You love cooking. You love feeding your family, and yet somehow, it doesn’t feel complete without a drink in your hand. The experience feels flat without it. This is episode 459 and I’m breaking down why that happens, how the Upgrade archetype can hijack your attention, and what to do if you want to enjoy cooking without needing a drink to make it better.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out. We’re challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation. No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking. Now, here’s your host, Rachel Hart.

Hey everybody. So I got a question recently from a listener that I think is going to feel incredibly familiar to a lot of you out there. Here’s what Katie wrote.

“I love to cook, and when I prepare meals for my family in the evenings, my habit is to pour a glass of wine or two or three while I’m cooking. I truly enjoy the ritual, but I hate knowing I don’t enjoy cooking without a glass of wine in my hand. I actually think about it and rush home after work so I can pour myself a glass, put on my apron, and start chopping. But I hate that my kids see me drinking every night. I’m scared they will think this is normal. I’m scared that they will learn what they live and will do this themselves when they’re older. I tend to argue more with my husband and my kids when I’ve been drinking, and I know it’s the alcohol. I don’t sleep well on the nights that I’ve had two or three glasses of wine and I wake up looking and feeling tired and angry at myself for my inability to say no. And I’m gaining weight, and I know the wine is a factor, but I can’t stop.”

Now Katie is in the trap that so many people find themselves in. Why can’t I do what I know is good for me, especially when I know all the downsides from drinking too much? Now here’s what’s important. What Katie is describing isn’t about drinking to escape how you feel. It’s about drinking to make things better, to make something more special. And that’s exactly why this pattern can feel so confusing. So today I’m going to talk about the upgrade archetype, how it works, how it hijacks your attention in a way that most people don’t realize.

The Upgrade archetype is all about drinking to enhance. So the brain learns that alcohol elevates experiences. The meal tastes better, the time with others feels more special, the surroundings and the setting feel more beautiful, and even cooking dinner feels more enjoyable, which is exactly what Katie is describing. You’ll often see the upgrade archetype show up around things that already matter to you, things like food and celebrations, vacation, travel, nice restaurants, meaningful moments. And the more you drink during these experiences, the more your brain starts to learn something really subtle but also really powerful. This moment just isn’t complete without a drink.

Nothing has gone wrong if this is your pattern. Humans have paired alcohol with celebration and ritual and enhancing moments for thousands of years. And probably long before you ever started drinking, your brain was getting messages that alcohol equals specialness. But here’s where the shift happens. What starts as enhancement slowly becomes expectation. And this is how alcohol hijacks your attention with the Upgrade archetype. Most of us think that drinking makes things more enjoyable because of the buzz. Basically, we’re enjoying it more because of what’s happening at a chemical level inside of our body.

But one of the biggest changes that actually happens is with your attention. Before the Upgrade archetype takes root, you might love cooking dinner because it’s an amazing sensory experience, the smell of the ingredients, the rhythm of chopping, the discovery of a new recipe, the pleasure of creating something with your hands, the joy that you get from feeding the people you love. I always think this when I’m making my grandmother’s tomato sauce. I don’t particularly love celery, but I love the smell of chopping really fresh celery. It’s just so pleasurable for me.

But once the Upgrade archetype takes hold, something changes. Your brain starts anticipating the reward that it gets from alcohol. So cooking no longer just means cooking with all of those pleasurable sensory experiences. Cooking now means wine or beer or whatever you drink. And it means dopamine, which is tied to motivation and learning, starts firing, not just when you drink, but also when you think about drinking. That’s what Katie is describing as she rushes home.

The urgency she feels is a learned anticipation. And this is the part that most people miss. Alcohol doesn’t just change how you feel, it changes what your brain pays attention to. Instead of fully experiencing what’s already enjoyable, your brain starts scanning for how to make the moment better. So the spotlight shifts, and slowly, all of those original pleasures start to fade into the background.

And this is where a really important distinction comes in. It’s a difference between wanting and liking, and it’s something that I talk about inside the ultimate guide to drinking less. But here’s what you need to know. Wanting is future-focused. It’s about anticipation. It’s the thought, “A drink will make this better.” But the moment that you are focused on the future, you’re no longer in the present where your enjoyment is actually unfolding in real time. Because liking is present-focused. It’s the actual enjoyment happening right now. And for most of us, we’re never taught how to separate out wanting from liking. And so we just kind of confuse these two things. And not only is the ability to separate these two things apart so incredibly important, but what we want is often a very poor indicator of what we actually enjoy.

So with the Upgrade archetype, wanting grows stronger and stronger while liking recedes to the background. So you might really want and like that first glass of wine, but do you actually like the third one? Now, as Katie said, she doesn’t like how she sleeps. She doesn’t like the fact that she’s more likely to get into arguments with her family. She doesn’t like the way she feels the next morning, and all of that is true. But the real question is, are you liking each subsequent glass the same or more as the first?

So I really want you guys to think about this, but truly, this is something that you have to experiment with. Do you truly enjoy the second, the third, the fourth glass as much? Or are you just on wanting autopilot? Now, I will tell you this, when I work with people, they will often say, “Yes, I do. I do enjoy it as much.” But when I have them actually do an experiment with mindful drinking, they will often come back really kind of annoyed with me. Because they realize, oh, each additional drink did not actually correspond to increase in my enjoyment, which I will tell you can be really, really mind-blowing.

It’s one thing to hear me talk about this, it is another thing to experience it. It certainly was for me. Because I had a very strong story about how much I just loved to drink. And also that more was always better. This story was so strong, but when I really slowed down and really paid attention, that story did not match the reality of my experience the more I consumed. Now listen, I’m not saying that suddenly you’re going to discover like, “Oh, I hate what I’m drinking. I hate the taste and I hate how I feel.” It’s not that. It’s about the subtleties. It’s about when you really slow down and pay attention, you are likely to find that you are drinking well past the point of enjoyment. And you may also discover that as your enjoyment diminishes, your wanting may actually grow.

What happens is the brain becomes really good at chasing anticipation while losing touch with real-time enjoyment. And it also starts to believe something that can feel so convincing with this archetype. Your brain will say over and over that this activity just isn’t as enjoyable without a drink. But what’s actually happened is that the alcohol has trained your attention away from the enjoyment that was already part of the experience.

I want to also address something that Katie said that I think a lot of parents wrestle with. So she worried that her kids are watching and learning from her, learning that drinking three glasses of wine when you cook dinner is normal. Now here’s the thing. Kids don’t just learn whether their parents drink. They learn how their parents handle being human. They learn whether or not the adults in their life avoid talking about their mistakes and their struggles and the moments where they showed up where they wish they could have shown up differently, or whether or not they own these moments. They learn whether conflict means distance or repair.

So yes, Katie, you may notice that drinking makes arguments more likely, and that is useful information. But don’t turn that into the story that alcohol is the only reason that you struggle or that removing it will magically make you endlessly patient and emotionally regulated with your family. Kids learn how their parents relate to stress and relate to pleasure and whether or not enjoyment comes from stepping fully into a moment or by adding something to it.

Even if you feel like you haven’t modeled a great relationship with alcohol in the past, you can model something incredibly powerful starting right now. You can model how to create enjoyment consciously. You can model how to start showing up in a more regulated way, and you can model always, always, always focusing on repair. That’s what I do. I always tell myself, Rachel, you don’t need to be perfect with your kids. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to show up in ways that you don’t like, but I always have the opportunity to repair with them.

So for all of you struggling with this, what seems like impossible thing to delink, right? The love of cooking and drinking while you are cooking, there are some very practical things that you can start experimenting with. Remember, the goal with the Upgrade archetype is not to remove pleasure from your life. In fact, that’s really going to backfire with this archetype. The goal is to retrain your brain to find and focus on pleasure that is already there without immediately rushing to, “How can I make this better?” The goal is to bring your attention back to liking instead of always being stuck in wanting.

So first, you can keep the ritual but change one variable. So right now, your brain has bundled everything together, the apron, the music, the chopping, the beautiful glass, and the wine. It all lives in one mental package. So when you imagine removing the wine, your brain reacts like you’re removing the whole experience, but you’re not. You’re just changing what’s in the glass. Maybe you have a special non-alcoholic drink while you cook. Maybe you wait to drink with dinner instead of while you’re cooking. You’re not saying that you’ll never drink again. You’re experimenting with this question. What is it like to keep all of the things I enjoy and really focus and bring my attention to why I enjoy those things instead of getting caught up in the wanting? So you’re helping your brain relearn that it’s the entire ritual that creates the experience, not the alcohol.

The second thing you can experiment with is anchoring your attention on something pleasurable in the moment. It’s not about distracting yourself, it’s about noticing what your brain has started to ignore. Remember how I talked about how much I love the smell of celery when I chop it? That’s the kind of noticing that I mean. So maybe it’s the smell of garlic hitting the pan, maybe it’s the sound of the knife on the cutting board, maybe it’s just the full sensory experience of cooking.

When alcohol becomes part of the routine, your brain stops fully registering all of these things. So this isn’t just mindfulness for the sake of mindfulness. You’re literally retraining liking. You’re trying to teach your brain to notice and focus and stay with all of these pleasurable things without immediately rushing to, “I need to enhance this. I need to make this better,” or immediately kind of focusing on the wanting in the future.

And then finally, if you’re the Upgrade archetype, and at this point, if you’re not sure, you can always take the quiz at FindYourDrinkType.com. But if you are, remember, this isn’t about needing less beauty or pleasure. It’s about giving the instinct a new target. So maybe you want to upgrade the playlist that you listen to. Maybe you want to light a candle. Maybe you want to get some really beautiful glass for your non-alcoholic drink. Maybe you want to plate the food intentionally. Channel the desire for specialness somewhere else and see what happens. Because what you’re trying to do is teach your brain this: specialness comes from how I engage with the moment, not from my drink.

And I want to prepare you for something because this is where a lot of people can get discouraged. You might notice resistance showing up in two different ways. The first kind happens before you even try these experiments. You might have thoughts like, “Yeah, I just know this isn’t going to be as good or it won’t be as enjoyable or what’s the point?” Or “I already know that I’m going to want the wine anyway.” Those thoughts are not a problem. That’s your brain just trying to protect a familiar reward. It’s simply reacting to change.

But then there’s also the second kind of resistance that can show up when you’re trying out one of these experiments. So maybe you start cooking without the glass of wine and suddenly it’s like the craving feels louder or you feel restless or irritated or distracted. Your brain keeps pulling your attention back to the idea of pouring a glass. And this is really important to understand. Neither form of resistance means the activity is actually less enjoyable. It just means that your brain has learned to expect the reward of alcohol and it’s noticing that expectation isn’t being met. In other words, that resistance isn’t evidence that something is missing, it’s evidence that learning is happening. You’re all of a sudden seeing the pattern instead of automatically following it.

So here’s what I want you to understand. The Upgrade archetype, it is not a problem. It’s evidence that you care deeply about enjoyment, beauty, and making things feel special, making things feel good. But at some point, your brain became convinced that without a drink, all of the things that you enjoy are lacking on their own. And the real shift happens when you start discovering something surprising. The moment itself was never lacking. Your attention has just been redirected from being in the present moment to focusing on the future. Somewhere along the way, you shifted from liking to wanting, and it’s that wanting loop that we need to get you out of. The real upgrade here isn’t adding alcohol to the experience, it’s remembering your capacity to fully experience and find enjoyment and pleasure on your own.

All right, Katie, I hope you found this helpful. If you guys have questions you’d like me to answer on the podcast, you can go to RachelHart.com/podq, that’s P-O-D-Q. I’ll see you next week.

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Hey guys, you already know that drinking less has plenty of health benefits. But did you know that the work you do to change your relationship with alcohol will help you become more of the person you want to be in every part of your life?

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