This article is part of The Belief Bucket series, where we examine ten common beliefs about alcohol.
- Introduction: What is the Belief Bucket?
- Belief #1 – Relaxation (Alcohol helps me relax)
- Belief #2 – Happiness (Alcohol makes me happy)
- Belief #3 – Reward (Alcohol is my reward)
- Belief #4 – The Rosy Effect (Remembering only the good times) ← you’re here
- Belief #5 – Taste (Alcohol tastes amazing)
- Belief #6 – Social Ally (Alcohol helps me socially)
- Belief #7 – Sleep (Alcohol helps me sleep)
- Belief #8 – Moderate Drinking (Our obsession)
- Belief #9 – Boredom (Alcohol solves boredom)
- Belief #10 – The Buzz (Alcohol feels amazing)
Some drinking memories can catch us off guard. A song comes on, an old photo appears or someone brings up a night we haven’t thought about for years.
And for a few seconds, we’re right back there. Everyone’s laughing. We feel younger, lighter and completely part of it.
Then the thought comes up: “Maybe it wasn’t that bad.”
The memory feels real because it’s real. That moment happened.
But did we remember the whole night, or only the part we liked?
That’s what the Rosy Effect is about. We remember the best parts of our drinking and don’t always think about the rest.
Why the past can look better than it was
Our memory isn’t a full recording of everything that happened.
We only remember bits of it. And because the good bits are nicer to think about, we may go back to them more often.
We remember the laughter. The music still takes us back. We remember the first part of the night when everyone was together and things felt easy.
But we might not remember the argument, the bad decision or the next morning nearly as clearly.
We’re not doing that deliberately. It’s just how our memory works.
So after enough time, that one good hour can feel like the whole night.
The memory often stops too early
A lot of our good drinking memories stop before the night started going wrong. We remember arriving, the first few drinks and the funniest conversation. We might leave out when we became too drunk, said something we regretted, started an argument or barely remembered getting home.
And we often leave out the next morning. The poor sleep, anxiety, headache, embarrassment or the feeling that we’d done it again.
For heavy drinkers, it wasn’t always over after one morning. We might lose the day, feel flat for several days and then spend the week trying to get ourselves back together.
All of that was part of the night too. It just wasn’t what came to mind first.
What were we really missing?
Many of us weren’t missing the alcohol itself.
We missed the people, the music, the freedom we had at that age or the feeling that life wasn’t as serious. Alcohol happened to be there, so it became part of the picture.
It’s the same with the belief that alcohol made us happy. The good feeling may have come from the people and everything else happening around us.
And if what we really miss is being younger, seeing old friends or having fewer responsibilities, drinking now can’t take us back to that time. All it can do is give us another night of drinking now.
We can compare the past unfairly
When we think about the past, we often go straight to the best moments. But when we think about today, we include everything.
We include work, bills, tiredness, routines and whatever else we’re dealing with. Then we compare all of that with one great hour from fifteen years ago.
Of course the past can look better when we compare it that way. So if we’re going to compare them, we need to think about everything that happened that night and how we felt the next day. That means remembering the part we enjoyed and the full cost that came with it.
Let the memory keep going
We don’t have to fight a good memory or try to turn it into something awful. We can just let it keep going.
What happened after the part we usually remember? How did the night end? What kind of morning did we wake up to? And how long did it take before we felt normal again?
And if it really was a good night, we can remember it that way. We just stop using one good part as proof that alcohol was good for us.
And it’s worth asking this as well: If those drinking days were as good as the memory says, why did so many of us end up wanting to stop?
We had reasons for that as well.
A good memory doesn’t make alcohol a good idea
Some nights really were fun. Some friendships were real, and some memories still mean a lot to us.
We don’t need to pretend otherwise.
But just because alcohol was there doesn’t mean it created everything we enjoyed. And remembering a good night doesn’t mean we need to drink again to try to get that night back.
We can enjoy the memory and still be honest about everything else that happened. The next one is “Alcohol tastes amazing”.
— Brent
Next in the series: Belief #5 – Taste (Alcohol tastes amazing) →