Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear

6 Things To Expect At 6 Months Alcohol Free

• Leon Sylvester

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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. If you stopped drinking alcohol for six months, what can you expect? Well, after not drinking myself for almost seven years and through helping hundreds of clients get to the six-month mark, I'm going to unpack six things that you can expect when you go six months alcohol-free. Hey, but listen, I'm not going to be some motivational speaker here. That's just going to be like, hey, things are going to be great, happy days. No, I'm actually going to give you some of the things that you might not expect to happen, but I want to do it. So you're prepared. Don't get me wrong. Good things are going to happen. But the fifth thing that I'm going to talk to you about I mean that one is going to be touchy, but it could save you, so make sure to watch this entire video.

Speaker 1:

A very quick introduction. My name is Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of SoberClear. We're a coaching company that helps business owners. We help professionals. We help people get control of their drinking quickly. We have a totally new method and if you want to understand how it works, I've just finished off a totally new video training that shows you how it works, but it also breaks down the science behind the method. What we do is totally different to everything else out there and in this new video training is actually break down the findings of what this academic psychologist found, who we commissioned to go and study the efficacy of our new method. So if you want to access a video training that shows you how to use it and shows you the findings of this report, just click the link down below to go and watch that. There's nothing for sale on that video. It's totally free, but it will show you a new way to control your drinking fast.

Speaker 1:

So what I'm going to ignore at this point now is what method you've chosen to use, because the thing is is there are different ways to stop drinking. Some people are going to have stopped drinking with willpower, right. Some of you are going to have used AA meetings. Some of you might be watching this video just purely curious about what you could expect at six months. So I'm going to ignore intricacies of different methods and stuff like that. So I'm just going to presume you've stopped drinking and not think about the methods. So the first thing that you can expect at the six-month mark is energy levels have started to stabilize.

Speaker 1:

So what can happen when you stop drinking is the first week you can feel slightly rough, you can feel pretty down, you can feel pretty lethargic and it's kind of like this whiplash, because you've been drinking, you've been elevating your dopamine through a drug. Then all of a sudden the artificial dopamine's gone. So you can end up with this kind of crash. And this all depends on the individual, right. But by the six month mark things start stabilizing. Now, for me my energy came back almost instantly. But you know, I stopped drinking in my twenties. I didn't stop drinking in my fifts or my 60s, and I've worked with clients who have drank for 50 years. Right, they've drank their entire life. So for them it was a very different process. It took time for them to kind of feel normal. So by the six-month mark, 99.9% of people, the energy will be fixed, they'll feel totally normal and it'll feel stable.

Speaker 1:

But it all depends on the individual. The months leading up to that it can fluctuate. We have good days, we have bad days. It all just depends on the person, and, alongside energy levels, other good things start happening, like general well-being starts to just be there. You just feel good about yourself and also your mood generally stabilizes around this point as well. But what you can really expect at six months is pretty much every single person across the board will start to feel stable and again, like I said, for me, that happened within the first week. For others it can take six months, but by this point you're stable Now. The second thing you can expect is now.

Speaker 1:

This isn't going to be relevant to everybody, but it was definitely relevant to me but things like anxiety and depression should have lessened. Now I'm not here to diagnose people with things like this. All I can really do with this is share my own experience. What I found is that when I drank alcohol is I would often get like this crippling anxiety, and it would always happen Like the night after a heavy night. I'd wake up the next day and I would just feel so anxious. They call it anxiety, and when I stopped drinking alcohol, I made a video about this, like when I was maybe one year sober. But what I found is that it wasn't this miracle cure.

Speaker 1:

Anxiety is typically about a fear of something happening in the future. Not always right, but a lot of the times we feel anxious about the future. And when I stopped drinking alcohol there were still so many unknowns. My life was still a disaster. I destroyed everything. I destroyed my business, I destroyed a relationship, I'd run out of money, I was in a bad place, and just by stopping drinking alcohol didn't miraculously fix my entire life like that. But what happened is I just kept putting one step in front of the other and just slowly started rebuilding things. That fear of the future started to drop dramatically.

Speaker 1:

But I'm not saying there weren't days in that first six months where I didn't get anxious. There were, but by the six month point it lessened dramatically. The same with depression symptoms. Now, I don't think I ever truly suffered with depression, but when I drank I did feel depressed. I'm not saying I would ever have been necessarily clinically diagnosed with that disorder, but when I stopped drinking alcohol, like any depressive symptoms, they pretty much just went out the window. Anxiety was a little bit of a different kind of thing, but feelings of depression for me I think they just completely disappeared. I don't think I felt depressed in stopping once. So for me, I know that there was a massive link to feeling crap and drinking alcohol, but by the six-month point these kind of things they should have dropped dramatically. I'm not saying that they're going to go away completely, but alcohol often exacerbates these two things.

Speaker 1:

The third thing at the six-month mark is the trust in your relationships will have started to rebuild. Now I don't know exactly where you are in your journey. Right, I've worked with people who have drank for years. You know alcohol has strained so many of their relationships and they're kind of beyond repair. I've also worked with people whose marriage was really on the rocks and you know they were at a place where, you know, the wife was just so upset with them, the husband was so upset with them, but they were willing to give them another chance. So, whilst I can't promise anything at six months, what I typically see happening amongst the people that I work with and in my own life is that the trust that you've lost in certain relationships because of alcohol is starting to rebuild. My daughter is absolutely delighted with me and she actually said you know, I've got my dad back, which was an awesome thing, because I didn't know. You know I've told you before I didn't realise they'd gone. My relationship with my wife is, I mean, just a 180 degrees. It's just been phenomenal. My marriage has definitely been so much better. My wife and I are just on a completely different level. My kids are very supportive Because, instead of you promising somebody you're not going to drink.

Speaker 1:

You're now six months without a drink, because a lot of the times when it comes to relationships is I don't know about you, but I've told my friends and family a million times that I'm going to stop drinking alcohol, only to let them down. But when I finally did it and I stayed sober, they're starting to think all right, he's for real this time and it's a great feeling. But on this topic of relationships, it's not just about your external relationships. The other amazing thing that starts happening is the relationship you have with yourself improves in ways that you cannot imagine. I tried to stop drinking for 10 years, so can you imagine the relationship I had with myself? I kept trying to stop, I kept making promises to myself and I kept breaking them. So when I finally stopped drinking and I went six months without drinking, I felt this new belief in myself. Now, that actually happened really early on, I felt that self-trust come back. I don't know in the first week, but by six months I had so much trust in myself that I could start thinking bigger. I started setting bigger goals. I started thinking, okay, if I could do this, I could do that, if I could do that, I could do this. And I started rebuilding self-confidence and self-trust and that was one of the best things that happened to me, and I hear that all the time with the people that I work with.

Speaker 1:

The fourth thing to expect is the and now this is where I'm going to start getting realistic with you. At around the six-month mark, you will start to feel grounded in your decision to not drink, but you will still think about drinking alcohol. It is impossible to not think about drinking alcohol. I don't know if you've read Stop Drinking Books before, but they'll always bring up this topic. You cannot stop thinking about alcohol. We live in a world that is dominated by this drug. It's in every supermarket, it's in every TV show you watch, it's in every movie. The world is dominated by this drug and whether you're a week sober, six months sober, sometimes even people that are three years sober, you'll still get these thoughts of drinking. But I wanted to let you know that these thoughts are totally normal.

Speaker 1:

During the first year of me stopping drinking is, I'd get the thoughts a lot more regularly and then over time they just dropped until it was like every six months. And then, after a year of not drinking is, maybe I'd think about drinking, like I don't know three times a year. Then it might have been every year and, to be honest, I think the last time I thought about drinking alcohol was like two or three years ago now, like it just is out of my head. But during those first six months you can expect those thoughts to come up. But the important thing is what you do with the thought. If you start thinking about alcohol and start thinking that you're missing out by not drinking, then it's a recipe for disaster. But if you can counteract those thoughts with feelings of like okay, what I'm doing is awesome, and if you've truly reframed the way that you view alcohol, those thoughts can actually be very positive because it can remind you of the amazing decision that you've made rather than make you feel like you're missing out on something. Now, again, this is something that I specialize on doing If you want to go and learn more about the program, the method, how I actually help people. Go and watch that free video training that shows you more about the reframing process that we use. So you can click the link in the description to go and learn about the report, the method, all that stuff. But just expect some thoughts to come up and maybe even expect some kind of emotional wobble. I told you I wasn't going to be 100% positive, but I want to be realistic, which leads me to the fifth point. Now this one is going to be the harshest of all, but it's the most important. So please pay close attention.

Speaker 1:

Once you reach the six-month mark, you will feel normal. What I mean by this is not drinking alcohol will just be your new baseline. See, when you first stop drinking alcohol, you'll go through this temporary dip that can last a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, but then what will happen is that you will then start feeling good and in your memory you'll remember how bad things were. So you have this very clear point of contrast, and what can happen is, over the first few months of stopping drinking alcohol is you're just feeling better and better and better. But there will be a point, maybe at the six month mark, maybe at the three month mark, but you'll get to a point where things just stabilize. You just feel normal. This is your new baseline, and what happens at this point is we forget what it was like, we forget about the pain, we forget about the hangovers, we forget about the upset relationships and everything just feels kind of normal. But that severe contrast that you had when you were first getting started has gone. So one of the most powerful things that you can do is never forget why you're doing this.

Speaker 1:

What I get all my clients to do is write down 10 reasons why they're committed to actually going through with this, so they can look back at this six months down the road when those thoughts are coming back. Because, trust me, I've been there. I've been six months sober, I've done it with willpower, and then that thought came back and then boom, I'm straight back to drinking again. Before you know it, life's back to ground zero. But I want to warn you that things will just feel normal. You'll almost forget that you drank.

Speaker 1:

Now the sixth and final thing. I really want to leave this on a positive note, but I just wanted to be realistic with you. But the sixth and final thing is this If you're six months sober and you make it to six months, firstly, congratulations. But what you've got to realize is this is just the beginning. Six months of not drinking is awesome. It's an achievement, right? It's a great thing to get to. But I'm telling you, once you get that long-term sobriety right One year, two years, five years, 10 years I just don't think you know how good life can become. See, a lot of the people who I've helped had no idea what they were capable of. So just keep focused, keep locked in, keep the momentum going. 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.

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Leon Sylvester

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