Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear
The Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear is here to help you stop drinking alcohol and achieve the life of your dreams. We want to support people getting sober so they can get on with their life without feeling miserable. If you want to learn more about stop drinking coaching, head over to https://www.soberclear.com/
Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear
QUIT ALCOHOL NOW. Jordan Peterson Will Leave You Speechless
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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 wwwsoberclearcom. See, jordan Peterson actually quit drinking alcohol decades ago and, as we're about to find out, stopping drinking alcohol played a pivotal role in his success. My team and I have dug deep into hundreds of hours of his content to find his best ideas on stopping drinking. We've identified 26 points that he's made, and we're going to show you how to apply these points to you and your situation. Love him or hate him. His advice has impacted millions of people, and the points that he brings up in this video today could be the final tipping point that gets you over the edge where you can say goodbye to this insidious drug once and for all.
Speaker 1:My name's Leon Sylvester. I'm the founder of SoberClearcom. Let's take a look at what Mr Peterson has to say, and I've saved the most useful clip of all to the end of the video, so please make sure to stick around and let's jump in. One of the things that stuck with me is esteemable people do esteemable things and it's like when you have that choice to do something better than alcohol, man, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the funny thing is, if you're trying to stop drinking, you need something better than alcohol. You want to figure out something that you're doing with your life that's worth not getting drunk and screwing up because that's fun. You might say, well, why do people drink too much? It's like, if you like alcohol, that's a stupid question. Yeah Right, it's like why do people drink too much? Well, because it's great. You know. It's like okay, so why stop? Well, you do stupid things when you're drunk. You hurt yourself, you compromise your health, it's really hard on the people around you, you tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life. It's like, yeah, but it's pretty fun. Yeah, well, it is. But you need something better than that. And what's better isn't being straight and not making mistakes. It's like that's all prohibition. In some sense, what's better is no, you need an adventure man. You need to get out there and have something to do Now.
Speaker 1:In this first clip, Peterson brings up six key ideas. I don't agree with all of them. I'll give you my take on things, but the overarching message is pretty awesome. It's just the first two ideas that I don't really see eye to eye with him on you want to figure out something that you're doing with your life.
Speaker 2:That's worth not getting drunk and screwing up, because that's fun.
Speaker 1:The first idea that he brings up is that screwing up is fun, and I really don't like the way that he talks in black and white terms here. He's talking in absolutes. It's binary thinking. Screwing up is fun.
Speaker 1:When I drank alcohol, I remember when I woke up with blood on my MacBook Pro, vomited this brown substance all over my MacBook. I didn't have any idea what it was. I don't recall being in the middle of Columbia blackout, drunk, fun. Okay, maybe in the moment there was an element of that. So I see where he's getting at. But this is a belief. This is not black and white thinking. Screwing up isn't fun. I don't know what his experience was with alcohol. I kind of see where he's coming from, but he's not drank for decades. So through my work, through the thousands of people that I've spoken to over the years with my business with Sober Clear, I've never once heard somebody say I like this idea of screwing up. Now we just make a transition away from this point and does give some quality advice. But this first idea I don't really agree.
Speaker 2:If you like alcohol? That's a stupid question. Yeah Right, it's like why do people drink too much?
Speaker 1:Well, because it's great. And the second idea that I don't agree with is that he says that alcohol is great, and this I just totally disagree with. Don't get me wrong, the rest of the video is absolute fire. It's just these two points I don't agree with. Alcohol is not great. Alcohol is poison. It's ethanol. It does nothing for you whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And holding on to this belief and this idea that alcohol is great, I think is a pretty bad idea, because you never really start to see alcohol for what it is and in the back of your mind you're always thinking, oh, that thing is great. And when you do that you've kind of got to resist the urge to drink Because in your mind you still think it's a good thing. And whilst he says alcohol is great, that is not a fact, that is a belief, and that's a belief that he has. So I would have just preferred him to introduce this by saying in my opinion, alcohol can be great. Or what would have been even better is if he may have said something like in my experience when I drank alcohol, there were a few great moments. That would have been a lot better, rather than say alcohol is great Because it isn't great.
Speaker 1:It kills 95,000 people each year. It's a freaking carcinogen. And drinking until you screw up and go and drive your car drunk I mean, that's not fun to me. I get where he's coming at, but then he goes into the third point, and now this is where the fire begins. And, by the way, the rest of the video, the other points he brings up, are just pure fire. It's just these two points. I can't ignore them.
Speaker 2:Okay, so why stop? Well, you do stupid things when you're drunk. You hurt yourself, you compromise your health, it's really hard on the people around you, you tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life.
Speaker 1:So the third thing he says is why stop? And then he starts reeling off some of the negatives. Well, you do stupid things, you become a liar, you screw your life up. So now he's contradicting what he said, and he's right, and, as we'll see at the end of the video, you'll start to see the realization that he had in his 20s. That really just took his career to the next level. You need something better than that Now. The fourth thing he says is that you need something better, and this was one of the biggest game changers for me in my journey of stopping drinking. Rather than running away from the pain of alcohol, I replaced it with a better quality future. I had a vision for my life and, instead of just sitting around in a circle in AA meetings and talking about not being able to drink, I did, and what I recommend doing and what I agree with here is that we all need something better to move towards.
Speaker 2:What's better isn't being straight and not making mistakes. It's like that's all prohibition.
Speaker 1:The fifth thing he brings up is that being straight isn't better, and I get where he's coming from there. I would partially disagree. It is much better to be 100% straight and not put poison in your body. But then he goes into the sixth idea.
Speaker 2:No, you need adventure man, you need to get out there and have something to do.
Speaker 1:And he uses an amazing word. He says you need an adventure, and I think the word adventure is a perfect choice of vocabulary. See, what we want to do when we stop drinking is wake up and feel excited to go towards something. When I stopped drinking alcohol, I quit my job. I immediately started a business, I booked a one-way flight to Asia, I started learning all these new skills with YouTube, with helping people stop drinking alcohol, and life did feel like one big adventure. I felt this new sense of freedom. So I love this word and I think it's quality advice. So let's play the next clip control.
Speaker 2:A proclivity to alcoholism can be a really vicious thing. You know lots of people get dragged down into the mud by alcohol, excessive alcohol intake, especially if they're sensitive to the opiate response that alcohol can produce. And when you drink, you know you get alert and, let's say, more enthusiastic and energetic, and then you don't want to stop drinking. That's definitely a bad sign with regards to developing alcoholism. So I would say you need to figure out something that's more important to you than drinking.
Speaker 1:Again another awesome clip. He brings up four ideas here.
Speaker 2:What would happen in your life if your negative habits got?
Speaker 1:out of control. The first thing he says is control your alcohol intake. He uses the word control. Now I don't know what he means by this word. I don't know if he's encouraging people here to reduce the amount of alcohol that they drink. When I talk about controlling your drinking, what I'm talking about is you have a choice and when you're in true control of your drinking, you logically see alcohol for what it is and you control it by choosing to never drink it again. But you don't fight the urge. You don't resist alcohol. You make a decision. You see it for what it is and you move on with your life.
Speaker 2:He doesn't define the word control, so it's impossible to know what he actually means here. One of the things that can really help you control your alcohol intake is to really really think through what you're giving up and where you could be in five years if you don't get it under control.
Speaker 1:Now the next thing he brings up point number eight is he gives us an exercise to do and this is one of the most painful exercises that you can do as a drinker, and it's to play it out, it's to ask yourself where is life five years from now? And when I asked myself that question, I knew that I'd never be the person I wanted to be. I'd never achieve the goals that I had for my life. I'd never, you know, become the husband that I want to be, the father that I want to be, the business person I would be alive. That's how bad I felt, that's how bad I could see it getting, Because my drinking wasn't going down over time, it was going up over time. So this is a really useful exercise.
Speaker 2:Proclivity to alcoholism can be a really vicious thing. You know, lots of people get dragged down into the mud by alcohol, excessive alcohol intake, especially if they're sensitive to the opiate response that alcohol can produce. And when you drink, you know you get alert and, let's say, more enthusiastic and energetic and then you don't want to stop drinking. That's definitely a bad sign with regards to developing alcoholism.
Speaker 1:Now, the ninth thing he brings up is that some of us have an inclination to drink. I recently met up with somebody in person who has been watching the YouTube videos. We actually had a conversation in person and he was asking me, like why, why do some people get addicted to it and some people are just able to kind of do whatever they can, stop and start, and what's the difference? And I said to him does it matter? Does it matter if your brain is slightly different to theirs or you've had some trauma or childhood experience? Because the solution is the same it's to stop drinking.
Speaker 2:I would say you need to figure out something that's more important to you than drinking.
Speaker 1:But then the 10th idea that he brings up is that we need something more important than drinking alcohol, and he's right. He's encouraging people to project into the future and have something to go towards, which, by the way you'll find out at the end of the video, is exactly what he did. So you'll see exactly how Jordan Peterson has applied this advice to his own life to achieve the things that he's achieved. But it's just another great point.
Speaker 2:You know, alcohol doesn't bring out the best in people's characters. Alcohol almost universally makes people less than they are. It's fun because it eradicates your concern for future consequences. It actually kind of does that physiologically, you might say Alcohol is a potent anxiety-reducing drug.
Speaker 2:The consequence for me was, you know, I would misbehave when I was drinking in ways that made me remorseful the next day. I realized at that point that was a performative contradiction. In a sense, performative contradiction is when you act out something that's a lie, that runs contrary to your moral beliefs. I was looking at the literature on atrocity, trying to determine how the proclivity to bring those states about, those hellish states about, might be ameliorated, like what's the opposite of evil. That's the question I suppose I was trying to solve, and so when I saw patterns of behavior in my own life that were making things worse than they had to be, then that was an indication that it was time to stop. Four more ideas that he brings up in this clip. You know, alcohol doesn't bring out the best in people's characters.
Speaker 1:The first thing is that alcohol doesn't bring out the best in people's characters, and that's a bitter pill to swallow, but it's true. I know exactly what he's talking about here. I became self-centered, selfish. I didn't really think about how it impacted people around me. All I cared about was me and my drinking.
Speaker 2:So I know what he's talking about, but it hurts to hear, it's fun because it eradicates your concern for future consequences. It actually kind of does that.
Speaker 1:Physiologically, you might say does that physiologically, you might say. He then says that it's again fun, which I disagree with. But he says it eradicates your concern for future consequences. Now, the scientific term for this is called alcohol myopia, and what we do is we want this short-term gratification and we do ignore future consequences. See, drink driving makes no sense. Nobody would drink, drive sober, and I don't mean that in an obvious way. But nobody really goes to a bar and then says I'm going to get absolutely shit-faced drunk and then drive my car home. Those decisions only happen when we're under the influence. Now, jordan Peterson describes that as fun, and sure, maybe in the moment it is kind of fun, but I've spoke to people who have woken up the next day and they woke up in a jail cell because they got a DUI. Wasn't very fun for them.
Speaker 1:Alcohol is a potent anxiety-reducing drug. The next thing he talks about point 13, is that it's an anxiety-reducing drug, which is absolutely correct, but then again we could also say it's a drug that probably causes more anxiety than any other drug. I don't know if you've ever woken up with a hangover and thought, well, what did I do yesterday? And had that anxiety just running through your body? Because, sure, in the short term it reduces anxiety, but then what about after? What about the consequence of drinking?
Speaker 2:The consequence for me was, you know, I would misbehave when I was drinking in ways that made me remorseful the next day. I realized at that point that was a performative contradiction. In a sense, Performative contradiction is when you act out something that's a lie, that runs contrary to your moral beliefs. When I saw patterns of behavior in my own life that were making things worse than they had to be, then that was an indication that it was time to stop.
Speaker 1:But then the 14th thing that he brings up and this is the most important thing of all is that he stopped lying to himself. He started taking an inventory of his life. He started recognizing patterns, and when he started recognizing patterns that would cause pain in his life, he stopped drinking. Now again, at the end of the video, we'll learn a little bit more about what exactly happened here, but I think the important thing to take away here is that he was honest with himself.
Speaker 2:Why quit drinking so I don't end up in hell? Hey, there's a reason to stop. And then, if you make that hell real, it's like here's all the details of my personal hell. Yes, let's avoid that. So then you have something to run the hell away from. You're also going to find out who your friends are, because if you're starting to put your life together and you have friends that object, those are not friends, those are just people you know.
Speaker 2:A friend is someone you can tell bad news to. They'll just listen and maybe they'll suffer along with you. But a friend is also someone you can tell good news to and the friend will say, wow, in this veil of tears, something good happened to you. Great man, I'm wonderful, it's rare, it's unlikely. Good for you. I hope 10 more things like that happen and they're not envious and they're not jealous and they're not one up on you. And if you're trying to get your life together and your friends get in the way, friends get in the way, that's actually real useful for you, because you've now identified who your friends aren't and you might think, well, I can't give them up. It's like, oh yes, you can, and not only can you, you should, and it would be better for them, because if they're aiming down and they want you going down with them, there's nothing good about what's happening to them and there's certainly nothing good about that for you.
Speaker 1:So we've got three absolutely fire points. Why quit?
Speaker 2:drinking so I don't end up in hell. Hey, there's a reason to stop. And then, if you make that hell real, it's like here's all the details of my personal hell. Yes, let's avoid that, right. So then you have something to run the hell away from.
Speaker 1:The first thing he's doing is he's really finishing off his point where he's talking about that five-year vision of how life will look if you actually drink, and he's really talking about getting descriptive with that vision of how life will look and creating your own personal hell to run the hell away from. I love this idea and I think it's so important for us to remember how bad things can get. What could be a good idea is if you're kind of weighing things up and thinking how bad would things get if I continue drinking, put it down on paper, just literally. Get yourself an A4 sheet of paper, write down where will life be five years from now if I stay on the trajectory that I'm on and if my drinking continues to increase, and just write down how life will be. How will your relationship be, how will your health be, how will your career be? How will you feel? Get descriptive Freaking sucks. It's not easy, but it's powerful.
Speaker 2:You're also going to find out who your friends are, because together and you have friends that object, those are not friends, those are just people, you know.
Speaker 1:Now he brings up this topic of friends and I actually don't think I've heard this clip before, but he nails it and this really does happen. You do find out who your real friends are when you stop drinking, and he talks about how you want people in your life that aren't envious. If you stop drinking alcohol and all of a sudden you're making more money, you know you're looking better, your skin changes. You don't want friends that are like, look at him, he stopped drinking. Who does he think he is? No, you want friends that encourage you and it is 100% true. You will find out who your true friends are. I've got people that are still in my life to this day, that still drink. I'm still friends with them, but they never discouraged me from stopping drinking. They celebrated it with me. But I also had people in my life that didn't. They discouraged it, not necessarily actively, but almost passively. They might just have made no comment, given no encouragement, no positivity, and just kind of been like indifferent, and that's fine. But were they my true friends?
Speaker 2:And if you're trying to, get your life together and your friends get in the way. That's actually real useful for you, because you've now identified who your friends aren't and you might think, well, I can't give them up. It's like, oh yes, you can, and not only can you, you should. And it would be better for them because if they're aiming down and they want you going down with them, there's nothing good about what's happening to them and there's certainly nothing good about that for you.
Speaker 1:And then Jordan Peterson just delivers the sledgehammer to the face right. He didn't have a very delicate delivery of this and that's why people respect him so much, but he says that maybe you will need to give up some friends. And then he goes on to say that you probably should actually do this, because if they're dragging you down, what's the point For some of us? It's not always going to be our friends as well. It might be our family members. We might have people in our family that are behaving the way that Jordan just described. Let's get into the next clip.
Speaker 2:First of all, you have to make a moral inventory. You have to figure out what's wrong in your life, which would obviously include the alcohol misuse. You have to rectify that, take responsibility for it, try to chart out a new course. And so that leaves not only do you stop drinking, but you stop associating with your friends or maybe even with your family members that's really hard so again two great points. You have to make a moral inventory. You have to figure out what's wrong in your life.
Speaker 1:The first is he says that we should take an inventory of our life, believe it or not. But this is actually a step in a 12-step program. They get you to take a moral inventory, but I think he's talking here in very general terms and trying to make it more relatable to everybody. But he's right. You need to look at your life and look at alcohol and say what role does this have in my life? Is this adding value to my life or is it dragging me down and holding me back? Could I be capable of more if I removed it? A lot of people drink alcohol but they're in denial I hate that word, but they are. So you can tell here that he's talking from experience.
Speaker 2:Not only do you stop drinking, but you stop associating with your friends, or maybe even with your family members. That's really hard.
Speaker 1:Now he also brings up friends and family members this time and he recognizes that this will be hard, and it is hard. I know from experience, I know from the people who have helped in my business, in SoberClear, that it can be one of the hardest things ever. It's painful and it sucks, but for some of us it's a necessary step.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug, and if you're inclined towards it because you're sensitive to its anxiety-reducing properties, or you can be sensitive to it because it enhances social communication, or because it produces a psychomotor high, like cocaine, or all of those at once, and if you're particularly predisposed to alcoholism, you can experience all three at once, alcohol is a really bad drug. 50% of murders take place in an alcohol-fueled environment. Either the victim or the perpetrator, or both, is drunk. It's almost the sole cause of domestic abuse. It's almost the sole cause of so-called date rape.
Speaker 2:If you dig into criminal behavior deeply enough, well hell, you don't have to dig much at all before you find alcohol. It's also the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive, and not merely because they don't know what they're doing. We did experiments at McGill showing that if you took drunk people and put them in a competitive environment where they could be aggressive and had them keep track of their aggression so they were actually conscious of it they became more aggressive even, rather than less. So, yeah, alcohol is bad news and it can turn perfectly good people into quite the impulsive and dim-witted monsters.
Speaker 1:Here he makes four critical points. But just wait, because the bombshell is coming.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug and if you're inclined towards it because you're sensitive to its anxiety-reducing properties, or you can be sensitive to it because it enhances social communication, or because it produces a psychomotor high, like cocaine or all of those at once, but when he's talking about this inclination towards drinking alcohol, he does miss out something pretty important.
Speaker 1:Sure, some people do get higher when they drink, they do have a bigger effect from it than others, but there are people that get addicted to it without experiencing what he experienced. It is one of the most physically addictive drugs on the planet and it's normalized. We've been conditioned to see it as a good thing, but it doesn't actually do anything for us.
Speaker 2:Alcohol is a really bad drug. 50% of murders take place in an alcohol-fueled environment. Either the victim or the perpetrator, or both, is drunk. It's almost the sole cause of domestic abuse. It's almost the sole cause of so-called date rape.
Speaker 1:Then he brings up another amazing point that 50% of murders take place under the influence. He also brings up date rape. We don't ever see this right. How many beer ads have you seen where they're advertising murder as a side effect, as a consequence of drinking this drug? When do you see that on a bottle of wine, on a date?
Speaker 1:And I know that might've come across as a little bit insensitive, but alcohol companies will never show you this side of drinking. They're going to show you sophistication. They're going to show you glamour. They're not going to show you violence. They're not going to show you a car wreck. They're just going to show you what you want to hear. It's a propaganda machine. So I really like Jordan bringing these ideas up, because it's true. He then says the next point 22, is that it makes people more aggressive. And I remember when I was a teenager I used to smoke weed and everybody that smoked weed had this argument in England that it should be legal, because when people smoke weed is that peaceful. When they drink alcohol, they're violent. I don't know. Muslims talk about this as well and, logically speaking, there is a point there.
Speaker 2:It's also the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive.
Speaker 1:Isn't it crazy that something that makes people aggressive, that's responsible for 95,000 deaths a year, is legal, and then we've got other things that are illegal? Why is alcohol in its own category and it's totally fine to consume?
Speaker 2:So yeah, alcohol is bad news and it can turn perfectly good people into quite the impulsive and dim-witted monsters.
Speaker 1:And the next point he says is that it can make a normal person kind of into an impulsive lunatic. He doesn't use that word, but I know from my experience when I don't drink alcohol, I don't act irrationally, I don't act impulsively. I'm actually quite good at impulse control. But as soon as I had four beers in me, you don't even want to know what I got up to. It was madness. And let's get into the final clip, which I personally find the most motivating thing Jordan ever said about stopping drinking.
Speaker 2:All the people that I was in high school with and in college with were extremely hard drinkers, and I drank quite a lot till I was 27. And then I found that I couldn't. Well, first of all, my life was taking a pretty professional turn and second, I found that there was no bloody way I could write seriously and think seriously on an ongoing basis if I was hungover. So, and I got married and I was going to have kids and I thought, yeah, enough of this.
Speaker 1:And there's kind of three things that he brings up here at the end of the video. So the first thing he did is he played it out. He really realized what role alcohol is having in his life. He was probably looking at the people who he was close with, that he grew up with, that were drinking, and thought, well, what trajectory are they on? He doesn't say that, but I'm guessing that was part of his decision making was getting married and having children, and that's when he realised it couldn't continue. But then he said the thing that I find the most motivating.
Speaker 2:I found that there was no bloody way I could write seriously and think seriously on an ongoing basis if I was hungover, he said.
Speaker 1:I could never write seriously if I kept drinking. Writing requires so much concentration and focus. You need absolute clarity of mind. So, whilst he's never truly said stopping drinking alcohol gave him the life that he wanted, but, if you ask me, he's alluding to this idea here Because he did stop drinking. He did write seriously and love him or hate him. He's achieved so much in his life. 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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