The Emotional Epidemic Behind Addiction That Big Pharma Hopes You Never Discover (And How It Could Actually Set You Free)
Added on October 3, 2025 inASTROLOGY CARDS
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Ever get that nagging feeling that the universe might actually be conspiring with your local liquor store? Like, flip the cosmic calendar to today’s astrology, and you might just find Mercury retrograde aligning suspiciously well with a 3 AM dive bar’s happy hour. It’s everywhere—this subtle (and sometimes glaring) pressure to drown discomfort in a glass, as if happiness only comes when you “disappear” behind the fog of a drink. Society’s spinning deranged, drunk-driving-fast down a metaphorical freeway—and guess what? The alcohol industry’s in the passenger seat, waving everyone toward that next sip. But hey, let’s pull over for a sec because voices like Susanne Warye, the brain behind the Sober Mom Life Cafe, are cutting through the noise. She’s not just talking sobriety; she’s unpacking the shame that festers beneath it all—like mold that quietly wrecks your foundation until you finally face it. So, ready to steer your life away from that reckless speed and toward clarity instead of the booze fog? Buckle up; this ride is all about shedding shame, busting the so-called “healthy drinker” myths, and reclaiming the wheel of your own story. LEARN MORE
Have you ever felt like everwhere you turn, someone or something is pushing you to self-medicate with alcohol? Whether you drink or not, it can feel impossible to escape the subtle (and not-so-subtle) messaging: if you want to be happy, you need to disappear.
Sometimes it seems our society is being driven drunk at high speed, the wrong way down a 3 AM freeway, with the alcohol industry encouraging people to drink in order to cope. Fortunately, people are becoming more aware of the risks and spreading hope for a better future, like Susanne Warye, an influencer and creator of the Sober Mom Life Cafe media network
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For Warye, binge drinking was about trying to outrun one emotion: shame. Once she connected the two, she was able to start healing. She knew she wasn’t alone in this quest, so she created a supportive digital community for women to explore their relationships with alcohol and find freedom in sobriety without the added shame. She joined Andrea Miller on the Getting Open podcast to talk about he journey.
Warye shared a fantastic analogy with Miller, explaining that shame is like mold in the basement. The longer you ignore it, the more damage is done.
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For Warye, looking at the “mold in the basement” was just too scary, and so she kept drinking. She wanted to believe she could control her alcohol intake or simply adjust her relationship with alcohol. Finally, she woke up one morning with yet another hangover and decided enough was enough.
She quit alcohol for good and discovered that living alcohol-free wasn’t about deprivation, it was about gaining clarity.
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Even one daily drink puts you in the moderate risk zone, as a 2022 study stated, “any amount of alcohol used long-term may have an adverse effect on recovery (the healthy dose of alcohol is zero).” One glass of wine equals three drinks, or units. You only get 14 units of alcohol a week before real damage begins. Alcohol kills 2.6 million people worldwide per year, which is 7000 people today. 400 million people suffer from alcohol use-related disorders.
Alcohol has also been linked to dementia, accelerated brain shrinkage, memory loss, and cognitive decline. Despite the alcohol industry’s claims otherwise, it is not a healthy beverage and it’s not a healthy way to manage your stress, past trauma or even to simply relax.
We trick ourselves by modeling social scripts about alcohol moderation:
These statements all contribute to feeling like a failure because you can’t seem to drink “normally”. You can’t follow the “healthy drinker” models from movies, series, and advertisements. In reality, few people can.
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Drinking is a small part of alcohol addiction. The majority of the “why” behind people become alcoholics lies below the surface.
While the tip of that iceberg represents the physiologically addictive substance, the submerged part of the iceberg is everything we avoid looking at, all of the problems we avoid, when we use a substance to numb ourselves. This all compounds when we try to cut back or quit and struggle to do so. We feel weak.
As Dr. Sarah Wakeman explains, “Trauma is probably the single biggest driver. You often hear things like, cannabis is a gateway drug. I would say trauma is the gateway drug.”
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Addiction isn’t weakness, it’s trauma. In addition, 40 to 60% of our propensity to become addicted is genetic. The rest generally comes from childhood adversity.
Shame about not being able to moderate our own alcohol consumption is often what keeps us drinking. It becomes a cycle: You feel shame so you start drinking, then you feel shame so you stop drinking and try to quit. But quitting is incredibly hard, so you feel ashamed of how hard it is to quit. You think it should be easier, after all! That shame triggers you to want to drink again and here you go again.
Alcohol then shows back up as the hero who claims to save you from feeling the shame, yet alcohol is also the villain who drives the shame deeper. The only way to truly heal it? You need to look your regrets in the eye, make amends with yourself, and learn from those mistakes.
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Once you no longer feel ashamed of making the choice to drink, you no longer have to feel the socially-driven shame of sobriety.
Instead of saying the alcohol made you good at being social, playing music, being a parent, or driving a car (yes, people still use that excuse), you can finally appreciate the hard work, the strength of character, the fun, the connections, and the fact that it all comes from you and not the booze. You can be the hero.
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As Susanne Warye shows us, once you take control and forget about the myth of moderation. The careening, runaway car that is your alcohol use can be controlled. You can pull the emergency brake, crank the steering wheel hard, and pull a 180-degree direction change, and start driving the right direction down the freeway of a beautiful, fulfilling life once again.
Will Curtis is YourTango’s expert editor. Will has over 14 years of experience as an editor covering relationships, spirituality, and human interest topics.
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