Kickoff Sessions

#276 I Quit Alcohol for 1000 Days - Here's How it Changed My Life

• Darren Lee • Episode 276

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Speaker 1:

If you're in your 20s and you're out drinking and you're partying too often and you think it's just fun, this video is for you Because the reality is I was in your exact position over 1000 days ago.

Speaker 1:

I was drinking, I was partying, I was out, doing everything that I thought was fun and harmless. This is the most important part I didn't have an issue with alcohol. I wasn't someone who was an alcoholic, waking up looking for alcohol or drugs or anything like that and missing work. No, I was actually pretty confident. I was working in a big nine to five job and I thought I had everything under control. I was going out partying at the weekend, meeting some of my friends, dating people, doing this, doing that, but I was actually ruining a ton of my potential and I had ruined a large proportion of my 20s. I thought I was just having a bit of fun, but the reality is I was becoming super comfortable in a really bad, negative habit and over 1000 days ago, that's when I decided to cut alcohol. If you're struggling with alcohol and you're struggling to hit your goals and really hit your targets and really improve your life, then this video is designed for you.

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During my early 20s, I had done it all. I'd been to university, I was traveling a lot during between university. I was at all the parties, all the festivals. I was in Ibiza, across Asia, across Europe, partying and doing all the things you're meant to do in your early 20s, and I never really had much of an issue because I would tell myself, just as long as you don't make your college habits your life habits, everything's going to be okay. So I did exactly that and I made sure that during my 20s, in my early 20s, I partied, lived it up, had a lot of fun, but then I cut it when I left university at 23.

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But what happened was I still kept on partying At the weekends. I would get paid for my nine to five job, which I absolutely despise. I was waking up every morning, going into this nine to five job in Dublin, ireland, and I was absolutely depressed. I was miserable to the point that all I could do was wait for the weekend to get messed up again. Monday, tuesday, wednesday, I would plan the party. Thursday, friday, saturday, I would be partying, and then I would start the process over and over again, and the reality is I was escaping from my actual potential. I was running from the reality. So, even though on paper I didn't have a problem with alcohol, I had used alcohol to escape from my reality.

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And if this is you in your early 20s, I want to put together a path for you today and to tell you a lot about my story of how I overcame this and completely broke the cycle with alcohol. Because just because you don't have an alcohol problem on the front end doesn't necessarily mean you don't have a problem on the back end. And if you're in your early 20s, or even older, and you feel like you're caught in this rut and you feel like that the party is dragging you in and every weekend you have friends pulling you in, well, this is exactly for you, because over a thousand days ago, I made the conscious decision to give up alcohol and it's changed my entire life Since then. I've got married, built a multi seven figure business, have attracted some of my best friends in the entire world, traveled the entire world with my podcast and my business, and it's all been because of quitting alcohol. So if you're struggling, this video is designed for you.

Speaker 1:

So in my mid twenties, right when I was in the middle of all the partying, this is when it really started to hit me because I had started my podcast, which allowed me to interview other successful entrepreneurs and founders, and what I had noticed was a lot of people that I interviewed. They were younger than me. They were either five years younger than me or four or five years younger than me, and they were super successful. They weren't necessarily incredibly intelligent, they were incredibly capable, but they weren't completely different than me. But what is the one thing that they had? They had focus and they weren't being distracted by drink and drugs and parodying and everything like that. And it was a real eye opener for me because I saw vividly what had happened when I had used alcohol to distract me from my reality.

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And that was it. I was running from my reality Because I'd worked this big job. I was trying to escape from it every single weekend. It would be this party, that party, and it would be almost unbearable. But the second I'd started my content and started actually interacting with a lot of high level people. I realized that this was holding me back significantly and I wasn't going to get any further if I kept on continuing on that path. And it was funny because when I was younger, I always wanted to make a million dollars before I turned 30. And the reality is, when I had quit alcohol, I'd actually achieved that within around 700 days.

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But here's the actual brutal reality. I actually grew up around alcoholism. I saw firsthand how alcohol destroyed families. I saw the arguing, the bickering, the frustration, the emotional wreck that alcohol and drugs can cause families, individuals, people, and how it can literally morph your brain and destroy your brain. I've seen loving, caring people turn absolutely aggressive, very hostile, very problematic. I've seen it firsthand.

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And the real messed up thing about this is that I thought it was normal. I actually seen these effects of alcohol super young in my life and I just thought it was normal. You go out, you get messed up, you come back, scream, roar, fight. It's just normal. Right? This is what happens. Maybe it might happen in an Irish setting, but it's definitely not normal elsewhere and that's not exactly where I wanted my life to be. But I had seen this and it had to become normal to me. So me going out, partying and going to different events, that should be okay. Right, because that's the fun thing to do, and if I don't do it, I'm just a loser. Right, because if I'm just the one over here who's going to the gym and trying to better himself. I'm a loser, I don't fit in with everybody else. And that's exactly what happened. People think that you're sick. People think that you're trying to be better than them.

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And what I realized is, when you quit alcohol, it becomes a mirror image to the other person. When I had told people that I was trying to improve my life and try to make a difference and try to quit, they would say, ah, just here, have another beer, or we're going to this party, or they would actually simply ignore it. People who were close to me literally ignored the fact that I was potentially struggling with alcohol. That I didn't realize, but they just tried to ignore it. And then this is the most messed up part when I had decided to quit alcohol and I worked very hard to stay off alcohol, the same people ignored me and they ignored the fact that I was trying to improve my life. So it wasn't until I had moved out of Ireland that I had realized that alcohol was not good for me. I had just moved to Singapore and the funny thing is is Singapore is quite expensive to buy alcohol, since everything is imported into Singapore, and I thought to myself, ah, I'll save a bit of money and I'll just take a break from alcohol for maybe like a month or two.

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And at that point I had a struggling career in finance, I had a declining podcast that was going nowhere and I was just going through the motions. So you might feel like that now. You might feel like that, no matter what you're doing, it's not getting a exponential improvement. You may feel like you're not getting the results that you want. And I'd quit alcohol. And what happened was I had all of the weekends to work on my actual business and my podcast.

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So it wasn't about escaping from my nine to five with alcohol. It was about escaping from my nine to five with a better life, and I had given myself the opportunity to improve my life by quitting alcohol. So myself and my girlfriend, who is now my wife, we lived in Singapore together and I had just spent the weekend just working on my content, trying out this thing my podcast, sending outreach to amazing guests and people were saying like yes, absolutely, because in a world of mediocrity, people love people who are obsessed, and I was just working on things that I really enjoyed and, for the first time in my entire life, I felt in alignment because up until that point I had done everything that I was told I'd parodied, got the job, took on the desk, tried to appease people. I did all these things and that's when I had gone back into drinking and parodying to almost escape from that lifetime. So what had happened was after one month I had forgotten that I had given up alcohol. I was just in this pursuit of getting better and working on my podcast and working on different areas. I would put on 13 kilos of muscle. I hired a fitness coach and I put on so much muscle during that period of time over the next year because I was so focused on the bulk that I didn't even want to break it by drinking alcohol. That moved into three months, that moved into six months.

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And then the question was very simple. People would ask me when will I start drinking again? And my response was why would I start drinking again? Because I had become a shadow of the person that I previous was the person that wanted to be, that was super insecure, that wanted to be the life of the parody, that wanted to be the center of attention. I didn't want any of that anymore, because I had realized the stuff that I had genuinely enjoyed, and alcohol woke me up to the reality that I was leaving. It was almost like looking through the matrix. I had literally seen the other side of the world and thought this has actually held me back. And you may still like having a drink and having a glass of wine with your partner, and if you do so, be it. That's completely fine.

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This is for people who actually want to improve their life, and I actually have been seeing alcohol hold them back and hold back their potential, because that's exactly what I was. And the same people that I was afraid of that would think that I'm a loser and think that I'm a nerd and think that I'm insecure are the same people that are not here today Because, unfortunately, the people that want to hold you back aren't the ones that support you. And what I've been thinking about a lot recently is the same people that laugh at you when you start something are the same people who ignore you when you're stuck, but they're the same people who clap for you when you've hit the finish line, and I'd seen that People coming back out of the surface. Oh, it's so amazing what you've built and everything. No, they had tried to hold me back from my potential, and these people don't adjust and evolve at the same rate that you have. Because, for me, quitting alcohol was extremely difficult.

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I come from Ireland. It's like ingrained in the blood, and it's quite funny to even suggest that because of the fact that it's such a big industry alcohol, tobacco, everything is such a big industry in Ireland that you are the odd one for not doing it, but this is the reality. If you want results that most people don't have, you have to do things that most people won't do, and looking at alcohol 1000 days ago was exactly that transformation that I needed to make, because it was the thing that was getting in the way. Now you have to remember I am not special in any way. When I was in school, at 17, 18, the teachers told me to never read or write because I was too dyslexic. However, when I had quit alcohol, I invested all that time into writing. I have written a hundred plus newsletters over the past two or three years. I've released 275 podcasts. I have effectively two businesses two separate businesses right now. I have an amazing team. I have an amazing wife. I moved to Bali full-time. I traveled all across the world.

Speaker 1:

None of this would be possible without alcohol. Not one thing. There's not one part of this that would be possible, because I will be thinking about the party, I will be thinking about what that guy or that girl thinks of me over here. But the reality is, the longer I've spent away from alcohol, drugs, all that BS, I've started to look at it for what it is and my brain has almost adjusted into seeing it. Because now, looking back at it, to be perfectly honest with you guys, even though I said I didn't have an issue with it, I probably did have an issue with it, because you're out partying all the time.

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What type of messed up behavior is that? It's socially acceptable to go out and get messed up and then everyone pats you on the back and calls you a hard man. What is that? There's no other activity that you get applauded for, getting absolutely obliterated. Like if you went to Burger King and started smashing a ton of burgers, no one's going to pat you on the back for that. Yet for alcohol, people do. It's a weird dichotomy, it's a weird mix up and this is the reality. So I feel like I had a problem with alcohol, that I can now admit that I definitely did, and I would say many other people also have a problem with alcohol. They're just not willing to admit it and I'm perfectly open to saying it.

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I was surrounded by alcoholism. I've seen alcoholics. I've seen the destruction. I've probably struggled with alcoholism to some degree to a lesser extent of destroying people in the process, but I definitely have, and I definitely have that effect because I have a very addictive personality. So, whether it is drink, drugs, devices, I can get pulled in and sucked into that world just like now. My content, my business, my team, my fitness I could get pulled into that just as heavily. So addictive behaviors need to be channeled in the right way.

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But the biggest thing is, you will not improve until you make improvements in your life. There's no point saying I have amazing potential and I have had amazing grades in school and these people think that I'm great without you going and doing the things because I'm, when you want to build something substantial and build something really bigger than you. At this point, voix is much bigger than me. We have people that come and work with us that don't even know who. I am right, which is the irony. That requires so much focus, so much pain, so much sacrifice and let me tell you this I have sacrificed everything to get to this point, everything. I have sacrificed everything to get to this point Everything Friends, family, habits, behaviors and it was all worth it 100%, because all of that was doing was holding me back and making me a terrible person. Making me a terrible person Because if all you know is drama, alcoholism, drinking, bad behavior, you will become that.

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As cliche as it sounds, who you surround yourself with the closest five people is who you become, and that's who I was becoming, because it was normal. Whereas if you critically critically look at who you are and look at who you're surrounding yourself with and the impact that it could be having on you and the people around you, you will change. If you can critically look at it, in a non-subjective way, in an objective way, look at who you are and who you're becoming, you will make those changes and thankfully, as a result of that, my entire life had changed. My girlfriend at the time has become my wife. We have done a ton of working on our relationship as a result, like I've, literally we've had to sit down and rewire some of the behaviors that I thought were normal in relationships, because I grew up around madness and I've had to rework those behaviors in me and that was a huge point so that we could have an amazing relationship and family, which is what we have now, and that was very important to me. And also, I respect my wife a lot because she was able to help me and not just walk out the door when I had struggled with things in the past, which is super important. And on top of that, then, different aspects of the friendships that I had or had, should I say and the impact that they've had on me and how I've had to adjust my behaviors has made me the individual that I am and, as it made me, create a much bigger reality. So the business that we've built over these years.

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So it went from year one figuring things out after finishing up with alcohol, year two to putting the pillars in place. I'd left my job working in a high growth startup. I was making 100k a year. Now we make 100k in like two weeks. I had built the business and systems and teams, which took another year. From there, we had built multiple products in the business. We'd scale that up, we'd build a much bigger organization and I had become the person that I had looked up to for many years in terms of the level of discipline, the level of focus, the level of attentiveness that's required, hopefully, as a leader, and I'm nowhere near my full potential and I would honestly say that after 1000 days, I'm only getting started, and myself and all of our leadership team of OX say this repeatedly we are only getting started. This is only the beginning and that's the beautiful part about this and it's really transformed my entire frame. Before I used to act out of anxiety I could barely sleep at night because I was up from drinking drugs and all that kind of stuff to now sleeping easy at night put it that way but also having an action plan for my life, changing towards an infinite game approach. I already have everything that I want in my entire life. I don't need anything. Everything that I'm doing from this point forward is more just wants things that I want to achieve, and that's been a beautiful part of how I've really really adjusted my frame. So I want to give you an action step.

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So if you are someone who is struggling to achieve their goals, you may or may not think that alcohol is in the way right now. I want you to sit back and critically analyze your relationship with alcohol right now, specifically the relationship around you your friends, family, spouse. How has that been and how much of an impact has that been on you and the goals you want to achieve? And your goals may not be making a million dollars a month, but your goal is surely more than nothing right, because that's everyone's goal. Because what you have right now is a distraction mechanism. It's truly truly holding you back from everything that you want to achieve in your life and it's very important that you understand what are those triggers.

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So identify where you are currently in your life who, what and how is it holding you back? Identify the triggers that put that together and create a 30-day action plan what you could achieve in 30 days by quitting alcohol. That doesn't mean you need to change your entire life in 30 days, but what it does mean is we put together a mini micro plan for you to be able to action over 30 days and then put together a 90-day plan. How does it look over 90 days? And I imagine and I know for a fact because I've felt it your life will dramatically improve. You will sleep better. How does it look over 90 days? And I imagine and I know for a fact because I've felt it your life will dramatically improve. You will sleep better, you'll be healthier, you'll have better relationships, you'll be less anxious, you'll be more critically thinking clearly, you'll be less reactive and you'll be exponentially better in your life. And does it need to be forever? I've just recorded this video explaining that I've been off alcohol for a thousand days and I'm telling you it doesn't have to be forever, but what it does have to be is focused, because you can enjoy possibly a drink with your friend or your wife or whatever for to celebrate.

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But alcohol isn't the answer to all of life's events Commiserations, congratulations, all these different events that happen in life. Alcohol isn't the answer to those events. It's just a part of society, and I think the more you realize this and the longer you away from it, the more you will truly really recognize how destructive alcohol can be and how much better your life can be as a result. So if you want to create a life that you truly are proud of and if you finally finally want to hit the goals that you've been talking about hitting for many years, put together a short micro task list of everything you want to achieve over the end of it, you will recognize how much of an impact alcohol can have on your life and how you can create anything you possibly want by spending a little bit of time away from alcohol and focusing on the goals you want.

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And I'll leave you with this one point if someone like myself can do this who was a complete dumbass, to put it literally, bluntly, as a child who struggled through university, struggled through school, had terrible jobs in his nine to five was able to move away from that. Who was an insane parody boy who would just get up to no good at the weekend and regret it all week long, if I can do it and spend a bit of time away from it and completely transform my life, I promise you, I quite literally promise you, that you can do it as well, a bit of time away from it and completely transform my life, I promise you, I quite literally promise you, that you can do it as well. And the main part here is just to remember that if you don't take control of alcohol, it will take control of your life, and the scary part is you might not even recognize it.