The Current - ‘Grey-area’ drinking, and asking hard questions about alcohol

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

In the new season of CBC podcast On Drugs, Geoff Turner examines his own relationship with alcohol, and how a deeply personal tragedy led him to ask who he would be without it.

Viking. Committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. Learn more at Viking.com. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. After a few years away, the CBC podcast On Drugs is back. The series has looked at the history and pop culture role of drugs. And this season's first episode dives into one drug in particular that gets special treatment. One drug that stands alone and that's alcohol.

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. That's Jeff Turner, host of On Drugs. He's examining his own relationship with alcohol. Jeff Turner joins us from our Vancouver studio. Jeff, good morning.

Hi, Matt. Alcohol is the most popular recreational drug in the world, I think it's fair to say. Why do you think it took until now for you to do an episode all about alcohol? Um, I guess the way I put it in the show is that it seemed like maybe it was a little too big and a little too present in my own life to address really directly. I'd always wanted to. I'm fascinated by drug culture of all kinds, but this was the one, I guess, that, and maybe in the back of my mind, I don't think I was thinking of it really consciously, but maybe the realization that if I was going to dive into it seriously as a journalist and a

storyteller, I was going to have to address some things about my own relationship with alcohol really directly, and maybe I just wasn't ready for that. I'm gonna get to that in a moment, but there is, I mean, society looks at alcohol in a different way, right? As you say in the podcast, it's alcohol and other drugs that we talk about. Yeah, it's really peculiar, isn't it, that we kind of set it off as a separate category and there's sort of, it's like the way I heard one person put it, it's the one drug in our culture where the social pressure is the opposite. It's like, wait, you're not gonna have a drink? You know? We're all going out, we're all having fun, are you gonna be a wet blanket?

But we treat it completely, you know, if you talked about crack cocaine or heroin the same way, you'd sure get a funny looking at. So yeah, it just occupies a huge and very distinct place in our culture. You have had a relationship, if I can put it that way, with alcohol for some 40 years. Go back to that night in 1983. What happened then? Jared Slauson Yeah, you heard a little bit of it there in the intro and I think that it was probably completely unremarkable to a lot of Canadians to hear how I was introduced to alcohol. It was just like so many of us, you know,

just a situation where alcohol was available and we were having fun, but I just loved it. You know, there's just no other way of putting it. I absolutely love alcohol. I love the way it makes me feel, up to a very clear point. And from that moment, I always wanted it to be part of fun in my life. And it was always, and for a lot of my life, you know, I don't, it's not all dark. I still have really fond remembrances of amazing times in my life that involved

a lot of alcohol, but then there came a tipping point. Pete How would you, I mean, and when you take a look at that evolution, it's not just, you know, the wine that you had in 83, I mean, how would you describe the way that your relationship with alcohol evolved over time? I guess I would say that certainly by the measures, I think it was probably a big eye-opener for a lot of people when a couple of years ago the Health Canada released those new guidelines that said that really safely you can't drink more than a couple of drinks a week, literally two drinks a week. Well, let me tell you, Matt, I've been drinking more than two drinks a week pretty much since that day in 1983.

It's really hard to sort of categorize yourself as a drinker, but when I drink, I like to drink a lot. And for many, many years, that was largely contained to weekends. But over time, it crept across the week. And I think the thing maybe that made it really feel obviously problematic to me was over the course of the pandemic. And I think a lot of people had this experience where I realized that it wasn't about celebration or fun anymore, and it probably hadn't been for a lot of years. It was about deadening feelings. And we gave ourselves permission to do that, right?

Culturally, that was the pandemic, martini, crantini, whatever. I mean, people did all sorts of things in that weird time to make it okay to drink too much. Oh, I still remember the excitement that you could get beer delivered in Vancouver. I was getting my favorite beer delivered to my doorstep and oh, what a treat and how cute that is.

Yeah, and all the cute memes and we were really, I think as a culture supporting each other., obviously people were figuring out what to do in a new and troubling time and we were finding healthy and unhealthy ways to respond to that. But one of the ways I found, well, it wasn't a new discovery either, I'll be clear about that. But it was over that time that I realized that, you know, I'm not drinking for joy. I'm, I'm trying to erase feelings that I have about the world and feelings I have that I'm not addressing. Instead, I'm just obliterating them.

One of the things that you do in this episode of the podcast is you speak with a psychologist. Um, tell me about Catherine Fairbairn. Fairbairn, what, what does she do? One of the things that you do in this episode of the podcast is you speak with a psychologist. Tell me about Catherine Fairbairn. What does she do? Well, I'll tell you something really interesting. I had a complete lengthy interview with Catherine Fairbairn where I turned to her as an expert because she's a clinical psychologist at the University of Illinois in Champaign.

She runs an alcohol lab, which not very long ago in my life, I would have been knocking on the door to sign up as a volunteer for their experiments because they literally get people a bit drunk and see what happens. But I did a complete interview with her and treating her as an expert on the subject of alcohol. Oh, fascinating updates. And by the time I expert on the subject of alcohol, and all the fascinating updates.

And by the time I almost had the episode completely finished, I realized this just sounds so fake and so far removed from what's going on in my life and the feelings and the relationship that I have with alcohol, I have to do it all over again. And so I called her up kind of sheepishly and I said, hey, do you mind doing this interview again, except this time I'm going to put myself on the couch and you're going to be my counselor? And luckily for me, because she's a brilliant, but also a very kind person, she did that and we were able to sort of talk through things. I don't want to make it sound like it's one big therapy session. There's still some journalism going on there, but I realized I had to approach

it differently. One of the things that you do is you work through this checklist for alcohol and drug use and dependency. This is in the DSM, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And there are a bunch of questions that people can ask themselves that might reveal something about their alcohol use. What did going through that list reveal to you? I found that really revelatory. Again, it's this funny thing, Matt, where Again, it's this funny thing, Matt, where I knew I had a problem, but I actually found it really helpful.

It seems like it might be the most obvious thing in the world. But like, first of all, for all listeners out there, as far as psychologists and psychiatrists go, alcoholism is not a term. Nobody talks about alcoholism as alcohol use disorder. And it's a spectrum. And by answering these 11 questions, you can figure out where, if anywhere, you belong on that spectrum. And some of the questions are things that might be really obvious, you know, have you missed work because of alcohol? But some of them are things like, do you think about drinking a lot? And I'll tell you that that's a really clear one for me, that even when I wasn't drinking, I was thinking about opportunities, when's the next opportunity

to have alcohol in my system? And by answering these questions, you can figure out where you belong on the spectrum. And I'm firmly in the moderate alcohol abuse disorder category, but creeping towards the more serious end of things. And yet, I mean, you just said, like, I knew I had a problem, but the way that that manifests is not, as you said, somebody who misses work because of a hangover, somebody who has wrapped their car around a telephone pole or what have you. What is grey area drinking? Because this comes out of this conversation with Catherine. Again, this is not a technical term, but it's something that I found really useful.

I first heard it actually in a hockey dressing room, somebody mentioned the term, and it's this idea, I think it's probably something we used to call functional alcoholic, where, like I say to people, I've never been a pee your pants, wrap your car around a telephone pole type of drunk. I've got a huge tolerance for alcohol. And interestingly, tolerance of alcohol is one of the biggest predictors for alcohol use disorder. What do you mean? And I think that might sound really counterintuitive, but people who can take a lot more alcohol in without obvious,

with sort of the obvious falling down, slurring speech, obvious outward signs of alcohol, are more likely to develop alcohol use disorder. And I think that's a little bit counterintuitive, because I think, I sometimes say to people like, it almost would have been easier for me if I was a really sloppy drunk. You know, if people see Matt Galloway at the party and he's got the lampshade on his head and he's falling down the stairs and all that stuff. They're going to say, wow, he's got a problem, we should talk to him. Yeah, that guy's got a problem and it needs to be addressed. People didn't, people, some people close to me saw what was going

on, but it wasn't necessarily obvious to the world and I think maybe it would have been to my benefit. And that's why I call it, why people call it the gray area, because it's just not obvious. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways. Learn more at Viking.com.

Essential reading for everyone, Health for All is the instant number one national bestseller by Jane Philpott, former federal minister of health and Ontario lead on primary care. With over 6 million Canadians lacking basic health care, Philpott offers a prescription for a healthier society focusing on hope, belonging, and purpose. Available in hardcover and audiobook, narrated by Jane Philpott. What's anxiety? Because that's connected in some ways, right? Yeah, I think my experience, that's a term, I think it's the Gen Z folks popularized term. Much younger than me. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I always used to think of hangovers as predominantly like a physical experience, the experience of nausea and raging headache. But over time, I think the much more pernicious part of a hangover for me was that anxiety, the feeling of just deep, deep regret, anxiety, depression. And of course, the cycle with the alcohol, the quickest, simplest fix for anxiety is more alcohol.

And then you're into that awful cycle. So it's like, you know, I can absolutely keep myself together for all appearances. I look like I've got it together, but inside, like, I'm just, I've got this raging anxiety and regret and shame about what I did the night before. One of the ways that people perhaps deal with that, and I mean, I'm talking to you in January, is by going on, as we say, the wagon on dry January, that you're going to stop drinking,

that this will give you the illusion, as you say, of some control over that. And then you're somebody who practiced Dry January for many years, what do you make of it now? Yeah, like I consider myself kind of OG Dry January guy. I was doing it a long time ago, like 20 years ago, before people called it that. And I think there came to be a realization for me

that it was a trick that I was playing on myself, where probably by New Year's Eve, I would almost certainly have been drinking every single day for the previous 20. And escalating amounts. And so, you know, it gave me a bit of a reset and an opportunity to say to myself and to say to the world, Oh, you see, I can quit anytime I like. I'm in the driver's seat. You're not my master, alcohol. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then, of course, sometimes I'd go longer than January, too. Sometimes I'd go several months. But the trouble is, when I'd be back, it would be really pedal to the metal, like almost like catching up on lost opportunities to drink. And so I think for me, again, people's relationship with drugs,

their experience with drugs is so particular and so individualized. Like, I'd never, I would never say to anybody, I'd never lecture anybody, don't do that. Well, and that's not what the podcast is at all. No, no. I'm just saying that for me, I think maybe I should have converted dry January into a dry lifetime a long time ago. Pete Slauson Can I go back to the why of why you wanted to do this? You've hinted at this and one of the things that you say in the podcast is, as long as I've been drinking, I have seen the toll of alcohol around me. This is a really personal episode, not just because you're talking about yourself,

but also because of the why you are having this conversation in the first place. Do you mind just talking a little bit about your cousin, Stephen? Yeah. So, I guess it's two years ago now. Stephen was a year younger than me. He and his brother and me and my brother, we kind of felt like we were all brothers together. We got on like a house on fire. I remember epic Dungeons and Dragons sessions, all night Atari, craziness in the woods with slingshots, sort of all that old time Gen X childhood. And Stephen was an amazing guy, just incredibly funny, sharp, acid humor.

And he also had a really serious drinking problem that he struggled with and battled back for varying degrees with help of 12-step programs. And then again, I think the pandemic was a real exacerbating factor for him because it created an additional level of isolation in his life. He was back to drinking. And drinking... sorry, it gets really difficult here. He was basically holed up in his apartment getting alcohol delivered to his place until he finally had enough and he killed himself. And I'm sorry, we I was asked stack of various self-help books of all kinds, how to succeed in relationships.

And in the middle of the pile there was the big book from Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was just this stark, devastating reminder of what he'd been dealing with. And it was a year later, I guess, that that really, well, it was a really painful experience. And I think that might've been the final piece of recognition for me about making a decision about alcohol in my life. And the decision was that you were gonna stop drinking. Yeah. How comfortable are you?

There's, and you talk about this in the episode as well, um, about that, the stigma in some ways of admitting that you need to make a decision that you need to do something for you talking about this, you could have told the story without inserting yourself in it. You could have told the story without it being in many ways, such a personal story, but you have done that and that makes it even more powerful. I just wonder how difficult it was for you to do it a different way and it felt so unnatural and so false that I just thought that if I was going to do it at all,

the only way that I could do it and be true to myself was to talk about my own experience. I think especially partly because of the way I drink that I think there are people who have had, including Stephen, who had much more devastating issues with alcohol, to the point that it was absolutely, that it's devastating to personal health and things like that. And I wasn't really there, but I was, I had a serious problem with it. And I think there might be a lot of people out there like me who don't have the obvious problem but need to address it and maybe need a little

bit of help in getting to that realization. This comes to the point that runs through this whole, not just this season, but all of On Drugs, which is that when we think of a drug user, maybe in our minds we have this idea of who a typical drug user is, but a lot of what you're trying to do is interrogate and dismantle that concept, right? Yeah, and I think I've tried to do that in previous seasons too, where it's kind of human first. The reason that I set out to do a series about drugs in the very first place is, I always say that drug taking might be the most

definitively human activity there is. I think we're aware of other animals that maybe deliberately seek out fermented apples or what have you, but human culture, drugs are a huge part of what it is to be a human. And we look for intoxication. Not just intoxication, we look for ways to reduce obesity, to treat diabetes, to knock us out for surgery. And anything that's so distinctively human is going to be associated with some incredibly human stories, and that's always been my motive. That's my secret with the show, is it's just a framework that lets me get to really human

stories. And I find that as long as I put the human first, then you start to recognize what you have in common with the person who's been using heroin every day for 30 years and that maybe they're not the scary alien that you thought they were. Pete Slauson So, now that you're the human at the center of this, and again, this is not a finger wagging, you should stop drinking, you should look at it sober, curious lifestyle kind of approach. That's not what it is at all. But now that you're the center of this, what do you want audiences to think about as they listen to this?

Matthew Feeney I guess just that about, think about, reflect on where drugs belong in your own life for better or for worse. And a lot of it you might find is for better. And I try to be really upfront about that because I'm definitely not going to be a finger wagger. I remember being really angry when I was a teenager and seeing Lou Reed on an anti-drugs ad. Lou Reed of all people. Yeah, I just thought, you fraud, man.

You had your 30, 40 years of fun with drugs and now you're going to lecture me about it? I never want to be that, but I think, I guess it's a matter of sort of being intentional and conscious about things in your life. And that was maybe the big realization for me is that you actually can do a cost-benefit analysis of these things. And when I forced myself to do that, I was able to look at it and say, you know what, it's not doing the thing that I think it's doing, or it's not doing enough of it to warrant the cost. And I think if you think about that with

drugs in your life generally, like we've got a fascinating episode about Ozempic where the journalist Johann Hari takes us on his own really complicated journey with Ozempic and where he just barely comes out on the side of using Ozempic for weight loss or Wigovie in his case. And I think there's a lot to be learned in just taking the time to actually walk yourself through the cost benefits. It's so well done. And it's just, brave is an overused word, but it is brave of you to put yourself in the frame to tell this story, because I think a lot of people will relate with where you're coming from and what you went through. Jeff, thank you very much. Thank you, Matt. Jeff Turner is the host of On Drugs from CBC Podcast. The first episode of season three is out now.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and particularly how you think about your relationship with alcohol and that issue of sobriety. It's dry January, a lot of people doing dry January as a way to, as Jeff was saying, exert some sort of control perhaps, or just take a break from drinking. What about that idea of gray area drinking? What does that mean to you? to, as Jeff was saying, exert some sort of control perhaps or just take a break from drinking. What about that idea of gray area drinking? What does that mean to you?

Is that something that sounds familiar? We had a conversation earlier this week with Maureen Palmer and Mike Pond about that idea of being mostly sober and how sobriety, total sobriety and abstinence hasn't worked for Mike Pond. As you think about those issues, we would love to hear your thoughts on that relationship with alcohol and perhaps how you're rethinking that relationship. You can email us, thecurrentatcbc.ca. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.