Episode 5: The Biggest Gorilla
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 everybody. We are here in the studio again, with our episode called The Biggest Gorilla. We're going to touch on the male relationship with alcohol.
Sam Hampson:
Men's issues. My favorite thing to talk about in regards to any substance use. Both of you are in the hotspot. I'm excited to hear about your experiences.
So I have a couple of things that I want to dive into. And I'm so curious, just knowing you both and knowing some of your story, the way that you look at some of these things, and maybe even how you incorporate this into work with your clients.
The first question I have is, in what ways do you think men are entitled to alcohol use, in ways that are different from women? What are the double standards around alcohol use with men?
Robbie Shaw:
I don't know exactly, but what comes to mind is just the history of it, the generational passing down. Let's face it. Historically, there was less knowledge about it. There was some emotion around it, obviously with the prohibition efforts.
And there's always been efforts and issues surrounding alcohol, but incorporate the Great Depression, and world wars, and all the things that drove heavier drinking. And so when you look back at what was passed down to me from my dad, and from his dad, and his dad, and his dad, and his dad, it was just passed down. And the passing down is the normalization side of it. It's just, "This is what we do."
Age 21 doesn't mean anything, age 18 doesn't mean anything. When you're a young boy you experiment. Fast forward to 20, 21, it's a little different. There's a little bit more sensitivity around that kind of stuff. ‘Boys will be boys’ is now pretty frowned on for a lot of valid reasons.
Patrick Balsley:
It's a rite of passage type thing. It's like, "This is what guys do." Men are allowed to let loose and be reckless. That's part of our makeup. Women traditionally aren't supposed to do that. And I think that's been ingrained in our culture for so long, that it follows suit in anything that has to do with alcohol use.
Sam Hampson:
I was just thinking about the difference in what types of alcohol are reserved for men. Do y'all have any thoughts on that?
Robbie Shaw:
Oh, absolutely. You don't see many women drinking bourbon neats. You do see some, but not many.
Sam Hampson:
What do you think some of that is about, just the alcohol types that are reserved for men, and how does that play into manliness of the alcohol culture?
Robbie Shaw:
I think a lot of it has to do with marketing, honestly. There's a whole other category of conversation that alludes to acquired tastes. If you're 10 years old and you drink a sip of bourbon, it's going to taste like fucking gas. To be able to handle that gas it burns your throat, it burns your stomach, and that feels good. It hurts good. They market it that way.
Patrick Balsley:
I have a little different perspective on this. My family owns the oldest wine shop in Charlotte. I grew up in the wine drinking culture.
Wine was not the first thing that I drank. From seventh grade all the way through high school, all I drank was beer. That's it. I didn't drink liquor. And the reason that I didn't drink liquor is because my drinking was, in my mind, a way for me to be able to control the way that I felt. I didn't want to black out. That's not how I drank. And I knew that the couple times that I drank liquor, it was like, "Wow! I don't know how to gauge this as much.”
By the time I got to college and I started drinking liquor, I met criteria for severe alcohol use disorder. There was no masculine undertone to the difference between types of alcohol that I drank. It was like, "Okay. Beer gets me one kind of drunk, wine gets me another kind of drunk, and liquor has this other effect on me.” And that was the only lens that I saw. It was a tool.
Challenging Male Stereotypes Around Alcohol
Sam Hampson:
There's a lot of things that are reserved for men in the alcohol industry. And just in the way it's marketed, the way that we talk about it. But I know that you both have your own experience post alcohol life. And want to dive into that and really understand, what are some of the things that you're taught about being a man that actually get in the way if you're considering removing alcohol from your life?
Robbie Shaw:
Kind of, chicken or the egg really. Alcohol fuels a lot of those stereotypes for me. It makes me fall into that category. And I use it for that reason, to not be sensitive, to not cry in front of people, to not share weaknesses, or even confront weaknesses, issues inside of me that I'm dealing with.
When your drinking becomes problematic and you have to do the things to enter recovery and sustain recovery, it's all those things. It's digging deep, looking inward, letting emotions out, being familiar with emotions, being comfortable with emotions, talking to other people, sharing, bonding, all the things that I was drinking to get over.
Sam Hampson:
It's crazy, because to me that's the ultimate gorilla. That is the courageous brave man that is able to enter that vulnerability. When I do those things, then I've entered a realm of courage that most men actually don't. Versus the idea that we have, that seems to be a little backwards, which is, "Definitely don't do that. That's not what brave and strong men do. That's not what gorillas do."
Do you all remember the points in the change over into living alcohol free, where some of those things really got challenged, and what they were?
Patrick Balsley:
One of the things that I never looked at until I stopped drinking and entered into this recovery world is a total space of self discovery. I had no clue who I was. I had no clue why I did the things that I did, why I thought the way that I thought. I was totally indoctrinated by my environment and the culture that we lived in. I didn't really understand how much I had been conditioned by my environment.
So when I stopped drinking, it thrusted me into this world of, "Okay. Now that you have all this time on your hands, you might as well start exploring yourself and figure out the answers to some of those questions." And what that did, was unveiled all this stuff that I had no idea was there. To me, that's been the coolest thing. Not to mention the health benefit of not pouring alcohol on my brain.
It's really given me the opportunity to bring a certain amount of clarity into my life, which is the precursor to any kind of change. To me, that's the coolest part of the process. There was so much information out there about me that I had never looked at.
Robbie Shaw:
I don't know if I could say that any better, honestly. A lot of it had to do with eliminating alcohol and going into a recovery world. It's not a midlife crisis, but it's just a certain age where you start analyzing and assessing yourself. And essentially what I did was, I went from, "This is me." To, "This is actually not who I want to be. So now I've got to look at and work on becoming who I want to be."
Sam Hampson:
From the time that I was 18 to 28, when I stopped drinking, not once was there a moment where the thought crossed my mind, "This is probably something that you need to take a look at." It was totally drowned out by my drinking and the culture around that, and this idea of, "This is who I am, and this is how it's going to be."
That totally blocked out any type of awareness around, "There may be some more to life out there, or there may be pieces of me that I don't know about." And I know a lot of people are struggling with that and they don't even know it.
So you two are both in long term recovery, and there's some really obvious glaring benefits of why it's better in your life these days to not have alcohol present, versus the days that you were drinking.
But I'm curious for our moderate drinkers, for our gray area drinkers, what would you offer as some of the benefits, or some of the opportunities they would have by removing alcohol, or reducing their alcohol use?
Patrick Balsley:
One of the things that comes to mind for me is that it actually helps a lot of people with their anxiety, and it's a quick fix. It's like, "I don't feel good. I'm anxious about a situation. All I gotta do is drink this and I feel okay."
One of the things that I see, especially working with people that are exploring their alcohol use and may not really be problematic drinkers, is it gives them the opportunity to approach treating their anxiety in a different way. When we put the alcohol on the shelf, it opens the door to more of a health and wellness approach around every aspect of our life. If I learn different ways to deal with my anxiety, I may start to look at other dimensions of my life where I may be self-medicating in different ways, or have some type of unhealthy coping skill in a different area of my life.
Robbie Shaw:
The word that comes to mind for me is dependence and not the extreme sense, not the physical sense, and that kind of thing. But if you come home and it's been a stressful day, and you have your beer at five o'clock, there's a relief associated with that. You can depend on that.
Any degree of dependence has the probability of an issue later. Removing whatever it is you're dependent on is going to be tough to some degree. And alcohol, obviously being so effective and so powerful, the removal of it becomes a lot tougher. And then therein lies the things that we implement to avoid the removal of it.
Sam Hampson:
I love that. Men love to be dependable. If you could depend on yourself to provide relief, to cope with things, to know that you can go and solve a problem, rather than something external, doesn't that feel so powerful? It's the ultimate gorilla roar.
Guest Rich Jones’ Insights on Male Alcohol Culture
Robbie Shaw:
Rich, thanks again for being here. Loved having you on episode one, and excited to have you back. So when we talk about men's issues related to alcohol, what are some of the first things that come to mind?
Rich Jones:
I think that a certain type of personality style really falls into this. I do think that men are very susceptible to this idea of "Work hard, play hard." And you get a badge of honor in America if you're just stressed out working 80 hours a week, going hard.
You know the show Mad Men? If you want to see the stereotype of the hard driven type A, high functioning alcoholic, it's Don Draper. Make a million and just drink whiskey at every meeting. It's almost like how cigarettes were seen in the past. If you remember cigarettes, it would be a cowboy smoking a cigarette on a horse. And you'd be like, "Because that's what a man does, man. He rides horses and smokes cigarettes." I don't know. I never did any of that. I never rode a horse. But it's this manly man deal, and you drink. Is that intentional by the marketing companies?
Patrick Balsley:
I think it's almost ingrained in our psyche. It's like, "If I work this hard, then I get this reward." It's like, "I get a treat at the end of the day."
Rich Jones:
And I think with men, there are certain things that you can do that when you're doing it, the people are like, "That's cool. That's boys will be boys." So I'm getting hammered, I'm taking off my shirt, throwing lawn furniture into the pool, I'm jumping off the roof into the pool, body slamming some people.
But if a woman were to start doing that, people would be like, "What's wrong with her?" Like, "What the hell is wrong with Sally? Why is she throwing lawn furniture into the pool." In the meantime, Rich is over here, just trashing stuff.
It's so gendered in that way. It's so damaging to guys. I do think that there's a tough guy mentality, and it drives a lot of problems. Beyond just the consumption of alcohol.
Issues like men's depression and anxiety disorders. I think that that's a completely mismanaged area, and I think a lot of men drink to cope. Because having a mental health problem as a man is not cool. It's not cool to be depressed if you're a dude. And so, maybe there's a situation where you have that combination of a higher prevalence of mental health issues than meets the eye. And then this becomes a very convenient way to cope.
Patrick Balsley:
I think that's a major, major revelation in regards to what we're talking about. A lot of people that I do know are acquaintances that... From a clinical perspective, you can see the untreated anxiety, and the untreated depression, and how the alcohol use covers that up.
Rich Jones:
I'm a hundred percent certain in my case, whether it was post-traumatic stress disorder, or undiagnosed depression, or whatever. If you'd caught me when I was in my mid twenties, it was driving a lot of that escapism. And then I do think the substance use can take on a life of its own as well. And it probably did in my case, but I was absolutely trying to deal. Maybe it's getting better in today's world, but man, back in the day, you didn't go talk to somebody.
Sam Hampson:
There's a lot less room for guys to be anxious, shy, and quiet when you're out. You think about it, the men are supposed to lead going up to a girl saying, "Hey" at a bar. Doing all these courageous, brave, pound on your chest kind of things. And if you are someone who struggles with anxiety or just you're introverted, you have to have a social lubricant to be able to do those things.
Misconceptions Around Male Alcohol Culture
Robbie Shaw:
I've always been a big believer that there's a lot of misconceptions around male culture with alcohol use. What do you think some of the misconceptions are around this?
Rich Jones:
I think it's some of the stuff that we talked about earlier. Real men drink and there's nothing wrong with getting out of control. People need to understand that's weird behavior. You shouldn't do that. That is not how you're supposed to act in a civilized society. It's not boys will be boys.
And this is something you would devote a whole podcast to, but it's the sexual assault issues. And the sexual issues that go along whenever guys are getting drunk with girls, and thinking that that gives him some license. The amount of sexual assault that's occurring on college campuses, and this frat boy idea that it's okay. There's nothing okay about that.
Robbie Shaw:
That makes me think back about my own experience. When my drinking became heavy, it was always problematic. But when it became fairly consequential was in college. I created these toxic masculinity type behaviors like, get with the hottest girl, brag about not going to class, all these stupid, stupid things that I didn't morally agree with, but that was what was being pushed on me. So it was my expectation, and the only way to cope with that, back to coping mechanisms, was to drink.
Rich Jones:
How do you change the culture around that? We've had so many conversations with colleges, and I'm just going to be straight with y'all, it's so disappointing. The way most colleges approach this, they have these stupid educational programs on binge drinking. I have little hope that the culture on any given college campus is changing.
Sam Hampson:
Especially that age group, you think about college as being that microcosm of getting the free pass. Even when parents have a young man that's struggling in school, getting drunk, getting arrested, they’ll say, "He's in college." It's his free pass. Until the school does something about it or the law does something about it, it just is what it is.”
The Impacts of Male Alcohol Culture
Sam Hampson:
Switching gears, what are the impacts of some of this societal pressure, some of the alcohol consumption in general on men? We're talking about everything from physical wellbeing, mental wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, sexual wellbeing. Can you talk about some of that?
Rich Jones:
First of all, it's everything that you just talked about, and it's this idea of also the way that we help men, it's not a wellness-oriented prevention, healthy lifestyle orientation. It's, "We're going to help you when you declare you're all F-ed up. And not until then." You have all these problems that nobody would really argue about.
If you sat down with your average medical professional, or your average therapist, they’d say it causes problems in all those areas. It causes problems in health, it causes problems in relationships, it causes sexual problems.
It's not a problem until you get caught or until you have enough consequences that you say you have a problem. Everybody who talks about this at a policy level or at an expert level, is really truly talking to the already addicted person. They're talking about how to solve that problem. They're not talking about how to solve the problem that your podcast is addressing.
Sam Hampson:
My red flags go up when there's so much pride around high tolerance. And I'm like, "Dude, let's talk about that." You're having to spend more than your friend. Let's just be honest. You have to spend more on your white clothes than your friend has to spend. That sucks.
And then there's the other impact where you're pouring more alcohol on your brain and organs than your friends are. That sucks too. Why is there this male bravado around higher tolerance? Like, "I can handle more. I'm stronger than you."
Robbie Shaw:
But something happened. With the straight edge movement, something happened where it was cool to be sober. And it had nothing to do with admitting you were an alcoholic. It was just, "We don't do that." That was with a very particular group of people.
Sam Hampson:
I've only found that to work with one population, and it's been athletes. I talk about my two words, my hook is optimal performance. And with athletes, it speaks their language, it's very much like, "Here's how you do even better." Not, "Hey, here's how you're doing damage."
Rich Jones:
That'll also work with high performing CEO types.
Sam Hampson:
Because it's not a conversation about failure, or consequence, or impact health wise, it's just a conversation about how you can be even better. And so it doesn't get into that defensive corner of like, "You're doing something bad, and I'm going to tell you how to do it differently." Where there's that male like, "I'm not going to be told what to do," resistance.
Rich Jones:
I feel like we're making some progress right now, though culturally, with the whole wellness movement, and mental health being a part of that. We're gaining some traction, and I think when people start to really look at what I call ‘mental diet,’ that whole wellness approach includes the mental health piece. I think that's the segway to these conversations.
Sam Hampson:
Being able to talk about your alcohol use, just like we talk about your lifting of weights, or your work, or your family. If there's defensiveness around it, can we set that aside? And what would it be like to just talk about it without that protection over it?
Because the protection usually comes from, "I'm not ready to get sober. I don't think that I have a problem." And that's not at all what this conversation's about. It's not about problematic use, necessarily. It's just about alcohol use and its place in your life or your relationship with it.
Robbie Shaw:
If I could say something to the men in the gray area drinking realm. It's similar to what I work on with my clients who are trying to manage their use. A lot of it has to do with preparation, and I think that falls into the category of prevention. It's not prevention from drinking, it's prevention from the progression of alcoholism. What we have to be aware of is that life is going to throw us curve balls. Shit is going to happen. People get sick, people die, traumatic things happen, inevitably.
In everyone's life, we have things that are super stressors. If we're not prepared for those things and we don't have the coping skills needed, we're going to do it in an unhealthy way. And a lot of times, if drinking is your way, it is going to progress.
Patrick Balsley:
One of the other things that I think about a lot is one of the questions that I pose to myself in a lot of situations with any behavior that I'm engaging in. The question is, if you removed this from your life, how much better would you be in those areas? And I think that that's one of the thought experiments we can do, or our listeners can do, that are thinking about changing their relationship to alcohol.
If you did stop drinking, or if you cut back your drinking, how much more present would you be able to be with your kids? How much less emotionally charged would your arguments be with your spouse? How much better would you be at work? And not to mention physical health, how much healthier would you be?
Sam Hampson:
Could it help move you forward? There's a total difference in just the way that we typically respond to those types of questions. Like, "I'm not implying you're not a present dad. I'm just asking how much more present you could be, and let's create that."
Robbie Shaw:
The information and opinion shared on this podcast are solely those of the hosts and guests, and not a substitute for medical advice. If you feel like you may need professional help, here are some resources.
For the substance abuse and mental health services administration hotline, call 1-800-662-4357 or visit samhsa.gov. For listeners in the Charlotte North Carolina community, visit dilworthcenter.org, or call (704) 372-6969. Or visit theblanchardinstitute.com, or call (704) 288-1097.