One of the books that's had a huge impact on my life and health is The 30 Day Alcohol Experiment. It's this book that helped me (finally) give booze the boot.
I decided to share this book with you, and also go back and share a couple of exerts from a podcast I recorded with Sarah Rusbatch back in Novemeber 2022.
Sarah is a grey area coach who specialises in helping individuals navigate the intricacies of sobriety.
The episode dives deep into the complexities surrounding alcohol consumption and the process of transitioning towards sobriety. Sarah Rusbatch's journey to sobriety is a captivating one. She narrates her struggle with societal norms around drinking and the constant question - was her alcohol consumption a problem or was she just another grey area drinker? This question led her on a path to understanding and accepting her issues with alcohol. Her journey is not just about overcoming alcohol addiction, but also about transforming her life and now helping others who face similar challenges.
One significant aspect of the discussion was the exploration of 'gray area drinking'. This is a state where an individual's drinking habits fall into a zone that is not clearly problematic but is not exactly healthy either. It's an interesting concept as it breaks down the stigma around the term 'alcoholic' and brings into light the fact that most people's drinking habits fall within this gray area. Sarah’s personal journey and her work as a life coach shine a spotlight on this issue and provide valuable insights for those grappling with similar challenges.
If you're thinking about giving booze the boot this book, and/or Sarah's coaching are great ways to gain the support you need and will make your journey easier.
One of the books that's had a huge impact on my life and health is The 30 Day Alcohol Experiment. It's this book that helped me (finally) give booze the boot.
I decided to share this book with you, and also go back and share a couple of exerts from a podcast I recorded with Sarah Rusbatch back in Novemeber 2022.
Sarah is a grey area coach who specialises in helping individuals navigate the intricacies of sobriety.
The episode dives deep into the complexities surrounding alcohol consumption and the process of transitioning towards sobriety. Sarah Rusbatch's journey to sobriety is a captivating one. She narrates her struggle with societal norms around drinking and the constant question - was her alcohol consumption a problem or was she just another grey area drinker? This question led her on a path to understanding and accepting her issues with alcohol. Her journey is not just about overcoming alcohol addiction, but also about transforming her life and now helping others who face similar challenges.
One significant aspect of the discussion was the exploration of 'gray area drinking'. This is a state where an individual's drinking habits fall into a zone that is not clearly problematic but is not exactly healthy either. It's an interesting concept as it breaks down the stigma around the term 'alcoholic' and brings into light the fact that most people's drinking habits fall within this gray area. Sarah’s personal journey and her work as a life coach shine a spotlight on this issue and provide valuable insights for those grappling with similar challenges.
If you're thinking about giving booze the boot this book, and/or Sarah's coaching are great ways to gain the support you need and will make your journey easier.
Hello, hello, it's Nadine here and I'm here with this week's mini episode of Life, health and the Universe. I have to say this episode might end up being a little bigger than some of my other mini episodes, because I'm doing something a little bit different Now. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you'll know that my mini episodes, which fall every other week at the moment, I've been talking about some of the books that have had the greatest impact on me my life journey, my health journey and just general life stuff and this one is no different. In fact, this book has changed my life for good. This book's called the 30-Day Alcohol Experiment and it's a book that I picked up almost two years ago. Some of you will already know, if you've been listening, that I stopped drinking a while ago, stopped drinking alcohol, and this is the book that led me to that experience, to me experiencing life as an alcohol-free person. So I thought that this was a great opportunity. We're edging towards the end of the year, even though we're kind of thinking we're going to potentially kick on and have some fun in the next couple of weeks, and we may already be doing that. There's also, I think, at the back of a lot of our minds about what we want to achieve in 2024 and what things that we might want to change, and that one of those things might just be, for you, cutting back, taking a break from or stopping drinking alcohol, and I can't recommend this book highly enough if that's something you want to do Now.
Speaker 1:What I'm going to do in this episode is I'm actually going to share a conversation, or bits of a conversation, that I had back almost just over 12 months ago, november 2022, with Sarah Rusbatch. She's a grey area drinking coach and the episode that we recorded season three, episode nine, if you want to go back and listen to the whole thing is called from piss to purpose, and Sarah has been on a journey of sobriety as well, but she's now become a coach. She's got an ever-growing community of women who are taking the leap and cutting back or taking a break from or stopping drinking alcohol. So that's my book. That's the book for the week. I'm not going to really tell you too much else about it. I wanted to share some snippets of the conversation that I had back in 2022 with Sarah.
Speaker 1:Grab the book if you've been thinking about this for a while. Make it easy on yourself. I can't express how much impact this has had on my life for the better. So let's listen to a little bit from Sarah about grey area drinking and what that is and I'll come back to you in a little while Because I don't think that people know a lot about it. And it's really interesting without You're the professional you know all of these things, but really interesting how we have these kind of aspirations to be that person who doesn't drink. But then we come up with all the reasons why we do drink we have fun, it's social, I really enjoy it, I love the taste, whatever it may be, and I guess that's kind of what that gray area drinking is. Would you agree?
Speaker 2:So I tend to describe it as thinking about your drinking as being on a scale of one to 10. So one is someone who either doesn't drink or maybe has a glass of champagne at a wedding to toast the bride and groom and other than that the alcohol just doesn't even feature in their life whatsoever. 10 is someone who has end stage physical dependency on alcohol, and what I mean by that is they need to have medical support to stop drinking, because if they were to suddenly go cold turkey they would die, because it's important to note here that alcohol is one of only three substances that the human body can die from. Withdrawal from and alcohol. If people are at that end stage physical dependency, they mustn't just stop, they have to have medical support. So one and a 10, they are quite extreme levels, right, and not many people sit there.
Speaker 2:I think we start to get into the gray area about five, and I would say five to an eight on that scale is where gray area drinking sits.
Speaker 2:So we haven't got to the point, perhaps, where we are physically dependent, and this is why the term alcoholic is so outdated, because if you use the term alcoholic you're either saying I'm an alcoholic or I'm not, and most people don't identify as being an alcoholic because we have the stereotype that an alcoholic is a homeless person who sleeps on a park bench, who has the shakes every single morning, that starts drinking at 9 am. And if we don't do any of those things, then there's no label for us and so therefore we go. I'm OK, but the problem is that most of us are not OK. We could be drinking binge, drinking heavily, we could be drinking a really significant level that's impacting our mental health and our physical health, but we're not giving ourselves the label alcoholic. So what are we? And that's where gray area drinking is so helpful to be able to give people a term to use that isn't alcoholic, but nor is it. I'm an OK, average social drinker. It's what's in the middle of those.
Speaker 1:In the next excerpt that I've included, sarah and I talk about that idea of how alcohol is so socially acceptable and how that can make it quite difficult to define whether we do have a problem with drinking, and we also hear a bit about Sarah's own personal journey to sobriety. Do you know, it makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable to say that I had a problem with drinking. Do you know what I mean? Because it's so socially acceptable to be in that cycle, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's so stigmatized to confess to having a problem.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and I've actually had times when I've said to people oh, I just want to stop drinking. And they're like don't be so hard on yourself.
Speaker 2:Totally, yeah. I mean, when I first stopped, I would say I'm not drinking for a while and people would go, oh, let's catch up when you're drinking again. Ok, it's one of the only drugs we have to justify not taking Right, or don't be so boring, just have one, you know. And when we actually dig deep and start to really understand some of the facts about alcohol, it's incredible that we have it on this pedestal of all the ways that it enhances our life, without actually talking about some of the things that it's actually destroying in our lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's pretty full on and I take my heart off to you with the way that you educate people because, as you said, you're not demonizing alcohol, you're not trying to make people feel bad about it. But knowledge is power, right, and you can make some better choices and some better decisions about whether you do or don't when you know the facts.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Tell us, if you don't mind, a little bit about your own story. So like what was happening you talked about, like your kids, and how that was kind of a trigger to a bit of an unraveling, but also the epiphany, perhaps, and the change, yeah, so tell us a little bit about all of that and like what was the turning point for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I grew up in the north of England and, you know, in the 90s an era where it was girl power, it was girls can do the same as the boys we can. Many of our role models back then were women that were, you know, drinking with the lads and matching the boys pounce pine, you know, pint for pint. And so I started drinking at a young age, as most people around my area did. At 14-15 years old we would fill up soda stream bottles with chinsano and go down the local park and snob the local boys and that was kind of my initiation into teenage years. And that was when I discovered alcohol and I liked it. I liked how it made me feel I wasn't an anxious person but I loved the. What I craved was connection and looking back on this is all stuff that I've unpacked over, you know, the last few years. But what I craved was connection. And what I loved about alcohol was it fast-forwarded connection. You know how, like after a few drinks, you're like you're my best friend, I love you and you're telling everyone all your secrets, like I loved that. I'm a girl's girl and I loved the kind of the quick and the speed up process of feeling really close to someone, even though it's not potentially authentic when you're a bottle of wine in. But that didn't matter to me at the moment. That was what I love.
Speaker 2:So I went to uni big drinking culture moved to London huge drinking culture and but never really associated my drinking of being problematic. It was something I did socially. Yes, I socialized a lot, but I drank in the same way that many people around me did. I wasn't at home drinking on my own. It was something that I did for fun. So then I met my husband. We got married and decided to move to Australia and it was a kind of catalyst of a lot of things that all happened at once, which was I've had a big, successful career that I absolutely loved and I got a lot out of it, and so I wasn't working. I had a second child very quickly after my first, so I had two under two.
Speaker 2:No job, moved to Australia, no friends, no family, no support at home with two babies all day, when my husband was setting up a new business and I was lonely, I was homesick, I was lost, I was confused, I was scared of my feelings because I was struggling to love motherhood as much as I wanted to. I found it a little bit monotonous being at home and doing the baby rhyme time and doing one of those things, and I missed work and I missed getting dressed up, but I missed seeing people because I didn't have any friends and you know, going back to what I said before, I love action. So alcohol became a crutch, because what alcohol is really good at in the moment is making all uncomfortable emotions go away. And so I didn't know how to sit with emotions because I'm sure, like you and many of your listeners, it wasn't taught to me at school and so I'm comfortable emotions were something to be avoided and distracted from at all costs, and alcohol is very good at doing that. So bring in the alcohol, and it was something that I started looking forward to.
Speaker 2:Every day, five o'clock, I can have my wine. My husband would sometimes see me. He would turn into the street and I'd be standing at the end of the driveway with a baby in one arm, a toddler at my feet, tears streaming down my face, just waiting for him to get home so I could hand him the children and go inside and drink my wine. And that continued for quite a few years, and I still have my rules. If I don't drink on a Monday and Tuesday, I would white knuckle Monday and Tuesdays because that told me I'm not an alcoholic, because I don't drink. For those two days my anxiety got really bad, because it turns out alcohol causes anxiety rather than relieving it. I'd been to my GP. I said to her I'm a mess, I'm crying all the time, I'm a shadow of myself and at no point does she say to me how much you're drinking. But did give me some anxiety medication.
Speaker 2:I this was about two weeks before the event that kind of changed everything. I then had a friend's 40th and it was a big boozy night. I drank a bottle of champagne before I even got there. I didn't eat anything. I was on a mission to get drunk. I've got outside for a cigarette and I was wearing high heels. And as I crouched down to put out my cigarette I fell forward, had no reflexes, landed on my face on a concrete driveway, splat open my lip, smashed up my face like cuts, bruises, everything. So my friend took me home and put me to bed and I woke up the next morning to my five year old daughter standing over the bed saying mommy, what happened to your face and you know that moment where you just feel that sick and that dread and it's like someone's punched you in the stomach and I was so ashamed and so remorseful and so embarrassed and I hated myself. In that moment I was just like why have I done it again? I've made a complete dick of myself. I'm the most drunk person at every event I ever go to. I can't ever stop at just a few. I always have to be the most extreme.
Speaker 2:I didn't stop drinking that day, interestingly because those feelings were so strong. I remember that night I actually drinking wine through a straw because I couldn't actually put a glass to my lips because they were so cut but I couldn't not have my alcohol. So I was drinking wine through a straw just to get the alcohol into my system, to escape the feelings that I was having. Yeah, jof of it. Yeah. And two weeks later I said to myself I'm gonna take a break. I'm gonna do 21 days, because everyone says 21 days is what you have to do to change a habit, right? So I said I'll do 21 days of no alcohol and I ended up doing 100.
Speaker 1:One more can I say. The conversation that I had with Sarah 12 months ago was great. If you wanna check that out and listen to the whole thing, you can go to season three, episode nine. It's called From Pist to Purpose. In the last 12 months, sarah has grown her community exponentially. She's written a book and I haven't read it, but and I'm talking about a different book here, with the book review that I'm sharing with you However, we have access to these materials.
Speaker 1:We can make it easy, we can find people that can support us and being communities where we feel heard, where we realize that we're not alone, that there are other people going through this at the same time as us, make it easy on yourself. If it's something that you've been thinking about. I can't recommend enough for the book, the 30 day alcohol experiment and or checking out Sarah Ruspatch. Her Facebook group is called Women's Well-Being Collective If you wanna check out the full episode.
Speaker 1:Season three, episode nine, the thing that I do love let me just finish with this the thing that I do love about the book the 30 day alcohol experiment is that it's 30 days how hard can it be? And it takes you through one day at a time. You just focus on one day at a time. It has been a life changer for me. I am, in the next couple of weeks, coming up to two years without drinking a single drop of alcohol. I can't even begin to explain what a life changing experience this has been. It's been the best thing ever. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoy this podcast and I hope that you have a great silly season and maybe have a little bit of break from alcohol, if that's something that you wanna do after it's all over. Until next time, bye for now.