.
(09:59):
It all so slows down our anxiety, meaning that your
anxious thoughts for a lot of us finally seem quieter.
We're going to talk about that in a second and
why that's actually going to backfire on you. Another impact
that alcohol has that comes from that sedative effect is
slurred speech. It's why you should also never drive when drinking,
(10:22):
because your response times are slower, even if you don't
think that they are. It's why we feel sleepy. Alcohol
also causes our brain to release something called opioid peptides,
which basically are the thing that signals the brain to
release dopamine and serotonin. And when they do, those areas
(10:43):
of our brain open the floodglates and they let out.
They make more of these neurotransmitters available to us, which
is what makes us feel really happy and euphoric because
of how this substance impacts our reward pathways and also
the release of dolphins. So alcohol triggers opioid peptides, which
(11:03):
trigger dopamine and serotonin and in the process also release
releases in dolphins. It's interesting because they actually only really
discovered that this is what was happening, this peptide to
don't mean to endorphin link about twelve years ago. You know,
they long assumed it, but it was really hard to
(11:26):
prove that this was what was why alcohol made us
so happy. The way they did finally prove it was
that they did a study back in twenty twelve where
they injected twenty five people, half of whom were heavy drinkers,
half of whom weren't, with a drug that would bind
to their opioid receptors. But then they radioactively tagged those receptors,
(11:47):
so they basically gave them like a low level of
a drug that stimulated their opioid receptors, and that drug
would obviously attach to those receptors so they could see
where they were in the brain. And then they asked
them to drink alcohol. And the people who got particularly
a lot of pleasure out of drinking, so heavy drinkers,
they all those areas, those places where the opioid peptides
(12:07):
were located based on that previous drug insertion. They lit
up even further, and so that really showed researchers and
scientists only twelve years ago that that was the system
and the reason why we get that euphoric feeling. So
the effects of alcohol they're not just physical and biological,
they're also really psychological, not just because of that happy feeling,
(12:31):
but because of the impact on our mind and our
mood in general, and also our personality. This amazing paper
from two thousand and eight titled why do we drink
puts it really perfectly. We drink because of alcohol's ability
to alter our emotional state and make us more like
the person we actually want to be, even if just
(12:54):
for a second. We want to be the confident person,
the relaxed person, the disinhibited person, the less stress person.
And because alcohol gives us a gateway to this realization
of the ideal self, that is actually what can make
it so addictive and what can fuel dependency. You know,
(13:16):
it's not just the feeling, it's who it makes us
become in comparison to who we are in our everyday lives.
You know, that is one factor. I also think the
other factor why the other reason it's so normalized and
while widely used, is of course, the social element to it.
How can we forget that?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know, that.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Social celibratory component to the use of alcohol is what
makes it so hard for us to contemplate stepping away
from it, because we think that we're going to miss
out on so many other things. You know, for millennium,
people have known that alcohol makes us have more fun,
it makes us merry, makes us open, more relaxed, and
(13:57):
so it has become integrated into our our culture, our
way of communicating and socializing. You know, the earliest evidence
of humans making and drinking alcohol was from seven thousand BC,
before Christ. That is a lot of years ago. That
is definitely not modern history. Actually, where they found this
(14:17):
wine was in China in what is now known as
the Yellow River Valley, and it really goes to show
that humans have for a long time used this substance
to alter their state of mind and for enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Now, you can obviously.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Get this buzzed, you for it relaxed feeling from even
just one drink, even a couple of drinks, but at
some point your body can't process the alcohol fast enough,
and so initially you will get that buzzed feeling, and
then you'll start feeling nauseous, dizzy.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Confused, and you may even blackout.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Let's actually talk about what happens to your brain when
you blackout. Now I'm talking blacking out passing out, So
not like, you know, being completely unconscious, but being conscious
but having no memory of what has happened. When this happens,
you've basically drunk enough alcohol to disrupt a really vital
(15:14):
part of your brain called the hippocampus. Now, this part
of your brain, it's responsible for a lot of things,
but in this context, it's really responsible for consolidating and
storing memories. So although you might be awake and you
might be currently experiencing your reality, your brain cannot take
(15:36):
those moments and store them properly. So that is what
leads to those gaps in what you can remember everything
that you're experiencing when you're really drunk on a night
out or wherever you are. Basically, it's only able to
be temporarily held in sensory and short term memory, which
you know normally has a life expectancy of about a
(15:56):
couple of minutes. So that's why you might wake up
the next morning and so, hey, this is so blurry,
I can't remember saying that I can't remember doing that,
even though you hadn't necessarily passed out at any point.
When we pass out, on the other hand, what we're
experiencing is as I described before, basically minor alcohol poisoning.
And when I say minor, I mean less extreme than
(16:17):
the worst case scenario. But honestly, any kind of alcohol
poisoning is not that great. And the next morning, you know,
how can we talk about the psychology of alcohol and
not talk about the next day. When we've drunk past
that limit, we get a hangover, and that's typically due
to dehydration and because when your liver breaks down alcohol,
(16:41):
a byproduct is called en settle a hyde, which is
what makes you really nauseous and gives you headaches. And
then we also have anxiety as a component of that.
I made a full episode on anxiety maybe two years ago.
The episode is called The Psychology of Anxiety that goes
really into depth on this subject, but as a summary,
(17:03):
when we drink, part of why we feel that calm
feeling I was talking about is also because of the
release of a neurotransmitter called gabba, and in response to alcohol,
our brain dumps a bunch of this into our body.
Gaba has that the sedative effect. It really slows things down.
It reduces your anxiety, It reduces chata.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Between your neurons.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The next day though, our brain is like, all right, cool,
we need to get everything back and balance now, so
it releases more of gabba's counterpart, glutamate. Now, glutamate has
the opposite effect. It has an exciderary effect, and that
is why you feel quite anxious the next morning, because
it takes a while for your brain to really find
(17:49):
the right level and restore that normal chemical balance. So
it's pumping in more glutamate, pumping in more gaba, pumping
in more glutamating, and you know they're kind of trying
to race to the top, and your anxiety is rising
and rising. That is why you can feel really overwhelmed by,
oh my god, what did.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I say last night? What did I do?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Even when you didn't do anything, you feel like there's
this lingering sense that something is wrong and this rising
anxiety in your body that, my friends, is glutamate. So
I think you know that even that interaction between gabber
and glutamate really sums up alcohol consumption for me. For
every reaction you have with alcohol, there is a counter reaction.
(18:31):
You might feel happy and merry, but then the next
day you might feel sad and depressed. When the buzz
wears off. You might feel uninhibited, but the next day
you feel anxious again. And for me, alcohol also was
just a really terrible contributor to my mental health because obviously,
like you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you've had a really
(18:52):
hard day, you might have a couple glasses of wine.
But I was finding that I would wake up the
next day. Firstly, I wasn't as productive. I didn't have
a much mental clarity, which is so important to me.
But secondly, all of my anxious, stressful, worrisome feelings and
sensations were just heightened and elevated, and it was unbearable.
(19:15):
And that is something that I have noticed, you know,
in this short period of time and the two weeks
that I haven't been drinking, my anxiety symptoms have declined,
like they're still there, but they feel manageable. Also, I'm getting,
you know, writing less of a wave, like an up
and down wave of spiked emotions from really jubilant to
(19:37):
really you know, terrified and sad. Very interested to see
how that goes, like in the next two weeks, after
a month, and even if I can do like six months,
I don't know. I've got, you know, my book coming out.
I kind of want to have a little glass of
champagne with that. But even in moderation, whether my alcohol
consumption is something that is directly correlated to poor men
(20:00):
health episodes for me, I do want to put in
like a little disclaimer here, like this advice and information
I'm presenting isn't presented in a way to just be
like everyone be sober and trying to dissuade you from
ever drinking again. Like I think I will eventually drink again.
I just also think that what I needed to understand
was some of the consequences and you know, really reacknowledging
(20:23):
myself what was happening in my body in response to
alcohol and whether I was willing to opt into that
interaction or whether I'd be better off without it. But
I honestly do think like I'll drink again. I probably
will get drunk again, probably a couple of times. So
this isn't like a blanket if you're listening to this
never drink again kind of episode. I just think that
(20:44):
any form of education gives you an informed choice. And
you can take this and be like, cool, I'm still
going to get blackout drunk, and I wouldn't you know, can,
I wouldn't promote that, But it's still your choice as
long as you know what you're doing to your body.
All right, let's take a shit short break because something
we haven't spoken about yet is the psychology behind alcohol
(21:04):
dependency and addiction. I think that deserves its whole section
of the podcast, so we will be back after this
short break. Why is it that some people cannot stop
drinking when they start? Why do some people get really drunk,
(21:25):
make terrible mistakes, ruin relationships and they still cannot quit. Basically,
I think the question that I'm asking is what makes
alcohol so addictive for some people? And it really, it
really is, even if we don't acknowledge it. Researchers at
Oxford University they've actually called it the second most addictive
(21:46):
drug on the planet, second only to heroin. Like that's
wild to me, Yet it's so widely accepted. If you
know we're all going around doing heroin every Friday, Saturday,
in odd Tuesday, you best believe that your friends would
be like, hey, intervention happening here. This isn't a good idea,
(22:07):
But alcohol is just not treated with the same level
of caution. What really makes alcohol so addictive, and I've
already kind of mentioned it is what it does to
us psychologically as well as physically and psychologically. What it
does is that it numbs us. But not only that,
it also lights up the reward centers in our brain.
So you know, of course our brain is going to
(22:29):
continue to repeat behaviors, will tell us to repeat behaviors
that are pleasurable, rewarding. And also, you know, alcohol provides
relief in a sense from really hard things, from negative circumstances.
When that association between you know, alcohol makes me happy,
alcohol takes away bad things. When that association becomes a pattern,
(22:53):
that becomes a habit, it becomes a lot harder and
harder to stop. We also have to acknowledge, you know,
a lot of people feel more like themselves, I guess
in their drunk state, and so of course they're going
to continue to drink, and sometimes drink heavily to put
them back in the shoes of this person they wish
(23:14):
that they were. This Really, this pattern and association is
really the neurological basis for addiction, and we typically see
addiction as happening in three stages. So for speaking of alcohol,
often people begin with the binge and intoxication stage, where
we're experiencing all the pleasure, we're experiencing, all the happy thoughts.
(23:37):
We associate drinking with really fun things, environments, people, and
it hasn't gotten bad yet. But then we get to
the withdrawal period, where it just feels crap to not
be drinking because of the hangovers, whatever, and also the
negative effects stage. So when we do stop, we become irritable, sad, depressed, anxious, anxious,
(23:58):
so we drink again to reduce the stress of not drinking.
And then that is really followed by the preoccupation and
anticipation stage. This is when we have strong urges, we
have cravings when they're not acceptable. Maybe we are watching
the clock for five PM with sneaking.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Drinks at work.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
This is where we don't feel like we can have
fun without it, we don't think we can function without it,
and it's where you know, alcohol abuse disorder and alcohol
addiction really kind of takes hold. Some of us are
more prone to this than others. And one of the
biggest factors that makes us more prone to it is genetics.
(24:37):
It's genetic factors, and recent studies, including one from only
last year, have showed that there are certain genes associated
with an addiction or dependency on alcohol, and those genes
are inherited some you know, scientists, some researchers even call
substance use disorders or alcoholism a complex genetic disease, a
(25:00):
genetic disease like you know, those that cause birth defects
or birth deformities. And it's also linked to generational trauma.
It's linked to environment, to learned behaviors, all of which
are kind of passed down from those above us, passed
down from our family. And you know, of course trauma
(25:21):
comes into play here. You know, a study in Australia
found that a third of adults who were exposed to
childhood trauma go on to abuse alcohol later in life,
a third of them. And you know, as a country
who has Australia being you know as a terrible history,
a terrible, terrible history, you know, you can see why
people whose families and whose culture have endured that suffering
(25:45):
would have problems with alcohol because, as it's called it's
a complex genetic and generational disease. That's how some people
really see it. This is why I really think that
people who struggle with alcoholism or substance addiction or abuse
of any kind, they deserve so much sympathy.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Maybe people will get upset.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
At me for saying that and say, you know, I
know my uncle has this, and he doesn't deserve a
lick of sympathy. He did this to himself. That's your
perspective and your truth. What I'm saying is that I
don't think anyone would choose that life for themselves. No one,
as a child, as a three four five year old
says when I grow up, I want to be dependent
(26:30):
on alcohol. No one dreams of that. But I've also
seen in my own life how easy it is to
fall into that pattern. I've seen this in people that
I know who seem totally fine and normal but have
serious problems with alcohol. They're just able to hide it
because they have a good support network, because of you know,
(26:52):
other things.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
In their life.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
You know, I just don't think that it really comes
down to not being disciplined. I think that or being lazy.
I really actually think that it can happen to anyone.
All it takes is one tragedy, one bad year, one
instance of bad luck, and all you have left might
(27:16):
be alcohol. That is how you self soothe. And I
think it's as simple as that it's such a widely
available and accepted drug that there's also people who don't
even question that they might have a problem until it's
too late.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Living in Australia, we have such a huge binge drinking
culture that I'm so sure that there are people I
would even know who don't even realize that they have
a problem until they would try to stop, until they'd
try to quit, and you know they couldn't do it,
like even I struggled. There's also the important thing to remember,
which is that alcohol is commonly used as a maladaptive
(27:52):
coping mechanism because of again, how it can be used
to help us manage stress, bad thoughts, inadequacy. It does
remove bad feelings, but it also prevents a deeper, truer
form of emotional coping. I think we really need to
articulate the distinction here between dependence, abuse and addiction, because
(28:13):
they are used very interchangeably. Even I've been doing so
so let's clarify this for a second. When people use
the term dependence, they are usually referring to a physical
dependence on a substance. So what that is characterized by
is symptoms of increased tolerance, so it's harder for you
(28:33):
to get drunk even as you drink more. And also withdrawal,
so obviously withdrawal is the removal of the substance.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
When you are sober.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
It doesn't feel great, you feel sick, you feel gross
as the alcohol leaves your body. And while it's possible
to have a physical dependence without being addicted, often it's
a very slippery slope and it's right around the corner.
Addiction is one step above dependence because it's marked by
(29:01):
a change in behavior that is caused not only by
biochemical changes in the brain from using alcohol, but also
psychological changes you know, linked to substance abuse. The substance,
and in this case it's alcohol, becomes the main priority
for someone who is suffering from addiction, regardless of the
harm they cause to themselves or others. So this is
(29:24):
a really important part, even if it's hurting family members,
even if you're going to lose your job, like you
just cannot stop you just cannot stop. Something interesting, though,
is that you can be addicted to alcohol and not
abusing it or even using it, Like you could be
completely sober and still addicted to alcohol, which sounds strange,
(29:48):
but it's actually a very core philosophy of alcoholics anonymous
that you're basically always going to be an addict.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
There was some controversy around this because if you tell
someone who's zero day is so hey, no matter what
you do, you're always going to be an addict, and
that is a bad, dirty word, so you better not
it's not even worth trying. Like, that's not a fun
thing to hear, you know, it's not a fun thing
to think that you're forever going to be under the
control of this substance, or your identity is going to
(30:17):
be associated with this substance. So some people have said
that idea that you're always an addict is not necessarily
good for an optimistic internal environment.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
But there are people.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Who say, you know, knowing that you are someone who
is always going to be an addict, who was an addict,
serves as a good reminder to them that they do
have a more addictive prone personality, so they shouldn't take
chances even trying to drink alcoholism in a normal way,
like that is not something that they can do. So,
(30:48):
wherever you sit on that kind of scale of whether
you think it should exist, that you're always an addict
or not, like it's very much an individual choice, what's
going to allow you to move past dependency and addiction
in the best way. There is also, I think one
less severe level of alcohol dependence or abuse that I
(31:09):
would call context based dependence. And I think this particularly
applies to our twenties. You might not have a problem
with alcohol. You might be able to stop for weeks
or months, maybe just weeks, let's say that, maybe a
couple of days. But you know, every time your friends say,
come out with us, let's go to the club. My god,
(31:31):
I sound so old, Like let's go clubbing, let's go out,
let's go to this party, you have to drink. You
feel like once you're in that environment there.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Is no stopping you.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That is not just addiction in the traditional sense, but
rather a context a contextual reliance on alcohol kind of
as a social lubricant or a way to fit in.
Like you could not imagine going to something and not drinking,
And when you do, it's incredibly hard.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think in these.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Moments, drinking really does become tied to the context rather
than a personal craving. Like this kind of dependence is subtle,
because when you're not in those environments, you might not
want to drink at all, but it's also something that means,
you know, it's also a form of dependence that can
go unnoticed. I think it's especially problematic when you're someone
(32:20):
who gets to the party and can't stop drinking. So
I think it's really worth reflecting on whether the choice
to drink in those moments is truly yours or if
you're being influenced by the environment, by other people's expectations
of you, and kind of just like this context based reliance.
You know, if you don't feel good after drinking, and
(32:41):
if you always like, God, I don't want to do
that again. If you feel pressured, if you know you
want to go for a run the next day but
you still end up going too far, I think that
that's when you know it's a bit of a dangerous
social habit. Perhaps even for you. It's more linked to
FOMA right in the way alcohol juices stress in a
(33:01):
situation or makes it feel like you belong. You don't
want to miss out on the fun. Perhaps it's a
fear of social exclusion, of not being part of the
interesting stories, of not being part of the moment, But
it is something that I think if you're in your twenties,
you need to recognize how does drinking and social acceptance
go hand in hand. Something really positive that I've seen.
(33:23):
You know, more and more though, is a lot of
us taking the sober route or being sober curious, that's
the name for it.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
These days.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
You know, there is this idea that you're either a
problem drinker, an alcoholic, or a normal drinker who has
no issues with alcohol. But more and more definitely seeing
these like shades of gray when it comes to dependency
and sober curiosity. Is this amazing kind of lifestyle choice
that doesn't require complete commitment to going sober for the
(33:55):
rest of your life, but it does mean that you
can choose to kind of dip your toes into occasional
or periodic sobriety and just kind of modify your drinking
habits without feeling like it's all or nothing. You know,
it's not because you're necessarily worried about dependency it's more
that you've evaluated what drinking costs you versus what you
(34:17):
would benefit from cutting down or going sober for small
periods of time. I have noticed that more and more
in my own social circles. Something I actually noticed recently
was more non alcoholic drinks being available at parties.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It's become a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
More normal to ask someone like, are you drinking at
the moment, rather than just assuming that they are more
people doing dry jen or dry July. And I think
that's really something we can expect more as we deprioritize
drinking or make small swaps. And you know, I promise
to tell you what I've noticed. Mental health thing has
been one thing, but there are so many other benefits.
(34:56):
You sleep better, you are less stressed because you're not
artificially elevating and then lowering and then elevating again your
gabber and glutamate levels, so your brain and body is
able to find that sweet spot and stay there. You know,
if you drink quite a bit and then you suddenly stop,
sometimes you do experience like a strange spike and anxiety
(35:16):
in the first few weeks because your brain is adjusting
to not having this substance. To reduce or relax it.
But after a while, like it turns out that your
body can manage that stress itself, it doesn't need the
help of alcohol. We also see regeneration in the frontal lobe,
which is where alcohol hits the hardest. The frontal lobe
(35:37):
and the cerebellum, and the frontal lobe is responsible for
a lot of our executive functioning and decision making, self control,
our emotions, personality, And sometimes you might not know it,
but prolonged and heavy drinking actually kills off brain cells
in that area and across the brain, and it causes
your brain to shrink, It reduces brain volume. So that
(36:00):
is why alcohol is so often implicated in neurological diseases
like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. When you are young and you
cut back, you're giving your brain more of a chance,
and you're allowing your brain space to prune, rewire, keep
those cells healthy. And that's why you may see an
increase in mental clarity. Oh my goodness, if I have
(36:22):
not noticed that I have less brain fog, almost none.
At the moment, you feel refreshed, you can get more done. Also,
you know, because your sleep is likely improved as well,
Like this is all coming together. It's a common myth
that you know, alcohol helps you sleep. It's where the
term nightcap came from, like having a drink a cap
(36:43):
of something to help you fall asleep. Actually, to myth,
bust that one.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
For you.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Drinking worsens your sleep quality significantly because it makes it
harder for you to enter and therefore stay in rem sleep.
So not drinking better, shut up. One of the things
I've also noticed that I didn't expect was how much
inflammation went away in my face particularly, but also in
(37:09):
my body, Like within a week, I wasn't as puffy,
I got less headaches, my skin was breaking out less,
it looked healthier. And that was just me going from
like mid range social drinking to no drinking at all.
And it's still made a really big difference, Like, oh
my goodness, even my hands and like my face is
(37:32):
the big one where I just feel less like bloated
and less like puffy. And it's really hard to like
see I think if you are someone like just like
a friend or a stranger and you weren't seeing my
face every day, but obviously as someone who sees it
every day, like I've definitely noticed this decline. Your liver
(37:52):
your heart. They both do better. And this raises a
really important point I haven't spoken about yet, which is
another myth, the myth that alcohol is actually good for
our health. I listened to this fascinating podcast by The
New York Times called How Bad Is Alcohol for You Really,
in which they basically debunk this idea that alcohol has
(38:12):
any health benefit. Most of us have probably heard this
suggestion or this quote unquote fact that a glass of
red wine is like good for your heart, it has antioxidants,
like it was even a fact that was like in
the episode, like in an episode of the Office. It's
so commonly spread. But actually, when you review the study
that this fact is taken from the way they interpreted
(38:34):
their data was really misleading, and now so many people
believe a false conclusion. When they conducted this original study,
they basically looked at people who drank versus didn't drink.
And you know, the people who did drink it was
quite moderate, maybe a couple of glasses of wine. And
what they found was that those who drank moderately were
(38:56):
healthier than those who didn't drink at all. And it
was this huge vine at the time. But what they
didn't control for, and anyone studying psychology knows you need
to control for your confounding extraneous variables. They didn't control
for the people who were in that sober group who
had stopped drinking because they had a real problem and
it had begun to impact their health. Now, it's kind
(39:19):
of hard these days to find someone who is completely sober,
and one of the reasons that someone might be completely
sober is because they can't drink.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
So all of those people.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Who were included in the no drinking group, it wasn't
like they'd never drunk before in their life. It was
actually the opposite. They had a problem, and so they
were basically pulling down the group average of non drinkers
compared to casual drinkers, so it looked like the casual
drinkers were healthier. That is a classic example in psychology
(39:50):
research of poor sampling methods, not controlling for your extraneous
or confounding variables, and knowing that now you know, there's
been so many more studies come out saying, actually, this
is not good for your heart, this is not good
for your liver, this causes cancer. There are entire countries
that have changed their dietary recommendations when it comes to alcohol,
(40:11):
saying it is not safe for you to drink it all.
It will increase your likelihood of dying, maybe only by
a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny bit, but still Actually, interestingly,
as I'm recording this, it actually looks like the US
will be the next country to make a recommendation that
people shouldn't drink. Obviously, it's very harsh recommendation, but they
(40:32):
want to do what's safe. All of this sounds very,
very scary, but something to note that I found really fascinating.
Even the man who discovered the problem in those findings
who said, you know, to everyone, for you, his alcohol
isn't safe, we shouldn't tell people that he actually get this.
He still drinks and he is very open about the
fact that he loves a couple glasses of wine, and
(40:56):
I think that is the important thing. Moderation is important.
And it remind finds me of that quote, which basically says, like,
you know, yes, son gives you cancer. Ice cream is
bad for you, Spending your money ruins your savings. Wine
isn't the healthiest. It ruins your liver. But I'm gonna
do it anyway, I want to have fun. It's a
good good philosophy.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
To have that.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yes, anything can kill you, everything can be bad for you.
How terrible is that? But actually it's not, because life
is actually about sometimes indulging and having fun and enjoying
flavor and enjoying richness. And I think that if you
don't have a serious problem with alcohol abuse, maybe and
definitely why not enjoy what you enjoy. Enjoy the feeling,
(41:41):
the sensation, the friendships that you might feel like you
get from a glass of wine or a little apperol
sprits every now and again. Okay, we're going to take
a short break, but when we come back, I want
to talk about how sobriety impacted my social life, what
it was like to go out sober, and just like
some fast rapid fire tips I have if you want
to give it a go, I think a big fear
(42:06):
we have around trying dry jam, dry July, whatever it is,
going sober for a couple of months is social exclusion?
Am I going to be included? Are people gonna think
that I'm like a wet blanket, that I'm not fun?
Am I gonna be left out? Is it gonna be
less enjoyable to be the only sober one. That was
definitely a fear that I had in like just doing
(42:28):
thirty days of this, especially like it's summer in Australia,
like everyone wants to do a little vo beverages, so
like it definitely felt like I was gonna be missing out.
But something that I've really noticed is that my friends
are very very accepting. Now, if you have a friend
group that is pressuring you to drink, I don't think
those people are your friends. They're not your friends because
(42:51):
if they only feel like they can enjoy your company
with a glass or something, you know, a can of
something in their hand, like that's not off. Like I
don't know, I just feel like your relationships shouldn't be
elevated by drinking. They should be just as good when
you're sober as they are when you're tipsy, as they
are when you're drunk. And I went out sober the
(43:14):
other night, like it was a friend's birthday, farty, like
a really good friend and I went out and I
was like, Okay, I'm committing to this. I'm committing to this.
I'm gonna drive, I'm gonna drive me and my boyfriend
We're gonna meet like thirty of our friends and I'm
gonna like just chill on the diet Kochs for a
little while. The first hour.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
This is what I learned.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
The first hour was the worst. Just get that out
of the way. First hour was the worst because everyone
was kind of like getting into the vibe. Everyone was
kind of having a few drinks, like lightening up, and
it was very much like based around, like let's go
to the bar, like this drink tastes good, We're gonna
sit and sit. So I was a bit like, I
(43:53):
just feel like I'm missing out. You guys are all
like getting more cheerful, more cheerful, and I'm just feeling
like I'm left.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Out here myr own of course, with my own actions.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
But then after the first hour was done, it was
so much fun. It was so much fun because I
was more present, because I wasn't sleepy, because I didn't
just sit in a corner and just chat to one person.
I was more like aware of who I wanted to
speak to, what I wanted to get out of the night.
I was able to like, I know this sounds weird,
(44:22):
but actually have some foresight to like organize things do
things like there was karaoke in the back of this bar,
and I was like, okay, like I'll take the initiative
and I'll book this because everyone else has kind of
like had a few drinks and is probably not thinking
about whether that's possible. Also, really really fun was driving
everyone home afterwards. Let me tell you this, I had
(44:44):
more fun being the designated driver and getting to drop
all of my drunk friends home than I have ever
had in a club. And I know that is a
huge statement, but it is a correct one. It is
an accurate one. I could not tell you the last
time I went clubbing and had a good time, Like
it's just not something that I think I like to do. Obviously,
when I was I actually probably could tell you, Like
(45:06):
when I was in my early twenties and like in
my teen years, it was like a great time. It
was part of like socializing at UNI. But since I've
kind of hit my mid twenties, like it's just not
my thing anymore. And I would always try and force
myself to really enjoy it and get something out of
it and make memories. That's the big reason why I
would go was for the memories. I made more fun
(45:28):
memories driving my friends home and going to McDonald's, and
they said the funniest stuff and it was like I
can remember the in jokes, I can remember what they
were saying, like the stories that were told. And then
the next morning, I was up by eight am. Like
obviously it was still a Sunday, I still had my
sleep in, but I was up by eight am. I
was refreshed, I felt amazing. I went for a five
(45:51):
k run and I just thought, wow, like I would
not have this energy if I had had four Gin
and Tonics last night, and I would have missed out
so much. And I also didn't get tired, so I
was able to stay out longer, which is a big
problem I sometimes have when I drink and go out,
like I have two red wines and I'm like, I
want to go to bed. But I really committed to
(46:12):
it and it was a great time. Some tips I
have for staying sober or trying out sobriety, and I
really would encourage you to just do thirty days. Have
like a non alcoholic drink that you like, soak and
Butcher Die Cooke lemonade, non alcoholic beer. A big fan
of non alcoholic beer, not so much non alcoholic red wine.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
That stuff is discussing.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Have your drink that you enjoy that you can bring
to the party, you can order at the pub, you
can order at the bar. Like that really helps you
feel like you're still integrated into the experience. Tell your
friends that you are sober, and like open up a
discussion about it, so it's not like expected that you're
going to be drinking, and they can actually think through
their own drinking choices, and you can change plans based
(46:59):
on your choice for the evening. See if someone wants
to do it with you honestly, like one of my
friends is doing it at the same time. It's like
kind of fun to exchange stories and just kind of
have a bigger goal attached to why you want to
do it. So if you're just like I want to
go sober for thirty days, but you don't know why,
it's going to be a lot harder to achieve. So
(47:21):
mine was really like, this is a personal challenge. I
want to see if I'm capable. For other people, it's
like they're training for a marathon and they're training for
a big run. Maybe it's that you want to see
your skin improve. Whatever it is make sure that the
reason you're doing this is really really clear to you,
and honestly, good luck. If you have done it before. Please, Oh,
(47:41):
if you are someone who is currently sober and husband
for a while, what can we expect in a couple
of years? What can we expect in like six months,
two years, five years? Like I've heard that it gets
better and it changes, and that you feel even more
energy and more attuned to yourself after a while. And
also send over your best tips and I'll share them
on Instagram. But I think that's all we have for
(48:03):
today's episode. I know what's been a long one. So
if you've made it this far, hello, comment a little
wine emoji in the comments on Spotify and I'll go
through and see who's gotten here. But thank you so
much for listening. Make sure that, if you haven't already,
you listen to Mantra. If you like the psychology of
your twenties and you like the kind of positive, calm
(48:24):
environment we're creating here, you want some inspiration, Mantra is
probably going to.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Be exactly what you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
So you can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts just
by searching Mantra with Jemma speG Also, we are open
to episode suggestions for this podcast at the moment. If
there is something about your twenties you want me to
explore the psychology.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Behind, send it through. I would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Make sure you are following along, make sure that you
have left a five star review please and thank you
if you feel cold to do so. And until next time,
stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we
will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. I just want to say
a huge, big fool thank you to all of the
(00:20):
love and support that you guys have shown my new podcast,
Mantra so far. In case you haven't heard, I launched
a new show. You know, I just wanted to spend
even more hours behind a microphone. One podcast wasn't enough.
But Martra is basically a weekly podcast that I put
out every single Monday that gives you a phrase and
(00:44):
affirmation for your week to help you guide your week,
whether it is I release the need for external validation,
I cultivate peace within I create my own reality. We
go into what each mantra means at the start of
every week to kind of give you some guidance and
some inspiration as you start things off and as you
(01:06):
get into it whatever it is you are going through.
So the first episode was released yesterday on the thirteenth
of January, and the love that you guys have poured
into that show already left me kind of speechless. So
thank you so much for those who have already listened,
already rated the show, who are following along on Instagram,
(01:27):
every single little two second act, whether you're rating it,
whether you're just playing the first you know, thirty seconds,
whether you honestly just hit follow, means the world. So
I really really appreciate it. But with that aside, just
to say a big thank you, I want to talk
about today's topic, because today we are talking about alcohol,
(01:49):
specifically what alcohol does to our brains, how it impacts
us emotionally and psychologically, and also this shift we're kind
of seeing in society today towards sobriety, especially in our
generation of twenty somethings. A lot of us are starting
to question whether our current drinking habits, both individually and
(02:10):
as a culture, are really what's best. And this has
been a big topic of conversation in my life at
the moment. It's been coming up everywhere I look because
I'm doing dry January, and you know what, I just
kind of said it as a personal challenge, and if
I'm being completely honest with you all, I did not
expect it to be as hard as it was. It
(02:32):
honestly shocked me a bit because I'm not someone who's
ever had a problem with alcohol. I could always stop
drinking when I wanted, But suddenly these thirty days have
been hard, and it's really got me thinking about, well,
the psychology of alcohol and the role that it plays
during this decade of life. I think it's been so
(02:53):
difficult because every social event or thing that's happening, every
interaction or opportunity to out with my friends kind of
has alcohol at the center. Maybe not every single event,
but probably every second one, whether it's going to the pub,
going out for drinks, going to a party, a birthday
of celebration, dinner, alcohol is very much at the center.
(03:15):
And honestly, as someone who actually does like the taste
of wine and who will have a few glasses of
wine or a beer, I never really noticed how dependent
those situations felt on drinking until I put myself in
a position where I couldn't participate in kind of the
group activity. What I have noticed has been really interesting
(03:37):
as well, both health wise, mental health wise, brain wise,
but also social wise. So I want to not only
discuss the role of alcohol on our brains and our bodies,
because I think that's just something we should all understand.
But also what happens when we quit alcohol, what changes
you're likely to notice, how to deal with things like
(03:59):
hangs out, and the rise of sober curiosity amongst us.
Also some of the things I've learned going out sober
that might surprise you. I also want to go kind
of more in depth into the psychology of dependence, substance abuse,
why we do feel like alcohol is so conditioned into
(04:19):
how we socialize, and so much more. I think this
episode is really important and it's essential listening if you're
in your twenties and beyond, because how often do we
really pause and consider how big of a role this
substance plays in our lives. You know, until recently, I
hadn't really done that thinking. So this is also such
(04:40):
a really richly and deeply researched area.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I do.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
You just want to say, the evidence and the science
is constantly evolving when it comes to alcohol, Like a
paper literally came out yesterday that I didn't get a
chance to put into this episode, So as of right now,
hopefully it is accurate, But maybe in a couple of
years the research will change again and I'll have to
revisit this topic, but for right now, this is what
(05:03):
we know about the psychology of alcohol, specifically in our twenties.
So let's get into it. Let's get some basics down
pat first. How is alcohol process by the body? Why
does it make us feel the way it does good
and bad? What is the impact on the brain. Three
(05:25):
things we really need to know. So first thing to
know when you have a glass of wine, when you
have a little apparol, sprits, your martini, your shots of vodka,
whatever it is, insert drink of choice here. The key
chemical or substance that we are interested in that makes
alcohol alcohol is ethanol. This is what is going to
make you feel tipsy or drunk. And ethanol is really
(05:46):
just a byproduct of the fermentation of a plant. So
for wine, it's grapes, For beer, it's barley, for vode curates,
potatoes or sugar or rice gin it's juniper berries. And
fermentation basically just means that the fruit is rotting, it's fermenting.
(06:07):
So when you drink alcohol, you're basically just drinking some
really funky juice. You know, something that is rotten. And
it's important to note that our body actually sees that
in some ways as poison, like it's not meant to
be here, even if it feels nice. If you, for example,
see someone throw up from drinking too much alcohol on
a night out, that is basically your body being like,
(06:29):
oh my gosh, we have been poisoned. Get this stuff
out of me. And I remember someone telling me that
when I was at Uni. Actually she was like, that
is your body responding to an overdose, a poison overdose,
And it really changed my whole perspective on how much
I would drink on a night out. Like binge drinking
was just so casually prevalent in my university experience that
(06:51):
hearing that person explain it that way like kind of
really shocked me. So, you know, on a less extreme note,
when our body metabolizes alcohol ethanol, even in small quantities,
a number of things happen. I'm not going to get
too scientific, but essentially it can only be processed by
our liver, which essentially does see ethanol as something that
(07:13):
is harmful and it tries to clear it out of
our system. It tries to clear it out of our
body by processing it. But when we have more than
the liver can process at any given time. This excess
alcohol in our body is what starts to give us
that loose, drunken, tipsy feeling because the alcohol is not
(07:34):
being processed as fast as it's coming in. That's not
necessarily a problem at low levels. Only at high levels,
and all those feelings that we are going to be
experiencing occur because alcohol is not only a drug, but
it's what we call a depressant drug. So in comparison
to stimulant drugs like MDMA, cocaine, that sort of thing
we have to press in drugs like alcohol marijuana. Now
(07:57):
they're called depressants because of the impact they have on
the central nervous system. And the impact that alcohol or
ethanol has is one of basically sedation. So your central
nervous system, hear that come up a lot. It is
made up of two things, your brain and your spine,
your spinal cord. And alcohol is actually one of the
(08:19):
few substances that can cross the blood brain barrier, meaning
that it can almost reach into our brain cells and
impact them directly.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
And when it.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Does that, it slows everything down and it disrupts normal functioning.
So basically, at any given moment, right now, you right now,
listening to this podcast, all of your neurons in your
brain are chattering away. They're sending information back and forth
like little workers in a big warehouse, and they're thinking, oh,
this is interesting, this is an interesting. Pay attention to this.
(08:53):
While you're watching the road, while you're cleaning. They're sourcing
all this information. And alcohol is like going into that
warehouse and slowly turning down the lights so that none
of those little worker neurons can see where they're going,
and they can't talk as easily. That is basically alcohol's effect.
It is kind of shutting down the systems, making it
(09:14):
harder for your neurons to talk. Now, this, this depress
an effect on our brain is what creates so many
of those typical effects that we associate with drinking. So
big one feeling a little bit clumsy, a bit slower,
but also less inhibited because all of those parts of
your brain that would normally tell you to hush or
(09:35):
would respond to physical stimuli, they are kind of quietening down.
They're finding it harder to communicate with each other. Think
about like, in a normal circumstance, you go to say
something embarrassing or weird, and your brain goes Okay, let's
read this, Let's read the cues. Let's think this through.
We're not going to say that, but when you're drinking,
your brain gets to that realization a little bit too slow.
(09:59):
It all so slows down our anxiety, meaning that your
anxious thoughts for a lot of us finally seem quieter.
We're going to talk about that in a second and
why that's actually going to backfire on you. Another impact
that alcohol has that comes from that sedative effect is
slurred speech. It's why you should also never drive when drinking,
(10:22):
because your response times are slower, even if you don't
think that they are. It's why we feel sleepy. Alcohol
also causes our brain to release something called opioid peptides,
which basically are the thing that signals the brain to
release dopamine and serotonin. And when they do, those areas
(10:43):
of our brain open the floodglates and they let out.
They make more of these neurotransmitters available to us, which
is what makes us feel really happy and euphoric because
of how this substance impacts our reward pathways and also
the release of dolphins. So alcohol triggers opioid peptides, which
(11:03):
trigger dopamine and serotonin and in the process also release
releases in dolphins. It's interesting because they actually only really
discovered that this is what was happening, this peptide to
don't mean to endorphin link about twelve years ago. You know,
they long assumed it, but it was really hard to
(11:26):
prove that this was what was why alcohol made us
so happy. The way they did finally prove it was
that they did a study back in twenty twelve where
they injected twenty five people, half of whom were heavy drinkers,
half of whom weren't, with a drug that would bind
to their opioid receptors. But then they radioactively tagged those receptors,
(11:47):
so they basically gave them like a low level of
a drug that stimulated their opioid receptors, and that drug
would obviously attach to those receptors so they could see
where they were in the brain. And then they asked
them to drink alcohol. And the people who got particularly
a lot of pleasure out of drinking, so heavy drinkers,
they all those areas, those places where the opioid peptides
(12:07):
were located based on that previous drug insertion. They lit
up even further, and so that really showed researchers and
scientists only twelve years ago that that was the system
and the reason why we get that euphoric feeling. So
the effects of alcohol they're not just physical and biological,
they're also really psychological, not just because of that happy feeling,
(12:31):
but because of the impact on our mind and our
mood in general, and also our personality. This amazing paper
from two thousand and eight titled why do we drink
puts it really perfectly. We drink because of alcohol's ability
to alter our emotional state and make us more like
the person we actually want to be, even if just
(12:54):
for a second. We want to be the confident person,
the relaxed person, the disinhibited person, the less stress person.
And because alcohol gives us a gateway to this realization
of the ideal self, that is actually what can make
it so addictive and what can fuel dependency. You know,
(13:16):
it's not just the feeling, it's who it makes us
become in comparison to who we are in our everyday lives.
You know, that is one factor. I also think the
other factor why the other reason it's so normalized and
while widely used, is of course, the social element to it.
How can we forget that?
Speaker 2 (13:34):
You know, that.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Social celibratory component to the use of alcohol is what
makes it so hard for us to contemplate stepping away
from it, because we think that we're going to miss
out on so many other things. You know, for millennium,
people have known that alcohol makes us have more fun,
it makes us merry, makes us open, more relaxed, and
(13:57):
so it has become integrated into our our culture, our
way of communicating and socializing. You know, the earliest evidence
of humans making and drinking alcohol was from seven thousand BC,
before Christ. That is a lot of years ago. That
is definitely not modern history. Actually, where they found this
(14:17):
wine was in China in what is now known as
the Yellow River Valley, and it really goes to show
that humans have for a long time used this substance
to alter their state of mind and for enjoyment.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Now, you can obviously.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Get this buzzed, you for it relaxed feeling from even
just one drink, even a couple of drinks, but at
some point your body can't process the alcohol fast enough,
and so initially you will get that buzzed feeling, and
then you'll start feeling nauseous, dizzy.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Confused, and you may even blackout.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Let's actually talk about what happens to your brain when
you blackout. Now I'm talking blacking out passing out, So
not like, you know, being completely unconscious, but being conscious
but having no memory of what has happened. When this happens,
you've basically drunk enough alcohol to disrupt a really vital
(15:14):
part of your brain called the hippocampus. Now, this part
of your brain, it's responsible for a lot of things,
but in this context, it's really responsible for consolidating and
storing memories. So although you might be awake and you
might be currently experiencing your reality, your brain cannot take
(15:36):
those moments and store them properly. So that is what
leads to those gaps in what you can remember everything
that you're experiencing when you're really drunk on a night
out or wherever you are. Basically, it's only able to
be temporarily held in sensory and short term memory, which
you know normally has a life expectancy of about a
(15:56):
couple of minutes. So that's why you might wake up
the next morning and so, hey, this is so blurry,
I can't remember saying that I can't remember doing that,
even though you hadn't necessarily passed out at any point.
When we pass out, on the other hand, what we're
experiencing is as I described before, basically minor alcohol poisoning.
And when I say minor, I mean less extreme than
(16:17):
the worst case scenario. But honestly, any kind of alcohol
poisoning is not that great. And the next morning, you know,
how can we talk about the psychology of alcohol and
not talk about the next day. When we've drunk past
that limit, we get a hangover, and that's typically due
to dehydration and because when your liver breaks down alcohol,
(16:41):
a byproduct is called en settle a hyde, which is
what makes you really nauseous and gives you headaches. And
then we also have anxiety as a component of that.
I made a full episode on anxiety maybe two years ago.
The episode is called The Psychology of Anxiety that goes
really into depth on this subject, but as a summary,
(17:03):
when we drink, part of why we feel that calm
feeling I was talking about is also because of the
release of a neurotransmitter called gabba, and in response to alcohol,
our brain dumps a bunch of this into our body.
Gaba has that the sedative effect. It really slows things down.
It reduces your anxiety, It reduces chata.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Between your neurons.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
The next day though, our brain is like, all right, cool,
we need to get everything back and balance now, so
it releases more of gabba's counterpart, glutamate. Now, glutamate has
the opposite effect. It has an exciderary effect, and that
is why you feel quite anxious the next morning, because
it takes a while for your brain to really find
(17:49):
the right level and restore that normal chemical balance. So
it's pumping in more glutamate, pumping in more gaba, pumping
in more glutamating, and you know they're kind of trying
to race to the top, and your anxiety is rising
and rising. That is why you can feel really overwhelmed by,
oh my god, what did.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I say last night? What did I do?
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Even when you didn't do anything, you feel like there's
this lingering sense that something is wrong and this rising
anxiety in your body that, my friends, is glutamate. So
I think you know that even that interaction between gabber
and glutamate really sums up alcohol consumption for me. For
every reaction you have with alcohol, there is a counter reaction.
(18:31):
You might feel happy and merry, but then the next
day you might feel sad and depressed. When the buzz
wears off. You might feel uninhibited, but the next day
you feel anxious again. And for me, alcohol also was
just a really terrible contributor to my mental health because obviously,
like you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you've had a really
(18:52):
hard day, you might have a couple glasses of wine.
But I was finding that I would wake up the
next day. Firstly, I wasn't as productive. I didn't have
a much mental clarity, which is so important to me.
But secondly, all of my anxious, stressful, worrisome feelings and
sensations were just heightened and elevated, and it was unbearable.
(19:15):
And that is something that I have noticed, you know,
in this short period of time and the two weeks
that I haven't been drinking, my anxiety symptoms have declined,
like they're still there, but they feel manageable. Also, I'm getting,
you know, writing less of a wave, like an up
and down wave of spiked emotions from really jubilant to
(19:37):
really you know, terrified and sad. Very interested to see
how that goes, like in the next two weeks, after
a month, and even if I can do like six months,
I don't know. I've got, you know, my book coming out.
I kind of want to have a little glass of
champagne with that. But even in moderation, whether my alcohol
consumption is something that is directly correlated to poor men
(20:00):
health episodes for me, I do want to put in
like a little disclaimer here, like this advice and information
I'm presenting isn't presented in a way to just be
like everyone be sober and trying to dissuade you from
ever drinking again. Like I think I will eventually drink again.
I just also think that what I needed to understand
was some of the consequences and you know, really reacknowledging
(20:23):
myself what was happening in my body in response to
alcohol and whether I was willing to opt into that
interaction or whether I'd be better off without it. But
I honestly do think like I'll drink again. I probably
will get drunk again, probably a couple of times. So
this isn't like a blanket if you're listening to this
never drink again kind of episode. I just think that
(20:44):
any form of education gives you an informed choice. And
you can take this and be like, cool, I'm still
going to get blackout drunk, and I wouldn't you know, can,
I wouldn't promote that, But it's still your choice as
long as you know what you're doing to your body.
All right, let's take a shit short break because something
we haven't spoken about yet is the psychology behind alcohol
(21:04):
dependency and addiction. I think that deserves its whole section
of the podcast, so we will be back after this
short break. Why is it that some people cannot stop
drinking when they start? Why do some people get really drunk,
(21:25):
make terrible mistakes, ruin relationships and they still cannot quit. Basically,
I think the question that I'm asking is what makes
alcohol so addictive for some people? And it really, it
really is, even if we don't acknowledge it. Researchers at
Oxford University they've actually called it the second most addictive
(21:46):
drug on the planet, second only to heroin. Like that's
wild to me, Yet it's so widely accepted. If you
know we're all going around doing heroin every Friday, Saturday,
in odd Tuesday, you best believe that your friends would
be like, hey, intervention happening here. This isn't a good idea,
(22:07):
But alcohol is just not treated with the same level
of caution. What really makes alcohol so addictive, and I've
already kind of mentioned it is what it does to
us psychologically as well as physically and psychologically. What it
does is that it numbs us. But not only that,
it also lights up the reward centers in our brain.
So you know, of course our brain is going to
(22:29):
continue to repeat behaviors, will tell us to repeat behaviors
that are pleasurable, rewarding. And also, you know, alcohol provides
relief in a sense from really hard things, from negative circumstances.
When that association between you know, alcohol makes me happy,
alcohol takes away bad things. When that association becomes a pattern,
(22:53):
that becomes a habit, it becomes a lot harder and
harder to stop. We also have to acknowledge, you know,
a lot of people feel more like themselves, I guess
in their drunk state, and so of course they're going
to continue to drink, and sometimes drink heavily to put
them back in the shoes of this person they wish
(23:14):
that they were. This Really, this pattern and association is
really the neurological basis for addiction, and we typically see
addiction as happening in three stages. So for speaking of alcohol,
often people begin with the binge and intoxication stage, where
we're experiencing all the pleasure, we're experiencing, all the happy thoughts.
(23:37):
We associate drinking with really fun things, environments, people, and
it hasn't gotten bad yet. But then we get to
the withdrawal period, where it just feels crap to not
be drinking because of the hangovers, whatever, and also the
negative effects stage. So when we do stop, we become irritable, sad, depressed, anxious, anxious,
(23:58):
so we drink again to reduce the stress of not drinking.
And then that is really followed by the preoccupation and
anticipation stage. This is when we have strong urges, we
have cravings when they're not acceptable. Maybe we are watching
the clock for five PM with sneaking.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Drinks at work.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
This is where we don't feel like we can have
fun without it, we don't think we can function without it,
and it's where you know, alcohol abuse disorder and alcohol
addiction really kind of takes hold. Some of us are
more prone to this than others. And one of the
biggest factors that makes us more prone to it is genetics.
(24:37):
It's genetic factors, and recent studies, including one from only
last year, have showed that there are certain genes associated
with an addiction or dependency on alcohol, and those genes
are inherited some you know, scientists, some researchers even call
substance use disorders or alcoholism a complex genetic disease, a
(25:00):
genetic disease like you know, those that cause birth defects
or birth deformities. And it's also linked to generational trauma.
It's linked to environment, to learned behaviors, all of which
are kind of passed down from those above us, passed
down from our family. And you know, of course trauma
(25:21):
comes into play here. You know, a study in Australia
found that a third of adults who were exposed to
childhood trauma go on to abuse alcohol later in life,
a third of them. And you know, as a country
who has Australia being you know as a terrible history,
a terrible, terrible history, you know, you can see why
people whose families and whose culture have endured that suffering
(25:45):
would have problems with alcohol because, as it's called it's
a complex genetic and generational disease. That's how some people
really see it. This is why I really think that
people who struggle with alcoholism or substance addiction or abuse
of any kind, they deserve so much sympathy.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Maybe people will get upset.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
At me for saying that and say, you know, I
know my uncle has this, and he doesn't deserve a
lick of sympathy. He did this to himself. That's your
perspective and your truth. What I'm saying is that I
don't think anyone would choose that life for themselves. No one,
as a child, as a three four five year old
says when I grow up, I want to be dependent
(26:30):
on alcohol. No one dreams of that. But I've also
seen in my own life how easy it is to
fall into that pattern. I've seen this in people that
I know who seem totally fine and normal but have
serious problems with alcohol. They're just able to hide it
because they have a good support network, because of you know,
(26:52):
other things.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
In their life.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
You know, I just don't think that it really comes
down to not being disciplined. I think that or being lazy.
I really actually think that it can happen to anyone.
All it takes is one tragedy, one bad year, one
instance of bad luck, and all you have left might
(27:16):
be alcohol. That is how you self soothe. And I
think it's as simple as that it's such a widely
available and accepted drug that there's also people who don't
even question that they might have a problem until it's
too late.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Living in Australia, we have such a huge binge drinking
culture that I'm so sure that there are people I
would even know who don't even realize that they have
a problem until they would try to stop, until they'd
try to quit, and you know they couldn't do it,
like even I struggled. There's also the important thing to remember,
which is that alcohol is commonly used as a maladaptive
(27:52):
coping mechanism because of again, how it can be used
to help us manage stress, bad thoughts, inadequacy. It does
remove bad feelings, but it also prevents a deeper, truer
form of emotional coping. I think we really need to
articulate the distinction here between dependence, abuse and addiction, because
(28:13):
they are used very interchangeably. Even I've been doing so
so let's clarify this for a second. When people use
the term dependence, they are usually referring to a physical
dependence on a substance. So what that is characterized by
is symptoms of increased tolerance, so it's harder for you
(28:33):
to get drunk even as you drink more. And also withdrawal,
so obviously withdrawal is the removal of the substance.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
When you are sober.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
It doesn't feel great, you feel sick, you feel gross
as the alcohol leaves your body. And while it's possible
to have a physical dependence without being addicted, often it's
a very slippery slope and it's right around the corner.
Addiction is one step above dependence because it's marked by
(29:01):
a change in behavior that is caused not only by
biochemical changes in the brain from using alcohol, but also
psychological changes you know, linked to substance abuse. The substance,
and in this case it's alcohol, becomes the main priority
for someone who is suffering from addiction, regardless of the
harm they cause to themselves or others. So this is
(29:24):
a really important part, even if it's hurting family members,
even if you're going to lose your job, like you
just cannot stop you just cannot stop. Something interesting, though,
is that you can be addicted to alcohol and not
abusing it or even using it, Like you could be
completely sober and still addicted to alcohol, which sounds strange,
(29:48):
but it's actually a very core philosophy of alcoholics anonymous
that you're basically always going to be an addict.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
There was some controversy around this because if you tell
someone who's zero day is so hey, no matter what
you do, you're always going to be an addict, and
that is a bad, dirty word, so you better not
it's not even worth trying. Like, that's not a fun
thing to hear, you know, it's not a fun thing
to think that you're forever going to be under the
control of this substance, or your identity is going to
(30:17):
be associated with this substance. So some people have said
that idea that you're always an addict is not necessarily
good for an optimistic internal environment.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
But there are people.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
Who say, you know, knowing that you are someone who
is always going to be an addict, who was an addict,
serves as a good reminder to them that they do
have a more addictive prone personality, so they shouldn't take
chances even trying to drink alcoholism in a normal way,
like that is not something that they can do. So,
(30:48):
wherever you sit on that kind of scale of whether
you think it should exist, that you're always an addict
or not, like it's very much an individual choice, what's
going to allow you to move past dependency and addiction
in the best way. There is also, I think one
less severe level of alcohol dependence or abuse that I
(31:09):
would call context based dependence. And I think this particularly
applies to our twenties. You might not have a problem
with alcohol. You might be able to stop for weeks
or months, maybe just weeks, let's say that, maybe a
couple of days. But you know, every time your friends say,
come out with us, let's go to the club. My god,
(31:31):
I sound so old, Like let's go clubbing, let's go out,
let's go to this party, you have to drink. You
feel like once you're in that environment there.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Is no stopping you.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
That is not just addiction in the traditional sense, but
rather a context a contextual reliance on alcohol kind of
as a social lubricant or a way to fit in.
Like you could not imagine going to something and not drinking,
And when you do, it's incredibly hard.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think in these.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Moments, drinking really does become tied to the context rather
than a personal craving. Like this kind of dependence is subtle,
because when you're not in those environments, you might not
want to drink at all, but it's also something that means,
you know, it's also a form of dependence that can
go unnoticed. I think it's especially problematic when you're someone
(32:20):
who gets to the party and can't stop drinking. So
I think it's really worth reflecting on whether the choice
to drink in those moments is truly yours or if
you're being influenced by the environment, by other people's expectations
of you, and kind of just like this context based reliance.
You know, if you don't feel good after drinking, and
(32:41):
if you always like, God, I don't want to do
that again. If you feel pressured, if you know you
want to go for a run the next day but
you still end up going too far, I think that
that's when you know it's a bit of a dangerous
social habit. Perhaps even for you. It's more linked to
FOMA right in the way alcohol juices stress in a
(33:01):
situation or makes it feel like you belong. You don't
want to miss out on the fun. Perhaps it's a
fear of social exclusion, of not being part of the
interesting stories, of not being part of the moment, But
it is something that I think if you're in your twenties,
you need to recognize how does drinking and social acceptance
go hand in hand. Something really positive that I've seen.
(33:23):
You know, more and more though, is a lot of
us taking the sober route or being sober curious, that's
the name for it.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
These days.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
You know, there is this idea that you're either a
problem drinker, an alcoholic, or a normal drinker who has
no issues with alcohol. But more and more definitely seeing
these like shades of gray when it comes to dependency
and sober curiosity. Is this amazing kind of lifestyle choice
that doesn't require complete commitment to going sober for the
(33:55):
rest of your life, but it does mean that you
can choose to kind of dip your toes into occasional
or periodic sobriety and just kind of modify your drinking
habits without feeling like it's all or nothing. You know,
it's not because you're necessarily worried about dependency it's more
that you've evaluated what drinking costs you versus what you
(34:17):
would benefit from cutting down or going sober for small
periods of time. I have noticed that more and more
in my own social circles. Something I actually noticed recently
was more non alcoholic drinks being available at parties.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
It's become a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
More normal to ask someone like, are you drinking at
the moment, rather than just assuming that they are more
people doing dry jen or dry July. And I think
that's really something we can expect more as we deprioritize
drinking or make small swaps. And you know, I promise
to tell you what I've noticed. Mental health thing has
been one thing, but there are so many other benefits.
(34:56):
You sleep better, you are less stressed because you're not
artificially elevating and then lowering and then elevating again your
gabber and glutamate levels, so your brain and body is
able to find that sweet spot and stay there. You know,
if you drink quite a bit and then you suddenly stop,
sometimes you do experience like a strange spike and anxiety
(35:16):
in the first few weeks because your brain is adjusting
to not having this substance. To reduce or relax it.
But after a while, like it turns out that your
body can manage that stress itself, it doesn't need the
help of alcohol. We also see regeneration in the frontal lobe,
which is where alcohol hits the hardest. The frontal lobe
(35:37):
and the cerebellum, and the frontal lobe is responsible for
a lot of our executive functioning and decision making, self control,
our emotions, personality, And sometimes you might not know it,
but prolonged and heavy drinking actually kills off brain cells
in that area and across the brain, and it causes
your brain to shrink, It reduces brain volume. So that
(36:00):
is why alcohol is so often implicated in neurological diseases
like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. When you are young and you
cut back, you're giving your brain more of a chance,
and you're allowing your brain space to prune, rewire, keep
those cells healthy. And that's why you may see an
increase in mental clarity. Oh my goodness, if I have
(36:22):
not noticed that I have less brain fog, almost none.
At the moment, you feel refreshed, you can get more done. Also,
you know, because your sleep is likely improved as well,
Like this is all coming together. It's a common myth
that you know, alcohol helps you sleep. It's where the
term nightcap came from, like having a drink a cap
(36:43):
of something to help you fall asleep. Actually, to myth,
bust that one.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
For you.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Drinking worsens your sleep quality significantly because it makes it
harder for you to enter and therefore stay in rem sleep.
So not drinking better, shut up. One of the things
I've also noticed that I didn't expect was how much
inflammation went away in my face particularly, but also in
(37:09):
my body, Like within a week, I wasn't as puffy,
I got less headaches, my skin was breaking out less,
it looked healthier. And that was just me going from
like mid range social drinking to no drinking at all.
And it's still made a really big difference, Like, oh
my goodness, even my hands and like my face is
(37:32):
the big one where I just feel less like bloated
and less like puffy. And it's really hard to like
see I think if you are someone like just like
a friend or a stranger and you weren't seeing my
face every day, but obviously as someone who sees it
every day, like I've definitely noticed this decline. Your liver
(37:52):
your heart. They both do better. And this raises a
really important point I haven't spoken about yet, which is
another myth, the myth that alcohol is actually good for
our health. I listened to this fascinating podcast by The
New York Times called How Bad Is Alcohol for You Really,
in which they basically debunk this idea that alcohol has
(38:12):
any health benefit. Most of us have probably heard this
suggestion or this quote unquote fact that a glass of
red wine is like good for your heart, it has antioxidants,
like it was even a fact that was like in
the episode, like in an episode of the Office. It's
so commonly spread. But actually, when you review the study
that this fact is taken from the way they interpreted
(38:34):
their data was really misleading, and now so many people
believe a false conclusion. When they conducted this original study,
they basically looked at people who drank versus didn't drink.
And you know, the people who did drink it was
quite moderate, maybe a couple of glasses of wine. And
what they found was that those who drank moderately were
(38:56):
healthier than those who didn't drink at all. And it
was this huge vine at the time. But what they
didn't control for, and anyone studying psychology knows you need
to control for your confounding extraneous variables. They didn't control
for the people who were in that sober group who
had stopped drinking because they had a real problem and
it had begun to impact their health. Now, it's kind
(39:19):
of hard these days to find someone who is completely sober,
and one of the reasons that someone might be completely
sober is because they can't drink.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
So all of those people.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Who were included in the no drinking group, it wasn't
like they'd never drunk before in their life. It was
actually the opposite. They had a problem, and so they
were basically pulling down the group average of non drinkers
compared to casual drinkers, so it looked like the casual
drinkers were healthier. That is a classic example in psychology
(39:50):
research of poor sampling methods, not controlling for your extraneous
or confounding variables, and knowing that now you know, there's
been so many more studies come out saying, actually, this
is not good for your heart, this is not good
for your liver, this causes cancer. There are entire countries
that have changed their dietary recommendations when it comes to alcohol,
(40:11):
saying it is not safe for you to drink it all.
It will increase your likelihood of dying, maybe only by
a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny bit, but still Actually, interestingly,
as I'm recording this, it actually looks like the US
will be the next country to make a recommendation that
people shouldn't drink. Obviously, it's very harsh recommendation, but they
(40:32):
want to do what's safe. All of this sounds very,
very scary, but something to note that I found really fascinating.
Even the man who discovered the problem in those findings
who said, you know, to everyone, for you, his alcohol
isn't safe, we shouldn't tell people that he actually get this.
He still drinks and he is very open about the
fact that he loves a couple glasses of wine, and
(40:56):
I think that is the important thing. Moderation is important.
And it remind finds me of that quote, which basically says, like,
you know, yes, son gives you cancer. Ice cream is
bad for you, Spending your money ruins your savings. Wine
isn't the healthiest. It ruins your liver. But I'm gonna
do it anyway, I want to have fun. It's a
good good philosophy.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
To have that.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yes, anything can kill you, everything can be bad for you.
How terrible is that? But actually it's not, because life
is actually about sometimes indulging and having fun and enjoying
flavor and enjoying richness. And I think that if you
don't have a serious problem with alcohol abuse, maybe and
definitely why not enjoy what you enjoy. Enjoy the feeling,
(41:41):
the sensation, the friendships that you might feel like you
get from a glass of wine or a little apperol
sprits every now and again. Okay, we're going to take
a short break, but when we come back, I want
to talk about how sobriety impacted my social life, what
it was like to go out sober, and just like
some fast rapid fire tips I have if you want
to give it a go, I think a big fear
(42:06):
we have around trying dry jam, dry July, whatever it is,
going sober for a couple of months is social exclusion?
Am I going to be included? Are people gonna think
that I'm like a wet blanket, that I'm not fun?
Am I gonna be left out? Is it gonna be
less enjoyable to be the only sober one. That was
definitely a fear that I had in like just doing
(42:28):
thirty days of this, especially like it's summer in Australia,
like everyone wants to do a little vo beverages, so
like it definitely felt like I was gonna be missing out.
But something that I've really noticed is that my friends
are very very accepting. Now, if you have a friend
group that is pressuring you to drink, I don't think
those people are your friends. They're not your friends because
(42:51):
if they only feel like they can enjoy your company
with a glass or something, you know, a can of
something in their hand, like that's not off. Like I
don't know, I just feel like your relationships shouldn't be
elevated by drinking. They should be just as good when
you're sober as they are when you're tipsy, as they
are when you're drunk. And I went out sober the
(43:14):
other night, like it was a friend's birthday, farty, like
a really good friend and I went out and I
was like, Okay, I'm committing to this. I'm committing to this.
I'm gonna drive, I'm gonna drive me and my boyfriend
We're gonna meet like thirty of our friends and I'm
gonna like just chill on the diet Kochs for a
little while. The first hour.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
This is what I learned.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
The first hour was the worst. Just get that out
of the way. First hour was the worst because everyone
was kind of like getting into the vibe. Everyone was
kind of having a few drinks, like lightening up, and
it was very much like based around, like let's go
to the bar, like this drink tastes good, We're gonna
sit and sit. So I was a bit like, I
(43:53):
just feel like I'm missing out. You guys are all
like getting more cheerful, more cheerful, and I'm just feeling
like I'm left.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Out here myr own of course, with my own actions.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
But then after the first hour was done, it was
so much fun. It was so much fun because I
was more present, because I wasn't sleepy, because I didn't
just sit in a corner and just chat to one person.
I was more like aware of who I wanted to
speak to, what I wanted to get out of the night.
I was able to like, I know this sounds weird,
(44:22):
but actually have some foresight to like organize things do
things like there was karaoke in the back of this bar,
and I was like, okay, like I'll take the initiative
and I'll book this because everyone else has kind of
like had a few drinks and is probably not thinking
about whether that's possible. Also, really really fun was driving
everyone home afterwards. Let me tell you this, I had
(44:44):
more fun being the designated driver and getting to drop
all of my drunk friends home than I have ever
had in a club. And I know that is a
huge statement, but it is a correct one. It is
an accurate one. I could not tell you the last
time I went clubbing and had a good time, Like
it's just not something that I think I like to do. Obviously,
when I was I actually probably could tell you, Like
(45:06):
when I was in my early twenties and like in
my teen years, it was like a great time. It
was part of like socializing at UNI. But since I've
kind of hit my mid twenties, like it's just not
my thing anymore. And I would always try and force
myself to really enjoy it and get something out of
it and make memories. That's the big reason why I
would go was for the memories. I made more fun
(45:28):
memories driving my friends home and going to McDonald's, and
they said the funniest stuff and it was like I
can remember the in jokes, I can remember what they
were saying, like the stories that were told. And then
the next morning, I was up by eight am. Like
obviously it was still a Sunday, I still had my
sleep in, but I was up by eight am. I
was refreshed, I felt amazing. I went for a five
(45:51):
k run and I just thought, wow, like I would
not have this energy if I had had four Gin
and Tonics last night, and I would have missed out
so much. And I also didn't get tired, so I
was able to stay out longer, which is a big
problem I sometimes have when I drink and go out,
like I have two red wines and I'm like, I
want to go to bed. But I really committed to
(46:12):
it and it was a great time. Some tips I
have for staying sober or trying out sobriety, and I
really would encourage you to just do thirty days. Have
like a non alcoholic drink that you like, soak and
Butcher Die Cooke lemonade, non alcoholic beer. A big fan
of non alcoholic beer, not so much non alcoholic red wine.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
That stuff is discussing.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Have your drink that you enjoy that you can bring
to the party, you can order at the pub, you
can order at the bar. Like that really helps you
feel like you're still integrated into the experience. Tell your
friends that you are sober, and like open up a
discussion about it, so it's not like expected that you're
going to be drinking, and they can actually think through
their own drinking choices, and you can change plans based
(46:59):
on your choice for the evening. See if someone wants
to do it with you honestly, like one of my
friends is doing it at the same time. It's like
kind of fun to exchange stories and just kind of
have a bigger goal attached to why you want to
do it. So if you're just like I want to
go sober for thirty days, but you don't know why,
it's going to be a lot harder to achieve. So
(47:21):
mine was really like, this is a personal challenge. I
want to see if I'm capable. For other people, it's
like they're training for a marathon and they're training for
a big run. Maybe it's that you want to see
your skin improve. Whatever it is make sure that the
reason you're doing this is really really clear to you,
and honestly, good luck. If you have done it before. Please, Oh,
(47:41):
if you are someone who is currently sober and husband
for a while, what can we expect in a couple
of years? What can we expect in like six months,
two years, five years? Like I've heard that it gets
better and it changes, and that you feel even more
energy and more attuned to yourself after a while. And
also send over your best tips and I'll share them
on Instagram. But I think that's all we have for
(48:03):
today's episode. I know what's been a long one. So
if you've made it this far, hello, comment a little
wine emoji in the comments on Spotify and I'll go
through and see who's gotten here. But thank you so
much for listening. Make sure that, if you haven't already,
you listen to Mantra. If you like the psychology of
your twenties and you like the kind of positive, calm
(48:24):
environment we're creating here, you want some inspiration, Mantra is
probably going to.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Be exactly what you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
So you can find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts just
by searching Mantra with Jemma speG Also, we are open
to episode suggestions for this podcast at the moment. If
there is something about your twenties you want me to
explore the psychology.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
Behind, send it through. I would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Make sure you are following along, make sure that you
have left a five star review please and thank you
if you feel cold to do so. And until next time,
stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we
will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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