Speaker 1 0:00
Hello everyone. This is going to be a little bit of a speedy
Unknown Speaker 0:07
live today,
Speaker 1 0:09
and I'm also broadcasting this to the virtual retreat group too. So normally this I record a podcast in midlife AF, which is a Facebook group, and on my Instagram account every Tuesday at 1230
Unknown Speaker 0:31
life permitting.
Speaker 1 0:33
And so I'm just also broadcasting this to the virtual retreat, because we started last night, and it was absolutely fantastic. But one of the things that we've been talking about in the be the lighthouse, my membership group and in the virtual retreat, is the concept of decisions, and it's a really interesting one. So first of all, welcome to midlife. AF, let's talk about decisions and decision fatigue, because it's a very, very, very interesting one, and I know for me, I made the decision back in it probably would have been towards the end of December, January, 19, 2019, 2019, to do a year out coffee. And I had been doing months here and there, dry. Should I save October? October, etc. I hadn't really found the methodology that I was going to find my my freedom from yet, but I had started like I had the book, this naked mind. I started listening to podcasts, I started listening to quitlet.
Unknown Speaker 1:49
But still, for me, I was trying to do it by myself, and
Speaker 1 1:52
I was doing it with willpower. And willpower is a finite resource, and it's the absolute opposite of everything that I teach, and the neuroscience says is the way, the most effective way to create long term change, particularly around alcohol. And it is a little controversial to a certain extent as well, because, and again, this is nothing to I have a lot of time for AA and how it works. It's not my methodology. It wasn't right for me. But I know a lot of people who have found their freedom through AA and I found and I think one of the things that's really amazing about it is community, but it's a very different way of stopping drinking than the way I teach and the way that I stopped drinking,
Unknown Speaker 2:48
I find for me,
Speaker 1 2:51
it puts quite a lot of emphasis on the person being the problem. And for me, that's the opposite that doesn't sit well with my values or my my approach. So my approach is very much that there's, you know, the problem isn't the person, and we were talking about this last night in the virtual retreat, and that the problem is alcohol and the problem is society, and alcohol is solution to a problem, not the problem. And so reason why decision? Hi, Mel. How are you nice to see you? Love your content. The reason I wanted to talk about decisions is, and this is going to be a funny one, and I've posted about it before. There's this concept from South Africa
Unknown Speaker 3:41
called, I think it's called suit pure,
Speaker 1 3:46
and it means salty penis, and it's a way that the Afrikaans people in South Africa describe that used to describe the British and other people as well, but people who lived in South Africa, but still had their their heart, their soul in the UK, and they used to call salty penis, because they what it meant was that they had a leg in each country and the penis was dangling in the salty water. My kid, I told my kids first last night, they're like, mum's a bit much, but I did a post February last year about it, and I was talking about this sort of idea of, you know, you hear so much. I've seen a lot on my post recently, been posting about this concept of normal, and there's this whole narrative that sits in our industry that's very much like and I think it's very harmful that is that this narrative that there's two types of people, people who can drink and people who can't drink, and why am I talking about this? Because there's this sort of concept. There's something wrong with the. Person that they're this awful human that can't is not allowed to, you know, drink because they can't be trusted. And it links into the whole drink responsibly campaign, which I have a massive issue with, especially because it's completely funded by the big alcohol companies, and it is absolutely in their interests to keep us believing that the problem is with the person. And I'm not like, you know, I'm not demonizing alcohol. I am not most of my friends drink. I'm quite happy to be around people who drink. I have no issue with it whatsoever. But I want to call things what they are, and alcohol is not an innocuous substance. It is a it is a poison, and it is addictive. And I think the the more we muck around and try and pretend that the people are the problem, the longer people get stuck, because they get stuck, because they want to seek help, because they think that the problem lies with them, and that if they could just pull their socks up and try a bit harder and give themselves a good kick up the ass, then they'd get it sorted. And I was like that for years. I was in that, you know, the problems me, you
Unknown Speaker 6:09
know, I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1 6:10
no one else pulled it down my neck, you know, all that kind of stuff. But in reality, the way the chemistry works, and we talked about this last night in the virtual retreat, is that alcohol is it? You know, the use of alcohol is a survival mechanism. Dope. The dopamine that we receive from alcohol is such a high amount that the body, and the body thinks it needs dopamine to survive, and so the body chases, naturally, chases dopamine. And what happens when we have a drink is we get flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. We get flooded with another substance called dianorphine. Adrenaline and cortisone are stress hormones. Diamorphine is it sucks the joy out of life. We start not to not to enjoy anything, unless we are drinking everything. And I was like that nothing. If someone said to me, let's go roller skating, it's going to be so much fun, I would be like, is there a bar? Because otherwise I don't want to go. And I thought that was normal, because that was also my, you know, my love, my family. This was also how we were. We were like, we didn't have days off from drinking. Drinking was a nightly carous. Now I did when I got into my 40s and I had kids, and I was trying to be healthy, we would only do a mainly drink, sort of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Unknown Speaker 7:25
and then drink heat at the weekend.
Speaker 1 7:29
But, yeah, it was, but I remember as a young person, like in my 20s and 30s, before I had kids, going on holiday with my best friend, and I've told this story before, but and she wanted to have an alcohol free day. And I was just like, what? Didn't understand it, and I got quite nasty about it. Was like, quite aggressive. I called her sanctimonious, and all those things, you know, which is basically, you know, sharing that really the, you know, there's an issue there. Because for me, the idea of having an alcohol free day on holiday was like, holiday alcohol. These two things go together. Why would you not drink? So I'm going off in lots of different tangents here, but coming back to the salty penis, coming back to the idea that there's these two people, coming back to one of the things, and again, talking about this is one of the things that I find difficult. Difficult is this concept of, you know, you've got one leg in, one leg out. I'm not, yes, I remember feeling the same, oh, that's, I think it's we all, a lot of us who stopped drinking, or cut down our drinking, or decided to take our drinking seriously, in some way, we had the same thing, right? And, and I remember even going to like cinema, like going to cinema with my kids, to watch the greatest showman, and having a bottle of champagne.
Speaker 1 8:53
But this idea that, you know, got a legged, and this is one of the things, because we think alcohols are not innocuous substance. We're sold this idea by society that the problems us that we should know better, we should be able to drink responsibly, when, in actual fact, the biochemistry of it is that, you know, we cannot. It's incredibly hard. We're fighting so people get so pissy with themselves when they can't stop at two drinks. But actually, you know, it's actually really, really hard, because, by chemist, chemically survival mechanism, going back to our, you know, our programming from, from cave man days, we are programmed to be chasing that dopamine because we think we need it to survive. And again, I talk about this a lot more in my programs, but it's, it's a it's a reward, chemical neurotransmitter. We get it as a reward for having done something. The idea behind these neurotransmitters, dopamine, particular is that it wants us to do something, and it wants us to do something. So think we get normal dopamine. We get from, you know, having sex. We get normal dopamine from eating a really good meal. We get really normal. Dopamine for completing something, we get normal dopamine for successfully achieving a sports goal. These are normal ways, and they usually have a sort of element of effort in them. And the interesting thing with alcohol is we get flooded with huge amounts of dopamine because the chemical makeup of it, but there's no real effort involved. And this is one of the reasons why people love it so much, why it's such a good solution to a problem, because, yeah, Mel says, Yeah. And also the all or nothing,
Unknown Speaker 10:27
I've eaten one biscuit, Maxwell,
Speaker 1 10:28
oh my gosh, totally drink. It's totally exactly the same, isn't it, that all or nothing? It's like, you know, I'm an all or nothing person, where actually you're, you know, we all have this black and white thinking that when it kind of comes from this idea that we're either in or out, we're either in or out, we're either full on or we're not, you know, we're on a diet, or we're stuffing our face with Tim Tams during the KFC bucket, filling our mouths.
Unknown Speaker 10:58
Okay, no one else did that,
Speaker 1 11:01
but it's very much like that, isn't it? Oh, Hi, Ruby. How
Unknown Speaker 11:05
are you? Darling. Good
Unknown Speaker 11:06
to see you too. Um,
Speaker 1 11:10
but coming back to sort of idea of having one foot in each each country and one foot in, am I drinking? Am I not the decision? And I remember when I had those months off from drinking before I, you know, found the method that worked for me. One of the things that I remembered, even though I hated the months off that I had, that's exactly right, all the different shades, that's exactly right, everything's so black and white, isn't it? Because, again, we're not emotionally developed. You know, we, we are stunted in terms of our emotional development, many of us, not just drinkers, but, you know, all of us, but drinkers, definitely, we tend to have that sort of, you know, everything's about us, and everything's sort of very black and white, very binary, no, no shades of gray. Oh, my goodness, I've
Unknown Speaker 11:56
lost my train of thought. What's I say,
Speaker 1 12:02
so I'm Yeah, so. So this, the thing that I find difficult is this, like, this, one of these concepts of things, like, you know, people say I just take it to gos, because for me, maybe was always a yes. Not having a plan always meant that I was going to fail. And I don't like the word fail, salty penis, I know, right? Isn't it great? Like, I love it.
Unknown Speaker 12:27
But it's, it's, yeah, it's like, literally, you've
Unknown Speaker 12:29
got your you've got one foot in England and one foot in South Africa. That's
Speaker 1 12:32
what it meant, the original analogy for it. But, but that's the same with, like, my aunt, I going to drink, and when you make the decision, I remember, you know, the freedom of those months, even though I hated those months back in the day, the freedom of not having to think for a month of what you know about alcohol, whether I was going to drink it, where I was going to get it, from, how I was going to get it. Did I have enough for the night? What was I going to do? And, you know, I, was I going to get home? And all these decisions that had to be made about drinking, was I wasn't. I just went to that for energy. A lot of trying energy and trying energy is really tough, with two neurodivergent kids for me who struggle with getting to school and all sort of things like that. Trying, trying, freedom is so beautiful, isn't it, and this is one of the reasons why I think decision making is so important. And one of the things that I when I first started training to be an alcohol coach, one of the things I remember just thinking, you know, one of the most important things is making that decision, getting out of the maybes getting out of the, you know what? I don't want to commit and I'm keeping the security blanket. I don't want to lose all the stuff. Nothing wrong with any of those things, right? There's nothing wrong with anything we do everything we do, we do for a reason. It's usually a very good one. We just need to work out what, what it is. So, so, so one of the things I would say is, you know, and again, this is going to be a quick live today, because I've got another appointment in a minute. But making a decision is such a fucking relief. You know, making a decision, I'm going to do a month, I'm going to do a year. What a relief. And I'm hearing it in my group. I've got couple of people in my membership group at the moment who are making a decision to do a year. I've got a few people who are coming up towards the end of their year. And you know, there is such a difference in having made a decision, be it for a month, be it for a week, be it for a year, the conversation gets off the table, because a lot of the time we drink just to stop the bloody arguments in our head, even if that decision is just for today, right? Absolutely. And for some people, they really, people really love that, just for now, just for the next hour, just for the next for me, that didn't work for me. I needed it to be I'm making a decision, because then I would start having that discussion in my head again. If it was an hour, if it was a day, it would be like, Okay, well, today we're going to have a discussion again. I needed to not be having that argument in my head anymore. And we're all different, right? Everybody's got different approaches. I know so many people who find. That really useful. But for me, one day at a time wasn't useful. That doesn't mean that it's not for other people. It wasn't for me, because it kept me, am I arm tying and again, I think it's how your brain works. And we're all so different, so complex, so amazing. So for me, it was like I needed to make a decision that I was not going to drink. And for me, the decision was I was not going to drink for a year, and I told my children, because that made me accountable, and the freedom I found from that, and the reason I did that was I felt comfortable saying a year. I told my children a year. I thought it felt manageable, if a little scary, but it also felt like I could justify it without having anybody to make, you know, making things mean stuff about me, like, you know, you know that she's got a problem. She's an alcoholic, all of that stuff, which, again, we should talk about as another subject. But
Unknown Speaker 15:58
for me, making that decision
Speaker 1 16:01
gave me so much freedom. And yes, there was all sorts of like times during it where, you know, but actually once I started to do the work around changing my beliefs, around alcohol, looking into the facts, and unpicking all of those beliefs, and started to do the work because I'd already started. And I think this is a really good idea as well, if you can start doing a kind of medicine, any kind of medicine practice, and it can be anything. You don't have to be sat in a corner on a cushion with your legs crossed. You could be walking. You could be swimming, if something which is out, you're breathing and you're moving or, you know, so I'd started doing that work beforehand, so my brain was kind of like open to understanding more about triggers, more about being dysregulated. But I would just say, like making a decision is so freeing. And I think we think that keeping our options open is better for us. It feels safer to know that we can, you know, a moderation feels safer. It feels, you know, it's like that feels because I think it's more about it feels safer to be in society
Unknown Speaker 17:08
as a moderator.
Speaker 1 17:10
But in actual fact, I think it's much, much harder. And I always help people to moderate. I hope people to mindfully drink whatever you know helps you. I work with, but I always say to clients, it's so much easier, because when you're moderating, you are always going to be fighting chemistry. Yeah, oh yeah. Let's do that. Mel, I definitely reach out. I'm going to head off because I've got an appointment, but let's definitely say Mel and I were just talking about alcoholic and stuff. That'd be really good. That'd be really good. I'd love to do that. Um, but I'll leave it on that note for you guys. But if you if in doubt, you know, make a plan. And maybe, as always, maybe it's always a yes, if you don't have a plan, you're going to, it's, it's, it's more than likely that you'll have a drink when you didn't want to, you know. And again, making a decision is half the battle. And because, you know, decision making takes fatigue. It fatigues your brain. It's a bit like willpower. It's got the same energy to it. It's that trying energy, that sort of, you know, it's really exhausting. And so when you're exhausted and you're and you've been trying, and also a lot of the time when you've got that argument going on your head, it's like you're actually having a battle in your head, and half the time we're just drinking to escape from that. So I'll leave that with you, my friends, because I've got to jump on a call, but it's been a delight to be with you. Mel, beautiful to be with you. Take care, my friends, and have great weeks. If anyone's interested. I have got a masterclass coming up on the 25th of September, my brain went blank. Then five surprising ways that taking a break from alcohol can be effortless and change your life. It's a really good one only an hour 7pm on the 25th which is the Wednesday. I'll put the link in the chat and in the show notes. And of course, we've got my Great Aussie alcohol experiment coming up on the 20, no 30th of September. Running for the whole of October, it finishes on the 29th of October. So it starts on the Monday. All right, my darlings, it's been lovely to be with you. I'll put links to all of those in the notes. Take care.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
