How Quitting Alcohol Made My Life Worse...

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Stop Drinking Podcast

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. So I drank alcohol for the best part of 10 years. I'd tried going to AA meetings. I tried using willpower. I'd begged God to help me. I've dropped to my knees in a church. I've read Stop Drinking books. I tried everything, but seven years ago everything shifted.

Speaker 1: 0:37

I started to see alcohol as a poison, as ethanol as what it actually is, because if we boil it down to its core, what is alcohol? A disgusting, foul-tasting substance that really adds nothing to our lives, and it took me years to get to that place. But once I got there, stopping drinking became the most logical and effortless choice that I'd ever made in my life, despite the 10 years of just gritting through it and fighting the urge. None of that stuff was working. But one thing I've never shared is how quitting alcohol actually made my life worse, and this is something that is really uncomfortable for me to talk about. But the goal of my channel is not to sugarcoat things. What I do is really try to give you a realistic look at what happens when you stop drinking, because I want you to be prepared. I don't want you to stop drinking alcohol and then all of a sudden get hit with this massive roadblock and be like whoa, what do I do here? Because you'll probably do what I always ended up doing and this little voice in my head would perk up and this great idea would come out of nowhere of hey, leon, just have one drink. Just have one drink. The hundred other times you tried it and it failed. Don't worry about that. This time will be different. Go on, lad, just have one, and then the cycle would repeat. That's what I don't want to happen to you, so I'm hoping, by being honest with you, you're prepared. If we haven't met yet, my name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of SoberClearcom and what I do on this YouTube channel is I help people stop drinking alcohol. I do have a paid service, a coaching program, and if you want to apply for that and see if working together could be a good match, you can click the link in the description. You can apply for the program and book a free consultation, and an academic psychologist, also wrote a report about the method, about the science behind how it works, how it gets a 96% success rate, and you can actually access that report by going onto Google Scholar and searching Sober Clear System. There you can learn more about the science behind what we do. But let me explain how quitting alcohol made my life worse.

Speaker 1: 2:26

When I drank alcohol, I would go through a cycle. What I mean is I'd feel a certain way and then I'd drink, and the things that would lead me to drink, the feelings that I'd have. There was a spectrum, right. Sometimes the feeling would be a craving. I'd just be like F it, I'm going to drink. But often it wasn't always a craving that would lead me to drink. There would be an emotion that came before the craving.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Now the problem is during the 10 years that I drank, for basically any emotion that I'd feel would be linked with alcohol. So let's say, maybe I'd be out socializing and just feel a little bit in my head, a little bit shy, and immediately just have a drink. Maybe it was a good feeling, maybe I was celebrating something, some win, maybe somebody else's win, a wedding or some kind of event, and I'm thinking, well, I need to cheers. I need a drink. But what would happen is I would get an emotion and immediately I would then be hit with this idea of drinking alcohol, and what this is is a form of escapism. I was escaping things. But the problem with doing this is, after doing this for 10 years is I might have something that I'm not happy about in my life and immediately I would just drink. And when you do that for multiple years, you never really live up to your potential. You never know what you're truly capable of. So why do I say that quitting alcohol made my life worse? Well, it all was temporary and I will show you how I fixed it.

Speaker 1: 3:45

But when I stopped drinking alcohol, guess what? Well, I went through an adjustment period. It took a few days where I didn't feel quite right, but then that was it, and at the beginning I felt pretty damn good. My energy came back, my clarity came back. You know, I was feeling pretty on top of things. But then there was a shock factor. I really looked at my life and, with the new senses of clarity and with this energy and with feeling better, I was able to just look at the situation and the life that I'd created and I wasn't happy with it. And when I just stopped drinking alcohol, I had this new mentor in my life and he said something that was honestly like a punch in the gut. He said everything in your life is exactly how you want it. Whether that was unconsciously or consciously and honestly, I remember hearing that and I was like nah, I just wanted to cry. I was like, ah, and I looked at my life and I got real with myself.

Speaker 1: 4:34

I was overweight. I looked in the mirror. I'm bloated. I could see it all puffed out in my face. I looked at my bank balance and there wasn't one. In fact, I had a negative bank balance. I was in my overdraft. I remember thinking that I owe a family of money.

Speaker 1: 4:53

I'd failed at a business attempt in London as a personal trainer. I'd failed my career in recruitment in London after I'd graduated university. And now I'd moved back to Oxford where I was at university and I'm thinking well, what have I become Like? Everything's gone backwards. I didn't have a relationship that had ended because of alcohol. My social circle was, you know, I did have some good friends, but it wasn't great.

Speaker 1: 5:15

And I realized that when I stopped drinking alcohol. Guess what happened? Well, sure, at the beginning I felt amazing, but then it was like this punch in the gut. Reality hit me. In the past, I would ignore this stuff and I would use alcohol as a form of escapism. Okay, sure, I'm overweight, have a drink. Okay, sure, I don't have that much money, have a drink. Okay, life isn't going in the direction that I want it to, but in the moment, right now, at least I can have a drink.

Speaker 1: 5:42

So, whilst life didn't necessarily get worse, what happened instead is I got clarity on what life was really like, and that was painful. And when I got there, when I realized life's not that great, I had two options. I either accepted it and said, well, I give up Might as well, drink again. That was one path that I could have taken, or I could have done what I did and just take full responsibility for it. Because when I took this radical level of responsibility, guess what that gave me? That gave me permission to change. That gave me permission to redesign my life the way I wanted it to be, and it's exactly what I did. What my mentor said was you can become somebody else. The way that your life is right now is how you designed it, but you can change and whilst it was one of the most painful realizations that I ever had, it was the most empowering Because I knew that if I could stick with my decision to be a non-drinker and make that who I was and part of my identity, just I didn't drink anymore. That problem solved, I'm moving on with my life and as long as I could go towards something better better health, strength, good relationships, a business, a career, something digital. I wanted to do something like YouTube. If I could put all my time and energy into making myself better in these areas, then the feeling I had of defeat, failure. They started to get replaced and they got replaced with these small wins.

Speaker 1: 6:53

The thing is at the beginning is when you stop drinking alcohol. It isn't immediate. You don't suddenly wake up with a six pack or $10 million in your bank account from your business. You don't wake up with a perfect marriage on day one. It takes time, but the most important thing I did, and what I would recommend that you do as well, is when you stop drinking alcohol, is take note of the wins. Think about what you're actually grateful for If we can just seize the day and do what we can every single day to move in the direction of the life that we want, rather than just running away from alcohol. A week from now, you've done five workouts, you've spoke to 20 new people in your business, you've gone on a date with your wife and you've spent quality time with your children. Okay, sure, life's not perfect, but guess, what you're doing is you're moving in the right direction.