Joy Drinking

I woke up from a dream, we were talking about “joy drinking”. My first thought was, is that a thing? Did I hear it somewhere? Did my sleeping brain stitch it together out of pieces floating around in my subconscious? With eyes barely open I grabbed my phone, turned off do not disturb, and started asking questions based on what I remembered of my waking dream.

What I remembered is that joy drinking was people intentionally consuming goodness, softness, beauty, coziness, tenderness, or everyday humanity in order to emotionally replenish themselves. There are already psychological and cultural frameworks circling around this idea, even if they don’t call it that directly. There’s comfort media, nervous system regulation through sensory input, “soft fascination” from environmental psychology, parasocial soothing and co-regulation, and intentional mood curation. People are already doing this constantly. We just haven’t really named it in a way that feels human and ordinary.

We talk endlessly about doomscrolling, screen addiction, overstimulation, and the way algorithms keep people emotionally activated, but we rarely talk about the opposite. We rarely talk about the deliberate consumption of things that remind us life contains goodness. Not productivity. Not self-improvement. Not optimization. Just goodness.

Once my brain came fully online and I started thinking about it, I realized we are already “joy drinking” without even recognizing that’s what we’re doing. We do it when we watch baby animals stumble around in the grass or children laughing and playing. When someone bakes bread in a quiet kitchen or films a train ride through the rain. We do it through gardening videos, people carefully restoring old objects with their hands, softly lit “day in the life” videos where nothing dramatic happens, and old couples still being sweet with each other after decades together. A golden retriever proudly carrying a stick twice its size like it’s the greatest accomplishment of its life. Live cameras showing bird feeders. Wood fires next to a stream. Small sights and sounds that bring a sense of peace back into the body.

These little glimpses of ordinary life make the nervous system unclench for a second because they feel human. And right now, I think people are far more starved for that feeling than they realize.

Most of us are consuming emotional junk food all day long. Outrage. Fear. Conflict. Comparison. Noise. Urgency. Catastrophe. Performance. We absorb a constant low-grade stress drip through headlines, arguments, comment sections, and algorithms designed to keep us emotionally activated because activated people keep scrolling. After a while, that level of tension starts to feel normal, and people forget what it feels like to exist without being internally braced for impact.

Your nervous system cannot live exclusively on alarm signals. At some point it starts starving for beauty, gentleness, warmth, and ordinary life. That’s why I think “joy drinking” matters. It isn’t distraction, avoidance, or “positive vibes only” denial. It’s nourishment. There’s a real difference between trying to protect yourself and trying to remind yourself that life contains goodness.

When people become depleted, they stop noticing what is still alive around them. Birds singing outside the window. Steam rising from a cup of tea. Fresh sheets. Rain against the house. Someone laughing in another room. The smell of coffee. Sunlight hitting the floor in late afternoon. A dog sleeping peacefully nearby. None of those things erase hardship, grief, uncertainty, or reality, but they do remind the body that life is not all about suffering.

Honestly, I think many people are emotionally dehydrated. Not from lack of information or insight, but from lack of joy. Not huge, cinematic, life-changing joy. Just small, daily, accessible human joy. The kind you can actually survive on.

This is the point where the dream turned into something practical for me.

Because once you realize you’re emotionally consuming things all day long, the next question becomes:

What exactly are you feeding yourself?

The rest of this piece is for paid subscribers, where I talk more about emotional junk food, curating your feeds and environment differently, creating more real-life moments of joy, and becoming someone who actively adds small moments of goodness back into the world around them.

four leaf clover spotted in a sea of clover and flowers

We are curating our internal world all day long, whether we realize it or not. Every account you follow, every headline you click, every argument you stop to watch, every comment section you linger in, every video you absorb before bed — all of it becomes part of your emotional atmosphere over time. Your attention is not neutral. What you repeatedly consume eventually shapes the emotional tone of your inner world.

Which means we need to become much more intentional about what we allow into our minds, bodies, and homes. Curate your feeds differently. Follow people who make beautiful food, grow gardens, restore old cabins, create art, laugh easily, or remind you life is still being lived quietly and meaningfully everywhere. Less outrage farming and manufactured panic. Less emotional junk food. More softness, beauty, and ordinary humanity.

And not just online. Practice “joy drinking” in real life too. Open the windows. Sit in the sun for ten minutes. Buy flowers from the grocery store. Listen to birds instead of a podcast once in a while. Light the good candle on a Tuesday. Wave at your neighbors. Pet your dog longer than usual. Cook slowly. Notice the smell of rain. Take the long way home if the trees are pretty.

And maybe part of “joy drinking” isn’t just learning to notice goodness again. Maybe part of it is becoming someone who helps create it.

Compliment people sincerely. Tell someone what you admire about them. Let the cashier know you appreciate their kindness. Tell someone they have a beautiful laugh. Tell a tired parent they’re doing a good job. Most people are walking around emotionally bruised and touch-starved for simple human warmth.

Tiny moments matter, not because they solve everything, but because they interrupt the constant narrative that the world is cold, disconnected, hostile, and performative.

Sometimes joy spreads quietly.

One ordinary human interaction at a time.

Tiny things count. In fact, tiny things are usually the things that save us over time.

So no, I don’t think “joy drinking” is some silly made-up phrase anymore. I think it’s a necessary skill, especially in a world constantly competing for your outrage, fear, and exhaustion.

My challenge to you this week is less doomscrolling, eliminate one thing that drives you crazy, compliment one stranger a day, and more “joy drinking”.

– Sarah