In the recovery community—and in the culture at large—it’s an article of faith that an alcohol dependency is an individual problem. The causes are individual: your genes, your history, your personality, your choices, and, if the culture you inhabit gets any attention at all, it’s likely just a mention of alcohol advertising, quickly hand-waved away as a non-issue because even children have become too media-savvy to fall for it.

Fortunately, writers are finally starting to challenge this “privatization” of alcohol problems, tracing its history as an alcohol industry strategy to avoid blame for alcohol harms. Scholars, journalists and even social media stars increasingly consider how addictive behavior can be driven by environmental factors such as marketing, propaganda, and social policy—a long-overdue change. Personally, I feel much less like a heretic than I did when I started this blog five years ago!

Still, when I talk with people currently struggling not to drink, I don’t see much evidence that they’re thinking all that differently than I did when I was struggling. I see some change, mainly among people who are a long way (both in years and in level of consumption) from the kind of physical dependence that warrants multiple detoxes and stays in rehab. Don’t get me wrong: some is a great start, and I’m thrilled to see people turning from alcohol before it turns on them. But I worry about those with longer-term addictions, from whose mouths (and keyboards) come the familiar litanies of self-blame, whether for a relapse after a period of sobriety or for becoming addicted in the first place.

So, after a period of inactivity, I’ve resumed blogging. My purpose is to say to the other members of my tribe, “Yes, we have to get ourselves sober, but that does not mean taking 100 percent of the blame for our addiction. We had a lot of help: from the alcohol industry, from a government that lets it run roughshod over public health, from supermarkets and box stores drunk on alcohol profits, from media paid to promote specific brands and glamorize drinking generally, from influencers who lie about alcohol’s health benefits, from government-funded scientists who do the same, and, yes, from advertisers who develop ever-more-ingenious ways to reach children while loudly condemning underage drinking.

I’m also committed to identifying the ways in which these actors make recovery—however we define it— more difficult than it needs to be. So welcome to my blog, and sorry in advance for the long posts, but brevity is hard when you’re arguing against ideas that most people accept without question.

The new photo? That’s AI from Deep Dream Generator, with the text prompt “photo of wine bottles burning and melting.” Cool, huh? And, yeah, I’d still love contributions from other writers, as long as they’re on-topic.

Updated April 1, 2023