How Is Your Relationship with Alcohol? Ft. Jenna Hollenstein
Christy Harrison: Jenna, welcome to Rethinking Wellness. I'm so excited to talk with you.
Jenna Hollenstein: I am too. I'm so glad to be speaking with you.
Christy Harrison: So we have been in touch for years at this point. We talked many years ago for my first podcast, Food Psych, and that was way back in 2017. So I imagine most people listening haven't heard your story and I think we only touched a little bit on alcohol, but that's what we're really going to be talking about today is alcohol, your experience of recovery and your thoughts on the current sobriety trend and wellness culture. So I'd love to start off by having you tell us about your history with alcohol and alongside that, your history with diet culture and disordered eating, since I know they were kind of intertwined for you.
Jenna Hollenstein: Yeah, they are all woven together. Sometimes when I say it out loud, it's a little surprising, other times it doesn't hit me quite the same way but I started drinking when I was 12 years old, and that was because I had untreated anxiety and depression as a child. And then I was a victim of mean girl culture in middle school and fell in with a group that had some older siblings who would get beer or whatever. It became sort of part of socialization. I liked the way that it helped me feel different in a situation that otherwise would feel really fraught for me. Just all those teenage kind of concerns about belonging and vulnerability and everything like that.
And then I continued drinking through high school, college, and early adulthood and managed to stay in sort of a gray area in terms of being able to be on the basketball team and get good grades and perform in college, et cetera, et cetera. And as you mentioned, the, the diet stuff really kind of wove in there because it was probably in high school where I really started to try to control how I was eating or I became very self conscious about my body and sort of focused on how I might change it through dieting.
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