Your drinking sound exactly like mine, everything you said, I was like, Yep, I that was 90% of my drinking to passing out on the couch waking up at two in the morning, feeling like garbage looking around being like, oh my god, how am I going to cope tomorrow? Not remember the end of shows? I mean, that was most of my drinking. And yet I held up the after work happy hours and the vacations in Italy and the date nights with my husband.

25:29

Yeah, for me, one of the big things that nearly stopped me quitting was thought of what will I do when I get married? I should point out that I was single at the time. And I’m actually still not married now. Yes. It’s a good job. I haven’t put everything on hold. Because at the time, I could not visualize getting married without drinking champagne on the day.

25:52

Yeah. Yeah. For me, it was eating, I quit when my son was eight. And my daughter was two. And I was even like, How can I not drink at my daughter’s wedding, she was two years old like that theme. And one of the things that actually helped me shift that and I want to talk about how to shift that perspective, was actually thinking about the trajectory of my life over the next decade. So my son was eight. And I was drinking a bottle plus of wine a night, and having all the negative stuff associated with it. What would his life and my life looked like 10 years out when he was a team, if I kept on that path, knowing that it just gets worse. And I was like, will he even want to bring his friends home to the house in the evening? Well, he respect me. Will we have all these amazing conversations and the relationship I want? If I keep drinking? So, you know, I had one, one part of my brain being like, what about my daughter, Lila, his wedding, she’s too. And another part of my brain being like, this is not going anywhere. You want it to go for your family, any, it’s not going to be good for your relationship with your kids or your own health.

27:11

Yeah, yeah. Wow, what a powerful way to play that movie out with different endings. Yeah, I love that.

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:18

And now it’s been almost six years, right. And he’s 13. And he’s super proud of me for not drinking. He just is like, when I hit 1000 days, he and my husband went to this craft store and got this big, tall glass vase and put in 1000, little turquoise beads in there and like had it on the kitchen table with flowers and a card. So you know, and it’s not all of our relationship. He’s not like my mom, quit drinking. That’s the number one thing in our life. But he is not embarrassed to have friends over and I’m present for him and I am not hungover in the morning or not wanting to drive him to sports, you know, basketballs at, you know, pickups at 9pm. At night on a Friday night.

28:07

Yeah, yeah. And you’re building a relationship with him. That’s, yeah. When you think ahead to that wedding, whenever it will come. You know that that relationship that you’ve built over years and decades with him? That’s going to be what matters? Yeah, but what’s not the liquid that’s been your glass for this one day?

Casey McGuire Davidson  28:26

Yeah. Which by the way, was making me anxious and feel like garbage and hating myself, and you know, all that stuff? Yeah, yeah. Let’s talk about how do you romanticize sobriety, because I know for a lot of women, it’s like, yeah, I can’t think of anything. Sexy, sophisticated, romantic, good about life without alcohol, just because sometimes it hasn’t been modeled for people.

28:54

Yeah. And as we’ve mentioned, we’re taught to see that really just two types of drinkers normal drinkers and raging alcoholics. So it makes sense that we don’t want to be in the raging alcoholic category. And there’s, you know, I always thought something a bit strange about people who don’t drink or that whole Oh, you can’t just a non-drinker. What nonsense, but all those little things that feed into us thinking that sober isn’t very sexy. Yeah. And people quite often tell me this. They’re considering, you know, my company’s called the sober school. People are like, I don’t like your name, Kate. Change that sober sounds really dull and boring. And I get that it does have all these connotations with it. So what we need to start doing is just first of all, as we’ve been doing here, becoming aware that we’ve been falling into this pattern of talking up alcohol and talking down sobriety, even when we’re trying not to drink. We sometimes talk about alcohol as If it says, like, lover that’s been taken from us, yeah. Or like the best level we ever had. And we’ve got to stop doing that, and start talking about sobriety instead. Because if this was a kind of cheesy 90s romantic comedy, alcohol free living is the guy that the girl overlooks to start with. But he’s kind of there in the background. And we’ve got to bring him up to the kind of into the main storyline. Yeah. So like, a really easy thing you can start doing is write down one thing every day that you love about alcohol free living. And if you challenge yourself to do this every day, you’ll be amazed at the things you find. Because you’ll start off with stuff like I love waking up without a hangover, like the kind of big stuff. But then you get into the nitty gritty things like you were mentioning about your son, like him being proud of you. Or, you know, you love the way your partner like looks at you in the morning. Rather than that look of like, what were you doing last night? Yeah, you’ve got their respect back. Or you can jump in the car and pick up your kids at any time of day or night, when we started looking for those little specific things, we start finding more and more of them. And that’s just a one example of where we need to start kind of putting out energy to, rather than playing the story all the time about what a hardship and a burden sobriety is.

Casey McGuire Davidson  31:38

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, there are literally so many of those moments, I love that you said, write them down. And notice them because I think doing that split screen of like, if I had been drinking, here’s what would have happened, like the good and the bad, right? Because I’m not drinking, here’s what it was like. And it can be everything from I drove home and was not terrified that I would get pulled over or not worried or not second guessing things. But also, like, I had this really great conversation with someone that I probably would have not been present for and may not have remembered all of it. Like I got to connect with that person, or I got up on Saturday morning actually went for a run or a kayak, which I had been telling myself for years that I would do but always sort of rolled over with a headache and said, Screw it. Like, I’m a more interesting person. I am doing more very things.

32:48

Yeah, yeah. I love that. And I think you can apply this strategy to so many things, if you’ve got something coming up that you are worried about, you know, say an event that you’re going to go to and you can’t imagine not drinking there? Well, you can start rehearsing this in advance and start thinking about, why is me being alcohol free? Why is that going to be the best thing ever? Yeah. Why is that going to make this event so much better than it would be worse, I’m drinking. And if you start doing that in advance, before you even get there, you’re priming the pump, you’re priming your brain to look out for these things. And to start anticipating and visualizing what it’s going to be like, because there are so many things that you’re going to gain. And I love what you said about having those conversations with people that maybe you wouldn’t have had before. And it’s those little things that you can just miss or gloss over. If you don’t stop and register that this is happening. Yeah, this is what life’s about.

Casey McGuire Davidson  33:57

Yeah. I mean, I think what you said about visualizing what’s going to be amazing about it is so important. And you know, I remember doing that when I was pretty early in sobriety going to Mexico to a big resort that I loved that I drank app before. And so that was a challenge that I needed to address. And so I thought about waking up in the morning, having coffee and going out on the deserted beach, they had these gorgeous white beds, like swinging beds on the beach with curtains and you know, I could never get them when I went there before because I was always hungover and getting up late and running the kids out. And I would go there and I would just like watch the beach and drink my coffee and like say hi to the other four people who are there and feel all proud of myself in perky and be like hey, how are you either the people jogging by that you’re always like, rolling your eyes at when you’re hungover. You’re like Oh Jesus, you’ve already gone for, like, that was amazing. And like reading a book on the veranda, you know, and remembering it. And you know, forget about all the little things like the bar bill and being able to go out to the hot tub in the pool with my daughter at 10pm. Whereas normally I would just not be safe, right? She was like two years old, I can’t go in the pool with her at 10pm. So all of that was pretty amazing.

35:30

Yeah, yeah, I think that’s so important to do. And, yeah, just soaking up all those benefits that you get from it. I’ve just lost my train of thought, oh, it’s the other thing I love is like so many of us and you know, with new year’s resolutions, right? I used to tell myself the exact same thing every single year, like, I’m going to do X, I’m going to do Y I’m going to, you know, start this hobby. And one of the things that is really awesome to do when you stop drinking is to actually sign up for some new things, sign up for the guitar lesson sign up to do painting, you know, I signed up for a 10k and joined a running club, which I had told myself for like decades, I’ve never run a 10k in my life. And, you know, so it was pretty amazing. I was that girl at 8am on a Saturday seeing a group and jogging six miles. And I was like becoming this person that I always wanted to be. And I just remember getting so emotional on those runs, because I was just like, This is what’s awesome about not drinking, like I’m actually proud of myself.

36:46

Yeah. And that’s the secret as well as to be going out and adding things into your life. Because when I look back on my unsuccessful attempts at stopping drinking, I did quite a few dry January’s and things like that. I never changed anything about my life during that time. Yeah, all I did was kind of monitor the calendar to see where we were, and how close we were to me being able to drink again and saying I’ve done it. But we’ve got to start creating a life that that feels really good that that we don’t want to escape from. So that involves adding some stuff into it, and doing things to genuinely make us feel good. And focusing on that. Yeah, rather than just mourning what’s left us? Yeah, someone said to me once that breaking up with alcohol is a bit like breaking up with a partner. Even when you know it’s the right thing to do. There are going to be moments when you question it, and you doubt it and you wonder if that’s right. But we’ve all had that experience of breaking up with someone, and then looking back and knowing that it was the best decision ever. Yeah.

Maybe you’re with someone now who you will never be with if you hadn’t gone through that breakup in the past. So there’s a bit of holding your nerve and knowing that you got to trust your instinct, even if there are those ups and downs well, and also just knowing I love the analogy of the breakup. And I think that as well, because you have to go through a little mourning period. I feel like if you don’t go through a mourning period, you’re not serious about leaving it behind. But you don’t need to dwell there, right? You need that space to open up in your life so that new good things can come into it. And I think it really helps in terms of romanticizing sobriety, yes, you’ve got your list of all the bad things about drinking, why you want to stop. Anyone who wants to stop has their list of like, shit, you want to stop happening, right? And it can be as simple as I want to lose weight. I look like crap. I never work out my stomach feels awful in the morning. But in addition to that, make a list of what you want to bring into your life, all the things you want, that you haven’t had time or energy, or just follow through with to do and sort of post that up somewhere. And I even like, post up pictures of I had a vision board of all the things I wanted to do without drinking and all the things that were good in life. Like there was something that said like more coffee, more sunsets, you know, more connection more hugs, more adventures. I had a picture of me on like orange Vesper scooter in Nantucket, when I was like 22 and I like took this Vesper ride out to all these lighthouses and took all this photography by myself and I was just like I want to feel that again. And having that image helped me so much. I was like, I want to be that girl, not the girl, hungover in the morning or like, zoned out on my couch. At the end of the night. I want to be the girl on the fuckin scooter in Nantucket.

40:18

You know, I love that I wish I had had such a clear vision when I stopped. I think I was very much motivated by what I wanted to escape from for a long time. And I just managed to keep going enough to then pick up on the fact that I needed to have more of a stronger vision of where I was going. One thing I wanted to say when it comes to romanticizing sobriety is we’ve got to give sobriety a chance, because most of us have given alcohol a lot of chances as well. My god. Yeah, see that again?

40:59

Yeah, we’ve, we’ve given alcohol, so many chances, hundreds if that final last chances, all of them. But yet, we’re so quick to go out and do something sober once. And then we’ve got a whole story about that.

Casey McGuire Davidson  41:16

Yeah, that is that for me, I was miserable. Like the girl who was the designated driver. Like, that was not fun.

41:23

Yeah, yeah. And I know, for me, and many of the people I work with, it is literally about practice. And if you can commit to going out and doing something, let’s say 10 times, check, go to 10 social events, and then come back and draw some conclusions on it, you’re in a much better place than just going out once or twice. Because those first few times when something is new, it is going to be awkward. And we are naturally like we’re wired to want to stay in our comfort zone. We don’t like things that are different. So we can’t let ourselves judge the experience on that. So if we can just keep doing it for a bit longer, get over the initial awkwardness, then it’s a bit easier to spot all those amazing things that we’ve been talking about and all the benefits that you might not see otherwise.

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:19

Yeah. I totally agree with that. And part of it too, is like, set yourself up for success. If an event is completely driven around romanticizing now calling that’s the main activity, you will be able to do that at some point. But don’t do that to yourself. In the beginning. I remember for my birthday, arrange something before I quit drinking. So it was a hot air balloon. I live somehow right next to 90 wine tasting rooms, literally three, three miles from my house. I’m pretty sure that’s why I moved here. A hot air balloon in the afternoon at sunset that landed and he went to one of my favorite wineries for wine tasting. And I was like 20 days sober. And it was my birthday. And when you talk about an ex-boyfriend, literally, I went in there. They were all tasting. I was red wine girl. They were tasting red wines. Pretty sure again, that’s why I chose it. And I was like, I’m not drinking, do you have something else? And they were like, well, we have water, you know? flatwater and I felt like I was watching all these people making out with my ex-boyfriend and I loved him so much more than I ever could. And what if I had chosen the sunrise hot air balloon? What if I had gotten there at five in the morning on a gorgeous summer day? My birthday is in August and done the sunrise and then had this incredible brunch, right? So it’s a little bit about like, if you romanticize sobriety, pick things that are going to be amazing that you would likely never do because I would not have gotten up at four in the morning to catch a hot air balloon a little ways away from me. And enjoy that be that person?

44:12

Yeah, yeah. Well, I quit drinking about six months before I turned 30. Wow. And I remember feeling under a lot of pressure at the time to have a big birthday celebration. And all my friends had had a sort of throwing a big party. And there’s the time drew nearer and nearer. I suddenly got that like nagging feeling that throwing this big party just wasn’t right for me. And it wasn’t so much that I thought I was going to be tempted to drink but a bit like you described there are still it’s gonna be boring seeing all these other people drink. They’re gonna keep asking me why I’m not drinking. Like that just doesn’t feel good. It does. Didn’t feel inviting or fun. So, one of the bravest things I think I did in that period was to kind of buck the trend and go like, No, I’m not doing that. And I spend a lot of my money on a holiday on the holiday of a lifetime. to Kenya. Yeah, well, we did a safari trek, I did a kind of health and fitness, and a few days with loads of yoga. And that was those were all experiences, I would never have opened my mind to, I would never have thought I could have done. You know, I would just never have gone to that place without quitting drinking, triggering this whole chain of events that broke me out of this pattern where I was kind of sleepwalking through life doing other things, doing things just because other people were doing them.

Yeah. I mean, that’s incredible that you did that. Didn’t you say it was in Kenya? Yeah. Yeah, it is very cool. I actually grew up around in Africa, and a bunch of different countries. My parents were diplomats with the US Embassy overseas. So I’m in like Zambia, and Mozambique and Namibia. And I can just imagine in early sobriety, if you’ve never been there, how incredible that would be in terms of like the adventure of a lifetime.

46:26

Yeah, it was amazing. Um, the other thing is, during that trip, I met someone who runs a fruit and veg box delivery service in the UK. Sounds really random. But this is back in what 2013 I hadn’t really heard of that, then. But he made such an impression on me. He and I told him about my idea for this thing called the sober school, but I didn’t think I was ready for it. And he was telling me about, you know, he’d set up his business after failing school, I’ve hardly any money and, and, and, you know, when you just think, wow, somewhere in the universe, I was meant to meet this person at the right time. Because he was just like, you, you are meant to do this next thing. And yeah, if I’d never gone on that trip, maybe the next few years would have looked totally different.

Casey McGuire Davidson  47:24

I always call that like following your divine breadcrumbs, like taking a step towards something that feels really good and exciting and amazing. And then you’re going to be given another breadcrumb, that’ll fall, you know, go to the next step. And then the next one, like, if you hadn’t stopped drinking, and then decided not to have a big party, you know, boozy night and decided to go to Kenya, and then met this guy. Like, it’s just this trajectory of good, optimistic, positive, exciting, you know, developments in your life. Yeah.

48:02

And the funny thing is, so now, I’m just turned 38. So not that far off turning 40. And I was thinking the other day, well, do I want to throw a big party for my 40s? Maybe I do. Because actually, now, I think, yep, I could throw a big party. And we do it exactly the way I want to do it. Every single person I know knows that. I don’t drink. They’re all fine with it. Because otherwise they’re not in my life. I especially post COVID. I like the idea of bringing everyone together and having a really good. Yeah, then and being there for all the right reasons. Yeah. It would just be so nice to do that on my terms, my way. But I didn’t have that confidence back then. Yeah. So back then the best thing I could have done was something completely different.

48:56

Yeah. And I know like a lot of people, it’s those big milestones that trip them up, but we’re vacations but it trips them up way before the event. Like I remember when I was stopping drinking, I was talking to my sober coach, and it was day 16. And I was like, Okay, here’s what’s what I’m worried about. I am going to Italy and Croatia on a vacation. How can I not drink on that? And she was like, okay, okay, when are you going? I was like, four months from now. And she was like, Alright, let’s talk about that in three and a half months. And we did all the work in between. I mean, first of all, I was feeling so much better. I was looking so much better. I was stronger. I didn’t have like the physical withdrawal by that point, but really needed to envision because like, I had been to Italy a number of times before my husband and I like drank crafts of wine in the sunshine and visited all the wine regions. Of course we did. And instead, I needed to envision going Venice, and I took all my wine money and spent it on like incredible Phoenician class necklaces that I just adored. And instead of wine crawls, I did gelato crawls with my eight year old son who thought I was suddenly the coolest mom ever. Because I was usually like, No, we’re just gonna sit at this patio for three hours doing nothing while I drink. And I went to bed early, so I didn’t do the late night stuff. But I woke up before anyone else woke up and I walked the canals and I did all this photography. I love black and white photography of just the empty buildings and streets. And that’s romanticized in sobriety, right.

50:43

Yeah, that’s amazing. I love that. So top tip for traveling anywhere is to look and see if they do a food tour. Yes, I’ve done food tours in Miami, are quite a few different places. Now. They do exist. They’re a thing. Yeah, what you’re saying there reminded me of a bit random. But have you heard of the gorilla experiment? No. Tell me about it is this I think it is from the 90s where the they got a group of people to watch a video of two teams playing basketball. And the people watching the video had to count how many times the ball passed between the two teams. And halfway through the video, a man dressed in a gorilla costume, walks across the screen, beats his chest and then walks back off again. And these researchers ask the people, so was there anything you noticed in the video? And more than half of them? Just say, Yep, I was counting the passes. And here’s how many times it went between the two teams. So those people didn’t even notice the gorilla walking across the screen? Because they were so fixated on something else. Yeah. And I think this applies so well to your holiday experience that we can go there and take our lens with us of like our goal, our goal? What can I do where I can drink? Oh, they’re watching everybody else order? And how much do they order? And what’s the class look like on their? on their table? Like?

Yes, yeah, basketball passes completely.

52:35

And it just reminds me that week, no one is ever having a full experience of anything. Like we can’t absorb 100% of anything. It’s just physically impossible. We have to tune some things out or our brain would just explode. So do we chew now the gorilla? Do we chew now the alcohol? Or, you know, what do we make room for what’s going to fall out the bottom? When you go on holiday, there’s only so much room in your suitcase. And if you take alcohol with you, is going to squeeze out a ton of space for other things. Yeah. And that’s always been a real comfort to me knowing that I’m not missing out because everyone is missing out. No one’s having this complete experience of everything. It’s just up to us to decide what we want to have within our experience and the food tool and the things that you described. That’s what I want in my experience.

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:35

And like bike tours and hiking tour. I’m a tour fan. I even did a walking photography tour in Paris. When I went there, there’s so much amazing stuff out there. You know, we took a Vesper to like four psi and like went on the highway, like, you don’t do these things, when you’re focused on going to the bar or you’re hungover or you’re sleeping late, like you’re really missing out on amazing things in life. And not only in vacations, like I remember, in early sobriety, I was driving across the bridge, I live in Seattle to see a friend. And it was like seven in the morning on a Saturday. And there were all these people biking across the bridge and running across the bridge with friends and talking and I was like, Holy shit, do they do this every weekend? Like I was like, there is an entire universe that I had no concept even existed. And those people look happy and healthy. And I was like, damn, like no concept. So you know, there is a lot out there that is an alcohol and the quicker you start romanticizing it in a really positive way. You know, shift your focus away from the glass of wine, how it looks what you’re missing out on and start envisioning how incredible life could be once you Leave alcohol behind it kind of take that weight off your shoulders, the happier and more successful you’re going to be. Yeah.

55:09

And the other thing I just want to reassure people is that some of the things you truly love doing right now, you probably don’t have to stop doing in sobriety. Like, if you love coming home from work and having a drink with your partner, you can carry on doing that when you quit drinking, because actually, what’s really special and lovely about that, is the fact that you’re spending time together. Someone’s asking you about your day, you’re hearing about theirs, you’re connecting, you can still have that in sobriety, like that’s not being taken from you. And the same way, you know, date nights, and all those other things. So I think it’s just about keeping that perspective and not like we started off talking about not putting alcohol up on that pedestal, and giving it the credit for all these things.

56:04

Yeah, it’s literally just a beverage in a glass. It’s like, if you were going to a restaurant and decide to order a salad versus a hamburger or became a vegetarian. It’s, it’s just a substitution, it doesn’t mean everything, we get it all this big importance and power.

56:27

Yeah, do the mindset work. Because you know how little kids have those comfort blankets they carry around with them. And if they lose the comfort blanket, they’re not going to have a good time at the party, they can’t settle down at night, all those things. Like we as adults know that that comfort blanket has no magic powers at all. But if the child thinks that they can’t go to sleep without the blanket, they think they can’t have a good time at the party, they won’t do. Like we’ve been carrying around alcohol with us like it’s a giant comfort blanket. And we’ve just got to let go of it. Yes, there’s a whole big world out there waiting for us.

Casey McGuire Davidson  57:05

Yeah, and the only way to see that you’re going to be okay, without that comfort blank, is to give it a chance to get some time away from it, and actually start enjoying your life, you know, versus like, just focusing like the woman who was a designated driver, just be miserable the entire time and not looking around at all the beautiful things around you. So I have loved this conversation. I know a lot of people listening to this are gonna want to follow up with you and find more out about what you do, how can people get in touch?

57:43

Thank you, the best place to find me is probably at my website, which is the sober school.com. I have a blog on there. I do weekly videos nearly every week. And some of the downloadable things a pep talk and a one o’clock guide. And I’m also on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter or at the sober school. So come on, come find me and say hi.

Casey McGuire Davidson  58:12

Awesome. Well, this has been perfect. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Hi there. If you’re listening to this podcast, I’m betting you’ve been going back and forth for a while now, on whether or not you should stop drinking. And I want you to raise your hand. If you’ve had any one of these thoughts. You might have been thinking, I’m not that bad. I actually don’t want to stop drinking completely. I just want to drink like a normal person. Or maybe you come home after work. And you think I know I shouldn’t drink tonight. But I literally can’t relax or have fun without it. It’s really common to say I’ve tried to take a break from drinking before, but it’s just too hard. I always give up anyway. So what’s the point in trying again? Or here’s one I hear all the time from women. Everyone I know drinks. If I stopped drinking, I will be bored. Or I’ll be boring. I’ll have no fun. I’ll never be invited anywhere. I’ll just sit home and be miserable. Or maybe you can insert whatever your reason is there. So is your hand up. If it is that is totally okay. And that’s because taking a break from drinking and changing your relationship with alcohol. This shit is hard. And that’s why I’m really pumped to invite you to my brand new, completely free 60-minute master class, The 5 Secrets To Successfully Take A Break From Drinking even if you’ve tried and you failed in the past. After you take this free class, you’ll realize why what you’ve been doing up until now hasn’t been working, and what to do. Instead, we’re going to cover all the juicy topics, including what questions you need to stop asking yourself, because they’re setting you up for self-sabotage, not for success. We’re going to talk about exactly what you need to do differently. So you can stop the exhausting cycle of stopping drinking and then saying, screw it, and starting again, and we’re going to talk about the real reasons, you haven’t been successful. And I’m betting they’re not what you think they are. And this isn’t surface level stuff. I am handing over the strategies and the mindset shifts I go through every day with my private coaching clients. If you’re listening to this podcast, I really encourage you to take a moment and sign up for this completely free masterclass. It will help you on your journey to drink class and live more to feeling better. So if you want to save your spot, go to hellosomedaycoaching.com/class is still available, and I really hope to see you there.

 

So thank you for coming on here. I couldn’t appreciate it more. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday Podcast. If you’re interested in learning more about me or the work I do or accessing free resources and guides to help you build a life you love without alcohol, please visit hellosomedaycoaching.com. And I would be so grateful if you would take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast so that more women can find it and join the conversation about drinking less and living more.