Trying To Find The Motivation To Stop Drinking?- You found it!
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[00:00:00] I'm sure you already know that drinking alcohol is bad for your health even if you're not like alcoholic but just a regular drinker we all know that it's not the greatest thing to do for our health but there may be other costs to drinking alcohol that you're not calculating in some things that maybe you're not even associating that are connected to the drinking
this is a price that you're paying is like a secret interest payment that the bank snuck in on you right or like a insufficient fees fund or something like that that they snuck in on your checking account and you don't even know it was there we're going to talk about some of those things that you're probably not even paying attention to because when you think about okay I know drink is not great for my health
but you're like oh but you got to die from something we we start rationalizing and excusing all these things in our head but some of these other prices that we're paying these little fees that we're paying you might not be so willing and okay to live with once they move up into your conscious thinking
[00:01:00] I'm going to warn you now once you're aware of these things you're not going to be able to be unaware of them so if you want to stay in blissful denial and you don't want to hear these truths now is the time to click away because once you know it once you see it happening you're going to recognize that's what's happening
and this is why it's happening now if you go to YouTube and you Google stop drinking motivation or quit drinking motivation there is a list of a tons of videos that come up you're going to see Jordan Peterson videos and you're going to see like Andrew Huberman videos all these great videos Which they're actually pretty good because a lot of them are like montages They have cool music and you throw all these stats at you That it does make you think so I would actually suggest that you watch them They're good videos but some of the more subtle things I think get missed you know They focus a lot on the physical things and stuff like that
but there's these little Subtle fees and interest that you're paying that you're probably not aware you're paying and you need to stop and think is it worth it to me [00:02:00] to pay this price for example I have clients sometimes who will say I want to reduce my drinking which is a great goal
and they'll say I want to be able to drink just like 3 days a week which on the surface doesn't sound bad actually there's really a couple of questions there's 1 is can the person really pull that off sometimes they can a lot of times they can't it's hard to back it down so that's the 1st question is that possible
but the other question or the other thing that they may not be considering is this and this got brought up to me that we were seeing a couple of this was this was probably a year or 2 ago and when this person said I was like yeah I really think about that that makes sense so this was a husband and a wife and the wife's goal was to bring back the drinking to only 3 days a week
and the husband's upset because he said okay yeah so you drink 3 days a week so when I get home you're already drinking so you're not accessible I can't talk to you we don't have good conversations it's not great okay 3 days a week but then it takes you a day or 2 to recover every time you have 1 of those [00:03:00] days
then the next day you're super irritable you're not really available I can't really talk to you about anything really yeah if I'm only drinking three days a week and the next day I feel crappy I'm hungover I'm not my best self I can barely get myself through work or whatever then that's another day that you're adding to it
so those three days a week then become six days a week at a minimum that's what I'm talking about when I say those sneaky little fees that are coming in there sometimes without you knowing and the way those those fees affect us it affects us in our relationships it affects us in our self esteem it affects our mindset
and I want to go through each of those categories and take a little closer look at just exactly how alcohol slowly starts to change these things in your life and sometimes it happens so slowly you don't recognize that it is actually coming from the alcohol first and foremost is your relationships
Usually the first relationship [00:04:00] to get messed up from drinking is your primary like romantic relationship so if you're married Or if you're dating someone that's the first relationship to start to be impacted and usually it's that other person that's the first one to start saying something and so what happens is you've got this significant other person who's saying Hey I think you need to cut it back
I think you're drinking too much or then it gets to the point where they're saying Hey promise me you won't drink when we go to my family event and what it feels like to you as the person that feels like Oh my God they're ridiculous no one else thinks this is a big deal no one else cares about this
when you're with your friends they drink they think you're drinking is great everybody's for it it makes you think it's just my spouse and you want to put all the blame on them because they're the only ones that seem to have a problem with it
they're the only ones that are seeing the repercussions of it they're the only ones that are seeing the total picture of it it's easy to excuse away that person's opinion because you think they're just controlling or they're just nagging or they're just mean or [00:05:00] they're just a perfectionist or someone in their family had an alcohol problem
so they're just uptight about it or whatever it's easy to throw this into one of those categories and then you miss it
your partner is the first one that's going to notice it but that's not the only relationship that gets affected it's just the first one usually but your drinking can also affect your work relationships so you go out you drink with your work buddies or maybe part of your job is to take people out to like fancy dinners and stuff like that
and so drinking is almost like part of the job description and then when you get to that point you drink more than you thought you were going to drink and then you end up saying something that you regret whether that was like embarrassing or maybe you got really angry and said something nasty
and there's nothing worse than that feeling of waking up the next day first of all you feel like crap already and then you're trying to even remember what happened and what you said and then the first thing you do is look at your phone to see what the messages are to see if there's like any clues about what happened the night before[00:06:00]
it's that moment of embarrassment and then when you see those people again you're just feel so like uncomfortable inside because you're thinking I can't remember what happened and that is an awful feeling it's no good it's like you almost get to where you just want to avoid certain people because things that they've seen happened while you were drinking and then there are places you stop wanting to go
there are people you stop wanting to be around and it's just a terrible feeling it's like you have to walk around with this like embarrassed uncomfortable feeling a lot of time that's one of those secret prices that you're paying that you're you may be like conscious of but not quite and I want to raise that feeling to the top
if you know what I'm talking about with that put a little hand up emoji in the chat or the comments so I know that you're tracking here with me the next category that you're going to see the relationship rolls down into this next category which is self esteem what happens to you is you eventually you feel [00:07:00] embarrassed right
which then leads to feeling shameful about yourself especially when you get into the cycle of this like stage three alcohol problem where you're promising yourself I'm not going to drink more than X amount or more than X amount of times a week or whatever and then you keep breaking your own rules
and that leads you to feel bad about yourself and then the more people start to get on you about that And you already feel bad about yourself then you start to feel bad about other people and so now you start to add more people to your life you've got your spouse or your partner you don't want to be around because they're always on your butt and they're aggravating
you've got people you don't want to see because you did something that you regret and you feel bad about you've got another section of people that you want to avoid and you feel guilty about it but when other people start to hit that guilt button and this happens so fast we don't recognize we do it
and we all do this it's like a defense mechanism it just it's just a button that gets hit more often if there's an [00:08:00] alcohol problem is that when someone starts to hit on that button something that you actually do feel really self conscious about or feel guilty about it's like immediately it provokes like an anger response
anger is like a protective emotion so someone is hitting that sore spot inside it brings up this resentment this anger this defensiveness pretty immediately and so now we have bad feelings about a lot of people around us so it's more relationships We're avoiding we don't like ourself and eventually and this is the part that really people Almost always cannot see like really very few of the people that I see that are like early in the process Truly understand how much alcohol is affecting their thinking their filter and their mindset and that's usually because it's happened slowly over a period of time that you don't quite recognize that
that's what's going on but eventually you turn into this other person it's not yourself this other person that [00:09:00] anxious this sort of high strung this sort of uptight slightly defensive mad at the world holding a lot of resentments replaying bad things that have happened to you whether it's like bad things like trauma things or bad things like uncomfortable bad conversations or breakups or things like that
you start holding those in your head you start replaying them over and over again because that is the effect of the alcohol and a lot of times when you're actually drinking your filter sort of turns I like to say the volume on your frontal lobe the volume on your filter turns way down
and so if you've got these bad emotional memories hovering around and you turn the filter down on what happens is Those memories start replaying and they replay like in slow motion because alcohol slows everything down And so it's like you're reliving Bad things you're re watching it like a movie in slow motion over and over you're like literally re traumatizing yourself over and over and every time you re [00:10:00] watch that movie It gets worse
it gets scarier the emotion around it ramps up and just because even you're having those thoughts those uncomfortable negative sometimes even like traumatic thoughts your brain is then producing more chemical because you're having those thoughts which is then reinforcing a lot of negative
body chemistry and brain chemistry and those effects don't just go away once the alcohol is out of your system your liver can filter the alcohol out of your system enough so that you're not intoxicated but all these other brain changes and effects and dopamine changes and serotonin changes negative thoughts and chemicals that stuff takes a while
to dissipate to get out of your system and so that's what I say if you even if you're not drinking every day You're drinking One day you have a recovery day sometimes people have a second day They have a second day cycle here a lot because it's like on that second day I start to feel better and then I forget how bad it was like two days ago And [00:11:00] that I can't remember exactly why I promised myself
I wasn't going to do that again And then they go back into it and so here around and around we go we're literally only getting Every 3rd or 4th day where we feel mostly like ourselves and after that goes on for a very long time are who we are as a person begins to change now with alcohol a lot of people can stay very
functional on the outside for a very long time only 5% of alcoholics are like what you have in your mind like the non functional not going to work can't take care of themselves like only 5% of alcoholics fall into that category so it's like the way minority research shows that most alcoholics are actually if you look at their functionality like their income level their education level stuff like that they actually are higher than the average
and that's another thing that keeps you in denial because I go to work I make good money I take care of my family I pay my taxes what's your problem which I can understand that on [00:12:00] some level because it's part of that defensiveness it's I work hard I get up early every morning
I do all this stuff what is your problem but the problem is that you are changing as a person most people I see that have alcohol problem they can work for years people don't get to the point with alcohol that they can't function and go to work and stuff till like late stages so if you're waiting until that point before you want to recognize this problem I'm like why would you do that to yourself
because The further you dig this hole the further and longer and harder it is to get out of the hole right you just have to recognize and sometimes once you can become aware of these subtle little things that are starting to happen and you're watching your behaviors change and you're watching yourself rationalize making bad decisions and you're watching yourself treat the people that you actually love and care about the most
not great and you find yourself lying and you find yourself manipulating and you find yourself like gaslighting other people [00:13:00] once you bring those behaviors and thinking patterns into the conscious it's really hard to ignore there's an old like AA saying and it's like a a head full of AA and a belly full of beer or something doesn't mix right
once you know these things it's really hard to unknow and it messes it all so that's why I said you should have clicked away from this video if you didn't want to hear these things it takes a lot of courage to look at it honestly And like I said cause most of the time it's I just want to bring it back
I just want to drink less but even if you are able to do that which I'm telling you most people aren't by the time they're watching these videos I'm not saying most people can't control their drinking I'm saying most people that have an alcohol problem that watch my videos can't do that so you're not just drinking two days
you're not just drinking three days you're in that recovery cycle and it takes actually a week or two or three really four weeks to get Really good background chemistry so you're never really out of that cycle you're thinking to myself i'm only drinking this many days and i'm not even getting that intoxicated but you're not Taking into [00:14:00] consideration all the after effects all the time that it takes to heal just after one binge drinking session right
I'm not even this doesn't even just apply to someone who would even qualify for an alcohol use disorder literally they used to say things like a couple of glasses of wine or a little bit of alcohol is good for you but that's actually not true at all even slight drinking increases your chances of cancer by a lot
alcohol actually kills significantly way more people than all the other drugs combined actually I heard it on Recovery elevator which is another youtube channel
it's pretty good You should check it out and he got the guy that was on there I think he got this from the cdc but he said which really shocked me I was like wow the tax burden So the amount of money that every single taxpayer pays is 2 66 per drink sold per drink consumed not per person that has an alcohol problem
per drink consumed the tax burden is [00:15:00] 2 66 when you start to think about that It gives you a tiny glimpse about Just what a massive Problem and issue it is and you're dealing with alcohol companies who like make a ton of profit to be Made i'm not against profit at all but There's a ton of profit to be made and you're but you're doing something in order to make that profit It's like killing people
And I think a lot of that is because it's old school thinking of alcohol is actually fun it's just if you're an alcoholic yeah if you're an alcoholic it's going to affect you worse but actually many more people are alcoholic that don't quite realize that they're alcohol because they only think that 5%
so they they don't recognize that I'm in that really high functioning percent that's paying some of these prices on the regular without even realizing it
sarah says does addiction cause someone to act in disrespectful ways towards their partner like infidelity Or is that a choice made by their true self addiction
when someone is in active addiction their thinking [00:16:00] is not reasonable or rational like I said when their mindset shifts they're holding resentments they feel anxious they usually blame their partner
Yes addiction will trigger those kinds of behaviors but I'm hesitant to say that because I think even if it's an addiction and you didn't mean to have it and it's causing your thinking to be warped it's your responsibility
yes it can does that mean that person holds no they can't help at all no it's a grayish blend in there
question my husband has been sober for a month using Soberlink you guys know I'm a Soberlink fan thank you so much for recommending it how long does it take for the brain chemicals to rebalance he is sober but is still withdrawn and cranky the like acute withdrawal like the physically feeling sick part can last So the first week is the roughest like physically but it takes it can take a good long while before the sleep cycles restore
and that has a lot to do with the mood and the good brain chemical levels and all that kind of stuff [00:17:00] so if your husband is still having some sleep issues most people that are quitting any kind of addiction have a sleep issue it's part of the process then they're not going to have their normal like resilience
it's like they're thin skinned right because they're not getting it's like you if you haven't slept or you're hangry or something They're in that state until things can level out I can't give you a number After 30 days I found people feel Significantly better and every day after that better and better six months out
Exactly how do you determine whether you drink enough to make cold turkey dangerous I'm going to give you an answer Debbie but I did want to say I consult your doctor I don't want to get myself in trouble if you find that you can't go past three days without drinking you keep trying to stop drinking and on that third day you always go back that's a pretty good indicator that you can't get through the withdrawal cycle
now it doesn't necessarily mean you have to be hospitalized but it probably because that 2nd and 3rd day is really hard and the withdrawal cycle if you found that you just can't get past that's when I [00:18:00] would definitely look into it and consider it now if you can't even get past 1 day you already know that you don't even you're not even questioned
some of you who don't drink all the time you're the ones that are thinking like can I stop if you can stop for five six seven days at a time then it's not a withdrawal issue necessarily
beth says I recently asked my husband to move out very civil between us he comes over frequently to visit our six year old daughter and me I have found him drinking then during those visits sneak drinking and hiding do I ask him to leave or ride it out I feel like this is why I asked him to leave in the first place
that's a really good question and it because it's a really it's a boundary question that a lot of spouses Run up against when you have this issue just to ask him to leave because he's drinking Probably isn't going to be all that helpful you got to ask yourself why do you want to set that boundary
my guess is because you want to protect your six year old right like you don't want to subject your six year old to something not great If he's coming over to visit then i'm assuming you or someone else is there if [00:19:00] he's over and he's visiting and he's intoxicated to the point that he's problematic that he's not acting right that he's Something's actually happening that you don't want your daughter exposed to Then I would say hey why don't we try this another day or something like that
but if it's just because I know we had a beer or something like that and I'm trying to put my foot down about it and prove my point that's not exactly the great reason to do that
how long do you think it takes a family member to restore brain chemistry after getting away for an active abusive outcome that is a really advanced question I'm actually impressed with your question the reason why that's an advanced impressive question is because it tells me like not only do you understand addiction you understand like addictive family system
the answer to that question is it's like the alcoholic and withdrawal once they stop the drinking or the drug use or whatever it is the brain starts to heal with the family member it's a little bit harder to measure because it's when do you stop letting yourself obsess you can keep obsessing for years and your brain [00:20:00] is not going to heal
and if you do that for long long time it's really hard to get off of that track because you're creating neuropathways negative thinking bad memories it literally solidifies neural pathways and it makes it hard to break the cycle you will start to feel better as soon as you stop for the best that you can letting yourself go down that deep dark rabbit hole
remember when think about bring up resentments bring up fears every time you go down that rabbit hole it's like the same thing as them having a drink as far as brain chemistry is concerned
honeyface McGee question what if the loved one won't admit It is really social anxiety that is driving the alcoholism if they won't admit that part how should I help it doesn't even matter if they admit that part in fact a lot of times people say it's because of my social anxiety and I have to drink
like sometimes people admit it and they'll grab onto it like it's an excuse and they won't let go of it and that actually keeps the drinking longer They don't have to admit what's driving the alcoholism if you can get them to admit that there's an [00:21:00] alcohol problem that's great that's actually more important than the other because you can't fix the other until the substance problem is addressed anyways
question does end stage alcoholism mean certain death
alcoholism is a terminal illness if you don't deal with it it's going to get you one way or the other it gets you in a lot of ways that sometimes people don't associate with alcoholism if you die of liver failure people are like oh that's because of alcoholism but a lot of cancer is caused by alcohol
a lot of other things is caused by alcohol so you've got these secondary effects it's still related yeah could something else kill you yeah you could be on a bus and get in a bus accident and die that wouldn't be related to the alcohol but if nothing else happens to you you keep drinking like that
yeah it's going to kill you unless you address it and stop
Hi Amber I was so confident about my sobriety that I was sure I could go back to my spouse that is a heavy user made it 14 days I was hoping that my falling so fast would be a wake up call for her this is [00:22:00] like a mix up of addiction your addiction and then the family member addiction I feel bad because you're literally it's like double addiction like dual diagnosis because you're literally saying I was hoping that my relapse would be a wake up call for them
whoa dude that's scary I don't want you thinking when you're still thinking thoughts like that you're not ready to go back in because what's happening is you're so worried about this other person which is understandable anybody who's in the family rule understands that but you're also so fragile because of the addiction that it's like you get this thing under control
you go back into that situation it sends you spiraling so I'm glad that you have that insight you're going to have to separate that out and I know you want you both to figure this out and get on the same path but to figure it out at the same time is very rare
maybe one and then the other usually just one but at the same time it's really hard to make that
steph says when I stop going down the rabbit hole and focus on keeping my sanity my spouse says I'm pulling away and being selfish [00:23:00] is there any point that I can tell him why I'm doing that if so how
I'm thinking about how to word this stuff yes you can tell him that but I want you to be careful about how you tell him that I don't want you to say I'm doing this because of your drinking or whatever it is I want you to say I'm actually just trying to have better boundaries because I found that when I don't I start acting controlling or resentful or get too anxious And that hurts our relationships
I'm just trying to be healthy so we can be good so it's how you frame it you're saying I'm doing this for me or even for us not any kind of anything that has any tinge of I have to do this cause you're whatever because that will just backfire on you but yeah they notice like when you back up they complain when you're all hovering and then you back up and they're like what's wrong
it's you can't win
dJ says I feel like a lot of advice out there for family members is just focus on yourself but not really solid advice how do we do that can be frustrating it is frustrating because it's and I even when I say to people you got to take care of yourself
[00:24:00] I realize that even when I say it's like saying I know you're in a house and it's like burning down to the ground but really it's almost insulting I get that our advice is a combination of yes it's focus on yourself it's do a better job of meeting your needs but it doesn't mean you have to like completely let go of this person because we like to say focus on yourself and then we also give you strategies on how to talk to that person or how to help that person and come around to it
we personally feel like if you want the relationship to stay if you're in a marriage or something like that and you're trying to keep the marriage together then yes it's a balance of focusing on yourself while helping that other person but you do have to back up two notches because when you're too close to the flame you keep getting burned you keep getting pulled back into it and then a lot of times inadvertently like you're just being sucked into it and you're fueling it and you don't even mean to
if my boyfriend is idolizing drug use idolizing using drugs but talking to me
I understand the idolizing drug use part but I'm not sure I understand the talking to you part if what you're [00:25:00] saying is should I worry if I'm in a relationship with someone who's idolizing drug use the answer to that is yes you should worry that is not a good sign because we whatever our attention goes to whatever we are focused on is what we attract
part of the human makeup what you think about and what you focus on is what will happen it is what you will bring into your life so yes you should worry I think that's what you're asking but you could possibly be asking like he's being sober and we're talking and things are good but he's still idolizing drug use
and if that's the case Same answer as before
steph says how do I know when it's time for my loved one to see you how would that be brought up that is a really good question because whether they see me or they see someone else or another addiction counselor or whatever so this just applies to how do I know when it's time for my person to Seek help or see anybody
the better you set it up the faster and [00:26:00] easier that works I'm so glad you're asking this question if it's me specifically what I like to do is see if you get them to watch one of my videos or maybe they'll agree and they'll get like my free 30 day jump start series or something and because that almost introduces them to me and then they can decide if they like me or not
if they come back to you and say that woman is crazy she's still showing us time out then don't bring me up bring up somebody else that they don't think is crazy they're like yeah sure and they're like watch another video or something then when the moment is right and you have one of those windows open then you say you know that lady from the video like she actually will do a virtual session with you like You want me to set you up a session
bring it up like that so it's almost like they get a chance to get to know me specifically first if it's not me and it's another counselor you have to wait until that right window where they're saying I want to get help or I need to do something different don't ask the question of do you want to get help
say is it okay if I make you an appointment with X Y or you could say it like what kind of counselor do you think would help you would you do better with [00:27:00] X Y or Z and then pick because their brain immediately starts to answer that question if you say do you want to get help wants to get help
so don't ask it that
