We live in a world where, to a large extent, marketing dictates culture. What would the country look like if it had a healthier relationship with alcohol and their health in general. When was the last time we asked why everyone normalizes, even glorifies, drinking so much?
There was a direct, provable correlation between regulating how cigarettes were marketed to the public and smoking related deaths & diseases. So why, despite a mountain of evidence showing the dangers of alcohol to both individuals and society, have no steps been taken to implement a similar playbook with alcohol?
People are finally waking up to the physical harms of alcohol (The #1 shared podcast of 2023 was Andrew Huberman’s episode on “What Alcohol Does To The Brain, Body and Health”) and there is a measurable shift towards dry January challenges, mocktail recipes, and other sober curious trends as people start to question their individual relationships with alcohol.
But while all of these have alluded to the larger societal problem of the ubiquitousness and glorification of alcohol, no one has tackled the big questions of “How and why did it get this way?” and “How do we untangle ourselves”?
We don’t think we are alone in these questions and feel there are way more people having these same thoughts, but are scared due to the societal norms to truly explore them. This film offers an intimate look at those questions and offers some suggestions we can take to start to build a healthier society with more mindful alcohol consumption.
It’s beyond time we rethink alcohol’s ubiquitous role in today’s society. Nearly every social gathering, from work dinners to kids birthday parties, is centered around alcohol, and abstainers often have to come with a list of prepared excuses for why they AREN’T consuming this drug along with everyone else.
The media portrays drinkers as “cool and sophisticated”, and there is good reason for this… not a single government official in charge of enforcing how alcohol companies market their products, tens of millions spent on lobbying, and a social media culture that’s created a virtual army of unwitting brand ambassadors.
