The brain associates alcohol with elevating your experiences.

Drinking makes everything—the meal, the celebration, the sunset—a little bit better.

This archetype commonly appears when seeking out the best life has to offer.

The Upgrade tends to show up when:

• • Preparing, cooking, and enjoying a meal.
  • Celebrations, special occasions, vacations, and travel.
  • Seeking out rare, unique, or high-end experiences.
  • Identifying as an expert in your drink of choice.

When The Upgrade is activated, saying no interferes with your desire for things to feel special, making it hard to abstain or moderate.

“Things just don’t feel as special without a drink.”

Rather than elevating what you’re doing, alcohol hijacks your focus and distracts from the specialness all around you.

The Upgrade teaches the brain that positive emotions are lacking without an external reward.

Humans have long used alcohol to mark special occasions.

But when the brain starts to crave alcohol in certain situations, it can steal your capacity for enjoyment.

Here’s an example of the thoughts, feelings, and actions associated with The Upgrade.

Together, they create a learned behavior and influence your relationship with alcohol.

Circumstance: You’re enjoying a beautiful view.

Thought: A drink will make this even better.

Feeling: Desire

Action: You reach for a drink, hoping alcohol will enhance your enjoyment. Notice what you’re not doing:

• You’re not present in the moment. Instead of soaking up the here and now, your brain is busy trying to find a way to make it better. 
• You’re not present in your body. Humans feel positive emotions as pleasurable sensations in the body. Instead of pausing to savor these sensations, your attention is diverted to finding something better. 
• You’re not expanding the original positive emotion. Pausing to consider how lucky, grateful, or happy you are in this moment can actually expand your initial enjoyment. 

Result: Short-term: your brain gets a hit of the feel-good hormone dopamine. Long-term: alcohol steals your capacity for enjoyment and makes positive emotions feel lacking if not immediately followed by a reward.

Here’s why:

• The brain uses dopamine to remember and repeat pleasurable experiences important for survival. This part of the brain evolved millions of years before humans discovered how to ferment alcoholic beverages.   
• Alcohol is not important for survival. Yet, because it creates a large dopamine response, part of the brain remembers it as a high-value reward and wants to repeat the experience.
• The brain learns to associate certain activities (e.g., enjoying the view) with drinking and getting a high-value reward. Over time, just thinking about these activities can trigger a craving to drink. 
• In the past, you may have enjoyed this activity without alcohol. Now, however, your brain expects a high-value reward. If the reward doesn’t come, you’ll find the activity “lacking.”
• You may start to believe—whether consciously or unconsciously—that you can’t fully enjoy the activity without a drink. 
• The idea of not drinking or limiting your intake while engaging in this activity may make you anxious or annoyed, which makes it harder to enjoy yourself.
• When the brain senses a threat to a high-value reward, it narrows your field of vision. You become hyper-fixated on alcohol, and everything there is to enjoy recedes into the background (who you’re with, what you’re doing, etc.).
• Alcohol is now in charge of whether or not something “feels” special, but only because part of your brain is confused. Instead of making things more special, alcohol has diverted your attention away from everything else there is to enjoy. 
• Meanwhile, you never fully savored or expanded the original positive emotion. In fact, constantly trying to “enhance” positive emotions makes them seem lacking to your brain if not immediately followed by a reward. 
• As a result, you keep believing the thought, “A drink will make this even better,” which reinforces The Upgrade archetype. In reality, alcohol starts to steal your capacity for enjoyment. 

The Upgrade often uses the fear of missing out to sabotage rules, drink plans, and Dry Januarys.

Keep in mind, not all obstacles will apply to everyone with this archetype:

• • You find yourself making exceptions because there’s something to celebrate.
  • You don’t want to restrict yourself when traveling or vacationing.
  • You love cooking, but it’s less pleasurable without a drink.
  • You don’t want to miss out on the full luxury experience.
  • When scanning the non-alcoholic options, you think, “There’s nothing fun for me.”
  • You feel like you’re “sitting at the kids’ table” if you’re not drinking.
  • You like knowing about certain drinks and advising others on what to order.
  • You’re embarrassed or annoyed when someone says, “I could make you a Shirley Temple.”
  • You feel awkward when toasting with water.

The Upgrade’s deeper desire is prosperity.

The deeper desire is what the drink represents.

In this context, prosperity is less about financial success and more about engaging with the richness, awe, and magic of life.

Here’s what it sounds like: 

• I need a moment to take this all in… it’s all so amazing.
• The littlest things make me feel so incredibly fortunate.
• So often, the most ordinary experiences can stop me in my tracks.

When pouring a drink is your go-to way to access prosperity, your brain is less likely to even register the everyday pleasures all around you.

Instead, you pour a drink and eventually start clamoring for more.

This is why, with The Upgrade, it’s essential to foster prosperity alongside managing cravings.

“As soon as I decide something is lacking without a drink, I steal my capacity for enjoyment.”

Letting go of The Upgrade will reveal more of life’s pleasures.

Here are some of the superpowers waiting to be unlocked:

• • Discovering how to make any moment feel special.
  • Consuming less and enjoying more.
  • Tapping into easy-to-miss moments of pleasure in regular life.
  • Finding more joy and happiness simply by redirecting your attention.
  • Spending more time on lasting pleasures that light you up.