This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without

judgment, pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Today I have Susie's question and she asks, when a friend says she wants to quit

smoking, everyone will support her and no one will offer her a cigarette

ever. So why is it that our friends have such a hard time when we announce

that we no longer want to drink? And why does it feel when we announce it that

the reaction might be judgmental? Oh, I didn't know she was an alcoholic.

People seem to go straight to that mindset which makes it pretty much taboo to discuss.

Thank you for the question Susie. It is such a complex question and I think at the crux of

the issue is the fact that we treat alcohol addiction very differently from any other addiction.

So as an example, we don't have cigarette alcoholics, we don't have heroinism or cocaineism,

yet we have alcoholics and alcoholism and alcoholic the word and alcoholism the word.

They define people whereas an addiction to cigarettes or an addiction to cocaine or addiction

to heroin, that defines the addiction and the addiction is separate from the person.

So with alcohol, we seem to put the blame on the person rather than the substance and I think

that in itself is something that's really wrong with how we look at alcohol as a society,

but it contributes to this answer. But it's no wonder because the vast majority of people drink.

I mean, the last statistic I read was that 87% of people in the United States drink alcohol.

So as a culture, we need to justify this because how can we justify that we're all consuming

something that's addictive. It's just my opinion, but I think one of the easiest ways to justify it

is to simply ignore the fact that like cigarettes, like heroin, like cocaine, alcohol is addictive.

And so the language around alcohol by blaming the individual rather than the substance is created

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