Stop Drinking Podcast by Soberclear

Quit Alcohol For 30 Days and THIS Will Happen

• Leon Sylvester

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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 www.soberclear.com. When you stop drinking alcohol for just 30 days, you can expect to go through an incredible transformation. And today in this video, I'm going to guide you through 20 things that you can expect. We're going to go one week at a time so you can be 100% ready for the ups and the downs because it's not all positive. Sure, there's going to be a lot of good things that happen, but there will be some challenges that you'll need to overcome. So by the end of this video, you are going to be so well equipped on tackling that first 30 days. Very quickly, why should you listen to me on this topic? Well, my name is Leon Sylvester. I haven't drank now for over seven years after 10 years of struggle. I tried AA meetings, I tried using willpower, but the problem is, is nothing worked. I'd try all these conventional ways to stop drinking, and then I'd end up drinking more. Anyway, since stopping drinking seven years ago, something shifted and my life has never looked the same again. Since then, I've created my company, Sober Clear, and I've worked with almost 500 business people and professionals to help them get control of their drinking as well. So I've helped literally hundreds of people go through their very first 30 days without a drop of alcohol. So not only have I gone through the first 30 days in my own life, but I've also helped a large number of people do it as well. People like John, who's over three years sober, people like Gordon, who's now over one year sober, and also Jeff, who's three years sober, and there's so many others. But if they can all do it, then so can you. So let's get into week one and talk about the very first thing that you can expect. So the very first thing that you can expect is your body will start to look for a balance again. See, we think that just because we've stopped poisoning our body with this toxin with ethanol, that all of a sudden everything's going to be okay. And generally speaking, it will be okay. Obviously, anything's better than putting a toxin in your body, but because of the way that alcohol affects the certain chemicals and neurotransmitters in our brain, when we finally stop drinking alcohol, it's going to feel extremely strange. You may feel tired, you may get irritated, you may feel restless, your focus might be worse than it's ever been. If you've been putting a drug into your body and you stop taking the drug, then of course it's not going to feel quite right. And that's what most people describe. They feel like something's missing. And it's almost difficult to articulate what's missing because it doesn't feel like alcohol is necessarily missing, but your body just feels like something is missing. And this is totally okay. A lot of people get afraid of this feeling, but provided that you've got the right mindset coming into this, you can actually use any bad feelings that you get in the first few days as fuel. You can use any negative feelings as a reminder that your body is starting to go through a healing process. Now, during the first 30 days, there's something that will make a huge difference to you. And it's mindset, accountability, and how you view alcohol. Now, if you want help getting to a place where you see alcohol for what it is, so it feels like a logical choice to not drink instead of this fight with all of these cravings and so on, then I have good news. So my company, Soberclear, uses a scientifically validated system to help people get control of their drinking quickly. You can actually go on Google Scholar and search the word Soberclear system, and you'll find a scientific report that shows how we get a 96% client-rated success rate, how we get results for some people in under 24 hours, and you'll see why so many people say that it feels like somebody's flicked a switch in their brain. It's like the desire is gone. Now, we are enrolling new clients right now. It is designed specifically for business people, for high-level professionals, for investors, for very motivated and ambitious people. But if you want to see if it's a good fit and you want more information on this, then definitely click the link in the description, watch that short video down below, and then you can schedule a call to speak with our team. So let's get into the second thing. Now, the second thing that you can expect is you can expect large disruptions in your sleep. That might mean you have trouble falling asleep at night. It also might mean that you wake up in the middle of the night at say three o'clock in the morning and you can't fall back asleep. And again, this is a very normal thing to experience. What alcohol does is it reduces sleep onset latency. It shortens the time it takes you to fall asleep at night. And a lot of people are used to that. See, if you've been drinking alcohol for a number of years, then you're just kind of used to having some drinks and then almost passing out at night. So you might struggle to fall asleep at night, but one thing to remember is whilst alcohol can reduce sleep onset latency, it destroys your sleep in the second half of the night. Now, we will touch on sleep again later in the video, but you're just going to have to suffer through it. And the big thing to remember here is this is such a tiny price to pay for what's to come. Sure, you're gonna be a bit sleep deprived, anxiety might be a little bit higher, but it's okay. Our bodies are incredible machines. But just remember, this will get easier. It will get so much easier because soon you will experience some of the best rest of your life. I've worked with clients who have drank for 20, 30, 40 years, and they tell me that they've never slept so well in their entire life. They can't remember when they slept this good. And you've got this to look forward to. You'll feel rested and rejuvenated, but at the beginning, it can suck. So the third thing that you can expect are with cravings. And no, I'm not necessarily talking here about alcohol cravings. See, when we're drinking alcohol, we are flooding our brain with dopamine. So when we stop drinking it, we almost go into a little bit of a deficit. Things that we may find pleasure in, I don't know, five, six weeks into our journey of not drinking alcohol, might give us zero pleasure when we first stop, especially in the first few days. Things like exercise, things like going on walks, reading books, these are things that a non-drinker finds tremendous amounts of pleasure in. But in those first few days of not drinking alcohol, it's like it doesn't give us enough dopamine. It's not a quick win. These activities don't give us that quick hit of the feel-good chemical. So our bodies kind of start to look for it elsewhere. So it might mean you, I don't know, binge watch a TV series, it might mean that you're scrolling on your phone, it might mean that you're ordering takeaway. And do you want to know what I say during those first few days? So what? You gotta learn to be kind to yourself. What we don't want to do when this happens is we don't want to replace alcohol with these things, but at least for that first five, six, seven days, however long it takes, for me it was only a few days, but I know for some of you you might have drank for 30, 40 years. Just go easy. Be kind to yourself. If you end up watching Game of Thrones and ordering a pizza, whatever, it's so much better than poisoning your body with alcohol. Now, the fourth thing that you can expect is you might just forget why you're even doing this in the first place. And what I mean by this is, you know, we live in a world that is dominated by alcohol. It's like everywhere we look. You put on the TV, there it is. You go to a sports game, there it is. You're watching a movie, there it is. You watch the news, and there it is. It's everywhere. And part of us can just almost forget. And we can start to have this self-talk of like, well, you know, it's been a few days. Do I really even want to do this anymore? Does it really matter? And one of the most powerful things that you can do is before you actually make the decision to go 30 days or stop drinking, is write down why. Why are you doing this? Why are you doing it? Who are you doing it for? What are you gonna gain? What are you gonna lose if you keep drinking? One exercise that can be super helpful here is just get yourself a pen and paper and just write down as many reasons why you're committed to doing this. Talk about the bad things that will happen if you keep drinking, talk about who it's impacting, talk about the good things that will happen if you stop and stay stopped. That way, when all this conditioning is just being thrown at you 24-7, at least you've got reasons to override them, to step above them. And when you get a feeling of missing out, it's game over. Because when you get a feeling of missing out, what happens next? Well, you get a craving. And I don't know about you, but if I ever get an alcohol craving, I'm pretty much finished. Now, luckily, I don't get cravings. I haven't had a craving in seven years because I see alcohol for what it is. Why would I crave putting a poison in my body that will literally kill me, which has scientifically been proven to cause cancer and adds no value to my life whatsoever. So I don't feel any sense of missing out at all. That's because I've reframed how I view alcohol. So again, if you want help with that, then definitely go ahead and click the link down below where you can learn more about the approach that I could take you through. Now, the fifth thing that you can expect in that first week is you may experience your first taste of clarity. If you drank for a long time like I did, then you don't really get much clarity when you're drinking. When I drank, I can always remember it feeling like a fog was over my eyes. It was like I couldn't think clearly, it was hard to make decisions, it was really hard to just drag myself through the day. But for probably 80 to 90% of people, depending on how much and how long you've drank for, they're going to experience their first real taste of clarity in that first week. But usually in that first seven days, most people are over the worst part of it and everything's starting to feel like, okay, I'm getting used to this now. But the real key here to get through that first week is just be gentle. You've got to see each day is your body going through a small act of repair. It is repairing, it's healing, and it takes time. And that's a big thing people forget. There's so many people on the internet that are just gonna say, this is the benefit of not drinking, that's the benefit of not drinking alcohol. But the reality is that first week can be rough. Anyway, let's get into week two and talk about the sick thing you can expect. So, almost guaranteed for 90% plus of people, at some point in week two, your energy will come back. So instead of having to drag yourself out of bed, you'll kind of wake up with a little bit more of a bounce. For the vast, vast majority of people, they're gonna be thinking clearer, they're gonna be digesting food better, and for a lot of people, they really will feel a physical difference. Because think about it like this if you've drank alcohol for 10 years, it's basically somebody punching your liver, punching your heart, punching your organs. And when you stop consuming that drug that's just wreaking havoc inside your body, of course you're gonna feel better. Imagine if you'd been getting punched in the face every day for 10 years. You'd have a massive bruise, and then all of a sudden the swelling would go down, and you know, people would start to say, Oh, you're looking a bit better. Like, what's changed? Well, that's exactly what's happening to your organs. And I can remember when I stopped drinking alcohol, after around one week, it was a surge of energy. I was immediately back in the gym, I was working with an online coach, then I quit my job, I started a new business, it went well, and I was feeling pretty damn good. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm young, I'm only 33. It's not like I stopped drinking in my 40s or my 50s, but through working with almost 500 people now, I know that this happens to almost everybody around the second week. Now, the seventh thing that you can expect, and this can happen probably around week two, is anxiety can actually spike. You've got to remember that alcohol does reduce anxiety. It's an anxiety-relieving drug. So there absolutely will be a rebound. Now, I was very lucky here where I didn't experience this too bad because I think the big thing for me is because I would often binge drink, I would hammer it at nighttime, and then the next day the anxiety would crush me. So I'm pretty sure I got all this out of the way in that first week, but I know a lot of people in that second week, it can spike. And I think a really important thing to mention here is if you ask me, anxiety is okay, there's the medical condition side of it, but a lot of the times it's a fear of the future. And why it can often spike in this second week is because if you felt quite poor for seven days after stopping drinking alcohol and energy's been fluctuating, and you know, one day you might say, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna eat healthy, and then you don't because it's just a bad day. Where the anxiety can then come from is we look back at the past seven days and we start to think, well, hang on, if I feel like this every single day, how am I gonna deal with this business problem, this career problem, this relationship problem if I feel this bad? And then combine that with the fact that your body chemicals are just out of whack, then of course this is going to happen. But again, it's temporary. I promise you. I promise you that your anxiety, if you stick with this, will go down to levels that I mean, I'm not saying that it's going to cure anxiety, but I mean, it's the next best thing. Just because of how alcohol affects the chemicals in our body and the fact that when you don't drink, you have the confidence in yourself to tackle problems in the future, which naturally reduces anxiety anyway. And I was talking about this with a new client of mine who we're working together one-on-one at the moment. And when I told him this, he was like, that's exactly it. If I don't drink, I know I'll have the confidence to deal with all of these problems. So he already knew anxiety was going to go down. But again, this can take time. Number eight, let's go back to sleep. Usually, around this point, sleep will start to feel normal. So, what I explained earlier is alcohol reduces sleep onset latency. Usually around the second week, you'll just start falling asleep a lot faster. But the great thing that happens around the second week is that the REM sleep that gets destroyed in the second half of the night that is no longer happening. So, this is when some of the real deep rest starts to hit. This is when you might start dreaming more. You might even dream of actually drinking alcohol. It's very, very common. But I promise you, you'll start to wake up and you'll just feel like, oh my gosh, I feel amazing. You'll feel clear instead of foggy and gross. I just remember when I was drinking, oh, it was terrible. You'd wake up like this, like, where am I? You know, you try to kind of gather your memory and then you go straight to the kitchen and get yourself a pint of water and just down it and oh, your throat's dry. That's gone. That's finished. Man, honestly, you couldn't pay me to drink alcohol. Honestly, I wish somebody would offer me$100,000 to drink a pint. I wish they'd show me the cash and show me the beer, and I would say, hell no. I would not risk it. There's no way I'm ever going back to that life. Anyway, the ninth thing that you can expect is that you may start now to get some real tests. What can start happening is your brain can start thinking, hmm, maybe I can start to have one drink. And this is usually when you start to feel much better. You start to think, well, maybe it wasn't that bad. And that's why you need that list of reasons why you're committed to doing this. And you've also got to realize that thinking about alcohol is okay. It's impossible to not think about it. But if you think about it and then think, maybe I can have just one, and then you see your friend or you turn on the news and you see all these people drinking, and then you start to make positive associations with alcohol, I promise you, it's game over. You need to see alcohol for what it is. It is an ethanol, there is no advantage to consuming it. So then when you start to think, well, maybe I could just have one, instead, you think, well, hang on, I'm free. Like I've freed myself from a prison, from a disgusting toxin. Why would I even want to have one? Because there's no such thing as just one drink. And now the 10th thing that you can expect, and this should happen around the second week, is the bloating can go. Drinking alcohol can often bloat us. We retain a lot of water, and whilst you're not going to have made a miraculous transformation physically in two weeks, that bloating that we can get and the redness and puffiness that can all just start to settle. And that will get better over time, but that's when you'll start to see some real noticeable differences, especially in the face. And at this point, you might have people ask you, What are you doing? You look better, you look different, you look younger, you look like you've got more energy. What's changed? I can't promise that. But the big thing here is that in the second week, what you need to do is really just focus on your commitment. You need to be crystal clear that you're not gonna go back, that you're not gonna restart the timer because you've got through the worst of it, and now just things will get better and better and better. So let's get into week three and the 11th thing that you can expect. So in week three, 99.9% of people start to feel great. Everything's starting to stabilize, focus, right? Mood, energy, all of it is now really starting to come together where you're just starting to feel probably the best you felt in a long time, especially if you've drank for a long time and you've not had many breaks. You start to feel calmer, right? And that calm feeling feels natural rather than chemically induced. And pretty much all of the ups and downs that you've been experiencing in that first two weeks will have completely leveled out. The twelfth thing that you can expect is you might feel like you're ready to start exercising again and taking good care of yourself physically. And that's great. Get yourself down to a gym, get yourself into a, I don't know, some hobby that's active. Play some sport, do whatever. But because your energy's coming back and you're just feeling a lot better about yourself, that can really ignite the desire to exercise. That's exactly what happened to me. I remember that I was just like, right, that's it. I'm getting fit, I'm getting strong. I don't want to be a fat drunk guy anymore. Like, I'm good. And at this point as well, in my experience and what I've heard a lot of clients say, is that because they're starting to feel more stable, is that also it's a lot easier to stick with a good nutrition plan. Rather than drinking and then ordering takeaway or skipping breakfast because you're rushing in the morning. A lot of people find it easier to just eat three solid nutritious meals a day. And I'll tell you one great thing that can happen here, is that if you can just commit yourself to showing up to the gym and getting on a good nutrition plan, that will increase your self-confidence so much. The 13th thing is I did say this earlier, but you'll really start to look different around the end of the third week. The inflammation is gonna go down, the puffiness will go down, your eyes are going to look better, especially because the sleep quality is just getting better and better and you're resting. But you may have found that you might have lost a little bit of weight. You might have lost one or two kg. And that's why it's really good to get yourself to the gym, start eating properly, and really just gain momentum with your physical health. The 14th thing is in your mental clarity, and this one is huge. At this point, the fog will have lifted. Your executive functioning will have improved so much. You'll be sharper, you'll be clearer, and you'll be way more decisive. This is literally your brain recovering. And having mental clarity is one of the most important things that you can have and one of the best benefits of all when you stop drinking. When you've got mental clarity, right? You can make better decisions in your work, you can make better decisions for your family, for your health, for your future. You can start to really focus on long-term gratification instead of short-term gratification. You can start to do things that the future you will thank you for because you've got the clarity to know that, okay, if I do something that I don't really want to do now, but I know that the future me will be happy that I do, you've got the clarity to make that decision and do it, which means not ordering the pizza, which means going to the gym. And in that third week, the 15th thing that you can expect is in your performance. Everything will start to feel smoother. I've worked with a lot of people who start making more money around this mark, especially those that are working in any kind of sales role or a small business around the third week into things they start to perform at their peak. A lot of people say that their spouses are starting to treat them nicer. They're looking at them proud. They're thinking, yeah, you've really done it this time. Same with children as well. And it's a great thing when you're not fighting yourself and dragging yourself out of bed and just kind of getting through the day, you feel good. You feel optimistic. And the big thing here in this third week of not drinking alcohol is it's all about doing good things to build momentum. You want to just start taking massive action here. Don't sit around and wait for some change, just go for it. So let's get into week four. And this is the most important week of all. The 16th thing that will happen is your body will start to regenerate. And listen, the changes that happen in your body are just unbelievable. Fat accumulation and inflammation in the liver will drop, hormones will start to normalize, testosterone levels, estrogen levels, your nervous system will have calmed down so much, which means that the GABA and the glutamate systems will have started to rebalance. Just everything starts to get better. Just imagine that. Imagine the changes that are going on in your body, inside your body. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean that it's not happening. It's very easy for us to get motivated by, I don't know, looking better in the mirror, right? Or our clothes fitting us better. But by not putting that poison in your body, the inside changes that are happening are so much better. The 17th thing that we can expect is that anxiety at this point should be down by such a huge amount. I'm not saying it's gonna go completely, right? But I'm saying at this point it should be 90% better. And that's because, again, the GABA and the glutamate systems will be rebalancing in the brain, which means that the chemical balance in your brain will have started to normalize. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not gonna have worries and you're not gonna have some fear in the future. But because at this point you've got so much momentum, you're feeling more equipped to deal with those problems. The 18th thing that you can expect is appetite can start to settle. Blood sugar levels are starting to normalize now, which means that you might not have the cravings for ice cream or haribo. And you can expect any fat loss that you've experienced to continue. I've worked with dozens of people who have all said that they've not even tried to eat healthier, they just eat whatever they want and don't drink, and that alone just makes weight fall off them. The 19th thing that you can expect is clarity actually starts to become the baseline. You almost forget what it was like when you didn't have the clarity, when you had the fog over your eyes. And just being clear-headed and thinking clearly just feels like the new norm. Now, one thing that we do need to be careful of is not to forget how bad it was when we drank, which is why I always think that writing things down when you start this journey is so important. But feeling good will just be the new norm. And I can guarantee that this will happen in your final week. Now I've saved the best till last, but the 20th thing that you can expect is you will feel more confident in the future and in yourself. When you drink alcohol, we aren't so confident at what's around the corner. We don't know if we're gonna get hit with a health scare, if our partner's gonna leave us, if we're really gonna achieve the life that we've always wanted. And when you really commit to that decision to not drink alcohol for 30 days, I don't care how successful you are, I don't care how much money you've made, how great your life is, when you commit to that decision and you follow through with it, it will spread to every area of your life. And the real focus here in this final week is to focus on the future. It's really to keep looking forward, it's to think, okay, well, I've done this, I've done that, what's next? What more can I do? Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking podcast by Soberclear. If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit www.soberclear.com.

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Leon Sylvester

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