That’s why we drink - an analysis

For anyone who knows me, I am a big country music fan. Especially new country music.

There’s a song by Justin Moore called “Why We Drink” and the first time I heard this I really liked it. I thought it was really cute. The lyrics go:

'Cause it’s ice cold
'Cause it's hot out

'Cause our team lost
'Cause our team won

'Cause we're a little messed up
But it's cheaper than a dang old shrink
That's why we drink

Then the more that I thought about it, the more I thought it wasn’t a very good song for these reasons:

1.      It’s poignant that most of the lyrics are opposites of each other. That is one of the reasons I thought it was a cute song at first. We drink because it’s cold out, we drink because it’s hot out. We drink to cool down we drink to warm up. It’s an interesting dichotomy that alcohol can create both of these feelings in our body depending on our circumstances.

2.     We are using drinking to both celebrate our successes winning, and to console ourselves during a loss. This is strange that we do the same thing for both we want to be in a different state of mind when we’re happy and when we’re sad. So that brings up the question of why can we not be OK with just being, or just feeling the excitement and happiness of winning and the sadness of losing. Alcohol is a way to feel better and in so is not good.

3.     We are a messed up society since one of the lyrics points out that drinking is cheaper than getting a shrink and actually facing our mental health issues that we would like some help with. We drink and we think this helps us when it actually does not do anything. It is like treating the symptoms but not the infection. It doesn’t actually treat the problem but it puts a Band-Aid on a bigger world, so we think it’s helping when it actually is not addressing the real issues that we have.

I’ve been struggling with the debate in my head on whether I should give up drinking altogether. Because I do enjoy drinking especially beer in the summer to cool down and bourbon in the winter to warm up. I am a cliché of one of these lyrics in the song which is why I thought it was which is why I liked the song right away.

I will also use drinking as a way to calm myself down. Alcohol is a depressant. And I use it as an anti-anxiety drug for myself, I tend to drink more if I am feeling anxious. I do this so that I don’t have to feel anxious depressants do that they can make you feel calmer and slow your system down.

But I think there are better tactics to address that than drinking. Like thought work, meditation, taking control of my own mind, and slowing it down through mindfulness/putting things into perspective by thinking of things I’m grateful for. These are ways that we can feel less anxious in the moment without reaching for drugs.

Also drinking can be used as a creative outlet and as Madame Gandhi points out, creativity should come from our unaltered state of mind rather than depending on a drug to get to a creative state of mind.

Therefore, this song is very poignant in this day and age on we drink no matter what. The US is a very drinking heavy country. I don’t think drinking is bad, but I think we should be mindful of when we’re drinking, what we’re thinking when we’re drinking, how we are feeling when we reach for a drug or drinks and keep in mind why we are consuming what we are consuming.