What a Fake Vodka Test Reveals About Your Second Drink
In 1973, researchers brought people into a lab for what they thought was a taste test. Some of them got vodka hidden in tonic. Some got plain tonic. And the people who drank more weren't the ones with vodka in their glass. They were actually the ones who thought it was there.
Speaker 1:So when one drink turns into three, how much of that is in the drink? And what do you wanna do when you still want another? Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Journey to the Sunnyside, a Sunnyside original podcast co sponsored by Cloud9. And I'm your host, Mike Hardenbrook.
Speaker 1:Let's say it's a Thursday. You've got a plan. Two at most. Around six, you wanna drink, but not desperately. Maybe four out of a 10.
Speaker 1:You pour it, you enjoy it, and then the glass is empty. And then somehow, you want the next one more than you wanted the first one. Back in September, we talked about why that second decision is harder. The brakes get weaker and tomorrow gets harder to see. That's only half of the story.
Speaker 1:The first drink can also press the gas. Researchers call it the priming effect. Think of an old hand pump. You pour a little water on top, and then that's what gets the water flowing. Here's how they tested it.
Speaker 1:They gave people a first drink in a lab or a comparison drink. Then they measured how much they want that more and how much they drink when they got the chance. In 2022, a team pulled 38 of these studies. A first dose of alcohol raised cravings, and it raised how much people went on to drink as well. The effect was small to moderate.
Speaker 1:So this is a nudge, not a force of nature. But if you look at the timing across those studies, alcohol's effect on cravings was generally larger at thirty and sixty minutes than at fifteen and smaller by two to three hours. These are just lab averages after a single dose, not a timetable for an entire evening. But it does mean that the wanting can still be rising after you've finished that drink. You've probably heard the advice, wait twenty minutes and the craving will pass.
Speaker 1:And the truth is, sometimes it will. After a first drink, it's not guaranteed, however. So if you want another one more than you wanted that first one, that may be an effect of having started. It isn't an instruction to keep going. Now here's something important.
Speaker 1:You won't see a pattern like that until you start writing it down. And of course, that's a lot easier in an app. Journey to the Sunnyside is created by Sunnyside, the online program that helps you to change your relationship with alcohol. You get drink tracking, a personalized plan, real human coaching and community, plus access to licensed care and medication if you qualify. In a customer survey, 96.7 of respondents who'd used it at least twelve weeks reported success drinking less.
Speaker 1:Learn more at sunnyside.cobackslash podcast. So is it all the alcohol that's doing it? For a long time, almost everybody assumed so. In the early nineteen seventies, the dominant view was that losing control was all physical. One drink and the body completely takes over.
Speaker 1:Alan Marlette and his colleagues at University of Wisconsin decided to test that. In doing so, they had a problem right away. How do you give somebody alcohol without them knowing? So first, they had college students taste different mixes until they landed on one that people couldn't really reliably pick out. Five parts tonic, one part vodka.
Speaker 1:Then they needed people to drink it without feeling that they were being watched. So they invented a taste test. Three drinks, supposedly different, and you rate each one with words like sweet and strong. But the ratings weren't the point. The point was how much you drank while you were rating them.
Speaker 1:They split people into four groups. They told Vodka that they got Vodka. They told Vodka that they got Tonic. They told Tonic that they got Vodka, and they told Tonic that they got Tonic. Boy, that's a mouthful.
Speaker 1:People who were told that they had Vodka drink more Vodka, whether or not there was any Vodka in the glass. Now that doesn't mean it's all in your head. When researchers tested this in 1982, the alcohol itself did predict cravings in the most severely dependent drinkers. And you just heard about the 38 studies, but the belief part has held up. And in 2017, it got strange.
Speaker 1:A team at the University of Liverpool gave 64 students a glass of lemonade with vodka on the rim and a mist of vodka sprayed on top and told them that it was alcoholic. On another day, they got water and they knew it was water. After the lemonade, cravings went up and they felt more lightheaded. Then came a taste test, a beer and an orange drink. Have as much as you'd like.
Speaker 1:The beer was alcohol free, and nobody told them. Beer made up for a bigger share of what they drank after the lemonade, about 50% versus 44%. So that's your answer. It's both. You can't argue with the chemistry, but you can look at expectation.
Speaker 1:Next time your glass is empty, ask, what do I think the next one will do that this one didn't? Now here's where it gets personal. For years, a widely held idea was that people at risk of drinking too much just feel alcohol less. They can hold their liquor, so they need more. Andrea King and her team at the University of Chicago tested this.
Speaker 1:They brought in a 104 heavy social drinkers and 86 light drinkers. They gave them alcohol and placebo without telling them which was which. Then they checked in every three months for two years. The heavy drinkers didn't simply feel less. They felt more of the good part, more liking and more wanting and less of the sleepy part.
Speaker 1:And among those heavy drinkers, the ones with the strongest lift and the least sedation were binging more often during follow-up. So the first drink doesn't talk to everybody at the same volume. This next part isn't from a study. It's an experiment for your own week. Let's say you take one routine that you circled in that eighty twenty episode.
Speaker 1:Zero to 10, how much do I wanna drink? You write down these three numbers before your first drink, thirty minutes after you finish it, and then sixty minutes after. And then next to each number, how many drinks have you had so far? Back to our Thursday. Before the first drink, you're at four.
Speaker 1:Thirty minutes after, you're at a six. And then by 60, a seven. And you've had the drink that you've wanted. Now that's an example, not a finding. Yours might look nothing like that.
Speaker 1:And here's the complication to that. The wanting may still be there when you reach your number. Now most of us treat that as a signal that the plan has failed. It isn't. You don't have to stop wanting it to stop drinking.
Speaker 1:So to help make the stop easy, you picked your number ahead of time. As we talked about in September, what's new is what you do with your hands. Pour something alcohol free with your first drink and set it right beside you. So when you reach your number and you still want another, there's actually something right in front of you. That setup, of course, is just a suggestion.
Speaker 1:It's not something that these studies tested. And if things like alcohol free beer or wine makes you want the real thing, then of course, can use seltzer. Now, the obvious objection. I'm not gonna sit at a dinner table, party, and start scoring myself out of a tent. You don't have to.
Speaker 1:It takes seconds in a note on your phone on one routine for just one week. And if what you're protecting and all of this is how you feel the next morning, then this one's for you. Our co sponsor is Cloud9, which I cofounded to help people look after their liver on the days that they drink. Daily Restore is our doctor developed supplement. You take one daily dose for liver support, brain support, and easier next day recovery.
Speaker 1:In our twelve week clinical trial, three out of four people had a decrease in at least one liver enzymes. So try it out with our hundred and eighty day empty bottle guarantee at trycloud9.com/sunnyside. And I put a little free gift there for anybody that wants to go take a look. So here's your experiment. Pick one routine where you usually go past your number.
Speaker 1:Let's say on three nights, you'd already be drinking. Set your number, pour the alcohol free drink beside you first, and then take your three numbers. Keep your alcoholic drinks their usual size and strength, and then write down how many you had at the end of the night. On Sunday, how you check the total first. Did you drink less than you usually do in that routine?
Speaker 1:Then look at the numbers. If the wanting rose and you kept your number, you just stopped while you wanted more. And that's the whole skill. If you went past it, next time, swap out that last drink for the alcohol free one. And if the numbers stayed flat but you drink extra anyways, check for automatic refills or rounds or the job that the drink is doing.
Speaker 1:Remember the lemonade. A little bit of vodka on the rim, and people wanted more. Expecting alcohol can actually do that, and alcohol can too. But you can notice the wanting and still finish at your number. That feeling isn't an instruction.
Speaker 1:Instruction. Okay. That's it for this week. If you got anything out of this, please rate and review the show. Really helps other people find it.
Speaker 1:And remember, Journey to the Sunnyside is a Sunnyside original podcast co sponsored by Cloud9. For support drinking less or quitting, visit sunnyside.cobackslashpodcast. And for liver support on the days that you do drink, try Daily Restore. Try cloud9.com/sunnyside. Thanks for listening, and until next time, cheers to your healthier drinking journey.
