I Sat Down With 5 Friends to Share Why We Really Drank—And What Sobriety, Healing, and Joy Look Like Now

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

drinking, alcohol, stop drinking, stopped drinking, sober, deeper work, why we drink, helps, heal, survive, surviving, cravings, not drinking, alcohol-free, sobriety, sobriety starter kit, community, connection, life changing, support, moderate, coping skills, coping mechanism, women, manage anxiety, hard times, resonate, vulnerable, brave, truth, rebuilding, life, without numbing out, mixed emotions, early motherhood, postpartum depression, recovery, married, mom, escaping, celebration, mental health, addiction, quit drinking, quitting drinking, mantras, people pleaser, anxiety, boundaries are your best friend in sobriety, death of a million cuts, navigate, remove the alcohol, guilt, shame, over compensating, moving forward

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Marriott Miller, Emily, Katie, Jess and Heidi

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.

Hey there, today is a very special episode, and we are talking about drinking as the presenting problem to be fixed, that we think when we stop drinking, when we finally decide to try a period of time without alcohol, it’s typically because we have anxiety or we’re sick of hangovers or forget in the evenings or looking like crap or something like that, and we don’t realize that for most of us, there are some underlying problems, which I always think about as what do you not have to think about when you’re drinking?

 

[00:02:00]

And it’s usually the deeper work you need to do or should do, or the coping skills we probably should have learned when we were in high school or college or early adulthood that we never did because we started drinking.

So, joining me are five women who I am so excited for you to hear from.

 

So, Marriot works with me in the Sobriety Starter Kit program as our member community manager, and I also have 4 of our SSK ambassadors who support the women in the program. Katie, Jess, Heidi, and Emily.

Now, you may have heard Marriot and Emily before. Marriott has done 3 episodes with me. One on how we both and other people try to moderate, which was episode 263. She also did a two part episode with me on how to stay motivated in long-term sobriety, where we talk about what happens after 100 days and after six months, alcohol-free, and Marriott’s experiences and growth in years 2 and 3 and 4.

 

[00:03:00]

So if you want to listen to those, they are episode 249 and episode 250. You can find all of my episodes by going to hellosomedaycoaching.com/249.

Emily also came on the podcast to talk in depth about the ups and downs of your first year of sobriety and the tools and strategies she used to move through that year.

And that is episode 232.

 

Now, this one is really close to my heart and special to me because of the women who are doing this work with me, but also because we are all together in one room around my kitchen table. So, if the sound on this one is different from previous episodes, please forgive us. But these five women are in town from Colorado and Georgia, California and North Carolina because we are having our first ever in-person gathering of women from the SSK member community this weekend.

 

[00:04:00]

So, we are in Seattle. We are going to Pike Place Market for a food tour, and on a boat around Puget Sound. We’re having a dinner picnic on the beach and going hiking. And more so after we record this episode, we’re driving to meet up with 20 women from the group who are coming together from around the country.

So, I’m going to let these women introduce themselves. They all have significant periods of sobriety and I want to hear from them. The first question is around why did you drink? So when you were drinking or when you were in early sobriety, what were the reasons you thought you loved drinking or you thought you drank to cope?

Hi, I am Heidi. I’m 47 mom of two, married 18 years, and I’m a surgical nurse of 25 years. It’s really a full circle moment to be on the podcast after finding it at 3:00 AM when I was so desperate for help on this journey.

[00:05:00]

So amazing to be here. I think. I started drinking so young.

I was probably 18, 19, and I never, ever moderated. I so I don’t think I ever learned any coping mechanism. I was very much someone that tried to manage other people’s emotions like my mother’s from a really young age. So, I think I just didn’t really know how to deal with, with anything.

 

My, my own feelings, other people’s feelings. And I continued to drink pretty heavily, until it became very obvious that I couldn’t keep going, that something had to change. I was a travel nurse and travel nurses are known for partying pretty hard. You get to leave every 3 months if you want, and kind of start over, and I really took advantage of that. It was a good way to get out of Kansas and I met my husband, on an assignment and we both drank really heavily.

[00:06:00]

We got drunk the first night. We were together on our first date, and it was a big part of our relationship.

We continued to travel. We would go to fancy restaurants, drink a bunch of whiskey, was our thing. And, and so it was almost like a third person in the relationship. And then we decided to start our family. I had two kids back to back and. That was a huge change at 34 to have to kind of put someone else first.

So, I drank a lot when they were little, unfortunately. There was a lot of times that I knew that, you know, it wasn’t a good idea for me to drink at all, and I kept trying to figure out how to fit it into my life for years. And then, I heard Casey one night in the middle of the night and, for the first time kind of had hope that you could do it in a way which was kind of abundant as opposed to giving everything up.

 

[00:07:00]

So, that was what I thought drinking helped me do was manage my emotions, connect with people, be a better, more patient mom, and kind of just as things got busier and busier with working kids, kind of just survive my life, and have some time that was just for me, an easy way to kind of downshift into, relaxation when I only had like 30 minutes to myself at night.

Yeah. So, those were all the reasons that I used it. Not all of them, but some of ’em over the course of my drinking career.

Hi everybody. My name is Jess. I am 43. I’m a little bit more than 2 years living alcohol-free. I don’t use the word sober because it sounds like such a downer and I am anything but down. So, I like to call myself. I live alcohol-free as fuck, so I am a FAF, that’s me.

 

So yeah, a little bit more than two years .

[00:08:00]

I am a mom to two school-aged kids. I have a husband, I’m a professor.

Why did I drink? My drinking really picked up during COVID as I think a lot of peoples did. Because there was just so much that was asked of us at that time.

We had to work remotely and we had to mom remotely with no help. And we had to be taking care of everyone and keeping track of all the news. And it was just, it was just a lot. And so, I drank to have fun. I drank to relax. I drank to just cope with too many things that were asked of me. There’s a longer story that happened before that, but that I think is that, that was the presenting problem.

 

It was COVID and children who were touching me and screaming at me and wanting to watch Blippy all the fucking time. And yeah, that’s, that’s, I would say my story. That was the presenting problem. It was blippy.

[00:09:00]

Love that.

Hey everyone, I’m Emily. I’m 38 years old. I’m the baby of the group and I am a corporate gold star girl. I’m married, I’m a dog mom, and I started drinking in college to fit in and I really never thought I had a problem. I thought I was just a normal social drinker. It definitely picked up when I started working full time, I used drinking to cope with the anxiety of working a demanding job, and I used it to celebrate the weekend downshift at the end of a stressful week, hang out with people connect, but I think the anxiety was really the shadow side of being that corporate gold star girl.

 

I just took on a lot. And so, I realized that I just felt really bad all the time and I felt stuck and I was like, I have a perfect life. Why do I feel like this? And so, it was just a constant ruminating and just looking stuff up online. And I came across Casey and similar to Heidi, I was looking for something that didn’t feel like taking everything out of my life.

[00:10:00]

I didn’t want to have a boring, sad, miserable life, which was what I felt like going sober was. So, ultimately, I decided that I would give not drinking a try, just as an experiment. I didn’t plan to do it long term, but I just was really tired of feeling stuck and awful and anxious all the time, even though I had an outwardly perfect life.

 

So, hi, I am Katie. I’m from Southern California. I’ve been married for a long time. I do not have kids. I do have a fur baby. And as far as why did I start drinking? I think I started drinking when I moved out of the house at 17, 18 years old and just fell in with party friends. And it was the college culture.

 

That’s just what you did. You drank everywhere you went. And over the years through dating, through meeting my husband, drinking has always been there. That’s just what everybody in my friend group has done. We would drink at all the family events. We’d drink at the dog park. We would drink on the holidays.

Drinking has always been a big part of my life. And then, I think as I’ve aged and grown in my career drinking became a way to relax and sort of make all the obligations more fun.

So, one day I, I looked up and realized that drinking was just a bigger part of my life than I wanted it to be. And I know I get emotional on these things. I can’t really help it. I realized that it was taking more from me than I wanted it to, and also that I was deeply, deeply unhappy, which is why I started to look for a way to change and become unstuck.

 

Hey guys, I’m Marriot. I know a lot of you have already heard from me. I help Casey in the SSK member group and I have over five years of sobriety. I have got three children and a husband that I’ve been married to for a long time.

 

Reasons that I thought I drank. I actually when I went to college, I went to a college that had a real like work hard, play hard kind of mentality. And I really, it turns out do not like, like big fraternity parties and stuff like that. And when I walked into one of those basements, I thought, oh gosh, how am I going to do this?

 

And somebody handed me a beer and then I just realized like, oh, this is how I’m going to do this. This is what everybody else is doing. This is supposed to be fun. So that was kind of one of the main reasons I drank was to like, fit in, I guess, or just to like act like a normal person at these things. But ultimately as I began to have a life where I was really not doing a lot of that and I had three kids and I was staying at home with them, a lot of my drinking obviously became more of a solo endeavor, and it really, I, I felt like I was using it to shut off the noise in my head.

[00:13:00]

I felt like I was using it to handle, quote unquote my life, and I thought it was helping me manage my anxiety. So, those were the reasons that I thought that I was drinking, but it turns out that they were all totally wrong.

Thank you guys so much for coming on here and talking. I know it is scary. It is vulnerable. It is bringing up a lot of shit that we all had when we were drinking that, that once you get 2 years away or 5 years away, you don’t normally touch on anymore.

And I know it’s, you know, it’s scary. So, thank you. I really appreciate it.

Why did I drink, if you’ve listened to this, you probably know my story, but pretty much, also started drinking in college. I, it was a huge drinking culture. I played rugby and we were the queens of blackout drinking and throwing up.

I thought it turned my mind off. I thought it helped me be fun.

[00:14:00]

It definitely helped me talk to guys and hook up, and I thought it made me way more interesting than I was. Like, it was almost like a benefit that when I got drunk, anything could happen. Like I would try to drink to the point where anything could happen.

I was super lucky that bad shit didn’t happen. I don’t even know how I managed that, but I did. And you know, it just kind of evolved from there. I, I was a seven night a week kind of drinker. Once I started living on my own. I drank every night thinking it was sophisticated and what adults did and was also drinking.

The first night I met my husband. I pretty much drank, you know, for our entire relationship. I quit when I was, 40. So we were 14 years married, probably 17 years together. And I thought that it, that it was a big part of my personality. It helped me cope with anxiety. It helped me manage the monotony of adulting.

[00:15:00]

But I also thought that being a red wine girl was a personality trait and sort of shorthand or a metaphor for like, I’m a fun mom, which looking back, I’m like, oh my God, that’s so sad. But I thought that it helped me with everything and it was my one reward and how I coped with stress and how I connected, how I bonded with my friends, basically all the things.

And I think when you stop drinking, you realize that. Yes. Some of those things were true, but most of them were not. So, when I stopped drinking, I did not lose all my friends. I stopped hanging out with people who I didn’t actually like. I remember like my coworkers were going to happy hour when I was sober, and I was like.

 

Dude, I don’t even like hanging out with you at work. I’m not going to drive to Seattle to hang out with you at a bar and not drink like that. Sounds awful. But turns out, I was still somewhat interesting. My friends still liked hanging out with me. I did not sit around staring at the walls every night with nothing to talk about with my husband.

[00:16:00]

My stress got better. It apparently did not help me cope with my anxiety and be a better worker. But those were all the reasons that I thought I drank and I also thought alcohol helped me with all those things. So once I stopped drinking, I realized that it didn’t actually help me sleep and it didn’t actually take away my anxiety and it didn’t actually help me be a more fun patient mom.

When I was telling my kids that we couldn’t go to the park because mommy has a headache and doesn’t feel great, but I’m going to ask these women, what were the underlying problems, the reasons that once you stopped drinking, once you got past a hundred days or six months what came up for you?

What were the things that you actually had to deal with? Because you are not totally checked out every night or every weekend or using alcohol at every happy hour or business trip. And if you’ve listened to this, you know more about me. But my big thing that I realized was I had a huge anxiety episode at 4months and almost couldn’t cope with.

[00:17:00]

My life and my work. I wanted to quit my job and run away and jump out of my skin. And I remember going to my doctor and being like, I can’t go back to drinking, but I cannot feel this way anymore, so you have to help me. And she helped get me on some anti-anxiety meds, but also referred me to a fantastic therapist.

I did EMDR with her. I saw her once a week for pretty much a year. I had already stopped drinking. I had gone to a therapist a few times before and been like, we were talking about this before we jumped on, but I went to a therapist who specialized with anxiety and addiction. ’cause I was like, I need to fucking stop drinking.

 

I got a problem. But I didn’t want to actually deal with that. I just sort of was trying to move past that. And I went in there and was like a. Oh my God, I have the worst anxiety.

[00:18:00]

My boss, my husband, my kids, my mother, and by the way, I drink a bottle of wine at night. He was like, let’s talk about your drinking.

I was like, no, let’s talk about my boss. But I had already stopped drinking by the time I got to four months. And I went into my therapist and I was like, you have to help me again. I was in tears. I was like, you have to help me because I cannot cope with my life and I can’t go back to drinking. And by the way, I am four months sober and I’ve already, I work out every day and I freaking try to meditate and I go to bed early.

So like, what the fuck? And turns out we did EMDR. I realized that maybe there were some reasons I had anxiety and maybe she was like, that is trauma. You know, whatever happened when you were. , Two to 11 years old and I was like, no, no, my life’s good. Nothing bad ever happened to me. I don’t know what my problem is.

And I had an underlying mood disorder that was totally undiagnosed my entire life. Dear God, if this could’ve been diagnosed when I was in high school, I would’ve been so much happier.

[00:19:00]

But I didn’t even realize I had it until I was sort of documenting my moods for my entire first year and realized that these super difficult, anxious periods where I felt like I couldn’t cope.

Came down and sort of descended and lifted without a real trigger. And yet she pointed out to me that there were things that happened in my life, like my very best friend was going through brain cancer and having surgery and dying, and that wasn’t triggering my anxiety episodes. Or we had big layoffs at work and that wasn’t triggering it.

So that was incredible, and that was something that I hadn’t realized clearly. I’d gone through these episodes before and I always blamed myself. I blamed myself for drinking and for not being able to cope with life as a personal failing. And why does everybody else not feel this way? And it was, it was super interesting to give myself that compassion, but also to find a solution.

[00:20:00]

I also didn’t really like my job. I didn’t really like my boss. And after some time of sobriety, some great therapy, feeling more clear, clearly I, I left my job. I started a coaching practice, I started a podcast and all that stuff.

But those were the actual reasons why I drank. Oh, and it’s addictive. And anyone who drinks enough is going to go down the path of being addicted to an addictive substance and going through withdrawal and coming back to it.

 

So, Heidi, yeah, so my first year I started seeing a therapist weekly just to try to sort through, things, reasons maybe that I was drinking. I don’t want to blame my parents, but I had a pretty traumatic childhood.

My parents did their best, but they didn’t do a very good job. Probably. My mom was a big drinker, my dad was really mean, and he was having an affair with a coworker.

[00:21:00]

So, my mom was really depressed, drinking a lot, and I couldn’t, I was really empathetic as a kid, so I would always try to manage her emotions and try to kind of fix her.

I was sexually assaulted when I was younger. That was really hard. So, I think that I initially started drinking to deal with trauma. So, I didn’t have any coping tools. Nobody ever taught me, how to process things and kind of move through them. I was super emotional kid anyway. And so, I think I drank initially to try to escape those feelings, those feelings of like shame.

And then the more that I drank, the more trouble I got into. And so, the shame just kind of became a reason that I drank. And then, as I got older, it’s what I had been doing for so long. So, it was part of my routine. It was a daily thing I did, and it was just, it felt kind of like a best friend, somebody that I could always count on.

[00:22:00]

It was like a super toxic relationship that I couldn’t seem to get out of, even though I knew it was like so bad for me. And so I just kept doing it and doing it for years. And it wasn’t until I had kids and I realized I was doing the same thing to them that my mom had done to me, that I really was motivated to change.

Thank you so much for sharing that, Heidi. I know it’s not easy to put everything out there, and I really appreciate you sharing that with us.

All right. Jess, what about you? Let’s see. My underlying issue, I thought that I was supposed to have it all, do it all, be it all to everyone at all times. I thought that I was supposed to accomplish a lot and be very successful. I was told from a very young age that I was a smart kid.

[00:23:00]

I was the nerd and I was supposed to. Go to the fancy college and then in the fancy college I did well.

And so, then I was told, oh, you should go to the fancy grad school. And I, everyone had all these very high expectations of me, and I had very high expectations of myself, but somehow I never could quite get to the place that I was supposed to. The, the thing that I was supposed to do, the place I was supposed to get, I would always get close, but never quite there.

And I have these very salient memories from, like after college, I went and I had a fancy job in DC and all of the other young people with the fancy job would sit around the table and we were all applying to fancy PhD programs all at the same time. And there was this one kid in particular who would sit sort of catty corner for me at the table.

And there’s a season when you get all of the results back from grad school. And I have these very strong memories of this guy looking over at me. And he would just like dart his eyes back and forth between me and his food, and me and his food, and me and his food.

[00:24:00]

And that was my way of finding out that Josh had gotten into MIT with a full ride.

And I had not gotten into MIT at all. I got rejected. And so I got to find this out at the table and it happened over and over and over again because all of us applied to 14 different programs. And so that happened when I was 25. And then the same thing happened essentially when I was on the job market.

When I finished my PhD. There’s all these public message boards where you can find out who got the interview and who got the fly out and who got the job. And my name was just never on the board. And so that, that carried over into, and that’s when my, that’s earlier in my life when I think the drinking really picked up.

But so what I learned from all of that is that I. Could have been more, I should have been more, and I wasn’t because of my own personal failings is what I thought.

[00:25:00]

I drank to cover that up and I was then trying to do more than I was actually capable of doing once I got the job that I have, which is a very good job by the way.

I intellectually know that I am actually quite successful. I know that. But I would just, I would try to do more than was actually possible for me in my job. I have a pretty high teaching load, and yet I would take on more research projects than could actually be done in a day. And then I started a consulting business because that wasn’t enough and I was trying to do good with my kids and trying to do good with my husband and trying, and it was just, it was too much.

It’s a lie. It is fucking bullshit when people tell you that you can have it all. No, you can’t. And by the way, I don’t think you actually want to have it all because I have friends. I know the people who went to MIT on a full ride. I know the people who got jobs at the top 20 programs. They’re miserable. Their lives suck.

[00:26:00]

My no, no, good for you, but my life is so much more fun. My life is so much better. And I think that recognizing what my actual capabilities are and what my actual limits are, and what I actually want to do with my life, that was the secret. That is how you figure out how to stop drinking.

You have to figure out who you really are, what you really want, and do that. Don’t do what’s expected you do you.

 

I relate to that so much, Jess, where we are all trying so hard to do more and be more and achieve everything and a lot of times.

We are doing all the things and then we are coming home and drinking because we are overwhelmed by all the things and we’re not very happy. And in order to not have to drink, to numb out the responsibilities in our lives, we actually have to do less and do fewer things.

[00:27:00]

In order to be happier so that we don’t have to drink to tolerate the way we’ve set up our lives.

And what I think is so interesting is that each one of us has a different reason why drinking worked for us, why we use that as our coping tools.

So Emily, what about you?

So, in the sober community, there’s a saying that sobriety is 10% physical and 90% emotional. And I was only drinking on the weekends, Fridays and Saturdays. So, I think I had a little less physical work to do. But the SSK program has this roadmap that walks you through your first 30 days and 60 days and 90 days, and walks you through that physical sobriety.

 

And then after that, there’s the emotional work. Which we also do as part of the program and on our own. And for me, the emotional stuff started as a kid.

 

[00:28:00]

There’s a really helpful quiz called the ACEs Quiz – Adverse Childhood Experiences, which stands for the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire. Recommend that you look that up and maybe even take it for yourself.

I had a lot of childhood stuff that I had to deal with, and that manifested into perfectionism and people pleasing over-functioning, overworking, which was great in the corporate world. I was a high achiever. I did really well. You know, everybody liked me, but it turned into burnout. I said yes all the time when I really meant no.

And I got to a point when I went through the physical sobriety part where I’m like, I don’t even know what I like to do now that I’m not drinking. Lik,e who am I and what do I do? And I also had to deal with all of the over-functioning and starting to walk that back. People at work expected so much of me because I gave so much of myself, or at least I thought they expected.

So much of me and Marriott challenged me all the time about these lists that someone produce and how much I had going on both professionally and personally.

[00:29:00]

And so, I had to start learning how to say no and start figuring out what it was that I actually liked, but that those were all of the things that were driving my drinking.

It started out in my childhood and I, I can’t help that. But now that I’m an adult, it’s my responsibility to work through those emotional things and, and figure that out.

Thank you so much, Emily, and if anyone wants to listen to Emily’s full story, please go to hellosomedaycoaching.com/232. It’s all about the highs and lows of your first sober year, and in that episode you will see that Emily’s tendency to over function and to over deliver. Really helped us in documenting her first year in that episode because she shares exactly the supports and tools.

[00:30:00]

She used it every stage in her first sober year, what she put on the back burner in her first 100 days, things that she noticed when she hit day 28, alcohol-free, and the discomfort she felt between day 60 and 90.

 

How she navigated her big sobriety challenges, like a business trip to Vegas, all-inclusive vacation, a promotion work, stress, the loss of your dog, Friday nights, everything and her advice on what worked and what didn’t work in her first 3, 6, 8, and 10 months alcohol-free.

Definitely, go to hellosomedaycoaching.com/232 because it’s a really good one.

And over to you, Katie. Tell us about what you discovered since you stopped drinking, were the underlying issues that were driving you to drink?

[00:31:00]

Okay. So, in my journey, I want to say pretty quickly in the first couple months, I realized that I was overcompensating a lot. So over giving inserting myself into people’s plans, helping them with things they didn’t necessarily even ask for. Being super thoughtful, remembering people’s birthdays and all of the things.

So, definitely I was overcompensating in all sorts of ways, and I do think that I’m a nice person and I’m thoughtful, but I was overdoing it because of this, like shame and guilt that I had from drinking. And I didn’t realize that until I removed the drinking. So once I removed the drinking, I was like, oh my God.

Like I don’t have to be perfect. I don’t have to remember all of these things about everyone else, and I don’t have to constantly feel bad about myself.

[00:32:00]

So that was just this big eye-opening experience because I don’t think I had ever done, you know, two, three months sober since 17. And so that sort of led me into learning that I have a big codependency issue.

So, I didn’t even really know what that was. And I think I have the high functioning codependency flavor and you know, big people pleaser. So, I’ve been learning a lot about that. You know, it was a, a lot of wanting people to like me. I’ve also learned that I have a lot of earning behavior.

 

So, again, trying to prove my values so that people like me. And then through, you know, more learning, I’ve also discovered I have an anxious attachment style, so I got all sorts of things going on. So, at first it can be a little frustrating because you find all these problems under the drinking that you think are going to be solved right away. This is the hard part of the discussion because it’s sort of like, I don’t know, the vulnerable part, like the root, but I think in the last question of this podcast, we’ll get, we’ll get to the good stuff.

[00:33:00]

Katie, everything you were talking about are things that I relate to.

I call myself a recovering people pleaser, and I had to do a ton of that work in early sobriety in order to take care of myself and to establish boundaries and it took me a long time to be at peace. With not producing and not delivering and not sort of trying to earn my love or earn my acceptance.

And I think that’s what a lot of us have to deal with. You mentioned high functioning codependency and I think we are all huge fans of Terri Cole’s book Too Much. It’s a guide to breaking the cycle of high functioning codependency, and I interviewed her on the podcast, if you want to listen to it.

It’s episode 251.

[00:34:00]

And I just had so many aha moments during that interview when I was learning about high functioning codependency and I think so many of us could learn something from her. And realize that we also struggle with that. It is pretty common for high achieving women who have been socialized to take care of others and be helpful and over give.

So you are not alone in that. Katie, and what about you Marriott?

Okay, so I kind of delved into this, I feel like on maybe one of the first two episodes that I did with Casey. But essentially, I feel like what I discovered after a period of sobriety was that although my anxiety like lessened so much, like on a daily basis when I stopped drinking I actually kind of uncovered that there was just this pattern of like depression and anxiety that I think had really been a part of my life since I was a child.

[00:35:00]

And I had never been given any resources or ways to deal with that. And so I think that I eventually was using alcohol to sort of self-medicate. So I really had to figure out how to address those things in a more. Positive way. And like I tell people in the group all the time, like, you deserve real solutions for these issues.

And not relying on an addictive substance that like is only eventually going to make your life a lot worse. I also have discovered that, really honestly, I think that I had made my life, my life had turned out differently than I thought it would. And not in bad ways. Just kind of similar to what Jess was saying in terms of like what your expectations are that you think you going to have it all and you’re going to have this great career and you’re also going to be a great present mom and you’re blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I had made some decisions that had made my life smaller in some of those areas and I think that I was drinking to cover up, like the feelings of loss around that.

[00:36:00]

And to sort of make myself more palatable in the role that I had, that I had kind of found myself in. That wasn’t necessarily, the, the best fit for me.

And I also think that I realized how much approval I was seeking. I don’t consider myself a people pleaser, but I definitely have realized that I have a hard time doing things that the people that love me, that I love in my life don’t approve of. And so a big part of this process has been understanding, like my independence as a person and saying, you know, well, I think this is good for me, so I’m going to do it, and I’m not really worried about what you think.

I know as I went around and listened to everyone here talking about their stuff, I was like, oh yeah, that too. Oh yeah, that too.

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.

 

[00:37:00]

When Katie was talking about being a people pleaser and seeking approval and making sure people like you, that. Was a huge part of me as well. I’ve talked about in other episodes how when I was seven and eight years old, my parents would go play tennis and I would wait till they’d left and then like frantically clean the house and then hide in a closet. And so they would be like, oh my God, who cleaned the house? And like come around and be super excited to find me.

Like it was the most fucked up hide and seek ever. And what’s crazy is we were living in South America, we had a housekeeper. Like that’s what’s messed up about it. So the idea that like I had to produce and deliver and do things for people in order to be loved. And , in my mind it was sort of in order to be kept, you know, meaning my parents like, might have sent me to boarding school in Saudi Arabia at one point. I mean, everybody’s got their shit right.

[00:38:00]

But when you were talking about wanting to be liked, I, I had a real fear that almost felt related to physical safety about like, if someone was mad at me or being bullied or being ostracized, I literally felt like I wasn’t safe.

Which. Makes you incredibly anxious for everything you do and upsetting people. And so, when you were talking to Emily about being an overachiever and a people pleaser and over giving.

Yes. And you know, when you were talking about Jess like wanting to get into the best college ’cause everybody else was, and the competition, I mean all of that shit applies I think to so many women.

And also I just wanted to say that if you’re listening to this and you’re not hearing your shit, I’ve coached 150 women one-on-one and everybody has their shit. You know, some women quit their jobs, some women go to marriage counseling, some women get divorced. For a lot of women, their marriage gets a lot better.

Almost everyone realizes that they are settling for way less than they deserve

[00:39:00]

And so, you might be dealing with a narcissist as a parent or you might be dealing with a toxic childhood. You might have ADHD. People who have ADHD are. Are five times more likely to struggle with substance abuse. And 50% of people with ADHD struggle with substance abuse and for women it is really not diagnosed.

So I’ve done an episode on that, but all that is to say is. When you stop drinking, it’s great. I mean, life without hangovers and sleeping through the night and your anxiety coming down a lot, like it’s so much better. But at the same time, I don’t know about you guys, but I was pissed when I realized that I stopped drinking.

I gave up my favorite thing in the whole fucking world, and. My life wasn’t perfect. I mean, this is something I had been worried about and struggling with and holding onto for 20 years. And I was like, are you kidding me that my life is not perfect now? And what I would say if that is disheartening to you is what is the alternative?

[00:40:00]

Like, numb yourself out. I, I felt like I was knocking myself literally unconscious every single night the minute I came home from work and waking up feeling like shit. Like is the alternative. Doing that for the rest of your life and settling for less than you deserve and never addressing these problems.

So, what we’re going to talk about next are solutions.

So, first of all, what did you do once you discovered that there were underlying issues? Once you discovered that whatever it was, was your thing, how did you address that and move past it? So let’s do that.

Heidi, will you start us off?

So, I quit drinking September, 2023, and I started going to therapy. January 1st was my first session, 2024, and I went weekly. And a big part of how I addressed it was learning radical acceptance. And that was brand new, a brand new concept for me.

[00:41:00]

I was never able to like, let myself off the hook for my past behavior and choices. I was never able to really forgive my parents for not protecting me in the way that I thought that they should. And so radical acceptance is where you don’t necessarily agree with how things were handled or. You don’t have to be happy about how things went, but you do have to accept it.

And that was really instrumental for me to be able to move on, in my relationship with my parents, who I actually have a good relationship with now. In my relationship with myself, towards the end of my drinking, I drank a lot because I was so ashamed at kind of how things had ended up and kind of where I was.

And so the therapist really helped me through talk therapy too, just to kind of get all those things out of me and, and just kind of be able to process things and let them go finally. That was really, freeing for me and I learned to set boundaries, which I had never, ever, ever done. It was so helpful.

 

I was able to tell my husband, you know, what I needed, what was acceptable, what I would no longer put up with. And yeah, I think those things really helped me, and being able to kind of work through the past, let it go, and then look to the future and kind of how did I want to set up my life going forward.

I love that Heidi, and I know it’s a lot of work, but it’s the really good work in terms of setting yourself up for more happiness and peace, and I love that term, radical acceptance. I hadn’t heard that term before either. So Jess, what about you?

[00:43:00]

I started quitting drinking in summer of 2021, and I got my last day one in June of 2023, so it took me some time to figure that out. I. By the way, side note, I have decided that my superpower is trying again. That is the secret to things. You try, you fail, you try, you fail, you try, you fail, you learn, you try, you fail, you learn and then one day you’ll get it.

So that’s my superpower. I started in the summer of 21. I got an individual therapist. I also did the thing where you find the therapist who specializes in alcohol recovery and also depression, anxiety, work issues. And then you bring it up and you say, I really want to talk about my work. And I did not tell her that I actually wanted to talk, talk to her about alcohol for God, at least two months I’m talking to her.

And so I tried a bunch of different things. The therapy certainly helped. Talking through some of my work stuff definitely helped. But what I discovered over the process of two years of quitting drinking is that ultimately I needed to just. Quit shit. I have this phrase to myself that when I’m finding my, my blood pressure going up, or when I’m finding myself overwhelmed is I say to myself, Jess, you need to quit some shit before you lose your shit.

[00:44:00]

And so, what that meant for me was quitting research projects. I had to tell a new co-author that, no, in fact, I can’t do that project anymore. I had to close down my consulting business. I had to take on less things at work. I had to quit a leadership position because it turns out that I don’t have infinite energy and infinite patience.

I’m a person who needs quiet. I’m a person who needs calm, not at every single moment of every single day, but definitely some time every single day. And so what that means is that I’ve had to sort of rightsized my life to use the corporate terms. Emily, I’m sure has heard the term rightsizing. I had to rightsized my life.

And in some ways that sounds I was, I was hesitant to say that on this podcast because in some ways it sounds like I’m making myself smaller.

[00:45:00]

But I really don’t think what, that’s what it is. I made my work life smaller so that I had more room for my real life, and I really had to come to terms with the fact that I don’t want my work life to be my real life. I am a bigger and fuller person than that, and I do so much more stuff now like, and so I don’t have as much impact in my work. My career is not as big and successful as I thought that it was going to be, and I’m actually glad for that because now I have time to do silly things with my kids and go camping for a week off the grid.

And I am currently training for a duathlon. I’m not even sure that I knew what that was a few years ago, but now I’m training for that. Occasionally, I do landscape painting. I’m on track to read 43 books this year. And so I had to quit shit in order to make room for the things that actually bring me joy and happiness.

And I think that for me is the big thing that was really different about Casey’s program than basically anything else that I had looked into.

[00:46:00]

Because so many other programs, and I won’t name names because I just won’t but so many other programs are like. If you just look at how alcohol is not good for you, and you really fully understand that you just won’t want it anymore, you won’t have to change anything else about your life, you will just magically not want it anymore.

That turned out to not be true for me, and that’s why it took me so many stumbles over the course of two years, is that it turns out that I did have to change some things. And once I did, that’s when it stuck.

Jess, I love that. And what was the thing you said about like, I have to quit shit before I lose my shit. Um, I’m going to, I’m going to keep that for myself, but I think that letting some stuff go to create more space for joy and happiness in your life, so you don’t have to feel like you want to numb out every night.

Is really, really important.

[00:47:00]

And I mean, I think we should all go around the table and, um, raise your hand if you are either currently in therapy or were in therapy after you stopped drinking or were in therapy long before you stopped drinking.

So. Yep. Uh, yeah, that’s all of us. So, um, if you haven’t tried therapy yet, I highly recommend it. We all have a lot of reasons why we drink and I think we don’t give ourself.

The gift of that kind of support, or even having this space to talk about the things in our lives that are hard, and we really should give ourselves that gift. All right, Emily, let’s turn it over to you.

So I started my personal development and therapy journey in 2015, and my last day one was actually in 2023, so I want to start out by saying there’s no right way to heal.

[00:48:00]

And my brain really wanted a linear plan. It wanted you do this first, and then you do this first, and then you do that. And really what happened for me is I started in 2015 with therapy. I did cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, and then I started some personal journey and I just kept doing things and trying stuff out.

But when I had my last day one in 2023, that’s when the personal development journey really accelerated for me. So, if you think that you’re doing all the things and something is still not quite right, I highly recommend trying Casey’s 100 day challenge because that might make the difference for you.

It’s what made the difference for me. It really accelerated a lot of the healing. So I still do coaching. I don’t really feel like I need. Therapy at this point in my life. But it is something that I would revisit in the future. And I have a lot of movement practices.

[00:49:00]

I’m really building up the spiritual side of my life, which I didn’t really expect to be a part of my healing journey and a huge aspect of my healing.

And what is working for me is starting to think about the way that I work, looking for those new ways to work. I still work in a corporate environment. I’ve actually been promoted twice since I quit drinking. And I have a lot of responsibility at work and I have to find ways to not over-function and not overwork and not people please and not be a perfectionist.

And it’s challenging because the corporate world is a hustle and grind culture and people who work that way, they get far until they burn out, and I’m not willing to do that. So the other thing that I really think about a lot is my time as an investment. Like we all get the same 24 hours a day, and what is the value of your time?

How do you want to invest it?

[00:50:00]

And for me, a lot, for most of my life, I really thought that that was wrapped up in what I achieve and my productivity, what I produce. And now, I find that my time is really valuable, just being out in nature or taking my dogs for a walk. And it really has nothing to do with what I externally produce, but a lot around how I am or who I’m being in that moment.

And that’s not something that I really expected when I first started this personal development journey. But it has become the thing that I’ve been focusing on now, and I think that everybody’s journey. Is an evolving process. I don’t think that there’s an end point where you’re like, okay, I’ve achieved it.

Now I can move on. It’s just something that continues to unfold. But the problems that I was experiencing, those underlying problems that were so complicated and hard and heavy, they’re not really as big in my life anymore. And I feel like I wouldn’t necessarily, I fully moved on from them, but they’re not the main focus and now I’m focusing on other things and expanding outward.

[00:51:00]

Emily, I love what you said about time and that our time is really valuable. Not only what we produce, but maybe more on who we are and love that you spend time with your dog and spend time in nature and are looking at this as a continuing journey where we’re evolving and becoming.

Katie, what about you?

Okay, so we’re going to see if I can get through this without crying. For me, I think that the only way out of this is through, and I was really pissed off when I learned that I had all this crap to, to work through. It was like I just did the hardest thing ever and stopped drinking and now I have to do more.

Like, are you kidding me? So I have done so many things. The biggest advice that I have for anybody is to go through Casey’s program, which lays out everything in such an easy to understand way.

[00:52:00]

Remove the alcohol because if you don’t remove the alcohol, you’re not going to see all the things that are underneath and all the cycles that you might not know are there, especially around guilt and shame and overcompensating.

 

I found that scrolling through and listening to her podcasts on all the different topics and as we used to say in the group to follow the threads. So whatever interests you, just sort of listen to that on that particular day. In my first 100 days I did a worth class through Belle – Tired of Thinking About Drinking and that was really impactful for me.

It was sort of the beginning of learning like that I am worthy. In the first six months, I did the Bigger Yes. Class by Laura McOwen. And that was really great because it helped me kind of learn who I was, I had forgotten. So, sort of like what I, like, what I used to like as a kid, what I’m passionate about.

[00:53:00]

Another class that I’ve taken recently is a codependency class through Terri Cole, which I highly recommend and that has sort of helped me. Learn to manage my own experience and that my own experience is just as important as everyone else’s. I’ve also added therapy to the mix and I had never done therapy before.

Therapy was not cool in my crowd, and so it took me a second to, to want to do that. And I have found it tremendously valuable just to have someone on your side who gives you like, good insight and good next steps. I’m also reading all the books and all the things and I’m doing another urgency culture class through Corey Allen.

So, for me, just following the, the threads of, and, and seeing where they take you and just picking up little bits of information. I know that sounds like a lot and I sort of have. Treated this whole sobriety thing like a college course, and I kind of find that, you know, the more that you put in, the more that you get out of it and it’s been a thousand percent worth it.

[00:54:00]

Katie, I just want to say when I’m listening to you that I am so impressed with all the things you are doing to heal and move forward and set yourself up for success. So, you took the sobriety starter kit program and you’re in the group, but then you added therapy and then you added the bigger. Yes Class. And then, you added Cole’s work on Codependency. And then more and more, and I think what would be better to approach as a college course or to invest in, I mean, this is your life. I think that was half of why I went back to coaching school.

 

I was no longer really interested in digital marketing. That wasn’t I was doing with my free time and I was no longer drinking and recovering from drinking.

[00:55:00]

And I was really interested in all of the personal development stuff and going back to coaching school was like the next evolution of the things that I was following in terms of what I was reading about and learning about, and having really interesting conversations about with really interesting people.

So, good for you. All right. Marriot, take us home.

Okay. So, the thing that I was noticing as I was writing my list of the things that I have done to deal with the underlying issues are that these are all real solutions. Like these are all life giving, practices and things that anybody at any stage of life with any sort of problems can do to feel better that that make your life better. Whereas drinking is just something that makes your life darker and smaller and harder.

[00:56:00]

So, like a lot of people here have said, I started going to therapy. For me, it was number one, about just talking out some things like verbal vomit basically of, you know, all the things. It was even like, not even really about what the therapist said so much, just about having like a witness.

Secondly, in therapy, I think I mentioned before that I didn’t feel like I had ever been taught any ways to deal with this anxiety that had been present since I was like giving myself bald spots as a toddler. And so she was able to teach me about anxiety and like breathing exercises and different things that have really helped me.

I also finally got on anxiety medicine, which I resisted for a long time because I had a bad experience with a certain medicine and I decided I was just never taking something like that again.

[00:57:00]

But, and I don’t know if this is true for everybody, but when I started taking the anxiety medicine that I’m on now, I honestly felt like, oh my gosh, is this how some people feel all the time?

And so I think it’s something that I will likely stay on forever and something that really would’ve helped me as a child and like college student to, to have had kind of the permission to take. I also started doing a bunch of stuff that. Like, like I said, really it’s just like healthy living type things, but like exercising, guarding my sleep, lowering the bar, learning how to ask for help.

Those have all been kind of life giving practices for me. And also like learning to do meditation. And then the biggest thing for me really was that my sobriety kind of within this like spiritual journey where I realized that I wasn’t like alone steering the ship and that I wasn’t actually in control.

[00:58:00]

That I just thought that I was in control. And for somebody who was a perfectionist and like hypervigilant, that was like such a freaking relief. Like, oh, I’ve never been in control of everything in my little sphere anyway, and I don’t have to even try to do that anymore. So kind of. Like letting that go as a life goal.

And that has been a huge relief and also source of strength in terms of dealing with a lot of the underlying issues.

One of the things I realized as I heard everyone talking and when I hear women talking in the sober world, is that I never talked about this shit with even my best friends typically as I was moving through life. Like when, you know, I got together with my friends, I, you know, of course bitched about my husband and my kids and my boss and all the things, and mostly they’d be like, oh my God, how are you?

[00:59:00]

And I’m like, oh, so busy. Like busy was my, you know, main, emotion that I shared with even my best friends. And then we would drink and you know, usually have fun. Sometimes I’d start crying and black out and not remember it. No, but that definitely happened. But we didn’t talk about this stuff. And once you stopped drinking, once you’re trying to navigate life without alcohol, you realize that all these things are triggers, right.

And it’s boundaries are your best friend in sobriety.

 

But also like it’s this death of a million cuts that you have to navigate all the things you originally drank over. And we share that with each other and you realize you’re not alone. And it’s incredible how little we talk about some of the things that are actually problems in our lives with the people even that we love because we don’t get deep enough, or it feels like you should be perfect or you don’t want to share your problems with someone else.

 

[01:00:00]

And once you do that, it’s kind of amazing to realize that even if it’s not alcohol, everyone is dealing with their own shit. And when you’re honest with people, they’re honest with you and it brings you so much closer and deeper and you feel better and you feel more understood. So, hopefully, if you’re listening to this, and even if what we are talking about is not your shit, you will realize that.

You know, people say to me all the time, like, oh my God, everyone I see, they have all their shit together. Their marriage is great, they look fantastic. They can handle work. They don’t have a problem with drinking. They can go have two glasses of wine and they’re fine. And I’m like. From talking to so many women, like everybody has shit.

We just don’t talk about it. And once you’ve realize that and you get support, whether it’s through therapy or classes or something else, you have no idea how much light lighter you’ll feel. So now I’m going to go around and, and have these awesome ladies talk about like what is life like now? Right? They are two years into sobriety.

[01:01:00]

They are a year and a half, they are five years. I’m almost to 10 years. Like what is life like now? And I. I am interested to hear what they say, but I think we’re all a work in progress. Like I have come so far since I was like knocking myself unconscious and passing out on the couch and smiling like crazy and being crazy productive and so busy.

I don’t when anyone looked at me anxious, but so busy and stressed. I am so much better, but I still deal with all the shit and I still go through the ups and downs and the benefits are that like 80% of my life is way better and I’m happier. And the other 20% I have actual tools to deal with it without blacking out.

All right, Heidi, let’s talk about it. What is life like in sobriety? Did you imagine it would be this way. So, I have to say I was never like a great area drinker.

I was a hardcore drinker for 30 years. I am just so grateful now to be, this is like where I always wanted to be.

[01:02:00]

I don’t think a day goes by where I’m not just like, I know a lot of people, like, did, did you do the pink Cloud? Like, I feel like I’m still on the pink cloud. I just, I mean, I’ve had such low lows and such rock bottoms that I just kept breaking through to the next lower level.

I just am so, so grateful. I mean, I’m not saying my life’s perfect, but it sure does look a whole lot better than what it did. And on the days that I things are rough. I know that. You know, I can do hard things as Glennon Doyle says. ‘Cause I’ve done them and I continue to do them. My relationship with my husband’s better, you know, he is on his own journey with drinking.

But I’ve definitely been a, positive change for our family. I mean, even though he hasn’t completely, well, he has quit drinking now as of a couple months. But I definitely think I’ve been the catalyst for change in our family.

[01:03:00]

I, you know, we used to be drinking buddies, so I don’t think that he would’ve made that first move for sure.

My kids are, 11 and 13 and they’re my biggest cheerleaders. They’re always, my son has this thing where he is always guessing what day I am on, and he is always. Sometimes he gets it, but he is always really close. So, they are very into my alcohol free journey and they know how important it is to me.

I had tried, prior to kids, I had done outpatient rehab, which I don’t talk about a lot, but I also did or tried to do the AA route and that was just neither of those things worked for me because it was all about, you know, like, I don’t know, it felt like alcohol was, even when you quit, it was still like such a huge presence in your life.

Like, you had to go to the meetings, you had to, you know, give up your time for those, you, it was like you’re always looking behind your shoulder to see like alcohol coming for you.

[01:04:00]

And I felt like, it was just so scary to kind of let go of like my best friend and then always be thinking about it, you know?

It wasn’t until I started listening to Casey’s podcast that I kind of got like, not only like, okay, maybe I could do this, but also like, oh, maybe my life would be better. Like, maybe I could quit and, you know, I could have freedom from this, you know, and I could have like, I could go on trips and I could, you know, manage my emotions.

And I, it just felt like a whole new world was available to me if I could just take the steps. And at certain times in the beginning, I really just had to trust that Casey wasn’t lying to me, that things would get better. And I’d eventually get to a point where, I didn’t really even think of alcohol.

[01:05:00]

And almost 2 years in, I really don’t, I mean, I’m check in the group and checking in on the posts and stuff, but I don’t think of drinking very often. And when I do think about it, it’s never like, oh, I might do that. It’s like never a real option in my mind. So for me,

I really didn’t imagine a life like this until I came across Casey. And it’s better than what I ever, I think could have imagined, honestly.

Heidi, I just can’t tell you how much it means to me and how happy it makes me to hear you say that. And I have loved seeing how far you’ve come from when you were just shaky. And starting out in not drinking and all the things that you have worked through in the process. And now to see you in the member group and just helping so many women who are coming behind you and inspiring them, it’s, it’s really amazing.

And thank you for all you do.

[01:06:00]

Alright, Jess, what about you?

It’s hard for me to remember when I even imagined what sobriety was going to be like. I don’t know that I really pictured it fully. I think I just pictured my life exactly as it was. But with no alcohol, same amount of stress, same amount of expectations, same circumstances, but just finding a way to get through some other way.

Whereas now I feel like my life is just, it’s brighter, it’s freer. I, that’s, that’s the word that I really resonate with is freedom. I recently went to a silent meditation retreat. It was my third and I happened to be there on the two year anniversary of being alcohol free. And I hiked to the top of a mountain at sunrise because why not?

[01:07:00]

And I just remember watching the sunrise and then walking down to the morning meditation and thinking about all of the women in my life in this group who have supported me. And I started doing a little loving kindness meditation. If you don’t know what that is, it’s awesome. You should look it up.

And I just, and I happen to be thinking about each one of the women here in this room and, and a few who aren’t in turn because I had I had brought a little rainbow catcher crystal thing, which is rainbows our Marriott’s thing. And so Heidi got a rainbow catcher and she said that she put it up in her kitchen.

And so, I got one for my kitchen and then I tried to get one for my office, but it didn’t work in my office. And so, I brought it with me to the meditation retreat. And so, I was there and there were these rainbows sparkling around the room. And so, that’s what got me doing the loving kindness first about Heidi and then about Mary, and then Casey and then about Katie, and then about Emily. And before I knew it, there were just these glorious tears streaming down my face. And I just find myself so grateful. So grateful for where I am and for the people and the community. I don’t think, I imagine the community. That’s the thing that really gets me about it.

[01:08:00]

I’m not a person who has ever had a big group of girlfriends. And I have that now. Yeah, freedom. Freedom, joy, and community. That’s what I have now.

 

Yeah, freedom, joy, and community. And isn’t it funny that we thought that when we stopped drinking, when we thought about sobriety, we thought it was the opposite. We thought we’d be trapped in our house with no joy and lonely, and it is the exact opposite.

 

Emily, All right. I’m going to hand it over to you.

So, just so you all know, since we’re not doing video, everybody is both crying and laughing right now because the feelings are real. The work that we did to get here is serious and hard and life changing. And now, where we are, and where we think we’re going, it’s beautiful.

Like, there’s no other way to describe it. And I have goosebumps just thinking about how far I’ve come. I never imagined a life without drinking because I never thought I had a problem with drinking.

[01:09:00]

I just thought I was a normal social drinker. And when I put the idea of taking drinking off the table, even for a hundred days, I thought I was going to be so bored.

I’d have no fun, nothing to celebrate. I thought I’d be an outcast and a loser. And my least favorite is weirdo, which I got called as a kid. And I thought people would say that about me. And I talk about this in the episode that I did with Casey.

Like, I legitimately thought I would get fired from my job for quitting drinking. Like, seriously. That was a fear of mine. And then, once I started going through the process of removing alcohol from my life and I felt better physically, I was like, okay, now I can do all the things. I’m going to excel even harder at work. I’m going to excel at, you know, lifting and golfing and start a business and just like add more and more and more to my life.

 

I thought it would fuel my toxic productivity habits.

[01:10:00]

And now, I’m at the point where I want to do less, and I feel like my life looks like the people that I follow on social media or have followed on social media when I looked at them and I thought they had the perfect life and everything is so glamorous and colorful and glittery and interesting, that’s my life now.

I am the social media person that I wanted to live vicariously through. All those people, like that’s my life. I feel so connected and I feel like I’m having so much fun and I’m exploring and I’m doing interesting things and I’m learning, and I’m doing stuff in nature, and I’m focusing on my health. And those are my values by the way.

Like, I’m literally living my values. And that was not a possibility for me when I was drinking. And my life still has hard stuff in it. I still have stress, I still have to deal with crap like everybody else. And it’s so much easier for me to do that. Things are not a big deal or as big of a deal as I made them when I was drinking.

I could just handle things so much easier.

 

[01:11:00]

And I feel connected to people that I just met yesterday. I flew across the country to meet what my husband said are strangers. But I’ve been, I’ve been connecting with these women for almost 2 years, and to what Casey said earlier, we share things with each other and have gotten closer in ways that I haven’t ever had with other women in my life who I’ve been, you know, friends with for years.

Because it’s so easy to stay surface level when you’re drinking, but when you go into a community of women who have stopped drinking, the connection and the community is so real and so deep, it’s life changing.

 

Emily, I love that you said that you’re living your values now, and I can just hear the joy and the energy in your voice when you talk about what your life has been like since you stopped drinking. And we were laughing about this last night about how, Emily’s husband was really apprehensive about her coming to meet us and stay with us, even though we’ve been in a group for 2 years.

[01:12:00]

Even though I’ve interviewed Emily on my podcast, even though we’ve been on a text thread that’s out of control and so good and so fun for 9 months now. Um, and he said, Emily, like, you don’t really know these people. And she was like, yes, I actually do. And we do. We know each other. Better than so many people we see in our lives every day.

And if you want to get to know people in sobriety, they are the best. And you can join the SSK and you can join the member group. And the connections are real and the women are awesome. So we would love to have you in there with us.

 

Alright, Katie, what about you?

Okay. So, I thought that I was going to live a complete life of deprivations. I thought that everybody else didn’t love drinking as much as I did.

 

[01:13:00]

And so, I was just going to feel deprived all of the time and I was going to have to do all the same things and just be like the loner in the corner. Like, no, I can’t drink. And it was just going to be really sad and full of FOMO and that was still a better option for me because of how I felt on the inside.

And I want to say within 30 days, like I had so much depression, lifted, depression that I didn’t even know that I had. And that is absolutely not sobriety at all, that life of deprivation that I was thinking I was going to live. My life is so joyful now. I am 661 days sober. I have saved depending upon the app, 16,500 to $19,000.

I’ve lost more than 40 pounds. But the biggest thing is like the joy and the no longer racing through life to try to get to the next drink or the next obligation the next should.

[01:14:00]

I’m so present. I’m so grateful. I definitely feel free. I don’t have to drink. I don’t have. You know, freedom is just such a, a good word to describe it.

Even more so is, my life is so full of hope and possibility, and it was never that way before. I absolutely feel like anything is possible now. I could take my life in any direction I wanted. I’m probably not going to do a marathon or a Ragnar race, like some of the inspirational ladies in our group. But I’m starting to get glimmers of things that are really exciting for me, things that I never thought would be possible, and they’re all possible within sobriety.

I just couldn’t be happier with my decision or more proud of myself.

Katie, I love when you talk about how much your life has changed for the positive since you stopped drinking and your transformation.

 

[01:15:00]

I mean, it’s just been amazing in terms of yes, how much money you’ve saved and losing 40 pounds is incredible, but seeing your joy and your confidence and your growth, when you talk about coming from such a place of being depressed and sad and lonely, I mean, it’s just, it’s really cool to see.

All right. Marriot, what about you?

I feel like, sobriety is everything that I thought that alcohol was going to give me, but it never lived up to the hype. And this is maybe this is top of mind ’cause I just went to Disney World and it’s maybe a fraught metaphor if you’re, if you’re a Disney World lover, but I’m not a Disney world lover.

It’s kind of like, to me drinking is like going to see the France exhibit at Epcot and sobriety is like actually going to France. So, it’s like, it’s like total drinking is like the, the fake opposite of everything that sobriety offers.

[01:16:00]

So, I thought that drinking was going to bring me joy because I laughed a lot with my friends whenever I was drunk.

But sobriety has brought me true joy, and I thought that drinking was going to calm my nerves and therefore make me feel like less on edge. But in sobriety, I have found true peace. And I thought that that drinking was going to make me have a lot of friends and be fun and social. And in sobriety I have found like deep true fellowship with people.

 

So, it’s just like the fake version of what is waiting for you when you actually give it up. And interestingly, I mean, it’s been such a cool journey to me to be a part of building this group for the past 2 years in the Facebook group. And a few years ago before I ever started working in this group, I went to this woman’s house and she like prayed this prayer over me.

[01:17:00]

And what she said was that, and I’ve shared this in the group before, but she said that she saw me as an oak tree that would grow up tall and be a place where people came to rest under its branches. And I have just seen that. That is a real like prophecy of my life and I see that those things are starting to come true, and it just never would’ve been possible had I not put down the wine glass.

Okay. I think that is the perfect place to end ’cause I could not say it any better than Marriott did.

Thank you guys all for sharing your stories and being vulnerable and telling the truth. And the reason I say that is because I know that someone’s going to hear. This podcast and resonate with it and be brave enough to take that first step to not only think about stopping drinking, but get support and take steps to do it and realize they’re not alone.

And that when they stop drinking life doesn’t suck.

 

[01:18:00]

And, try it. I promise you, we’re not just all full of shit. Life isn’t perfect, but it really is better and you deserve to at least see if it is like that.

So, thank you guys. I can’t wait to hang out with you this weekend and promise we will stop crying and start laughing more.

And if you were listening to this episode and any part of it resonated with you, I want to invite you to join us in the Sobriety Starter Kit program.

 

Just go to sobrietystarterkit.com and check it out, see if it’s for you.

Sign up, join us. You get 2 months free in the member community and you’ll get all the support, not just from me, and I’m in there every day coaching you and cheering you on and offering advice and feedback.

 

But Marriot is there every day, and so is Heidi and Jess. And Emily and Katie, and two other amazing women who are ambassadors, Katharine and Anna, who couldn’t make it out for the weekend.

[01:19:00]

And I just would love to help you take the first step to changing your life and seeing if you do in fact feel better without alcohol, I think you should take a chance on yourself. So, if you want to join us, we can’t wait to welcome you in.

 

Go to the sobrietystarterkit.com and see if it’s something you’re interested in.

 

So, thank you for coming in. I appreciate that.