Front Burner - Weekend Listen: What are drugs teaching us about what it means to be human?

Episode Date: January 18, 2025

On Drugs looks through the lenses of history, pop culture and personal experience to understand how drugs have shaped our world. Because even if it’s just caffeine or ibuprofen, there’s a good chance you’re on drugs right now. More episodes of On Drugs are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/aRCxzV

My name is Ian Urbina. I've reported on some pretty mind-blowing stories, but nothing like what happens at sea. If they got within 800 meters, that is when we would fire warning shots. Murder, slavery, human trafficking, and staggering environmental crimes. Men have told me that they've been beaten with stingray tails, with chains. If you really want to understand crime, start where the law of the land ends. The outlaw ocean. Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast.

Hi everybody, Jamie here. So we have a special bonus episode for you today from a returning CBC podcast that we think that you're going to really like. It's called On Drugs and it's a series that looks through the lenses of history, pop culture, and personal experience to understand how drugs have shaped our world. This new season challenges the typical narratives about addiction, exploring what substances reveal not only about our bodies, but also our understanding of consciousness, our motivations, and our very sense of self.

Host Jeff Turner confronts his own casual relationship with alcohol, using it as a lens to question the nature of desire, drive, and what we truly seek from life. From the allure of psychedelic therapy to the cultural stigmas around safe supply to the acceptance of certain drugs over others. On Drugs asks the question, what are drugs teaching us about what it means to be human? Now here's the first episode of the brand new season of On Drugs. Have a listen. The first time I ever really tried alcohol, I was 14. I don't remember exactly how the evening came to be but I was with my best friend Mike and we somehow got

invited to hang out with some of my older sister's friends. One of them, Jane, lived a few blocks away and her parents were out of town and she and Sue had bought a big bottle of white wine and did we want to come over and listen to records? Well of course we did. Jane's house was set back from the street tucked in among the trees. It was all cedar and modern and cool. We hung out in the rec room in the basement and we sat on the floor with LPs fanned out and the bottle of wine in the center of our circle on the rug. I probably drank that first glass of wine way too fast and soon my cheeks were flushed. I don't know

if it was the alcohol or the cigarette or maybe it was just because I was smiling so much. because I was smiling so much. We didn't get drunk. We maybe had two or three glasses each, but man, I just remember laughing so much and feeling at ease with girls, girls, even though they were four years older than us. I remember really listening to Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album for the first time and loving it so much

and wanting to hang on to everything that I was feeling forever. And it felt like alcohol was the magic ingredient. A powerful elixir that made me feel funnier and smarter and just more comfortable in my skin and it seemed to be working for everyone else too. It was early September, the last wisps of summer were still in the air. I remember walking the few blocks home and being a little worried about having wine and players lights on my breath, but I got to bed without anyone noticing.

I drifted off with a warm buzz in my head and my heart. warm buzz in my head and my heart. I sometimes wonder if I've been chasing that perfect buzz all of this time because alcohol has been a part of my life for better and for worse ever since that night in 1983. Oh, by the way, I'm Jeff Turner and this podcast is on drugs. I know it's been a very long time since I last spoke to you here, but I'm really happy to be back to share some stories about drugs and their place in our culture and our bodies and our minds. Alcohol kind of has its own category.

We talk about drugs and alcohol as though it's cordoned off from the rest of the things we take for pleasure. It's not like other drugs because it's soaked into the fabric of society. We use it to relax, to connect, to remember, to forget, to celebrate, and to mourn. I don't know why I had to get through two whole seasons of the show before I finally got to an episode all about alcohol. Maybe I avoided this one because it seemed a little too big and too present, and maybe a little too close to home. In the years since I last talked to you here, I've thought a lot about alcohol and the ways that I use it. They mostly haven't been happy thoughts. So in

this episode I'm going to get a little bit personal and I'm going to try to answer a question. Why don't I stop drinking? Of course, I'm not the only one who likes to throw them back. Alcohol is far and away the most popular recreational drug in the world. According to Statistics Canada, just over three quarters of Canadians aged 15 years and older reported drinking alcohol in 2019. But that might be starting to change. Over the last 10 years or so, I've really noticed a gathering momentum

of people who embrace sobriety or something close to it. Three years ago, I decided to go Cali sober and it's honestly been the best decision I ever made. My name is Steph and today we're gonna be speaking all about sobriety. Anyway, I just seen from the title of this video, I'm going sober. Look, if you would have told me in my 20s,

I'd be stone cold sober in my 30s, I would have told you hold my beer. But sober living completely changed my life and I know it might do the same for you. That's not to say that alcohol is going away anytime soon. That became really clear in January 2023 when the Canadian government released new guidance on alcohol consumption. A new report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction says the science has evolved and so must the guidance. Low risk is now defined as two or fewer standard drinks a week. Any more than that and the risks start climbing fast.

That report went off like a little culture bomb. I remember the mix of consternation, eye rolling and denial among my friends and colleagues when the guidance was released. After all, it wasn't that long ago that we were all parroting the supposed science that a couple of glasses of wine contributed to heart health and longevity. Of course, if you step back just a little bit and think about it, you know they're right. Alcohol is a known carcinogen and a major risk factor for several forms

including mouth, laryngeal and esophageal cancers. It's terrible for your heart and it heightens your risk of stroke. Booze is implicated in a huge percentage of accidental deaths, homicides and suicides. And that's not even getting into the social costs, the broken families, the shattered careers, personal despair. But two drinks a week? For a lot of people, that seemed like a reversal of popular wisdom and an absolute buzzkill. Two drinks a week? Well that's just not feasible, not in this country.

Well come on man, two drinks a week, what's that going to do for you? I mean that doesn't even get you through a day. That is Dino Senacola of St. Catharines, Ontario. You'll be able to have like four beer. I mean, I'll have six. A reporter from CHCH Television intercepted him on his way into the beer store and asked him about the new guideline. But there shouldn't even be guidelines anyway.

Why are you going to tell me how much I can drink at home? Well, as you can imagine, that appearance made him a bit of a folk hero. Because even if you don't drink five or six tall boys a day, maybe you just don't want big brother giving you new guilt about something that gives you joy. And in these days of growing health disinformation and knee-jerk skepticism about public health authority, who knows what kind of effect the information really had anyway. But there's something I noticed in checking out all those sober curious videos on YouTube and TikTok. The creators don't come off as the caricature of out of control drinkers.

But they're looking at the kind of evidence the Canadian government is offering and they're asking a lot of really good tough questions about the place of alcohol in their lives. I have a bunch of those questions too and I found just the person to help me with them. I'm Katherine Fairburn. I'm an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and I run an alcohol research lab here. The work in that alcohol lab is fascinating. They hook people up with electrodes and they get them a little drunk and they see what

happens. But as compelling as that research is, I have more personal questions for Katherine. Yeah, so you'd like me to psychoanalyze you? Because in addition to that research that she does, Catherine is a psychologist with a lot of experience in therapeutic settings, where she helps clients struggling with addiction. Yeah, I'll do my best. Yeah, absolutely.

Catherine, one of the things that I've been really interested in lately is I've been looking at a lot of these, some of them are YouTube videos or TikTok videos. And I get the sense of a lot of young people embracing, it comes in different forms, but they call it sober curious, or they call it California or Cali sober, but just this general idea that a younger generation than my own is really embracing sobriety. Is that borne out by your observations? Yes, there is some evidence that people who are now

young adults and adolescents are drinking at lower levels, engaging overall in less binge drinking than individuals of an older generation were when they were the same age. And there's certainly more sort of a general culture of mocktails and dry bars emerging that wasn't around 10 years ago. And one of the things that I've noticed about these videos is that a lot of these people, they're not necessarily sort of pee your pants, crash your car, blackout drunks. They're considering their health,

they're considering their financial picture, all sorts of really good reasons, but they're not necessarily the caricature of a problem drinker. Yeah, absolutely. You don't have to be a recovering alcoholic now in order to be curious about that lifestyle. I think we're especially seeing that in younger generations.

So maybe it's the new rebellion, you know, maybe it's gonna revert back at a certain point or maybe this is an enduring trend. I guess it really landed for me too, because I've recently become aware of this term, gray drinking or gray area drinking. And it's being used to describe, you know, people who are probably drinking certainly well more than what Health Canada is recommending. They're telling us two drinks a week is the maximum. But drinking a significant

amount on a pretty regular basis. And when I started to think about it, well, that really described me. And I wonder, what do you make of that idea of gray area drinking? I think it's a really important concept. And I do think that that has been something that's missing. Like we have thought about people as two categories as alcoholics and non-alcoholics and there hasn't been room for people to consider

that there might be a spectrum. And I think maybe because that's threatening to people, maybe because the kind of reflection that you're doing right now feels kind of threatening and uncomfortable, but at the same time that gray area drinking can be a really, really critical point. First of all, gray area drinking can lead to some pretty serious consequences in and of itself. If you just have one night of extraordinarily heavy drinking, that can result in losing

your license, losing your job, farm to relationships, all sorts of problems. And also it can not only have problems immediately, but at the same time it can be a trajectory to something else. So I think I'm glad to hear you're reflecting. ["Dreams of a New World"] The people that you talk to who are dealing with issues with alcohol, is there a typical presentation? Are you seeing people who are that caricature, who are just, their lives are falling to pieces or is there something, is there a more typical characterization?

Well, the answer is yes and yes. So we do see people who really do feel like they fall into a lot of those typical categories. Drinking all day, really unable to stop, unable to stop despite profound negative consequences for themselves. Muted response to alcohol, this sort of cluster of very severe symptoms, we absolutely see that. At the same time, if you actually look through the diagnostic criteria for alcohol use

disorder and the ways you can get there, there's huge variety in the kind of combinations of symptoms you see. Now, to get to severe alcohol use disorder, you have to have six symptoms. And so necessarily the presentations become less variable when you get on the severe lens, sort of like every mild alcohol use disorder looks different

and every severe can start to look the same. Well, it strikes me that probably a lot of what people are talking about when they're talking about gray area drinking, they're actually talking about people who are probably on the low to moderate end of the spectrum of alcohol use disorder. That's correct. So I think at that end, which is again a really critical end where you can transition one

way or another, there's massive complexity both reflected within those diagnostic criteria but also extending beyond it. So I had my own look at that list of indicators from the diagnostic manual, and I confirmed that if you answer yes to just two of the questions, well congratulations, you have mild alcohol use disorder. And if I'm being totally honest with myself, I answer yes to at least five of the eleven questions, which puts me firmly in the moderate category for alcohol use disorder.

The questions are things like, have you had times when you ended up drinking more or longer than you intended, continued to drink even though it was making you feel depressed or anxious or adding to another health problem? Check. Have you had to drink much more to get the effect you want? Check. Have you had to drink much more to get the effect you want? Check. Have you more than once wanted to cut down or stop drinking or tried to but couldn't? Check.

Have you spent a lot of time drinking or being sick or getting over the after effects? Check. And check. I could go on, but you get the idea. If you've ever questioned your own drinking, I suggest you look up those questions in the diagnostic manual. It's pretty stark when you see it laid out in black and white. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of

the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a tightball. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision The question and the diagnostic criteria that really stood out for me is one that I've already mentioned. Have you had to drink more than you once did to get the effect that you want? Or found that your usual number of drinks had much less effect than before. That's a big check for me. And I think it's an especially important one. When I think about the way that I use alcohol, I think something

that stands out for me is I really don't enjoy having one drink that has never worked for me. Like what happens with me is I'll have that drink and then either it's gonna be nap time in an hour or we're going for it. And I don't like that nap time feeling. So what winds up happening is the way I've described it is, and I'm a pretty big guy, I can really pound the back of I want to.

And in that first hour or so, I have this, you know, that elated feeling. And then I spend the rest of the night chasing that and never actually getting back. But by the end of the night, I've consumed a lot of alcohol. And then the next day, it's payback time. And not even as much the physical part, but the psychological part, I think over time has really, that's really started to weigh on me where it's just that awful feeling, what the young folks now called anxiety. I sure feel that. And I guess it's finally making a sort of a cost accounting of the cost and the benefit of

that arrangement is finally hitting home for me after about 40 years. Yeah. So what you described, first of all, the fact that it's hitting home at all is tremendous evidence of willingness to self-reflect and grow. But there is something about drinking and how it weaves itself into our life, our relationships, ourselves, that in order to do some unraveling, there has to be some pretty profound growth. So I would say that to begin with. Also, some of the patterns that you just described are very illustrative, very typical. So the need for a nap after one drink, that is there you would reach the peak of your BAC curve fairly quickly.

So the ascending limb is where you experience those stimulant arousal effects, some of that reward or enjoyment. And then if you just have one drink fairly soon after you finish it, then you're going to be on the descending limb where you get sedation, et cetera. And then that feeling of describing chasing the next drink, I will say that that is a symptom of alcohol use disorder where once you start drinking, you feel this feeling you need to continue and often drinking more than you'd intended.

But it sounds like there you're kind of falling into that very kind of understandable pattern of doing something that makes you feel good, of doing something that makes you feel alert, aroused, interested, happy. And then because we are human and we so easily forget that which is not immediately in front of us, it's easy to have that lead you towards the next drink and to forget what you might feel when you crash and also the next day when you might be experiencing some hangover symptoms as you mentioned.

I have to say though, you know, that there's no small amount of shame in reflecting on the fact that I'm almost 55 years old, and it's literally, it's been 40 years since I first had a drink, and there's no small amount of shame in feeling that it took me 40 years to really seriously think about that and the price that I was paying.

And I wonder how that in itself, like the shame and even addressing it prevents you from taking the step or something. Yeah, I think that is, there's a beautiful passage from the Little Prince where he meets the drunkard and he asks the drunkard, why do you drink? And he says, I drink because I'm ashamed. And he says, why are you ashamed?

And he says, I'm ashamed because I drink. And when you're at more severe levels of alcohol use disorder, that cycle absolutely can come into play. But I would also say that my hope is that one effect of this kind of gray drinking zone is that maybe we can move beyond some of that shame as a society that understand that alcohol use disorder isn't or even individual symptoms of it isn't something that sets you apart as different, but rather it's something that can make you very human.

So I think that always, you know, reflecting that we might have been doing something wrong is a painful one. But at the same time, I hope that we can remove some of that very specific stigma from alcohol use disorder since I think it's an impediment. ["Dreams of a New World"] Another thing I've reflected on is the fact that for years I've practiced dry January, and I think partly that's because typically, like a lot of people, my drinking really ramps up over December to the point that I think where I probably started doing it

because I was like, I really need a break. Like physically, I need a break from that. But I think also there's probably on some level, it's a way of telling myself I'm still in the driver's seat. I'm still, you know, alcohol is not the boss of me but over time I've started to wonder if actually it's had a different kind of negative effect and that maybe I would have been better off if I was real sloppy obvious drunk who couldn't do that because then the problem is so obvious that everybody sees it and

I'm forced to a reckoning sooner. Instead, it's like, oh, look at Jeff. Yeah, look at the discipline. He's not drinking at all in January, never mind the rest of the year. You know, that's actually very interesting. One thing that's come up a few times now, which is tolerance. So you've mentioned being a big guy, one drink doesn't really do it for you, being able to kind of pound them back. Tolerance occupies a really interesting cultural space, where it's kind of viewed, if you are somebody who's drinking a lot at a party, for example, and you are not falling down,

you're not weaving, you're not slurring your speech, people will be less worried about you when they should be more. you're not weaving, you're not slurring your speech, people will be less worried about you when they should be more. Tolerance predicts alcohol use disorder better than many other indicators. One study I think found that people at risk for alcohol use disorder who also had tolerance were something like six times more likely

than people with low tolerance to go on to develop a problem later on. And I think something that you just mentioned in terms of, I think it's this, you know, maybe this idea of really experiencing negative consequences as a result of your drinking between maybe dry January, but certainly your tolerance, you're kind of insulated from some of those negative effects. One of the big obstacles for me, I think had less to do with the chemistry

and a lot more to do with having built a social life around alcohol and occasions around alcohol that there are so many baked in associations, many of which are really lovely. I've had a lot of really lovely experiences that involved a lot of alcohol. And so then you have to start to ponder a future where you're going to still find joy in your life without this ingredient that you've been turning to for 40 years to help create that joy. How much does that come up in in your clinical work? I mean that's huge. That's huge. There's so much I mean it's about joy, it's about community, it's about even a sense of identity. There's a lot of people who come to therapy saying,

I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. Drunk Jeff is the guy, you know, he's like the party. He's got friends. There's so many pieces that are wrapped up. But I think the piece that you mentioned about enjoyment, joy, reward is massive. And I think, you know, in our lives we have home and work and then we have the third place. And oftentimes,

this sort of place that is a place of respite, refuge, rest, enjoyment, and so often that's been a bar. One thing that I say to clients, you know, I think alcohol and other substances can kind of act sort of like the sun. It is huge and powerful and warm and when it's around, you think that it's the only thing in the sky. But when the sun sets and you can reach true nighttime, you begin to see this great complexity and this great array of stars, of tiny pinpricks of light out there. And so I think it can be a huge transition from pounding back five Jägermeisters at the bar with all your friends and dancing on the table, and transitioning from that to a sunset walk or the smell of jasmine in the air, even just the taste of a pleasant food, to those tiny little pinpricks of reward being what you turn to.

I think that's a huge transition. It takes time. And it's hard when that kind of big globe of the sun is present, it's hard to recognize those. This ties into also the conversation around the question of whether moderation is an option or whether abstinence is the path. And I think in the back of my mind, I know that in the context of me drinking, there's just no moderation. And I guess I struggled because partly there's an admission then that, okay, you're not even the master of your own house here. How much of a struggle is that for people

do you find? Like, do you find people having success in moderation or is it more typical that they have to give it up altogether? Absolutely. So I think, yeah, I mean, I think this idea that the person who is totally abstinent is out of control and that is a jagged pill to swallow. I think, you know, there's a reason that in Alcoholics Anonymous,

they make you repeat that. I'm an alcoholic, my drinking is out of control. They make you repeat that over and over again, in part, I think, to dull the pain, to sort of have that idea ingrained into you rather than this sort of alien sharp sentiment. It is, I think it can feel. It feels demeaning, I'm sure, you know,

in common cultural terms, emasculating. It's a huge impediment, yeah. So moderation is not only attempting paths because you get to drink sometimes, but also attempting paths because you get to preserve your inward and outward sense of self. That's a fascinating way of thinking about it. I think also in a previous conversation that we had, you used something that really stuck

with me. You talked about how the attempts at moderation can appear in some ways, or they're sort of analogous to a breakup in an unhealthy relationship, where maybe there are some trial separations and you keep going back, even though you know on some level that partner is not good for you. in a place, it's almost like a kind of acceptance and mourning that, no, I can't be with this partner who turns out to be alcohol. That's right. And there's stages of grief and there are stages of change for alcohol use disorder. So there's a time when you're thinking about it, but you're not serious. There's a time that you're thinking about it and you are serious. And then once you actually finally take action, there's grief, there's anger, there's loss. I have heard more than one client refer to alcohol as the love of their life and their best friend.

I think there is a sense of personal and relationship loss when people lose alcohol. And it takes ages and sometimes multiple rounds of treatment, multiple rounds of flirting with sobriety in order for people to get there. Yeah, it's it's extraordinary how it becomes so like, I think you use the phrase, how it's woven into parts of your life. And I find myself having to get ahead of things like, okay, well, we're going to be at the cottage this summer, which is a big beer drinking time normally, or going to be staying in Montreal for a conference. Boy, I don't get to go to the hotel bar. You know, these things that I've so woven into,

these fond associations. So with each part of the year, and even beyond a single year, I'm sure, you know, recurring events that come up, weddings, et cetera, you have to kind of grieve alcohol in each setting. Yeah. Now that you put it that way. you have to kind of do grieve alcohol in each setting. Yeah. Now that you put it that way. Fun ahead.

Lots of fun ahead. The trouble is that over a lifetime alcohol can become so much a part of who you are. I think that truth haunts anyone who decides to stop drinking for whatever reason. At a certain point it's part of your identity. You're a social drinker. You like to party. You've got a little drinking problem. You're a social drinker. You like to party. You got a little drinking problem. You're a functional alcoholic. And in a funny way, the opposite is also true.

If you don't drink, then that is your identity. You're on the wagon. You're sober or you're straight edge or whatever. It's as though we can only conceive of social identities in relation to alcohol. I've been circling around this from the start of the episode but now I guess I need to be more direct about why I decided to talk about alcohol and specifically about me and alcohol. So here goes. Last year, my cousin took his own life. Steven was just a little bit younger than me. When we were kids, he felt like a brother.

He and his brother and I and my brother loved to be together. There were epic sleepovers where there was no time for actual sleeping because we were too wrapped up in Dungeons and Dragons and Atari. There were wild rampages in the woods with slingshots and pellet guns. And Stephen was always the joyful troublemaker at the heart of the action. In our late teens and twenties, we drifted apart. Over the years, I heard snippets about his life and I knew that he'd struggled with drugs and alcohol. But I also knew he'd found stability and sobriety

for long stretches with some help from AA. We had overlapping careers in the movie business for a while and I would sometimes see him on set. He still had a wicked and sharp sense of humor and a mischievous smile. It was always a real treat to see him. So when my mom called to tell me of Stephen's death, it had been 15 years since I'd last seen him. My aunt and my cousins did the best they could to piece together a picture of his last decade for me, but there were big holes. What we know for sure is that he'd gone back

to drinking. In his apartment where he died, the cleaners found 30 empty bottles of vodka. There were receipts that showed twice-daily deliveries of booze. His last days were spent in drunken squalor and isolation. When the time came, my aunt asked if I could help clear Stephen's belongings from his apartment, his home for 15 years. There's a deep sorrow in seeing the life of a vibrant person you loved reduced to mere possessions. You can't help but try to fill in the blanks. But the apartment offered so few clues, hardly any photographs or much of anything to connect him to love or friendship. I have a hard time keeping thoughts from that day out of my mind, but there's one image

that has haunted me especially. On his bedside table was a stack of self-help books, books about how to succeed in business and relationships, books about health and finance. And sandwiched in the middle of the stack was the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. It's sort of the Bible of the 12-step movement. I don't know if I made a sound in that moment, but the sight of that vignette struck something deep inside of me. To think that some part of him was still reaching out for the light until he reached for the gun was poignant and devastating. It would be an oversimplification to say that alcohol killed my cousin.

But here are some things we know about booze and suicide. One in four deaths by suicide involves alcohol. Alcohol use disorder is the second most common mental health disorder in people who have died by suicide. The precise interaction is not perfectly understood, but the booze seems to facilitate suicide attempts by reducing inhibitions and increasing impulsive choices. Sometimes that's all it takes for someone who's on the edge. For at least as long as I've been drinking, I have seen the toll of alcohol around me.

Friends injured or killed in drunk driving accidents. A friend whose alcoholic father took his own life. People whose careers or academic life was totally derailed by drinking. But Stephen's life and death felt much more visceral to me. And that experience got me thinking really seriously about the ways I use and abuse alcohol. To put it simply, I drink too much. I'm not the kind of drinker to get loaded and wrap my car around a telephone pole. I've never missed work because of a hangover. but when I drink, I really drink.

Where you might have a beer after work and a glass of wine with dinner, I'll have two or three pints of beer and then maybe a cocktail and just a couple of sips of whiskey and then a half a bottle of wine with dinner and maybe a drink or two or three during the movie. That's not every night. Well, maybe during Christmas or maybe when we're at the cottage for a couple of weeks, it's every night. And there was a real creep in my drinking habits during the worst of the pandemic.

It felt like more than ever, we as a culture were giving each other permission to use alcohol as a coping mechanism in those weird times. Thirsty Thursdays were sometimes giving away to Wanting Wednesdays, if that's a thing. Again, I was just drinking too much. I guess in my mind I was one of those gray area drinkers, or what Catherine Fairbairn flatly calls a functional alcoholic. And recently something was changing.

I found that the more I drank, the more joyless the experience was. I'd have that euphoric rush after the first drink or two, that warm surge as the liquor hits the bloodstream. And then I'd spend the rest of the evening chasing that feeling and mostly winding up feeling sad and inward. And while I can hold my liquor without getting sloppy, I'm deeply vulnerable to the emotional effects of a hangover. Anxiety is the term the kids use these days and it feels spot on. It's when your nerves are raw and scorched and the euphoria is long gone.

When you can suddenly reflect on the stupid things you said and did the night before, on the money you wasted on drinks you didn't need. You can suddenly imagine things you could have been doing instead of getting hammered and the things you won't be doing today because you feel like shit. All the emotional connections you won't make with people who need you because you're hanging on

by an emotional thread yourself. That price is high. Far too many weekends lost to anxiety and sourness and self-loathing. So for all those reasons I have not had a drink since New Year's Eve. Now before you get too excited, I have long practiced dry January and it often stretches into February. But it's April now. And I have never fully committed to stopping drinking. But that's what I'm doing now.

I'm not going to turn this series into a therapy session, but I'd like to share some of the questions that are coming up for me now that I've made that commitment. I've already talked a bit about the blunt force of alcohol marketing, but I'm also really interested in the ways that alcohol use is framed in music and literature and film. So in the next episode, we're going to explore that idea some more. We're going to look at alcohol in popular culture and we're going to do it with the help of psychoanalysis. No, really.

I think this is where you start, which is that psychoanalysis begins from the standpoint that people don't always do things for the reasons they think they do them and they don't always think things for the reasons they think they think them. You don't always say things for the reasons you think you say things. That's right. We're going to put pop culture on the couch and try to figure out what the movies are telling us about why and how we drink. us about why and how we drink. And by the way, some time has passed since we recorded this episode and it's now been over a year since I stopped drinking. On Drugs is produced by Hadil, Abdul Nabi and me. I also created original music for

this episode. Our executive producers are Chris Oak and Cecil Fernandez. Tanya Springer is senior manager of growth and Arif Noorani is director of CBC podcasts. All right. That was the first episode of the brand new season of On Drugs. Episode two is waiting for you right now. Just search for On Drugs wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow so you don't miss an episode. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.