Journey to the Sunnyside

Welcome to Journey to the Sunnyside, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and of course, your own mindful drinking journey. This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free fifteen day trial. I'm your host, Mike Hartenbrook, published author, neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert. Welcome back to Journey to

the Sunnyside. I'm Mike Hartenbrook, and today I want to talk about something that comes up a lot, especially when it comes to our drinking and the phase of maybe you are wanting to make a change and you've been trying to make a change and it's just not working out the way that you thought it would be. It's a lot harder. And many times when this happens, we start to ask ourselves, you know, am I an alcoholic or do I have an addictive personality? And I'm speaking from personal experience because I definitely asked myself these questions many years back.

But honestly, in my view, these kinds of questions tend to do more harm than they do good. And many times it's really not helping you to change. What does it matter if you label something, you still have to figure out the route to that change and they can make you feel stuck and even worse, they could give you feelings like you have to figure out your identity and put a label on things before you're allowed to improve things. So let's talk about this a little bit and I apologize for my voice. I'm struggling with a sinus infection here, so I'm doing my best.

So bear with me, but let's start with some statements here and that is you are not your worst night. You are not that one time that you overdid it. You are not your habit. And you're definitely not a label Because the truth is most of us don't fall into this alcoholic category anyways. Stats show that something like eighty percent of people who struggle with drinking don't meet the criteria for a severe disorder.

Many times we're just drinking more than we want to, or more often than we feel good about. And we're stuck in these patterns that do not feel aligned with who we want to be. And that's not being a broken person. That is just being human. So I want to talk about one thing that I mentioned there, which is the concept of addictive personality.

I hear this all the time. You know, I just have an addictive personality, but here's the thing with that is that if you truly had an addictive personality, you'd be addicted to everything. You'd be addicted to cake. You'd be addicted to gambling and weed and TikTok and shopping and caffeine and literally every single thing. It's more likely that you've just built up a strong habit loop around this one thing, which is alcohol.

And that's actually good news because habits, they can be changed. So here's the better question. Is this behavior working for me? And not things like who am I and what label am I? And not, what does this say about me?

Just am I drinking a way that lines up with how I want to live? And that's the question that moves things forward. And that moves into this concept of what's next. And I want to talk about something called harm reduction. And if you've never heard of that, it's a totally different way to think about change.

So instead of needing to quit forever, put a label on yourself or hit rock bottom, harm reduction is just making things a little bit better, reducing your harm. Things like drinking less, taking breaks, swapping in something alcohol free when you normally wouldn't. Harm reduction isn't necessarily new. It might be more new to the mainstream when it comes to alcohol and it's been used in public health for all kinds of behavior change, more notably for other substances. And I got to interview some pioneers when it comes to harm reduction, like Doctor.

Andrew Tatarsky. If you haven't go listen to that episode, I also interviewed Doctor. Jason Kilmer a couple of weeks ago. He has some amazing insights when it comes to harm reduction. So guess what?

Even cutting back just a little bit can lead to real health improvements, both mentally and physically. And this concept of harm reduction says it doesn't need to be perfect. You just need to set up some goals that seem attainable and feel like good first steps to improving from where you are now and just move in the direction that you want to go. Now, I want to talk about a piece that most people skip, and I think this is such a key piece to improvement, to growth. And that is the concept of gratitude.

Gratitude is where change actually starts in my opinion, not motivation. It doesn't come from shame. It doesn't come from guilt comes from gratitude. Gratitude that you're even thinking about making these changes. Gratitude that you're taking the time to improve yourself by even listening to this podcast.

Gratitude that you woke up today to have another shot at doing things a little bit better. And gratitude that you care about how you feel because that's a huge step forward. But on the other side of the coin, things like shame, they keep you frozen. They keep you from moving forward. They keep you stuck in dwelling on the problem instead of progress and labels.

They kind of do the same thing. They box you in, but gratitude that feeds you that's energy. It puts you in a mindset where growth becomes possible. And that's what it's really all about. Not fixing yourself, not becoming somebody else, not defining who you are.

It's just about growing into who you are now without the things that are holding you back. All right. So here's a quick challenge for the week. Don't worry about figuring yourself out. Don't worry about putting on a label if that's what you're trying to figure out.

Just ask yourself, what is one thing that I could do differently today? And then go do it with gratitude that you can. So you're doing amazing. I hope you have a beautiful week and until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.

This podcast is brought to you by Sunny Side, the number one alcohol moderation platform. And if you could benefit from drinking a bit less, head on over to sunnyside.co to get a free fifteen day trial.