Why Humans Crave Altered States
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Journey to the Sunnyside. Today, wanna talk about something in a little bit of a different format. Now, before I do, just imagine that 05:00 feeling, you know, that feeling on the end of the day or maybe it's a Friday, you close that laptop and then something in your brain kind of goes, you know, a drink sure would be nice right now. Now, most people, you know, when you're trying to change and that comes up, you think that that's a problem.
Speaker 1:That's a sign maybe you're too stressed or too dependent. Maybe you think you're too weak, too something. Right? But here's what the research actually shows. So anthropologists have studied altered states across more than 400 societies.
Speaker 1:You have things like trance, ritual intoxication, meditative absorption, and ecstatic dance. And they don't show up as fringe behaviors in human history. They actually show up in roughly 90% of the societies studied, woven into basically how humans bond, how we grieve and celebrate and make meaning, which changes the whole question. Not why do people drink, but why do humans seem so fundamentally uncomfortable staying in baseline consciousness in the first place? So let me give you some context on that anthropology claim because I don't want to just throw out a number and keep moving on.
Speaker 1:So an anthropologist, Erica Borguignon, she spent years studying altered states across cultures. Her cross cultural work covered more than 400 societies and found institutionalized altered states in roughly ninety percent of them. Not some of them, nearly all of them. And when I came across that, you know, obviously, had to pause. I almost reread it because this kind of reframes the whole conversation.
Speaker 1:This isn't modern people with the electronics and everything that we got going on in this modern world, us being overstimulated and unable to sit still. While that does happen, the desire to shift our consciousness appears to be part of human history across almost every single culture that's been studied. And the practices, they're not random. They were organized. They were repeated.
Speaker 1:They were part of the culture, the community, and often deeply meaningful. So one example would be synchronized movement. This is the kind of thing that you see in religious ceremonies. You have tribal dance, even rave culture, for example. And researchers at Oxford found that moving in synchrony with other people can increase pain thresholds and feelings of social closeness, of course.
Speaker 1:And so people weren't just dancing because it was fun. They were, without knowing the neuroscience, shifting their own biology. Same with fasting, and you have breath work and chanting. These are technologies developed over a millennia for moving the sense of self being alive and being somewhere different. And then alcohol, it arrives.
Speaker 1:It's faster than dance. It's more available than fasting. It's more portable than ritual, which probably explains a lot about how quickly it became woven into so many cultures across the world. So here's the frame that changed a little bit about how I think about drinking. So alcohol, it's not just a beverage.
Speaker 1:It's a state changer, and it enters a very specific job description. A researcher named Melissa Cooper developed one of the most widely used models for understanding why people drink in the first place, and it breaks drinking motivation into four broad patterns. You have enhancement, you have coping, you have social, and you have conformity. And enhancement is drinking to amplify something positive. You know, music makes you feel better.
Speaker 1:The dinner feels more inviting. The night feels more alive. Now you have coping is drinking to reduce something negative, you know, soften the stress and anxiety, turn down the volume on the end of the day. Then you have social drinking is about connection and ease, entering a room just ready to mingle. Right?
Speaker 1:And then conformity is drinking to avoid standing out, not trying to explain to yourself for being there. Those are four completely different relationships with the same substance. So if you just say drinking is the problem, you're kind of completely missing what the habit is actually doing for someone. A person drinking to enhance a celebration is in a totally different conversation than a person drinking because it's the only thing that reliably turns them off and shuts down their nervous system, say, at, like, 8PM on a Friday night. Same substance, different job, different emotional functions, different habit loop.
Speaker 1:And then there's one thing about coping that should get more attention, which is that relief over time can become more reinforcing than seeking pleasure. And that has nothing to do with your constitution and how strong you are. It's more around what the nervous system learns. So I wanna talk about the science of why relief gets more reinforced. And this is one part of the conversation that a lot of times gets overlooked.
Speaker 1:A lot of people aren't drinking because life is great. Think about what a modern day actually looks like. You got work and parenting and decisions and your phone's going off with notifications. Of course, toss in some social pressure and bills and everything just is running. Right?
Speaker 1:Your brain simulating the future, replaying the past, comparing, analyzing, worrying about a long day. And then at the end of the day, everything just goes quiet. Maybe the kids go down, the laptop's shut, and you can have a moment to breathe. And in that moment, the brain has learned something. This is when we get relief.
Speaker 1:And there's a researcher, Wolfram Schultz. His foundational research on reward prediction error helped reshape how scientists actually think about dopamine, prediction, and reward. And one of the key findings was that dopamine neurons don't just respond to reward, they actually respond to cues that predict rewards. And over time, the dopamine response can shift forward towards the anticipation of the reward rather than the reward itself, which means the state change can start way before you pour anything. And I've actually done an entire episode around that.
Speaker 1:And, you know, just things like the sound of ice, the glass, passing by a liquor store, that Friday feeling of maybe just finally the week's over. The brain is already moving forward and towards relief before a single drop of alcohol reaches the glass and in your mouth and in your bloodstream. And that is the brain learning a pattern and preparing the body for what it expects next. And understanding that changes how you approach habits entirely. Now, I want to say that the brain already has multiple state change systems that are built in.
Speaker 1:The desire to change how you feel is not the problem. Your brain and your body already have these biological systems designed to do exactly that. Exercise, that's the most obvious example. Most people have heard of a runner's high, that kind of floaty, slightly euphoric feeling after intense effort. And for years, people have talked about endorphins.
Speaker 1:But what's interesting, there was a 2023 review that revised sort of the picture of how we look at endorphins entirely, pointing to endocannabinoids as an important part of the story. Basically, those are compounds that your body makes that interact with the same broad systems affected by cannabis, and you can actually get there through movement. Music also works in the same way. Research has found that dopamine releases during peak emotional responses to music. Even during the anticipation before those moments arrive, the buildup itself changes the brain.
Speaker 1:And ancient technologies, things like rhythm and movement and breath and ritual, weren't just cultural, they were biological. Humans built practices around things that actually worked on the nervous system long before anyone could actually explain it. Now it's important to note, not all state changes are equal. That's pretty obvious. Some restore you, some connect you, some delay the emotional backlog, maybe just by a few hours, and then, like alcohol, hand you the bill the next morning.
Speaker 1:Now alcohol gets a little bit complicated because it often starts as one kind of state change. You have euphoria, enhancement, connection, maybe celebration, and then over time becomes another relief, shutdown, escape. And that shift usually happens slowly enough that most people don't even notice when that change is happening. And that's an important moment to take notice because it tells you that it's now doing a different job for you. It has changed.
Speaker 1:Now, one thing that's different in modern life doesn't really give us a lot of true baseline to return to. We live in this environment of constant stimulation and constant reward cues. Every app, every platform, every piece of content designed by very smart people to grab your attention and shift how you feel. So the default setting isn't this calm baseline of consciousness anymore. And for a lot of people, the default is being overstimulated, being under rested, and just kind of stressed, which is why one of the most disorienting things that people can experience, especially when they cut back on alcohol, isn't always gonna be the cravings.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's just being present with yourself. That quiet that alcohol can get you to, now all of a sudden you have restlessness that has nowhere to go. And that emotional, let's say, backlog was just kinda waiting underneath the surface. So with all of that, people start thinking, boy, I really miss drinking or boy, I could really have a drink. But when you actually get curious about it, when you ask, you know, what state am I trying to enter into, you might get a different answer often shows up.
Speaker 1:Maybe you miss the ritual, you miss the transition, the thing that marked the end of the day, everybody knows that's my issue, or maybe you miss the interruption of all that mental noise. What's important to note is that that's not the same as missing alcohol. Those are unmet needs with multiple possible solutions. Now I'm not gonna tell you the answers to never want to feel different or want to change your state. Honestly, that's just not realistic, and I don't think it's even desirable.
Speaker 1:But a great conversation should change you. A good song maybe should move you. A walk, a run, maybe a hard ride on your bike should leave you somewhere different than where you started. Now the goal isn't to achieve the exact same thing that you're getting from alcohol. The goal is to become more conscious about the what and the why behind the shift that you're seeking.
Speaker 1:Now I want to close with just getting honest about what you're asking alcohol to do for you. Most people, they never really stop to ask that question. They just kinda reached for the tool that was available. Of course, it's legal. It's socially accepted.
Speaker 1:You know, works fast every time. That's that's an efficient tool, but efficiency isn't the same as getting what you actually need. Now going back to the humans who gathered around fire and danced for hours and fasted and chanted weren't doing those things just randomly. They were doing them because something in that experience was genuinely meeting a need. And the drive you feel at the end of a hard day is connected to that same thing.
Speaker 1:So this week, just one question. When you feel that urge before you just on autopilot pour that drink, ask yourself, what state am I trying to leave right now, or what state am I trying to enter? The more clearly that you can see what you're actually seeking, that's gonna open up your self awareness, and that is basically the whole game. Okay. Thanks for hanging out with this anthropology and history lesson today.
Speaker 1:If you got anything out of this episode, please rate and review wherever you're listening. And until next time, cheers to your mindful drinking journey.
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