SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, moderate, moderation, moderating, quit drinking, rewiring my brain, forever thing, habits, drink, alcohol addictive, voices, stop drinking, sober, support, pregnant, happier, relationship with husband, less anxiety, less angry, white knuckling, bottle of wine, sobriety, benefits, withdrawal, cycle, take a break from drinking, alcohol-free, without alcohol, accountability, support, relationships, relationship with alcohol, stopped drinking, boring, fear, Groundhog Day, free from shame, craving, withdrawal, limiting, cycle, sleep, Sobriety Starter Kit member group, podcast, reward, drinking data points, sobriety data points, fading affect, emotion, feeling, memories

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Marriott Miller

00:02

Welcome to the Hello Someday Podcast, the podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. I’m Casey McGuire Davidson, ex-red wine girl turned life coach helping women create lives they love without alcohol. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was anxious, overwhelmed, and drinking a bottle of wine and night to unwind. I thought that wine was the glue, holding my life together, helping me cope with my kids, my stressful job and my busy life. I didn’t realize that my love affair with drinking was making me more anxious and less able to manage my responsibilities.

In this podcast, my goal is to teach you the tried and true secrets of creating and living a life you don’t want to escape from.

Each week, I’ll bring you tools, lessons and conversations to help you drink less and live more. I’ll teach you how to navigate our drinking obsessed culture without a bus, how to sit with your emotions, when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

I am so glad you’re here. Now let’s get started.

 

Hi there.

Hey there. Today we’re talking about

the concept of moderation and whether you have tried to moderate your drinking or you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve realize that moderating your drinking is really hard, if not impossible.

My guest and I are going to talk about our experiences with moderation and the way that we coach women and support them in moving past those thoughts and shutting down that voice in your head that tells you maybe I can just have one or two glasses on a special occasion.

 

So, my guest today is Marriott. She works with me in the Sobriety Starter Kit member community.

 

5 years ago, she was my private coaching client and now we work together and wanted to have this conversation because the concept of moderation is one that comes up most frequently in the work we do with women who are trying to take a longer break from drinking.

 

So Marriott, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, so anyone who hears Marriott’s voice and it sounds familiar, that is because she has been on the podcast in a two-part interview talking about how to move past early sobriety and her experiences in moving from a hundred days to a year, to two years, to three and four, and five, and how her sobriety shifted during those times.

So I will put those links in the show notes so that anyone who’s interested in listening to that conversation can hear it. If you want to know how to find it. Right now, they are episode 249, how to Stay Motivated in Long-Term Sobriety. And episode 250, so you can always, hellosomedaycoaching.com/249 or slash 250 to find those episodes really easily.

So, Marriot, to start this, because I know it’s such a universal experience, will you share some of the things that you heard in your mind when you had stopped drinking for a while, but then you decided to go back and moderate again, or while you were attempting to take breaks from drinking the thoughts that tripped you up and sent you back to buying a bottle of wine?

 

Yeah, sure. Well, I went through a period of time where I quit drinking for about 3 months, but I never really intended on it being a full-time, like forever thing. And so, I, the whole time during that 3 months was like, I’m totally rewiring my brain. I’m going to be fixed after this. And I just thought that I had gotten into some bad habits, like with nightly drinking and that just having a certain amount of time away from alcohol would create different habits and that I would be able to interact with alcohol in a different way.

 

And what I found was that was actually not true. And as soon as I started letting alcohol back in my life in any way, all of the addictive voices came back in full force. I had a very, very similar experience in that the first time I tried to stop drinking seriously and got support. I was sober for a year, but it was really only 4 months before I got pregnant with my daughter, Lila.

 

So I didn’t drink for a year, but I’m sure I would’ve gone back to it earlier had I not gotten pregnant. But I did something so similar to what you’re describing, meaning. At the end of the year, or even before it, when I started thinking about drinking after Lila was born, I was so much happier and my relationship with my husband was better, and I had so much less anxiety and I was less angry.

 

And I thought to myself that the fact that I drank so much was situational. And this again is that voice in your head that tells you that you can drink. And I thought to myself, I’m better now. I’m more stable if I can go this period of time without alcohol. I mean, forget about pregnancy, but even the 4 months before that, surely I don’t have a quote unquote “real problem”, and I can go back to drinking. And that led me to telling my husband on a date night, oh, I think I can just have a glass or two of wine. And he was totally on board with me doing that. And I thought, oh, I’ll just do it on a date night or a special occasion. And very, very quickly it went back to, oh, well it’s a Friday night, so I’ll buy a bottle of wine to celebrate with Mike because we can’t go out to eat because I have this baby at home to, it’s been a hard day or a good day to, I’ll just have two. And all of those attempts at moderation, once I reintroduced alcohol, failed. I very quickly went back to a bottle of wine or more, 7 nights a week, and all the justifications about why it wasn’t a big deal or how I was going to take a break.

And that, like you’ve described, this Marriott, that like ticker tape in your head, constantly thinking about drinking or not drinking. Yeah, and I mean, mine was a little bit different because I, I guess I would say from the outside, I did successfully moderate my alcohol for a period of time. Like, I think it was about 6 months before I finally decided to quit.

But it had such a mental hold on me. So, even though I wasn’t physically experiencing nearly as many consequences from it as I had been previously, it was like that ticker tape that you’re saying. So I, I always think about when you’re watching TV and you see like the news headlines down on the bottom of the screen, and it’s just this constant thought in your mind about when am I going to have a drink next?

And it’s almost like over time that Ticker tape gets like bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And it’s only I found in completely eliminating alcohol from my life that, that those, that that little ticker tape goes totally away, which has been such a freeing thing.

Yeah, I’m glad you said that because those are sort of the 2 different examples. Like, for me, I, unless I was white knuckling, it really couldn’t moderate, you know, I would go four days, drink a bottle of wine, four days, drink a bottle of wine, and that was if I was trying my hardest to not drink. And the fact that you could quote unquote “self”, you know, successfully moderate, I’ve heard that from women as well.

 

Meaning, but I used to drink X amount, which was really heavily, and now I drink less. I only drink Y amount. So, basically, I am successfully moderating and therefore it’s not as big a deal, you know?

Yeah. And I think that the sad thing about that is I, I agree with you. I think a lot of people live in that space because they feel like they have to keep it in their lives for whatever societal reasons or for their marriage or whatever.

And in my personal experience, which is really the only thing I can speak from, it’s like when you’re doing that, you are, you are doing a whole lot of the, the hard part of sobriety, and you’re not getting a lot of the benefits because the benefits really come with completely eliminating it. And there are various reasons for that, which we, I’m sure we’ll talk about more.

 

But in, just in terms of it forcing you to make some changes in your life, it forcing you to feel uncomfortable with. Whatever your current situation is, and so then you’re going to change things up. It forcing you to get some hobbies other than sitting on your couch and drinking wine. So, when you’re, and then also when you’re holding those few glasses of wine out as like the ultimate treat for yourself, then I feel like it’s hard to do what we are trying to do through your program, which is rewiring your brain to think this isn’t a treat, actually this hurts me and I need to learn how to have treats that like are positive influences on in my life and not an addictive substance that is going to ultimately harm me and my family.

And so, I don’t think you can do both of those things. It’s incongruent to think.

Yeah. I’m really glad you said that as well because I completely agree. And when you are attempting to moderate whether you’re successful or not successful, you are still drinking, whether it’s once a week or once every two weeks, or you know only on the weekends or only two glasses of wine at the time, or whatever it is.

But what that means, is that, you are still constantly in the drinking and withdrawal cycle, and alcohol is still the reward that you are holding out for, meaning it has just this outsized importance in your life. And you actually, you know, the best thing that you could possibly do is take a longer break from drinking completely instead of keeping it to only on Friday night or only on Saturday night, or only two glasses of wine every two weeks.

 

Which by the way, like was absolutely practically impossible for me because you need, say, a hundred days. You need distance from drinking to get some clarity around the ways in which, drinking is impacting every part of your life. So, realizing that, you are less stressed without drinking. You can’t do that if you just drank once every two weeks or on the weekends or whatever, because drinking spikes, your cortisol, your stress hormone, you have to get further away to feel less, less stressed, and less anxiety.

It suppresses your dopamine, which is your happy hormone, so you need more time to get away from drinking, to feel happier without it. When you’re trying to moderate, you just don’t feel happy when you’re not drinking. And it also impacts serotonin, which is your mood stabilizer. So, you have all these emotions and ups and downs.

You don’t feel that sense of peace. And also you have all these limiting beliefs about why drinking is important and required, and fears about how you’ll be able to have fun without alcohol, or what people will think of you or what it will mean. And you need more time to get away from that and sort of disprove those limiting beliefs with experience.

And also, so many people have said, and I had this, that their marriages were better, that they were a more present parent, that they worked out more and felt more confidence. And you know, all that kind of stuff requires you to get further away from alcohol.

 

Yeah, and I think for me, like the ultimate thing is that I just was so tired of breaking promises to myself.

And that happened when I was drinking a lot, but then that also happened when I was trying to moderate. So, the first things that started happening when I was trying to moderate were like, well, maybe I’ll make an exception for this, or how much wine is actually in a glass of wine and that kind of stuff. And it just felt the same. It felt like letting myself down and I just couldn’t live like that every day anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. So, if you are not experiencing what I was experiencing, which was just, you know, daily hangovers and you know, not remembering the end of shows and, you know, honestly crushing anxiety and a feeling of doom and knowing that alcohol was the issue, what actually motivated you to get support and stop drinking because all of those feelings that you were having are were completely real and were negative consequences.

And yet, it is still a big jump to be like, okay, I need to stop drinking. You know, like I’m, a lot of people would stay in that, that sort of really shitty middle place of really trying to limit their alcohol consumption and if they’re successful. They may not realize if they’re in that moderating place, the degree to which it’s negatively impacting their lives.

Yeah, I mean, I think I had already done some searching and was connected with like different groups and podcasts before I quit drinking the first time. So, I kind of knew like that this idea of moderating was probably not going to work. But of course I’ve had to try it for myself anyway. And so, I think when it was clear that it was not going to work, then I realized I need help.

So, that’s why I reached out to you. But, but really, the day that I quit was on New Year’s day of 2020, and the reason was that I was moderating and supposedly had like two glasses of wine on New Year’s Eve. We didn’t even do anything. We were like cooking dinner at our house. And I woke up the next morning with a hangover and I was like, I mean, clearly it wasn’t two glasses of wine.

Right. And I just was like, this is like Groundhog Day. I’m so tired of this. Like, how many years am I going to waste of my life feeling this way? And so, I just decided it was like just kind of a, a soul level decision of like, I’m surrendering this, like I’m done with this. Yeah. And I’m going to do whatever I need to do to help myself.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I was so excited to start working with you because you were in a really solid place in terms of your desire to move past alcohol being such an important factor in your life. And I know that I wasn’t in that place when I started 9 and a half years ago. In sobriety, basically, the only thought in my mind is I can’t feel this way anymore.

I can’t keep doing this to myself. And just this, this high, you know, deep down worry about what I was going to do, what I was doing to my marriage and my kids and my life and my health. Even with that, I was still.

I signed up for a hundred day challenge, alcohol-free challenge, and I wasn’t even sure that I would be able to do that.

 

So, the only thought I had was I can’t feel this way anymore, and I know alcohol is the problem. I still wasn’t willing to take alcohol off the table, but I was like, okay, I need help and I need to not drink, and I’m not able to do that for myself. For me, it was more like I need this out of my life and I need some tools to make it like a positive experience because I had done it before on my own, without any help and without changing anything really about my life.

Just continuing to do all the same things I think like right. A few weeks after I quit the first time I was like in New York on a girl’s trip with my high school friends, like just not sitting in bars like all night long and just not, not changing my life really in a way to make it a positive decision.

It felt like deprivation. And so I think that once I realized that moderation wasn’t going to make me happy either, then I reached out because I needed some tools. And I love the way that you have such a positive spin on the whole thing.

Thank you. I really do try to in my coaching program, make it a gift that you’re giving to yourself and not an experience of deprivation or isolation, but rather one of exploration and self-discovery of like, Hey, I know what my life is like drinking, like the good and the bad.

I was 40 years old, so I’d been drinking for over 20 years. I was like, I deserve to give myself the gift of 100 days without alcohol, that you’re three months of your life to see if life is better without it. And so that’s what I encourage women to do it as well, like to give yourself the opportunity to see.

So, one thing I wanted to talk about, because I feel like this is so universal that we’ve all gone through this, but I wanted us to share a few different ways that we tried to moderate our drinking. Like all the rules you put into place. And I have so many that I tried over the years because you know, in my mind when I was drinking, I literally thought to myself that.

 

Stopping drinking completely was my worst case scenario and thought, okay, I need to get a handle on this so that I never have to stop drinking. Like the end goal was to moderate so fucking hard that I would never have to stop drinking completely. So what did you do? What were the ways that you tried to moderate or the things you did to help you moderate?

 

I think really had to do with, you know, I mean, I feel like it’s just so common. It’s like, it’s crazy when you hear other people talk about this because you’re like, wait, I thought I was the only person that did that. You know, but it’s like limiting the number of drinks I would allow myself to have saying that I wasn’t going to drink at my house.

I was only going to drink if I went out. changing up the type of stuff that I drank to things that I didn’t like as much. I mean, in my stage of six months of serious moderation, what I said is, you can only have three drinks per week. Because what I decided is that no one who only drinks 3 drinks per week has a drinking problem.

But what I found out is that is not true. Just because it was still controlling so much of your life, or you were, it was, you were thinking about it all the time, or it was really hard to eliminate to three drinks. Yeah. Just because your outside behavior is quote unquote like “acceptable” does not mean that the way you feel on the inside is.

Yeah. I mean, I did so many things that you mentioned. I mean, clearly all the rules about how many drinks you’re going to have. A night or how many days a week you’re going to drink, or my New Year’s resolution every single year was to do Dry January or to take a longer break. I mean, that was an attempt to moderate.

I definitely switched what I drank, from red wine to white wine or from red wine to beer, or even from red wine to cocktails. I mean, I tried every different kind of drink to drink things I liked less, which is totally ridiculous. So I’m going to drink alcohol, but stuff I don’t really like water between each drink only on the weekends.

Then I would, I was like, okay, that’s not working, like relying on myself. So, let me physically put impediments in my way so that I won’t drink. And, and you know, the classic one is I’m not going to buy a bottle of wine. Right. Another one I hear from women all the time, although once I started drinking, this never worked for me.

But it, other women I hear all the time is like, okay, I’m going to. Drink two drinks, and then I’m going to pour out the rest of the wine so I don’t finish it. Or I’m going to buy really small bottles, like mini bottles, half bottles, mini bottles of vodka or whatever it is. , I was so deep. I even at one point was like, I’m going to buy a boxed wine instead of a bottle of wine because if I have boxed wine, I won’t drink as much because it’s the, the fact that there’s only a quarter left in the wide bottle that’s making me finish it, which do not buy boxed wine.

If that you think that will help you moderate. I mean, it sounds so clear, but my vibe was so screwed up trying to not drink. I would book early workout classes so I wouldn’t drink, but then I was just getting up and doing burpees at five 30 in the morning with a brutal hangover. I would book evening activities so I wouldn’t drink, right?

I would book a running club where I would run from seven to 8:00 PM so I wouldn’t get home till eight 30 with the goal that then I wouldn’t drink, but I would just drink a bottle of wine after that. And then of course, like I’m going to do a whole 30, or I’m going to go on a diet and I’m going to lose all this weight.

But a key part of the diet was no alcohol. And son, I just was like, I’m going to stick with this and I’m not going to drink. And that never worked to the point where I would be like weight watcher points, back in the day, we’ve all talked about diet culture and, and how bad it is. But I was deep in that as well, where I would eat nothing, almost nothing during the day, like egg white omelet or, salad and salmon or whatever it was.

And then, I would allocate my points to 4 or 6 glasses of wine at night and be like, what’s going on? I’m in my points. Why am I not losing weight? Yeah. I mean, all of this is so, it’s so sad kind of, to think about just how much brain space we waste on it’s like a liquid that you put in your body.

Like it’s so weird. Just a beverage choice, right? Like it’s a beverage. Like, and, and the fact that there’s just all this brain space and strategizing and hiding and sneaking and it’s just crazy. And it makes you feel crazy too.

Yeah. And it’s, the attempt to moderate that is making you crazy because if you were to take it off the table, and I have to say I needed support to do this because I had tried a million times to take a break on my own. I needed accountability and support. But if you take it off the table, all those thoughts, those crazy thoughts stop and you crave it less and you realize that all your fears about it won’t actually come true.

 

So when you were trying to moderate and kept going back to it, what were the things, what were the crazy limiting beliefs or thoughts about why you needed to keep it in your life or why your life would suck? The negative consequences of not drinking? Did you have any of those?

Yeah, I mean, I thought I’m not going to have any friends. My husband, I think really just wanted it to be kind of like, oh, these are just some bad habits that you need to reign in. I mean, he didn’t want to be married to somebody that I didn’t like going to cocktail parties and stuff, to be honest.

Did you actually? Did you know that? Was that true or was that a fear he had as well? Because he liked drinking with you.

I mean, I think it was somewhat true, but I think that he has realized since I started talking about it to him, he’s realized that this is the best thing for me. And so it’s the best thing for us. And we have grown and our relationship is better than ever and we’ve worked all that out.

But it was definitely a fear of how is this, I talked about this on my first podcast with you, but we started dating when I was 18. Like our relationship is very, was very tied into my relationship with alcohol. And so, there was a whole renegotiation of our relationship that had to happen. And that’s scary.

 

So, you actually thought it would hurt your relationship if you stopped drinking?

 

What I wanted to be able to do was, I wanted to be able to go out to dinner on my birthday and on our anniversary and when we went on vacation and have 2 glasses of wine and it be romantic and etc., etc., without having the negative consequences that came along with drinking every night on my couch.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had the same fears and I hear it from women all the time. I was worried that my relationship would get worse if I stopped drinking because like you, my husband and I, I mean, I think we started dating when I was 22 or 23. But I know, even for women who start being with their partner at 40 years old, at 30 years old, you know. Whether you’ve been together for 3 months or 3 years, there is a fear if you’ve started drinking together that your partner will think you’re less fun.

I was worried Mike would think I’m boring. I was worried that I’d be bored. A lot of women are like, God, can I have sex without drinking? You know, all those things. I also, it’s so ridiculous the way alcohol shifts your mindset. I actually thought that I would be not punished at work, but I wouldn’t be promoted or I would be less successful if I stopped drinking because I thought that I would miss out on those work happy hours. And, the bonding sessions and the connections that happen really late in the night, which is ridiculous. I think I sabotaged my career so many times by getting drunk and being unprofessional or, just oversharing or being hung over in the morning at meetings.

But I was worried that if I stopped drinking, my colleagues and boss would think I had a problem with alcohol and therefore they wouldn’t promote me as opposed to, tripping and skinny my knee in front of my boss on the way home from dinner or saying something really stupid or being overly familiar and huggy, whatever it was.

 

The other thing that I worried about is, same as you, I would lose my friends or that I would be miserable if I went out with them for a weekend away or whatever and didn’t drink. Like, I would literally be craving and denying myself constantly. I worried that, that I would be bored too. I mean, I literally was like, what the hell do people do when they don’t drink?

Do they just sit silently on the couch and stare at each other? Which is so ridiculous. So, you know, what I’ve found is that not drinking made me happier. Like literally, I was happier not doing it. My husband thought that our relationship was more peaceful and that I was more peaceful. Our home was more peaceful.

 

Casey McGuire Davidson 

Hi there. If you’re listening to this episode, and have been trying to take a break from drinking, but keep starting and stopping and starting again, I want to invite you to take a look at my on demand coaching course, The Sobriety Starter Kit®.

 

The Sobriety Starter Kit® is an online self study sober coaching course that will help you quit drinking and build a life you love without alcohol without white knuckling it or hating the process. The course includes the exact step by step coaching framework I work through with my private coaching clients, but at a much more affordable price than one on one coaching. And the sobriety starter kit is ready, waiting and available to support you anytime you need it. And when it fits into your schedule. You don’t need to work your life around group meetings or classes at a specific day or time.

This course is not a 30 day challenge, or a one day at a time approach. Instead, it’s a step by step formula for changing your relationship with alcohol. The course will help you turn the decision to stop drinking, from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

You will sleep better and have more energy, you’ll look better and feel better. You’ll have more patience and less anxiety. And with my approach, you won’t feel deprived or isolated in the process. So if you’re interested in learning more about all the details, please go to www.sobrietystarterkit.com. You can start at any time and I would love to see you in the course. 

 

I thought that I would be more stressed as a mother and that my kids would annoy me more. And turns out not parenting a toddler with a hangover is actually way better than parenting a toddler with a hangover. Like not feeling like shit. I thought that I would never be able to de-stress because I wasn’t drinking.

Like, what am I going to do to transition from work to home? How am I going to shut off the day? How am I going to shut off my mind? Turns out I was much, better able to de-stress and had better boundaries and worked less when I wasn’t drinking. I mean, all of those things. Yeah, I think it’s just it like steals all of the small joys of life.

And I think that. It takes a while to reprogram that, but you realize that you were like hitting yourself over the head with this like blunt instrument every night and you were missing life and things that didn’t have any allure for you when you were sitting on your couch drinking a bottle of wine every night, are all of a sudden super fulfilling and something that you look forward to.

For instance, I ended up joining my church choir and we practice every week. That’s every Wednesday night. That’s not something that I ever. Considered doing outside of my house when I was sitting on the couch drinking wine. And you and I have talked about this, like that’s what’s boring.

Yeah, that is absolutely what is boring. It’s like the Groundhog Day.

 

So, what I realized is that’s, that’s the boring part. And by finally laying down the idea that I can just be this one unicorn person that can moderate when other people can’t. It’s given me so much freedom to explore things that are actually fulfilling and actually make me happy.

Yeah. The other thing that I was afraid of was that I would miss out, right? I would miss out with my friends. I would miss out on those great nights that I had. Like I just would have fewer adventures in life. And again, you have to get away from drinking. To have this kind of clarity, you have to take a longer period of time without it, you basically have to not moderate and just decide to get a hundred days alcohol free.

But with that clarity and looking back, I realized that I was missing out on so many things when I was drinking and. Like this is like very, I’m talking for real missing out. So for example, on New Year’s Eve, one, one year, I, I had younger kids. My mother-in-law was going to stay with them, and Mike and I were going to have.

A sleepover with all of our couple friends, right? We all got a hall pass and went over to my friend’s house, obviously started drinking because that it was a party night and we had no kids and we didn’t have to drive, and I literally don’t remember. You know, half of the night I blacked out early. But not only that, like I went to bed, I was passed out, so my husband did not have someone to kiss at midnight and I did not remember a good part of the night like that is missing out.

I wasn’t physically or mentally present at all. And that didn’t just happen once like that happened, you know, my friends came over and slept with their kids at our house and so we could, you know, have a party night and I put the kids to bed and passed out in bed with my son. So, again, literally missed the end of the evening and woke up brutally hungover where my friend who didn’t get drunk had already gone for a run in the morning and I was just embarrassed.

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s the lie we tell ourselves, right? Is that, and that’s the addictive voice, like trying anything to like, keep you connected to it. But the truth is that you’re actually missing out when you are getting drunk and passing out and missing things. I mean, I have a similar story.

On my 30th birthday, my sweet husband threw this great party for me and invited friends from all over the country. Basically, people flew to this party and I didn’t even make it past the dinner because I just couldn’t go anywhere. So, I mean, it was horribly embarrassing. And also, yeah, just like missing out on time with family and friends and life is too short for that, you know?

Yeah. And you don’t even realize how much, go ahead. The, the few times that I like, the few times after I quit drinking that I went out to like a girl’s dinner with my friends and other people were drinking. It’s not that, but I just remember laughing so hard, like feeling out like I was going to pee in my pants because I was laughing so hard and staying there until the people are sweeping up around you because they’re ready for you to leave.

And then driving myself home totally sober and feeling like, yeah, oh you can, it’s not that alcohol makes these things fun. It’s that being with your friends and like laughing and joking and catching up and having dinner together. Like that’s what’s fun and alcohol steals that from us. Hmm. And it also like we think it brings us closer with friends or our partners, but I had so many instances where I misread social cues or I overshared, or I told friends something that wasn’t my story to tell.

Like even for example, like my best friend got promoted and I was like so excited for her and blah, blah, blah, and drunk. And so I told people that she had gotten promoted. I took that moment away from her for her to share that news and see the reaction, and it didn’t bring us closer. She was pissed at me. That wasn’t like, Hey, alcohol brought us closer. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Or I didn’t, I wasn’t present properly for a conversation that people, you know, that I could have had. And I’ve heard this from so many women who have, especially teenagers or kids in college or tweens who are going through middle school shit, that their kids finally are ready to have that conversation in the evening, whether, you know, the house is quiet or whether you’re putting them to bed or whatever it is.

And once they are sober, they’re like, oh my God. I was able to be fully present for that conversation. And if I was drinking, either she wouldn’t have talked to me or he wouldn’t have talked to me because he knew I wasn’t really paying attention. Or we would’ve had the conversation, I would’ve said something that wasn’t good or whatever.

You know, like you literally think it brings you closer, but it, but it doesn’t.

Yeah, it’s a fake sense of closeness.

Yeah. And those, you know, the reason I wanted to go into that is because I think these fears keep us trying to moderate, right? They’re part of what makes us hang on to that as the end all be all in addition to whether you’re able to do it successfully or not.

Yeah. I think that you know, one of the things that we, that we see a lot in the group is people asking like, who would know? So, who would know? I was home by myself. My husband went out town and I thought, who would know? And that makes me so sad. And I used to think the same thing, but it makes me sad because it’s like you would know you are the person that matters. You’re the only person that matters. You don’t. You don’t do something this big. I don’t think you can be successful doing something this big for somebody else. You have to do it for yourself. And so, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.

It matters what you think about you. And so, until we get that in the center of our mind that like, we’re going to honor ourselves and we’re going to be the type of person that does what we say we get we’re going to do and doesn’t do what we say we’re not going to do, then I think it’s hard. And that’s one of the things that I still don’t take for granted every day when I wake up, I’m like, you know, I am.

I don’t wake up hating myself anymore. And that is such a gift.

Yeah. I mean, nobody quite understands the degree to which that changes things. I used to wake up and literally my first thought was, what the fuck is wrong with you? Get your shit together, Casey. And when that goes away, it’s incredible.

It’s just amazing. Like you said, like not waking up and thinking you’re a piece of shit. My God. What would that be like? Yeah. If you’re feeling that way, and then when I think you’re trying to, when you’re moderating, you might not be feeling bad about yourself every single day, but the thing is that like you are trying to moderate an addictive substance.

 

So, you are not going to be successful 100% of the time, and so you are going to have times where you don’t meet, whatever it is, the expectations that you’ve set for yourself. And so, you don’t. You weren’t free of that shame until you finally just put it down for good.

Yeah. And you’re constantly, anytime you consume alcohol, you are putting yourself in that craving and withdrawal cycle.

 

So whether or not you realize it, it takes 30 days or more. I’ll link to the episode on Dopamine Nation with Dr. Anna Lemke. She describes it more than better than I ever could, but you never give yourself the opportunity to feel as good at and as happy and as emotionally stable and as relaxed as you would, if you went a longer period of time without alcohol. So, you don’t even realize how much better you could feel. Also, a really important thing that people don’t realize is how little alcohol can impact your life. In terms of sleep, in terms of so many other things.

So research said that a single glass of wine for women decreases your sleep quality by 24%. So, I think anyone I know would think that a single glass of wine, which by the way is five ounces like I used to drink. I probably had like two to three of what is considered a glass of wine in every glass I consumed. But even one glass of wine will decrease your sleep quality by 24%.

 

Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.

And it’s interesting because I actually used to, I, I think one reason I got into a bad relationship with alcohol was relying on alcohol to sleep. And I thought that I couldn’t sleep at night, and so I was going to, I had to have that glass or two glasses of wine to put me to sleep. And turns out that’s not true.

Melatonin works just fine. And it deteriorates. I mean, that’s not sleeping, that’s passing out. And so, I have felt so much more energetic. And I think someone said in the group a few months ago, I don’t know, like what if someone went on the internet and marketed that there was something that you could do that would make you feel 25% more energetic.

It would give you a 25% better sleep. It would make your skin look better. You would lose weight, da da da da da. People would be exploded. Yes. People would be jumping at, what is that? And it’s like, oh, well here it is. Just quit drinking.

 

Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing I just wanted to share, because what people think of.

As successfully moderating, and again, I never did this, so like my negative consequences were significantly worse. But new research has come out and I’ll link to the studies so you can see it’s not just me saying this, it’s, it’s scientific research that just one beer or glass of wine a day, which I think anyone would be like, yep, that is moderating and I’m fucking doing it, is it can shrink the overall volume of your brain equivalent to 2 years of aging.

And the damage worsens as the number of daily drinks rises. The brains of people who drank three glasses of wine a day had reductions in both white and gray matter that looked as if they added 3.5 years to the ages of their brain, but even one. 2 years of aging.

The other thing is that studies have come out, and now, the surgeon General, you know, has said that no amount of alcohol is safe.

Certainly no amount of alcohol is good for you, but for women, 3 glasses of wine a week. And by the way, anyone would think that is quote unquote, “successfully moderating”. I mean, that’s what you were saying that you wanted to do and we’re doing successfully. Just three glasses of wine a week increases your risk of breast cancer by 15%, and every glass on top of it raises another 10%.

 

I mean, my God, I was drinking a bottle of wine or more every night. I was drinking nine bottles of wine a week. So, I was. Well, past that. But again, like say you drink a bottle of wine a week, right. That is the cancer equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes and just all this information that even if you moderate successfully, it’s, you know, literally significantly bad for your health.

Yeah. And it should just like, what is the reward?

Yeah. There are, there are so many other ways that you can relax or whatever it is you think you’re getting from it.

Yeah. So, one thing I wanted to share, because this is what we are saying, we actually asked in the Sobriety Starter Kit member group if women would be willing to share.

So, we are not violating any confidentiality. They told us this was fine to share on the podcast, but like, share with us why moderating drinking doesn’t work for you. And you know, Marriott and I are going to read them just so you can hear not just from us, but from other women, their experience in moderating successfully or unsuccessfully.

 

Do you want to start Marriott?

Yeah, sure. Okay.

Moderation doesn’t work for me because it’s too much work for very little reward. The work hours, thinking about whether I was going to drink, what days, how much, how to plan so I wasn’t hungover. Menopause makes that a crap shoot. The reward, having only one or two, I didn’t get buzzed most of the time, and having three was a hangover for me. So, no upside and big downside.

Yeah. Another woman said, moderation doesn’t work for me because I don’t crave the beverage. I crave its effects. This is hard. This has rewired my neurological reward system and therefore any time I try to moderate my brain tells me that everything deserves that reward above any other.

 

The only way to rewire my brain is to remove the substance and weaken those connections. Moderation doesn’t work for me because I’ve never really seen the point in having just one. I also think of it like dieting might work for a short time, but eventually I would say F it. Yeah. And I, you know, when I was being honest, like I have never wanted a glass of wine or a drink in my life.

 

Like one woman said, I wanted the effect. So, you know, once I stopped drinking, even if I thought like, okay, I’ll just have a glass of wine. Once I was successfully away from alcohol, I was like, what is the fucking point? I don’t want a glass of wine. I want three glasses of wine because with a glass it’ll just be, you know, it will just be me craving more.

Yeah. I mean, I said to answer this Facebook post myself that the truth was that I didn’t want to moderate. That’s just what I called my desire to drink without consequences. Yeah. To keep it in your life like me, I have to control it so that I never have to give it up, which meant it was still the most important reward in my life.

It was still this thing that I was putting on a pedestal as the end all, be all that I couldn’t possibly remove. And the fact that a liquid, a substance was so incredibly important to me was crazy. Once you get away from it, you can see how crazy that is, but you can’t see it when you’re in it, when you’re moderating.

Another woman said, after decades of research, I’ve discovered that I am unable to moderate an addictive substance. If I have one, I want more. And it’s too much of an internal battle to control how many I do have. Sometimes I can do it, but the majority of time I drink more than I intend. And once I’m drinking, that addictive voice is loud in my head. To moderate would be to shut down the addictive voice when you’re not drinking. But mine doesn’t work like that. I can’t turn it off on a whim. Mine needs to be starved into silence. Sobriety works, moderation doesn’t. And then, because she’d been drinking for years and years and years, she’s like, also, who am I saying this? Like, I don’t even know who I am now.

Okay.

 

Another one said, I tried to moderate many times in a desperate attempt to prove to myself that I could still drink wine without any consequences. The mental gymnastics involved in trying to stick to all the rules I created for myself was exhausting. Once I took the option to drink off the table completely, it was so freeing. Now, I spend time trying to do things that make me truly happy instead of obsessing over my next glass of wine.

 

Yeah, someone else said moderation doesn’t allow you to fully embrace the effects of being alcohol free. It doesn’t allow you to be out of the drinking cycle long enough to notice the behavioral and lifestyle changes.

 

The next one is moderation doesn’t work for me because I’ve become consumed with limiting myself to whatever number I set in my head instead of enjoying the moment or whatever I’m doing.

Exactly.

Moderation didn’t work for me because it was mentally exhausting to set rules and then try to follow them.

 

Moderation doesn’t work for me because I only have the ability to say no to the first drink.

 

I feel like we can each write a chapter in a book on this subject personally for me, and the most simple explanation is that one is too many and one more is never enough. And then the last one that I loved so much says, moderation doesn’t work for me because it actually may work for a while. And then I think I’m in control trying to moderate feeds the illusion that I’m in charge.

But slowly, very slowly, the reasons to drink get closer and closer together. The voice that considers it a reward, despite all of my knowledge and belief to the contrary, gets a little bit louder. The shame grows, and I wake up one day and I’m back to the incessant mental battle and gaming out what would be the best day for a new day.

One, the big lie of moderation is that it wants me to believe I’m choosing a bigger life while it quietly steals everything I’ve achieved in sobriety. I love that one too. So now that we’ve talked about moderation, how we tried to moderate why it didn’t work for us, all the rules we set and shared why moderating itself, even if you’re doing it successfully, is not good for you physically, mentally, emotionally.

I wanted to talk about a few ways that you can move away from that craving and withdrawal cycle. Change your limiting beliefs, strategies you can use, and if you get further away from alcohol, how to not go back to drinking when you think like we did, like I’m fixed now. If I can go 30 days without drinking, clearly I don’t have a problem and I’ve reset, and now I can moderate.

 

So, the first strategy that I’d like you to use is when you have those thoughts of “maybe I can have just one, or I’ll drink two tonight, or only drink on a special occasion”. I want you to change that language. Like, just be honest with yourself. If you have two weeks or 30 days or 60 days or more when you think maybe I’ll just drink on a special occasion.

 

Just be honest with your language. Say, I’m going to choose to dive back into the drinking cycle because that is what you are doing. You are not having a glass of wine at a wedding, or you are not drinking on this vacation. You are choosing to dive back into that drinking cycle.

Yeah, that makes me think of, there was a lady that was in a group that I was in one time and she told me that anytime she starts to think about just one then that she imagines that that just one opens a little trap door to hell that will eventually suck her in because that’s what has always happened in the past.

And I think I always think about that whenever I have those thoughts because it’s like, why would it be any different than it has been all these other times? And it’s. It’s insidious because it can be a slow, it can be a slow drag back, but how many times in the group do we see people coming back and saying, you know, I thought I could moderate, and here I am again back in that same bad place, or oftentimes in even worse place.

And so there’s, there’s a lot of evidence that that doesn’t work. There’s not a lot of evidence that it does. Yeah, and I see women all the time who post and say, Hey, I went out to dinner last night, or I had a margarita, I did whatever. And like, it wasn’t bad. It was actually fun. I only drank one. You know, it wasn’t terrible.

I can moderate. And then whether it’s a week later or two weeks or two months, they come back like, holy shit, I need to stop again. And this sucks, and this is hard. So if you don’t have an off switch, or if you are white knuckling it to not drink, like Marriot said, it’s going to drag you back down to that same low place that if that’s not you, it’s literally what the substance is designed to do.

Right. And that’s why just one is the problem. It’s not how that one makes you act or feel. It’s what it activates in your brain over the long term. Yeah. And it lights up my brain. Like I know when I had one drink, it just lit up my brain. And my husband even said to me, because he didn’t want me necessarily to stop drinking.

He wanted me to moderate, right? He wanted me to be able to drink on a date night, but not black out. You know, he wanted me to be able to just drink on vacation. Like, I was like, oh, I haven’t thought about that, that before. Why don’t I try that? Great idea, babe. No, but right.

So, if you have a period of time without alcohol, and those thoughts come in about maybe I can moderate again, or I really want to drink right now, the first thing I want you to do is eat something because hunger is a huge trigger. And the second thing I want you to do is to zero in on why you want to drink. Like what is the emotion or the situation that you want to enhance or escape with alcohol. So you may be bored, you may be insecure, you may be overwhelmed, you may have a promotion to celebrate, you may be at a wedding.

You may think adulting sucks, you may have tension with your spouse or with your kids. So, once you identify why you want to drink, you can solve for that. You can solve for boredom or loneliness or overwhelm or you know, rewarding yourself. You can solve for that in a different way. And part of this process is figuring out what you emotionally need or want, and you can solve for that without consuming an addictive substance.

Yeah, and I think another good thing to do is to reach out to your people, whoever that is, that knows that this is hard for you and knows that this is something that you’re trying not to do. To me, just the act of saying, I’m really wanting to drink right now to somebody like texting that to somebody. And just getting it out of your body and it out of your mind is so powerful. And we see that in the Facebook group, too. It’s like, people are so much more successful if they post before they do something, as opposed to saying, you know, I haven’t been around for the past month because I’ve been drinking. You know?

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that I think trip trips people up, and I’ve heard this so many times, is the idea of, well, I drank, that’s another data point that it doesn’t work for me. Oh, I drank, but it’s not a big deal. Now, I have that data point. The only thing I want to say to you, when you are thinking about going back to drinking, even if your mind is telling you like, oh, I’ll moderate.

You have enough data points, you have years of data points or months or weeks or whatever. I had years that drinking made me feel worse and that I wasn’t able to moderate. So, you have given drinking a million chances to be good. Why don’t you give alcohol-free life? Even a small number of those chances, right?

I had, you know, felt like shit after a wedding or after a party, or after a New Year’s Eve a million times. And every single time I’d be like, oh, well maybe this time’s going to be different or it will suck without drinking. I had never given alcohol-free life. The opportunity to give me a data point that it didn’t actually suck.

Or maybe your first time is hard and you feel awkward and uncomfortable because everybody does. The first time you do something new, go on vacation, go out to dinner, do whatever. But go through a stressful situation. Go through anger at your work or fear. I had never given sobriety multiple data points the way I had given alcohol.

So, just think when you want to quote unquote go back to “moderating”. Or if you want to just drink on vacation, because it’ll suck without it. You have a ton of drinking data points. Give yourself a sobriety data point. Just see.

 

Yeah. And I think the other thing is it’s so powerful when, even if it’s just for a period of time, even if you say for 100 days, I am not going to drink, no matter what, when you moderate, you always have these opportunities in your mind where you are going to drink.

And so, there’s this constant like decision making process that has to happen. It’s like, well, am I going to have one of my drinks tonight or am I going to have it tomorrow night? Or am I, and that whole mental gymnastics is a big part of the, the drag of all of that. And so, if you just will commit to a certain period of time alcohol free, you will see that those thoughts are not there anymore, that you’ve made the decision.

And so you don’t have to make all these kind of micro decisions in the moment. Yeah. When you start thinking, because this is normal, right? The desire to go back and drink, but to do it in a quote unquote “normal” way or to not have the negative consequences, that is normal. Every single one of us has had those thoughts.

Even if you’re at 30 days, 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, like you won’t struggle against them all the time. You really won’t. It gets so much easier, but those thoughts will come up. That is normal, and I’ll tell you why.

There is a thing called the fading affect bias, and what that is, is where an emotion associated with a bad or unpleasant memories, they fade away more quickly than a feeling associated with a positive event. In other words, people not just, you tend to forget bad parts about an event more than the happy memories.

So it’s normal. What you’re feeling is normal. Your thoughts are normal, and what you need to do is say, even. If I want to drink in this moment or going on a vacation, I think will be hard or going to this wedding might be hard. I’m not going to drink anyway because I want to see how I feel with a longer period of time without alcohol.

Or I have committed to not drinking for 100 days until I have clarity on what my life really looked like and felt like when I was drinking because I have distance and I have data on whether or not a vacation without hangovers and with clear memories and without the whole vacation or good part of it.

Being centered around alcohol, whether that’s better than one that’s centered around drinking or where drinking is an important part of it.

Yeah, and I think the thing we haven’t talked about is that, the people who successfully moderate, they’re not spending a whole bunch of time thinking about moderating. They’re just the people that, and I think Veronica Valley is the person who said this in her book, they think about alcohol like you think about sandwiches.

So, they don’t sit around thinking they, they’re like, oh, okay, I’ll have a sandwich today for lunch. That sounds good. But they’re not sitting there thinking, can I have one tomorrow? How about 2? What about next weekend? Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So, that’s how they’re thinking about alcohol. You’re, you’re not obsessing over how many sandwiches you’re going to have. And I think when we think about it like that, we realize that most people actually don’t fall into that category. Which means, that most people can’t successfully moderate. And the ones I would go out on a limb and say that, the ones that are seeking help for their problematic relationship with alcohol, the people that are reading books about that, the people that are listening to podcasts about it are probably not thinking about it like they think about sandwiches.

 

Yeah, absolutely. I think that is the perfect place to leave this Marriot. I want to thank you so much. I mean, all the women in the Sobriety Starter Kit member group that you support, you have made such a difference in their lives. Anyone listening to this can understand why you’re so fantastic and how much wisdom you have to impart. And so, thank you for coming on this podcast. Thank you for having this discussion with me and sharing all your tips and your insights and the way you coach women because it’s so valuable.

Oh, thanks Casey.

Anytime. All right, well, I hope this was helpful.