Drinking Culture Undistilled
hey
i am michelle and i am a non-drinker
i know that probably just sounded like
the start to an aaa meeting didn’t it
well it’s probably because i’ve had a
lot of practice and i’m guessing
some of you have as well so i’m going to
make the hypothesis
that if i share my experiences with you
you will feel more inclined to share
your experiences with me
and maybe even feel a little bit more
empowered to do something about it
now i should probably back up and
introduce myself because believe it or
not
i haven’t always been this excited and
comfortable talking about addiction
in front of a bunch of strangers i was
raised in the pacific northwest and this
is my family
this was my first communion and as you
can tell i was definitely
rocking the 90s fashion trend
from the outside looking in a lot of
people would describe my childhood as a
fairy tale
my father was a well-known and respected
physician
we were well traveled and had a
beautiful home
my father ended up passing away from a
massive heart attack when i was 15 years
old
by the time i was 16 i met my high
school sweetheart
who is now my husband one thing that my
father
told me before he passed away was
michelle
you are going to make this world a
better place
and with most things he was right
right after college i landed my dream
job within the department of corrections
as you can only imagine walking through
a maximum security prison took some
getting used to
but i was so excited to start making
real change and having an impact on this
world
just like my dad had told me my husband
decided to enlist in the military and
was deployed
right after within a few months of
deployment he was
injured and returned home he finally
landed his
dream job and life was really good we
had a beautiful home and two healthy
beautiful
amazing children and as the years went
on
i started to notice a trend it was about
every two to three months
my husband would wait for me to wake up
in the morning and he would say
we need to talk he would have this
concerned
disappointed look on his face and say
michelle
do you remember what happened last night
and with this sense of
shame and confusion washed over my
face i would say babe
i have no clue
we started to notice that my drinking
habits
had increased i was finding it more
difficult
to control my alcohol consumption
we started to come up with a plan of
taking the alcohol out of the house only
drinking on weekends
switching the type of alcohol that i was
drinking
nothing worked i had a
really hard time giving up my love for
the bottle
i truly felt like it was a social
suicide i didn’t know how
or if i could ever give up my love
affair
for alcohol fast forward five years and
this was my life i was a full-time
working mom
feeling like a horrible mom because i
worked and a horrible employee because i
was a mom
everything that i dreamed of and worked
so hard to build i was
living and all i wanted to do was escape
all of it working in a penitentiary is
so traumatic
and it’s exhausting over time and my
to-do list at home was like a million
miles long
i didn’t know where i could possibly fit
in self-care
or any type of friendships i truly felt
like i was
failing at life and disappointing
everybody
what i had envisioned for my life was
nothing close to my current reality
so the next time my husband said
michelle
we need to talk it was different
he was sitting at the foot of my
hospital bed
as i had just been admitted for a fatal
alcohol poisoning
my mother had just passed away as i was
learning to become a mother myself
it was all too heavy and i utilized
alcohol
as a way to cope and escape it all
that was the moment where my two worlds
collided
the secret life and my real life that i
had worked
so hard to keep separate
i met with my doctor the day after i was
discharged from the hospital
it was time for me to start being honest
about my relationship with alcohol
i felt a sense of calmness washed over
me knowing
that it was over that
the secrecy and the pain
and the isolation had come to an end
and my doctor was so kind and patient
with me
and said michelle you are so far from
alone
and although that made me feel a sense
of
ease i asked her where are all
these people and why are we hiding and
doing this
all alone and i thought about it and i’m
like
our society shames the sick
we are not having these types of
conversations about
problematic drinking as water cooler
talk
so when i got home that evening i did
what any normal person would do that’s
confused about their relationship with
alcohol
you guessed it i asked google and oh boy
was that information
so confusing there were so many quizzes
tests and assessments around are you an
alcoholic
are you able to moderate do you need to
abstain
that i left the web more confused than
ever before
i decided to reach out to a friend who
put me in touch with an addictions
therapist
i was really excited to start doing the
work
around my bereavement from the grief and
loss with my parents
the postpartum depression i needed to
start doing the work
that was internal that was giving me
the permission to reach for an external
solution to an internal problem
i started to realize that alcohol was a
tool that i was using that i had picked
up in my daily
habits and routines and so that was
really exciting to see that there were
many different ways
to treatment and pathways to recovery
other than just
alcoholics anonymous so i leaned in and
got really curious about all the
different treatment modalities that were
possible
and through this process i was really
excited to start recovering
out loud to start using my voice for
those who weren’t ready yet
because i know what it’s like to be in
secret
and our silence keeps us sick
and i was going to be that voice until
people were ready to use theirs
and they need my voice more than my
protected silence
and at that point was when recovery is
the new black was founded
wine has practically become a must-have
for modern day motherhood
it is right up there with messy bun
coffee yoga pants and minivans
we’ve probably all laughed at the memes
that flood our social media feed
that talk about moms needing wine to
cope
with life and with motherhood most
people who share this type of stuff
don’t have a problematic relationship
with alcohol
but there are so many people who do and
i am definitely guilty of being on board
with mommy wine culture
until i saw for what it was and
it’s so problematic for people who are
genuinely struggling
that they’re not getting the help that
they need due to the jokes and to the
peer pressure
media is making a ton of money and so is
the alcohol industry by offering moms
alcohol as a solution to motherhood
there is this unwritten rule that
motherhood
is really hard and the alcohol helps
many of us aren’t given permission to
admit that we’re struggling
and so we don’t ask for help we don’t
seek
support and we stay in isolation
and our secrets have been keeping people
sick
what starts out as social drinking can
quickly turn into a daily habit
that is used to unwind relax take the
stressful
rough edges off that really stressful
day
i’m guilty of doing it to quiet the
noise in my head
and to treat myself as a reward for a
job well done
alcohol is so accessible it’s convenient
it’s it’s inexpensive and no one’s going
to question you
but people are losing their jobs their
marriages their kids their homes
even their lives to suicide and overdose
i encourage them to really ditch labels
that can stigmatize that can leave us
feeling
small and call ourselves what we are
we’re non-drinkers here’s how
society views addiction now this is what
it really looks like yep this is a full
bottle of wine inside of a yeti cup
people are getting way more creative
about how they are hiding their alcohol
consumption
because our society is shaming the sick
therefore people are not wanting to ask
for help
what makes it even more difficult is
that we live in a really
really boozy culture one out of eight
adult americans
meet the diagnostic criteria for alcohol
abuse disorder
so this means 12.5
[Music]
of the people watching this right now
are drinking more
than is recommended now i am not here to
tell you that alcohol is bad or that you
should not
drink it but i will tell you that i am
absolutely pro sobriety and i will shout
that from the rooftops
but in all seriousness let me give you a
few examples
of what i’m talking about so let’s say
that my friend has just given up smoking
and has
30 days smoke free the conversation
would go something like this
congratulations i am so proud of you i
know how hard you’ve been working on
that
it’s a really nasty habit you’ve been
kicking i am
really really proud of you keep up the
good work
now how a conversation would go if
somebody was
alcohol free for 30 days
what you’re supposed to go out with me
this weekend what do you mean you’re not
drinking
are you pregnant is this a joke
are you an alcoholic don’t think i’m not
gonna drink because
you’re not drinking you know one won’t
kill you right
you are such a buzzkill
now this are these are real
life examples of what people deal with
every single day by society because
they choose not to pick up a mind
altering chemical
that is destroying them from the inside
out
what we need to remember is that some
people who say
no thank you to alcohol doesn’t mean
that they’re an alcoholic
have a problem or are under some court
mandate
some people have medical restrictions
allergies
medication interactions religious
beliefs
let’s not forget the smart individuals
who know that this is a known
carcinogenic
so there’s lots of reasons why people
say
thanks but no thanks now there is strong
evidence to support
that alcohol increases cancer all types
of cancer like
stomach colon bowel
breast just to name a few
now it has been 30 years
since 1988 that congress
passed the alcohol beverage labeling act
and what this is is the labels you guys
are used to seeing
on the alcohol it is it might
impair your judgment if you are
operating a machinery
or driving a vehicle it may increase
birth defects if you are pregnant and
the last one is
is it may cause health issues
now if we updated these labels and we
had more education about what we were
really consuming
do you think anything would change would
you reconsider
your evening night cap if you knew it
was the same ethanol
that you put in your gas tank was the
same ethmo that you were drinking
every evening would you reconsider that
drink
now here is the picture of me drinking
wait it’s not so cute is it
right it’s not that whole billboard
magazine sex in the city glitz and
glamour we’re used to seeing
absolutely not this picture would never
sell society encourages
drinking straight out of pictures like
sex in the city
but the problem is it is not so classy
when you can’t stop drinking
now we’re in a pandemic for the last
year americans have rushed to stock up
on alcohol
and there’s been so many new concerns
about excessive drinking during this
really hard season of life that we’re in
and we have alcohol sales that have gone
up
54 in the last year
our online cells for alcohol are up
500 percent
americans are reaching for comfort
solutions
during this time of uncertainty and this
really hard season of life
we are using one public health crisis to
worsen another
are you willing to be part of the
solution where do you fit in
if you can drink responsibly that is
fantastic but not
everybody can how can you help support
people who are trying to normalize
sobriety
and live a happy and fulfilled life
alcohol free
we deserve to have alcohol-free living
not be made fun of but supported like
other
medical conditions so a way that you can
support somebody
is don’t ask them why they’re not
drinking don’t
ask them if they are an alcoholic don’t
wait for them to be so self-destructive
that they need way more help than they
would have needed if they just started
so remember no is a complete
sentence it doesn’t matter why
and no thank you is all it should take
addiction does not discriminate and
nobody is immune to this i never
in a million years thought this would
have happened to me
and don’t think that it can’t happen to
you either
i will leave you with this friendly
reminder
please be kind to one another everybody
is fighting an
internal battle you know nothing about
thank you so much for letting me share
today
you