Topics Discussed In This Episode:
We’re not taught to question our drinking until it becomes problematic – but why?
Why are we willing to accept the hangover as the price for a good night out?
Creating an environment and culture around drinking where everybody feels that it is safe and okay to ask questions and define their own relationship with alcohol
The nature of alcohol
Our brain’s hardwired “desire function”
Why it’s actually difficult to maintain a neutral relationship with alcohol in our current society
Addiction as the way our bodies try to process trauma
Feeling like an imposter in AA
Cultural conditioning around what’s okay and what’s not okay with certain drugs
Making it as normal not to drink as it is to drink
Alcohol’s position as a rite of passage into adulthood and the assumptions that come with it
Anti-anxiety medication is essentially alcohol in a pill
Unacknowledged spiritual and physical trauma
How plant medicines can help us mend our trauma and change our relationship with addiction
Why alcohol was originally called “spirits”
Giving yourself a month-long break from alcohol to examine how it makes you feel and engage in self-examination