The Myth Of The Normal Drinker

Given our years and years of conditioning and absorbing trillions of gigabytes of pop culture where drinking is cool, sexy, fun, encouraged and harmless, it’s SO understandable why part of our brain wants to occasionally entertain the idea that there is a “normal” drinker.

But as a sobriety coach who has worked with hundreds of clients, I’ve found that the normal drinker is more fantasy than fact.

I met “J” at a coffee shop in Portland. As strangers, we struck up a conversation one day and the next time I saw her, she shared that she was 5 days AF!! And in the course of conversation, she wistfully told me about a friend, a consummate entertainer, who drinks mimosas early in the day, mojitos in the afternoon and wine in the evening. “I don’t know how she does it,” she said almost admiringly.

Just because something is COMMON doesn’t make it NORMAL.

And there is a big difference between something that is normal vs something that our culture has normalized!

Growing up in New Orleans, the prevalence and pressure around alcohol was common, was normalized, but was anything but normal! As young children we learned to make mixed drinks, left Santa cookies and a scotch and soda, and as teenagers could buy cocktails from a drive-through window.

I was on a plane and got to chitchatting with the man next to me, a doctor, about what we both did for a living and where we were headed. “Why did you give up alcohol….did you have a problem?” he asked me. Gee, Doc, let me see…did I have a problem with the substance that was increasing cortisol production, robbing me of good REM sleep, weakening the gut lining, creating a safe harbor for bad bacteria, damaging cells and increasing my risk for heart disease or breast cancer?! Yes, I guess I did have a problem with that!”

But I get it…we walk by the beer garden or the French cafe and we romanticize the “normal drinker.” And as a winery owner, I believed drinking wine (“in moderation”) made you a normal drinker.

I think sometimes you are probably beating up on yourself. So consider this. Thanksgiving 2019 was my first Thanksgiving without any alcohol in about 36 years?!? (I already told you we started young in New Orleans). Maybe that normal drinker “over there” hasn’t tried doing a holiday, a birthday, a concert or an awful stressful day without alcohol….in a few decades. Maybe they can’t remember when. You might have beat up on yourself because you didn’t make it all the way through Dry January, but perhaps that “normal drinker” has never even tried!!

Of course, we don’t know what happens when the “normal drinker” goes home or in the middle of the night. It’s possible that they have reached out to me or to any of the thousands of sobriety coaches or recovery counselors for support. Did you tell all of your friends, co-workers, neighbors, acquaintances and total strangers that you were questioning or experiencing alcohol-related digestive, mood or energy consequences due to alcohol? Probably not! (A coach friend of mine with a huge following posted recently that she “was part of the problem.” She was a paid influencer and used to post photos of herself sipping wine and champagne by the pool in exotic settings, but the reality of how she felt physically and emotionally was far different).

My husband and I were part of the problem. In our wine sales materials, I asked him to stop referring to Champagne as the “breakfast of champions” or ever alluding to “rosé all day.”

The stats suggest that up to 80% of people who drink — including that “normal drinker” you think you see on the other side of the restaurant — want to drink less. And of course that’s true! While there are some brief initial euphoric feelings associated with drinking alcohol, the first part of the brain impacted by alcohol is the pre-frontal cortex where judgment and decision-making are housed. Alcohol artificially stimulates the brain’s reward center, causing a dopamine response that creates a desire and need for the substance. Dopamine is the learning chemical not the pleasure chemical and it tells the brain, do this again. That’s just how dopamine works. So it is absolutely baked into using this substance that we will do more of it than intended, desire more, and occasionally throw our best intentions out the window.

I’m pretty sure my drinking looked normal, (reasonably responsible even?) to my friends, and my husband repeatedly stated he saw no issue. And even though it was causing me to wake in the middle of the night beating up on myself, causing acid reflux and serious brain fog, and occasional annoyance if something interrupted wine-time, I didn’t discuss that with my friends. Perhaps the “normal drinkers” you see are doing the same thing.

We will only ever see part of the drinking of others. If you “pre-gamed”, topped up when no one was looking, drank when you got home from events, desired another drink even when you thought you shouldn’t, ever drank more than you intended, or ever felt tired or yucky (or worse) in the morning, perhaps others do too.

People might have other “crutches.” Humans are very apt to use food, sugar, porn, caffeine, shopping, scrolling, alcohol, meddling or over-functioning in other people’s lives, overworking, etc as an avoidance mechanism or to buffer unpleasant feelings.

With regular drinking comes tolerance. So while someone might not be slurring or weaving because their body has worked hard to learn how to continue to function despite the drug, their brain, liver, gut lining, and mitochondria can’t escape the ethanol. It’s quite possible a “normal drinker” has blood pressure or cholesterol meds, acid reflux tabs or antidepressants in the medicine cabinet.

We’re seeing a shift in this perception, but for the longest time, our world view has been that the “normal drinker” is the person that keeps drinking, even perhaps quite a lot, while the sober curious person or the person who is trying to cut back is deemed the one with the problem. Crazy, right?!

Even just one drink is enough to rob us of REM and slow-wave sleep and cause someone to be what Jane Fonda referred to as half-mast the next day or longer. How many days of this precious life are we willing to be at half-mast? Since good sleep is foundational for longterm health, how much of our future are we willing to gamble, and just how normal is gambling on that?

Early on, I found it helpful to think of a toll bridge. Even if alcohol delivers 20 minutes of some euphoria, letting down our hair, or doing interpretive dance to pop-songs (ok, that part WAS fun), alcohol extracts such a gigantic toll and it’s a toll I’m no longer willing to pay. I didn’t lose my privileges. I’m allowed to drink. But I just won’t pay that toll anymore. Are my karaoke days or being filmed in a hotel bar pretending to be a supermodel over? (Yes, that really happened!). I say we can either decide to go do AF karaoke together (I’m SO game, just ping me) or we decide it is really a small price to pay to give it up (how often did you do drunk karaoke anyway?) Even better, we could decide to get wildly curious about ourselves and investigate the social ingredients that allow us to feel playful, light, loved, funny, whimsical, dangerous, intrepid, sultry, boisterous, etc. In my courses and my coaching, we explore what gets us into those playful, inspired head spaces, yet doesn’t suppress the ability to really feel our feels, suppress motivation to follow dreams, depress the immune system and cognitive function, kill the good bacteria in our gut, etc.

But the absolute best medicine that cured me of worrying about the normal drinker was the epiphany that arrived one day, that how others drank, or how others would see my drinking, or what a doctor would say, just…didn’t…matter!! Just didn’t matter one wit.

Rather than asking ourselves "why can’t I drink like a normal drinker,” or “doesn’t my drinking look no worse than theirs,” the only questions worth asking were “how do I feel?” “How do I (underlined) feel?,” “Would I feel better with less or none?” AND “How do I want to live this one precious and wonderful life - at half-mast or with all my senses intact?”

YOU are amazing for asking these questions! And I think you are wild, a bad-ass…AND a great karaoke singer/dancer - no alcohol required!!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

xoxo, Martha

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From my hometown of New Orleans to working with Food Network chefs, to the vineyards of Oregon...food, friends and flavor figured centrally in my life - and got ALL tangled up in alcohol! I didn't want a wine habit running my life, but I was scared that giving up wine meant living with a "glass half-empty." When I got certified as a sobriety/mindful drinking coach, trained in the neuroscience of habits and behavior and did a deep dive in the health benefits of cultivating joy, I realized I didn't have to give up places and rituals I had enjoyed! I could double-down on them! I invite you to visit my site and book a free call because I believe you deserve a juicy life, not a dry one!