Are you worried that you won’t be happy without alcohol?

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson 

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.

Well, Hi there. Welcome to the very first episode of The Hello Someday Podcast.

I’m Casey and I created this podcast to help busy women create a life they love without alcohol. I’m a certified life coach and the creator of the Sober Girls Guide To Quitting Drinking. And after having a serious love affair with alcohol for most of my adult life, I gradually started to question my relationship with drinking about 10 years ago, and then trying to moderate my drinking and reach out for some support and resources six years ago, and then I finally, happily, stopped drinking completely four years ago.

I’ll tell you my story in a future episode. But the quick version is that for many years of my life, drinking wine was my favorite hobby. I loved it so much that I somehow knew in the back of my mind that I needed to moderate it so that I would never have to give it up completely. So I drank and I also tried to limit my drinking. I created a lot of rules and guidelines about how and when I should drink. I told myself that I would only have three glasses of wine at a time. Or I would only drink on social occasions like when I was out with friends, or I would only drink when I was at home and not driving, or I would limit my drinking to just two nights a week, or I drink water in between each glass of wine. You get the idea.

I did other things that I thought would help me reduce my stress and anxiety so I wouldn’t turn to wine each night.

• I took vacations.
• I took mental health days from work.
• I went to yoga, I went to therapy. I talked about everything except my drinking.
• I got massages, I got sleeping pills so that I wouldn’t wake up every night at 3:00am.
• I tried to meditate. I changed jobs. I tried new workout routines. I changed jobs again.
• I signed up for 10Ks. I did bootcamp classes at 5:30 in the morning.

Incredibly, turns out that none of those things actually helped me drink less. And they didn’t help me reduce my stress or anxiety over the long run. Because I was drinking a bottle of wine at night, which if you don’t know increases anxiety and depression. Eventually, the work I was doing in thinking about drinking, moderating my drinking, recovering from drinking, worrying about my drinking, deciding to take a break from drinking and then drinking again. It was exhausting. It took over more and more of my life. But I had no idea what to do about it.

I started this podcast because I was clueless about the world of recovery. I don’t even think I knew what that word was. For many, many years, I was stumbling around in the dirt. I had no one to talk to. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And it took me a long time of “not knowing” to “figure this sobriety thing out”.

In this podcast, I’ll give the shortcuts I wish I had when I was just starting on this path. I want you to find what you need to feel better more quickly. I want to share what I’ve learned through years of research and experimentation, through my personal experience in quitting drinking, and my coaching work with women to stop drinking, so that you have a roadmap to get where you want to be. So that you have a roadmap to get to where I am now. I want to save you the time and frustration and help you get to the good part more quickly.

When it slowly dawned on me that drinking wasn’t working in my life anymore, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know anyone else who didn’t drink or who like to drink and it stopped. All of the people I hung out with drank. They didn’t all drink like I did. But nobody was sober. And if they didn’t drink like I did, they didn’t really get what I was going through anyway.

I had a lot of negative beliefs and assumptions about what life without alcohol would look like. I thought that if I had to quit drinking, it would be the end of the world.

I believed I was left with two options. Option one was to keep going down the path I was on, drinking more and more often trying to use willpower to stop and failing, having more hangovers and fuzzy memories of the night before, and feeling increasing anxiety. Also feeling so much defensiveness about how much I was drinking and whether I drank too much the night before, and overcompensating and working so hard in every area of my life, to prove that I still had it all together. And I was worried that I would eventually really screw up my family, and my life and my kids.

I thought option two was to sit alone at home every night, not drinking, feeling sad and isolated. I imagined myself in my house at night or out at a bar, desperately wanting to drink but not being able to like a teenager who has been grounded and isn’t able to drive the family car, I could see myself sitting through every dinner party without drinking. Or that I would have to join a 12 step program in sickness circle, labeling myself an alcoholic, and saying that I was powerless. When I thought about those two options, neither of them was very appealing to me. And in the first scenario, at least, I got to drink my wine. So I kept going.

But it turns out there was a lot I didn’t know. I didn’t know about all the tools and resources, podcasts, books, inspiring thought leaders and cool women out there who’ve decided to ditch drinking, and I’ve discovered that life is happier and healthier on the other side. I didn’t know that if you decide that drinking isn’t working for you. It’s actually not the end of the world. I didn’t know that I’d actually be happier, have more friends and more adventures without drinking. I didn’t know that I’d still be able to to host dinner parties. And I didn’t know that there are thousands of cool women out there who quit drinking without a 12 step program.

And there were other things I didn’t know and I had to learn. I had to learn how to let go of alcohol as a coping mechanism and find new ways of self soothing. I had to learn how to deprogram the associations I built around alcohol over a lifetime of exposure and socialization.

My belief that drinking alcohol was a privilege of adulthood, something to be celebrated and honored.

My belief that alcohol was a reward for her day of work, and the only way to celebrate a promotion.

My belief that drinking made you look cooler and more relaxed. That wine made you sophisticated, and that drinking beer at football games made you fun.

I had to learn how to release the idea that drinking as a mom helped me cope with the demands of my kids, and also meant that I was somehow keeping something for myself that having a glass of wine, or three in the evening, somehow signified that my life wasn’t all about my children.

And I needed to realize that drinking at company events wasn’t actually required for team bonding.

I didn’t know how to challenge my assumptions about what my life without alcohol would look like, how to get over my fears about what other people would think. I didn’t know how to practically change my drinking habits, or how to set up an evening routine without wine. I didn’t know how to deal with my anxiety, and people pleasing and perfectionism.

Without alcohol, I didn’t know how to set healthy boundaries.

And I didn’t know that you don’t need to consider yourself an alcoholic to decide to live an alcohol free life.

So in this podcast, I’m going to save you some of the time and energy I spent stumbling around in the dark. I want to give you the shortcuts so you can spend less time doing the hard part and more time enjoying how good your life can feel without alcohol. This podcast will be your one stop shop for inspiration, education, honest conversations, practical tips, connection and coaching. And we’re going to start in the very next episode with the mistakes most women make when they try to take a break from alcohol.

In the meantime, to get started sign up for my Sober Girls Guide to Quitting Drinking 30 tips for your first 30 days. It is jam packed with resources, suggestions, ways to get started and the information you need to feel positive and empowered by your decision to stop drinking and to choose a better path for yourself.

I am so honored you’re here.

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, 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.