How Does Alcohol Really Affect Your Mental Health? w/ Jason Kilmer
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, 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. We all know alcohol and mental health are connected, but what does the science actually say? Doctor. Jason Kilmer, a leading researcher from the University of Washington, joins us to break down how alcohol impacts anxiety, depression, sleep, and emotional regulation. Discussed why drinking to take the edge off often backfires, how alcohol myopia alters decision making, and the surprising link between alcohol use and suicide prevention.
Mike Hardenbrook:We're cutting through the myths and focusing on what the research actually tells us about alcohol and mental health, whether you're looking to better understand your habits or simply learn more about alcohol's effect on the brain. This conversation is packed with science backed insights and practical takeaways. Okay, Jason, thanks for coming back today. It's good to see you.
Jason Kilmer:Good to see you too. Fun to get to do this again.
Mike Hardenbrook:Okay. Today, we're gonna talk about alcohol and mental health, and you spent your career researching alcohol's impact on mental health. So why don't you give us a little bit of background? What sparked your interest in that area in regard to mental health? I know that we talked about, you know, the Just Say No program.
Mike Hardenbrook:What specifically in the mental health space were you attracted to?
Jason Kilmer:I think it's really interesting how far we've come as a field with substance use and mental health. You heard in the last, time we had the chance to connect, talking about the Bar Lab research. We know expectancies matter and people's drinking motives matter. So if someone says, I don't like how I feel, I want to feel better, I mean that counts as a motive, that counts as a potential expectancy. But I think that when I first got into this field, if someone went to counseling for example and says I'm really really depressed, I'm also drinking a lot, the mindset, what, three decades ago was you're going have to get that substance use taken care of before we can address the mental health needs.
Jason Kilmer:And people would literally be told, go work on the drinking, once that's under control then we can work on whatever you're coming in for for mental health. It was in the late ninety's you start to see more of a shift where it's like why would we possibly turn someone away who is seeking help, particularly if they are intertwined. And so looking at ways in which a mental health issue could be caused, made worse, exacerbated by someone's substance use became of interest to folks, as did what if the reason someone is using is to self medicate. And so it's really, really acknowledging that both things can be co occurring for someone, and how do we lessen suffering for people? How do we help people?
Jason Kilmer:How do we get people to where they want to be around things like mental health?
Mike Hardenbrook:What do you think that the mentality was back then around that that you had to do one before the other?
Jason Kilmer:I mean, I think it did fit. This is purely my own take on it, but, again, go back to the eighties. The music was fantastic. Let's we can all agree on that. And, we were a very just say no, abstinence only society.
Jason Kilmer:That's where things were. I'll remind you that with college students, we had no published showing that anything we did in prevention, successfully reduced drinking or consequences, but we did have 12,000 Just Say No clubs in the country. So that's very, very firmly where we were. It was this abstinence only, zero tolerance type of thing. And so also think that there was maybe less comfort with clinicians addressing mental health and potentially co occurring substance use.
Jason Kilmer:But as the research started to show, and I think as people started to look at how do we best help and best serve people, I think you definitely did see a shift. I made reference in our last time we met to working at the Evergreen State College, I was really really lucky that I worked at a school that said if we build it, will they come? What if we put an addictive behavior specialist in our counseling center? They had not had one, it was not something that was commonly in place on college campuses. And they said, let's see what happens.
Jason Kilmer:And by what, halfway through winter quarter of my first year there, the number of students self referring to meet with me outnumbered those that were referred by my colleagues in the Counseling or Health Center. So I think that people like my colleagues at Evergreen have said maybe we need to make sure we are addressing all the needs of people as we look at more holistic care became really, really groundbreaking.
Mike Hardenbrook:Yeah, it certainly seems a a much more holistic approach because I mean, as we know, many people drink because their mental health is not good And then when they drink, it causes their mental health to get worse. And so, you know, it's this cycle that people get into. And so without addressing both of those, it seems really difficult to get out of that cycle.
Jason Kilmer:Absolutely. I always cite Laurie Davidson when she worked with the Suicide Prevention Resource Center, they did a foundational paper at one point for people who worked on college campuses to find out what comes first. Is it that people get depressed and they drink to self medicate, or that enough unwanted things happen while drinking that they start to get depressed. I cheated on my partner and they're done with me. I lost the love of my life.
Jason Kilmer:I showed something that wasn't mine to share, my friends want nothing to do with me. I went out instead of working on that paper that was due, I failed it. I might lose my financial aid, and they started getting depressed. What they said was both pathways are completely possible, yet it seems that the latter on college campuses is the most dominant. It's that things that happen because of someone's drinking tends to contribute to unwanted, affect, unwanted mood, these mental health challenges.
Jason Kilmer:And it led Laurie to say, you know, if you want to be a campus that does good suicide prevention, do good alcohol prevention because alcohol prevention is suicide prevention. And, I was like, that's very, very powerful. Can I quote you on that? And she said, yes. There's Laurie Dairdson and her amazing quote.
Jason Kilmer:But if someone tells me, I didn't even drink until I got really down and I kind of numb myself, they're clearly pointing to an order, a temporal order. I got depressed and then I started drinking. But for a lot of people, they have a tough time separating it out. I was drinking, I cheated on my partner, the relationship ended, I started drinking more, I got more depressed, my friends were like wow, you're not very fun to hang out with, like all these things progress and it makes it very, very hard to disentangle what did come first. In some ways, it doesn't matter as much which comes first, it matters you know, how do we do we best meet the needs of the person who's hoping to make a change?
Mike Hardenbrook:Yeah. I love that. And I mean, it makes total sense and it does sound like so intertwined. I have some questions here I want to go through, but before we do, I want to ask you what's one surprising or misunderstood that, you know, a way alcohol affects mental health that maybe people don't talk enough about?
Jason Kilmer:I think that the one big misunderstanding is what it means for your inhibitions to be lowered. I think people use that phrase all the time. Don't think they know what it means. If people are like, well, was out drinking and my inhibition's lowered. What's your understanding of how that works?
Jason Kilmer:Well, the inhibition's lower. It's like, great, but what does that mean? There's researchers, Steele and Joseph, nineteen ninety. It's a groundbreaking article where they described a phenomenon called alcohol myopia. I wear contact lenses because I'm myopic.
Jason Kilmer:It means nearsighted. It doesn't mean we get nearsighted when we drink, but it means the cues we intend to do. Steele and Joseph said, if you're out drinking, there are two types of cues in your world. Impelling cues that tell you, yes, I want to do this, and inhibiting cues that tell you, yeah, and here's where I probably shouldn't. So impelling cues could include, this is an epic party or this person I'm talking to is super cute or super funny or these drinks are delicious.
Jason Kilmer:I know I said I'd only have two, I want more. Inhibiting cues could include, look at all the phones that are out and pointed at me. Like, I'm doing, this is getting shared or recorded. Or I have a test tomorrow or I need to be up early tomorrow. Steele and Joseph showed that the more and more and more we drink, the more alcohol narrows the attention, our attention to the most salient internal, like what we're feeling, and the most salient external, what's around us, cues.
Jason Kilmer:Of those two types of cues, what tend to be the most salient? The impellant. And that's what it means for our inhibitions to go down. Someone when sober says, I would never drink and drive, and when you ask them why, all the inhibiting cues are there. I could lose my license, I could wind up in jail, I could kill somebody.
Jason Kilmer:Everything I worked so hard for could be gone like this. If someone's had a lot to drink, it's late, they're tired, what's the impelling cue? I wanna go home. Wait, there's my keys. Look, there's my car.
Jason Kilmer:What are the inhibiting cues? All the ones that were there before, and now they've even been added to. I'm not walking so well, and at least two of my friends tried to get my keys for me. But when we get above a point 06% blood alcohol level, judgment and decision making goes down, and Steele and Joseph used this concept of myopia to explain that again, it narrows our attention to the most salient internal and external cues. Those impelling start to win out at the expense of the inhibiting.
Jason Kilmer:I'll give one more example as I move to mental health.
Mike Hardenbrook:Please do.
Jason Kilmer:Two people walk into a party, one runs into the other one pretty hard and neither of them have been drinking. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't see you. My bad. You okay?
Jason Kilmer:You okay? Two people. One or both are above a point o six. One runs into the other. What can happen?
Jason Kilmer:Fight. What's the impelling cue? Oh, no. Guy's calling me out. I gotta fix this.
Jason Kilmer:What's the inhibiting cue? Wow. That guy's bigger than me. Or I'm alone. This guy have three friends with him.
Jason Kilmer:Or that's a police officer right over there. And if I swing first, I'm the instigator. I'm the one getting in trouble. You can explain literally every regretted decision through the eyes of this model. So now move to things like mental health and even something like suicide.
Jason Kilmer:Someone hasn't been drinking and they have the thought, what if I ended my life? And they are flooded with the inhibiting cues. I have heard students say things like, I have a crisis plan with my counselor, I know what to do. I wouldn't do that to my family. I had a student say I wouldn't want my dog to wonder where I was and that led to them choosing to not act on that, and if that's what kept someone alive, fantastic.
Jason Kilmer:This could get better tomorrow. I have coping strategies I can use. I could talk to a family member, could talk to a friend. If someone's had a lot to drink, what's the impelling cue when they have the thought, what if I killed myself? The impelling cue is I hurt.
Jason Kilmer:I don't want to feel what I'm feeling anymore. We see such a disproportionate ratio of alcohol on board during not only suicide attempts, but even self injury without the intent to end one's life. So I think the big misunderstanding is that when someone is feeling really really down, and says if I drink it will help me feel better, like I will somehow numb this. On the contrary, it can actually lead to focusing even more on the very very upsetting things. And because judgment and decision making is affected, our ability to think critically about any action we take is potentially really significantly impaired.
Mike Hardenbrook:First of all, you for educating myself about that because I've honestly probably couldn't have given a good answer to like what does uninhibited mean? And I think anybody listening here, that is a real educated answer and a way to look at things and what really goes on when you do drink and what the consequences could be.
Jason Kilmer:Thank you. I appreciate that. It's heavy content and I didn't mean to turn to something certainly we're talking about mental health, but when we look at, a quote like alcohol prevention is suicide prevention, especially if people are really having a tough time and they're increasing their drinking, that becomes, that becomes concerning.
Mike Hardenbrook:Absolutely. So a lot of people talk about the short term effects of alcohol, like, you know, they feel bad or they're hungover or whatever. But what about the long term effects? Because the brain and mental health obviously are connected. So what does the research show about alcohol's role in our emotional regulation and brain changes?
Jason Kilmer:It's a good question and, you know, certainly there's research that shows that while the brain develops throughout life, certainly up to the age of 25, there's development in the brain that would be noteworthy for people being very mindful of what drinking looks like, when people are younger. When people say, does it really make sense to wait until 21? Yes, and technically the science might even say it makes sense to wait until 25, just because of development that's happening in the brain. As someone that does work about harm reduction with college students, we tend to focus on what might be forty eight hours in the future and less forty eight years in the future. However, we do meet some students that are like how's this going to affect me when I'm in my 60s?
Jason Kilmer:And so we can focus on those longer term things. Certainly risk of addiction and alcohol use disorder. There are physical concerns, cirrhosis of the liver, there's something called Korsakoff syndrome, which in many ways, in as user friendly a term as I can put it, it's like an alcohol induced it's very similar to Alzheimer's but it's different. Very dramatic impacts on things like memory. And so certainly we worry about, as you've probably seen in the news recently, elevated risk of things like cancer, so we do look at in those big picture opportunities that there can be some long term effects that people would want to be mindful of as well.
Mike Hardenbrook:Yeah, unfortunately I was one of those college kids that said I'll worry about it forty eight years in the future, not forty hours. So many people, you know, when it comes to mental health, want to take the edge off in the evening. That was actually my go to. It was the only way to kind of switch off between working because I was an entrepreneur and I was always on. And when I opened a bottle of wine, was the only way to signal it.
Mike Hardenbrook:How does occasional drinking like that end up turning into a habit for self medicating for stress and anxiety?
Jason Kilmer:This is gonna be a flaky answer and it has to be. You know, I mentioned the last time you and I met that there are only three laws in psychology. I jokingly say one of them is that everything has to spell a cool acronym. One of the other laws is we always leap at the chance to make up a word. And in psychology, we talk about the biopsychosocial model that acknowledges there are family history, genetic underlying physiological issues, there are environmental issues, and then there are psychological expectancies, motives and so on.
Jason Kilmer:So for any one person, the answer could vary. It's a flaky answer as I say, and yet again, it has to be. I think part of it can just be you brought up the concept of mindfulness and I think that becomes important. When I say I'm going to have a drink now, is that because I really want to have a drink tonight or is it because that's kind of the routine I've gotten into? And you also can look at what is it that's relaxing me.
Jason Kilmer:I gave the example when we met last time about tobacco use and misperceived norms. It's always amazing to me when I talk to people that are looking at making changes in smoking. And they'll say, one of the things that's really, really hard is that it relaxes me so much. If all you did was look at someone's body when they're smoking cigarettes, you would not think they're relaxed. They're using a stimulant, nicotine, their heart rate's gone up, Nothing looks relaxing.
Jason Kilmer:But what is relaxing about a smoke break? The ability to say, you know what? I'm done with all of you for the next five minutes. I'm gonna go outside. They're taking deep breaths.
Jason Kilmer:They're getting away from stressors. The worst thing someone can do when they're trying to quit smoking is stop those chances to breathe and get away from people and take a break, because what's relaxing about a smoke break is that break, frankly. And so if at the end of the day, open up a bottle of wine, put your feet up, turn the TV on, take a deep breath, it could be that level of unwinding that's driving that relaxation as much as anything else. So it's really hard to separate out at some point because alcohol as a central nervous system depressant, at least initially, the impact is that it's gonna kind of slow things down a bit. And so if someone says when I drink alcohol, it relaxes me, that's true.
Jason Kilmer:If one sip in, someone says I'm relaxed now, that's probably the expectancy which you and I talked about last time as much as it is the deep breath and the and the feet up getting away from work.
Mike Hardenbrook:Totally. I mean, I talk about that sometimes because let's say somebody's doing mindful drinking and they're on a day that where they've already committed that they're not gonna drink and they're really having cravings and like, I I, you know, I really wanna drink. I really wanna drink but you need to stop and ask yourself, what do you really want? Do you really wanna relax? Do you really wanna unwind?
Mike Hardenbrook:Do you really wanna turn off the light switch as I said before? Because a lot of times you got to look at that and then you say, okay, I just want to relax or I want to blow off some of this stress. What other ways can you do that? Because alcohol is not the only thing and as we know that that's only a short term fix anyways. It just pushes whatever stress or anxiety that you have off.
Mike Hardenbrook:And so, yeah, like I think that the so you can switch the ingredient, you know, I am going to kick off my feet up with a drink, but it's just not gonna contain alcohol.
Jason Kilmer:You know, you brought up a really important point and, I brought up Alan Marlatz's name last time. Alan, did a lot around when people are saying, wanna try and not drink. Even if their goal isn't total abstinence, I wanna try and not drink today. What do I do when I have a craving? Alan talked about the concept of urge surfing and what he said was an urge is a wave that comes and goes and if you do nothing at all, it will go away on its own.
Jason Kilmer:The problem is if as that wave is ascending, someone says this craving is really bad, I'm going to go ahead and have a drink, it immediately makes the craving go away and what it does is it reinforces drinking, because it made something aversive and uncomfortable, like a craving, go away. When the truth is, giving it time, doing anything else to help relax, it will make that go away. We can use that same type of model with everything like door checking for someone who has some checking compulsions, we can apply the exact same thing to things like substance use. If I'm anxious, did I lock the door? Don't check it, it'll go away on its own.
Jason Kilmer:But if I check and I go, okay, the door's locked, I quickly reinforced checking because it made that anxiety go away. So the point you make about if someone's having a craving, it's recognizing it's not gonna keep going up and up and up and up. It will, in time, go away, and it's it's having faith in that and it's believing the, what, research since the eighties that has shown that that's very much the way that cravings work in the body.
Mike Hardenbrook:Yeah. I love urge surfing. That's one of my go tos for sure. And there's a couple of them, and I'll just mention them. Like, EFT tapping, think, works really well.
Mike Hardenbrook:Breath work, even, like, something called the physiological sigh where you basically take two sips into the nose and kinda resets your nervous system. We're just going for a walk or or giving a pause. Giving it, like, one one guess that we had was basically I'm not gonna say I can't drink. I'm just gonna say I can't drink right now, which is like a ten, fifteen minute rule. And so in ten or fifteen minutes, if you really, really want to and you haven't been feeding that urge the whole time and you still want to, then you could either recommit to more time or just give in because usually that that will plateau and start to subside.
Jason Kilmer:Absolutely.
Mike Hardenbrook:So, tell us a little bit about alcohol and depression. What does the latest research actually tell us about the link between drinking and mood disorders?
Jason Kilmer:I mean, that alone, we could do a quarter long class on that and obviously Sorry
Mike Hardenbrook:to load that up for you. And by the way, you have I didn't get to respond earlier. You have not given any flaky answers. All of your answers are all fantastically entertaining and on point.
Jason Kilmer:The day is still young. We'll see where we go. He's got a flaky answer in there. I think that what the science shows first is that issue about myopia that I described. Decisions we make while drinking are different than ones we might make either below a point o six or when we're not drinking at all.
Jason Kilmer:So things said, things done, certainly can be noteworthy. I think that, the research on alcohol and sleep is very, very clear. If people say, when I drink at night, it helps me fall asleep, they're telling the truth. Alcohol as a depressant slows the body down. We can ask people, unless you've been drinking, what do you notice about your sleep?
Jason Kilmer:Tell me about your dreaming. People are like, woah, how did you know? I don't dream at all. Or if I do dream, it's crazy vividly right before I wake up. Here's why.
Jason Kilmer:When if you look at what a perfect night's sleep looks like, we have many different stages of sleep, different brain waves present at each. Simply, we talk about REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, where we do our dreaming, and we talk about non REM, which are the other stages of sleep, and probably most well known is deep sleep. Sleep experts make clear REM is overrated. It's not that more REM is better, but instead we want a night that as the night progresses, time in REM gets longer, longer, longer, time in deep gets less and less and less. If we go to bed with a positive blood alcohol level and stay at a positive the whole night, the brain waves needed to kick into REM sleep don't happen.
Jason Kilmer:We get our hours, we get our quantity, the quality is not there. What's the impact of a night of REM deprived sleep? We see an increase the next day in anxiety. The brutal irony is I'm sure you understand is what if someone says that's why I drink at is to help me unwind, help me relax. It can literally cause anxiety the next day.
Jason Kilmer:An increase in daytime sleepiness, when we look at things like feeling down, feeling depressed, that low energy, that being tired can be a symptom and even something that people continue to struggle with. An increase in irritability, feeling on edge, shorter fuse depending on what's going on with a family member, a partner, someone someone's dating, a co worker, and so there's that increase in that irritability and there's also an increase in physical jumpiness, just literally feeling on edge, all packaged nicely with a quality of sleep that wasn't so hot. If 's at a positive blood alcohol level but hits a zero in the middle of the night, they typically wake up prematurely, abruptly, and even with some anxiety. If they continue sleeping, they go through what's called an acute REM rebound, where now they spend too much time in REM, not enough time in the other stages of sleep, vivid weird dreams right before they wake up. That REM deprivation, just like with complete REM deprivation, is associated the next day with increases in anxiety, sleepiness, irritability, and jumpiness.
Jason Kilmer:If people drink multiple nights in a row, these effects are additive or cumulative. If someone takes a night off, the body plays catch up. We all have had the next night's sleep, whether anyone's ever touched a substance in their life or not. Why do I know that? Because lots of things cause REM deprivation, including not sleeping, sleep deprivation.
Jason Kilmer:Think of the last time you were up all night or only got an hour or two of sleep. The next day, if you could pull it off, you sleep for ten, twelve hours. How do you feel when you wake up? Tired, groggy. It's like, how do you feel tired?
Jason Kilmer:You got twelve hours of sleep. Because quality, different than quantity. We slam so fast in the deep and so immediately into REM, that's what insomnia is. That rapid cycling leads to difficulty both falling and staying asleep. Once people get to sleep, too much time at REM, not enough time in the other stages of sleep, increase in fatigue the next day.
Jason Kilmer:It's not even until the next night the body sleep cycle approximates something normal. So if you consider the words that I've managed to say in describing this: anxiety, irritability, jumpiness, sleepiness, fatigue. A number of mental health issues can include those very words among the diagnostic criteria for them. And any changes people make toward either choosing to not drink on a given night, or if they reduce their drinking to a lower blood alcohol level, they will improve their quality of sleep, and all of those words will improve, if not actually go away. If you go to a 0.05 blood alcohol level, all the alcohol is out of your system three hours and a few minutes later.
Jason Kilmer:So depending on when you go to bed, your sleep won't be affected at all, where it most would be affected minimally. So when people decide if I'm trying to be mindful about my drinking, if someone says I'm really trying to get these good things from alcohol and minimize these not so good things. Even setting a limit can make a big difference for them.
Mike Hardenbrook:Okay Jason, so if somebody's using alcohol to maybe manage their stress or their mental health, what's some small shift that they can take or make today that would change that pattern?
Jason Kilmer:That's such a good question. And I think that for any one person, they know themselves best. And that's the thing we always try and acknowledge is do we have lots of, I think, really cool facts about alcohol? We really do. And none of that matters to a person for whom they're their own best expert on themselves.
Jason Kilmer:It's what they do with that information. So if we give people lots and lots and lots of facts and information, their knowledge might go up. It doesn't necessarily change behavior. It all comes back to what might lead to someone changing their behavior. As nerdy as this sounds, as someone involved in research, I always encourage people to approach it like an experiment.
Jason Kilmer:In research, when we have a hypothesis that's supported, we all go, yeah. And we write it up, and we try and get it published. And when we have a hypothesis that's unsupported, we lose the yay part, but we still write it up and try and get it published. Because you can learn as much from an unsupported hypothesis as you can from one that is supported. If someone says, today, I'm gonna try and do the following, and it works, fantastic.
Jason Kilmer:Do not blow that off as a fluke. Recognize, like, what did I do to set myself up for the success? And it's really celebrating that. If someone says today, I'm gonna try blank. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't mean they've failed.
Jason Kilmer:It doesn't mean that, well, I guess this behavior change wasn't meant for me. It means, what do I need to do differently tomorrow? What do need to do differently next time? So whatever one thing a person does, that's up to them. And I would never pretend to say, here's the top three things someone could do, because what for any one person, what they choose to do is gonna be most useful for them.
Jason Kilmer:I think that, it's really, really, really viewing, successes as a reason to keep, you know, what can I take from this? How can I keep this momentum going? But not being discouraged if something doesn't go the way that they hoped that it would. We talk a lot about the distinction between a slip or a lapse with any one goal and then a full blown relapse. If I say tonight, I'm gonna try and not drink, and I do, course correct.
Jason Kilmer:What can I do tomorrow? If I'm really gonna try and not drink, what can I do differently? If I say I'm only gonna drink two tonight, but I snuck in a third, hey, if I normally would drink six, I still have cut my drinking in half. That's amazing. And what do I need to do tomorrow to really make sure I do meet that goal?
Jason Kilmer:So I think it's just it's really, again, kind of nerdy to view it in that, through that researcher lens, but I think that that takes the pressure off in a big way. If you're constantly saying, well, the hypothesis wasn't supported again, maybe it's time to call time out and say do I need to get more input on this. And I think that's the final thing I'll say, is there are so many, whether if it's for mental health, so many counseling based resources, if it's for alcohol, so many opportunities to look at behavior change that it's getting support if people need it and knowing that if they need support in changes around what they're doing with substance use or mental health, we're in a world right now that's very well equipped to support that type of thing.
Mike Hardenbrook:I mean, makes me feel really good to hear you say things that I think somebody that's so done you know, dedicated their life to research around this because, I mean, I don't first of all, I don't think it's nerdy because I think approaching it like an experiment really lifts a lot of the pressure as you said there. I mean, what's the worst can go do that experiment. If it doesn't work out, what's the worst? You're back to where you are. And I think also what works for somebody doesn't work for another.
Mike Hardenbrook:Like, I mean, for for example, I do breath work, but I I barely seldomly do I tell other people to do because it's hard, and most people won't won't do it. And and I don't think and so unless it speaks to you, pick the things that work for you or am I drinking a lot? I don't know. Does it feel a lot to you? Because if it feels a lot to you, even if it's two glasses a couple times a week, then you can change that.
Mike Hardenbrook:Or, you know, it might be quadruple that for somebody else, and it it doesn't. You know? But you get to define that, and that's what I'm taking away from what you're saying, which I is why I love the harm reduction sort of philosophies.
Jason Kilmer:Well, Mike, I just wanna thank you for I appreciate your attitude. I appreciate your positivity. I thank you for the chance to talk about stuff like this. We publish lots of things in journal articles that will will never make their way into, in quotes, the real world. And through things like what you're doing, it's a chance to get a lot of that science out there.
Jason Kilmer:So I appreciate the chance to be a part of that.
Mike Hardenbrook:Yeah. It's been amazing. Why don't you is there anything new that you got upcoming? It could be even just travels, something exciting, or research that you're doing.
Jason Kilmer:I'm going to New Orleans next week, for, and I've and my wife has never been, so we get to travel to New Orleans for the first time together as a couple. I've been there for conferences many time, but I'm receiving an award, which feels like the most immediate, very exciting thing in my, next seven days future.
Mike Hardenbrook:Since what's the award?
Jason Kilmer:It's from NASPA, which is the biggest, student affairs organization in the world, and it's the George Ku award for contributions to the college student, literature on how to support the students that we work with. So, it was described to me as a lifetime achievement award and I'm like wait, am I old enough to get a lifetime achievement award? So I will say it kinda stresses me out a little bit. I'm like, wait. Do I have to retire now?
Jason Kilmer:But, when you ask about any travels, that's the most immediate, travel in my future. And they said leave room in your suitcase to bring the award back. So pretty excited to get next week.
Mike Hardenbrook:Awesome. Well, I mean, it sounds like it's so deserved. So thanks, Jason, for coming on. It was just incredible.
Jason Kilmer:Thank you very much. Thanks for doing what you do.
Mike Hardenbrook: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.
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