The Habit of Social Drinking with Amanda E. White

Jessica Honegger [00:00:03] Hey, welcome to going scared. I'm Jessica Honegger, founder of the world changing brand Noonday Collection, and I'm so glad to have you here for today's conversation. Our Going Scared community gathers here every week for direct and honest conversations that help you live a life of courage by leaving comfort and going scared. Well, today's conversation is quite courageous because we are talking about alcohol. I knew we couldn't do a series about habits without talking about alcohol, and one day on Instagram, I came across an Instagram account Therapy for Women. It actually has almost 500000 followers, and the woman behind that Instagram account is a therapist, Amanda E. White. She calls herself a retired party girl, now relatable therapist. I purchased her book Not Drinking Tonight, and I have to say there are some really big takeaways that you're going to hear on today's episode. So I don't want you to be scared. I don't want you to think we're going to tell you to stop drinking. I'm definitely not going to stop drinking, but I am going to really ask myself some hard questions about the role that alcohol plays in my life. And I'm also going to re-coin some things and especially around the word alcoholism. And I'm really going to think about the stigma that our society places on people that choose not to drink. So lots to cover today. I think you're going to enjoy the conversation. Welcome to the show, Amanda.

Amanda White [00:01:49] Thank you so much for having me.

Jessica Honegger [00:01:51] I was telling Amanda that we've never talked about alcohol on the show, but it's hard to do an entire series on habits and not talk about alcohol.

Amanda White [00:01:59] It is a big one. It's a big one that I think we don't realize is a habit in our life. It's just something we do.

Jessica Honegger [00:02:06] That's right. That's right. So you said the way we as a society discuss alcohol consumption and alcohol use disorder is unhelpful at best and harmful at worst. Tell me what you mean by that.

Amanda White [00:02:21] Yeah. [00:02:21]So what I mean is like as a society, we tend to say everyone should drink, right? That's like baseline. That's normal. And if you don't drink, you're either, you know, weird or you need a really specific reason or you have a problem with alcohol and everything, really, when it comes to talking about alcohol is framed as is it bad enough that you have to stop and we never talk about, is this habit serving me that I should keep going? [31.6s]

Jessica Honegger [00:02:54] Talk to us about the hit rock bottom myth, because you really say that that is a myth.

Amanda White [00:02:59] Well, I think it just causes a lot of issues where if we have this idea that people can only stop drinking or changing anything, really, when we've hit that rock bottom moment, it causes people to keep going into destruction for such a long time because they're almost I kind of equate it to... It's kind of like the myth that you can only change on New Year's or on a Monday or at the start of a month, right? We kind of attribute the change process to being something external. It's like this day after this moment, after this experience, it's like I'm going to be able to change. And while it might be easier to change because you have, you know, more motivation that day or there is something external, we can spend so much time waiting for the right moment to stop. [00:03:52]And especially when it comes to alcohol or any substance use, I mean, the deeper you dig into that hole like the harder and the more you drink, the harder it's going to be to stop. So if you keep waiting for your rock bottom, you could number one be waiting for your whole life and spend a lot of time there. And number two, you can end up, you know, it's going to be even harder to stop drinking. It doesn't make it easier, the more addicted you are to it. [29.8s]

Jessica Honegger [00:04:23] On that note, let's talk about the bike tire tracks because this is something we haven't yet talked about on this habit series.

Amanda White [00:04:30] Yeah. So if you look at people's brains, it's really interesting when you were talking about habits and especially with alcohol habits, because right, alcohol is a habit, but it's also an addictive substance, even if you aren't addicted to it per se. Alcohol is an addictive substance, so it lands in your brain a little differently. [00:04:51]So the way that we can kind of think about habits, you know, a lot of times people will come to me and say, I want to stop drinking or I want to reduce my drinking. I want to moderate, but I don't want to stop completely. But if we look at how the brain changes, we change by creating new neural pathways or new, you know, routes in our brain. But the ones that we've used in the past don't just go away. [27.0s] And if anyone's had the experience, for example, of if you used to be someone who maybe never set like, never hit snooze and then all of a sudden you start doing it. If you get out of that habit and you have been in the habit previously of hitting snooze, that habit is kind of there and waiting and available. And it's kind of in the background, so to speak. So I kind of give this analogy of especially when it comes with drinking. [00:05:49]Moderating is kind of like trying to ride a bike track right next to a very deep other bike track next to it. And if you can think of that analogy, it's possible, but it's really easy to teeter on the edge and accidentally kind of fall into an old pattern compared to if you were to ride your bike a couple feet away from that groove. You're not going to risk kind of falling in to that old pattern. And that's why for a lot of people, actually quitting drinking completely might be easier for them than moderating. [34.7s] And especially when you factor in unlike, you know, snoozing the alarm alcohol, you know, it creates a thirst for itself

Jessica Honegger [00:06:33] as an addictive substance.

Amanda White [00:06:35] Yes. Yes. Even if you're not addicted when we ingest alcohol, our body naturally tends to want another glass. That's why very few people only will have like one. One drink when they go out.

Jessica Honegger [00:06:49] OK. OK, tell us about the history of the whole term alcoholism, and you suggest a new way that maybe we should talk about alcohol.

Amanda White [00:06:58] Yeah. So like any, you know, mental health diagnosis, it's really impacted by current events, by society, by what we say is normal or not. Because right, like even though it's psychology or medicine that's helping create these diagnoses, it is really determined by what we think is normal or not. So the language around how we classify different disorders changes depending on the environment. So the term alcoholism is a very old term, and it isn't even a term that really has any meaning anymore. Just because it's not in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, which is the DSM. It's what people. It's what psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists use to diagnose. And it's really intertwined kind of with AA, because what's really interesting is that Alcoholics Anonymous was formed before we had any treatment for people that had alcohol issues. So because AA was formed and Alcoholics Anonymous is also really intertwined with treatment centers. There is a lot of overlap there, and the term alcoholic is still really used, even though there isn't a definition that people agree on for what an alcoholic is. In the DSM currently, it's called alcohol use disorder and there's mild, moderate, and severe, and we can kind of look at it as more of a spectrum, which is much more helpful than kind of saying someone either is an alcoholic or they're not because we used to say someone was an alcoholic only if they were physically addicted and would detox when they stopped. And now, not

Jessica Honegger [00:08:47] until reading your book. Yeah, it's been very eye-opening. Reading your book, I'm like, Oh my gosh, is that everybody have disordered drinking? Yeah, I really thought more around those terms.

Amanda White [00:08:58] Yeah. And I think like to your question, I think it's very common in our culture to have periods of our life where we have disordered drinking. I think especially in college, that's very much and that's why I came up with the term disordered drinking. Because if we make someone label themselves as having a problem with alcohol or having, you know, being an alcoholic, it leaves out millions of people who just go through periods in their life where they might use alcohol in an unhealthy way. And as a therapist one thing that's that was a challenge for me is, you know, I can talk to people about all different types of habits. I can talk to them about their sleeping habits, their exercise habits, all of these things. But when it comes to, OK, tell me about your drinking habits. The first question people respond with or say is, Well, I'm not an alcoholic, and that tells you so much that we think we can only question it if we have a problem, right?

Jessica Honegger [00:10:01] And you suggest a really great question to ask instead of Am I an alcoholic? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Amanda White [00:10:09] [00:10:09]Yeah, it's would my life be better if I stopped drinking or I drank less? In the same way that we think about that is like, would my life be better if you know, I changed my job or I worked less? No one has to diagnose themselves as a workaholic to be able to explore their relationship with work. [19.7s]

Jessica Honegger [00:10:30] And then what I also appreciate about your question is there's some cost benefits of alcohol. So tell us more about that activity.

Amanda White [00:10:39] Yeah, I think it's unreasonable to act like there aren't benefits for people for drinking. I mean, there's a reason that people drink. It does, you know, when you're in the moment, it can be something that helps you connect with people. If your whole social life is structured around friends that drink, you may lose friends. Things might change in your relationships with people. It might be harder to go to a happy hour at your job or things like that, so I think it is really helpful to look at things from everything we do serves us in some capacity. And also most things we do, there are some costs to it. You know, whether we're talking about the physical cost of how much money we spend on alcohol or the cost that it takes to recover the next day from having hangovers. [00:11:28]I think it could be a really helpful exercise when looking at any habit to think about what is this habit? You know, what are the pay offs I get? What are the positive things I get from this? And what is it costing me? And are the costs worth the pay offs? [15.3s] And that can also change depending on what's going on in your life, just as you know, the costs and benefits can change depending on how much you're drinking or doing, whatever it is.

Jessica Honegger [00:11:57] Yeah, and let's I mean, we've talked so much on this. We've had many therapists on. We've done a whole series around anxiety and different ways that we cope and regulation. But alcohol is one way that we're trying to regulate something that, you know, some uncomfortable emotion often or covering trauma and pain from our family of origin. Why alcohol, though? Why is that especially a dangerous coping mechanism?

Amanda White [00:12:24] The problem with alcohol is that it's a depressant, but people don't think about what happens when we ingest a depressant because our bodies always want to be in homeostasis. So when we drink alcohol, the first thing your body tries to do is actually produces anxiety hormones like cortisol, like dinner, often in order to bring you back to homeostasis. So while you might initially feel that stress relief or you feel a little bit more relaxed when you drink alcohol, especially if you're someone who's prone to depression or anxiety, right? Like the alcohol leaves your body. But those anxiety hormones are left, and that's why you're more likely to feel anxious, especially the next day after drinking. [00:13:14]So while I don't, I don't often like the word like dangerous because I think everything is relative. I think that it's important to just understand how it impacts you. And if you are using it for stress relief, it's not an effective coping skill long term. It feels like it's helping initially, but you are going to be left the next day with more anxiety and stress than you started. [23.9s]

Jessica Honegger [00:13:39] That's a really good point, and I really like how you made this distinction because we often hear about you talk about sugar because I hear people say that a lot. People say, Well, I'm going to cut sugar out, but you say sugar addiction. There's not evidence actually to support the theory that sugar is addictive.

Amanda White [00:13:59] Yeah. I mean, if you look into the research, there have been no I mean, all of the sugar addiction studies have been done on mice. And while you know those types of studies can be helpful for us starting to form hypotheses, we can't base an entire argument on just studies that haven't been done in humans and haven't been tested in the same way. And the truth is that you can live without alcohol. Your body cannot survive without food or sugar. I mean if we look at what the breakdown of sugar is, right, it's like carbs. It's what our body needs in order to survive and stay awake. [00:14:38]And what's interesting about when we compare kind of sugar and alcohol is that if you restrict your food intake, if you restrict food, what happens is, is your body reacts because it wants you to stay alive and it cares about having enough sugar and carbs and enough calories in your body to keep you alive, you will crave that more. Where because alcohol is actually addictive, once you stop drinking, you will actually stop craving it over time. Because I mean, your body isn't meant to digest it. [35.6s] You're we are able to break down alcohol because of a mutation that happened that allowed us to eat rotting fruit. And not everyone has that mutation, which is why some people truly can't metabolize alcohol.

Jessica Honegger [00:15:28] Hmm. That part of me is hard the fact that our bodies are not even made to digest alcohol. I just got back from the wine country with my parents, and I went and I went and we tasted wines. And I don't I mean, I actually don't think any of us overindulged. Well, I can say this about my dad. He would laugh. But that's the problem is that he would laugh and for sure, he drinks too much. So there you go, dad, there's that. But, you know, is wine any different?

Amanda White [00:15:58] Wine is the same. I mean, I think it's again, if we go back to that, it's probably one of the earlier things we were because of the rotting fruit. You know, it's a similar in that, but it's not about even the break down of it. It's what happens right? When that fruit gets rotten and ferments, it creates a different chemical compound. And that's what we weren't we weren't able to digest for a long time. [00:16:25]But I do want to be clear, too, like my whole goal in writing the book in talking about it isn't. I'm not, as you know, you read my book, you know, I'm not saying alcohol, no one should ever drink or it's this horrible thing or it's dangerous. I think we just need a better education around it and around what is alcohol. What does it actually do to us? Because most of us are never given the opportunity to ever question how it impacts our life, and most of us never even like we don't learn how to socialize without alcohol, we don't learn how to date, we don't learn how to do any of these things. So we think we're reliant on it when actually there may be skills and practice that we can learn how to do it without alcohol. [41.2s]

Jessica Honegger [00:17:07] You know, it's so interesting because, you know, you talk a lot about emotional regulation and boundaries and re parenting yourself. And my daughter just turned 16 and I have been out of town the last week, so she turned 16. We had a birthday celebration and then I had to leave town the next day. And she has been driving for the first time in her life this last week. And we live in Austin. It's urban, the traffic's crazy. She has been driving all over the place and basically yesterday I got back in town and my husband said, Oh my gosh, she is really. She is stressed. And so we laid in bed for a long time last night and I'm letting her skip school today and we've been doing a lot of regulating activities, homeostasis, activities to get her, you know, and also just compassion. And she talked through how scared she is to park and said that it's like causing a lot of stress, you know, so we practice just saying, Well, I'm a learner. So when you start getting stressed like, well, I shouldn't know how to do that yet or I'm learning and anyway, and it just reading your book. Then after having kind of walked with my daughter over the last, you know, 24 hours, I thought, Wow, the power of being able to teach these ways that we can regulate our emotions, become self-aware about our stress. Like if she had had access to alcohol this last week, it would have numbed all of that, and it's almost like we all need to go back to being. I mean, I know plenty of people start abusing alcohol as teenagers, but my kids are not doing that so. But for those of us that didn't. It's like actually go back to when you were 15 or 14 and you didn't have alcohol in your life, you know, and you just kind of had to learn how to. It's like we called middle school kids socially awkward where it's like there's plenty of awkwardness that still happens. We just cover it up with alcohol.

Amanda White [00:18:55] Exactly, exactly. And if we don't, if we never learn how to fully do that or we don't have parents that are able to teach us kind of these emotional regulation skills, we often will just use alcohol or some other behavior to numb that. And then we really miss the opportunity for growth. You know, you can hear just by the story you told about your daughter that this has been a really important learning experience for her. And if she would have just numbed it, she wouldn't have had that.

Jessica Honegger [00:19:24] OK, so this is the thing because we're trained for a checklist, you know, that's what we're trained for and there's no checklist in your book. And so I'm trying to figure out how do we guide our listeners into rethinking the role that alcohol plays in their lives?

Amanda White [00:19:41] I think one thing you could start with is think about what you know, I mean, you kind of just said it, but [00:19:47]think about what role does alcohol serve in your life? How does it benefit you and how does it negatively impact your life? How do you use it? You know, do you use it to smooth over awkwardness in social situations? Do you use it at the end of the day to kind of signal to your body that the work is done? Do you use it to get along with that family member who is difficult for you to tolerate? And if you can start thinking about those different areas, then you can start thinking about what can I add, right? Sometimes stopping drinking completely is really scary. And maybe we're not ready for that. So one thing you can think about is what even if you want to keep drinking, what regulation skills can you add also, right? [45.6s] So instead, at the end of the day, instead of just drinking, you know that glass of wine, can you take a bath first? Can you go for a five minute walk before you pick up that drink? Can you call a friend? Can you, you know when you're at that event with that family member, that's difficult to deal with, can you excuse yourself and, you know, go to the bathroom, and take a couple deep breaths? So you can play with the tolerance a little bit of allowing yourself to practice, not using alcohol and also really beef up those skills because setting boundaries, emotional regulation skills, self-care, all of that can still be done in addition, even if you don't want to change any of your drinking habits yet.

Jessica Honegger [00:21:18] Right, right. And you even suggest that if that is, you know, if you're in a traumatic situation, then you want to learn some of these skills first for you, cold turkey stop. I did want to ask about partners because I work with a lot of women and I often have women, you know, tell me this is what's going on with my husband. What do you say to that? What do you say to someone who is wondering if her spouse possibly has a disordered drinking issue?

Amanda White [00:21:46] Yeah, I think it's really hard because like, you know, just like I said, it can be a touchy subject for a lot of people. [00:21:54]So one of the best things I think we can do is start by, you know, so often we want to say to our spouse or someone we're worried about like, Hey, I'm worried about you. This is the pattern of behavior I'm seeing. And instead, I would recommend asking them, you know, there's something under that if they're drinking in that specific way, there's something going on that's leading them to pick up that behavior. So asking them, you know, how are you feeling lately? [26.4s] What's going on with you, starting with kind of a curious, open ended question to understand what their mindset is and how they're feeling? And then maybe go into just saying, you know, I'm just worried I wanted to ask how you were doing because I've noticed this pattern of behavior and try to be really gentle, curious, non-judgmental and open and see what's going on for them. They may not be open to talking about it, and you may have to lead from, you know, another thing you can do, I think, is plan more activities or things you guys can do together that don't revolve around alcohol and kind of be a positive influence that way. But it also might take a couple of conversations.

Jessica Honegger [00:23:05] Well, and I do think this whole you're an alcoholic or you're not, that's what makes that conversation so charged because the moment you bring up alcohol, it's like, Well, I'm not an alcoholic or I can hold my alcohol or I don't drink every night. I mean, we all of us, we make up these excuses really. And if we can just approach it more in this way of, hey, how are you using alcohol in your life and what would you enjoy more about your life without it? I mean, we can all ask questions, whether any of us think we're abusing alcohol or not.

Amanda White [00:23:41] Exactly. And I think if it's your partner and there's something going on specifically where their alcohol use is negatively impacting you in some way, you can come from the place of I'm not saying you're an alcoholic, I'm not saying you're a problem, you have a problem. And when you drink, this happens and it's hard on me or it puts a strain on our relationship and really trying to talk about alcohol in the same way that maybe you would talk to them about, you know, watching too much TV or playing video games or doing anything else that could lead you to feel frustrated and unsupported in that partnership.

Jessica Honegger [00:24:18] If there were two helpful things that you would want to change, the way society is, the way we think about alcohol from your book, what would be those two takeaways that you would want people to have?

Amanda White [00:24:30] Oh, this is a great question.

Jessica Honegger [00:24:32] Well, your book is dense. I mean, I mean, it really. I mean, I was like, Wow, this is very holistic. I mean, really, I actually really appreciate it because I do read, you know, quite a few books by therapists and I loved how you just included, but in a really simple way boundaries, regulation, re-parenting. Like I said, you know, there's whole books written about the little chapters that you put in there, and I thought, Wow, this is stuff I can actually read with my kids.

Amanda White [00:25:00] Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I tried to approach, you know, to me, alcohol, or any other behavior we're using is the top, it's the top of the iceberg. It's just the surface behavior we see most of what we're what's going on is under the surface, and it's why I think the book really can help people. Whether you are, you know, super interested in changing your relationship with alcohol or not, because we all have different habits that we can fall into. But to answer your question, [00:25:29]I think one thing that I would love people to take away from the book is we think that people who have a problem with alcohol are different than us. We think that they're unique. Their brains are different, right? There's something wrong with them. And I think it's much healthier and it's why I created that term disordered drinking is to look at in all of us given enough trauma, difficulty, stress, lack of support, anxiety, whatever have the ability to use alcohol or anything in an unhealthy way to survive because that's what all of us are trying to do at the end of the day, we're trying to make it through and deal with what's going on in our lives in the best way that we can. So I think I would love to change the narrative around, you know, us versus them when we're talking about addiction or alcohol issues. [57.1s]

Jessica Honegger [00:26:27] Well, thank you so much, Amanda. This was very helpful.

Amanda White [00:26:30] Thank you so much for having me.

Jessica Honegger [00:26:38] You can follow Amanda at therapy for women, and you can get her book Not Drinking Tonight Anywhere Books are sold. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. Our music today is by Ellie Holcomb and I'm Jessica Honegger until next time. Let's take each other by the hand and keep going scared.