This is why quitting alcohol sucks (i can't take it anymore)
Apr 17, 2024
Leon Sylvester
In today's episode I will be sharing the truth on why quitting alcohol is so difficult for most people! If you're on your journey to sobriety than this episode is a must listen. https://www.soberclear.com/dark-control-now
📞 Book a Roadmap Call to see if the Soberclear Program and First Principles Thinking could be a good match with you: https://soberclear.com/bookcall-ytd
In today's episode I will be sharing the truth on why quitting alcohol is so difficult for most people! If you're on your journey to sobriety than this episode is a must listen. https://www.soberclear.com/dark-control-now
📞 Book a Roadmap Call to see if the Soberclear Program and First Principles Thinking could be a good match with you: https://soberclear.com/bookcall-ytd
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. For close to 10 years I struggled to stop drinking alcohol, yet for the past five and a half years that I haven't drank, it's been easy. I've been around alcohol countless times and I have no desire to drink. There has been a dramatic shift and as a result of the decision to not drink alcohol, every single thing in my life has got better. But the title of this video isn't particularly positive and in this video I'm going to tell you why quitting alcohol sucks. I'm not going to sugarcoat anything in this video, but don't worry, we'll do our best to end on a positive note. So whenever I've scrolled through YouTube and I've seen a few videos about this person not drinking for 30 days, this person not drinking for 90 days 20 benefits here, 30 benefits there it's almost like the world is split in two, and we've got people on this side that are always talking about the good things that happen when you stop drinking. They'll talk to you about the great clarity, the great health, the great relationships, all the great things that will and do happen. And I have experienced all of those benefits. When I stopped drinking five and a half years ago, you know, I immediately lost weight. I immediately got back to the gym. I literally probably quadrupled my income in three months because I went from working a job into having a business almost instantly. I just went into massive action mode and changed my life in every single way. So I'm not gonna discredit these people and in fact, if you go on my channel, you're gonna see me talking about the very same stuff. But if it was all positive and it was all like rainbows and happiness and positivity, then nobody would ever fail to stop drinking because they'd just see all these benefits, they'd see all the negatives of alcohol and then that would be it, they'd move on with their life. But that's not reality.
Speaker 1:
And today, in this video, I want to share reality. I want to share what actually happens to you when you stop drinking for a prolonged period of time. See, when you stop drinking for 90 days, 30 days, six months, like the other YouTubers like to talk about, what happens is you have this point of contrast, you have somebody that was really you know. They were down low, they had no energy, they were tired, they were lethargic, they had low self-confidence. They were overweight? Well, maybe not, but you get the point right. Alcohol took them to a place where they could see negatives. So, of course, when they remove the negative thing of alcohol, of course all those things start disappearing. They feel better, they wake up earlier, they have a better quality night of sleep, they save a bit of extra money, they're working a little bit harder and they just start stacking these wins. So then, when they make a video about not drinking, they have this severe point of contrast of how life was when they drank and then they're comparing it to how they feel 30, 90 days, a year later.
Speaker 1:
But I don't see a great many deal of people talking about being five and a half years without a drink. I mean, they're out there. But quite often we get these motivational videos of how I stopped drinking for 30 days, 90 days, six months. And listen, all those things are going to happen. I am definitely not disagreeing in any way with those individuals. I've had the same message and I have the same message. It will change your life forever, but eventually you will reach a place where your baseline of your life has just improved. You'll reach a place where not waking up hungover is just the norm. You'll reach a place where being fit and healthy is just the norm. Having a great night of sleep is just the norm. Now, one time in my personal life when I reached that place where it was now the norm, where making X amount of money was the norm and being healthy was the norm and having a good relationship was the norm, that's when a voice in my head kind of started peeking up like hey, leo, life's good. Now you can have one or two. As you know, if you've watched my channel for a while, you'll know that in the past I've had that thought.
Speaker 1:
I did end up drinking one or two and then nine months later destroyed everything back at ground zero. Here we go again. But why am I talking to you about this? Well, I'm going to be 100% transparent with you right now, but earlier on this year I had a very stressful period. I had around two to four weeks of high, high pressure and high stress. Firstly, there was a major family issue that I can't share the ins and outs of it, right, but it was causing a tremendous amount of emotional pain and I felt under extreme pressure and stress. Then me and Orr, my girlfriend, we'd been traveling, we'd moved around, we moved here, we moved there and then work started piling up slowly, slowly. Slowly I had pressure because I had to film more YouTube videos.
Speaker 1:
And now my business, soberclearcom, where we help business owners and professionals stop drinking. It's certified by something called LegitScript and LegitScript basically goes and looks at claims that you make and how you portray things, and then they go and fact check everything. So I then received an email from LegitScript saying Leon, please can you provide factual evidence and statistics why you use this language on your website, why you say stopping drinking is easy, why you say you've got a 92% success rate, and I can easily get all that data. But it's again another piece of stress, which, by the way, in the end, they're totally fine with the language that I use on my website. They verified it, they fact-checked it, so that ended up being quite a good thing that happened, but it's a high pressure thing.
Speaker 1:
That just landed in my inbox and there was around 10 things like this. Now I'm not going to go and name every single one of them. But these were things that I couldn't just sit down and fix them in like an hour here, an hour there, an hour here. Some of these things were going to take a couple of weeks to resolve and it all seemed to happen all at once. It was like you know the same when you're waiting for a bus, then five always come at once. Well, it felt a little bit like that. And listen, I was waking up and the moment that I'd opened my eyes, I'd be like, oh right, the stress would hit and I'd go through my day, I'd do everything that I had in my power to do, but the problems were still there, they still existed. So the stress just didn't magically disappear.
Speaker 1:
And I really wanted to share this with you today because I want to be honest, I want to be real about what it's actually like to not drink alcohol, to not resort to this drug, and about what it's actually like to not drink alcohol, to not resort to this drug. And this is why quitting alcohol sucks. Listen, when you've got that point of contrast, quitting alcohol is amazing. You'll feel so good. But I promise you one, two, three years down the line it will be normal, no-transcript. But life is still going to throw problems at you. We could get an email from XYZ with this bad news and that bad news.
Speaker 1:
And just because you don't drink doesn't mean that you're not going to have to deal with BS. You might get this person wanting your time, this thing that you did in the past. Somebody wants this, somebody wants that, and sometimes not doing these things can have tremendous consequences. So it increases the pressure, increases the stress, and you've got to deal with it. So when you've got these people that are saying, yeah, stopping drinking, better sleep, better energy, it's true, but it's not the be all and end all of living your life as a non-drinker. And when I say a non-drinker I mean somebody that doesn't want to go back to drinking.
Speaker 1:
Because, if you think about it, if I hadn't changed my perception of alcohol, if I hadn't ref own personal strength, if I was to ever face a difficult situation like this, with pressure, with stakes, with stress but I still think that alcohol is good at stress relief is good at helping me relax what do you think is going to happen? I'm not going to look at those situations and think, yeah, I'm going to be fine, I can deal with this, you know, I can get it done. I've done this kind of stuff in the past. I can do it again. I'm just going to want to escape the emotion. I'm not going to want to even take that stress on board and I don't want to be negative. I want to be realistic. I want to kind of not necessarily warn you, but kind of share what happens, because I know a lot of people that watch this. They're struggling to stop drinking and those motivational videos will help. But I know there's a lot of people on this channel that are a few months into it, a year into it. But I'll tell you one thing and I will promise you one thing when I've been dealing with these problems, I'm equipped to deal with them.
Speaker 1:
Stress isn't necessarily a bad thing. And using alcohol as a stress reliever to escape the problems and give you a moment of silence, of escapism, of relief, of peace, what happens the next day? You wake up, you're lethargic, you're tired, you can't really think straight. Do you think the problems have gone away? Do you think the stress-causing things have disappeared? No, what happens is you wake up the next day and you're not at 100%, and then you struggle to even deal with them, and then you've just built this reference experience of feeling stress, having a difficult situation to deal with and escaping, and, because I've not drank for five and a half years, I have built reference experience after experience after experience of feeling stressed and coping coping naturally coping with it and dealing with the issue.
Speaker 1:
Now, I'm not saying that from a place of I'm better than anybody, or anything like that.
Speaker 1:
What I am trying to say, though, is that you need to stick on this path, and when the hard things come, when the challenges come, when the stressful situations come, you are just going to be 1000 times stronger.
Speaker 1:
You'll be equipped, you'll be mentally prepared and you'll be ready to deal with those situations one by one, and every time you do that, you'll get a little bit stronger, a little bit more self-belief, a little bit more self-confidence, and if you keep sticking with your decision and you keep not drinking and you don't resort to that drug, in three years time you could go back to the city you grew up in, and people won't even recognize you Like who's that. They look healthy, they look happy, they're smiling, they're standing up straight, they look confident, they're looking me in the eye, they're making eye contact. Who is this person you know? Look at this person with their family around them and look how their kids admire them. These are the kind of things that happen when you stick to that decision to not drink alcohol, and that's exactly what I want to happen. Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear If you want to learn more about how we work with people.