Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear

6 Lies Alcohol Drinkers Tell Themselves Daily

• 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. Now, before we get into this video, I want to warn you this will not be easy to watch. This video will probably make you slightly uncomfortable, but if you can make it through to the very end, I'll promise you one thing you are going to be so well equipped to not drink alcohol. So if you want to reduce your drinking, stop drinking, or if you've already stopped drinking alcohol and you want to really solidify your mindset, I really encourage you to just watch this whole video. I promise you it ain't going to be easy, because what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to break down six lies that all alcohol drinkers tell themselves. How do I know this? Because these are lies that I told myself. I drank for almost 10 years and all of these thoughts and all of these things that I told myself were in my own head After speaking with thousands of people. These are the lies that come up when I have conversations with people who have a drinking problem, but I'm not calling anybody out specifically. Every single drinker will go through this. But the most important thing that I'm going to give you in this video is I'm going to give you the lie and then the truth, and the truth can sometimes sting. Like I said, if you can get to the end of this video, you'll be miles ahead of everybody else. So the first lie that people tell themselves is it's not that bad. This can keep people stuck for decades. They know in their heart that they're doing something that they shouldn't do. Because I do believe that everybody's got some level of cognitive dissonance with alcohol. We know it's a poison, we know it's a drug, we know it does nothing good for us. But in order to reduce this cognitive dissonance, we need to lie to ourselves. So all that we're doing here with these lies is reducing cognitive dissonance so we don't feel so stupid about consuming this highly addictive drug, this poison. We need to reduce the cognitive dissonance, otherwise we're going to go insane or we'll actually just stop drinking. So what we can often do is we can drink right and life can be kind of okay. It's not like we've got a DUI. It's not like X, y, z, and what we're really doing here is we're comparing our drinking to other people. We can think, well, I'm not as bad as that guy that got a DUI. I'm not as bad as that person who lost his wife because of their drinking. It's not like I've got cirrhosis of the liver and I'm going to die. I'm a high functioning alcoholic. See, it's not that bad.

Speaker 1:

And if you've ever told yourself this, who are you kidding? Because I'm not buying it, your family aren't buying it. Who are you kidding here, comparing your drinking to somebody else's? To then say to yourself to lie to yourself that it's not that bad. What are you waiting for? Are you literally telling yourself that you want to wait for a moment where everything explodes and then it's bad enough to fix? See, just for a second, reflect on your drinking over the past few years. Have things got better? Have things decreased over time, or are things getting worse? Are you drinking more? That time goes on.

Speaker 1:

Because if it's not that bad and you're not as bad as them, or you're not as bad as that person, what do you think that the person who is that bad once said to themselves as well? The same damn lie. I don't want to sound condescending. I want you to be able to look at the situation logically and just recognize that you saying it's not that bad, you ain't kidding anybody else but yourself. And whilst I don't want to come across as judgmental, I do want to remind you that I have said this lie to myself as well. All of these things are lies, I told myself. In hindsight, it's quite easy for me to now look at those lies because I don't drink. I've got past it all. But I want to be as real as I can with you. I want you to be able to look at the situation for what it is and listen. You might hate me after watching this video, but I'll take it. I'll take your hate as long as it helps you stop drinking.

Speaker 1:

Lie number two this one is huge. The second lie is telling yourself I have things under control. I've got things under control. I only drink X amount and I've got my limit and I never go over it. I'll be honest, I didn't really tell myself this lie so often, but there were periods where I did believe I had it under control. So I didn't stop and the inevitable end of a long road came where I no longer had things under control.

Speaker 1:

Now, just so you can see the insanity of this and again, I don't mean to sound like an a-hole, I'm just being honest but how many people do you meet? And let's say, I don't know, I don't know if you've ever been skiing before, but I love skiing, right, it's literally my favorite thing ever. I have the most fun of my life when I'm skiing. I just love it. It is the best feeling ever. But when I meet somebody else that shares that enthusiasm of skiing, do you think me and that person sit down and say I love skiing so much? No, of course I don't do that.

Speaker 1:

I also have a soft spot for pastry, right, I love panneau raisins. I might have even just butchered the pronunciation panneau raisin, however you pronounce it. I didn't really listen in French class at school. But anyway, these pastries are amazing, they're beautiful, but I don't really eat them because it's a pastry filled with sugar and butter. So you know, maybe every so often I'll walk past one. I'll see the most beautiful pastry. This happens when I go to Europe and I'm like I just can't resist it. But do you think I'll walk into that store and say, can I have my panoramic raisin, listen, and then I start justifying it. I don't really eat that many panoramic raisins. I got this under control, but today I think I'm going to have one. I think I'd do that. Of course not. It would be ridiculous.

Speaker 1:

When you tell yourself you what are you talking about? Think about it. This is nothing other than justification of consuming a drug. If you are telling yourself that you have things under control, do you ever say that about other areas of your life? See, we say it because we know in our heart that alcohol is a poison. We know it's not a good thing.

Speaker 1:

So by telling other people and lying to yourself that things are under control, I'm sorry, but it's just reducing cognitive dissonance. It's pure justification and pure cope and again I've used that word, again, cope. It must be a millennial term. But does that mean that if you tell yourself you've got things under control, that you're only going to look at the problem if you don't have things under control, and then surely if you don't have things under control, then it's too late? Do you see the madness of it? So the third lie oh, my gosh, this one. I have told myself this so many times.

Speaker 1:

The third thing is telling yourself you'll deal with this later. And this is when you've kind of got past those first two lies. You know it's bad, you aren't lying to yourself that you can control it. You know it's causing problems, you know it's causing pain. And then you tell yourself I'll deal with it later, after the holidays, after that wedding. Oh, I've got this big event coming up, this big business thing, this big social thing. Once that's done, then I'll fix the problem. And I don't want to sound negative, I don't want to discourage you. But does tomorrow ever come?

Speaker 1:

Diet starts Monday, right, we've heard it all before and I'm not necessarily saying that choosing a date to stop drinking is bad. But why bother, why delay it? What's the delay for? Because if you're actually delaying stopping drinking until after that social event, you've actually never truly fixed the paradigm that you have. You see alcohol as something that adds value in your life, in these social events, which is why you need to tell yourself that you'll deal with things after the event. But then that means you've never fixed your worldview in the first place. So then you're just going to resort to willpower. Because I promise you one thing if you're able to reframe the way you view alcohol to see it in its purely logical way, in its pure form, as ethanol, right as a poison. If you can see it that way, then stopping drinking is a choice that you make in an instant. It's like the flick of a switch and you don't think about what's going to happen further down the road. It's like all it is is it becomes a decision.

Speaker 1:

Telling yourself that you'll deal with this after XYZ event or when life's calmed down, when you're less stressed, is a lie. The best time to do this was yesterday. The next best time is now, which leads me into the fourth lie. Now, if you've had failed attempts to stop drinking alcohol in the past and you are going to try again and you're either going to use a method that you used in the past that didn't work, or you're going to tell yourself that you're just going to fight it with willpower and do this on your own. But that hasn't worked already. To me, you're almost kind of setting yourself up for failure. And again, I don't want to discourage you. Right, I want you to fix the problem.

Speaker 1:

But if you've tried stopping drinking, let's say with pure willpower, and you've had success, you've stopped for a few months, here and there, and then you're telling yourself this time is going to be different. This time I'm just going to resist it even harder. Then, in a weird way, it's kind of like self-sabotage Very, very tough for me to say, but telling yourself that you're going to go back to the method that didn't work already. Are you seriously sure that it's going to work, or are you kind of giving yourself like an escape hatch of like well, if it didn't work, oh well, at least I tried? The good news and the good thing, though, is that there is a different way for you to do things.

Speaker 1:

My method is totally different to everything else out there. It's all about reframing how you view alcohol, instead of reframing the way you view yourself. I have a coaching program where we've worked with over 450 business owners and high level professionals, and if you want to see if that could be a good match for you, then you can click the link in the description. You can fill in an application and book a free consultation. What we'll do on that call is actually give you a plan to follow, so it will be a super valuable call. We get a 96% success rate. The method has been scientifically validated by an academic psychologist, and, if you go on Google Scholar, you can search sober clear system and you can read a scientific report that explains how the method works. But if you could stop drinking alone with the methods that you've already tried again I don't want to sound too negative, but you'd probably already be sober.

Speaker 1:

Which leads me to the fifth lie. And the fifth lie is not necessarily a lie like the other lies, but it's this feeling of how am I going to deal with an emotion without alcohol? So, for example, how am I going to deal with stress after a hard day of work? How am I going to be able to loosen up in a social event without a drink? How am I going to celebrate without a glass of champagne? How am I going to have a good time with my partner? Now, this is less of a lie, but it's more of like a fear, this thing of like. How am I actually going to deal with life when a problem comes my way? How am I going to deal with it without alcohol? And with this one? I just want to remind you of something.

Speaker 1:

This might take you back quite a few years, but before you ever touched alcohol, you were able to deal with stress. You were able to deal with socializing. You were able to deal with everything without this drug as children, as teenagers. Nobody needs alcohol and I promise you, if you stop drinking alcohol and you make it permanent, you will be able to deal with anything life throws at you, and in fact, you won't just be able to deal with it, you'll be better equipped to deal with it. Things aren't going to get worse if you stop drinking.

Speaker 1:

But it all boils down to the sixth lie, and this is the biggest of all, and this is what everything is built upon. This is like the foundation of lies. The biggest lie that people tell themselves is that they believe that life will be worse off if they stop drinking. This is the ultimate fear. They think that everything isn't going to get better. It's going to be harder.

Speaker 1:

During the 10 years that I struggled to stop drinking alcohol, that fear dominated my life, it dominated my thinking and it dominated my worldview. I thought that if I stopped drinking alcohol, life would be in a worse position, because there was this deep rooted belief that alcohol added something in my life. Listen, I'm going to say this to you 10,000 times until it clicks Alcohol adds nothing. It will add nothing to your life. It gives you nothing, and life will not be worse without it In six months time from now, if you stop drinking alcohol and you focus on what you actually want from your life with your relationship, with your health, with your business, with your finances, with your spirituality if you put all your energy into the things that you want and you stop drinking alcohol.

Speaker 1:

I want to make something clear. The version of you in six months that stopped drinking and gone towards the life of their dreams could see who you were right now. The two people will be unrecognizable. Life will not be worse if you fix this problem. It's when life begins. 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.

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Leon Sylvester

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