Resources Related To Helping Your Husband If He’s Struggling With Alcohol

and Marriage After Quitting Drinking:

Ep. 107 Living With A Partner Who Drinks When You’re Sober | Hello Someday Coaching

Ep. 227 How Al-Anon Can Help If You’re Living With A Partner Who Drinks Problematically | Hello Someday Coaching

Ep. 132 Using Science + Kindness To Change Your Relationship with Alcohol | Hello Someday Coaching

The Beyond Addiction Workbook for Family & Friends Evidence-Based Skills to Help a Loved One Make Positive Change  

Ep. 95 Making Marriage Work After Quitting Drinking | Hello Someday Coaching  

Ep. 225 Alcohol Explained with William Porter | Hello Someday Coaching  

Ep. 64 Giving Up Alcohol With Paul Churchill

Ep. 165 Can Your Drinking Habits Change When You Use Motivational Psychology? | Hello Someday Coaching 

Ep. 146 How To Take Sobriety To Recovery 2.0 With Tommy Rosen | Hello Someday Coaching 

Ep. 124 Why Is Moderating Alcohol So Hard? | Hello Someday Coaching 

Ep. 71 My Marriage, Drinking And Not Drinking | Hello Someday Coaching

Ep. 143 Choose The Best Path To Sobriety For You | Hello Someday Coaching 

Ep. 186 Why High-Achieving Women Struggle To Connect In Their Marriages (And Alcohol Doesn’t Help) | Hello Someday Coaching

Ep. 193 Sober Motivation: How To Get It and Keep It Going | Hello Someday Coaching 

Want to read the full transcript of this podcast episode? Scroll down on this page.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF THIS PODCAST INTERVIEW

What To Do If Your Husband Is Struggling With Alcohol with Todd Kinney

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

alcohol struggles, partner support, drinking problem, quitting alcohol, emotional impact, family dynamics, sobriety journey, male perspective, drinking triggers, relationship challenges, sobriety resources, alcohol-free life, parenting impact, quitting fears, support groups, husband, struggling, alcohol, alcohol-free, take a break from drinking, gray area drinker, cycle of shame, embarrassment, regrets, a death with 1000 cuts, sober vacation, making memories, blackout drinker, online sobriety support group, sober support

SPEAKERS: Casey McGuire Davidson + Todd Kinney

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 buzz, how to sit with your emotions when you’re lonely or angry, frustrated or overwhelmed, how to self soothe without a drink, and how to turn the decision to stop drinking from your worst case scenario to the best decision of your life.

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

Hi there.

Hi there. Today, we are talking about

what to do if your husband is struggling with alcohol.

And I know from the conversations I’ve had with women that this is an area that a lot of women deal with, especially if your partner was your drinking buddy.

You have decided to go alcohol-free, or you’re trying to take a break from drinking, and your partner is either not supportive of you, is trying to sabotage you won’t get the alcohol out of the house or more. So, you’re actually worried that they have a drinking problem and it’s impacting your life, and you don’t know how to get them on board, how to support them if they are not interested at all in stopping drinking.

So, I asked my guest to join me. His name is Todd Kinney. He’s an Attorney who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife, four kids and three wiener dogs. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, reading, hanging out with his family when they let him, and spending an unhealthy amount of time and money supporting the Iowa Hawkeyes. He quit drinking in 2019 considers it the best thing he’s ever done for himself and his family. And in 2023, his memoir, titled, I Didn’t Believe It Either: One Dad’s Discovery That Everything Is Better Without Alcohol, was published.

So, thank you so much for joining me, Todd, and talking about this.

Todd Kinney  03:00

Thanks for having me, it’s good to be here.

Casey McGuire Davidson  03:02

Yeah, and we met at a conference where you were speaking, and you in that talk described your own struggles with alcohol, what made you decide to stop drinking, and all the pieces that were in that. I think it’ll be helpful for women who have a partner who is struggling with alcohol to kind of hear about your process. And I want to talk about options we have for intervening or making sure that they don’t sabotage our own efforts to stop drinking. So, do you want to tell us a little bit about you?

Todd Kinney  03:40

Sure. I, as you said, I’m an Attorney in Omaha. I’ve lived in Omaha, the Omaha area, most of my life, except for College at University of Iowa. I’ve got 4 kids, and I’m married, and, as you said, 3 wiener dogs, so maybe 7 kids total.

My drinking story, I think, is fairly typical. I wasn’t an everyday drinker. I was mostly a weekend drinker and a social drinker and was one of those I call myself a classic gray area drinker.

I was one of those persons that on the outside, most people probably just looking in, thought I was a normal, suburban professional dad who liked to cut loose on the weekends. And you know, I had a job, decent house, nice family, all that stuff. Again, when you’re looking on the outside, you think checks a lot of boxes to what we count as successful in today’s world.

For a long time, I had my own internal battle with my drinking that was that was going on in some way, shape or form, from probably college onward. And it ebbed and flowed. And as I got closer to quitting it obviously it got. More and more intense, but it was always a very, I would say, private individual internalized battle. And it was. It just focused on my, what I call my kind of obsession with drinking. And I, you know, I didn’t have an off switch more often than not. When most people would have three or four drinks, or two or three, I would have five or six or seven. When most people would stop drinking, I would just be getting going. Most people would go home for the night and get ready for bed and then go to bed, and I would go to the basement and have a couple more drinks. I woke up. I can’t tell you how many nights or how many mornings, and had that whole, you know, cycle of shame and embarrassment and regret and beating up on myself. And why can’t you get a hold of this?

And it was most of the nights, nothing terrible happened, but I got more drunk than I wanted to. My wife would be annoyed with me. I was worried about Didn’t I say anything embarrassing, inappropriate, you know, you pick up your phone with kind of one eye open and you’re worried about what you texted the night before, whatever. I can’t tell you how many times that happened, such a terrible I can’t I mean, looking back, I can’t believe how many, how long I put up with that so that that was my, you know, and when I wasn’t drinking, I was thinking about drinking, and I was planning my calendar around drinking, and I was planning my kids activities, or I was playing my drinking around my kids activities. But everything was kind of secondary to when it usually on the weekends, when it came to like when I was going to be able to drink, how much I was going to be able to drink, how late I was going to be able to stay out. That was always, always front of mind. And everything else came second.

Yeah, you know, and it just, I just obsessed about it when, even when I wasn’t drinking, and then, of course, when I was drinking, I was obsessing in a different way, and that was, am I having too much? Does everyone in this room know that I’ve had six beers and everyone else has only had two? Do I look like I’m drunk? Is my wife mad at me? You know, am I going to be able to drive home all that stuff?

Casey McGuire Davidson  07:13

It was just such a similar like, I’m laughing, because everything you described is exactly what I did. I mean, down to a T same things like, it’s my husband mad. I don’t remember when I went to bed. I get home and I want to open another bottle of wine because I don’t have quite enough, the wake ups, the hangovers, the kids’ stuff. I mean, it’s interesting how similar a lot of our stories are.

Todd Kinney  07:39

Yeah, and it’s interesting you say that, because at one point, I literally thought I was the only person in the world who struggled with alcohol in the way that I did. And I thought I was the only one in the world who woke up feeling like that. I thought I was the only one in the world who obsessed about it. And it to your point, as I discovered in the last few years, there’s there. We’re everywhere.

Casey McGuire Davidson  08:02

Yeah, and we don’t talk about it. Lots of No, no it.

Todd Kinney  08:05

It hardly ever gets talked about. And I and, and until I started talking about it after I, you know, after I quit, I had no idea how many people out there go through the same thing. And I think have some, you know, drink similarly, and think about doing something about it. They just don’t know how, and they don’t know how to start, and they don’t know who to talk to, and it’s and it’s scary and all that.

Casey McGuire Davidson  08:31

Yeah, and if you aren’t ready to stop drinking, which I know I worried about it, and yet loved it, like this whole love hate relationship I didn’t want to admit to anyone, especially not my spouse, how worried I was about it, because I was afraid if I did that, then I would have to stop. And I really didn’t want to, I just wanted to not get drunk and black out, right.

Todd Kinney  08:56

Right. Just drink like a normal person, like, how hard is that? Yeah, if we be completely honest, and if we honestly confront ourselves and what’s going on in our head, that’s way too scary, because we know what the next step is after that, and we don’t, like.

Casey McGuire Davidson  09:13

Yeah, and, you know, it finally got to the point where I was like, Okay, I’m going to have to stop eventually. Like, there was a while where I was like, I just need to control it. And then at the end, I was like, oh shit, this is going nowhere good. So, I was like, I’m going to a have to, at some point, stop drinking. But I was like, I think I can play this out for like, a little while longer, like a couple more years, which is, yeah, I was just waiting feeling better.

Todd Kinney  09:42

We do everything under the sun to keep playing it out and kind of keep it going without, without jumping off that cliff that that we think is quitting. And that’s funny. You say that because I looking back, I think for a. Long time before I quit. I I knew somewhere inside of me that that I was probably going to have to, you know, I you don’t want to dig into that. I certainly didn’t want to dig into that for a long time. But there was a part of me that knew, I mean, I know I know my personality, and I think some part of me knew all along that the only way to kind of fix things for me would be to give it up.

Casey McGuire Davidson  10:30

Yeah, but it’s such a scary proposition.

So, we had chatted about this before, and maybe our situations were different than some of the women listening to this, because your wife, you know, didn’t stop drinking. My husband didn’t stop drinking. He didn’t even necessarily want me to stop drinking. He just wanted me to not pass out on a weeknight, right?

Like, he just wanted me to have an off switch and to get a control over it, because we were drinking buddies. But Did your wife worry about your drinking, and did she say anything that helped you think about actually digging into support and resources, or was it your decision to get support and stop completely removed from anything she did?

Todd Kinney  11:19

You know, it was mostly removed. I don’t think she, she didn’t worry about my drinking, from the standpoint of, you know, you need to stop, or you’re going to end up in the hospital or in jail. But she, she did. She worried about it in the in the sense of, like, like you mentioned with your husband, like, you know, how about you not be the drunkest person in the room. For once, she thought about that a lot, I know, and she, she want, always the only thing she wanted, I think, was for me to drink like a normal person. And that’s all I wanted for a long time, too.

And she, you know, her brain doesn’t work the same way as mine does with alcohol. And so, to her, the idea of obsessing about it, and, you know, negotiating with yourself, and saying, Well, I’m only going to have 3 drinks tonight, and then having 7.

Yeah, that’s, like, totally foreign to her. She doesn’t understand how if you only want to have three drinks, then you have three drinks. That’s how it works in her mind. And that’s absolutely not how it works in my mind. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.

And so, that she just wanted me to drink like a normal so, yeah. You know, she got plenty annoyed at nights when I didn’t, and you know that dance that we had got. We got down so well over the years of where I wake up and I’m kind of walking on eggshells the next morning trying to figure out exactly how mad she is.

Casey McGuire Davidson  12:52

Oh, my God, cringe. And I was so defensive, my husband would be like, so how are you feeling today? And I was like, I’m fine. I’m fine. What? I don’t know why you’re asking. I felt like garbage.

Todd Kinney  13:07

Yes, yes. And that, that dance of like, trying to figure that stuff out and not really talking about it, is just oh, I hated it, yeah. But we did it a lot, and we got used to it. I and I didn’t like it, but, but at the time, I liked drinking more than I didn’t like that dance. And so, you know, it kept happening.

Casey McGuire Davidson  13:32

Imagine that. I want to hear about what helped you and how you finally stopped. But imagine that you’re a woman who imagine your wife say, she actually struggled with alcohol, too, and she stopped drinking, and yet you’re not on board, from your perspective, knowing where you were. How would you recommend someone approach you in that way?

Todd Kinney  13:59

Yeah, good, good question. You know, it probably depends on the person, of course, but I would, you know, for me, it would have, it would have made a lot of difference, depending on where I was in my own process. Like, I started kind of evaluating my drinking for real in 2013 now not I was a long way from quitting. I mean, it took me only took 6 years to figure out that’s what I needed to do, but it in 2013 was when I at least started. That’s when I started seeing a therapist, and that’s when I started taking an honest look at my drinking. So, at that time, I was at least receptive to talking about my drinking.

Now, if you would have come to me in 2013 and said, I think you need to quit drinking, I would have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s. I’m not. We’re not talking about this. That’s too drastic. Like, stop being dramatic, but I would have been open to some sort of discussion, and say, two years before that, I probably wouldn’t have been, and that’s all defensiveness, and it’s, it’s all. All it is me knowing that there’s an issue there, but not being ready to confront it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  15:19

Yeah. I mean, it’s like those stages of change, right? Like pre contemplation, contemplation. I mean, when you say six years, I actually don’t think that’s unusual at all. I mean, like you said, I had incidents in college that I was like, Oh, I got to, got to cut this back. And certainly, in my 20s, but I, for the first time was like, Oh, shit. This might be a problem when my son was one years old, and I quit for the first time when he was five, and I finally stopped when he was eight. So, for me, it was 7 years as well, like of an awareness that, like, yikes. This is, this is something that I am trying to control, and it’s not going well.

Todd Kinney  16:05

Yeah, everyone has to go through that process, and everyone’s process looks different and is a little bit different timeline. Think what would have resonated with me is, if someone would have come to me, because I know this was true of my kids. Like, I was, I was nudged hard by things involving my kids. What really started to move the needle for me, and I’m talking about my kids right now, but I don’t. This doesn’t necessarily have to involve kids, but what really moved the needle for me was when I started to realize my drinking, was having an effect on the kind of dad I was being and I started realizing I was not the best possible dad I could be because of my drinking that hit me in a way different from just the stuff about me, by myself.

And so, if my wife would have come to me and said something like, I’m a I’m concerned that your drinking is affecting our relationship, or is affecting my happiness in the relationship, that probably would have got my attention more than if she just said, I think you’re drinking too much, and you need to do something different.

Yeah, because that was just a little that would be harder to run from, because now you’re drinking. It’s not just affecting. It’s not just me waking up on a Saturday morning thinking, oh my god, I can’t believe I drank too much. Yes, it’s having an effect on the people around you and the people you love the most. And yeah, that for me would have, I think that would have resonated differently, and it would have hit a little differently.

Casey McGuire Davidson  17:46

Yeah, what was it like? Are you open to sharing a few things that happened with your kids? So, you were like, Oh, this is impacting the dad I want to be.

Todd Kinney  17:56

Yeah, sure. Um, you know, some of it was just kind of generally, I know I started to notice as my kids, as my older two boys, got old enough, where they were aware of adults drinking too much and what it looked like when adults got drunk. I didn’t love that. I didn’t love it generally, but I also didn’t love it because I was among the adults drinking too much and getting drunk. And I didn’t like the fact that they would see that on a regular basis. So, that is one. Just generally there.

There was one incident in particular with my oldest when he was 15 that really kind of knocked me back and made me think. And that was, we were at a baseball game, and there were probably 7 or 8. There was me and a friend of mine, and then 5 or 6 kids, like two of them were mine, and then one or two which were his, and then a friend or two. And we all went to the baseball game, and then we split up when we got there, because we had different seats. And then we met back in the concourse to go home. And I had not had very much to drink that day. I was driving everyone home, and so I hadn’t had very much to drink at all. My son had not seen me drink, I don’t know at all that day. So, I was not drunk, and I wasn’t acting drunk, but after the game, as we’re getting ready to go home, my son says to me, Dad, do we need to take an Uber home? And I said, no, why? And he said, well, sometimes when you and Mr. Peterson get together, you guys can get pretty rowdy. And that hit me in a way that like I had not been hit before with my drink. He didn’t feel safe, right? And for a 15 year old to verbalize something like that to his dad meant that it was really weighing on, yeah? Because that’s super brave, yeah. I mean teenagers, don’t you? Just spit that stuff out. You know, there’s a lot of stuff that goes inside. There goes around inside their head that they never, they never have the courage, or whatever, to verbalize to adults. And he it that was weighing on him enough that he had the courage to verbalize it to me. And yeah, that was the biggest thing. I thought. My son, because of my drinking does not feel safe all the time, and, like, if we’re not.

I mean, there, there’s a lot of things you need to do as a parent, but Parenting is hard and we don’t get it right all the time, and it’s impossible to get it right all the time, but the one thing we should be able to do is, is, is give our kids a feeling of safety.

Yeah, I mean, I and the fact that I was not. I was failing at that, and I was making him feel not safe because of my drinking. I was like, you know, what? What are you doing? What am I doing with my drinking? Like, yeah, we get one shot at this parenting thing, and you know, it goes fast.

Casey McGuire Davidson  21:04

So, question for you, I could totally see how that’s a huge wake up call. Did you tell your wife about that conversation? Because I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have told my husband about that.

Todd Kinney  21:15

I did. Wow, which, which is kind of surprising looking back, because I totally get why you wouldn’t, and there. So, this was summer before I quit in October of 2019. This happened a couple months before that. If that had happened, like a year or two before, I probably wouldn’t have, but the wheels were spinning in my head, and I think that’s part of the reason why I told her. I think another reason might have, might have been just to make myself feel a little better about it, like I could not shape that feeling.

Casey McGuire Davidson  21:53

I thought maybe if I get this out there and you’re like, but I hadn’t been drinking, that’s crazy, right?

Todd Kinney  21:58

Yeah, I wouldn’t. It was, yeah, it was so I did tell her, and it didn’t make me feel all that all that better. It was the last thing I thought of when I went to that night. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up the next day, and I just thought, Man, the one thing I’m supposed to be doing as a parent is to give my kids a feeling of safety, and because of the way I dream, I’m not doing that and that that’s like, that wasn’t acceptable to me.

Yeah, I didn’t. I didn’t quit that day, but, but that was a big one. That was a big one involving my kids.

Casey McGuire Davidson  22:38

I feel like when you’re stopping a couple things. I thought of number one for me, at least, and it was sort of a death of 1000 cuts.

There wasn’t this big thing that happened that I was like, oh shit, I need to stop drinking.

But it was like all those moments like the ones you described, like every hangover, every time my husband made a snide comment, every time I like, open the wine before I probably should have or like, didn’t want my husband to know how much I was drinking, like I had two bottles going, because I didn’t want him to know I drank more than one. Like that are little pricks, and anytime someone tells me that this person in their life is drinking a lot like the way I used to, and they’re like the it doesn’t bother them at all. It’s not a big deal. I was like, nobody who drinks like that. It’s not worried about like they have the 3am wakeups, they have the anxiety, they have, the hangovers, they have, the text checking. They’re just not talking about it.

Todd Kinney  23:45

Yeah, yeah. That’s a good point. And I was going to say to your listeners, if they have someone in their life who they are wondering about, one thing I would say is your, husband, boyfriend, partner, they know it’s on their mind. It was on my mind constantly. But yeah, like you said, I never talked about it, and my wife never knew it was on my mind nearly as much as it was, but it was on my mind all the time.

Casey McGuire Davidson  24:19

I never told my husband, I actually how worried I was about my drinking and how much I was debating stopping, not stopping drinking, not drinking, trying, failing, like worrying about in the morning, hating putting on my eyeliner because I could see my bloodshot eyes, not wanting to look in the rearview Mirror to talk to my toddler, because I was like, it was on my mind constantly, and he knew nothing. So yeah, that’s one thing I would say that your partner, if they drink, if you’re worried they have a problem with alcohol, it is probably on their mind a lot.

And the question is, How do you approach it? How do you get them on board without having, you know, you could just inspire them if you’re stopping drinking a lot of times? I think partners try to sabotage you a bit like they won’t get the alcohol out of the house. They ask you on vacation, Are you sure you don’t want to drink? Like, are you being too stringent? Or even like you’re high and mighty now that you’ve stopped drinking, or they’ll go out without you, like, all of these are little ways that they’re being hard on you. But I think also, as you go for I’ve talked to lots of women whose partner got on board with stopping drinking, like, a year later, two years later, which I know is hard to wait that long, but like you said, it’s this growing awareness. And every time something happens, you’re like, Okay. And every time you try and fail, you’re like, yikes.

Okay, one thing you mentioned to me that I don’t know about is the unique challenges that men face when giving up drinking. You said you felt like it was your entire identity as a man. Can you talk about that? Because obviously that’s something that we don’t completely understand.

Todd Kinney  26:24

Yeah, it that was something that really freaked me out. And I know there’s a whole unique set of stuff that goes along, you know, for women, when they think about quitting and the mommy wine culture is real and there is for me as a guy.

I literally thought like I was giving up my identity as a male, like I did. I didn’t know. I thought, What kind of guy doesn’t drink. Like, nobody. I want to hang on with, nobody. I would trust. It blew up my whole kind of identity as a male. I thought of myself as someone who kind of you know, was a guy’s guy and like to drink.

And if you called me up at, you know, 3 o’clock on a Tuesday and needed to go talk about something, I would go meet you at a bar, have a couple drinks, and we would talk like, that’s what, and I wanted to be known. As the guy who was always up for a drink and, and every everything I did like, you know, golf outings and tailgates and traveling, and everything I did with my friends and family. For that matter, drinking was the, the primary draw.

Yeah, I did. I wouldn’t have admitted that, because who wants to admit that? You know, the you’re going to Disney World with your family, and what you’re looking for, what you’re really planning on is getting that first drink, what you get in the park, so you can make it through.

Casey McGuire Davidson  27:59

My God, I used to go to Disneyland, like, back in the day, and there was no alcohol in the Magic Kingdom. And I was just like, how the hell is this the happiest place? This is impossible, ridiculous.

And now, of course, now I’m like, That’s amazing, and they have alcohol there, but, but I totally hear what you’re saying. Like, we just like, center our lives around drinking unconsciously, but by the activities we do, the people we hang out with, those people who don’t drink a lot, we’re like, ooh lane. And then when your entire identity and life is centered around it, yeah, you like, if you stop drinking, everything will go away.

Todd Kinney  28:44

Yeah, oh, I thought. I thought all of that would go away. I thought, who, you know, I thought my identity as a male would be gone. It’s funny when I, when I first stopped, and you know, you know this, a lot of the alcohol free space and communities online is female center. There’s a lot for females, there’s not a lot for males and so, that’s just that’s those are the communities I found. But I felt safer, and I felt more at ease talking about this stuff with women than I did men. And I remember, we would be my first couple, like social outings after I had quit. You know, they’re extremely awkward, and, you know, you feel like you’re at your first middle school dance all over again. But I would if there was a table of women and a table of men. I would want to go over to the table of women and socialize with them, because I felt like I was going to get more shit about my about not drinking from the table of men. And I didn’t want to deal with it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  29:53

And you didn’t want to tell them that it was anything, yeah, at all, right, yeah.

Todd Kinney  29:57

I just didn’t want to. I didn’t. I knew what it was going to sound like. I knew what I was going to hear, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. The Women’s table always felt like a little more welcoming and understanding. I felt like I wasn’t going to get crap from them about giving up alcohol.

Casey McGuire Davidson  30:17

Well, and that might be just that they would have given another woman shit because they’re like, maybe, yeah, maybe not the men. So, tell me what all your fears were, because this will help us understand if we have a partner who is resistant, like give us all the crazy thoughts and fears you had, yeah?

Todd Kinney  30:39

So it was, you know, I’m never going to, I’m never going to. A big one I had was I’m never going to make any memories again. Because when I look back on all, you know, I got a ton of 1000s of pictures in my phone, and I look back on all the vacations and the trips and the football games and the golf trips and everything they all involve alcohol.

And when my friends and I get together, every story we tell over and over and over again, you know, every time we get together, we tell the same stories for the 100th time, and we laugh about them just as hard as we did the first time. They all involve alcohol, yeah, and so I thought, I’m never going to, like, my memory making is going to cease.

Casey McGuire Davidson  31:27

Does that mean like, I’m never going to have fun again? I’m never going to.

Todd Kinney  31:30

Yeah, yeah. It’s another way of kind of saying I’m never going to do anything that’s going to be worth talking about.

Casey McGuire Davidson  31:38

Like, it’s going to be boring. I’ll never have a new, hysterical story of this adventure.

Todd Kinney  31:44

Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, I was really worried about that, and guess what didn’t happen. I have a chapter in my book called, none of the bad things happen because, and it’s kind of a list of all these things I thought were going to happen. And not only did none of them happen, but you know, I was worried about never making memories. Again, never, never, never going on a trip and having a good time again.

I mean, so I’ve I’m almost 5 years sober, and to me, a drinking vacation versus a sober vacation is like, no contest, what’s better? Yeah, and it’s the sober version 100 times over.

Casey McGuire Davidson  32:26

I was laughing when you said, I’ll never make memories again, because I personally was a big blackout drinker. I had the same thought, but I didn’t remember lots of things. And it’s kind of funny, you know, the degree to which you can believe something versus how true it was. I remember going to, like a couple’s only New Year’s Eve sleepover, after we had kids, and I was so excited for it, like grandma was here. We had the night out. It was our best pre kids friends, and I started drinking when we got there. I was so looking forward to this. I got so drunk, I don’t remember it, except for I woke up the next morning with a brutal hangover, and apparently I had either gone to bed or been put to bed pretty early. I had missed the entire night. My husband had no one to Kiss at Midnight, and it was just so embarrassing. And I was just playing it off, but the idea like, I’m going to miss all these memories, like I wasn’t there mentally for a lot of stuff, no.

Todd Kinney  33:35

And I thought all the memory making, the bonding, the, you know, the good, genuine, you know, good times that connect you with people. I thought that that it almost had to involve alcohol, like, like, those things didn’t have, you didn’t connect with someone without alcohol involved. And, and, of course, what I’ve discovered since then, it’s like, that’s the last place that those things occur, and those moments that I thought were so connecting and genuine and meaningful weren’t really any of those things.

Casey McGuire Davidson  34:14

Approached you about that like your spouse at the time, if they were worried about it, and said, Hey, you’re still going to have fun. You’re still going to do XYZ. Like, would you have believed them?

No.

What helped you did? So, what helped you stop? Like, I know it was an internal decision, but did you start out saying, Okay, I’m going to take a 30 day break, or 100 100 day break. Was it like, I want to get in better shape? Was it, you know what I mean?

Todd Kinney  34:45

Yeah, yeah. It was, well, the time I ended up quitting for good. It started out by saying, I’m going to. I’m going to stop for 90 days because I had done that before. I’d done that before twice. But in the back of my mind, I knew this was a little different. And it just got to the point where the scales just ended up tipping. And for, I’d say, the previous probably year to 18 months, enough was kept dropping on the side of bad things associated with drinking that it just got out of balance and the enjoyment I was getting from drinking, became less and less, and the bad stuff that came with drinking was getting more and more, and it finally reached a point where I was like, why am I continuing to do this thing that brings so much crap into my life? like, Why? Why do I?

What am I getting out of it that is making it worth what I endure most of the time? I drink and I just got to the point where I was like, I’m not getting hardly anything out of it, but I’m certainly not getting enough to offset everything bad that comes with it.

And I will say, I had a couple, you know, this didn’t. I wouldn’t say this made me, this made me quit, because I had already made the decision somewhat, that I was, I was done with it, but, like, I had a trip with t3 of my friends to New York City. This was like a month or two after I said I was going to do 90 days, but I was in the back of my mind. I’m like, I think this might be it. I just hadn’t announced it yet. And we had a trip to New York City. I was really worried that I was going to ruin the trip, you know, that they were going to be like, I literally thought there was going to be, like, a side text conversation about what when I wasn’t around so they could really, I, like, actually have some fun.

Yeah, I thought. I thought I wasn’t going to have fun. I thought I was going to ruin the trip for them, and I was just really worried about it. And I went on this trip, and I remember I had a, I had a run in Central Park early one morning when I was there, where I felt like, I don’t know, you know, people talk about a runner’s high. I don’t know if this was different from a runner’s high. I think I just had this feeling wash over me, of um, of gratitude, and thankfulness and just this, it kind of all hit me at once that I was making the right decision.

And I just remember thinking, Oh, my God, I want to bottle this, feel it, yeah, for like a month from now, when I’m not sure if I’m making the right decision.

Casey McGuire Davidson  37:37

I’ve had those moments. They’re incredible. Just this joy that bubbles up. Or I remember walking into work one morning and being like, I loved my life, watching these birds take off from this field, and I was like, I used to walk into work being like, I hate my life. Like, this is awful, you know. And it was just such a like, tingly, transformative moment that you just don’t get.

Todd Kinney  38:03

No, it was, it blew me away. And I was like, oh my god, it was like, kind of a bolt of lightning from the universe to tell me, like, you’re on the right path. Like, keep, keep going. And then on top of that, the trip was great. Like, it might. It ended up being like I couldn’t. I couldn’t have picked three better guys to have done this trip at the time I did with him, but I felt more connected to those guys that I did after a normal trip. I mean, I remembered everything for starters.

And the other surprise I had was, you know, they didn’t really drink quite as much as I did on these.

Casey McGuire Davidson 

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

 

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

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

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

C

Casey McGuire Davidson  38:44

Oh my god, right. You’re driving the insane amounts of alcohol. Yeah, yeah.

Todd Kinney  38:50

And I was kind of looking around like, how come nobody’s wasted right now? And it’s like, they didn’t really, you know, drink like I did on the strips. But in my head, they were going to, or they wanted to, and they were going to be able to, because of me, and none of none of that was true. But being able to see that early on was a big kind of push forward, and kind of propelled me forward, and let me realize your it just felt right.

Yeah, and it’s big to get those moments early on, big or little, they don’t always have to.

Casey McGuire Davidson  39:29

Yeah. I think that one thing that I’ve told women I’m talking to, that their partner may or may not take them up on, but is the idea of like, encouraging a fixed period of time away from drinking. Being like, hey, let’s do Sober October. Let’s do Dry January, together. We can do this other stuff. We’ll feel better. It’ll be a great break. I mean, more than 30 days is ideal, but you almost need to get away from it. From a positive standpoint, even if they go back to drinking, they’ll at least have that, that data.

Yeah, yeah. And it felt better when I wasn’t drinking.

Todd Kinney  40:12

Yeah. And even on a on a smaller level, saying like, hey, why don’t we go out? Let’s have a date Friday night, and neither of us will drink. Now, if you would have, if my wife would have said that to me, like, while I was drinking, I would have been like, really, would you have done it? Are you sure about this? I think, well, as we got closer to the time I quit, yes, I would have done it. Further away from when I quit, I think I would have done it, but I would have been a little resentful.

Casey McGuire Davidson  40:51

Yeah, and I would have been like, kind of watching the clock, like, okay, when we get home, can I drink? Yeah.

Todd Kinney  40:53

But I think, I think if you do that as a couple, I mean, I’m sure you, you’ve discovered when you remove alcohol, you’re at least my I found this my just I started needing and wanting more connection in my reactor with my wife. Yeah, and connecting without alcohol is different than connecting with alcohol. Yeah, And is so much better.

Casey McGuire Davidson  41:22

And if some women, I don’t know if this would work, I want your perspective.

Say, they’ve stopped drinking, and their spouse is still drinking problematically, or their partner, they’ve done things like, all right, I don’t really want to be around you when you’re drunk, or I won’t have sex with you when you’re drunk, or I don’t want to kiss when you’re drunk or drinking, like, would that have had an impact on you at all?

Todd Kinney  41:48

Oh yeah. The sex one would have, for sure.

Casey McGuire Davidson  41:51

I won’t have sex with you if you’ve been drinking. Well, you would have been sick, right?

Todd Kinney  41:55

Oh yeah, yes. Yeah, that would it well, one, it would have had a short term impact on me for sheer desire to have sex, yeah. Two, it eventually it would have. I would have sat down and given that some thought and it, I know it would have bothered me a lot, and it would have been real uncomfortable to kind of dig into that, but I think I would have, at least to some extent, and would have realized, okay, this like, this isn’t good long term. This isn’t sustainable. This is not helpful for my marriage.

No, if my partner is like, does not want to be around me and it’s not physically attracted to me while I’m drinking. Like that’s a problem.

Casey McGuire Davidson  42:49

That’s something that needs to be addressed, which, by the way, you don’t see it till you get sober. But like, real people actually aren’t that attractive.

Todd Kinney  42:58

You see it a completely different from a completely different standpoint.

Casey McGuire Davidson  43:04

And you’re right, it’s like, we have our own beer goggles on, where we’re like, Oh, dude, this is a good look.

Todd Kinney  43:12

Yes, for a while I would, when I would see that, I would just cringe. Because I would, I thought, how many times was I that person? And I just made me want to cringe.

Casey McGuire Davidson  43:30

Yeah, but you’re right. It’s a different perspective. All this time when you were the drunkest guy in the room and your wife wished you weren’t that. Did she, like, bite her tongue, or did she ever say anything about, like, okay, the kids this or that, if that would have had an impact, or was she just, like, kind of annoyed and snippy and whatever, but never had an in depth conversation or an earnest one?

Todd Kinney  43:53

Yeah, you know, we, we didn’t have a lot of in depth conversations, probably not as many as we should have. She didn’t completely bite her tongue, but, but I she did more than I would have if the roles were reversed, and it was more like the annoyance, like, Oh my God, not this again. Honestly, I think she just figured out how to deal with it best as best she could and and so it wouldn’t ruin her entire night. And then she’d be mad about it for a while, and then we would move on, and life would happen. And then it would happen again. Sometime in the future, we would.

Casey McGuire Davidson  44:36

My husband never said anything really to me either. You know, I thought he was, he made some sly like, you know, oh, I couldn’t wake you up on the couch last night. Or he’d like, shut the door when I fell asleep downstairs and like, I’d open it up and be like, God, what a passive aggressive dick. Meanwhile, it was because I was totally humiliated.

You know, I actually had him on the podcast, and we had a big conversation. Like, 5 years after I quit drinking, I was terrified. Um, oh, wow. Because, you know, I never really asked. I was like, la, la, la, nothing to see here. But what he said to me was, like, I’m not your father. Like, it wasn’t my job to tell you what you could or could not do, which I appreciated, and I would have. And he was like, and the few times I mentioned it, you were so defensive, I learned, he said, I learned not to poke that bear. And I’m like, yikes, yeah, but I don’t know, right, would I have just been totally pissed about it, or would it have helped?

Todd Kinney  45:42

I think we get defensive like that with our loved ones in part as kind of a defense mechanism, because we want, sort of to deter them from bringing you up again.

Yeah. I mean, I know, I, I did that. If you make a big enough fuss about it, and it results in a big enough fight. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking, maybe she won’t bring it up again, and I don’t really want her to bring it up again, because it makes me really uncomfortable to have to think about that stuff.

Yeah, I think she, I think my wife was kind of the same way. She, she’s not someone who would normally try to, you know, tell me what to do. And so, I think she thought this was like something I needed to figure out. And at the same time, was flabbergasted that I couldn’t figure it out, because in her mind, it’s just so simple. But like I said, our minds work differently when it comes to alcohol.

There was a time where I was wishing that she would come to me and say, You need to stop drinking, or our marriage is going to be Oh, really? Why? Yeah, because, I mean, closer to when I decided to quit, I was kind of that mind, because I thought that would make me, that would make me quit. And it like, took that. It was. It took the decision out of my hands. It was like, I didn’t have control of the decision, and I didn’t want ownership of it.

And so, if someone else came in and, like, made me do it, that was different than me. I don’t know, for some reason that was that was less scary. It gave me an excuse, until one day I realized this is stupid.

You do have control over this decision, and if you want to quit, you can quit. I mean, it’s not that simple, but I kind of fooled myself into thinking I didn’t have control over the decision and the process when I did, but I was. Yes, for a little while.

Casey McGuire Davidson  47:50

I think my husband had brought it up to me, like, not when I was hungover, not when I was drinking, like if we were going on a walk or something, which sort of is easier because you’re not staring at each other and been like, Hey, this is something that I think, like you said, is hurting our relationship. Like, it’s hard to communicate with you, or you’re less present, or, you know, all this stuff.

Can we take a break from drinking together and see how we feel?

That probably would have helped me wrap my head around it, like it’s not forever. It’s not like you’re the one, your parent. I don’t know, like that might have helped a lot of the things.

I work with women on is like boundaries and so like the idea of, I don’t want to be around you if you’re drunk like or I don’t want to have sex if you’re drunk or if you’ve been drinking like, that is at least a boundary where you’re sort of protecting yourself.

Or like, I, you know, going to therapy like for myself, or, I know some people, it’s Al Anon, like, just realizing that you can offer empathy and encouragement and support, but you can’t do it for them, right?

Todd Kinney  49:07

Yeah, I guess that that would be the other thing I would mention which I, I think most people who give up drinking know this on some level.

It has to be inside the person. They have to, they have to decide to do it themselves, like it can be.

You know, I say my kids had a huge part in me getting to the point where I decided I was going to quit. So other things can get you there, but I but there has to be a, there has to be a desire inside that person to do it, or it’s not going to stick, and it’s not going to be as fulfilling as it should be. I don’t think because you can’t doing it for someone else, or for some other reason, only takes you so far,

Casey McGuire Davidson  49:57

but you can awaken them, right? Like so. Many of us enable it or gloss over it, or, like my husband, picked up the slack a lot, and yet didn’t mention it. And I, I mean, I think there’s a difference between knowing they need it, to do it for themselves and not actually, you know, telling them what that it’s having an impact.

So, there’s that little prick of like, I’m not just getting away, like I used to be like, Oh, I’m only hurting myself. I’m still a great mom and a great wife and a great work and, you know, I was like, God, I do everything, right? This is my one vice whatever. But I think if you know, as opposed to my husband, like driving all the time or always playing the babysitter, or always being the one when we’re on vacation to get us back to our hotel safely. I mean, I think if he was like, Dude, that wasn’t that much fun for me. You were kind of dead weight. Like, not cool, yeah, that might have been like, yikes, you know, like, not yikes that I didn’t know it, but Yikes, as in, like, Oh, he’s noticing, you know, yes.

Todd Kinney  51:08

Yeah. I mean, saying those things out loud is, is a big deal. And I we don’t say those things out loud very it’s like, right?

Casey McGuire Davidson  51:15

If he had just, yeah, enabled it, shut his mouth. Never said anything that wouldn’t have stuck in your head. But he didn’t do it meanly or No, judgingly. He was just like, you know, no and no, and as much as it made me want to crawl out of my skin to hear him say that I am so grateful that he did because of the impact it had on me, but, hearing those things from someone else, and then saying certain things ourselves that can have a huge impact on just what it does to the conversation.

Todd Kinney  51:30

Yeah, And you know, because once that stuff’s out there, you can’t run from it. Once you say the words to your partner, like, I think I need to do something about my drinking then, like I never wanted.

Casey McGuire Davidson  52:07

He was, he was the last person I told, seriously, like I told my best friend before I told him. I mean, I told him I was taking a break from alcohol, and I was doing 100 day like health Challenge. But I had my online sober groups. I had a sober coach. I told my girlfriend like I didn’t want to tell him that I was worried about my drinking, because if I did like, I was going to live with him for the rest of my life. I didn’t want him watching me or what if I didn’t work like, I feel like your spouse is the hardest person, too.

Todd Kinney  52:40

I went. I think about a week of like carrying around after I admitted to myself. I remember I said out loud to myself in my car one day, I need to quit drinking, and I’m going to quit drinking. And it still took another like week. I mean, I felt like I was carrying this huge secret that I knew I needed to tell my wife, and I just couldn’t. It took me a week to work up the courage to walk into the room, sit down across from her and say those words to her, because I knew if I said those words to her, and then went back to drinking, like, that’s, that’s the world’s worst, husband, dad, person, and I did not want to be the world’s worst.

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:28

How did that conversation go?

Todd Kinney  53:32

You know, it was really anti climatic.

Casey McGuire Davidson  53:36

Like, you were like, okay, yeah.

Todd Kinney  53:38

I mean, I had been carrying it around for a week. I remember I even walked into the kitchen, walked out, walked into the kitchen, walked out, and finally, was like, Okay, you’re an adult, like, you need to have this conversation. And so, I get it out, and I’m like, you know, I feel like I’ve just lifted 1000 pounds off my shoulders and my wife’s just like, Okay. And I was like, That’s it. Like, that’s it, yeah, and I don’t know if, I don’t know if she, um, maybe didn’t believe me completely that I was going to do it. Or I don’t know it was not the I don’t know what reaction I thought I was going to get, but it was a very blase, like, like, I just told her that I wanted pizza for me. Yeah. She’s like, okay.

Casey McGuire Davidson  54:26

Okay, yeah. And I think my husband was like, Yeah, you do you? You know what I mean? Like, he sort of, I told him, after 100 days, we were going to Italy, and it was going to be my birthday. And I said, Okay, I’ve done 100 8 alcohol-free. I want to do 6 months. And then he sort of stepped back, and he was like, Wait, you’re really not going to drink in Italy. Like, he was just like, seriously. And I had I was like, Yep, I’m not going to drink in Italy. And he was like, all right, but I don’t think he was three. Build about that, but I was strong enough at that point that I was like, I’m okay with that.

Todd Kinney  55:05

You know, yeah, yeah, I did. That was one thing that I underestimated, that I didn’t really give any thought to, was, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re dumping a pretty big thing on your spouse when you tell him that, yeah. And I was so focused on like me and how this was affecting me, that that’s all I was thinking of. But you know, when you come to your spouse, someone you rank with for years and years and years, yeah, and you say, like, uh, the game’s changing here. That’s a big deal. And I mean, if my wife would have come to me when I was drinking and said that I would have freaked out. Yeah, I would.

Casey McGuire Davidson  55:46

I wouldn’t have, let’s picture that, because that’s sort of the situation that we’re going into. So, a woman is like, all right, I’m not drinking. And I do tell women, like, if your spouse is a huge drinker and it’s making it hard for you to stop, like you can set down boundaries, like you can make it more difficult for them in order to protect yourself.

So, I always advise, like, definitely getting your drink of choice out of the house, or not having any alcohol in the house and telling your partner, like, Hey, you can drink in the garage, or you can drink out with your buddies, or you can drink when we go to dinner, but like, I don’t want you drinking in my house, or I don’t want this in my house.

They might get pissed off about that, but on the other hand, I’m like, Yeah, every time I was like, trying to do a health kick, my husband would eat salmon and asparagus, and that wasn’t his favorite, and I would be like, no cookies, you know. So, it’s different, but it’s not.

But tell me, if your wife had said that, what would your reaction have been?

Todd Kinney  56:57

Oh man. Well, on the inside I would have been like, Oh my God. What does this mean for my drinking? I would have been, I would have done my best to be supportive on the outside. And if she asked, you know, if she asked me to do certain things, I would have, I would have done whatever she wanted me to do to be supportive. On the inside, though, I would have been like, Oh, my God, what? What is this? What is this doing to us? I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t have said any of that during our first conversation, but I would have been thinking it. I would have been very I would have been scared. I would have been nervous. I would have been self-conscious about my own drinking.

Casey McGuire Davidson  57:45

That’s actually good. I was sort of like, even if you didn’t want to, if you would have supported her not drinking the house and it shined a light on your drinking, I would have been like, yeah, he’s uncomfortable. I’m cool with that.

Todd Kinney  57:55

I don’t, yeah, I don’t know if I would have been aware enough to identify it as, you know, uncomfortableness with my own drinking, but that’s exactly what it would have been.

I realized much later with my wife, that all the things that I was worried about. About quitting drinking, you know about not our friend. I was worried that our friends wouldn’t invite us places. I was worried that vacations wouldn’t be fun, all that stuff. She worried about the same things when I told her I was going to quit drinking.

Oh, wow. Which is normal.

I mean, but again, I was so focused on like, Hey, I’m doing this. I’m the one that’s giving up this thing that I’ve leaned on for 25 years, like I’m over here. This is like, I deserve all the attention, blah, blah, blah. I was not very well. I was not very aware that it causes an upheaval in her, in her world, too.

Yeah, that I think is fair to work through. And I think it takes, it takes time. It took a lot of time and effort to work through that. I didn’t see that problem on the horizon at all when I decided.

Casey McGuire Davidson  59:10

Did she tell you that or no? she was just trying to be supportive too.

Todd Kinney  59:15

No, she didn’t. We didn’t have, we didn’t really have that conversation until I brought her the chapter in my book on that whole topic and asked her to read it. And she wasn’t thrilled with how I portrayed her in that chapter. That led, yes, I didn’t. Well, and I told her, I said, I want you to read this. I’m not putting anything in the book that you’re not comfortable with. I don’t want to. I don’t want to do that. And so, she read it like I said. She was not pleased with how I, she thought about her. And then, we had that conversation where I realized for the first time where she, she said, Yeah, I was kind of freaking out about that stuff too, but we had never, never talked about it. I mean, we should have, but we never, we never had. And so, I was really glad we had the conversation. I was able to add that perspective into the chapter, and I think much more fairly kind of portrayed per side of thing.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:00:24

You know what’s interesting? I realized once I quit drinking, but even after that, like when we were recording the podcast, which is a full 5 years after I quit drinking. How much we never talked about in our marriage around like the inner fears and the inner, you know, worries and the inner struggles. And I just celebrated 22 years of marriage, like we’ve been married a long time, and I consider it a good marriage, but, and, no, it is. It’s great, but I needed other people to talk to, like I needed the people in the sober community. I needed my therapist. I needed my girlfriends, because it was, like, too loaded, like there was we were just so close, like, in terms of living together, and we both had so much, like intertwined in terms of friendships and lifestyle and life and money and everything that I needed those external people who had sort of a neutral perspective. Did you find?

Todd Kinney  1:01:29

Yeah, yes, I very much so. And I needed that too. But at first, it kind of freaked me out, because I felt like I should be getting that from my wife, and I wasn’t. And that freaked me out, and I felt like, it felt a little weird to me that I was connecting with all these new people for the first time who were strangers on the internet. But I’ve since come to realize there’s something so unique about making this decision to give up alcohol, that you meet someone on the street or in an online support group that you’ve never seen before, and if you both have given up alcohol, there’s a connection there that just exists, that’s different, and, and, and, I would say, stronger than whatever you can connect with, with the random person you’re going to meet under other circumstances.

Yeah, and yeah, there’s just something.

I think it’s because we’ve all done something that’s hard and it’s difficult, and it goes against the grain of so many things in our in our world, and we’ve discovered that. I mean, how many, how many people do you know who have given up drinking, who said it’s the best thing they’ve ever done? I mean, almost everybody said that, yeah, yeah. And so, when you combine like, making a really courageous, hard decision of like that, and then with the realization that it’s the best thing you’ve ever done for yourself, that is a powerful connector.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:03:16

Yeah, it just doesn’t exist elsewhere. Well, and it sounds like your wife and my husband, and a lot of other people out there, they haven’t struggled with alcohol, meaning, like no off switch lights up your brain. It’s your favorite thing, and yet you can’t stop at one or two. They just don’t get it. And if they don’t get it, they can’t understand why.

I mean, I remember in my online groups, like, a lot of my triggers were actually like my husband or my kids or, you know, those, like, million, you know, irritations of everyday life like us, and I couldn’t talk about that with him, and yet, in these groups, everyone knew, like, Okay, you’re really pissed off at your husband, or your kids are driving me crazy. That is dangerous, because that is a trigger to drink.

Todd Kinney  1:04:10

Yeah, and you’re right. I think your husband and my wife, they because their minds don’t operate the same way with alcohol, as ours do. They also don’t understand the you just have a connection with someone who’s done it, and to talk to someone who say, is 6 months down the road as you or a year down the road or whatever. And to hear that, I mean, I’m sure this happened to you. I can’t tell you how many times I heard things from people who are farther down the road than I was that I latched on to and said, Okay, that sounds great. I just got to keep at this. And maybe 6 months from now, I’ll be in that position, and they can give you hope.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:04

They can shift your mindset. Yeah, yes.

Todd Kinney  1:05:07

Yeah. And the only way you can get that is from people who have done the same thing you have. So, I’ve since come to, and I tell people this all the time, it’s perfectly fine to rely on and connect with people who are not your spouse, who you never thought you’d be relying on or connecting with. Um, it’s, it’s fine. It’s necessary, I would say. And there’s, there’s nothing wrong with it. And that’s, you know, our spouses aren’t meant to be all things all the time to us, and we’re not meant to be all things all the time to them either.

Yeah, but it’s for a while, it felt very weird to me to be going outside that, you know, comfort zone. Yeah, I’m really glad I did.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:05:53

It’s like, you’re talking to someone online, and I remember my husband being like, Who you talking to? And it felt very weird to be like, Oh, it’s this person in this group. But they’re sort of like, it’s some very odd.

I remember going out to dinner with a bunch of sober friends, and if usually he knows everyone that I’m going out with, and I’m like, Oh yeah, it’s these 6 people. And he’s like, what the hell?

Todd Kinney  1:06:20

I know, I know what’s happening.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:06:22

It’s sort of like they get defensive about it, or they feel a little threatened, especially if you’re like, Yeah, I’m going out to dinner with these 6 people. You don’t know any of them, and, by the way, you’re staying home with the kids.

Todd Kinney  1:06:37

Well, like I remember the first few, first few times I was on my computer for this online sobriety support group that I found. And my wife would walk into the room, I would shut my computer.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:06:50

She’s like,

Todd Kinney  1:06:53

Yeah, I’m like, What am I doing? Why am I doing that? Like, it was so odd to me, but I felt like something I needed to hide, which, of course, felt weird in and of itself. But, yeah, it’s weird.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:07:08

I used to go to the park and, like, do my online meetings on my phone and then come home. I mean, it made me realize after how, so I didn’t tell my husband, I had a sober coach, which is insane, until I was, like, 7 months sober. Like, really, apparently, I don’t tell him a lot, and I enjoyed, like, Hip Sobriety school back in the day. I didn’t tell him about that. And I was like, my god, he knew I wasn’t drinking, and he knew I was in like, an online Facebook community, but that was sort of it. And then when I finally told him, he was like, what? And I was like, wonder I got away with drinking so much like he, you know, we’re busy. He coached basketball, he coached baseball. He was gone a lot in the evenings. I was like, no wonder I got away with it.

Todd Kinney  1:07:59

Yeah, it’s weird. The things we do, like, early on, it quitting drinking comes with so much baggage in our in turn. It’s your Yes. A lot of it.

Yeah, well, it’s like, all the bad things I thought were going to happen, and none of them did. I mean, I wish whenever I’m having a conversation with someone, and I hear this all the time, and I’m sure you do too. You run into people all the time who really want to take that next step. Yeah, um, whether it be take a break for 6 months or 90 days, or some, some people say, I, I’m ready to quit. I just don’t know if I can do it, and I want to, I want to just take them and fast forward a year and say, This is how you’re going to feel in a year. I mean, it doesn’t work that way, of course, but man, if, if you could, if you could transport someone ahead a little bit and just let them know how they would feel. It would be the easiest decision they’ve ever made.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:09:06

Well, I want to talk about resources, because when you talk about that, one of the resources that I get asked all the time for, like, Okay, this is awesome, but what about men? My husband, my brother, and my XYZ.

Your book is great because that’s basically what you do. You take them forward and you say, here’s what you’re going to feel like, here’s what I experienced. Here are the fears I had that did not come true.

And I want you to talk about that book, and then I also want to ask you, obviously your book was not around when you stopped drinking. As a man, what resources helped you? So, let’s talk about your book first.

Todd Kinney  1:09:35

So yeah, so the book is called, I Didn’t Believe it Either: One Dad’s Discovery That Everything Is Better Without Alcohol.

And one of the reasons, one of the big reasons, I wrote it was, Yes, so I could put that those stories out there about everything I discovered along the way, after I decided to quit, about how great an alcohol-free life could be, because I thought if everybody knew, if people knew this, if they could get a taste of what I got after deciding to quit drinking. Everybody would quit drinking. I mean, I know it’s not that simple, but I just wanted to give people who were interested and who were maybe thinking about quitting, and a taste of what there was a life out there that they probably couldn’t even imagine at the time, because that’s how it was for me.

I wanted to let them know, like, all this stuff you’re thinking right now, like, I don’t think I can do this. This sounds really boring. I don’t think I’m ever going to have fun again. Like, I thought all those same things.

Yeah, I thought them all, and get and I was wrong about them all, and I think you’re going to find that you were wrong about them all too. And the only the way I knew how to do that best was because preaching to people doesn’t work and you know, you’re not going to walk into a bar and walk up to people and say, I think you should quit drinking. Um, that’s not going to be very effective. But telling stories about what I discovered after I quit, and just saying, Look, I don’t know what your situation is. I don’t know. I can’t predict the future for you. But let me tell you kind of how quitting impacted me as a dad and as a husband and as a person in general, and what it did for me, that’s all I could do, is I could tell that story, hopefully, as well as I can. And my hope is, was when I wrote the book, that like, someone would read this and think, I want to give this a shot.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:11:53

Yeah, so maybe someone could give that book to their partner and be like, hey, thought you especially if they’ve stopped drinking. Be like, just if you want to understand what I’m going through. This is from a male perspective about it, how it changed someone’s life. They may or may not read it, but it’s, it’s something you could give them, especially if they also relate to your life situation, like professional, married.

Todd Kinney  1:12:21

Yeah.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:12:22

I think I read a lot of books about people hitting a much deeper bottom than I did, and I got stuff out of that, but at the same time, it triggered this part of my brain being like, Oh, well, I’m not that bad. And then reading about people who are more in a similar stage of the way they drank in their life and telling me that it was better like that was helpful.

Todd Kinney  1:12:47

Yes, yeah, because it’s so easy to look to someone and say, Well, they do X, Y and Z, I’ve never done that. I don’t need to quit, because I’m not at the place where they’re at. I mean, we do that, we did that costume, or at least I did.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:13:04

Oh God, yeah. And it’s almost like you do that so that you’re like, Oh, well, I’m not there. So Right? I think if anyone’s listening to this, and they start by sort of planting those seeds or sharing that you’ve noticed that this is impacting your marriage or parenting or the way you relate to each other, maybe encouraging them to do a challenge for a period of time with you, suggesting dates without alcohol, asking them not to drink in the home or not have sex with you or whatever, but then also giving them like your Book and maybe I always recommend, like, Alcohol Explained by William Porter too, because it was written by a man.

I’m thinking, for men, I’m like, what resources, were there other books or things, the groups that helped you, that you think set you on your way?

Todd Kinney  1:13:58

You know, there was. It’s funny when I when I started looking for online, you know, sobriety support. Everything I was finding was women focused or women centered. And I thought, I must be, I must not be looking in the right spot. I must be missing the men’s section of all this sobriety support stuff. And then I realized that I wasn’t missing it. There just wasn’t a whole lot out there. I read a lot. I love to read, and so I read every quit lit book that I get my hands on. And the only one I remember reading by a male was Dry by Augustine.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:14:39

Augustin Bureau. Love that, but that’s the bottom right.

Todd Kinney  1:14:44

Yes, yeah, he was a 12 step book.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:14:45

I loved that book.

Todd Kinney  1:14:49

I did too. I love. I think he’s a great writer, but I went back through when I was thinking about writing a book, I went back through and thought about all the books I’d read.

And they, with the exception of that one, they were all written by women, yeah? And I thought, well, maybe that’s one reason why I need to write one from a male perspective, yeah.

I found The Luckiest Club early on for online sobriety support group. I know they now have this when I started going. They now have, like, a men’s only meeting, and they have a dads, kind of a dads group subgroup. So, those are kind of carved out for male specific support, which, again, I love the all the female centered stuff. Like I said, it made it a little safer space for me to kind of go to. But I also realized after going to a couple of the men’s group meetings there was there, it was nice. There was something different about just being with other guys. Yeah, made me feel like there was just something really nice about being surrounded by guys who had all made the same decision and who we all talked about the same kind of parenting things, and, yeah, challenges at home. It was, it is nice. It is.

So, I would say to your listeners, to the extent that your their partners, you could direct them to those types of groups. I mean, all, I think all sobriety support groups are like this, yeah, there’s something very welcoming and very comforting about entering, whether it’s online or in person. Just entering a space where everyone’s made a decision that you’re thinking about making. There’s no pre like, I always say about people have given up drinking. There’s no bullshit there. Like, yeah, we no nobody has any shame about their stories. There’s no pretense. It’s very disarming and it’s very welcoming, and you don’t have to worry about.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:16:56

And sometimes you’re like, I did this. And people are like, Yeah, I did that 17 times, you can be like, Yeah, that sucks, and you could do this instead, or you won’t feel that way anymore. But like, people tell me stories. I’m like, yeah. I mean, it’s not like, I never Well, you mentioned, like, throwing up with your kids in the car. Here, listen to this. I had gone over my son was like, two. I’d gone over to my girlfriends. We had a big group of girlfriends. We all had young kids. We slept over because we were so great moms and safe, right? Because we didn’t want to, right? Very responsible.

Yeah, we started like, 3:00 o’clock, 4:00 o’clock. It was Memorial Day weekend and woke up the next morning. I mean, we all had, like, 2, 3, 4, you know, whatever, a year old. I drove home with my son in the car seat in the back and had to pull over in a parking lot to puke while he was strapped in. Like, so when you said I had to pull over my car and puke, I was like, oh, yeah, I’ve done that. This does not square a big deal edging you like, not at all.

Todd Kinney  1:18:06

That’s good. That’s good. Yeah, it’s crazy. How many you run into who have all, they’ve all, they’ve all experienced something.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:18:15

Yeah, something like, and it’s really powerful to get in a group like that.

Alright, it is. Tell us how people can find you buy your book, anything you want to share?

Todd Kinney  1:18:25

So, they can find a book on Amazon. It’s also on my website, toddkinney.com, I’m on Instagram @tkinney111. That’s about it.

Casey McGuire Davidson  1:18:39

Alright. Thank you so much for coming on. I know this is going to help a lot of people, and I appreciate you being so open.

Todd Kinney  1:18:46

Yes, thanks. Thanks for having me. Enjoyed it.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Hello Someday podcast.

If you’re interested in learning more about me, the work I do, and access 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.