Journey to the Sunnyside

At some point, a lot of people assume their drinking is just part of their personality. In this episode, we unpack the myth of the “addictive personality,” explain how habits get automated in the brain, and explore why reinforced behavior can start to feel like identity. What if this isn’t who you are — but just what your brain learned?

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Disclaimer: This podcast is not intended as medical advice, and the views of the guests may not represent the views of Sunnyside. If you’re concerned about your health or alcohol use, please consider seeking advice from a doctor.

Creators and 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 a top 1% podcast, reaching over 500,000 listeners every week. It’s 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, diving into topics like mindful drinking, sober curiosity, moderation, and full sobriety. Through real stories, expert insights, and science-backed strategies, we help you find what actually works for your journey.

Hosted by Mike Hardenbrook, a #1 best-selling author and neuroscience enthusiast, the show is dedicated to helping people transform their relationship with alcohol—without shame, judgment, or rigid rules.

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 episodes do not necessarily represent those of Sunnyside. We’re committed to sharing diverse perspectives on health and wellness. If you’re concerned about your drinking, please consult a medical professional. Sunnyside, this podcast, and its guests are not necessarily medical providers and the content is not medical advice. We do not endorse drinking in any amount.

Speaker 1:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another one of these ten minute Mondays. And today, I wanna start with something that I hear all the time. And it usually sounds like a version of this. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

It's just kinda this is who I am, and I've always been this way. Maybe I just have a addictive personality or I'm just wired for this. One way or another, I've heard many different versions of that. And underneath it, there's usually shame and a little bit of a quiet resignation. And today, I wanna separate something very clearly.

Speaker 1:

Your habits are not your identity. Let's start with the idea of the addictive personality because that gets tossed around a lot. It sounds scientific. It sounds like maybe it's been proven. But here's the truth.

Speaker 1:

There is no formal psychiatric diagnosis called addictive personalities. It's just not something that clinicians diagnose. What the research does show is that certain traits in individuals does potentially increase the likelihood. So things like higher impulsivity, higher neuroticism, more novelty seeking personalities, and if you have a lower tolerance for distress. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1:

Correlation is not predestined. It is not your destiny. Personality influences risk, of course, but it does not determine your fate. That's a distinction that really matters here because what most people interpret as their identity is often just a reinforced behavior. And that's very important here because those live in very different systems inside of the brain.

Speaker 1:

Here's where the neuroscience gets interesting. Your brain has an automation system. Think of it like a habit hard drive. When you repeat a behavior enough times, the brain shifts out of the conscious decision making center and into the automated loop. So you have the cue, the routine, the reward, the structure for the habit loop.

Speaker 1:

Repeat that loop enough times and it runs on very little conscious effort. And that's all around the brain looking for efficiency. Now here's the key part. Your sense of identity does not live in that automation system. Identity lives in completely different networks in the brain.

Speaker 1:

The one that activates when you reflect on yourself, when you think about your story, when you ask yourself things like, who am I? So we have two different systems. One automates behavior. The other explains behavior. They are not the same thing.

Speaker 1:

But when we don't understand that, we blend them together. And that's where the shame starts. Here's what usually happens. You repeat a drinking pattern. Maybe it starts off as stress relief.

Speaker 1:

Maybe it's social ease. Maybe it helped you unwind during a hard time in your life. The brain reinforced it because it worked. And this is important because dopamine doesn't just fire because something is bad or good. It fires because something is relieving and it's meaningful inside your brain.

Speaker 1:

Now the loop is strong. The brain wants the story to match the behavior. So instead of saying, I'm reinforcing a coping loop, we just say, this is who I am. And psychology shows that we prefer self consistency. So once we adopt a label, the brain looks for evidence to support that.

Speaker 1:

It filters it. It reinforces it because it prefers coherence. So if you decide this is your identity, your nervous system will start behaving in a way that supports that belief. And here's the thing, that's powerful. It's also reversible.

Speaker 1:

Let's go one level deeper though. A lot of drinking habits are not personality driven. They're nervous system driven. There's something in psychology called the self medication hypothesis. The idea is that many substances in these patterns begin as an attempt to regulate emotional discomfort, things like stress and loneliness and being overwhelmed and anxiety.

Speaker 1:

And alcohol, it works quickly on calming the brain. We all know that. And it quiets the mind. It kind of just takes the edge off, right? From a nervous system perspective, that's really adaptive.

Speaker 1:

Your body was able to find relief. Now, problem with that is that this strategy, which we all know is not a good strategy for self medication, got reinforced by the body and the brain. Add chronic stress to the mix and the brain amplifies that relief signal and that loop that I talked about, the habit loop, strengthens faster. Again, this is biology. This has nothing to do with identity and most people, they don't have a problem when it comes to personality.

Speaker 1:

They have a nervous system that has just basically learned a very efficient coping strategy. So those are two different stories. Now here's the part that matters. Something called neuroplasticity. The same mechanism that wires habits can also rewire them.

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So circuits strengthen with repetition, circuits weaken when they're not reinforced, and new patterns can override old ones. So if a personality determined your fate, neuroplasticity, it basically wouldn't exist. But it does and your brain learned the loop. It can also learn something else. Here's the truth.

Speaker 1:

Identity often follows behavior, but not the other way around. When you reduce frequency, when you build friction, when you interpret cues, when you experiment with new responses, something starts to shift and the narrative shifts with it. You don't wake up one day and declare, hey. I've got a new identity. You build it through repeated actions and reinforcing these new behaviors.

Speaker 1:

So going back to where we started, if you're listening to this right now and thinking, maybe this is just who I am. I want you to pause there because is that actually true? Or is it a pattern that your brain has just automated? Because those are not the same things. You are not your drinking habit.

Speaker 1:

You are the one just noticing it. And the moment that you can notice it, you're putting yourself already on the outside of it. It's about understanding what your brain has learned. And once you understand that, you can start shaping what it learns next. Alright.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for hanging out with me today. If you got anything out of this, please rate and review. Of course, I love hearing from you. Send me an email, mike@sunnyside.co. And until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.