The Science of Alcohol: Why Change Feels So Hard w/ Phil Cowley

Welcome back to Journey to the Sunnyside! Today we’re exploring a topic that resonates with so many people: why alcohol is so hard to cut back on or quit altogether. While it may seem like just a habit, there’s actually a lot happening in your brain that makes change feel so difficult.

Joining me is Phil Cowley, a pharmacist with over 20 years of experience who’s known for simplifying complex health topics so that anyone can understand. Today, he’s going to help us break down the science behind alcohol’s grip and why it can feel so challenging to make changes, even if you’re just trying to cut back.

Alright, let’s dive into it with Phil Cowley, the Owner and Pharmacist at Cache Valley Pharmacy.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Mike Hardenbrook

#1 best-selling author of "No Willpower Required," neuroscience enthusiast, and habit change expert.

What is Journey to the Sunnyside?

"Journey to the Sunnyside" is your guide to exploring mindful living with alcohol, whether you're cutting back, moderating, or thinking about quitting. While Sunnyside helps you reduce your drinking, this podcast goes further, covering everything from mindful drinking and moderation to sober curiosity and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert advice, and practical strategies, we’re here to help you find what works best for your journey.

Mike Hardenbrook is a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol.

This podcast is brought to you by Sunnyside, the leading platform for mindful drinking. Want to take the next step in your journey? Head over to sunnyside.co for a free 15-day trial.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in our podcast episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We're determined to bring diverse views of health and wellness to our audience. If you are concerned with your drinking, please seek the advice of a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical professionals and the content shouldn't be viewed as medical advice. In addition, we never endorse drinking in any amount.

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Mike: [00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to another episode of Journey to the Sunnyside. I'm your host, Mike Hardenbrook, and today we're exploring a topic That resonates with so many people. Why alcohol is so hard to cut back on or quit altogether. While it might seem it's just a little bit of habit change. There's actually a lot of things happening in your brain that makes change feel so difficult.

Joining me today is Phil Colley, a pharmacist with over 20 years of experience in who's known for simplifying complex health topics so that anyone can understand them. Today he's going to help us break down the science behind alcohol's grip and why it can feel so challenging to make changes, even if you're just trying to cut back.

All right, let's dive in with Phil Kali, the owner and pharmacist of Cache Valley Pharmacy.

Phil, you've talked about how alcohol enhances GABA, the neurotransmitter that helps us relax. Can you explain how this process makes alcohol so appealing and why it's so difficult to [00:01:00] quit or cut back?

Phil: So, GABA is a really dangerous substance. So we, we search for GABA in our life because it makes us feel calm and it makes us feel very soothed in everything we're doing.

It takes away a lot of the anxiety. As we build more GABA though, our bodies say this isn't a sustainable way that we can live. So then it builds more receptors, which require that you have more GABA, which means you have to drink more alcohol. Just get back to where you started to begin with. So in my terms, that's what addiction looks like.

It's when your body says, I can't live without this because I have become so pendant on having it around. Now, instead of just being able to fill, I don't know, if you put your anxiety on a scale of one or two, when you quit drinking, you've have so many GABA receptors that in order to fulfill their needs.

You're constantly at a four or a five on your anxiety unless you have it around because your body said, where did that go? I was used to having it [00:02:00] when you have that now what happens it becomes Completely scary to live without it And one of the things that's really interesting when you sit and talk to somebody with about alcohol when they get angry You know that they've become scared So they're very aware of the fact that without it their body says there's something truly truly wrong with me You It feels real.

It's tangible to those individuals. But by the time you figure that out, society and your friends and everybody else you're with, especially people who aren't very good about holding their alcohol, don't realize they're in that trap until they went from looking like a movie star to now, how do I get out of here?

Mike: So, Tell me about the differences because dopamine gets thrown around a lot with substances and alcohol, and you're talking about GABA. How are these two related or different?

Phil: So you talk, we talk a lot about dopamine because dopamine is the gas that makes us make new roads. It's, it's, if you, [00:03:00] if you have that, Your brain says, I wanna learn something new.

I wanna be excited. I wanna get out there. And so when you first drink alcohol, you get this dopamine release and, but you also get that dopamine release when you eat a lot of sugar. You also get it, when you talk about sex, you get dopamine from a lot you, so everything that you know, you talk about with gluttony, whatever it is, you know that it's because dopamine originally paves the pathway that is the neurotransmitter.

Our brains aren't really set up to think through every situation. What we do is we create residual pathways. I always say if you look at the word the, you've had, the last time you look at a T and an H and E was forever ago. You see the, your brain already jumps down that pathway. It's a sight word.

Dopamine creates those types of pathways which are called residual pathways. So we always talk about dopamine and getting our dopamine and everything else because you get so excited. Dopamine's interesting though because if you can't get dopamine from one place, you'll go get it elsewhere. So, if you're used to getting dopamine from eating a Twinkie [00:04:00] yourself, you'll tell yourself you're not getting a Twinkie today.

Your brain will go then to a second pathway and say, well then go play music. Or go exercise. So your brain will keep searching for dopamine. So dopamine's one of those things that we always have to regulate, you'll find it. GABA, on the other hand, is like slowly turning down the lights inside your brain, so you have a pathway you're walking.

It's the one you've been walking for a long time. It starts getting darker. You're like, I don't want to try any new pathways. They're all scary. So even if you have the dopamine to go out there and try something that's not drinking, your brain saying, no, we're not going anywhere. This is the only pathway, you know, it's, it's too hard to go anywhere.

We need to stay right here. So the combination. We talk about dopamine, and dopamine can be dangerous, but dopamine seeking behaviors include everything that's healthy, and everything that's unhealthy. It's just the gas to get us to go. GABA, on the other hand, makes every other decision look scary if you, if you don't have it, because that means your anxiety will [00:05:00] increase when you don't get it.

And so now you're just stuck in that GABA cycle, which can be substantially worse than a dopamine cycle by far.

Mike: So you started out with the extreme example of how addiction can form. And I like to break apart, you know, we can talk about the habit loop and people get into reinforcing behaviors or the reward tied to it, but a big component that is obviously is also the physical and chemical things that are going on.

And there's also subtle ways that make resisting a drink. All because of it's related to the chemicals and the physical side of it. Are there subtle ways that this starts to creep in when it comes to GABA?

Phil: Well, it's subtle. It's actually all subtle because you don't realize that you've now feel more anxious when you don't drink.

To begin with the first time you drank, it was fun. You got doping. It was fine. Then one day you start realizing if I really dumped out all my alcohol today, even though I only have a little bit. [00:06:00] That makes me worried about how I'm going to sleep tonight. That makes me worried how I'm going to socially interact with people.

And so then you reinforce that behavior because you think it's just one drink and it's okay, like, I don't have a problem with people that drink. I have to tell everybody there are worse substances in the world than alcohol and there are better ones. But when you start leaning on any substance and, and you can get it readily available and you realize that my social anxiety is worse now than it was before I was drinking, that my interactions with my family are worse now, and without a drink, I'm way worse.

You start realizing, Oh no, I've changed my neurochemistry. So it's going to take a minute to get back where you're at. So there are, it's absolutely very essential. It sleeps in just so subtly because it's just a little, just a little, just a little, and then you realize it's, it's now part of who I am. And it happens with caffeine use, it happens with everything else too.

That's how it all happens. One day you're, you know, it's what our brains do. We like a little and then we take it and the brain says, Oh, we have [00:07:00] plenty. I'm going to build new receptors. So it's a very dangerous process. If you don't always look for equilibrium and balance in your life.

Mike: Yeah. I don't get the sense that you want to demonize alcohol or anything like that.

And obviously I like to pull it apart because then we can understand what's going on. It's easier to make informed decisions when we actually know Oh, you know, I drink last night. There's a 12 to 24 hour window when alcohol peaks at four withdraw and you don't have to be addicted. You don't have to be full blown drinking huge amounts to feel those effects, to have those cravings kick in and trigger coupled in with maybe decision fatigue or stress, there are a lot of things that we're pointing to.

So I think that just getting the information out there and it's a lot easier to give a more defined. Example when it's to the extreme.

Phil: Yeah, it's just easier. So it makes sense, but I do, I do understand that there are people who can drink in moderation. I understand that there are people that [00:08:00] can do that and it becomes, and they're very aware, but without education, alcohol could become very, very detrimental to anybody.

So education, understanding it and owning it, like I know what I'm doing. Really? Not that thing. You say that guy that's, you know, But really knowing, okay, I know that this is going to be with me for 12 to 24 hours. I know that, that although I, my blood alcohol says I'm fine, it's not fine. Those are really important things, the honesty component of drinking.

And there are people that are really honest with their drinking and that, that becomes a lot healthier for them to be able to take the steps to be who they want.

Mike: Are there some things that we can do from maybe behind the pharmacy counter or on the shelves in front of the pharmacy counter that would maybe counteract a little bit of this anxious feeling?

Yeah,

Phil: It's very important to start to recognize what your triggers are and what may be the issues. So, we live in a world that's so loud now that every one of us have a level of anxiety. Even people say they [00:09:00] aren't anxious, they act anxious. And what's demands are put on us become more and more apparent in the news.

And, uh, and be able to absorb things. So when you start to look at yourself, using anything to help cope with anxiety or depressive states or, or insomnia, you have to start breaking down. What is it going on in my life? How can I work with that? Who do I have that I can lean on? And start instead of starting to put I don't like band aids for anything.

So you need to start even medications I give you the concept would always be to come off of them If we could find the right mix and sometimes you can and sometimes you can't but my suggestion behind the counter Is is that a lot of people will move automatically from alcohol to medications and then they'll stay on medications for the rest of their life That's still not getting to the root of what's causing your anxiety And if your job is causing your anxiety, then you got to go get a new job.

So that means start getting new skills. If, [00:10:00] if it's your family, that's getting anxiety, start working on those relationships with your family, because those things don't go away. So you have to continually medicate yourself with something, even if it's not alcohol.

Mike: Totally. And, you know, we're kind of basing this conversation off this really great posts that you made.

And there was one mentioned within that post that you talked about. Binge drinking. And I'm always interested in this because there are two types of drinkers, I guess, you know, you have some people that are unhappy with their nightly routine, and then there are some people that'll say, Oh, you know, I'll go a week and then I go off the rails or whatever.

And you have some opinions on. The difference is, does binge drinking lead to other consequences faster?

Phil: Binge drinking, I think, is so destructive. There's a reason why it's, it's related to youth. Like, I, you know, I know it's not just young, young people that do it. Binge drinking, in particular, becomes extremely [00:11:00] detrimental because you start to build quicker receptors faster, and your brains don't know how to compensate with it, and we have more damage.

So, on the post, BINGE The idea that you're looking to binge drink in order to deal with the world around you will change your perspective. So from a pharmaceutical standpoint, I would never tell you to take six antibiotics today and then don't touch them again for three weeks. I would never tell you, say, go, if you took all your Prozac all in the first day and not on the 30th and not all the rest of the days, it would work.

So from a standpoint of a pharmacist, once you start doing things like just taking, you know what, why don't you eat all of your meals right now? And then don't eat again the rest of the week, those kinds of behaviors are not how our body reacts. And somebody who's looking for those, those kinds of things.

I would love to sit down with them, see what's going on, see why they feel like that socially, like why they need that. I'd love to know that person. And start figuring out what is in your brain that made you feel like you were needed that to have people around and let me introduce you [00:12:00] to some friends that really like you.

And so you don't have to be that person every place you go. And my guess is your friends don't like you when you're that way, no matter how much you remember it that way. I've never had a friend that was, that was really, really drunk, who I thought was cooler than I did when they were not drinking at all.

So I, you know, that's the other thing. So I think. I don't know. It always makes me want to go find that person who feels like they need to binge drink and give them a big hug and say, let's, let's show you the rest of the world, like there's so many things that are, but let's, I got so many places to show you so many cool, you know, people.

And anyway, so I, I know I just went on a huge tangent, but binge drinking is a sign of somebody who really needs a big hug. Like that's what they need more than anything else. And I know people talk about a kick in the butt, but that's not what they need. They just need a huge hug and, and find a safe place for them to be.

Mike: If you went on a tangent, all I heard was that you have a big heart because, you know, I gave you many opportunities in our, in our talking that you [00:13:00] could have easily just said, yeah, you know, open this bottle and take this. And half of those times it went deeper than that. It went to the personal and human connection.

Phil: Well, I, you know, you see it within your own family and you realize. There are people who get to drink and be moderate. There are people who get that in their life. But there are a lot more that don't get to do that. And as soon as you make that person feel ashamed of who they are, it makes it really hard for them to have a solid life and be able to make good choices.

Because now you see them, you know, that's why I always bring up first, I know I couldn't quit, so I didn't start. I know I wouldn't quit, so I didn't start. But there are other people who can do it. But even those people, who They better have a good support network around them because times get hard and then you lean on something and then you're in trouble.

So

Mike: we could do a whole episode on shame and around alcohol that

Phil: I hate shame with alcohol because it's a stupid thing. Like I don't shame anybody for taking anything else. I won't start here, [00:14:00] but you don't also have to like their behaviors either. Like you can be like, I love you as a person and when you're ready to come around, I'm here always here for you.

But I don't want to be the one that's sitting next to you in the bar while you're making a fool of yourself. Like I don't want to do that anymore.

Mike: 100%. Yeah. So if we were going to recap today's episode, I think a few key points were around GABA. We talked about dopamine. We talked about the consequences of how those imbalances can affect our mood regulation and even our actions.

So if somebody were to start taking note of what's going on or be able to realize what's going on, what are some basically observations you would want to leave us with and any information you want to share?

Phil: I love self awareness. So the more that you give people the idea of, Oh, the reason why I feel more nervous the day after I drink is because my GABA is now disappearing.

So I know that this is becoming, so how do I help myself in the morning with that GABA because I don't want to do it anymore. You're saying, okay, maybe you take some more magnesium in the morning [00:15:00] because magnesium helps us process it with the L theanine. Even though, so that way I don't have that nervous feeling.

If somebody realizes that I have a dopamine seeking behavior of going to the, going to drink, But I also have dopamine seeking behavior of liking to exercise or, or being with my friends and having a good conversation. You have to replace the dopamine because you know, okay, that's a dopamine seeking behavior.

Let me find one that's healthy. That's the morning when I'm losing, losing my GABA. Let me find something to replace it. Will you become aware of what, because your brain is not your friend. I don't, people always think that we're, our, our brains are like our worst enemy. They're always doing the things we don't want to.

It's like, there's a duality there. So when you understand what your brain is trying to manipulate you to do, then you could kick back and say, instead of doing that, I'm going to do this. And then you could be in a healthy place. And so I liked the idea of somebody saying, okay, I now understand the chemistry behind it.

I'll make the decisions I want to make because I know where I'm at. That empowerment leads to the self actualization of who you want to become. [00:16:00] Whereas if I just say, don't drink, cause it mixes with your medicine, I'm going to get the middle finger and people are gonna say, I'll do what I want and it doesn't, they don't care.

So, you know, I don't, I don't ever say that, but I love the education. So they dig in and they're like, Oh, well, I'm getting manipulated by my own brain here. I'm sick of this. I'm going to do my own thing. And then you have a real chance of making changes that stick. Bill,

Mike: if that wasn't powerful, I don't know what is and something that's actionable as well.

So I want to thank you so much. First of all, for your time. Your openness to share your insights. And this has just been an incredible episode. Thanks so much for coming on.

Phil: No, I really appreciate everything you do. I appreciate the fact that you and your wife follow, actually tell your wife, thank you first, cause she started.

So she gets a hundred percent of the credit. You don't get any, do

Mike: this for me. Say hi, Priscilla.

Phil: Hi Priscilla, and thank you Priscilla, you are my favorite person that follows out of everybody, it's you I like the best. Thank you so much Mike, this has been awesome.

Mike: That's it for this episode of Journey to the Sunny Side.

A [00:17:00] big thanks to Phil Calley for breaking down why alcohol is so challenging to cut back on and what's happening in our brains that makes this process difficult. Understanding this can be a key in making lasting change. And if you want to learn more about your own relationship with alcohol, head on over to sunnyside.

co and take our 3 minute quiz to get personalized insights. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, at joinsunnyside, for more daily tips, resources, and success stories. Plus you can enroll in our free masterclass and you'll find that link right in our Instagram bio. If you've enjoyed today's episode, hit that subscribe button.

So you never miss an update from journey to the sunny side. And until next time, let's keep moving towards a healthier, more mindful relationship with alcohol.