E30: Gray Area Drinkers and Positive Alcohol Expectancies
01/15/21 • 16 min
2 Listeners
Gill discusses gray area drinkers. She explains the idea of the popular saying, “rock bottom is where you stop digging”, what misery threshold is, and how positive alcohol expectancies play a large role in how we drink. Gray area drinkers have a unique challenge of not having their drinking be bad enough to quit, but having it be bad enough to make them miserable all the time. She discusses this idea and why it is so hard for them to stay sober in this episode.
Resources I offer:
- Membership: Living a Sober Powered Life where you gain access to weekly episodes about navigating life without alcohol, weekly meetings, and a private community to get support. Use the code PODCAST to get 20% off your first month. https://www.soberpowered.com/membership
- Weekly emails on Thursdays where I explain the latest episode in more detail, share images to help you understand the concepts, share announcements, interviews, writing, discount codes and more. https://view.flodesk.com/pages/6107260617e156c4839768b5
- A free 3 day quit drinking challenge https://view.flodesk.com/pages/62f2cb3de5ea6b3d8aea4ab2
Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors. Learn more:
https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors
If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support my work https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered
Sources are posted on my website
Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Gill discusses gray area drinkers. She explains the idea of the popular saying, “rock bottom is where you stop digging”, what misery threshold is, and how positive alcohol expectancies play a large role in how we drink. Gray area drinkers have a unique challenge of not having their drinking be bad enough to quit, but having it be bad enough to make them miserable all the time. She discusses this idea and why it is so hard for them to stay sober in this episode.
Resources I offer:
- Membership: Living a Sober Powered Life where you gain access to weekly episodes about navigating life without alcohol, weekly meetings, and a private community to get support. Use the code PODCAST to get 20% off your first month. https://www.soberpowered.com/membership
- Weekly emails on Thursdays where I explain the latest episode in more detail, share images to help you understand the concepts, share announcements, interviews, writing, discount codes and more. https://view.flodesk.com/pages/6107260617e156c4839768b5
- A free 3 day quit drinking challenge https://view.flodesk.com/pages/62f2cb3de5ea6b3d8aea4ab2
Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors. Learn more:
https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors
If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support my work https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered
Sources are posted on my website
Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Previous Episode
E29: Alcohol and the Teen Brain
Gill discusses alcohol and the teen brain. She explains how bullying contributes to teen drinking and why teens tend to binge drink (hint: it has to do with their brains!). This topic connects back to episode 22 on anxiety, so you’ll learn more about brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) with an explanation on DNA and RNA. She will also discuss how teen drinking puts kids at risk to develop addictions later in life and some statistics on this topic. This episode is very interesting, so even if you didn't drink as a teen or have a teenager, you will still enjoy learning this information.
Key takeaways and sources are posted here.
There is now a Sober Powered email list you can subscribe to! Each Tuesday you will receive an email with the summary of the previous week's podcast episode. Click here to subscribe!
Follow Sober Powered on Instagram for more education and inspiration
Join the Sober Powered Facebook Group for extra support
And if you're enjoying this podcast, please leave a review on iTunes. This podcast takes so much effort and work to create, and each review increases the possibility that this podcast can be seen by people who may need it.
Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research.
Support the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered)
Next Episode
E31: If Alcohol is Toxic, Why Can We Drink it?
Gill discusses why humans are even able to drink ethanol in the first place. Ethanol is toxic, and we aren’t able to drink diluted versions of other alcohols without severe consequences, so she's been curious why we even evolved to process ethanol. She explains why scientists think we evolved enzymes to process alcohol, and what happens if you drink the other alcohols, which have very similar structures to ethanol. She ends the episode with a couple of stories about people consuming alcohol thinking it was just ethanol, but it was actually tainted with methanol.
Resources I offer:
- Membership: Living a Sober Powered Life where you gain access to weekly episodes about navigating life without alcohol, weekly meetings, and a private community to get support. Use the code PODCAST to get 20% off your first month. https://www.soberpowered.com/membership
- Weekly emails on Thursdays where I explain the latest episode in more detail, share images to help you understand the concepts, share announcements, interviews, writing, discount codes and more. https://view.flodesk.com/pages/6107260617e156c4839768b5
- A free 3 day quit drinking challenge https://view.flodesk.com/pages/62f2cb3de5ea6b3d8aea4ab2
Thank you for supporting this show by supporting my sponsors. Learn more:
https://www.soberpowered.com/sponsors
If you enjoyed this episode please consider buying me a coffee to support my work https://www.buymeacoffee.com/soberpowered
Sources are posted on my website
Disclaimer: all of the information described in this podcast is my interpretation of the research combined with my opinion. This is not medical advice.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Featured in these lists
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/sober-powered-the-neuroscience-of-being-sober-40547/e30-gray-area-drinkers-and-positive-alcohol-expectancies-10984978"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to e30: gray area drinkers and positive alcohol expectancies on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy