My $100k alcohol relapse on New Years Eve (true story)

In today's episode I will be sharing the story of the worst alcohol relapse of my life and how I managed to rebuild my life from it. If you're on your journey to sobriety then this podcast is a must listen!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help you make stopping drinking a simple, logical and easy decision. We help you with tips, tools and strategies to start living your best life when alcohol-free. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, then head over to wwwsoberclearcom. Let's imagine for a second you'd stopped drinking alcohol for six months, and this would be pretty awesome, right? But imagine I came up to you and I said congratulations, it's been six months and as a reward, you've got two options you can either have an espresso martini or you can have $100,000. What are you going to pick? Well, seven or eight years ago, however long it was I didn't choose the money. I chose to drink, and I'll explain what this means in a minute. But I relapsed on a New Year's Eve and it cost me 100 grand, maybe even more. So if you want some motivation and you want some inspiration to stick on this path, to stay sober and make yourself a few hundred grand in the process, definitely watch this video, because I want to warn you what can happen when you drink alcohol, when you relapse. So a quick introduction. My name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of SoberClearedcom, which is a coaching company that works with business owners and professionals. We help them get control of their drinking within as little as 48 hours. Our success rate is between 92% and 97%, and I have the most viewed YouTube channel in the world when it comes to stop drinking content. We've got over 20 million views Now, despite not drinking for six years.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Life didn't used to be this way. I've been up and down with alcohol for as long as I can remember and I've done it all. I've drank every single day. I've binge-drinked, I've quit drinking with Alcoholics Anonymous with Willpower, with begging God to help me. I've done it all. But the worst relapse of my life happened on a New Year's Eve seven or eight years ago, I can't remember. I'd basically quit drinking with willpower for six, seven, eight months and my life during that six to eight months was just amazing. I was in the best shape I'd ever been. I had a six pack, I had a girlfriend, I had a Mercedes, I had a personal training business whilst I was a full-time student, and it was making just under 100,000 US dollars per year as a full-time student.

Speaker 1: 2:01

When I'm not drinking, I'm not drinking. I'm a different beast compared to when I'm drinking. Right, when I'm drinking, it's nothing like that, but because I had consistently not drank for such a long period of time, I was just taking over. I was just killing it and listen. That might come across as arrogant, but if you knew what I was like when I drank, you'd think the same You'd be like. This guy is a different person.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Anyway, I went out on a New Year's Eve party. It was me, my friend, my friend had invited some girls and we went to this club called the Hospital Club. It's a famous private members club in London and I'm a guy from a small town in England that's never been in a private members club before. I might have been to this place once or twice with my friend before the party, but to me this was like a very special place, like when I was growing up I didn't even know these places existed. So on the night it was fancy right. It was a great Gatsby themed party. You know, everybody's wearing suits and hats and it was really, really cool and people in this place were super successful. You know, I met a guy that night who I'm still in touch with to this day and I'm like he's like, what do you do? I'm like, oh, I do personal training. I've got a personal training business. He's drinking champagne, right, he offers me a champagne. I have my own fund and we do sustainable investing in places like Africa and stuff like that, and I'm like that's cool. So I've seen this successful man drinking and then I look around and everybody's drinking, right, everybody, and everybody is having a great time. People are talking like crazy, you know, super loud.

Speaker 1: 3:17

And whilst I went into that occasion thinking I wasn't going to drink, there was a switch in my head. What started happening is I started having a positive association with alcohol. I forgot about the pain that it caused me for 10 years and in that moment I just thought, oh yeah, drinking. There was just this switch. I thought about the guy drinking his champagne. I thought about, you know, all of these people laughing and joking and I didn't see just the occasion as the good time. I just started seeing alcohol as the one thing that everybody had in common. So this little voice in my head came up and it's like Leon, just have one drink. That thought is a demon. I had one espresso martini and within five minutes of finishing it, I'm drinking another one. Then I'm on the beers and then, before you know it, I'm smashed. Now I was already having a great time before I drank, but as soon as I got that feeling of missing out, a feeling like everybody was doing something and I'm the odd one out that's not actually, you know, enjoying themselves properly as soon as that switch happened in my mind, it was game over.

Speaker 1: 4:06

And one of the biggest problems is the next day when I was waking up with a hangover. I had really good memories of that night. I didn't think, oh, alcohol sucks, it's the worst thing ever. The worst thing that happened is I had a positive association with that evening and drinking alcohol and that just prolonged into a relapse that destroyed my entire life. I lost my business, sold my car, moved to London, failed in a career in recruitment, failed as a personal trainer, kept drinking, had to move back to Oxford where I was at university, had to go and work in a restaurant. My life just crumbled apart because of that one decision to drink that espresso martini. That cost me almost a six-figure personal training business and in fact it probably cost me a lot more because of the opportunity cost, because that probably would have grown even higher.

Speaker 1: 4:46

And here's what I should have done instead, instead of associating positivity and that night and alcohol all as one thing. I should have just gone home and played it out. I should have sat with myself and said right, listen, leon, that was a mistake and get real with yourself, because if you don't fix it right now, leon, what's going to happen? Because I knew in my heart what would have happened. I knew it would have just started snowballing and everything would have crumbled.

Speaker 1: 5:06

I didn't say that to myself, I didn't play it out, I just thought everything's going to be fine, right, and it was almost denial. I was lying to myself and if I could go back in time, I would have just sat down, had a conversation, got real with myself and then I would have asked for help. I would have stopped telling myself that it's okay that I'm going to figure it out, whatever. I would have found support. That's what I should have done, but I didn't, and it cost me so much. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear. If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit wwwsoberclearcom.