Hi, and welcome to the Stacey M show. I am going to tell you why you don't have to give up alcohol. So it's probably a cheeky topic because maybe in some cases you do need to give, give up alcohol for health reasons. But if you probably a few months ago now, I did an episode on why I gave up alcohol. and then kind of went back to it and then kind of have given up again. And having clients who have alcohol issues, I thought I would do this episode to basically just make you not feel bad if you still want to drink alcohol. So You know, there's kind of like an all or nothing mentality around alcohol. You either drink it or you don't. There seems to be no in between. You know, maybe withholding alcohol is not something that you want to do. You might want to save it for a special occasion or something. And obviously you have the health aspect of giving up alcohol as well. So first of all, I want you to have a think about whether you think you have an alcohol problem or not. I didn't think I did until I realised I was putting away three bottles of wine a week, which wasn't like me at all. Now I can't even have like half a glass and it makes me feel sick. But I want you to have a think about why you drink. So some examples are you might be using alcohol as a coping mechanism, which is quite common. You might be drinking for enjoyment. You might like the social aspect of that. You know, stress, anxiety, loneliness, overwhelm, making your reasons why you drink alcohol. You can probably chuck drugs into this perhaps as well, like illegal drugs. But predominantly I'm talking about alcohol today. There could be social pressure like we're trying to fit in with others. So that might be more common for younger people. So, you know, people at school type, for example, or you may feel pressure that you go out that you have to have alcohol and then you know someone gets cranky at you for not having alcohol or they think you're trying to be cheap and have soft drinks you don't want to buy the round you know so even in adulthood those pressures are probably there but it's probably more there with underage drinking I suppose and the pressure uh that is there I'm assuming it's still there kind of was kind of was there when I was in high school sort of kind of You know, you could be drinking alcohol to celebrate achievements and marking special occasions. So where alcohol got put into celebrating things, I'm not sure. Same as kind of like birthday cakes and all the unhealthy foods that usually come with celebrating a birthday. But, you know, it could be celebrating achievement. It's quite common for champagne to go around, you know, gin, gin, glass, drink. So it could be celebrating moments as well. Habit and routine is one. I think that was kind of where I was. I was literally walking in the door after picking the girls up from school and going straight to the fridge and getting a glass of wine. So for me, how it got to that stage, you know, I'm not entirely sure, but it was definitely habit. I'd walk through that door and I'd go straight to the fridge to get a glass of wine before I did anything. So habit and routine, you know, it's usually unconscious. until you kind of become conscious and realize the choices that you are making might not be suiting you. And self-medication as well. So you might be self-medicating yourself with alcohol to save you from dealing with the real root cause as to why you're drinking alcohol in the first place. I'm not necessarily going to go into what is deemed an alcoholic. I don't want anyone to to feel bad if I say something and then that's what you're drinking and then you know you feel even more crap about yourself there are different perspectives on what an alcoholic is and some of them aren't I don't think um I don't think are correct um so um yeah whether you know you drink a bottle of wine a week or whether it's a I don't know, two bottles of wine a week or whatever it is, what it is. But I'm not going to go into how much alcohol makes you an alcoholic because I just don't think it's relevant. You should know whether you have an issue with drinking. If you don't, you know, maybe ask a family member or friends if they think you do. But hopefully if you have friends like that, they will be telling you that, you know, hey, we're a little bit concerned that we think you're drinking a little bit too much. But so... If you're using it to numb pain, it doesn't help you with the root cause as to why you're drinking alcohol. So I know from a therapy perspective, a lot of alcohol addiction is due to abuse from childhood, bullying, sexual abuse on top of that. So it's from something negative parents were heavy drinkers and you think that that was just the norm that you're heavy drinkers you put away I don't know a bottle of I don't know um rum or something you know away that that's the norm so but realize that if you are using alcohol to numb something it's not really a fix it's just numbing you for a specific period of time until you need to drink again to numb that pain again So dealing with the root cause as to why you're drinking alcohol can really help you if you wish to reduce your alcohol consumption. You know, there's obviously long-term consequences of drinking a significant amount of alcohol. There's a lot of health concerns related to that. So, you know, if you need to give up for health reasons, that could still be really hard because someone's telling you you have to give up So it might not be necessarily that you want to give up the alcohol, but a doctor's told you that you have to give up the alcohol because it's killing you inside. It's stuck to the liver and then you're going to get to a point where it's irreversible. But you still have to want to give up that alcohol as well. So there's a very fine distinction between you wanting to give up alcohol and somebody telling you to give up alcohol. Because it's possible that if someone is telling you to give up alcohol, even for health consequences, that's probably still not going to be enough to get you to stop the alcohol. So, but again, that's kind of coming down to the root cause as to why you drink alcohol in the first place. You can be drinking alcohol to avoid things. So again, you could be avoiding the root cause as to why you drink alcohol. I'm obviously coming down to root cause a lot. It's generally because there is something that has happened to you in the past that is leading you to drink alcohol or as I said, it could be That, you know, nothing different but to have a large amount of alcohol because that's how you grew up. That's what your parents did. But usually there's a root cause as to why you are. People like the feeling it gives them as well. I'm not necessarily referring to the hangover component of it but, you know, similar to a drug. People like the feeling alcohol gives them. It gives them maybe a little bit more Dutch courage. It might relax them a little bit as well. Again, I'm going to go back to that whole root cause. You know, is there a connection between the feeling that you have from alcohol? Are you trying to, yeah, are you, you know, what's the, what's a reason that you want to feel, you know, relaxed. Okay. So that's probably pretty obvious. Are there other ways that I can relax as a part to, you know, getting a little one a day or something like that. So that's another one. I'm going to go into the therapy side of it again, because if you don't know, I'm a clinical chemotherapist and I have done research into this because I know a lot of relationships end because of addiction. So, There's other things out there as well, but alcohol, drug addiction, sex addiction, gambling addiction. Specifically, I'm obviously talking about alcohol today, but addiction can be a large cause of marriage separation. So relationships, separation, marriage separation, whatever. Separation of relationship. I still don't think that makes sense, but hopefully you know what I'm trying to say there. So addressing the root cause is really important to tackle and it's not necessarily reliving something from your past it's reframing it and dealing with why you are turning to alcohol whether it's bullying whether it's some sort of assault whether it's you know you know no different that's how you grew up so that's just how it is addressing the root cause can really assist you if alcohol consumption um either being eliminated or still drinking it, but from a social perspective can help you with that. If you're using it for a coping mechanism, there is probably a better coping mechanism for you than downing alcohol. So that can be discussed as well. It might be that instead of grabbing a glass of wine, it might be you go for a bath or you go for a walk or you play with the kids or play with your dog or whatever it might be. That's something that we can work through as well. Reframing your relationship with different emotions. So you might be drinking because you're happy, sad, cranky, everything in between. So having systems in place for you to realize what emotion brings on me wanting to drink alcohol and how we can change that as well. You know, breaking an unconscious pattern and triggers can be really, really difficult. You need to know what that trigger is. That could be that emotion that I was talking about. You might come home cranky, then you go straight for a drink. I know that when I used to buy more bottles of wine, it usually was on a Friday afternoon. And I reckon half of the town was there buying their alcohol on a Friday afternoon. And a lot of people were, you know, professionals, like lawyers and accountants. And it's like, you know, it's It's a shit week. I'm going to go home and down this bottle of, you know, vodka or wine or whatever. So, yeah, I know that is something definitely that I have noticed. But knowing what that trigger is and knowing what the patterns are around that alcohol can help you either eliminate or reduce your alcohol consumption. You know, emotional resilience, I think, can be taken kind of by the grain of, The word resilience is not something that I'm kind of overly happy with. I don't know. I think it's sometimes a little bit over. Sorry, I don't really stick for the whole resilience thing. Like, where does that go? People will tell their kids to be resilient. I'm like, okay, well, how resilient do you want them to go when they're being significantly bullied and things like that? So resilience is a word I don't usually use, but I have popped it in here just in case some people you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Yeah, I draw onto it. I don't know what the word is there. I lost my train of thought. But it's there. Mental health can obviously play a part in alcohol consumption as well. So I think there's something really big in society about clean living and perfectionism and Your diet has to be like A-OK and you'll jump on Facebook and you smash with all these, you know, ads for eating clean, eating healthy, you know, being vegan, being plant-based, whatever it is. There's so much perfectionism expectation out there that I don't think it's realistic. So, you know, if there is something that is triggering you, whether it's a page that you follow or something, maybe unfollow them so you're not seeing that every time. But I do think having that perfectionist clean living mentality is just not quite, it's not for everybody to start with. Not everybody wants to do that. It shouldn't be shameful wanting to drink alcohol. But, yeah, I think the whole perfectionist eating type thing can go definitely too far. Social media versus real life balance kind of fits into that perfectionism. You know, you'll see a lot of, you know, I know I'm going to smash people like some yoga at home thing at the moment and the models that they're using, they're reading out bras and undies. That's what it looks like. It's probably, I don't know what it is. That's exactly what it looks like. And they're tan and they're toned and, you know, they have six packs and, you know, that's not everybody doing yoga. Where are the people who are starting out in yoga? you know, where the guys, you know, it's all females with hardly any clothes on. So, you know, that can be really hard for people to see and then they feel bad that they're not that person and that they can't start to get healthy because they're not there but you kind of, you might not want to get there either. You might just be wanting to do, you know, you might just want to go for a ten-minute walk. You might want to, you know, just take your dog around the block or something like that. um yeah and obviously we have AI photos now as well and if they're done right it's really hard to find out what's a real photo and what's an AI photo um the guilt and shame around occasional drinking so only with the people that I've worked with they were consuming large amounts of alcohol but they did not want to stop drinking alcohol so they all had significant health issues um you know um you know because they were vomiting, because they were so intoxicated, you know, that was starting to affect them with all the acid. Their teeth were starting to rot. Their liver was obviously struggling. But they did not want to give up alcohol. They just wanted to have a better relationship with alcohol and be social drinkers. So that is okay too. So, you know, that's why I kind of titled this, you don't have to give up alcohol. You don't. If you want to be a social drinker, be a social drinker. If you don't want to give up alcohol at all and you want to keep being a heavy drinker, then that's your choice too. Like, you know, obviously there's consequences of that, but if that's your choice, that's your choice. You know, I'm assuming you're a grown adult and you know what the consequences are of that. But don't think you have to give up alcohol. If it's for health-related reasons, you know, perhaps you should strongly think about it. But again, you have to be the one that wants to give up alcohol, not somebody telling you, because usually that doesn't quite work. think about quality over quantity type thing. So I know when I was younger, I was kind of like, you know, a goon bag or passion pot. You know, maybe think about, okay, so how about I drink alcohol, but I drink a really high quality bottle of wine type thing. And I'm surrounded by vinyards here. Do you think I can think of a, you know, name of vinyard around here? But you might want to skip on the cheap stuff and just have a quality glass. Or if you're out at the pub or something, have a quality glass of wine and not your cheap stuff. So have a think about that as well. What else did I have? Listening to your body's signals and responses. So I know for me, when I started paying attention, it was definitely affecting my body, but I kind of was either consciously not aware or was purposely not making myself aware So I know that I would get reflux. My body would be like really, really sore the next day. Obviously, you kind of have that grogginess as well, whether you're, you know, depending on how much you drink. Usually, if there's just a couple of glasses of wine, for example, you still have that little bit of grogginess. I wasn't enjoying it. I was drinking it because it was a habit. So listen to your body signals and responses because they're probably... is something that your body is trying to tell you when you consume the alcohol that you might be tuning out to, you might not be realising that it's affecting you. And the way I worked that out was I was fortunate enough to pretty well go cold turkey. That doesn't work for everybody and I don't know how it worked for me, but it did. And then I had a glass of wine at a celebration and the next day my body was aching and that was just from eight glasses of wine. So, I'm like, okay, that's either coincidence or that's what's happening. Tried it again at another occasion. I think this time it was vodka. Same thing. So, it was either a coincidence that my body was so sore and achy from those two, you know, drinks of alcohol or, you know, it was just something that happened. So, yeah, think about the signals that your body is trying to give you if you are consuming that alcohol. Think about other things you can do if you're celebrating. If alcohol isn't your option, what you want to do. So you obviously have not alcoholic wine and beer. Tried it. Personally, not a fan. But, you know, that might be enough for you. Or you might want to have sparkling water. Or you might just want to have water. So have a think about if you are presented with something at a celebration, what do you want to do? Do you want to take it? Do you want to replace it with something else and say thank you, but no thank you and no drink? I don't drink alcohol or I don't want something at the moment so um yeah so have a think about what you could replace if you that is something that you're wanting to do um there's social connections as well so just because you don't drink alcohol doesn't mean you're gonna have those social connections you might get ripped into a little bit hopefully if they're true friends they're not going to continue ripping into you so how to consider consider that as well but um I know I got ripped into a little bit for you know, for not wanting alcohol. But, you know, it was, yeah, I had expected that. And it was nothing bad. It was just, you know, having a bit of a jab as to, you know, why I'd stopped type thing. And then, you know, if you're female, it's like, oh, you're not drinking alcohol, you're pregnant and, you know, all that stuff. So have a think about that. Professional networking and business events as well. There's obviously usually a lot of alcohol. You have Friday drinks sometimes in some businesses. So have a think about in that situation whether you just want to save a drink for that occasion or you just want to save a drink for having that celebration or you don't want that at all. So just kind of think about the places where you are offered alcohol. If you do want to drink that alcohol and if you don't, what you can say and do instead of taking that glass of wine. You might want to take it and walk around with it for the night and sit it down with someone Maybe that's an option too. So yeah, have a think about that. So what else did I have? Yeah, fine. If you are using it for coping strategy, let's find you something else. You know, it could be that, you know, taking your dog for a walk. It might be a bath, whatever it might be. If that is something that you want to either eliminate or reduce, you know, we can come up with some coping strategies to swap that glass of alcohol for something else. Setting personal boundaries that work for you is one as well. I know boundaries can be really hard to enforce. But, you know, if you don't want to drink alcohol and someone's trying to force you to drink alcohol, You know, what are you going to do? Are you going to cave and take it or are you going to hold your ground and go, no, I do not drink alcohol, I do not want it, thank you? So, yeah, have a think about personal boundaries and what would you do in that situation, whether you would cave or whether you would stay true to your boundaries. What else did I have? I kind of didn't really have any... thing else other than that, probably just have a regular check-in with yourself. So if you do have a glass of something or a bottle of alcohol in your hand, you can try and have a conscious thought as to, okay, why do I have this in my hand? Is it because it's routine and that's what I do when I get home? Is it because I'm watching the football? Is it because my Friday night drinks? Is it because I'm with this person? You know, maybe you've got that person that drinks a lot of alcohol and they're the one that influenced you to have that alcohol. So try and check in with yourself to work out why you are drinking and then how you feel about that. So whether you're okay, you know what, I'm all right to have this drink, but I'm going to stop at two or I'm not going to have anything at all. So, yeah, so just try to check in with yourself when you do have that alcohol to work out whether you might be trying to numb pain. For example, you know, that could be something as well. You might be cranky and then that has triggered you to go to the alcohol. So just try and check in with yourself to see whether there's any thought patterns or emotions happening with that. But just remember, you have permission to do what you want to do. If you want to give it up, cool. If you don't, fine. If you want to be a social drinker, fine. You know, if it's for health reasons and you have to be strong to do that for health reasons or work out the root cause as to why you're drinking in the first place as well because as I said if someone has told you to stop drinking alcohol and you don't want to even it's for health reasons you're probably still not and even if you are listening to this and you know it might be your partner that has to give up alcohol for health reasons and they're not know that someone telling somebody to do something and then wanting to do something are two completely different things so Maybe there is an underlying issue as to why they drink alcohol in the first place, and it's not just as easy as giving up. So if you are on the other side of that, you know, getting frustrated with somebody for not doing something about their alcohol consumption, just know that it could be something more underlying than what you realize. So have a think about that. You know, just make sure you're prepared. to receive external judgment and pressure, it will probably be there. But as I said, if you have a good, strong friend network, you probably won't have too much external judgment or pressure coming your way. Focus on maybe overall well-being instead of that perfect clean diet. I had thought that I might have become a social drinker. I don't even do that. I went to the business awards. that a couple of weeks ago I think I had like a quarter of a glass of wine and I started to feel sick so and you know this is coming from someone that was drinking three bottles a week so I don't even enjoy it so for me it was just very fortunate that I just I I can stop and I don't want to be that social drinker because I don't enjoy it so you know if I go to a really nice vineyard for lunch or something will I get something maybe I don't know but I'm not craving it and I'm not missing it. And I have bottles of wine here. I've got Verve. I've got Moscato was always my poison. Love Moscato. It's still sitting there. I haven't touched it. So, and there's no, you know, I'm not really trying to hold back from touching it or putting it in the fridge. I just don't want it. So, and I also actually don't buy people alcohol. So I know We have Christmas hampers and stuff with businesses or clients. We had cases and cases of wine in the office because it's an easy gift to give. But actually don't give wine as a gift because you don't know what that person is dealing with. They could be a recovering alcoholic. They may be an alcoholic. So if you are buying gifts, just take into consideration whether you do actually want to buy alcohol for somebody. unless you know the person. But, you know, if you don't, just have a think about whether there's something more appropriate that you could give somebody than some alcohol. And, you know, there are stacks of resources out there as well. I am constantly putting things together and putting it on my website. So, you know, join our mate at least. I've done other podcasts about it. I've done blogs. I've done emails about it. So make sure you subscribe. Chill out emails if you haven't already. And, you know, you're getting all the freebies that I've put together for you as well. But hopefully that has given you a little bit to think about or you share this episode with somebody who might be dealing with some alcohol issues. But, yeah, just don't have shame if, you know, you keep pulling off the wag. Like, that's okay. You were trying. you know, maybe try something different. If that didn't work, try something different. Maybe you do need to go to therapy to find out the root cause as to why you're drinking alcohol. So, but yeah, if you have any questions at all or you want me to put together any information and things or ideas for you, please reach out and let me know. Otherwise, thank you for listening or watching and I will catch you next time. See you.
