12 Signs Alcohol Drinkers Have Before Addiction Gets Them

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Signs Matter

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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 www.soberclear.com. I ignored these signs for almost 10 years. I told myself I was okay because I wasn't drinking litres of vodka and homeless. But having a problem with alcohol doesn't always need to involve a rock bottom. There are really 12 signs that you may have a problem, and in this video, I'm gonna break all of them down for you. Not to belittle you, but to really help you gain some awareness to the problem, if a problem even exists. Honestly, the final sign will be the hardest to admit, but if you can stick around till then, this might be the video you've been waiting to see. If we've not met yet, my name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of soberclear.com. I drank for almost 10 years, and now it's been seven years I've not touched a drop, which is crazy. Actually, it'll be eight years this year. I don't know where life goes, but my life has changed in every single way as a result of stopping drinking alcohol. Now, the first sign is that you can't stick to the limit that you set yourself. I've done this more times than I can count. You know, it'll be a Thursday night. And I'll tell myself, all right, tonight I'll go out, I'll have one beer, come back home, wake up fresh, all good. Then I'll wake up the next day, scratching my head, thinking, what just happened? I don't even remember ordering that second, third, fourth, fifth drink. I thought I was only gonna have one. You know, these negotiations that we make with ourselves, they sound so reasonable and logic at the time. But then as soon as the alcohol hits our bloodstream, it's like, well, you know, why not? Another one won't hurt, another one won't hurt, another one won't hurt, and before you know it, the plan's gone out of the window. Now, if you do this, then it's a sign that you may have a problem. But it doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It doesn't mean you're broken. The nature of alcohol is for you to drink one and want to drink more. So it happens to most drinkers. And if you want the honest truth, people who are those normal drinkers, they don't even make these rules. They literally have a drink and that's it. So even starting to negotiate with yourself and promising yourself you'll have less and whatever, then it might be a sign you have a problem. And this leads us to the second sign, which is pretty exhausting. And the second sign is that you've made a conscious effort to cut down or stop and failed. This is almost like a bargaining phase. We know deep down that we're drinking and we don't really want to drink, so we try to fix it. We tell ourselves, you know, I don't know, dry January, right? January the first comes around and you're not gonna drink all of January. Maybe it's Lent, maybe you're not gonna drink through the summer, I don't know. But maybe you've done this and then gone back to drinking. Or maybe you've managed to take the entire month off, but then as soon as that 30-day hits or 31st day hits or whatever it is, as soon as it hits, you're back drinking even more than before. This used to happen to me. I told myself I wasn't gonna drink for let's say a month, and then on day seven, I'd be feeling better. Because usually there would have been a catalyst that got me to want to change. Maybe it was a really bad hangover or something. And then as soon as I felt a bit better, that's when the bargaining would begin. Well, you know, it's you're feeling good, you're not that bad now. Whatever. Maybe this time we'll be different, maybe you can control it. Oh my gosh. You know, it's just been more. I don't even want to talk about it. Like it just happened all of the time. Just think about it for a second logically. If I drank poison unexpectedly, would I need to negotiate with myself to not drink that poison again for 30 days? Well, the answer is no. But that's what I was doing with alcohol. I was drinking a poison. I wasn't aware it was a poison, but I'm drinking this poison and then negotiating with myself to drink less or stop, and it doesn't make any sense. Once you start to see alcohol for what it is, this is when the desire goes away. You don't try and stop for 30 days, you don't try and stop at all. You see it for what it is, you stop seeing it as something that adds value to your life and you move on. If you want to help getting into that state of mind, there are two options. You can either read my book, The 48-hour alcohol reset, or you might want to apply to work with me directly, one-on-one. If you go to the description of this video, you can find a link to actually order the book, or you can fill in an application to work directly with me. But once I got there, I never drank again. And this brings us to sign number three. The third sign is that you plan your day around drinking. And this is where you really start to lose your freedom. When I was drinking, my schedule wasn't really run by me. It was run by drinking. I started to do these mental gymnastics just to make sure that I could drink. Maybe I got an invite from two different people. And I knew that person A didn't drink. I thought they were boring. And person B, I knew that if I met them, then we'd be having some beverages. And I'd choose person B almost every single time. You know, it even got so bad that I actually started to choose jobs and careers that I knew that drinking was going to be involved in. When I finished university, I went to London thinking I could go and work in recruitment. And part of the pull to that is I knew that alcohol was involved in it. It's pretty sad, and I'm almost ashamed to tell you, but I did it. You know, I really started to design my life around drinking, and I was a slave. I was a slave to this drug. I was a slave to this poison. And it's sad, but it's what I did. And if you're starting to think, okay, well, if I go here, if I do this, if I live my life this way and I can't drink, and you're starting to feel some sort of fear, and you're actually spending time planning your day thinking where you can and can't drink, it's a sign. It's a sign that something's not quite right. And all this boils down to is fear. It's fear that you can't live your life and enjoy it the same way if you're not drinking. And it's nothing more than self-deception or drug addiction. Now, the fourth sign is that hiding your drinking or even lying to people about how much you've drank. Because you know that if people really knew what was going on, they'd be worried. So I'm not trying to call you a liar. Maybe you've done this out of love. Maybe you've hid your drinking because you don't want to upset people and you think it's all okay. I'm sorry, but this isn't normal. If you're at a party and you know, you finish your drink quickly so you can get another one and everybody thinks it's the same drink. If you've done things like this, then I mean so have I, but it's a sign that something's not quite right. If your wife says, Have you been drinking tonight? and you say, Yeah, I had one or two and you've really had five or six, it's not good. That's no way to live your life. And I've done this. You know, I remember going to work with a stinking hangover, and somebody said, Can I smell alcohol in your breath? And I'm like, uh, it's mouthwash. And it and I knew when I'm saying it, I'm like, they're gonna know I'm lying, but they can't exactly push and argue, but what a sad way to live. Why do we do this? Like, why do we do this? Well, we want everybody to think that we're normal drinkers. We've got it under control. There's nothing normal about lying about your drinking. You're hiding an addiction to a drug. Now, sign number five, again, is pretty terrifying. The fifth sign is that you've started to have blackout and memory lapses. You know, I've had it before where I've drank so much that I've woken up the next day, seen food on the side that I've got from some takeaway on when I'm walking home, and I just have no memory of it. I look at my phone, I've seen texts at one o'clock in the morning, and I'm thinking, what even happened? Maybe you've had it where you've seen a bruise and you're you've just got no recollection of where it came from. When blackouts start showing up, it's a major sign. It happened to me, and I'd wake up with this panic and this adrenaline of what just happened? It's terrifying. And I know it doesn't happen to everybody, so you might not relate to this point, but when you've flooded your system with so much poison that your brain stops recording memories, it ain't good. If you took a medication for a headache and it made you forget the last four hours, you'd sue the doctor. You'd never take that pill again. You'd be warning everybody, don't take that headache medication. But alcohol, we laugh it off. Whoa, what a crazy night that was. And then next weekend, we're doing it again. If you're blacking out, your body is screaming at you to stop this drug. Now, sign number six is that you're literally drinking to get rid of withdrawal. And that doesn't do anything to help you. It's actually just prolonging an addiction. Because the day after drinking, you feel hungover because your brain is just totally out of balance. And by drinking again the next day, you're literally just kicking a can down a road. You're keeping yourself trapped in a loop where the medicine is the poison and the poison is the medicine. People without alcohol addiction do not do this. If a healthy person gets food poisoning, they don't start eating rotting sushi the next day. If you're using alcohol to function in the morning or to get over a heavy night, you may have crossed the line. Anyway, let's get into sign number seven. The seventh sign is that work or personal responsibilities are starting to slip. Maybe you've thought of yourself as a high-functioning drinker. You get the job done, you make money, you're there for your family. But maybe cracks are starting to show. Might start small, you might just be late one day, you might miss a client email. And I'm gonna tell you something I've never told anybody before, but this happened to me when I was a personal trainer. So when I first stopped drinking alcohol for a prolonged period of time, I started a personal training business and it all was going so well. For the first time, I was achieving things, I was going in the right direction, and I relapsed. And I remember I got a text from a potential client, and he's like, Leon, you know, I want to train, blah, blah, blah. And I'm hungover. And I'm like, I just couldn't bring myself to message him. And I remember seeing this man, this young man, with a different trainer in the gym. And I was just thinking, no, I can't believe it. It it's the cracks are starting to show. And I tried to stop drinking. That I thought that that might just trigger me to say, all right, enough is enough, but it didn't. And if these kind of things start happening in your life, it's a sign you may have a problem. And maybe you think nobody notices, but people will notice. They'll notice you're more irritable. They might notice a slight shake in your hand. They might smell something on your breath. They might see your performance dropping. Your family might notice you're less present. Are you telling me that you want to trade your potential for a drug? Are you trading your career, your family life, your ambition for a glass of ethanol? Now, the eighth sign is that your significant other is really paying attention and starting to make comments. Or maybe it's got so bad that they've said enough is enough. Now that's a very obvious sign, but maybe they're just making small comments that seem like not a big deal, but they're really saying something. I've seen marriages end as a result of drinking alcohol. But a marriage ending is the tip of the iceberg because the person who gets a divorce would have had multiple small events that have led up to it. So just pay attention. Pay attention to those little comments that you might be hearing. Now, the ninth sign is that you're getting restless when you go too long without a drink. Maybe you've had two drinks, you're in a social event, and you really want a third, but for some reason you can't get one, and you're really feeling agitated. You're feeling irritable, you're feeling restless. Maybe you come back after a hard day of work, it's 5 p.m. and you're just desperate for that drink, and you're just feeling like I need it. And then you have it and everything's calm and relaxed, and every time you drink, you're just you can't wait for it. It's a sign. That's drug addiction. You don't feel that way thinking about a croissant. You don't feel that way thinking about having a chicken. You might be excited, but it's not changing your state totally. If your drinking is causing a huge change in your state, it's another sign. Now, sign number 10, and the tenth sign is that you need alcohol to feel normal. It's a very sad stage, but you really just want to get back to this baseline. You don't get a buzz, you don't get excited. It's kind of like you feel bad, and then by drinking, you just feel normal. And when you're not drinking, you just feel this depressed, flat feeling. You're not drinking to feel high, you're drinking to feel normal. Maybe earlier in your life you were confident, you were talkative, sociable. And now just to get to that what was once normal feeling, you must drink. The drink is like a tax. There's no escape. You just do it because you have to. But the weird thing is that alcohol is causing you to feel that lower baseline anyway. The solution is to stop drinking. But if you feel like you can't function like a normal human being without ethanol in your system, it's a problem. You're becoming chemically dependent on a drug. Now, the 11th sign is that you've started to do things or you've done things that the sober you would never dare to do. I'm talking about drink driving. I'm talking about sending the wrong text. I'm talking about arguments. I might be talking about fighting. See, good, honest people can become dishonest when they're under impairment. And you might have done things you regret. You might have done things that you are ashamed of. This is a big part of a 12-step program. It's going, it's making amendments to people because when we're under the influence, we may do things that we're just not proud of. And that might not be you. You might be a good person. And in fact, you probably are a good person. You're probably a great person. But when you drink, you're not being that person. If you've done things you're ashamed of under the influence, it's a sign. And this brings us to the final sign. Out of all of these signs, this is the one that may have been happening the entire time in this very second. The twelfth sign is that you've been listening to this list, hoping that you don't take too many. As I was going over these points, blackouts, hiding the drinking, failed attempts, what was your brain doing? Were you thinking, oh, well, at least, you know, I'm not that bad, I'm not that bad, this one, okay, whatever. Were you negotiating with yourself? Were you looking for a loophole? Were you looking for someone to say, it isn't that bad? Well, I'm sorry, but the desire to find the proof is a problem in itself. If I made this video talking about orange juice, you wouldn't feel that way. Which is why, if you've made it through to the end of this video, you should click the video on the screen right now because I'm gonna show you 20 things you must avoid doing if you want to stop drinking. Definitely check this one out next. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking podcast by Soberclear. If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit www.sobaclear.com.