Liquor Commercials

The power of marketing is truly a force to be reckoned with. It has the ability to influence, create awareness, persuade, and evoke emotion sometimes in a matter of seconds or minutes. It's found in content creation, word of mouth, and affiliate marketing, just to name a few. The world is vast and complicated. No single action can please everyone, and this is no different. Someone’s going to be offended, triggered, or annoyed. That’s what this is: a rant about liquor commercials, Here’s the scenario.

Maybe it’s happened to you: You decided not to go out, maybe it’s the weekend or a night when friends are out, and you stay behind because you want to stay safe in the confines of your humble abode. So, what do you do? You go on YouTube, maybe watch a show on Hulu or Netflix. If you’re like me, sometimes you want to save money and pay for the low-tier subscription plan with ads. As you watch your show, here come the ads in between, and it’s a liquor commercial.

Personally, I’m limited in hobbies. Most of mine are suited for warm weather or during the day, so I isolate myself and do the only safe thing I can, turn on the TV. And at some point there’s an advertisement for beer, tequila, cocktails, it doesn’t matter. The worst part is when you're on a streaming service like Hulu. In this case, it’s the same 3-4 ads in rotation, so you're watching the same videos over and over again. Sometimes, they even repeat the same commercial back to back.

Being an alcoholic in recovery, here’s what happens in my head. First, it gives me a fear of missing out and being excluded in something(FOMO). Something in this case is drinking culture. This emotional rollercoaster is just getting started. My thoughts start spiraling into deeper, more troubling places. I feel left out, like life’s teasing me with an experience that’s unattainable for me. I’m at home doing my best to avoid triggers, and here it comes.

What’s a guy to do? Switch over to YouTube or another streaming service? There's still ads there too. I could mute the audio, sure, but there’s still the image. I don’t want to turn away. I won’t know when my show is back on, after all I can’t hear it anyway. Then, I would have to rewind and it’s a hassle. I’ll just watch the ad on mute. 

Now, it’s no one’s intent to upset people like me with these commercials, but the reality is that it sells, so it has to be done. I’m just a casualty in the industry’s marketing campaign. Eventually, my mind wanders to memories of the bar atmosphere, the sound of a beer can popping, friends laughing, and sharing a good time.Sometimes these moments of reminiscing feel real like you’re there and you can almost smell the liquor. This starts to annoy me, and that annoyance turns into resentment because I can’t have it like that. I remember past basement parties in college towns, a time when I was wasted and dissociated from the moment. I remember feeling like I was on the outside looking in at this time. I remember all the thoughts and feelings I had in those moments. 

So now I’m triggered. Not only am I hating the feeling of being left out of the target audience, but I’m also angry thinking about these past memories of frustration. All this energy with nowhere to go I can just live tweet my feelings in a raw, passionate manner. It’s the only thing I can do to somewhat feel better, but it’s not enough. Because, boy, am I upset. I walk this world with a chip on my shoulder, and here comes some wind, just giving me the excuse to get all worked up. 

This ends with me overflowing, choking on my own blood  metaphorically speaking. I’m upset, and I can’t take this to anyone. Even if I could It’s also 3 a.m., so I’m definitely not waking anyone up with this. I’ve been sober on and off for a long time, so I know nostalgia isn’t real in the sense that it’s nothing more than a memory of a memory that is dwelling on the positives and ignoring the negatives. It can never be the same. This commercial is just a reminder of that. I’m no different than a junkyard dog tied to a 6 foot chain with a big juicy steak 7 feet away. I've run and hit the end of the line so many times that I know better than to run for it. This isn’t enough to make me drink that much I know.

All this resentment, frustration is consuming me. I'm all pent up. It’s enough to keep me up at night and throw off my sleep schedule. This is the foundation of temptation that can send someone over the edge. Luckily, there’s no liquor in the house. I could be a second away from deciding to throw it all away. I mean, after all this, I think I’ve earned it. In reality, that type of justification is shortsighted. It wouldn’t satisfy the itch the commercial started. So, I don’t even do it. Why go through that for a small taste of pleasure followed by a lot of pain, spanning who knows how long, all over this? 

So I just sit there having gone through all this in my head, with no choice but to just let it go. Even though the temptation was real, I’ve learned that staying true to oneself is worth far more than any fleeting pleasure I could have gotten by letting the commercial get to me.