Alcohol has for generations been an issue in my family- I tend to abstain because of it, and I expected to disagree with your main takeaway but you hit the nail on the head. The American predisposition to medicalizing normal human responses and then commodifying a “cure” and the lifestyle associated puts us in a never ending cycle of virtue and addiction. Feels like we can sorta blame the Puritans/Calvinists for this one?
That means a lot to me Jackie. Thanks for this comment. And YES to the Puritan legacy. I almost named this post “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of (Capitalist) Wellness”
A gentle pushback on one point. I don't know that I agree that there is an "American way of drinking." I grew up in Louisiana where the way of drinking was akin to, say, the northern mid-west. It was often done at family function. When I moved to Tennessee, in 1985, I was shocked by the extreme drinking and the extreme religiosity about the act. Most counties at the time were still dry. The predominant drinking was whisky and with one object. No family festivities. Things have changed, of course. But my point is that culture of drinking varies enormously across this country, even today.
Hi Brian. Thanks so much for your comment, and I completely agree with you. There are as many ways of drinking in America as there are Americans, but one product of our cultural diversity is a lack of widely shared cultural and social norms around drinking. That's not to say that different communities in America don't have those norms--for sure they do, and I struggled with whether to engage the endless caveats to my argument. I decided not to in the interest of the larger point--that what IS uniquely American is our individualism and our reliance on market mechanisms to shape our social norms.
I am an alcoholic in recovery and I am one of those people who cannot manage my relationship with alcohol (or any substance! or anything that makes me feel good, really, lol!) and I think you're spot on. Monetizing sobriety is a big business, because people like me will relapse over and over and we will keep paying and paying for a solution that that attractive wellness influencer pushing an app simply does not have, while regular rich people who can probably just enjoy their alcohol will pay for the sensation that they are "optimizing" themselves. It is as cynical and punishing as you are writing about it here. Now that my sobriety has given me the gift of a life that looks "normal," when people find out I don't drink they assume I'm up to that kind of optimization, instead of what I really am: a pathetic alcoholic who truly wanted to die rather than not drink, who has been given a beautiful life beyond anything I could have dreamed of. If that sounds extreme, it's because it is, and most people aren't like me (thank God!)--which means most people don't really need what these influencers are pushing, which brings me back to your point--this cultural anti-alcohol shift feels like a way of isolating regular people from their means of socializing while extracting money from them, rather than "helping" people who are actually struggling. In that way, it's textbook American.
PS: I got sober (and stay sober now) using the freely given support and connection of other sober alcoholics, as well as the help of a sliding scale therapist who herself had been sober for 15+ years. If I listed the ways that she gave of herself without asking for my money, I would be here all day--if we opened up something in therapy she felt like we didn't close fully, she would give me another free session that week. She ran free sobriety support groups on her own time. She didn't charge me for months when my insurance fell through. She was amazing. If anyone reading this has other questions about how I did it, feel free to PM.
Hi Veronica. Thank you for sharing this very moving story. For the record, you’re not pathetic. You are a bad ass who wrestled the beast and won. Amazing.
Very thoughtful critique of how health and its symptoms become individually customized, Emelie Polanyi. Timely too, as we are subject now to recurring quests to identify ultra-processed foods, and to balance them in our individual diets. As you point out, while it is important to acknowledge health risks, the way it is conducted is reductionist or atomizing, validating individual targeting. Analogous to the 'carbon footprint' approach to planetary health...
Haha! I like that nickname :) I was thinking the exact same thing about the ultra-processed foods panic. In fact I had a couple of paragraphs in this piece about that but I cut them out to avoid going too far down that rabbit hole. Maybe another less booze-centric post is in order...
This was a great piece (loved the Polanyi reference). It made me think of the popular term “Hangxiety” - the guilt or shame you feel after a night of drinking. With all of the caveats, it made me question how individuals - fed by these health guru narratives - police their own behavior. As you say, drinking is socially embedded in history, culture, and shared moments, and some moments just require another glass of wine. Why then must the internalized judgement and self-righteous abstinence persist? To sell you another product of course.
Really enjoyed this post. We run a newsletter and podcast about the intersection of pop culture and the new paradigm of sobriety, so we love picking apart these emerging facets of wellness as it relates to drinking.
I think you're spot on about late-stage capitalism swallowing wellness culture and packaging a cure in a way that feels vulgar, especially when compared to A.A.—an incredible activation of social good that will never be a for-profit business. A.A. is technically American too.
That said, I also think alcohol is the new tobacco. In 1965, smokers probably thought there were things we simply couldn’t do as a society without cigarettes, like conduct a board meeting or take a long flight or play poker. Turns out we can. It is very possible **for those that want to** to enjoy a sense of community and socialize without ethanol in our glasses.
Amen! I've had my periods, two of them separated by a period of 15 years, of alcohol use and the typical bingeing (abuse). For the bulk of my adult life i have been a tea-totaller. I refostered a light habit of alcohol at 50 thinking it would be enjoyable of an evening and do me no harm in the balance. I was right about it being enjoyable, i was wrong (again) about it doing no harm, so i gave it up entirely (again.) The last straw this time was the new data showing that a single drink screws with your gut bacteria, and gut bacteria in a healthy state is vital to all systems, including cerebral. Learning this was the last straw. No more, ever. Indeed, no amount of drinking is harmless. The state of my life utterly dry of alcohol is significantly superior to the state of my life even under the most modest of habits. Alcohol consumption is one of the stupidest things a person can do for their life i've concluded. From experience. Any alcohol consumption. Thankfully i've never been a guy cowed by peer-pressure. I do my best and live an examined life and given this I've always been far more concerned with what i think about the people around me than what they think about me. Additionally, i am immune to fashions, trends, apps, advertising, the health industry... and cell phones. ;) All of which i recommend building in your own system, such immunities.
This was a really great read and I think you nail the cultural difference that makes the US so unique. The US is often called a cultural melting pot to suggest a blending of different cultures but it’s maybe more accurate to call it a culture-stripping machine as everyone gets pushed through the pressures of hyper individualistic assimilation and capitalism. I think reintroducing cultural meaning to alcohol so that it carries symbolic importance would go a long way toward easing americas fraught binge drinking ways.
A very thoughtful and well-written article on this fascinating American obsession with wellness and the intense business dynamics surrounding it.
As an European, I have little firsthand perspective on the current American relationship with alcohol, but two things immediately come to mind: the lingering influence of Protestant ethics, even in a more diffuse form, and the historical impact of Prohibition. It would be fascinating to see a deeper comparison between past Prohibition-era campaigns and today’s ‘dry’ movements—how the messaging, motivations, and societal responses align or diverge.
Thank you Dale! It's so good to hear from you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I wrote during my year abroad (previous posts that you can find on my homepage). I hope you and Gera and your growing crop of grandkids are all doing well.
Alcohol has for generations been an issue in my family- I tend to abstain because of it, and I expected to disagree with your main takeaway but you hit the nail on the head. The American predisposition to medicalizing normal human responses and then commodifying a “cure” and the lifestyle associated puts us in a never ending cycle of virtue and addiction. Feels like we can sorta blame the Puritans/Calvinists for this one?
That means a lot to me Jackie. Thanks for this comment. And YES to the Puritan legacy. I almost named this post “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of (Capitalist) Wellness”
YES!
And there is just no way that those awful non-alcohol cocktails will take the place of a companionable sip of wine . . .
A gentle pushback on one point. I don't know that I agree that there is an "American way of drinking." I grew up in Louisiana where the way of drinking was akin to, say, the northern mid-west. It was often done at family function. When I moved to Tennessee, in 1985, I was shocked by the extreme drinking and the extreme religiosity about the act. Most counties at the time were still dry. The predominant drinking was whisky and with one object. No family festivities. Things have changed, of course. But my point is that culture of drinking varies enormously across this country, even today.
Hi Brian. Thanks so much for your comment, and I completely agree with you. There are as many ways of drinking in America as there are Americans, but one product of our cultural diversity is a lack of widely shared cultural and social norms around drinking. That's not to say that different communities in America don't have those norms--for sure they do, and I struggled with whether to engage the endless caveats to my argument. I decided not to in the interest of the larger point--that what IS uniquely American is our individualism and our reliance on market mechanisms to shape our social norms.
i love this. so much.
Such a good piece of writing and ideas!
Glad to have you back!
I am an alcoholic in recovery and I am one of those people who cannot manage my relationship with alcohol (or any substance! or anything that makes me feel good, really, lol!) and I think you're spot on. Monetizing sobriety is a big business, because people like me will relapse over and over and we will keep paying and paying for a solution that that attractive wellness influencer pushing an app simply does not have, while regular rich people who can probably just enjoy their alcohol will pay for the sensation that they are "optimizing" themselves. It is as cynical and punishing as you are writing about it here. Now that my sobriety has given me the gift of a life that looks "normal," when people find out I don't drink they assume I'm up to that kind of optimization, instead of what I really am: a pathetic alcoholic who truly wanted to die rather than not drink, who has been given a beautiful life beyond anything I could have dreamed of. If that sounds extreme, it's because it is, and most people aren't like me (thank God!)--which means most people don't really need what these influencers are pushing, which brings me back to your point--this cultural anti-alcohol shift feels like a way of isolating regular people from their means of socializing while extracting money from them, rather than "helping" people who are actually struggling. In that way, it's textbook American.
PS: I got sober (and stay sober now) using the freely given support and connection of other sober alcoholics, as well as the help of a sliding scale therapist who herself had been sober for 15+ years. If I listed the ways that she gave of herself without asking for my money, I would be here all day--if we opened up something in therapy she felt like we didn't close fully, she would give me another free session that week. She ran free sobriety support groups on her own time. She didn't charge me for months when my insurance fell through. She was amazing. If anyone reading this has other questions about how I did it, feel free to PM.
Hi Veronica. Thank you for sharing this very moving story. For the record, you’re not pathetic. You are a bad ass who wrestled the beast and won. Amazing.
Thank you for your kind words Emelie <3
Very thoughtful critique of how health and its symptoms become individually customized, Emelie Polanyi. Timely too, as we are subject now to recurring quests to identify ultra-processed foods, and to balance them in our individual diets. As you point out, while it is important to acknowledge health risks, the way it is conducted is reductionist or atomizing, validating individual targeting. Analogous to the 'carbon footprint' approach to planetary health...
Haha! I like that nickname :) I was thinking the exact same thing about the ultra-processed foods panic. In fact I had a couple of paragraphs in this piece about that but I cut them out to avoid going too far down that rabbit hole. Maybe another less booze-centric post is in order...
This was a great piece (loved the Polanyi reference). It made me think of the popular term “Hangxiety” - the guilt or shame you feel after a night of drinking. With all of the caveats, it made me question how individuals - fed by these health guru narratives - police their own behavior. As you say, drinking is socially embedded in history, culture, and shared moments, and some moments just require another glass of wine. Why then must the internalized judgement and self-righteous abstinence persist? To sell you another product of course.
Really enjoyed this post. We run a newsletter and podcast about the intersection of pop culture and the new paradigm of sobriety, so we love picking apart these emerging facets of wellness as it relates to drinking.
I think you're spot on about late-stage capitalism swallowing wellness culture and packaging a cure in a way that feels vulgar, especially when compared to A.A.—an incredible activation of social good that will never be a for-profit business. A.A. is technically American too.
That said, I also think alcohol is the new tobacco. In 1965, smokers probably thought there were things we simply couldn’t do as a society without cigarettes, like conduct a board meeting or take a long flight or play poker. Turns out we can. It is very possible **for those that want to** to enjoy a sense of community and socialize without ethanol in our glasses.
Amen! I've had my periods, two of them separated by a period of 15 years, of alcohol use and the typical bingeing (abuse). For the bulk of my adult life i have been a tea-totaller. I refostered a light habit of alcohol at 50 thinking it would be enjoyable of an evening and do me no harm in the balance. I was right about it being enjoyable, i was wrong (again) about it doing no harm, so i gave it up entirely (again.) The last straw this time was the new data showing that a single drink screws with your gut bacteria, and gut bacteria in a healthy state is vital to all systems, including cerebral. Learning this was the last straw. No more, ever. Indeed, no amount of drinking is harmless. The state of my life utterly dry of alcohol is significantly superior to the state of my life even under the most modest of habits. Alcohol consumption is one of the stupidest things a person can do for their life i've concluded. From experience. Any alcohol consumption. Thankfully i've never been a guy cowed by peer-pressure. I do my best and live an examined life and given this I've always been far more concerned with what i think about the people around me than what they think about me. Additionally, i am immune to fashions, trends, apps, advertising, the health industry... and cell phones. ;) All of which i recommend building in your own system, such immunities.
This was a really great read and I think you nail the cultural difference that makes the US so unique. The US is often called a cultural melting pot to suggest a blending of different cultures but it’s maybe more accurate to call it a culture-stripping machine as everyone gets pushed through the pressures of hyper individualistic assimilation and capitalism. I think reintroducing cultural meaning to alcohol so that it carries symbolic importance would go a long way toward easing americas fraught binge drinking ways.
Do you have thoughts on the sobriety-industrial complex in the UK?
Remind me of that Corey Hart song
A very thoughtful and well-written article on this fascinating American obsession with wellness and the intense business dynamics surrounding it.
As an European, I have little firsthand perspective on the current American relationship with alcohol, but two things immediately come to mind: the lingering influence of Protestant ethics, even in a more diffuse form, and the historical impact of Prohibition. It would be fascinating to see a deeper comparison between past Prohibition-era campaigns and today’s ‘dry’ movements—how the messaging, motivations, and societal responses align or diverge.
Amen. Amen to realizing how our actions are a weave of many many threads of very human vital needs and impulses. Wonderful writing.
Thank you Dale! It's so good to hear from you. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what I wrote during my year abroad (previous posts that you can find on my homepage). I hope you and Gera and your growing crop of grandkids are all doing well.