E326: Why Alcohol Looks Better in Your Memory Than It Was In Reality

0:00Romanticizing alcohol can be one of the most confusing parts of sobriety because logically you know what alcohol did to you. When alcohol starts sounding good again, your brain is not remembering the full drinking experience. It's not sitting there saying, you know what would be great? Ruining my self-esteem, feeling anxious at 3am, snapping at people I care about, losing more trust in myself, and spending tomorrow trying to recover. that's really not what you're thinking about. You usually remember the relief, the exhale, the moment the pressure went away, the feeling of finally being able to turn your brain off.

0:40Your brain remembers the part of drinking before all the consequences showed up and it leaves out what happened after. So if you're having thoughts like a drink would feel good right now or I miss being able to relax or maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought that doesn't mean that you want to secretly destroy your life or you're too stupid enough to know better, it means your brain is retrieving an edited version of the story. It's just a sign that your brain has learned that alcohol is a fast way to change how you feel. So when the same discomfort shows up, stress, boredom, loneliness, resentment, overwhelm, social pressure, exhaustion, your brain is pulling up an old solution because you don't have many other reliable ways to respond to that discomfort yet.

1:40romanticizing alcohol is a memory distortion it's when your brain presents an idealized softened and incomplete version of drinking and treats that version like it's the whole story It highlights the part that felt good and minimizes the part that hurt. It zooms in on the first drink or the vacation drink or the patio drink, the celebration drink, and conveniently leaves out the drink that happened after that and the one that happened after that and the drunk argument and the anxiety and the shame and the obsession and so on. And that's why romanticizing alcohol can feel so convincing. it's not usually a fake memory there were moments where alcohol felt fun relaxing comforting exciting or helped you connect with other people and that's what makes it hard if alcohol never gave you anything or if it was simply a bad habit that you developed like we tell ourselves you probably would not have kept going back to it when your suffering started to increase the problem is that it separates those moments from the full truth of your drinking.

2:51So when you think I miss wine on the patio, the more accurate version is probably I miss the first 20 minutes of wine on the patio. When you think I miss being spontaneous, maybe the more accurate version is I miss the version of myself that I thought alcohol gave me access to. When you think I miss drinking with friends, the more accurate version is probably I miss connection, ease, and belonging with no lag time. And when you think I miss turning off my brain, what you really miss is relief from pressure, responsibility, overstimulation, and your own thoughts. And that's important because we need to stop treating every alcohol memory as evidence that drinking was better than it actually was.

3:39Alcohol becomes so sticky in the brain because it doesn't just create an experience, it creates a rapid state change. And that's one of the reasons it can be so hard to let go of even when you know it's hurting you. Alcohol is not only connected to the taste, the drink, the glass, the restaurant, the patio, or the social thing. It becomes connected to the shift that you felt after drinking it. If you were anxious, it probably made you feel calm. If you felt insecure, it probably made you feel more confident. If you felt bored, maybe it made things feel more interesting. If you felt resentful, overstimulated, lonely, or emotionally exhausted, it probably gave you a fast way to turn that off.

4:28And your brain pays attention to anything that It changes discomfort quickly. The brain is always learning from what we do. I felt bad. I drank. I felt better. It teaches the brain this thing works. And even if it only worked temporarily, it still learns that it worked. Your brain learns that alcohol is a reliable way to change your state faster than any healthy coping skill ever could. And that's where the reward system comes in. alcohol increases dopamine in the brain's reward pathways especially in the areas involved in motivation reinforcement and learning it's not about pleasure it helps the brain bookmark something as important and worth repeating so if alcohol gave you relief confidence or a sense of reward dopamine helps stamp in that association your brain doesn't just learn that felt good it learned remember this this helped and it will help again alcohol also affects GABA and glutamate two major neurotransmitter systems involved in calming and activating the nervous system GABA is inhibitory so when alcohol enhances GABA activity you will feel slowed down loosened up less tense, less inhibited, or less overwhelmed.

5:52And glutamate is excitatory, so when alcohol suppresses glutamate activity, the brain's usual level of activation turns down. That's why drinking feels like it takes the edge off. It can create a sense that your brain has finally stopped running at top speed, your body unclenches, and your problems move further away. But the issue is, your brain doesn't just remember the chemical effect. It remembers the context around it. It remembers the cues like the time of day, the end of work, the first warm day of summer, the restaurant, the airport, arguments, loneliness, the feeling of being sick of everybody, the moment that you walk into the kitchen at 5 p.m.

6:38And the more that we pair alcohol with cues and emotions like stress, boredom, celebration, socializing, conflict, vacation, cooking dinner, or trying to relax, the more we link these things with drinking. So that means later, even after you quit, those cues can still wake up old associations. Your brain recognizes the pattern. This is the kind of moment where alcohol used to help. And once that association is activated, alcohol begins to look appealing again. And this is why cravings and romanticizing show up in very specific situations. They may show up when you're stressed, bored, lonely, socially uncomfortable, resentful, tired, or like you need a break.

7:29Or maybe it's something like summer, at a party, after a hard day, or during a transition time from work mode to home mode. It's a learned association, that's all. Your brain has learned, when this happens, we get alcohol. And if you aren't doing any of your work in sobriety, then it may seem like romanticizing shows up randomly, and the thoughts can become very believable, but it's not actually random at all. The version of drinking that your brain pulls up is the first drink fantasy. This is when your brain remembers the beginning of drinking before all the bad stuff. And this is one reason that playing the tape forward can be useful, but I think we need to understand what that really means.

8:18You're not trying to scare yourself by imagining the worst case scenario or remembering how alcohol is bad for you. That doesn't work. You're just restoring the missing data of your own personal drinking experience. Your brain is showing you the beginning because the beginning was the good part and had the relief, and that's what created the memory and the association in your brain. Playing the tape forward means you bring back the middle and the end. You remember what usually happened after the first drink. The negotiation, the loss of control, the obsession, the anxiety, the shame, and the way that one night can turn into days or weeks of trying to get back on track.

9:03The consequences of drinking start to feel less intense the longer that you are away from them. In the beginning, the pain is very fresh. The consequences are emotionally available because you're still very close to them. But as you get more time away from drinking, those memories soften. They lose their emotional charge and they become more factual. Your life starts to stabilize, which is a good thing, obviously. That's the point. But the tricky part is that the current stability can make the past feel less serious. Your brain can start to say, was it really that bad? Maybe I just needed a break.

9:42And this is where feeling better can become evidence that your brain uses against you. And that's what I'm going to talk about more next week. So if that's an issue for you, make sure you come back next week. Romanticizing alcohol works by narrowing your attention. It puts the relief in the center of the frame and pushes everything else out of your view. So you may be thinking about the drink on the patio, the wine at dinner, the beer at the beach, the cocktail on vacation, or the feeling of being able to exhale and turn off your brain. But if you only focus on that part, the fantasy gets stronger.

10:28so instead of only playing that edited clip to yourself practice telling yourself the entire story for example alcohol will promise you you'll finally relax and you will but then what happens after that your anxiety comes back stronger you sleep poorly you wake up at 3 a.m with a racing heart and you start the next day hating yourself or maybe alcohol promises you'll have more fun you will in the beginning but then eventually you lose control of how you show up you say things that you don't mean you overshare things that you don't want people to know maybe you pick a fight embarrass yourself or maybe you just wake up afraid to check your phone again alcohol promises you, you deserve a break.

11:18And temporarily, you do get to turn off your brain. But eventually, the same stress is still there tomorrow, except now you have to deal with it while feeling terrible and hating yourself. Based on what I've observed with my own sobriety and with the people that I've worked with over the years, in the first 18 months or so, we romanticize alcohol when old memories are cued or we experience moments or emotions when we used to drink. After 18 months to two years that may shift from romanticizing to a thought of a drink would be nice or normally I would drink in a situation like this without anything behind it.

12:01But if you never allow yourself to get consecutive time you never get to the part where being sober becomes who you are. You always stay trapped in the hard part where you're working on it. And this is one reason why support still matters after the initial crisis phase of sobriety. A lot of people think they only need support when everything is falling apart or when they're actively craving alcohol or newly sober or afraid they're going to drink for some reason. But romanticizing starts as a private thought that you don't say out loud. Maybe I wasn't that bad. Maybe I could be one of those special occasion drinkers that I've never heard have ever existed before, but I could probably do it.

12:46And when those thoughts stay private, they feel more believable over time. Romanticizing gets stronger in secrecy because there's no reality check. When you're alone with the fantasy, your brain can continue to slowly edit and massage the story for you. It can keep showing you the relief, the fun, the confidence, the good memories, and the version of alcohol that exists inside the fantasy. And if no one else knows what's going on, no one can help you notice what's missing or noticing while this is happening. Addiction thrives on narrowed attention, and support helps widen the frame. it helps you bring the missing information back before the fantasy turns into bargaining and before bargaining turns into a plan you just need to get the thought out of your head you don't need anybody's expert advice you need to hear yourself say it where it can lose its power there's a big difference between privately thinking maybe i could drink again someday and saying to a group or one sober person or expert like a therapist, my brain is telling me I could drink again and I know that's ridiculous but I wanted you to know.

14:06The first version pulls you deeper into the fantasy over time. The second version creates awareness. It starts to put distance between you and the thought. I used to do this a lot in my first couple of years. I would share when memories would pop up and then have a laugh about what the real truth of my drinking is with whoever I was talking to. It helped me for two reasons. To get the thought out of my head and to diffuse it a little bit. Romanticizing makes people feel bad sometimes, like they're doing something wrong or they're at risk, but it's a normal part of the sobriety experience. having someone laugh with you or just show that they care about your sobriety can help a lot community also helps because other sober people can reflect the whole story back to you without shaming you they can help you remember that missing alcohol does not mean that you need alcohol and this is why i don't think that support should only be there for emergencies or tough times if you wait until romanticizing has already turned into a plan then you're working with a much stronger pull it's easier to interrupt it when it's still just a thought i know when you're in it it feels like you're so deprived everybody drinks except you and it's going to be so difficult forever but once you allow yourself to get to the other side of this you will see that none of that is true in my first year or two sober i associated warm weather with taking my drinking from the inside of the house to the outside of the house or from the inside of the bar to the outside of the bar i felt so sad that i couldn't drink and now i associate warm weather with little tiny baby animals and i get excited to go on walks to see the baby ducks turtles and swans in my area you can build different associations over time if you allow yourself to get through the hard part.

16:11If you're working on making sobriety your lifestyle, then I would love to help you with that in my community. But if you're still in the lurking gathering data stage, then check out my weekly-ish email. The focus is on the difference between people who build long-term sobriety and people who keep getting pulled back into the same cycle. So maybe it can help you get a little bit of perspective and courage to move forward and have a stronger commitment. So thank you for listening, and I will talk to you next week.

17:06Thank you.