Dr. Tabatha Barber argues that even moderate drinking hijacks your brain's reward system, creating artificial dopamine spikes that make genuine joy harder to find. Alcohol occupies mental real estate before and after you drink, eroding the peace and self-control that come from spiritual well-being.
Instead of focusing on like, oh, I'm only having 2 glasses, or I'm only having this amount of alcohol, what is it doing to your love, your joy, your peace, your patience, your self-control? But instead of focusing on how much you're drinking— I'm only having 2 glasses a night, or I'm only having like 6 on the weekend, or whatever it is— what is it doing to the fruit of the Spirit? Like, is your 2 glasses of wine robbing you of peace because that's all you can think of in the hours leading up to it and the hours after it, right? Because you're taking so much mental real estate to those 2 glasses? Um, is it getting in the way of, you know, your joy, right? Because of how alcohol affects our dopamine, it gives us this natural— not natural, unnatural— spike, artificial level, huge. When you get used to that, it's hard to figure out like what, how you normally can feel joy, right? Because you're used to this massive artificial dopamine spike. And so instead of focusing on like, oh, I'm only having 2 glasses, or I'm only having this amount of alcohol, What is it doing to your love, your joy, your peace, your patience, your self-control? Like, what— how is it interrupting or getting in the way of the fruit of the Spirit? I am not joyful because all I am is focusing on this one thing that I think is giving me all these things when it was actually robbing me of that. And really, we're like giving up our joy every time we drink
