Episode 13: Creating Counter-Culture
Robbie Shaw:
This is Champagne Problems where we come together to explore the gray areas of drinking. This is a judgment free zone where we can all take a look at how we make decisions about our relationship with alcohol. Welcome back, let's jump right in with Sam and Patrick. What were the things at one point you thought you couldn't do without drinking?
Patrick Bosley:
Live.
Robbie Shaw:
Live. Yes. Eat, talk, sleep. The things that I prioritized early in my life which were very much centered around social situations, popularity, attraction by the opposite sex, all these things that are super important when you're younger. And when I first drank, alcohol gave me that false sense of all of those things. I was able to talk to girls. I was able to be funny. I was popular. I was in with the crowds. I was doing all the things. And so over time that became my dependence and I was not able to do any of those things without alcohol. So I could go to work. I could go to school, but anything outside of that, I felt I needed alcohol.
Patrick Bosley:
Mine is a little different, alcohol for me was more of a baseline. I never thought about what life would be like without it, because it was always there. And I think it was just so normal in my life and everybody's lives around me that it was just like part of my daily routine. It was just this unconscious behavior that it was part of me for so long. That question just never came up.
Robbie Shaw:
I agree. I wasn't thinking about that then either it was more about when it was removed, then it all came to light.
Patrick Bosley:
For me, when it was removed, there was so much relief involved, there was no fear about it for me.
I was not expecting that either, which is kind of cool. Once I kind of got out of that trap, one of the first things I realized was holy crap. I never needed this. Because I had lived unconsciously for so long. And I had 15 years of my life with a bunch of destruction, not a lot of positive memories.
Robbie Shaw:
Sam, your experience, I assume, is a little different. Let's hear it.
Sam Hamson:
It is. And honestly, I have to constantly fight this comparison piece of, I really want to agree and be like, oh, me too. And I can't, I don't even remotely relate. And maybe that's why I'm on the podcast. Is to also share some of that voice because I never felt that way about alcohol. The only thing that I felt like alcohol brought me that would be missing if I removed it is a place to be with others and fit in. Not any of the other stuff that you talk about in terms of helping me feel like I fit in or confidence or any of that, if anything, it gave me anxiety because I didn't enjoy it, made me not feel good. And I always felt like, why am I so weird? Why do other people enjoy this so much? They enjoy going out and getting drunk and I don't, it makes me anxious. It makes my stomach not feel good, all these things.
I was 21 when I decided that I didn't want to drink. I just wanted to be on date night and have a pretty drink, or I wanted to be at a rooftop bar and have a pretty drink. And I wanted to feel like it was girls night out. The minute that I realized that I could do all of that without alcohol in that pretty drink, it was fine. As long as I could partake and I could be there and I could be present, it's date night.
I want a pretty cocktail. And I would just order it without alcohol, or I would get to the bar before my friends would show up. And I would order, I don't know, soda, water with lime to make it look like I was drinking so that I didn't have to deal with the questions I immediately received. But that was really it.
I still had the thoughts of, why am I not like other people? Why do I not enjoy it like other people? Surely there's other people out there, I can't be the only one that's like 40 when I'm 21. I felt like an outlier in that sense. And I think that's what I really love about what we're talking about today with CounterCulture, there's got to be people out there that don't enjoy drinking that just want a place to go that actually have never had any type of consequence or problematic use that just don't like to drink.
And maybe that's part of the fight that even as a person, this far into my journey, I still feel this like, “oh, I should say what Patrick and Robbie are saying.” Or that's what speaks to people. And I just can't, I have to stand in my own kind of story. Mine is a totally different isolated experience.
Robbie Shaw:
Sam, that is hugely valuable. You have had a different experience with alcohol and there are plenty of people out there that have had the same experience or very different than ours. There's a reason why we go down the ladder on experiences with who our hosts are here. It's because we're trying to reach everybody and you're one end of the spectrum and I'm at the other. And I think that is hugely valuable. So please don't apologize for not being similar to us. I love that you shared that. So thank you.
Welcoming Molly Ruggere, founder and CEO of CounterCulture Club
Robbie Shaw:
Your experiences are exactly what I think a lot of people want and need to hear.
So today our guest is Molly Ruggere, founder and CEO of CounterCulture Club, which is based here in Charlotte, North Carolina. CounterCulture Club is a global alcohol-free community.
Molly Ruggere:
Hello. Thank you for having me.
Robbie Shaw:
Molly and I met a couple of days ago and had a conversation around what we were to speak about today. And I feel like we are very much in line with our missions and the way we think about life alcohol free. So Molly, let's get going. First question, let's start with just a brief look into your past. If you don't mind discussing that we don't need any war stories or anything, but what led you to change your drinking patterns?
Molly Ruggere:
So a brief look at my history. I didn't start drinking alcohol until college. My story is very similar to a lot of people's stories and the trajectory of it. I drank socially in college. I drank alcohol to escape the social anxiety that came with parties. It was also just college. Binge drinking is incredibly normalized. I balanced it with my schoolwork. I would drink on the weekends, binge drink on the weekends and then recover on Sundays and go to class. I was an honor roll student. I had eight internships. I was always trying to do the most. It wasn't really a concern for me. Of course there were those nights where crazy things would happen, but we would laugh it off the next day in the dining hall and move on with our lives.
So then after I graduated, I lived in DC for a summer. I worked at an internship, drinking if anything went down, it was less of a thing for me when I was in DC. Because I was working full time. Didn't really have that many friends, so I wasn't going out as much. But then I moved to New York City in 2012 for a music PR internship and moved there with two suitcases, no paid job. The whole romanticized “I'm moving to the big city” and moved in with an ex boyfriend and lived there for a couple of days and then found my own place. And my drinking, it was still the same as it was in college. We'd go out and get drunk with friends. And then I did my work and I had two nanny jobs and I was doing this internship.
I found a full-time job in PR and I was doing that. And then slowly, I just started changing my habits and the ways I thought about alcohol. I always thought that I would never like drinking during the day because it made me tired, but then I'd start going out for boozy brunches. And then that would turn into bar hopping. And then before you know it's five and you've been drinking all day long and it kind of snuck up on me. I didn't see when I was in it, how I was increasing my alcohol intake and doing the things that I always thought that I wouldn't do, like going out on a Tuesday and staying out till 4:00 AM at the bars because the bars are open till 4:00 AM every night in New York city. And when you look around and all your friends are doing the same thing, it's funny, you laugh it off.
This is normal. This is being in your twenties in the city. It really wasn't until 2015, it picked up. And then 2017 I'd say was when I started drinking to cope with negative emotions. Alcohol was definitely causing problems for me. I blacked out often when I drank. So I would do things I regretted like send a bunch of text messages or order a bunch of food and not pick it up, little things like that, but it would be embarrassing and just do the Sunday morning apology tour.
I was very insecure in my relationship. So I would get drunk and cry and call my boyfriend and just say, I don't think you love me anymore. And it was very dramatic and emotional and he just got fed up with it. And one night, we broke up and I never saw him again. And that was when I started self soothing. Everyday on the way home from work, I would pick up a bottle of wine and I would drink an entire bottle of wine every night. And that was what I used to make me feel less of my feelings that I was experiencing. And then I was depressed.
I was prescribed antidepressants and I didn't want to take them because I knew that they conflicted with alcohol and I chose to continue drinking rather than take the prescription. And I was also in a job that was really high stress. I wasn't happy there. I just didn't have anything going for me in New York. I had my friends and my social circle, all that I had was my social life and going out and drinking, I didn't have any activities I did. I didn't have any other outlets. I drank to escape the stress that my drinking was causing me. And my parents started to pick up on that something was off with me. I would call them regularly crying about my unhappiness with my job or my sadness over the breakup.
I came home for Christmas and that's when they could see the physical toll that the drinking was taking on me. My face was really bloated from alcohol and I was just crying all the time. I was just so emotional. And so they suggested that I come back to Charlotte. I was like, okay, I'll move back to Charlotte. So I quit my job.
I left all of everything I had built for six years in New York, left my friends. I didn't really say goodbye to that many people. My dad drove up to New York. We threw out a bunch of my stuff and put what we could in his car and drove back to Charlotte. And I moved in with them and I thought that that geographical change would make me feel better. And in a way it did, it made it a lot easier to get out of that cycle. But at the same time, I didn't realize that one of their stipulations was that I would stop drinking.
Also once someone acknowledges that you have a problem, it makes it a lot harder to pretend like you don't because you deep down will know if alcohol is causing you issues. And I don't think that for me, I could drink without guilt once that was exposed. I felt like I was going to get in trouble. So I was sneaking around and still drinking occasionally when I had the opportunity. But I got caught, same thing in high school. Every time I would do something, I would get caught.
At that point, my parents just said, “you need to do some kind of program. You can find something.” I didn't want to do AA, but they said figure something out. I ended up going to an AA meeting. My dad was in the program. And so he took me to my first meeting. And I remember, I didn't want to get a white chip. I just kept going and being a fly on the wall and observing. And then eventually he kept elbowing me to go get it.
And so I did, but I didn't want to commit to forever. I just was like, “I'll do what I need to do to pass it by my parents. But this is not a lifestyle that I want to subscribe to.” And so I just remember getting my white chip and sobbing because I was 27 and I was like, this is the end of my life. My social life is over and I'm surrounded by a bunch of older people. And I didn't see anybody my age and I wasn't happy about it.
Robbie Shaw:
Well, thank you for sharing that. That makes me think of two things. One is how familiar I am with that story personally. And for me specifically, New York city, I know exactly what you're talking about. Exactly.
That was exactly my story. I remember going and doing the same thing. I would walk out of work and I would go straight to a store and I would buy a pint of 110 proof blue label vodka. And I would drink it before I walked out of the store. But the other thing that stood out was someone recognizing your problem and you not recognizing it. That speaks so much to the normalcy of problematic drinking. If you want to call it that or just drinking in general, consistent drinking, you can put yourself in a group of people just like you and way worse.
Molly Ruggere:
Right. And there's always someone worse than you can look at and be like, oh, well I'm not puking over there.
The CounterCulture Club Mission, Helping People on Their Journey To Wellness
Robbie Shaw:
So let's talk about CounterCulture Club. So you come back to Charlotte, you start looking at things a little differently, a little introspection and so what leads you to the creation of CounterCulture?
Molly Ruggere:
So that came when I was about two years sober. I discovered a whole other world of sobriety resources and that was mainly through Instagram. I made an Instagram account, I think it was like my 200th day of sobriety and I decided I was going to post every single day and just write how it was going. And I did that every day until I hit my year mark. And through that I found Holly Whitaker, Ruby Warrington, all of these accounts and alternative paths to sobriety that really spoke to me, because not only was it people doing things differently and giving me other options and ways to look at things, I found a lot of resources on what was happening in my brain and how alcohol affects you and what it does to your body and why you're addicted to it.
It wasn't the simplicity of you have a problem. It's not alcohol, it's you, there's something wrong with you. And I just didn't like that. It didn't sit well with me. I didn't subscribe to the idea that because I chose or was gently led to this quitting that now I have a problem. Because I gave it up, I now have an issue, but if I just continued on drinking like everybody else, I didn't have a problem. It felt a little hypocritical that when you acknowledge that something isn't serving you, that's when you have the issue and not when you're just drinking and being merry, like everybody else.
So I found a lot of books. I just started educating myself and slowly over time, podcasts were really huge for me. I listened to Home Podcast, which is a podcast from Laura McKowen and Holly Whitaker. That was interesting to me too, because they talked about all kinds of these concepts that people weren't talking about anywhere else. And I didn't consciously realize my mind was changing, but it was changing. I was feeling more empowered about this choice. I was feeling like I was doing something good for myself. I felt like I had discovered the secret sauce or the life hack that other people didn't get. And over time I became grateful that I quit when I did, because not only did I save myself from a lot of potential damage, but I also am able to exceed my potential that I would have had had I kept drinking.
Robbie Shaw:
Yeah. CounterCulture.
Molly Ruggere:
Yes. So anyway, 2019 was when I started CounterCulture and I felt great in my sobriety. I had a good online community. I'd made a lot of friends through Instagram, but I didn't have an in-person community and I didn't want to go back to AA just to make friends. I said if something doesn't exist, I think I am capable of building it. And I know these people are out here. We have over 60 breweries in Charlotte, there has to be the other end of the spectrum of people that are sick of that kind of drinking culture.
And so I just put out the call and I said, I want to start this group, a social group for women that are looking to connect with other alcohol-free women in Charlotte. And I had a friend that was also sober. She was really supportive and it just started out being like a social meetup. We posted on meetup and Facebook and gradually over time it became bigger. And I turned it into an actual business in 2020. But basically what it is now is a global alcohol-free community. We're based in Charlotte, but we have a monthly membership that has members from all over the world. So we have people in New Zealand, London, Amsterdam, Canada, and California, and spread out all over. And then we have a really strong local community as well, where we do a lot of monthly in person events. And we do virtual weekly share circles with our virtual, with our global community.
Robbie Shaw:
What do those events look like? Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Molly Ruggere:
So we do weekly yoga at Camp North End, and that's open to the public and is an opportunity for us to host an event for anybody that's curious or interested in our mission, or just wants to take a yoga class on a Sunday. And then we do a lot more for the monthly membership community. So we do the weekly share circles. We also get dinner once a month. We went to the Whitewater Center last Sunday. We go to Carrigan farm.
So all of these activities that I wanted to do and the girls in the group wanted to do, but we didn't want to do them surrounded by drinkers and be the only ones not drinking. We now just do them together. It's a space where alcohol is just irrelevant. You don't have to worry about someone asking you why you're not drinking. You don't have to deal with the mental gymnastics of how many should I have? Should I have one? What should I drink instead? The anxiety and the stress of being in that environment is removed because we're all on the same page and everybody is not drinking.
Robbie Shaw:
I feel that every day. Every time I go somewhere that is in a social setting, gymnastics is going on. It's who's going to be drinking. Who's not, who's going to look at me for not.
Molly Ruggere:
Yeah. We have a group chat going with the members and just yesterday, someone was talking about, she had gone to a boat party and she was saying, what do you guys say when people ask you why you're not drinking and pressure you and keep digging. And you shouldn't have to explain yourself, but in the culture that we live in, unfortunately often people do want you to explain yourself.
Robbie Shaw:
Yeah. They need that explanation for themselves.
Molly Ruggere:
Well, they want to know that they're safe and if you have a problem, they want to know about it so they can make sure that they're not.
Exploring Your Relationship with Alcohol
Sam Hamson:
Molly, one of the questions that I had for you was how your experience through going to AA and feeling this, like obviously a very productive experience for you early on and really helpful and supportive. And then as you shaped your understanding of what your sobriety was going to look like, redefining how you wanted to use that in your life within your environment. And I'm curious, how did that play out when you were creating CounterCulture Club, as far as being really inclusive or not using the word alcoholic? Like who's welcome?
Molly Ruggere:
Anyone is welcome in the group. I'll just answer that question first. We have members that I don't even know their relationship to alcohol. All I know is that they're looking for more alcohol free spaces and more things to do that don't involve drinking. We don't require you to be sober. We don't require you to even be sober curious. It's just people that want that authentic community that isn't found gathered around a picnic table at a brewery. But in terms of the label, I don't identify as an alcoholic, that is a big piece of being in AA is that you are expected to identify that way.
And so when I was in meetings, I did because I am a rule follower and that's what everyone else was doing. But it felt really good for me to drop that and just build my own patchwork of recovery and sobriety and figure out what worked for me. And I encourage other people to do that too. AA works wonders and it definitely helped me at the beginning, held me accountable. And I did the 90 meetings in 90 days and that gave me enough space away from alcohol and enough clarity to think, use my brain again, and be able to find other resources that worked better with my mindset and also helped me change my mindset.
Sam Hamson:
I think it's so cool to see the inclusive paths. We've got a lot more of that now in our community and globally, where it's not a requirement to say hey, I'm an alcoholic to quit drinking or receive support around living an alcohol free life. I just love anything where we're like, this is a sober space and your journey is yours, but we're here for support, I think it's incredible. And one of the things that we're looking at, is just all of the options for sober people and this new exciting wave of people who are really interested in removing alcohol, especially after a year of having an extended snow day and people were stuck inside and drinking.
And can you talk a little bit about what it's like for you now living in a world where are a lot more options and you've created one of them and just the excitement around sobriety in general, but also all the new options that there are for folks, especially younger people who are looking at removing alcohol and really inviting you to celebrate with us about the fact that this is being more talked about that we're trying to get it more out in that space. And that there's more to do now. There's more people to talk to about it now.
Molly Ruggere:
That is what I love is that there are more and more options every day for people that want to like the sober, curious term. I love that term. I'm a big words person. I write, I'm in public relations, I understand that messaging and word choice really matters. Maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people, it does. And it mattered for me. Finding ways to articulate my experience and also finding people that felt that and understood that and wanted that community has been game changing for me. And I think that helped so much to just be able to say, you don't have to quit drinking forever. You don't have to say I'm swearing off alcohol. It doesn't have to be black and white.
You can look at your drinking, you can look at it with a critical eye. You can be an investigator in your own life and be curious. And that positioning just feels better for a lot of people because it is also giving them their agency and their power and their ability to make an informed decision of how they want to drink, when they want to drink, why they're using alcohol and go from there. And also again, we're hosting fun events and we're giving people the opportunity to go out and see if they can go and have fun without alcohol. Because some people think that they literally can't socialize and can't have fun without drinking. And our events are an opportunity for people to debunk that for themselves.
Sam Hamson:
It's a safe space, which is often missing. It's like a lot of people are going and trying that with friends who do drink.
Molly Ruggere:
That's really hard, because you feel as soon as everyone has a drink and you don't, even if you're the most confident non-drinker and not tempted by alcohol. I don't want to drink and I don't feel tempted. I do still feel left out if I'm the only person not drinking a cocktail. The non-alcoholic options make that a lot easier as well.
Patrick Bosley:
I'm just kind of curious. What's the average age range that you're seeing interested in CounterCulture?
Molly Ruggere:
Our age range in the group varies from early twenties, but I'd say the bulk of the membership is in their early thirties.
I think that might be part of it too is that I'm the person that started the group. I'm attracting people that are in a similar stage of life as I am, but we also have people that are in their fifties and a little older. It varies.
Robbie Shaw:
I'm imagining pockets of this all over the world having representatives leading the show there. And I assume that's the goal.
Molly Ruggere:
That would be the goal 100%.
Patrick Bosley:
I think we have fertile ground now for people that want to explore their drinking. And we need a place where people can go and be a part of a community and learn together and feel safe and have fun. I think that there's just a massive opportunity here for stuff like CounterCulture to catch fire and really provide a big need for people right now.
Molly Ruggere:
Yeah. Especially because a lot of people started drinking more during the pandemic.
Tips to Start Your Wellness Journey
Sam Hamson:
Molly, one thing that we try to do is just leave our listeners with some words of encouragement, some advice, some places to begin and take aways from each episode. And I'm curious, where would you tell our listeners to begin? Or what advice would you give them if they're starting kind of this curiosity around their relationship with alcohol?
Molly Ruggere:
I think that that word again, curiosity is what it should be. It's not necessarily, I am quitting, I'm never drinking again, I'm putting this down and I'm going cold turkey. You don't necessarily have to make any big changes right away. But looking at it, thinking about every time you reach for a drink, think about why you're doing it and what you think you're going to be relieving and educating yourself about the impacts of alcohol and that I think is helpful in terms of the investigative approach.
But one other things that I encourage people to do is seek community. Sure you can do this alone, but it's really, really challenging to try and solve this in a vacuum for yourself. Because again, it feels really isolating in an alcohol soaked culture to be pursuing this and to feel like you're the only one and you have no one to talk to and ask these questions of and it might lead you to want to just give it up because it feels too hard. But if you have a couple people you can give a call to or a group or a place you can go, then it feels a little bit more manageable.
Sam Hamson:
And because of companies like yours, people don't have to do it alone.
Molly Ruggere:
Exactly. And the other thing I would say is just start, no one ever feels ready and it doesn't have to be perfect. There's no expectation that you're going to slip up, it's not a linear journey, but just give it a shot because you're never going to feel 100% ready. You may as well just try it and go from there.
Debunking Myths About Alcohol Consumption
Robbie Shaw:
All right. Let's segue into something that might be a little more interactive here. Let's go through the lists of things that we hear that people often express as a fear of what life is like without alcohol. We know being on the other side, a lot of that is irrational as lots of fears are, but let's go down. Some of the things that we know in here and probably have felt ourselves and just kind of shed light on those things. First one is that life will be boring.
Molly Ruggere:
I would counter that life was much more boring for me when I was drinking because my hobbies were drinking.
And now I actually have hobbies and interests and I read books. I have more to say, more to contribute to a conversation because I'm educating myself, I'm reading interesting books, I'm going out and trying new experiences. And I didn't do that when I was drinking.
Patrick Bosley:
Yeah. It was like every day was the same.
Robbie Shaw:
Next one. People won't like me.
Molly Ruggere:
I would say some people might not, but those probably aren't your people. And by quitting drinking, you might be able to weed out the people that aren't your friends for the right reasons. If someone's going to have a problem with you not drinking, then maybe your best interests aren't of a concern to them.
Robbie Shaw:
Yeah. Look at that guy. He wants to be more healthy, what a loser.
Molly Ruggere:
It just blows my mind that when someone says they're doing something like letting go of alcohol or not drinking tonight, that another person would push them and try to get them. Why does it matter to you so much what I am doing and what I am putting in my body?
Molly Ruggere:
Yeah. We always say in the group, it's more about their own relationship, alcohol has nothing to do with you and yours, but it's a whole other thing.
Robbie Shaw:
Yeah. It is the FOMO, the fear of missing out.
I've said this many times, I'm 15 years in alcohol free life. And it still hurts my feelings when I'm not invited to stuff. You're going to feel that if you feel you're not included in something, but how do you deal with that? Because I need to know.
Molly Ruggere:
Yeah, FOMO is real, but I also would say that I almost felt more FOMO when I was drinking because I didn't do anything else, the things people were doing outside of drinking, going to museums or going to yoga classes. I couldn't keep up with anything else or have any other real social interests, if drinking wasn't involved.
Patrick Bosley:
Yeah. I think about my own experience when I was in my own alcohol use about how I didn't even know what I was missing out on.
Molly Ruggere:
You're going to lose things when you give up drinking, you're going to lose the old way of life and maybe you're going to lose some friends, but you're opening yourself up to such a bigger life and bigger opportunities.
Robbie Shaw:
Towards the end of my run, I was being excluded from things because I was such a heavy drinker, and then I quit drinking and I'm being excluded from the heavy drinking things and both sides were FOMO for me. And it's just stupid.
Another one. I won't be funny anymore.
Molly Ruggere:
Well all you have to do is be sober at a party when everyone else is super duper drunk and you'll realize that they're not actually funny.
Patrick Bosley:
In my first three months without alcohol, I think I laughed more than I had the previous 10 years.
Robbie Shaw:
Real laughter too.
Robbie Shaw:
I'm scared of the feelings that I will have to face.
Molly Ruggere:
Yes. Those feelings will never go away and they won't go away if you don't deal with them. And you can buy temporary relief with alcohol, but you're buying it on credit and the feelings will come back the next day and they will be exacerbated and you will also potentially have to deal with the wreckage of what those feelings did when you were drinking.
Patrick Bosley:
I think that's such a profound thing for us to understand as a culture is that we're just suppressing everything.
Molly Ruggere:
I think for me it feels badass to be deconstructing these societal narratives that we’re being fed of like, you need alcohol for this or you need alcohol for that, for me to be living my lifestyle, devoid of alcohol and actually doing all these things without it, that's empowering to me. Again, it's future focus, looking at the positive benefits of an alcohol-free lifestyle rather than what you're going to lose is just a more effective strategy for me.
Robbie Shaw:
Thinking about the way that our society talks about not drinking, it's like, you can't change your drinking habits unless you admit that you have a problem.
Molly Ruggere:
Yeah. And you're also not going to be able to change the way other people think about non drinkers or you not drinking. All you can do is work on your own thoughts about it and mindset and then speak about it and live that way. And people will see that.
Robbie Shaw:
There's also this stigma and that word is such a hype word or whatever around this, but something is wrong with me. And we've already spoken about this, but I have a problem and you need to admit you have a problem in order to go forward in this world alcohol free, but that's the stigma. That's the hang up and the hurdle for so many people. It's like, what if I don't have a problem?
Patrick Bosley:
It's like the depth to that word problem.
Sam Hamson:
That's the whole reason that we have tried to pull it back to the wellness space. It's just so unproductive when we put it anywhere else. When we bring it into the wellness space where we do cut out carbs and we do increase kale consumption and we do all these things, we're a lot more open to talking about it. And I just wanted to bring it back around and blow the question all the way up, Molly, why do you think alcohol should be part of the wellness consideration or conversation? Why would we even want to take a look at alcohol in the first place when we're talking about general health wellness and kind of living this happy full life?
Molly Ruggere:
Yeah. We don't talk about it. And I think that's the main reason that people turn a blind eye to it, is because it isn't even when you go to the doctor, they're not talking to you about your relationship to alcohol and we're not educated on the impacts of alcohol and even just one or two drinks a day, but it really does affect your health. And even if you are doing the yoga and drinking the green juices and doing all these things, drinking alcohol is damaging to your body. I don't think alcohol is bad.
I'm not a prohibitionist. I don't tell people they shouldn't drink, but we do need to acknowledge that there are health impacts, no matter how many drinks that you're consuming. It is interesting to me and feels kind of hypocritical for the wellness community. Goop, for example, is sponsored by this vodka brand. It's a weird juxtaposition of, we're so healthy, but we're also drinking this organic wine, but it's okay because it's organic. It's still alcohol.
Patrick Bosley:
It's a healthy poison.
Molly Ruggere:
And these conversations are what helps, just talking about it because for years people just didn't talk about it. It was so hush, hush and that just makes it more stigmatized. Because people are afraid of what they don't understand.
Robbie Shaw:
Molly, we can't thank you enough for being here. You're a wealth of knowledge.
I love that you are 31 years old and have organically reached these places of awareness and it's super respectable and we're honored to have you on here. Thank you for coming in.
Molly Ruggere:
Thank you for having me. Thank you for creating this podcast.
Robbie Shaw:
Patrick, Sam, what do you all want to leave our listeners with?
Patrick Bosley:
It was really inspiring. It really made me think how much we need organizations like CounterCulture. The gray area drinkers or the people that don't identify as alcoholics. There's really nothing in our community for them to connect with and come together that revolves around alcohol free stuff. There's plenty of health and wellness stuff, but we said, sometimes that stuff's littered with alcohol use and acceptability of drinking. I think we need a lot more that's inclusive. That doesn't have any barriers to entry where people can get educated and really start to explore an alcohol-free life.
Sam Hamson:
I think it's amazing. She saw where there was a gap in the type of support that she would want. And so she went and created it and then the byproduct is there's millions of other people who also wanted that thing. And to even think of myself as being able to attend CounterCulture club events, as I just don't want to drink today. And I don't want my yoga to be at a brewery or I don't want Whitewater Center to automatically come with what's on the local tap this week. I don't want to go drinking. I just want to go do stuff. I'm thinking of the person who's like, I don't necessarily have a problem with alcohol. And I would probably like to drink less than I already do by default.
And they can go and do these activities and go have sober fun together with just the removal of any pressure around drinking or having to explain why you're not. And it's almost like you get to dip your toe in sober life without having to say I'm quitting drinking or reserving sobriety for January or October. I've been referring clients to CounterCulture Club. Because whether they choose not to drink today or forever, it's such a neat place to gather. And I love that one of her biggest takeaways, it's don't try to do it alone. You don't have to do it alone. There are plenty of other people out there like you with similar interests.
Robbie Shaw:
Good stuff. To our listeners, if this is something that's interesting to you, if you're looking to find a community that doesn't involve alcohol. If you're in Charlotte, obviously reach out to CounterCulture and get involved. But if you're somewhere else, you can start your own community. We advise you to either contact Molly and get some advice on how to do that, or just start your own community. Two people, five people, one person, just get it going. Secondly, try new things, try things without alcohol. That's the first step.
The information and opinion shared on this podcast are solely those of the hosts and guests and are not a substitute for medical advice. If you feel like you may need professional help, here are some resources, for this substance abuse and mental health services administration hotline call 1-800-662-4357 or visit smsa.gov. For listeners in the Charlotte North Carolina community, visit Dillworthcenter.org or call 704-372-6969. Or visit theblanchardinstitute.com or call 704-288-1097.