Ep. 6 F-U Alcohol: A Final Farewell, 5 Years AF

I have not had a drink in five years. I don't even watch or count the numbers or count the years anymore because it's been so long, and it's an amazing feeling to not have that hanging over my head. So I'm going to share a lot today on my journey. My tips and tricks. 

I am sharing simply what my journey was. Getting to the alcohol free life, or those of us in this world call it the AF life. Alcohol free. 

So let's buckle up. Let's get ready to settle in here. And if you're coming along for the ride, let's go. 

Mentioned in Today's Episode: 

https://iamsober.com/

https://www.amazon.ca/This-Naked-Mind-Discover-Happiness/dp/0525537236

https://www.amazon.ca/Unexpected-Joy-Being-Sober-alcohol-free/dp/1912023385/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=232502480384&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9000745&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=7769140360589627031&hvtargid=kwd-384358160350&hydadcr=22489_10105676&keywords=the+unexpected+joy+of+being+sober&qid=1691320951&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.ca/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/1839404116/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=267164029910&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9000745&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=17041449903457485283&hvtargid=kwd-329397215244&hydadcr=14982_9480969&keywords=allen+carr+stop+smoking+now&qid=1691320985&sr=8-1

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Transcript

 Hello, K. Hello, everyone. Oh, my gosh, it is August. I cannot even believe this. And if you've been following along, we've been in the podcast for a full month now. And if you again have been following the journey and listening week by week, you know that I had pre recorded all of July's episodes back in June. I wanted to pre record. I wanted to sit with it. I wanted to figure it all out, the technical difficulties, stuff like that. So here we are in August, and I am now trying to record the podcast as close as possible to release dates. So you are probably or if you are listening to this Monday, August 7. I had looked at my calendar and I thought, oh my gosh, this is so divinely aligned. August Eigth is my five year AF anniversary. 1s Alcohol free anniversary. And I have been thinking about what I'm gonna say on this podcast, and I've been losing sleep over it because not because I'm stressed, because I'm so freaking excited to share this journey with you. And I thought, wow, this is so divinely aligned. I am going to start recording the podcast as live as possible. We're heading into my fifth year alcohol free. This is amazing timing. I can't wait to do this. So here I am, getting ready, getting it all set up, and I look at my Im sober app. This is what I use to track my alcohol free journey. And I realize that I am five years and three days sober. So here I am thinking the whole time. I'm going to release this on the 7th. And the eigth is my actual anniversary. Yes. My anniversary was a couple of days ago. Totally missed it. And I can't even believe it. And this is the thing. I have not had a drink in five years. I don't even watch or count the numbers or count the years anymore because it's been so long, and it's an amazing feeling to not have that hanging over my head. So I'm going to share a lot today on my journey. My tips and tricks. I am not a doctor. I am not a therapist. I am sharing simply what my journey was. Getting to the alcohol free life, or those of us in this world call it the AF life. Alcohol free. And I'm super pumped to just kind of share this journey. A lot of you who know me know that it has been quite the quite the wild ride. Oh, my God. That was like a freaking tongue tongue twister. And there's a lot of you that in the past five years, you have reached out to me. You want to know how I did it. What did I do to get sober? Why did I get sober? And I want to use the word sober. However, it's not the correct word for me, and this is a practice. I'm going to be bouncing back and forth between the word sober, sobriety, and AF alcohol free, because, yes, I am sober from alcohol. However, there is still some times that I may dabble into a little bit of cannabis, and this is not 1s true sobriety, if you will. And this is kind of the journey. We're going to talk about the journey and the cannabis portion of it as well. So, yes, I will stay sober throughout the podcast. Yes, I'll say sobriety and alcohol free, but this is specifically pertaining to alcohol. So let's buckle up. Let's get ready to settle in here. And if you're coming along for the ride, let's go. 2s Welcome to Spiritual Woo, a space where we talk about all the things that move you, the things that wake and shake you. No woo woo here we believe and talk about real, divine spiritual connections, all while taking a light hearted and sometimes humorous approach. I'm your host. Ashley michelle. From bar owning late night karaoke hosting raging alcoholic to yoga and meditation teacher life and wellness coach Mind manifesto and sober as fuck badass chick, this podcast is here to inspire you. We'll be exploring many different spiritual concepts, practices, and ideas, as well as chatting with some pretty inspiring, spiritually aligned guests. Plus, I'll be sharing and bearing about my own spiritual awakening. Our intention here is to encourage and offer support to you throughout this beautifully chaotic journey that we call life. Grab your tea, start your cleaning, or buckle up and settle in for this epic spiritual ride. 6s Okay, so again, I'm super pumped to share this 1s on the podcast, and I'm not sure how it's going to translate because there is so much. 1s I've got the recorder on, I have pressed play, and I'm going to see what comes out. 1s Happy five year AF anniversary to me. And when I say that, I am so freaking proud. You have no idea. I am so proud. When it comes around August, I feel like I just want to wear, like, a t shirt or tattoo it on my head. I've been sober or I've been AF for five years. I can't even believe it. Okay, so let's rewind. 1s Let's go back. I had my first drink when I was 13 years old. And it was I'll never forget I always remember my first memory. I was with a friend, and we were home alone, and my mom never I lived with my mom and my sisters. My mom never really had booze in the house. When we were growing up, like, really young and we were in the Christian church, there was never any booze or alcohol flowing and flying around our home, our community, our friends. However, when my parents got divorced and my mom was a single mom, this is when I started seeing beer and stuff like this come into our house. And I'll never forget. She had received a gift from her then boss of oh, my gosh, like forty s of homemade vodka and I believe, like whiskey and homemade wine, boxed wine. Up until then, there was never any of this into our house. In our house. And she had received these gifts, and they were sitting in the cupboards, in the fridge forever because my mom didn't really drink that. And she was only just starting to drink beer and not really around us. She was going out and having drinks and things like that. This is my perspective of it, anyways. And we were home alone, me and my friend. And I remember saying, like, let's get drunk. Let's do this. And we went to the store and we bought slushies or slurpees and brought them home into the kitchen and put every single flavor of alcohol into these slushies. The vodka, the whiskey, the red and the white wine, all homemade. You can imagine what kind of recipe for disaster that was. It was I remember the first time I got drunk was the most fun I've ever had. It was the most hilarious thing that. 1s Had ever happened at that time. I'm 13. I remember I was so drunk and laughing so hard that I peed my pants like this. I'm bearing all here. Okay? Literally bearing all. And it was fun. Of course it was fun. Oh, my gosh, it was fun. Then this is the alcohol had a taste, right? I had a taste for how fun alcohol was. And I'm pretty sure, I'm almost 100% sure, every weekend since that time, my first vodka, whiskey, wine infused slushy ever since that first time, every weekend, we would me and my friends would go stand outside the LCBO, which is our liquor store, and we would get people to buy us booze. I can't even believe that people would buy 13 year old girls booze. But it's a thing. I can't even believe it. I hope people are not still doing this. But anyways, we would get people to buy us booze. Mickeys in specifically. And I remember back then, it was oh, my gosh, was it like, $5 for a Mickey? Maybe like $7. And this is where it started. Started it with Mickey's of vodka. So I started hard right out the gate. I was drinking Mickey's of vodka. Yes, we were trying Mike's hard lemonade and spritzers and mixed drinks and things like this, but this was not a progression. This was hitting the hard liquor right out the gate as a teenager. And we were drinking Mickey's every weekend. Every I don't know, three, four nights a week in the summer. Oh, my gosh. Just going crazy, right? Good times. This was good times. And I remember having so many good, fun times. And I think I started smoking weed around that age as well. 13 years old. And I think about that now my stepson is 13, and I can't even imagine him doing something like this. Don't know if the times have changed or if it's just him and his personality, but I just cannot imagine a lot of these 13 year olds in this day and age doing these things. But. 1s We were doing these things and we were awful. We would, like I said, stand outside the liquor store. We would take cabs and try to coax the guys to buy us alcohol and all this kind of stuff, right? Oh, my gosh. We were awful. And what happened was the mickey's eventually started turning into 26 ers, and then the 26 ers started turning into forty s of vodka. And this was, I'm telling you, like 1314, 1516. 2s I had a little break in between 17 and 19 because I was getting married and I was with a partner. However, I was still drinking, but more so for, like, a very kind of social, let's go out for dinner, and I would try wine. I didn't like it. It was gross. I always wanted vodka, and my then partner wasn't a big drinker. However, I was still finding ways to go out and party with people and have drinks with my family and all these kinds of things. So. 1s Always drinking from the age of 13. And I'm gonna say, once I hit 20, I was already going into a divorce at that time, and I was starting to work in the bar industry. This is very common, okay? We work in the bar. It's a very alcohol infused life. It's college life, university, it's party life, these kinds of things. However, I was already there. I was already needing seven vodkas by the time I was 2021 22, I was needing, like I remember the number. I needed seven vodka sprites at that time to feel drunk. And that's a lot. I mean, if you know, you know. But if you don't know, seven drinks is a lot when you're 21 years old. And when I was working in the bar, this is when shots started 1s incorporating into the mix. I'll never forget the first time I had a shot of jaeger, and it felt like I said, this must be what cocaine feels like. I had never still, to this day, I've never done cocaine. And I'm so very grateful and so very thankful that I never have. But I remember taking the shot and feeling like it amped me up, like it just infused my whole body with energy, and my eyes felt like they were bulging out of their head, and I was like, holy shit, this is amazing. So this is when the shots started. So now here I am, drinking 7oz of vodka, or seven or eight drinks, and now I'm adding in shots to the mixed. Yes. If you're listening to this and you've worked in the industry, okay, sure. We're partying. We're doing shots, we're having a good time, all this kind of stuff. However, the party would never, ever stop. When I say this. It never stopped. So we would work. We would close the bar at 02:00 a.m., and we would carry on. Again, this is common if you're in the industry. We would carry on. And the party would always be at my house. Always, always. And we would get bottles from wherever we had to get bottles. We had stashes of bottles. People would go to other bars and say, hey, can we buy bottles? Oh, my gosh, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but we would buy bottles from bars that were closing. This is so illegal. And we'd take them, and then we'd go to my house, and we would party till six, seven, eight in the morning, until the sun rose, and we would just continue to drink and drink and drink. And this was going on from. 1s The time I was 25 to 29 and it was no longer seven drinks. It was more like 14 to 16. This is where I would feel my normal. I would be like, okay, I am no longer hungover. I am in party mode. I've had my twelve drinks. I've got was, okay, 14, I'm drunk. Woo. Let's go. Right? So this is where I had really lit the fire with the drinking because I was now noticing that I myself 1s could drink half if not most of a 26 year of vodka myself. 1s And that's scary if you think about it. And if you are currently doing that. We're going to talk about this as we go a little bit deeper into the podcast. But that's just a little bit of background. Okay? And I don't want to get into too much of the nitty gritty, but let's just say from the time I was 13 to 30, 2s I was drunk almost every single day. Almost every single day. There were a few times that I had said to myself, I need a break. 1s We all do this. I need a break. And when you're young, when you're in your 20s, you need a break so you can lower your tolerance so it doesn't cost you as much money or it doesn't take as much alcohol to get you that drunk. So it's not you need a break because it's taking a toll on your body. Or you need a break because you might be an alcoholic. It's a break because you want to reset your tolerance level. At least this is how it was for me. So all throughout my twenty s, I would take these breaks. Ten days. I'm going to go ten days, no booze. Okay, great. And on the 10th day, whoa. I would go all out and get shammered 1s and same thing. Then I would like pump it up to I'm going to go 20 days. And usually I would do this once or twice a year. I'm going to go 20 days, no booze. Or I'm going to go month dry January. We all know this. I'm going to go dry January. 30 days, 31 days just to reset, save some money, feel good. Now I'm getting into my and 20s. I'm going to feel good and just reset my whole body. And then of course on day 30, day 31. Hello. I freaking deserve this drink because I just went 30 days sober. Yay me. This was the game I was playing for ten years. 1s Oh, my gosh. It was crazy. Every vacation I had gone on at this point, I think I had gone on, like, 14 allinclusives in my 20s just to get as drunk as possible. Yes, I'm super privileged to be able to do that. I would work my ass off, save my money so that I could go on a seven day all inclusive vacation and get as shitty as possible. How I didn't die, how I didn't get raped, how I didn't get oh, my gosh, lost things stolen from me. I don't know how this did not happen to me. 2s It surprises me and shocks me to this day that I managed to escape some pretty interesting situations. Not to say that I have not been in these dangerous situations. I have. But I have managed to get myself out of them pretty quickly, because deep down inside, there was this little voice that was always there and is now very present in my life. So, yeah, these breaks, right? This was happening a lot. And I would say 1s probably 1s when I was even in my early, late 20s, was when I started asking the question, am I an alcoholic? Am I an alcoholic? I don't know. I don't know if I am or not. Maybe I am. 1s Alcoholism runs in my family. 1s My grandmother had it. Her mother had it. 1s It just runs in my family. Without, you know, saying too much. It is there. It is very predominant in my mother's side of the family. So I was a little bit nervous that I was going to become an alcoholic, and I was questioning this even at the age of 22, 23. And then I started googling, am I an alcoholic? And you may have done this. And I actually know people who I have coached into an alcohol free life that have Googled, am I an alcoholic? Because you're not really sure and you want to know what the signs and the symptoms are, I'm going to tell you this. And this is from, again, my own experience, and again, not a doctor, not a therapist, not all these things. But if you are googling, Am I an alcoholic? Chances are you probably are. Okay? That may be a really harsh thing for me to say. It may be a really harsh thing to hear. But if you are questioning it, if you are Googling it, if you are contemplating, am I an alcoholic? 2s You might be. And this is for you to figure out. Nobody else but you. So I played this game for a lot of years. A lot of years did I play this game. I was the absolute party girl. Alcohol defined my life. I could drink anybody under the table. I'm five foot and quarter. Yes, that quarter really counts for me. I could drink anybody under the table. I could hold my liquor. I would host parties, host karaoke. You guys know, all these things. And this was my life. I took a lot of pride in my alcohol, rock star life, because I was freaking awesome at it. At least I thought so. But we all know how shitty and non rock star we feel the next day, right? And the next day for me, was, of course, awful. And I would work. I would get up and I would work. And this is the thing in the industry. You would work, and you would work so hungover, you'd be sweating. People would be like, oh, you smell like booze. This is a common thing, right? And then it started getting to the point where I was shaking. Oh, my gosh, I'm shaking. I'm shaking. And until I got that next drink in my body, then the shakes would settle. Then I would start to feel better. Because this is the thing. The minute you stop drinking or you take that last drink for the night and you go to bed. You immediately start detoxing, your body is starting to go into that detox state, and you need the alcohol to maintain that balanced body because oh, my gosh. Like, me, like, my blood was infused with vodka, right? So once I put the drink down for, you know, 8 hours back, then I was sleeping 1214 hours just to sleep it off. And you don't sleep it off. It's still in your system. And until you get that next drink, in is only when you can feel better. This is the problem, right? This is the alcoholism. 1s So 2s I was questioning this for a very long time, and I really started taking my 30 day sobriety very seriously towards the end of my twenty s and into my 30s, because now I was sort of craving a change. Because the hangovers, as we know, and if you don't, you will as you get older, the hangovers get way freaking worse. 1s And they were brutal. So I was like, oh God, I gotta stop freaking doing this. Like, I feel like complete balls, complete shit. That's it, I am done. But of course, at this point in my life, I was so alcohol dependent that even though my mind was sort of ready and shifting for a change, I fizz declay could not do it or I could not get there. I also had to really come to the decision that I did have a problem. And this is a really hard thing to face for people. You don't want to admit that you're an alcoholic. You don't want to admit that you are dependent on booze and alcohol, and again, you are on your own journey. However, for me, I had to admit that I was an alcoholic and dependent on booze. And this was a very hard admission because that's when you start falling into like, oh my God, I have to change my life or I'm going to die. I would wake up in the morning feeling like I was slowly killing myself and I was slowly drowning in this alcohol infused death. This is how I was feeling towards the end of my it was almost a 20 year drinking career and I craved change. At this point in coming into my early thirty s, I was like, I need change. Because this is what was happening. Alcohol is a depressant. I'm pretty sure we mostly or most of us know this alcohol is a depressant. And I was really getting into those darker, deeper depressive states and. 1s Because Eric and I had moved out to the country, 2s I started drinking a lot earlier. So, yes, I was working. You have your drinks when you're done work. At some point in this journey, I'd switched to day shifts and I was done work. I think it was like, I don't know, nine to three or something like that. And I was starting to have those drinks at dinner time instead of 910, 11:00 and drinking till four in the morning, five, six in the morning, it doesn't really matter, but I was starting to have those dinner drinks. And at this point, I had switched to wine, because as you age, you enjoy the finer things in life. And I always loved oh, my gosh, red wine in the winter, white wine in the summer. And I always had two bottles of red, one white, on my counter in the winter, and two bottles of white, one red in the summer. And I was drinking wine now, and I would only have vodka when I'd be going out, partying at the bar, but at home, I was having wine and dinner. And so good. Still to this day, I freaking love wine, but I don't drink it. So I was having wine and it was like half a bottle of wine, and then it was a full bottle of wine, and then it was a bottle and a half of wine. And then I started noticing I was rationing my wine. Eric would have a glass of wine and I would say, hey, whoa. How much wine did you just have? Okay, that's a problem. And I had realized that. I was like, whoa, okay, this is a problem. Like, I'm literally measuring how much wine I have. How much did Eric have versus how much I had? If I knew that you were going to get into my wine at dinner tonight, I would have bought an extra bottle. How freaking dare you? Whoa. Right? This is where it was at and this is where it was headed. And I started to notice we were out in the country. So it's 20 minutes home from work, and once I'd get home, I'm not going anywhere else. I'm like, back in. I'm settled, I've changed out of my work clothes. I'm not even going to go to like a 06:00 or a 07:00 yoga class, because instead of having dinner wine, I was now having after work 04:00 wine. Because I'm already home. I'm not going anywhere. I'm opening the wine now. Okay? So now it's just getting earlier and I'm justifying it and all all this kind of stuff. So I knew. 2s That I had a problem at this point. And I was angry. I was angry. I had sort of admitted, yes, I have a problem. How am I going to freaking change it, right? I was angry. I was very angry that I knew I had a problem. I felt very stuck. I felt very out of control 1s and very just dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark. And then what we do, we just keep drinking because fuck it. Excuse me, sorry, but I did say that. But really, truly, like, fuck it, I'm just going to drink. I don't give a shit. And this is the things we tell ourselves, right? Listen to this, okay? I deserve I deserve my glass of wine. I deserve my drink because I had a freaking hard day. This is what you tell yourself. This is how you justify. And I get really mad about this because 2s alcohol had such a hold on me. It has such a hold on so many of you that you should be mad at how it has a hold on your life. On your life. Okay? So I was starting to feel this fuel and this fire. Like, I felt like I was chained to the drink, if you will. So I had to make a change at this point. I had quit smoking. Thank God. Oh, my gosh. I was smoking cigarettes since I was twelve. And I quit when I was 27. When I was 27, I was smoking a pack a day. And I always had another pack in my purse. So I was smoking 25 cigarettes a day. On the days I was really drinking, it was getting up to 30 cigarettes a day. And oh, man, I love me a menthol cigarette even now. Like, yes, I have not smoked. No, I have not had wine in five years or alcohol. Do I still crave it? Yes, I do. But I know that it's a mental craving, not a physical craving. So menthol cigarettes and wine, vodka. If you can see me right now, I am pretending to hold a cigarette and smoke it. This is how much I just loved this motion, right? So here we are. I need to make a change. I had quit smoking. I had read Alan Carr's Easy Way to Quit Smoking. I will link that into the show notes. And he reads it, or he says in this book, like, just keep smoking. Read this book. And I did, and I read half of it. And there was something he said in there. I can't even really remember what it was, but he had said something. I closed the book and I was done. Cold turkey. I was done. I couldn't believe it. So I had already known that if I could do that with nicotine, I can do this with alcohol. However, I needed to amp myself up. I really had to amp myself up. So I said to Eric, my partner, I said, I'm going to quit alcohol. And at this point. 1s Ashley michelle has said she's gonna quit alcohol. For the past ten years, she has tried multiple days of sobriety. Here we go again. Okay. Okay, Ashley, whatever you gotta do, you do it. But I was like, really amping my mind up for this mental and physical race to quit alcohol. I was ready. I was ready. Mentally amping myself up, but physically, of course, I was very dependent on alcohol. So I had said to Eric, I said, listen, I'm quitting drinking. I'm done. I'm done. I want a better life for myself. If I keep drinking, I'm going to be dead by the time I'm 40. I'm going to be on dialysis. I'm going to be needing a liver transplant or something because this is how I actually really, truly felt what was happening in my insides. Like they were slowly dying. So I said to Eric, I'm done. I'm freaking done. And I'm going to book myself a trip to Vegas. You're going to come with me. Let's go to Vegas. This is August 2018, and we booked a three day weekend to Vegas. And I said, let's go. I'm going to go to Vegas and let's have a balls out end, a 20 year drinking career party. Let's do this. And of course, Eric's like, okay, whatever. He just goes along. I just love him and. So we go to Vegas with the intention that this is my last hurrah. I'm gonna come home and I am going to get sober. And at this point, I had purchased a book called this Naked Mind by Annie Grace. Again, I'll link it in the show notes, and I was kind of reading this. I brought it on the plane and sort of with Alan Carr's, easy way to quit smoking. I was going to keep drinking while reading this book. And I'm reading this book on the plane. We're going to Vegas, we're having a good time. I put it off to the side in the hotel room, and we have three days of wild, crazy Vegas drinking times. It was so much fun. It was so awesome. I am the life of the party. And we just destroyed Vegas, and Vegas destroyed me. So much so, that on my last night of drinking, I tripped and fell and almost broke and sprained my wrist. I think I did sprain my wrist. And at this point, I was actually teaching yoga. I am a yoga teacher at this point. And I got on the plane home with a sprained wrist, and I asked the flight attendant in for a double vodka soda. And that was the last drink I had ever had. And I'm looking at my sprain wrist. I am drinking my last double vodka soda, flying home from Vegas back to Toronto. 1s And I knew. I knew it was done. I knew it was done. I knew it was over. I knew I had made the decision. And now I just had to figure out how to practice sobriety. I had to figure out how to maintain sobriety. And this is where the journey really begins. I come home and I am pretty confident in my decision to stay sober. And in this naked mind, the book, Annie Grace had said, if you can just make it 90 days, three months, this is where real, true kind of habit forming patterns start to happen. So before then, I had only ever gone 31 days. I had never in 20 years made it to any time past 31 days. So I had really committed to 90 days. Okay, if this is what she says, I am going to do 90 days. And I joined a bunch of Facebook kind of sober groups, and 1s there's a lot of these. And I really recommend if you are thinking of getting sober from alcohol. 1s To really kind of join these groups because it's just a place where there is no judgment and you don't have people that you know in this group. So you can post, like, anything you want. And people are very supportive. There's a lot of resources. If you want to know some of the Facebook groups that I had joined, you can definitely reach out to me on the back end, and I can send you some or invite you to some of them. So a lot of these people suggested to get an app, and I downloaded the I Am Sober app, like I said at the beginning. And as a tracker, it just tracks your days. It tracks the number of dollars that you're saving. And every day, it sends you a little mantra or a little affirmation, and each week or each milestone, you get, like, an achievement. Woo yay. It's like a little fun game. But I was watching this. I am sober, app every day. I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm at, like, 33 days. I have never gone 33 days since I picked up the drink at 13. And then it was 50 days. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I am almost here. Right then came 90 days. And once I hit 90 days, I was like, holy shit, I am going to 100. It's only ten more days. I am going to 100. And when you start seeing this number right on your phone, 90 days, 99 days, there's something in the brain, like dopamine or something that kicks up when you see the number change to 100 days of sobriety or alcohol free. 1s This was such a huge, overwhelming, amazing accomplishment that once I saw 100, I was like, yeah, I can go 365. Of course I can. So it was this kind of thing, right, just watching this app, seeing the number grow, and I was very committed to, oh, my gosh, just growing that number of sobriety. And in this time, 1s what's very important when you decide to kick a habit, whether it's smoking, drinking, whatever, it could be sugar. Oh my gosh, that's when I can't quit biting my nails. I still have a very hard time with that. You have to keep yourself busy. You have to do something else to the mind and the body from picking up the old habit. So what I did was I read books this isn't everybody's cup of tea, but maybe you listen to audiobooks and these sorts of things. I read within I think it was six weeks, I had read eight books on women or men's, kind of memoir, biography, type books of other people getting sober, and, like, people that were 1s or people that were bartenders, people that were mothers, all sorts of walks of life. I was reading their stories on how they kicked the booze. Another book that I really, really loved was the Unexpected Joys of Being Sober by Catherine Gray. This was an amazing book for me because she talks about the firsts, and I had never heard this concept before. And it was like, once you get past the firsts, everything is a little bit easier. So, example, once you get past your first birthday without alcohol, once you get past your first Christmas, your first wedding, you're going to your first social event, biggest one, your first vacation. Once you conquer the firsts, you've done it. You've done it, and you don't have to worry about it. Now. You know, I can go to a wedding and not get drunk. I know that I can celebrate Christmas and not get drunk. This was a really big realization for me, and I had a very excited attitude. I was like, yes, christmas is coming. Like I said, I got sober in August, so there wasn't much coming up. Christmas was the biggest one. Okay, this is going to be my first Christmas. No booze. And of course, Christmas is, um. 2s So the firsts are very important. And then also in this naked mind, Annie Grace, she had said something that just struck a chord with me. She had said that you need to change your relationship with alcohol. And this was very much the truth. And I kind of said a little while ago that I was getting angry with how much alcohol was controlling my life. And once I was into that 9000 days of sobriety, I got really angry because I felt like alcohol stole 20 years of my life. It stole all this time, these hangovers, these drunken nights that I don't remember. I literally started to have a fuck you attitude to alcohol because I was so damn mad that it took so much from me. And this is what I had to do. I had to change my relationship. And she goes in the book and you can pick it up and you can read it, but she talks about, like, you need to treat alcohol for really, truly what it is. And some of you may not like this because I'm just saying what she has said, but you need to treat it for what it truly is, and that is poison. It's ethanol. It's literally poison and ethanol that's masked up with flavors and sugars and sweetness and Skinny Girl vodka and Strawberry Leachy vodka. It's just mass produced, marketed to sell to the customer, but it's really freaking poison that you're putting in your body. Just think about it for a second. And when I read this, I was like, holy shit. She's so right. She is so right. It is just ethanol. It's just poison. Oh, my God. And then you start to really realize and see what the alcohol industry does and how it's almost is the word unescapable or 3s cannot. You cannot escape it. You cannot escape the way that society romanticizes alcohol. Think about everything you watch on TV or Netflix or movies or whatever the case may be. They are romanticizing alcohol. Everybody is drinking always. Again, like, oh, I deserve that drink. Or I'm out with friends, and I have this drink and martinis, please, with a lemon twist. It's just so romanticized, right? 1s And of course, like, you might not have a problem, and if you don't, that's fine. That's your own thing, your own journey. But I really started seeing alcohol everywhere. On magazines, listening in ads, on Facebook. You know, everything is surrounded. Let's go, cottage country, got the beers, vacation. Everything is surrounded by alcohol. And it's crazy. It's like turning the light switch on and realizing, like, holy crap. They are just trying to I mean, this might be a little conspiracy sounding to some of you, but I felt like they, whoever they are, are just trying to shove alcohol in our faces to keep us wasted so that we are not awake. And I was mad. I was mad that I was stuck in that for so long. So I continued to read. I continued to study. I started to study, like, the scientific things on what alcohol does. And I'm not going to really get into that because I can't even remember. I just know what I read. I know that it shifted something in me and it allowed me to just really deepen the change a little bit further. So, yeah, this journey was so intense and it was such an awakening 1s to this big change in my life. And I'm going to fast forward and bring it up a little bit here to me being alcohol free for five years. We know now. We know that's what it is. It's a big, giant, proud number that I don't even open that I am sober app anymore. I don't even know. I don't even care about the number. I just know August. Like I said, I thought it was coming up, but it's already happened because I don't care, and I don't think about it in that way anymore. However, I always accredit and attribute everything that I have in my life right now. 1s The yoga dome, the retreats, all over the world. Everything in my life, everything that I have in my life right now is because of the past five years of not consuming alcohol. When I stopped drinking, my life, it's like I just hit the dead end and hit the wall. And then I just turned onto a new path. And I know I'm making it sound very easy, and it really wasn't. It was not easy. But I had to do this and had to make this change because. 2s I needed to. I didn't want to die. And I really felt like I was going to die, truly. And I know I'm kind of making that a little light and light hearted, and that but really, I was very, very scared that I was either going to die from alcohol or I was going to take my own life because I was so dark and depressed because of it. And yes, it's very raw and it's very honest, but that's what this is about, to share this with you, because I know that there are a lot of people that feel or felt the same way that I did. And I'm such a huge like, if I can do this, you can do this. You really, truly can. And one of the things that I love is with the firsts, going back to the firsts, I was so excited to take a vacation. I think I was six months sober, six months AF. I was so excited to take my first alcohol free vacation. And up until then, I had never, like I said, all inclusives, every resort. And the resorts were only upgrading to higher services and better types of alcohol and all this stuff, and I had only traveled to, again, get drunk. So six months in, I had said to Eric, I'm like, I want to take a vacation where we're not drinking. I want to take a vacation where we get up at 06:00 A.m. This was unheard of, where you get up at 06:00 A.m. And go hiking and see nature. This was not my life. Six months before that. And Eric had suggested Costa Rica because he had been there and several times. And I said, yeah, okay, let's go to Costa Rica. So I booked this Costa Rica vacation 1s with my own money, because I had saved in six months, I had saved $5,000, like, in and around that 4600 to five, $200 on booze. Okay? That's how much money I was spending. I'm sure if you're drinking every single day, once you get that app, you can see how much money you're spending, and it's quite shocking. So I had booked this trip, and we went to Costa Rica, and it was the best freaking trip of my life. It changed my life. It landed me there 1s into a space that I was doing retreat research, and you know the rest. If you've been listening. Our retreats in Costa Rica are very successful and all these kinds of things. So this was a huge thing. And this is where travel had changed for me. And people were always coming up to me. And Eric and I take quite a few vacations. We take two to four vacations a year, generally not long. We'll go for four nights. We'll go for five nights. Our retreats are seven, which are a little bit harder to manage with two businesses. But people would say, like, how do you have the money to travel? And I say the same thing. And most of you have probably heard me say this, but I have the money to travel because I quit drinking and smoking. That's what it is. I saved thousands of dollars when I quit smoking when I was 27. Cigarettes were $10. I was $10 a day just on cigarettes. Okay? Alcohol was I don't even know. But yes, this is why I can travel so much, because I don't spend my money on booze and cigarettes. And if. 2s Are spending the majority of your money, you would probably don't even know, because when you're buying the wine and buying the case of beer, you consider it groceries, pretty much. Right. It's a part of your life. But get that app and just even if you're not ready to stop the drinking, just get the app, the I Am Sober app, and link in what you spend per day. So just keep your receipts for a week and put in the dollar amount. If it's like $36 a day on wine, that's kind of generally what I was probably spending, because I would hit the liquor store or the LCBO every single night to grab wine, to have that stock up and just let that roll out for a month and see how much money you've saved. You've saved enough to go to Costa Rica. I'm telling you. I promise you, you have. 4s This is what it is. So, yes, I can travel because I've made these changes. I have a yoga studio, and I teach full time because I have made these changes. Making these changes has changed my life. I cannot promote it, preach it any louder 2s than I already am, posting on Facebook, sharing this story, sharing this podcast with you. You know, some people could be, 1s I don't know, maybe a little resentful, maybe a little jealous that I have been able to snap up and do these things. And have I been to AA. No, I haven't, because there was something in me that just didn't need that. I did not require that for my alcohol free journey. However, I have friends that need this option. They need AA. They need support. They need that group setting. And I 110% encourage you to go and check it out if you think you cannot do it alone. And I really want you to know that you are not alone, even though it feels alcohol and being drunk and being hungover is a very lonely place to be. 2s I know this because I spent 20 years there. However, you are not alone, and I really encourage you if you are questioning that you're an alcoholic, even if you're not, and you just want freaking change, man 1s reach out to me. Reach out to those Facebook group. Reach out or grab the books that I'm going to link in the show notes. 2s If you need other support and resources, I'm so happy to help and share. And I just want to touch one more topic before I sort of wrap this up because this is a much longer episode. Is moderation okay? Ashley yep. I I'm good. I can drink in moderation. And if you can do that yay. I'm so proud of you. I'm so happy. And honestly, Eric eric can drink in moderation. I'm going to say a couple things here. Eric's drinking heightened when we moved in together, and he was keeping up with me. We were drinking all the time, having a good, you know, living the life. And the minute I stopped drinking the minute Eric stopped drinking and I was, hey, like, you don't have to stop drinking because of me. And he's like, I don't even like drinking. I was just drinking. And he owns a brewery, right? It's just not his vibe. So I had know you can like, I'm fine. I'm on my own journey. He said, I don't even really care to drink. I was just drinking because you were drinking. So when I stopped drinking, I noticed my partner stopped drinking. And Eric has, like, one to four beers a week. He is a moderation person. He does not have alcoholism in his blood. I definitely know that there are these types of people out here. Not everybody is an alcoholic who drinks. Please let me make that clear. And if you can have your drinks in your moderation, that's great. I also want you to watch for binge drinking. So you are working Monday to Friday, nine to five, right? And you don't drink during the week. Or you might have one beer at dinner, but on the weekends, you go all balls out. Woo. Okay. This is binge drinking. This is another form of kind of like alcoholism, if you will. And then you've wasted your whole entire weekend and you have no control. You just get to the weekend Friday night, bam, bam, bam. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You're recovering, and then you're back to work Monday. So look at the cycle, right? Like, how much is alcohol really 1s playing in your life here? Do you think about it all the time? Is it constantly? Like, I knew I had a problem when I was panicking that. 2s I was getting off work late, and I needed to punch out before the liquor store closed. I needed to get to the liquor store before it closed. That's a problem, I'm sorry to say. Like, that's a problem if you can't go and, oh, damn, the liquor store closed. Oh, well, I'll have a drink in a couple days, right? So just, like, think about these things I'm saying, and it's not to be judgy. It's not to, like, make you feel bad. It it's really just to open up an awareness and a little bit of a, like, oh, yeah, maybe, and maybe you're not ready to dive into getting sober or stopping drinking, and that's your choice. That's your journey. But this is specifically, like, if you are craving change, if you feel like shit every day, if you are spending all your money on booze and you are ready to just shake this shit off, 1s I want to help you. I want to help you. I want to guide you. I want to share with you, and I want to see you accomplish the absolute 1s great, amazing feelings of bliss that I feel almost daily because I am not hungover. Life really, really changes. Get to that 90 days, life really changes. So. 2s With that. 2s I'm going to talk a lot about this and there's several people that I have sort of coached and guided and offered a few tips and tricks that are way past their 90 days. I'm going to welcome them onto the podcast and we're going to talk about what their journey to the AF life looks like and what it's been like for them. And this is really important part of who I am. It's going to be an important part of the podcast. 1s It's not necessarily spiritual woo. However, it has allowed me to really move into the best version of myself, right? This is the best version of myself. I always knew by the time I was 40, I wanted to be smoke free and alcohol free. This was something that I knew. And I always have this ongoing joke and I'm going to share it with you. And I don't even know if I should, but I'm going to share it anyways. I always say that I spent 20 years of my life drunk and wasted and high and all this stuff, so I'm going to spend the next 20 years kind of like clear minded and doing yoga and being sober and all these things. But on my 85th birthday, I might push it to 90. On my nintieth birthday, I am buying a bottle of wine, I'm buying a pack of menthol cigarettes and I'm going to celebrate my birthday with some wine and some cigarettes. And I may even try cocaine for the first time. This is the ongoing joke that I have for myself. And again, it's just taking that light hearted approach to life because really, 1s this is where it's at for me. And yeah, secretive alcohol. Yes, I love alcohol. I love cigarettes. I don't eat animal products. I love the taste of meat, but I don't want to do these things anymore. I don't want to be drunk, I don't want to eat animals, I don't want to smoke. So I'm just not going to do it. I know, easier said than done, right? But this is the choice for me and my best life. And I hope that I inspire you to make better choices in your life. And I also please do not feel guilty that you keep trying and you can't get there or you keep trying and you fail. Remember compassion. Compassion is key. If you haven't listened, go back. Go back to episode two and listen to compassion practice, because that you need to bring with you. I will always, always promote compassion. As you know, I repeat it time and time again. Bring this peace with. 2s So with that, thank you so much for listening to a little bit of my journey, my little crazy wild ride journey. I am so grateful, so thankful to be able to share with you. Honestly, like, just thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. A month into the podcast, super excited. Next week I have Chris Bowlby coming up who I went to high school with, and I don't want to say too much because I'm very excited to have him as a guest next week. He is currently in training for Iron Man Competition, and it's the second time he's done it and he is training for this. And he's going to come in and he's going to talk about how the yoga and the meditation, specifically meditation, how meditation and bringing this practice into him, taking on this giant competition. So he's going to be here next week, right in Dome. We are going to talk about it. And I cannot wait for you guys to hear Chris because he is something. 2s I'm calling him the Iron Man with the open heart. And you got to be there. You got to listen. So next week, that's what's going on and we've got lots planned for August for you. And thank you very much. And that's it for today's episode of Spiritual Woo podcast. We hope that you have found some inspiration as well as connection and perhaps take some of this with you and hold it near and dear to your heart today. Thank you so much for joining me. And if you've enjoyed listening to this episode as much as I loved creating it, well, then, if you're open to subscribing and leaving a five star review, I'll love you forever. Just kidding. I already do. Your support means the world to me. Maybe you'd like to share this podcast with your friends or follow my personal Instagram account at lifeofayoga teacher. You can also find more spiritually aligned and inspired content by following at Spiritual Woo podcast on TikTok and YouTube as well as at Spiritual Woo on Instagram. Thank you so much for all your love and support. I am deeply grateful and truly honored to be able to share with you all. I wish you an amazing day and I cannot wait to connect with you again next week. Much love to you all. Am.