Are You Interested in not drinking… or Committed?

Hot mamas, get ready to take off the spiritual Spanx and slip into something real… because in this soul-sparking episode of Unslurred, I’m breaking down the difference between being interested in sobriety and being committed AF.

This ep was inspired by a juicy convo between two of my favorite expanders — Dr. Kelly Brogan + John Assaraf — and they said something that landed so hard for me:

“When you’re just interested, fear runs the show. When you’re committed? You use fear as fuel.”

UM. YES.

So today, I’m taking you behind the scenes of what keeps us stuck in “kinda-sorta” energy around ditching alcohol — and how to finally flip the switch from flirting with sobriety… to becoming her sexy soulmate.

In this episode, we unpack:

💭 The 3 core fears that keep you interested in drinking — not committed to quitting
💥 Why FOMO isn’t actually about missing out (spoiler: it’s about missing FAKE shit)
🧠 The identity + skillset upgrades required for lasting change
⚡ What’s really going on when your brain says, “I just don’t think I can do this…”
🔮 How alcohol gives you fake safe space — and what happens when you choose real intimacy instead
💅🏽 Why nervous system regulation is your sobriety superpower
🧬 The new belief systems you need to step into your next-level sober identity

If you’ve ever thought:
 “I don’t think I can do it…”
 “I just want to connect and have fun…”
 “I can’t handle reality without a drink…”

This one’s for you, babe.  

And if you're ready to go from interested to I don't even recognize that version of me anymore…

💃🏼Grab my Ditch Drinking Guide — your roadmap to releasing alcohol with clarity, confidence, and zero shame spirals.
✨ https://stan.store/milfierich/p/ditch-drinking-disco- ✨

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello, hot mamas. How are you today? Welcome to another episode of Unslurred. I am your host, Jenny Jector. And today I wanted to share some inspiration I got from another podcast recently that I was listening to with one of my favorite spiritual leaders, Dr. Kelly Brogan, she was interviewing John Assaraf, who has written many books on not manifestation, but really like habit change and how to create the outcomes that we want. And they had a podcast and I was listening to it yesterday. I re-listened to it today and I started to apply a lot of the concepts that they were talking about to our drinking habit. And a lot of it was really resonating for me. And as I was listening to the main point about are you interested or are you committed to the change that you want, I really started to think back on my own sobriety journey. And I can see how for many years I was in the awareness phase of changing my relationship with alcohol, meaning I– you know, wanted to change things. I was having hangovers. I was even noticing effects of just like a couple of glasses of wine, but I was still so used to drinking. Like drinking was still such a part of my life. It was still habitual. It was how I coped emotionally. It was how I coped with stress. It's how I numbed myself from lack of connection. It's how I felt more secure. And And even beyond the emotional drinking, it was just a part of my life, right? Like it was just something that I did and didn't think like, oh my gosh, you could just not do this. So the thing that they were talking about on the podcast was the difference between being interested or committed. And one of the things that he said is that when you are interested, there will be excuses why you can't or won't. and you will be controlled by your fear instead of using your fear as fuel. What? Mic drop. Wait, we can use our fear as fuel when we wanna quit drinking? How do we do that? Well, I wanted to answer that question for myself. And so I just listed out, I mean, I feel there's a lot of fears that people have when they wanna stop drinking. But I listed just a few of them that have come up in my own life and in some of my clients that keep you interested in drinking but not committed. Now, I want to say this too. He also mentioned that it's fear, limiting beliefs, or a self-image problem that keeps you committed. in certain habits that keeps you from outcomes that you want, that keeps you from living a lifestyle that you want, that keeps you from freaking change. So we're going to go into limiting beliefs and self-image too, but let's start with the fears. So here are three fears that I kind of came up with that I'm thinking back to my life and the life of my clients that kept them interested in drinking. interested in quitting drinking, but not necessarily committed. And the first fear is I'll feel like I'm missing out and I won't be able to connect with people who are drinking. Here is the thing. This is actually true. You are going to miss out. But what I want to reframe here is what you're actually missing out on. We think that Alcohol helps us to connect. We think that alcohol helps to make us feel courageous, but it actually does all of the opposite. We don't generate real self-esteem if we have alcohol every time we go to a party to numb that anxious voice that's telling us like, oh my God, they don't like you or any of that stuff. We don't actually generate anything of real substance or value. So You are actually missing out on something when you stop drinking, but it's just not what you think it is. You're missing out on fucking fake shit. It's fucking fake. It's fucking fake to go to a party and to be able to act like you like everybody because you're drinking. It's fucking fake. You're missing out on being fucking fake. And instead... What you're going to be instead is fucking real. And the part where we're like, okay, well, I'm not going to be able to connect with people who are drinking. Also true. Also true. But guess what? As people drink more and more, they become more self-involved and not interested in you. And this is what the research shows, that as people drink more, their circuitry in the prefrontal cortex starts to go offline. Guess what's in the prefrontal cortex? Your capacity to empathize. So are you actually connecting with people when your capacity to empathize is going down and what you're highlighting and amplifying is the more primitive part of your brain that is more of your survival mechanisms, that's more the me, me, me part? So are we actually connecting when we're drinking? No. What we think we're connecting with is a shared experience of of something in our hand, right? It's a shared experience, but the true connection, like the true energetic connection isn't happening because of alcohol. In fact, I think it's not happening because of alcohol. So when you stop drinking, you actually gain more connection, deeper intimacy, and real fucking vulnerability. One of my clients said one time was so good. She said this on a podcast episode way back in the day. If you want to, you can go find it. It's when alcohol became her abuser with Carrie Dobson. She said, alcohol gives you fake safe space. And I was like, that is so freaking true. That's exactly what it does. is fake safe space. You let your guard down. And for some of us, we want to be able to let our guard down, but we also want to know that the person that we're letting our guard down with is safe, is a good person, is someone who we can trust. And the other part of this is when you are actually being vulnerable, you want your body to remember the feeling of being vulnerable. And when you're drinking and being vulnerable, there's like a cellular disconnect. And so you never actually memorize the feeling of being able to be vulnerable, of being able to be authentic and real. It's always at the hands of alcohol. It's always because we have a drink that we're able to do that. So you end up with what's called a vulnerability hangover, which is just as real as a real hangover. I want you to think of any time you have said too much at a party and then freaking regretted it. This is not real connection. Real connection happens when there is resonance between two people, when you can tell that they're being real with you and you're being real with them, you can feel it. And alcohol, in my opinion, and I think there's a lot of people think like this, it just, it masks that. It blurs the lines. It blurs what's real and what's not. So yes, you are absolutely going to miss out. And I just want to reframe it that what if that's a good thing? The second fear that people have is I won't be able to do it. And I think that this is just really just standard run of the mill fear of failure, right? So this is really normal because you don't have evidence yet that your brain has. So your brain's like, oh, I don't have any evidence that I've been able to stop drinking before or take more than a month off or take more than a couple weeks off. So I'm not going to be able to do it. So your brain is just layering on an obstacle ahead of time by predicting your failure. And by predicting your failure and the pain that failure might cause you, Your brain keeps you doing the thing that you know is actually harming you. And I want you to think about this. When you're thinking, I won't be able to do it, I want you to think about every single thing that you are good at now. You were once not good at it. Every single thing that you can do now with ease at one point in your life, you were not good at it. But what did you do? You put reps in. And all I want to say is that you have put reps in drinking and that's why you're good at it. You're good at saying yes to alcohol. You're good at saying yes to your alcohol brain's lies. And you can get good at not drinking by putting in the reps of not drinking. And this is the only reason that your brain actually has for why you're not good at it and why you're going to fail. And positioning you as like, hey, I won't be able to do it. And putting that fear in there, putting that fear of failure in there. The third fear that I have come to notice, and I think this is a big one that we don't talk about. And I think for everyone, it's very different. But being with unadulterated reality. What, what reality? do you not want to be with? Is it your kids every night from five to eight o'clock when you come home from work and you're already overwhelmed and they're going crazy? Is that the reality you don't want to be with? Is it the 5 p.m. happy hours that you're forced to go to with a bunch of people that you work with that you do not like and that you have nothing in common with? Is that the reality you don't want to be with? Is it family picnics where most of your family is super dysfunctional And they say the most off the wall stuff that you disagree with. And in order to curb your anger or an outburst, you need to have rosé, a steady stream of rosé going into your mouth. Is that the reality you don't want to be with? When we drink habitually, there's almost always a reality we don't want to be with. And here is where I want to kind of tie this into what we need in order to be able to change. And it's an upgrade. We need an upgrade in identity, knowledge and beliefs, and skills. I'm going to say that again. All change requires an upgrade in identity, knowledge and beliefs, and skills. And we'll kind of add to that daily habits that would crowd out the habits that you're trying to extinguish. This is how we change. So when we think about being with an unadulterated reality, we want to ask ourselves these questions. Do you have the emotional regulation skills you need? Maybe you don't. Maybe that's a skill that you need to develop in order to quit drinking, in order to feel great in your body, in order to have more genuine connection in your life. These are the things that quitting drinking offers us. But maybe there's a skill that you need to learn in order to do that. What about your reality are you most scared to face? I know for me personally, I had a lot of codependency in my relationship and a lot of people pleasing and a lot of just dishonest and inauthentic interaction, right? And so I had to learn skills to hold myself in the discomfort of pulling out of some of my people pleasing tendencies. I had to learn nervous system regulation skills. I think that's probably true for everybody. I don't know a single person that it's not true for, that you don't need to learn some skills to regulate your nervous system to be in more uncomfortable situations. And I want to say, as you're learning these skills, what you're doing is building your capacity. You're building your capacity to be with discomfort, to be with more heightened emotions that maybe don't feel good in your body. For me, personally, being in arguments was really uncomfortable for me. So feeling that disconnection that comes when you are in discord with somebody. I didn't like that feeling in my body. I had to learn how to tolerate that feeling so that things could change in my relationships so that I had more autonomy and I was being more truthful and I was speaking up for my wants and needs more. Maybe that's something you need to do too. Here's another question. Are there certain people you tolerate with alcohol? And do you have the capacity to change the boundaries in those relationships? Quitting drinking is so much more than just not opening a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc on a Wednesday night. It truly is about changing relationships. so many things that you think and have been thinking about yourself and about your relationships and about emotional maturity, there's so many layers to what has to change. And I think that that's what we don't realize until we get into it. And so my hope is that the more you come back to my podcast, if you get my ditch drinking disco guide, if you work with me one-on-one and Or if you work with someone else one-on-one, if you find other resources, that you're preparing yourself for the challenges that sobriety brings. That it's not just like, oh, I'm going to white knuckle my way through this because that fucking sucks. And it doesn't work. We can use willpower for a limited time, but at some point we're going to need what we're talking about in this podcast. An upgrade in identity, knowledge, beliefs and skills and new habits to crowd out the bad ones. The other thing that they said in this podcast that I thought was super, super interesting is that we all have 100% discipline to our current habits and patterns. And I thought that was a really interesting way to phrase that because a lot of people will say like, oh, I'm just not disciplined, right? And I really believed that about myself for a very long time that I just wasn't disciplined. But it wasn't true. I was disciplined. I was disciplined to the current habits I had and the current patterns that I was in. And that's the other thing that they were talking about on this podcast, that we're all just running patterns and stories. That's not new, right? That's not new that we've heard that. You've heard that before, right? We're all running patterns and stories. And I think this is where we have the identity shifts that have to happen. I know for a fact that becoming someone who didn't drink was not something I believed was possible for me. I remember changing my beliefs about alcohol when I first took my 90-day break from drinking back in 2019 and I genuinely thought there is no way I could ever be someone who didn't want to drink. I was working in the alcohol industry at the time. I had the best sample bottles every day. I was surrounded by alcohol, and I was surrounded by people who drank a lot of alcohol, and I just thought it was so normal. That's the conditioning. That's the conditioning of an alcohol-obsessed world. But what I wanted was to be someone who didn't want it. So along my journey, as I was putting more reps in, not drinking, using the process that I teach in my ditch drinking guide, learning how to allow urges for alcohol to go unanswered in my body, putting in those reps, not drinking, I started to change my beliefs. And then I started to become someone who didn't want alcohol. I genuinely started to be someone who didn't care about it. And it did take about 90 days. Now, y'all know if you've been around for a while that I stayed in a sober, curious place for about four years and didn't take alcohol out completely until around two years ago, two years, three months, something like that. So my beliefs changed again, right? My beliefs went from like, I don't really care about it and I don't drink it that much to I don't want this in my life at all. And my identity shifted again. I now feel identified with a sober identity. I now feel identified with an alcohol-free identity. That also took probably about a year, a year of zero alcohol until I really was like, this is who I am. And during that year, I, again, brought in more knowledge. I started to really educate myself about alcohol and all of its harmful effects. I did not want to hide anything from my brain. I had to get a new skill set too, because there were still moments that I like would have a glass of wine. And so it was still on the table for me. to use it if I wasn't really that happy on a Friday night, I could pretend to be happy with a glass of Chardonnay. So there was a new skill that I had to learn. Specifically in that instance, being okay with not being happy. Knowing what were my stories that I was telling myself that were making me unhappy. Were they true? Questioning my beliefs yet again. Aren't we always going to be doing this for the rest of our lives? I think the answer is yes. questioning our freaking beliefs is it true how do i show up in the world when i believe this and then my habits had to upgrade again this is when i started my tagline like night walks over nightcaps because it's when i decided to be sober that i made my night walks like the thing that i did i think it's it's probably pretty rare that i miss a night walk after dinner i And that happened while I was shifting from sober curious to sobriety. So again, a new habit had to come in place. We are 100% disciplined to our current habits and patterns. And we can change these things anytime we want to. If this episode was helpful, I would love for you to come share what you got from it with me in my Instagram or on my Instagram. Send me a DM. Share it with a friend who needs it. And when you are ready to take your first 90 day break from drinking, I want to invite you to download my Ditch Drinking Disco Guide. I teach you all of the mindset shifts, all of the skill sets, all of the tools that I use to go from drinking four nights a week, never thinking I could be someone who didn't want to drink to now two plus years alcohol free. And I don't want or miss alcohol at all. This is not about saying you were never going to drink forever. It's about you becoming more aware of what it is you really want and why you're drinking. All right, until next week, I will see you all next time. Cheers.