Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear

10 Signs You MUST Quit Alcohol NOW

• Leon Sylvester

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Speaker 1:

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. Listen, when it comes to alcohol, there are 10 certain signs that can come up that you must not ignore. They're warning signs that it's time to do something, and if you ignore them, it might be too late. Listen, I'm not here to call you out or cause stress or anything of the kind. The thing is, conversations like this are hard. It's going to be hard for your friends to talk to you about this, hard for your family to talk to you about this, and it'll be even hard for you to have this conversation with yourself. And today, in this video, I'm not going to be the friend you want. I'm going to be the friend you need, because you need to hear this and just so you know you're not alone here. All of these 10 signs are things that came up in my own life and for the 10 years I drank, for I was either too scared to look at these signs or too proud to address them, so I'm going to use plenty of personal and almost embarrassing examples because I want to do my best to help. So let's get into sign number one. The first sign is drinking to manage your emotions. Think about it like this we get home from a stressful day of work where there's all this chaos and demands on our time, and we finally get home and we pour ourselves a drink. We're de-stressing, we have an argument with somebody, somebody upsets us, we're feeling angry. What do we do? Escape with the bottle. And when you do this continually, it's a sign that you're not just drinking for the sake of drinking anymore. You're drinking to deal with emotions and basically you're using it as a form of escapism. I used to do this all of the time Feeling lonely. Have a drink. Feeling a little bit underconfident. Have a drink. Meet a new person and feel a bit shy. Have a drink. Look at my life and not feel happy one day. Have a drink. Have a massive win and make a sale or make some money. Have a drink. You see the pattern here.

Speaker 1:

What started happening in my own life is every emotion I'd use as an excuse to drink. At first it didn't seem so bad, but the problem is, is. It spirals and I'd need to drink more and more and more to escape that emotion. So that's the first sign. The second sign is having failed attempts to moderate. So if you're repeatedly telling yourself that I'm only going to have like two drinks on a Friday and one drink on a Saturday, and then you drink more, this is another massive sign. Listen, this was me for 10 years.

Speaker 1:

I always said to myself I was going to moderate. There was probably a handful of times in my life where I was intentionally getting drunk. Most of the time I'd say, all right, I'll just have one and then see what happens. Or I'd actually promise myself I'm only gonna have one, two, three drinks, and nine times out of 10, I wasn't sticking to it. Another big thing that would happen is I might stop for a period of time.

Speaker 1:

But if you keep telling yourself this and you keep failing I don't want to sound too brutal, but it's going to be like a sledgehammer to the face. But you're lying to yourself. You're lying to yourself. It's not going to be different this time. The drug remains the same. Alcohol is still one of the most addictive drugs on the planet, regardless of how you promise yourself. It's going to be different this time. The drug never changes. Moderation is a fallacy. The best thing you can do for yourself is change the way that you view alcohol and then make a decision. Make one decision and then be done with it. It's not going to be different this time, it's not going to be different next time. It's the same drug. This keeps happening. Maybe it's time to do something different. If you do want to do something different, don't forget to go to soberclearcom. Learn about that.

Speaker 1:

But now let's get into number three. The third sign is you're starting to engage in risk-taking behavior. This might mean driving after drinking, thinking it's going to be okay. It might mean risking certain medications with alcohol and I'm not going to sit here and list a million bad decisions that you could make. But what happens when you drink is we don't think about the consequences of what could happen later on down the line. It's all in the moment and we just want to feel good now. So, for example, with drink driving, people just want to be in their own environment and get themselves home. They don't want to pull out their phone, get a taxi, go and pick the car up the next day, which is obviously the right thing to do. But when people are drunk in the moment they don't think this far ahead and listen. When it comes to risk-taking behavior, sometimes I don't think I should be a lie.

Speaker 1:

I try to keep this channel relatable. I try to keep it on topic on alcohol, but when I was drinking, when I was growing up, I made some of the most ridiculous life choices ever Going out drinking with criminals, with people that have just got out of jail when I was 18. Drink driving completely blackout, drunk at three in the morning. See, this is the thing is that even though I was 16, I was still drinking like a lunatic. When I drank, I drank. I remember I was 16 and I had a 50cc scooter like a moped. I don't know if other countries do that. It's like a thing in England when you're 16, you're allowed a moped, 17, you're allowed to drive. So when I was 16, I was getting the moped, I remember driving it home, so drunk I walked in the door. It was like two put myself in some incredibly, incredibly dangerous situations.

Speaker 1:

Now the thing is is when I reflect and look back at this stuff, I think what was I thinking? But once I've got a few drinks in me, those thoughts disappear. I'm not thinking about the consequences of anything. And if you're starting to see this in your own life maybe not as extreme as my examples, but if you're starting to see it it is a sign because guess what? Maybe one day you're a little bit over the limit, you get pulled over, you've lost your license for a year. Maybe one day you're over the limit, kid runs out in front of you. You don't know, accidents can happen and I've met people, I've spoke to people, who have had their lives turned around because of this risk-taking behavior.

Speaker 1:

Now the fourth sign is in memory gaps, and they're becoming much more common. So if you're regularly experiencing blackouts or your memory's just not really what it used to be, this is a real, real sign. This can be a massive, massive sign that it's time to change. The scary thing for me was this started happening even if I didn't drink too much. Sure, if I went out and drank 10 pints, I'm probably going to black out, especially if I was drinking on an empty stomach. But then there would be times where I might drink three to four pints and still have these massive lapses in my memory and that got scary and I've had some pretty scary blackouts and I can actually still remember the feeling of waking up and not having any recollection, of getting home having no idea what happened. You know I've had some pretty scary blackouts in some pretty nasty areas. The thing is is I'd love to tell you more about my blackouts but, to be frank, I can't remember. And that's the scary thing. Maybe I said something to the wrong person that night. I don't know, but the consequence of a blackout can be so severe it can end in death. You just don't know.

Speaker 1:

The fifth sign is in a declining physical health. This is when you might have things like unexpected digestive issues, weight gain. Your blood work might not look great. You might get some bad results with your liver. If you ever get blood work done, you might be getting headaches. If you're starting to see physical health scares, this is one of the biggest signs of all.

Speaker 1:

What happened to me was the more I drank, the more I could feel it in my health. Now, if you have drank for a long time, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you've never really drank a lot, you won't kind of get this. But I felt unhealthy. The more I drank, the worse I'd feel. I could just feel like I was poisoning every cell of my body, which I was, but I could really feel it. I could feel the shakes and it's really hard to describe, it's really hard to put it into words, but I just knew I was battering my body, I was beating it and when I'd wake up with a hangover it's like I could feel it all rattling around in my brain. But then I've also had specific things that have happened, like I once threw up blood on a computer after a night out, scared the life out of me. Actually, that scared me into stopping drinking for like six months. When I was drinking, I started putting on weight. The physical signs were very apparent. That's happening to you.

Speaker 1:

Another sign, the sixth sign, is in prioritizing drinking occasions. So this is when you start planning your schedule or planning activities around when you can and can't drink, and also thinking about the recovery, so what days and what nights you can drink more than usual. If you're starting to think like this, it's not normal and I'm not again, I'm not trying to belittle you, I've done this. But I'll give you an example. If I went out with somebody that didn't really drink a lot, let's say, I'm just going to catch up with a friend. We're going to have a dinner. They might have one drink. I have two drinks. Afterwards I'd have a plan in my head of where I'm going to go next, because I know that that I wanted to spend time with were drinkers, and if you didn't drink, I didn't really see a point of spending that much time with you. So instead of doing something good for myself, like I don't know going to a gym, spending time with my family, I'd always want to prioritize my drinking.

Speaker 1:

Now, the seventh sign is in the strain that happens in your relationships. Now this is when friends, family, loved ones, maybe children, spouses they're starting to express a concern and you can see that it's straining your relationships. Now this is big. When this used to happen when I drank, I would immediately get defensive oh, it's not that bad, I can stop anytime. It's just not that bad. I don't drink that much. It's not like I'm drinking vodka in the morning. It's not like I'm like that person, like this person. It's not that bad. And I was in denial. And when people are continually coming up to me and expressing concern and I keep just brushing them off, what do you think happens? People got sick of it. My mum has been to AA for over 20 years. That's how she got sober. It wasn't how I got sober, but that's worked for her that program and when I used to drink, she knew that I was drinking pretty heavily. So imagine the fear. Imagine how terrified she would have been.

Speaker 1:

Alcohol has destroyed romantic relationships. For me, it's destroyed friendships, and listen, I'm so grateful that I stopped drinking six years ago because this was only getting worse. A big thing in my relationships is I'm 32 years of age but I have an 18-year-old brother. We have a huge age difference Now. When I was drinking he was a lot younger, but now that I'm older, I want to set a good example to people around me, especially the younger ones. I don't want people coming up to me that love me, that are worried, sick about my drinking. Anyway, this actually touches my heart. This, like that, was a big thing for me and a big motivator to stop. But if your relationships are straining, maybe it's time.

Speaker 1:

The eighth sign is when you start losing interest in other things. This is when hobbies that you might used to have had just start taking a backseat to the drinking. Maybe in the past you enjoyed sport, skiing, maybe playing an instrument, maybe reading, and these days you just either don't seem to find the time or you've just kind of lost interest in those things altogether. They don't give you the pleasure that they once used to. The only thing that seems to give you pleasure is alcohol. Honestly, when I was drinking alcohol, I don't think I had a single hobby. I used to think of my hobby as drinking alcohol. Listen, that's not a hobby. There's nothing fun about doing this. How is this a hobby? It's ludicrous. It's not a hobby. It's drug addiction and there's no other way to put it.

Speaker 1:

The ninth sign is in the financial impact. So if you're spending an increased amount of money on alcohol or it's causing a loss of productivity, this is huge. Think about the average drinker they're spending $150,000, $200,000 on alcohol over the course of a lifetime. But the problem is is that when people get older, they usually have more disposable income, so they end up drinking more and spending more drinking in restaurants, and it just goes up and up and up. And another big thing is the loss of productivity, especially if you've got a business or a career where there are promotions, there are clients that you might be missing out on, and this can be huge.

Speaker 1:

Now, I think one of the problems is when we drink we're so focused on the moment and feeling good that in the moment we don't really care. We order some things on Amazon after a few drinks, whatever we buy a round for a bunch of strangers in a bar. Who cares? I mean, I've done that a bunch of times. But when you do finally stop, that's when you'll see not only the gain in the money that you saved, but the lost potential of spending all that time drinking. You are capable of so much more. And the 10th and final sign is in withdrawal symptoms. If you're experiencing shakiness, anxiety, irritability when you're not drinking, then this is one of the telltale signs that you are actually drunk. 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.

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Leon Sylvester

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