Hello and welcome to this episode of Frankie’s Cultural Observations. Today we’re going to be analyzing why no one drinks anymore. Can you take a sip? Self-improvement is sucking us all off at the bar still. We used to stop drinking cuz we had a fatty liver and a family were frightened of us. Now we just want to run a faster 5K without a hangover. When we’re constantly performing, achieving, and being the greatest version of ourselves, alcohol gets in the way of our endless growth. A trickle that slows down progress and sometimes gets us arrested for punching people outside kebab shops. Thank you. So, society becomes a repressive regime of inclusion in the absence of any real freedom. All that’s left is personal development without a direction and another half marathon in between ad breaks. So quitting booze used to be for those who needed it. Now it’s for those who post about it. And we can even trace this shift on the level of language. We used to get sober. Now we go sober as if it’s a holiday destination and not an accomplishment. And now you don’t even have to be sober to be sober. You can be sober curious. Which means you can just think about not drinking while actively holding a drink in your hand. Capital’s persistent need to expand its markets to more and more customers means the alcohol industry now captures drinkers, non-drinkers, and people who pretend to drink less than they used to cuz they do meditation and go hiking for mushrooms. When euphoria has been privatized and utopia is closed for maintenance, sobriety becomes a sleeve tattoo we wear to impress people and then laser off after we finish the Hyrox. So ice drinks are out, ice baths are freezing, but we pretend to enjoy them to act like we’re spiritual. When really, we’re just buying into a Ponzi scheme that tells us true contentment starts and ends with the self. In the age of the customer, we live within our menus where everything’s inclusive, but nothing feels free. So, we lean in and close the distance between ourselves and what’s being cast out of reach. We internalize social problems we experience together and the scale-based failures we up alone, leaving the structures complicit in our downfall. There’s a pigeon there, leaving the structures complicit in our downfall, devoid of all responsibility. We were told to find balance, that we could grasp the good life if our hands weren’t so grubby. I smell Do you smell like apple tart? Or or is that just apples? It could just be apples. It’s probably apples. Okay. When the DJ’s finished, but you’re still searching for relief. You put on a shirt and tie and join a hackne half marathon. Settling on accomplishment to stifle the tired reminder of who you were before you woke up early on Sundays. Now we eat supplements with the same level of confidence we used to double drop pills with. Blindly bought off a man in a bucket hat. Now we say no to the book fast. In a post euphoric world with no more third spaces, we recreate community through what we consume rather than who we connect with. Now brands preach to the converted. Bring your own bashimal. It’s cheese night. We’re islands, choirs of one that construct personal cathedrals. Singing to the sound of a song in another room. A distant drum so faint that you think you’re imagining it, but you swear you can still hear the hum. With the death of religion, gods and deities have been replaced by recovery influencers and Tik Tockers preaching the sermon of the dangers of a drug they used to love two weeks ago. But when you pretend to hate a substance that became more important than the air in your lungs, you repress your desire and make it a kink and do the entire recovery movement a disservice, giving those in need of genuine help a false sense of reality. It’s okay to love drugs and hate the consequences they have on you without blanket declaring them as evil just because you can’t do them. Because when you do that, you turn the black hole you were once running away from into a moral failing for those still struggling to feel ashamed about. So, in an effort to raise awareness, we reinforce hierarchy. But when we shame those who haven’t found their way to recovery yet, we’re no different than the kid who brings his football home so no one else can play. Can you hold this?

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