5 Things To AVOID When You Quit Alcohol in 2026

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Welcome And The Core Promise

SPEAKER_01 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 www.soberclear.com.

Hitting Rock Bottom Without Stopping

SPEAKER_01 0:22

When you vomit blood after a heavy night of drinking and you don't stop drinking alcohol, you know you've got a problem. That was me. That was me for close to 10 years. When I drank alcohol, it was 10 years of nonsense. Broken relationships, losing things, fighting, running out of money, health problems, vomiting blood. It was non-stop. And it was 10 years of this up and down roller coaster. Stopping, starting. Life goes good again, life goes down again. It was just a 10-year giant waste of time. So today, I want to make this video to really show you what you need to avoid if you're serious about quitting alcohol. These are the mistakes I made. I'm going to make this video for the younger version of me, the version of me that was struggling, the version of me that would have given anything to just watch this video to help me get through. Because when I stopped drinking alcohol, there wasn't that much information out there. There were good books, and you know, I read those books, but a lot of this stuff has just come through raw experience, raw experience of being punched in the face, beaten down, and then rebuilding myself. So I want to save you that pain today. I want to get you through it because I've already helped hundreds upon hundreds of clients do this. I mean, if you look on the screen now, you can see Gordon, you can see Kevin, you can see Colin, you can see I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. There's hundreds of people who have helped to stop drinking alcohol. This video is just going to give you a breakthrough. So let's jump straight

The Old Beliefs That Make Quitting Hard

SPEAKER_01 1:52

into it. The first thing you've got to do, and the first thing you've got to avoid, is you've got to avoid this old way of thinking. What is the old way of thinking? So the old way of thinking is that stopping drinking alcohol is going to be hard. It's going to be a lifelong process, and relapse is inevitable. If you go to the average person on the street who has told you that they're not going to drink alcohol again, and you ask them, how has it been? That is the majority of the population. Most people think that stopping drinking is hard. Why? Because they believe they are sacrificing something. They never change anything about their worldview, about their paradigm, about their relationship with alcohol. So they believe they're sacrificing something. So stopping drinking alcohol will always feel hard. Life is just a bit harder. You don't have your crutch. You don't have that thing to help you out anymore. The other thing people think is that it's going to be a lifelong struggle. This idea gets pushed by AA. You know, you've got a lifelong disease with no known cure. But also because people really believe they've sacrificed something, it's a lifelong struggle because we live in a world where alcohol will always be there. You walk into a bar, you go to a store, you go to a football game, you see the commercials. It's everywhere, right? So we think that because it's hard and because we live in a world with alcohol in it, it's going to be hard forever. Which leads us to the final thing. And that's that relapse is inevitable. Most people that stop drinking alcohol fail. I failed so many times. You know, it's it's like it's inevitable. 90% plus of people that stop drinking alcohol will end up drinking again. And that's sad because it doesn't need to be this way. So what you first need to do is you need to be okay with this idea that this is totally fucking wrong. And I've had enough of it, and I'm sorry for swearing. It gets to me. Because this is just nonsense. This, this, all of this is just a belief. This is a belief, this is a belief, this is a belief. It is not reality. It's they're beliefs. And beliefs can be changed. Beliefs are changed all the time. So I'll break it down further of how this is just total nonsense. But if you can't get past this, if you're thinking, what's this young man saying to me? He's off his head. Of course it's hard. Of course, most people. If you can't get past that, the rest of this video is not for you. If you can, let's continue. So that's the first thing. So you need to be totally, you need to totally be ready. Oh, I don't know what that's there for. My wife has put my daughter's name on the whiteboard. We had a baby recently. I'll tell you about that another time. Anyway, if you can't get past this, nothing's gonna help you. I'm sorry, nothing's gonna help you. So you've got to be willing to get rid of this, and instead, this new way of doing things is to just be willing to accept a new paradigm or a new worldview or new way of thinking, whatever you want to call it. If you can do that, then you're able to build up your understanding of alcohol and the world and addiction and this idea that stopping drinking is hard from the ground up. That's the most important thing, is it's approaching this whole problem with fresh ice, like you've never seen anything about alcohol before. And when you can do it and you can ignore society's views and the way that alcohol, the way that we've been conditioned to see alcohol, if you can ignore that and just build your own understanding, your own paradigm that isn't influenced by everybody else, I'm telling you, this will be flipped. It won't be hard. It'll be easy, it'll be the easiest thing you've ever done. It won't be a lifelong struggle, it will happen instantaneously. You'll make one decision to stop drinking alcohol, the fight is over. And the final thing is relapse isn't inevitable. Relapse is the last thing you'll ever think about because you will know in your heart that it's done, it's finished. That is possible for you, that's happened to me. I've helped hundreds of clients do it, but it all starts with the acceptance first, right? It starts with just being okay with this idea, these ideas that you've been fed your whole life are totally wrong. That's hard. That's hard to do. But if you can get past that, we're on to a good start.

Why Labels Keep You Powerless

SPEAKER_01 6:11

So the next thing you've got to avoid, you've got to drop the labels. The labels are gonna keep you stuck. And what do I mean by labels? Well, the labels are calling yourself an alcoholic, calling yourself disease, calling yourself powerless, calling yourself an addict. Listen, alcohol is one of, if not the most addictive drug in the world. If you drink a lot of alcohol, it dehydrates you. It also lowers your inhibitions. So now you've got these forces that are working against you that make you want to drink more. Then you've got this these ideas that are pushed on you 24-7, 365 days a year from day zero of being born. And we're supposed to believe that we are powerless alcoholics with a lifelong disease with no known cure. It's not true, right? It's not true. You gotta drop the labels. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not an alcoholic, you don't have a disease, you there's there's just nothing wrong with you. This idea that you are the problem has gotta go. It's all part of this old way of thinking. You ain't the problem. Do you know who you are? I'll tell you who you are. You're a strong individual. You're perfectly capable. You're perfectly capable of beating this problem and never looking back. There's nothing wrong with you. You, if you have a problem with drinking alcohol, that is because you got addicted to a drug. Nothing else. You're strong. And you can beat this and you can win and you can move on with your life. You know, people that start eating gluten and start having bad stomachs, they don't go to glutenholics anonymous for the rest of their life. No, they just make the association in their mind of like, okay, if I do this, this happens, end this. But with alcohol, we don't do it. Now, one of the problems with labeling yourself as powerless, weak alcoholic, is it can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. And what I mean is when I internalized this idea that I was an alcoholic, because I did go to AA, I went for three months, I really went with an open mind. I really tried to believe it and buy into it. But when what ended up happening is after 90 days, I ended up drinking again, but now I've got this story. I've got this story that the drug isn't the problem. The alcohol is not the problem. I'm the problem. So I have one drink. Oh, it's not that bad. Well, I mean, I'm an alcoholic. Destroy my life. You know, I I don't want to sound like a crazy person, right? But I believe that this label kills people. That's my belief. And I've seen it happen. I've told this story before, but you know, when I went to Narcotics Anonymous, which is another 12-step program, more focused around drugs, but alcohol can be part of that. There was a young man there, and uh he ended up putting three spoons of coffee in his coffee, mixed it up, and I said, Why are you putting three spoons of coffee in your coffee? And he went, Leon, don't you get it? I'm an addict. I want to get caffeinated. I was like, What? This guy ends up dying. He dies of a heroin overdose, he ended up relapsing, and it's like a tragedy. Now, I don't know what would have happened to that individual, regardless of whether he believed he was an addict, but he had internalized this idea so deeply and then dies from a drug overdose.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

I don't know. I'm not a fan. So you gotta drop the labels.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

So let's move

The Trap Of Counting Sober Days

SPEAKER_01 9:48

on. The third thing you gotta avoid. This one is massive. This one is massive.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Avoid counting the damn days.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

So this leads back to the idea that this is going to be a lifelong problem. So if you stop drinking alcohol and you make a true decision and you know that you're never gonna drink again, there is no counting of the days. There's one decision, and you might know how many days you've not drank for, but there's no sense of achievement. What I like to tell my clients is that I might not have drank for eight years, but the day that you decide to join me on that path, and you really decide to stop drinking alcohol, and you really started to see alcohol for what it is, you've fully built this paradigm, you are as much of a non-drinker as me. I've just got a few more reference experiences. I've just had a few more times where I've been in a social event or a stressful event and not drank that you don't have. But if you've made a decision, we don't need to count the days. You can know. I'm not saying, you know, it's a bad thing to know the days, but this idea that like you're putting a marker on a calendar of like, oh yes, I achieved one day without drinking. Oh, it's been two days. All that you're doing is telling yourself that the the longer away that you get from alcohol, the better that you're doing. What happens then? Oh, yeah, man. I mean, it's been 28 days. It's been such a hard time. Why can't I drink again? And but it all goes back to this idea that it's hard in the first place. If you think it's hard, if you believe you've given something up, it will feel like a win. You'll get a bit of a dopamine spike, you'll get to 10 days and you'll be thinking, yeah, this is going well. It ain't good. Counting the days is the easiest way to remind yourself that you've made a sacrifice. There's no sacrifice. There's nothing to give up. This is the thing. You don't give anything up. You just throw away a poison, and then you get in better shape. You're in a better relationship with your husband, your wife, your girlfriend. You're all of a sudden doubling your business, tripling your business, making $10 million, $100 million, I don't know. And you think you're giving something up. Just makes no sense. There's nothing to give up. So why what are we counting the days for? We don't need to count the days. We need to make decisions. We need to make one decision, stop drinking, move on, and forget about it. That was what I did. Every time I thought that the longer I go without drinking, the more of a non-drinker that I am, I ended up drinking again. But the day that I just decided I'm done, I can't begin to describe how much better it was. So again, don't count the days. Number

Why Trying To Moderate Backfires

SPEAKER_01 12:39

four, the next thing that you want to avoid doing is you need to avoid this one.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

This one is probably the biggest. Maybe number five is the biggest. The thing you want to avoid trying to do is you want to avoid controlling your drinking.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

See, when you count the days and your 30 days, your 60 days, your 90 days, life is gonna be better. I'm not saying that counting the days isn't going to improve your life because as long as you don't drink, things will get better. You know, your few pounds will drop off, maybe your wife is gonna be a bit happier with you, your husband's gonna be a bit happier with you, you're looking in the mirror, the bloat's gone, good things will start happening. That's happened to me. I mean, I had a period where I didn't drink for seven, eight, nine months, the longest I ever went. I was using willpower, mind you, but I went seven or eight, nine months, uh, had a personal training business, you know, just everything was going in the right direction, was getting quality grades at university. But I had this idea, I had this great idea that this time, now, you know, now don't worry about the previous nine years. Don't worry about that. You've stopped drinking seven, eight, nine months. And look at you, you know, you've got a momentum. Things are going well. Maybe this time it's gonna be different. But I hadn't changed my paradigm, right? I hadn't changed my paradigm. But more importantly than my paradigm is the drug hadn't changed. The drug still dehydrates you, the drug still lowers your inhibitions, the drug is still designed for you to drink one and then want to continue to drink it. That's not changed. But maybe it's gonna be different this time. Oh my gosh. What do you think happened? I don't even know how long it was. Four or five months later, I destroyed everything, was back at ground zero, building my life up again for the hundredth time. But this idea that is going to be different, I can just have one drink. I can have a couple of drinks at the weekend. Just don't even go there. I promise you, just don't even go there. And I'm smiling. I'm smiling now because it's been such a long time. And I shouldn't smile. Because when I actually thought I could control my drinking, I destroyed my life. You know, I was I was asking to borrow money off my family again. I'd have to go and move and live with a friend. Is it was an embarrassment. It was an absolute embarrassment. And I smile because, you know, I made it to the other side, but it's life or death sometimes, this. You know, that could have put me in a coffin. I could have said the wrong thing to the wrong person in a bar. I could have driven a car drunk. I used to do the stupidest things. So, controlling your drinking, I mean true control over alcohol is I can drink if I want to. I can go and have a beer right now. What's stopping me? But I have no desire. You know, I could also go and buy a crack. I don't know where to buy it, but I could go and buy some crack cocaine if I really wanted to. I don't do it. I have no desire, but I have a choice. But I always choose not to do it. That's control. There's no control in actually consuming alcohol, a poison that does nothing for you. Anyway,

Stop Replaying The Past Choose The Future

SPEAKER_01 15:56

the the biggest one here, sorry, is uh is is what we've got to do is we've got to avoid focusing on the past. This is the last thing that you want to do. What you don't want to do is, you know, I'm uh there's a I I gotta say, there's nuances. So there's a time and a place where focusing on the past makes sense, right? I've worked with people who have got PTSD. They need to go and focus on the past. They need to go and do some work. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of us don't. And I can't, you know, it's not medical advice, right? Like I'm not saying that that's 100% relevant to every single person on the planet, but for me, maybe for you, we can ignore it. And I mean that I say that we can ignore it because instead of digging up the past and creating this shame, this guilt, whatever it is that you're experiencing by focusing on that stuff, what ends up happening is, well, when we feel these negative emotions from bad things that have happened in the past, what's our default response? To escape. And what do we escape with? Hopefully not alcohol at this point. But that's been our go-to thing for so long. So I hear it all the time. People say, you know, I went to a therapist or I went and did AA step work and I had to go and make amendments to people, and by the end of it, I just wanted to freaking drink. You know, I've been talking about my drinking, I've been talking to this therapist about this bad thing in my childhood. And listen, I'm not saying that you don't need to do that, but most of us don't. And instead, what we want to replace this with is a relentless focus, relentless focus on the future. You know, instead of sitting there and making yourself into this victim, why not just get a gym membership, start, you know, pumping some iron again or doing some cardio, joining a run club, getting some quality food down you, spending time with your family, being there. Because instead of going to the past and just making yourself feel awful, why not just make you better? That's the ultimate thing that you can replace alcohol with is a better version of you for your family, for yourself, for your friends, for your community, for your colleagues, for everybody around you. This is the big thing that people don't realize is when you stop drinking alcohol, it's not just about you. It's about everybody around you. That single decision for just one person to stop drinking alcohol ripples to so many people. Why not replace alcohol with that? Why not just focus all your energy onto making you the best version of us?com.