Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear

Once I learned THIS I never drank alcohol ever

• Leon Sylvester

Share episode

➡️ Book a call here: https://soberclear.com/quiz?el=podcast

🎥 Want to learn how to control alcohol quickly? Watch a short explainer video that explains how our new, FIRST PRINCIPLES THINKING method has worked for 400+ clients 👉🏼: https://www.soberclear.com/new-2/?el=podcast

Watch THIS next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpST0HuNFGM

🔥 100% FREE SHORT MOVIE: How To Make Controlling Alcohol 🍺 Feel Like A Flick Of A Switch In Your Brain: https://www.soberclear.com/dark-control-now/?el=podcast

Send us a text

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. So I haven't touched a drop of alcohol for seven years, and it all happened after I learned this really simple thing. In fact, it's so simple that it's totally overlooked by 99% of the population. So today I'm going to break it down for you. So my name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of a coaching company called Sober Clear. I've not drank for seven years. I struggled with alcohol for almost 10 years and I've worked with hundreds upon hundreds of clients.

Speaker 1:

And I'm going to give you a different spin on things right now, because you might think I'm going to sit here and tell you that alcohol is a poison and it's a drug and all of a sudden you're going to be cured. No, if it was that simple, then nobody would drink. But I want to give you a thought experiment. I want you to imagine for a second that you were born in an alternate universe and in this universe, alcohol is totally illegal. You know, we've got the war on drugs. Well, in this country we've got the war on alcohol, right, like, alcohol is just a no-go, it's available but it's totally illegal, right? So imagine you're born into this country. So I don't know if you got this when you were at school, but when I was at school there was a lesson called PSHE and I think it was physical, social, health and I don't know economics, environment. Basically it was a class that we got that prepared us for life and you got things like sex education, you got things about racism, you got what else was there? Drug education, there were all these kinds of, like you know, life education things that we got taught at school. And I'll never forget they showed us this. It was like this made up documentary of drugs and the whole purpose of the documentary was, I think it was to scare us into not smoking weed, because you know, the big thing back then was like weed is this gateway drug and if you smoke weed it's going to lead to whatever God knows what right. So I remember seeing this documentary and you know drugs were seen as really bad. And then I remember there was another documentary on heroin and that one like I mean the one with weed. It was like a bunch of friends having fun. It didn't look that bad. If I'm honest, right, I'm not saying that it persuaded me to take drugs, but like I watched it and I was like I still kind of want to do it. When I watched the heroin documentary I thought, oh my gosh, like that stuff that is nasty.

Speaker 1:

Now imagine this In the alternate universe. In school they don't show heroin documentaries or marijuana gateway drug documentaries. What they do is show alcohol documentaries. And in this alternate universe there are two types of documentaries they show on alcohol. The first is the scientific side. They show exactly what alcohol is. They show how it impacts the body, how it destroys pretty much every cell it comes into contact with, how it's a known carcinogen that causes cancer.

Speaker 1:

If they knew about our universe they'd know that it kills 95,000 Americans each year. Globally it kills hundreds of thousands of people. So they'd show this side of things. And then on the other side of it, they'd show how it damages the individual on a societal and an individual level. So it might show the impact that it has on somebody's family. It might show somebody getting a phone call from a doctor saying you've got cancer, you've got cancer of the pharynx, you've got cirrhosis of the liver, and the documentary shows the real, raw reality of alcohol and it kind of portrays it in the same way that it portrays heroin, like in our society.

Speaker 1:

Because I don't know about you. I mean, listen, I took drugs, right, I've taken a lot of drugs in my life. A lot of my friends took a lot of drugs, but heroin was always the one where it was like whoa. If you go that far, you're a drug addict. But I promise you this right now if there was an alternate universe where alcohol was discovered today, there would be documentaries in every school, there would be news, there would be, you know, there'd be so much conditioning about not using this drug because of the damage that it can do to society and to the individual, nobody would dare drink it.

Speaker 1:

It's quite interesting to think of it this way, right? So I said I learned something and it got me to stop drinking. Well, if that's what alcohol is a cancer-causing, poisonous, toxic substance that isn't for human consumption, if that's what it actually is, then what did I learn? Because you already know that. I already knew that when I drank. In fact, most people know that. If actually there was a study done that showed that most people don't know that alcohol is a carcinogen. Very interesting, it is a carcinogen, but anyway we know that it fucks our body up. Yet so many people, millions of people, tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people still choose to drink it. But why? Well, think about it for a second right. Think about how that documentary on heroin conditioned my mind to never touch the stuff. I've been offered it right In parties. You know when I drank I was around the wrong people. I've been offered it. I know people that have died from that drug. I'd never touch it because I was conditioned from day one of being born to know that that is where you don't go.

Speaker 1:

In our society, alcohol is not seen that way at all, despite killing more people, despite doing more harm, despite doing more damage, despite costing the economy so much more. Now, what do we see alcohol as? Just go and turn on an advertisement for alcohol? We don't see somebody in an abandoned flat shooting up heroin into their arms with no money left. Does alcohol do that to people? Yes, are there people that may smoke heroin casually and never get fully addicted to people? Yes, are there people that may smoke heroin casually and never get fully addicted to it. Yes See, there's always a spectrum with drugs, but with alcohol they don't ever show us the spectrum of destruction and death and despair. They show us the glamour, the sophistication, the good times, the happiness.

Speaker 1:

Right, we go to the doctor. Right, we say we've got a drinking problem. What do they say? Oh, just drink less. You know, we've got these recommended daily allowances One, two units a day, no problem. Who the fuck listens to that advice? Anyway, Alcohol's a drug for crying out loud. If I go to a doctor and I say, dude, I've got this problem with crack cocaine, it's like yo, get yourself into a rehab, you're a drug addict. I go and say I've got a drinking problem, don't we all? It's madness, right.

Speaker 1:

So what did I learn about alcohol? Why do I keep saying I learned something? Well, do you know what I learned? Nothing? I did the opposite. What I had to do to get control of my drinking and when I say control, I mean I had the choice and I always choose to not drink it. I can drink if I want to. I never choose to drink.

Speaker 1:

What I had to do was I had to unlearn all of the stuff that I've been told since day one of being born. I almost feel like I've now watched the heroin documentary for alcohol. So I stopped seeing it as something that adds value to my life. You know, when I see James Bond ordering his martini shaken, not stirred you know, looking all cool and confident and cocky and sexy and thinking he's the man, I don't see the man. I see somebody drinking a drug. When I see, you know, a couple get married and they're having a glass of champagne, I don't see the champagne as anything that adds anything to that event. Yeah, sure, I'm happy for the people getting married, but I see them drinking a drug and I think I just killed a mosquito. I hope I did, because I don't want to get dengue fever again. I got dengue fever last year. I'm so scared of mosquitoes at the moment. Hang on, anyway, back to it. So what I had to do was unlearn these ideas that were put there by somebody else that alcohol is a good thing. Right, because that is how society sees alcohol, whether we like it or not.

Speaker 1:

I never forget, you know, my first week of university. You have this thing called Freshers Week. I don't know if you have that in the States. Freshers Week in England is when you know, the first week of university. You've got all the first year students and everybody goes out every single night, gets absolutely blasted and listen. It is what it is. But the teachers would always laugh. They'd be laughing at how hungover everybody was. It's the first week, you know, everyone's just getting accustomed to it, First time being away from home, and at the time, you know, I didn't think much of it. I probably laughed as well. I was probably hungover as well. But when I look back, what happens? Everybody was coming back off a crack binge, right? I feel terrible. What would the teachers think then? You took crack cocaine.

Speaker 1:

No alcohol, alcohol is in a different category and what did it for me was unlearning the ideas that were put there. I don't know who they were put there by right. My theory is that you know big alcohol. These huge alcohol companies want us to see alcohol a certain way because guess what? It creates more product sales. I don't believe governments are really that bothered about it because they get so much money from tax. And do you know what? Most politicians are probably drunks themselves, except Donald Trump. Very interesting fact Donald Trump has never touched alcohol in his life. But politicians aren't bothered about it. You know they're more interested in keeping power. So if they were to, you know, start banning alcohol and start having, you know, campaigns against alcohol. Guess what? That's going to create uproar in the people and they're going to lose their positions of power. So it's never going to happen. So we don't need to learn anything.

Speaker 1:

The trick to not drinking and feeling totally okay with it is to be mindful. When you start seeing these messages, advertisements, right, I don't know publications on the news saying alcohol drinkers live longer. When you see that beautiful packaging in the seltzers I don't know if you've seen those seltzers now, but it looks like I'm about to drink some healthy vitamin I don't flipping know what flavoured electrolyte water. No, I'm drinking freaking poison. So when you see this, you need to understand that this is big business, this is big money.

Speaker 1:

And guess what? The people selling this stuff don't care. They don't care if you die from it. Nobody gives a shit. And I promise you, when you start seeing through these lies, through this nonsense, and you unlearn what you thought you know was true about alcohol. It's like a light bulb switch. Now this is what I help people do in my program. We use a mental model called first principles thinking and it's funny, a lot of my clients, when I teach them the stuff that I tell them, they always say dude. I feel like I've known this all along and it's because they have.

Speaker 2:

Seems so simple to say it. But whatever, for some reason, the approach that you developed made it almost like ah, oh, yeah, that makes sense, you know, instead of these other things about oh it's negative, oh it's bad, oh God, it's really hard, all this stuff. I think you cracked the code on this mental model thing.

Speaker 1:

You know that alcohol is bad.

Speaker 2:

You know that, but the sober clear program really helped me understand what alcohol was.

Speaker 1:

And once I really understood what alcohol was it really, really was easy to quit, because there was a time, maybe when you were a kid, maybe when you were a very young teenager, where you had the beliefs that I have now. But through the years, through different interactions with people, through different messages, new beliefs have come into our mind. So what I'm kind of doing is bringing it back to what it was like before. Those beliefs were there, and that's why people say it's like I've known this all along. I just needed somebody else to show me. Now, if you want to see if working together could be a good match, I am accepting new clients right now. If you want to see if working together could be a good fit, then all you need to do next is click the link in the description to book a free roadmap call. These are short, 30-minute calls where we just have a conversation, learn a bit more about your situation and then I'll explain an actual plan for you to follow to get in control of your drinking quickly.

Speaker 1:

My program is totally new. It's totally different. It's like nothing else out there. It's not like AA or rehab or therapy or stop drinking coaching. It's nothing like that, and one of the best things is it works quickly. It can work in as little as 48 hours. Usually it takes maybe three, four, five days, but it can work in as little as 48 hours. We've already helped clients from NASA, from Forbes, from PayPal. We've had $500 million CEOs in the program. We've had people who have run the largest companies in certain countries. We get some really awesome clients. But, most importantly, the clients don't matter. What matters is the program works. So click the link down below. Let's have a conversation and see if it will work for you. Have a great day. 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.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Leon Sylvester

Host