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PlanB Coaching > Blog > Uncategorized > The Glamorisation of Addiction: When Did Self Destruction Become Trendy?
Let me start with something that might make you uncomfortable.
I’ve watched friends almost die from alcohol withdrawal. I’ve held someone’s hand while they shook so violently they couldn’t hold a glass of water. I’ve sat in hospital waiting rooms wondering if this was the night the phone call would come that changed everything.
So when I see twenty somethings on TikTok romanticising their “wine mum” culture, when I see influencers casually joking about their “cocaine brunches,” when I see memes about functioning alcoholism being shared like they’re harmless punchlines—I have to ask:
Since when did addiction become trendy?
And more importantly, what the hell are we doing to ourselves?
Let’s clear something up right now. There is no VIP entrance to addiction. There’s no velvet rope, no guest list, no exclusive club where you get a membership card for being “interesting” or “edgy” or “deep.”
The qualification process for becoming an alcoholic or an addict is not a nice life experience. It is not aesthetic. It is not quirky.
It is:
Waking up at 3 AM with your heart pounding so hard you think it’s going to explode, needing a drink just to stop the shaking.
Hiding bottles in places you’ll later forget, behind the toilet tank, in the garage, under the floorboards of your car, in your office desk drawer at work.
Having to calculate how much you can drink before you have to pick your kids up from school.
Lying to your doctor, your partner, your parents, your friends, and eventually even to yourself.
Waking up with bruises you don’t remember getting, in places you don’t recognise, next to people whose names you can’t recall.
The sheer, bone deep exhaustion of needing something that is slowly killing you, and hating yourself for it.
This isn’t romantic. This isn’t “living your best life.” This is survival mode and it’s not cute.
So how did we reach this point? How did we take something that destroys lives and families and turn it into a personality trait?
We live in a culture that has always been fascinated by the tortured artist, the brilliant mind that burns too brightly, the star whose flame is extinguished by their own demons. We romanticise Cobain and Winehouse and Hendrix and Morrison, and we ignore that they are dead. The romanticisation erases the reality. Addiction kills.
But celebrity culture has evolved. Now it’s not just about idolising the dead, it’s about normalising the living. We watch reality stars slurring their words, we scroll past Instagram influencers posting wine glasses like props, and we absorb the message that substance use is just what you do when you’re successful and interesting.
There’s an entire economy of content built around romanticising dysfunction. Memes about needing wine to get through the day. Jokes about being “hot messes.” Shared posts about day drinking being a lifestyle choice.
Here are some phrases I’ve seen unironically shared thousands of times:
“Rosé all day”
“It’s wine o’clock somewhere”
“I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a professional wine taster”
“My hobbies include drinking and regretting drinking”
“Adulting is hard; wine helps”
Cute, right? Until you realise these memes are created by marketing teams, shared by people whose feeds are curated to hide the real devastation, and consumed by young people forming their entire worldview about substances from a screen.
This isn’t harmless. When you commodify dysfunction, you trivialise recovery. You minimise the suffering. You send a message that addiction is just funny, a quirky personality quirk rather than a life threatening medical condition.
One of the most dangerous myths we’ve normalised is the “functioning alcoholic.”
“Oh, I’m fine, I hold down a job, I pay my bills, I’m a great parent. I just drink a lot.”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: “functioning” isn’t a personality type; it’s just a phase. It’s temporary. It’s the part of the disease that comes before the wheels fall off and the wheels always, always fall off.
You can be “functioning” for years. You can convince everyone around you that you have it together. But inside, you’re running a marathon on a broken leg. Eventually, you collapse. It’s not an if, it’s a when.
I want to take a moment to be really specific about what qualifies someone as an alcoholic or addict. Because the trendification of addiction has watered down the definition to the point where “I like to have a drink after work” is somehow equated with a life threatening disease.
Here’s what actually qualifies you:
1. Loss of Control
Not just drinking more than you intended, though that’s part of it. It’s the inability to stop. It’s planning to have one drink and having eight. It’s telling yourself you’ll take a week off and caving by 10 AM on day two. It’s the terrifying realisation that you are no longer in charge of your own choices.
2. Withdrawal Symptoms
This isn’t just a hangover. This is:
Sweating through your sheets at night
Tremors that make it impossible to write or eat with utensils
Nausea so severe you can’t keep anything down
Hallucinations, visual and auditory
Seizures
Delirium tremens (which can be fatal)
3. Tolerance
The progressive need for more and more to achieve the same effect. The bottle that used to last you a week now lasts two days. The beers that used to get you buzzed now just help you feel “normal.”
4. Using Despite Consequences
This is the heart of addiction. You know you’re damaging your liver. You know you’re destroying your relationships. You know you’ve missed important events, ruined careers, hurt people you love. You know all of this—and you still can’t stop.
5. Craving
The overwhelming, consuming, all-day-every-day need. The obsession. It’s not just wanting a drink; it’s planning your entire day around when and how you’ll get one. It’s counting the hours until you can justify it. It’s the voice in your head that never, ever shuts up.
6. Time Spent
Addiction is a full-time job. The time spent obtaining substances, using them, and recovering from them takes over your life. Hours disappear. Days blur together. Your entire existence narrows to the next fix, the next drink, the next moment of chemically induced relief.
Now let’s talk about what happens when you stop.
Because the trendification of addiction doesn’t just misrepresent the disease, it completely erases the brutal, unglamorous, heroic reality of recovery.
Recovery is not a Hallmark movie moment. It’s not a montage with inspirational music where you have one big breakthrough and then everything is fixed.
Recovery is:
Every Single Day
I cannot emphasise this enough. The battle doesn’t end when you get out of rehab. It doesn’t end when you hit a year sober. It doesn’t end when you get your life back together. It doesn’t end, ever.
There are days in recovery when everything is fine. You wake up, you have your coffee, you go about your day, and the thought of using doesn’t even cross your mind.
Then there are days when it’s all you can do not to walk into a bar. Days when your brain screams at you that just one wouldn’t hurt. Days when you have to physically force yourself to call your sponsor, go to a meeting, reach out to someone—because you can’t do it alone.
The Losses
Recovery often means losing people. Some people can’t handle the sober version of you. Some friendships were built entirely around using. Some relationships have to end because they’re no longer healthy for you.
These aren’t clean, dramatic breaks. They’re slow, painful, sometimes years-long processes of realising that the people you love can’t stay in your life if you want to stay alive.
The Grief
There’s profound grief in recovery. Grief for the life you thought you’d have. Grief for the years you lost. Grief for the person you were before addiction took over. Grief for the people you hurt.
You process this grief while staying clean. You feel it completely, without any chemical buffer. It’s raw and it’s hard and there’s no escape from it.
The Community
But recovery is also this: finding people who get it. People who have walked through the same fire. People who will answer a 3 AM phone call without judgment. People who will sit with you in meetings and share their own shame so you don’t have to carry yours alone.
It’s building a new life, brick by brick, when your old life is in ruins. It’s discovering that you’re stronger than you ever knew—not because you don’t want to use, but because you do want to use and you still choose not to. Every. Single. Day.
So why does any of this matter? Why should we care about memes and celebrities and trends?
Because glamorisation kills.
When we make addiction look fun, romantic, or edgy, we do several things:
We normalise early use. Young people see substance use as a marker of adulthood, sophistication, or rebellion. They start earlier, and starting earlier dramatically increases the risk of developing a substance use disorder.
We delay help-seeking. If you think addiction is just a lifestyle choice, you’re not going to seek treatment. You’re going to think you can control it. You’re going to think “I’m not that bad” until you’re trapped.
We minimise the severity. We treat addiction as a moral failing rather than a medical condition. We shame people who can’t “just stop” because we’ve bought into the myth that addiction is a choice.
We make recovery harder. When we romanticise using, we create a culture where sober people are seen as “boring” or “judgmental.” We make recovery feel like a punishment rather than a gift.
We invalidate real suffering. When someone who actually has an addiction sees memes about “wine mums” being “sooooo drunk,” it minimises their experience. It makes them feel alone. It makes them feel like their suffering doesn’t count.
I’m not saying we need to treat addiction with fear. That doesn’t help anyone. What we need is honesty.
We need honest conversations. We need to talk about addiction the way we talk about cancer or diabetes—as a serious health condition that requires treatment, support, and compassion.
We need to stop romanticising. No more “tortured genius” narratives. No more aestheticising self-destruction. No more making jokes about substances that destroy lives.
We need to centre the real stories. The stories of people in recovery. The stories of families who have lost loved ones. The stories of people who are fighting every single day to stay alive.
We need to destigmatise recovery. We should celebrate sobriety the way we celebrate any other life-saving medical treatment. We should create communities where people can be open about their recovery without fear of judgment.
We need to understand what addiction actually is.
Language matters. When you say “I’m so OCD” because you like things neat, you trivialise a debilitating condition. When you say “I’m so depressed” because you had a bad day, you minimise a life-threatening mental illness.
When you joke about being an alcoholic because you drink on weekends, you do the same thing to people who are actually fighting for their lives.
Words have power. Use them with care.
Addiction isn’t trendy. It isn’t fun. It isn’t a personality quirk or a lifestyle choice.
It’s a disease. It’s a thief. It’s a liar. It takes everything you have and demands more. It isolates you from everyone you love. It convinces you that you can’t live without it, and then it kills you.
Recovery is hard. It’s the hardest thing many people will ever do. It requires humility, courage, community, and a willingness to face everything you’ve been running from.
But recovery is also possible. Every day, people get clean. Every day, people rebuild their lives. Every day, people choose connection over isolation, hope over despair, life over death.
And they deserve our respect, our support, and our honesty.
They deserve a culture that sees them clearly, not as tragic heroes or cautionary tales, but as human beings who are fighting a fight that most of us can’t even imagine.
So the next time you see a meme romanticising addiction, think twice before you share it. The next time you hear someone joking about being “so alcoholic,” gently challenge it. The next time you encounter addiction in your life, in your family, in yourself, meet it with compassion, not judgment, and with honesty, not glamour.
Because addiction is real. It’s deadly. And the only thing trendy about it is how quickly it goes from being a joke to being a coffin.
If you or someone you love is struggling with addiction:
In the UK: Contact Alcoholics Anonymous UK at 0800 9177 650
You are not alone. Help exists. Recovery exists.
Choose life. Every day, choose life.
If you’re in recovery: I see you. I honour you. Keep going.
If you’re still using: You are not beyond hope. There is a way out. Take the first step. Today.
If you’re a bystander: Stop romanticising. Start supporting. Your words matter. Your actions matter.
Let’s build a culture that doesn’t glamorise self-destruction, but celebrates the hell out of recovery.
At the time of writing I am 15 years and 4 months without any mind altering substances!!!
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