Hey visionaries. Welcome back to the, your biggest vision show Leah here. I hope that your year is off to a great start and I’m so excited to be here to share this episode with you today. Uh, if you are a follower of the show for a while, um, or you follow me on social media, then you might know that last January, January 1st, 2021, I made the decision to completely cut alcohol out of my life. And I shared a lot about the decision when I made it. I also did a 90 day, um, follow up episode. 

So I wanted to do a year, uh, kind of recap and review. Um, and I had gotten some questions from you guys on Instagram. So I just wanted to share what the last year at this point 13 months have been like without alcohol. Now, if you don’t know my story or why I made this decision or what my life was like before I did, then I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode.

It is to this day, one of the most popular episodes I’ve ever recorded. Um, and I think that it shares a lot about the backstory and why I made this. So I don’t wanna go too deeply into it here, but I will just do a little recap in case you are new or in case you don’t remember that story. So essentially I had spent the last decade or so of my life being, uh, casual to frequent drinker. 

I wouldn’t have called myself a heavy drinker because I didn’t get drunk all that often, but I drank a few drinks relatively regularly, often with dinner or going out on the weekends or just with friends and family. So it was a pretty big part of my life to the point where I didn’t often think like, should I have a drink or not tonight? It was just sort of something I did.

I didn’t drink every night, but it was definitely a regular part of my rotation and life. And it was just so mindless. It wasn’t really something that I consciously decided to do every time I did it or something that I really thought about it just kind of was passively part of my life. And there came a switch, um, last year, which is when I decided to do this, where I decided to become more active about it. And I decided to sort of question drinking and alcohol and its role in my life and how it was helping my life, what good it was doing, what harm it was doing. If I really wanted to drink the way that I was, I just started examining it in a way that I never really had. Um, and when I did that kind of closer dive into it, I started feeling very uncomfortable with alcohol itself.

And this was a very new way of looking at alcohol to me. I mean, to begin with, as I’ve said, I hadn’t really even spent time looking at alcohol to begin with. It just sort of was accepted in my life. You know, it’s so common socially. It’s so common in our society. It’s so common in college. It’s so common as a young professional in its cities, which I always, then I lived in New York and then Miami. So it just never was really questioned. 

So I started doing that. And then I also realized that I felt like a lot of the sort of rejection of alcohol or negative view on it, came from it in context of a addiction, those who identified as alcoholics and those who felt like they were addicted to alcohol, but the perspective I started seeing last year, and when I decided to make this decision, wasn’t really about feeling like I had an addiction or like you had to give up alcohol because of an a, and it really just came from a discomfort with understanding what alcohol was.

Um, I read a few books that really opened my eyes to the reality of what it does to our brains, what it does to our, um, physical health, what it does to our mental health. And I just became increasingly uncomfortable with putting it in my body. And I think that what really hit home the most for me was starting to understand how it was hurting me in ways I couldn’t, I hadn’t consciously admitted. And for me that was most evident in sleep. So I started realizing that I, even if I just had one or two glasses of wine that night, I would not usually sleep through the night. And I just got really sick of, you know, I really wanted to, uh, sleep better. And then I started realizing all the other places that this had been showing up in my life. I wasn’t as energetic.

Uh, the following day after I had had a drink, I realized that I spent a lot of decision making power, trying to think about if I should drink or how much I should drink. And is it the right decision tonight because what do I have tomorrow? And I, it just started of becoming a parent that I was really accepting this somewhat burdensome part of my life for, for no reason. I really didn’t need to accept it. So long story short, I decided to completely give it up and what a year it has been. So I wanna share, first of all, what happened in the year after I gave up alcohol, um, I wanna share the biggest change in my life. Um, I’m gonna share the five best improvements I’ve seen from, uh, not drinking. I also wanna share some challenges that came with not drinking.

And then I have a few question and answers for you guys from Instagram. So I just wanna share this candidly, I don’t wanna sugarcoat anything. Um, but I also do really wanna highlight how powerful the decision is. Maybe you are what they call sober curious, or you’re just interested in hearing this perspective. 

Maybe you recently have given up alcohol yourself, or you wanna do it for a year or whatever the case may be here is my experience. And particularly my experience as an entrepreneur. So I can just start out by saying that the year that I gave up alcohol 20, 21 was the best year of my life. So after I gave up alcohol, uh, I got pregnant a few, honestly, a few weeks later, several weeks later, um, I had a baby in 2021 and I had a, my first seven figure year in my business.

So some of the just right off the bat, those accomplishments and those things happening were some of them, most monumental things that have happened in my life. And they all happened in one year. Now, I don’t attribute sobriety to those things entirely, but I do think that it had a lot to do with both of them happening and happening as smoothly as they did. However, at the same time, both of those things, particularly pregnancy, made it a little cloudy for me to say the huge difference that my life has seen in being sober, um, because I was pregnant and I went through so many physical changes pregnant. So for example, when I first start stopped drinking early last year before I got pregnant, I found that I was in the healthiest shape of my life. I felt great not drinking. I felt like I realized I craved, um, unhealthy food a lot less when I had no alcohol in me, I was sleeping really well, had a lot of energy.

I was exercising really regularly. I was outside a lot. I felt so good. So I think that if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, I would probably be here telling you that last year I was in the best shape of my life, but I got pregnant so I gained weight. I obviously got tired. I craved a lot of sugar and none of those things were bad things. But my point is that I don’t feel like I have a complete clean comparison of my life before versus my life after alcohol, because so many physical changes happened to me through pregnancy. When I stopped drinking that, you know, it kind of clouded the comparison of one verse, the other. So I do have those first few months to go off of before I got pregnant. But after that, it’s a little bit hard for me to say physically how much different the year was without it.

Um, that said, I do think that, uh, not having alcohol in me, uh, made for a of their pregnancy experience, especially in the beginning. And I definitely think it helped me get to seven figures because it really removed some of my decision making necessity, I guess, or some of my, um, decision making drainage. I didn’t realize how often when I was drinking, I would have to make decisions about drinking questions of, should I drink tonight? If I drink, how much should I drink if I drink, what should I drink? Should I drink beer? Which probably isn’t as intensive alcohol wise as hard alcohol, or should I drink hard alcohol, which is probably somewhat healthier than beer. You know, all these decisions, they seem small, but I’ve learned that decisions no matter how big or small take up the same amount of energy in your brain.

So once I started getting rid of these decisions, that really didn’t matter at all, or help me in my life or in my career, it opened up the way for me to think about decisions that did help my life and my career. And I do think that that helped my business really accelerate last year. So just on, so surface value, if you’re looking to sort of take your life to the next level, and these things resonate with you, if you feel like you spend a lot of time thinking about how much alcohol you should drink, if you should drink what you should drink, when you should drink, then maybe do consider removing it, just see what it feels like to, to free up that part of your brain and what you could fill in with it. Instead. Additionally, if you are for a health transformation, it is sometimes hard to really look at the effect alcohol has on our health, overall. 

It is a lot more than just the drink itself and the extra calories that come with that drink. It also has to do with how it affects your sleep, how it affects your mental clarity and, you know, brain fog, how it affects you the next day, how it affects your energy, how it affects your cravings. And it really can be kind of in ignite ignition to a health transformation. So I had definitely both of those experiences and those were really incredible. 

Now I don’t wanna sugarcoat it and say that the year or was perfect the year definitely had its challenges. Pregnancy had its challenges. And while it was my biggest year of business growth ever, it definitely had business challenges, but I don’t think that those challenges came because I chose to drink alcohol. I think those challenges came because that’s what happens when you do really big things, both in your personal life and in your professional life.

And I think I was better equipped to handle those challenges because I didn’t ever have alcohol as a way to cope with them. Um, I’m gonna get into this a little bit in the next section of this podcast, but alcohol to me was not a huge emotional crutch I’ve realized. Um, when I look back, I can see that I sure sometimes I would have a glass of wine or a drink because I had a stressful day and I just sort of wanted to unwind, but more often I feel like I associated alcohol with fun and kind of, um, free living, you know, feeling young feeling, um, social. So I did have more of a fun association with it than a crutch for challenging experiences. I think people are often associated more with one or the other, often a little bit of both. Um, but mine was more than the latter, the fun experience.

So when I was going through these challenging times, I didn’t really crave alcohol because that, wasn’t always my go-to when I went through challenging times to begin with. But nonetheless, it definitely was not lost on me that I liked not even having the choice to lean on it, because it obviously is just masking the challenge that your go going through and that doesn’t really solve it or help you grow or help you actually work through the emotions that those challenges bring up. Um, and, and you kind of need to do that, especially as an entrepreneur, you have these challenges as an entrepreneur to become better at your job, to become better at business, to be a better leader, a better boss, a better manager, a better, um, creator of what, whatever it is that you’re putting out there. And when you are doling those with alcohol, you, you miss out on those lessons.

So that was my experience of the growth that I experienced, all the benefits I experienced, all the achievements I experienced and how I did not have alcohol to lean on when I had to experience the challenges that came with those things. Um, I also just wanna pause here before I go into the next session and acknowledge that you might be thinking like, Leah, why are you proud of the fact that you were sober for a year and you were pregnant for that whole year. I get that, you know, it’s not like I had to make the active decision of sobriety every single day over the past year, once you get pregnant for most women, it’s not even on your radar to drink, even if you’re a heavy drinker beforehand. So I do acknowledge that my first year of sobriety nine months of it was spent pregnant.

However, I made this decision before I got pregnant. And I will say that once I truly made the decision to stop drinking, I never, I didn’t really think about it again. It never really was something that I had to Reig it wasn’t a daily battle of, should I really be doing this? Is this really what I want. It sort of just left my consciousness and I’ll talk a little bit more about that, but I just wanna pause and note that in case you’re listening to this and thinking Leah, it’s like not a huge deal that you didn’t drink for a year when you were pregnant for nine months of it. 

So , that’s kind of my approach on it and why I’m sharing my experience with it nonetheless. Okay. Before I get to the biggest lesson I learned, I wanna talk about the five biggest differences in my life from when I was a drinker to now being a non-drinker the biggest difference that I notice and that I really am grateful for is how much less regret I experience or just less anxiety about what I did or didn’t say the night before or what I should or shouldn’t have done, or, you know, beating myself up about decisions I’ve made.

I really just have more trust with myself. I don’t regret decisions I make as much, and I don’t have anxiety about what I should or shouldn’t have done. So let me explain what that looked like a little more, when I did drink the regret is pretty obvious. I think most people that drink alcohol experience this, even if you’re not drunk the next morning, sometimes you wonder, did I share too much? Or should I have said that? Or, um, did I say something inappropriate or should, should I not have shared that much? Or, you know, kind of just second guessing yourself, even if it was just out having wine with a girlfriend, sometimes you can feel like you maybe talk too much about something or you didn’t wanna focus on something, but you did, or you just second, guess whatever you talked about because you weren’t fully in your own judgment, right?

Alcohol impairs our judgment. We all know that. So even if you don’t have full regret, right, you’re not going through some of these like horror stories that you hear about in college when you’re really drunk and just do something that is totally regretful, but you still just have those of, should I not have done that that’s draining and no one likes to feel like that. And I never feel like that anymore. And that is definitely something I feel grateful for. Um, but beyond that, I also would experience just some anxiety around not trusting my own decisions. Like sometimes maybe I wouldn’t wanna go to the gym one morning and I would say, oh, this is so silly. If I didn’t have alcohol last night, I probably would of the motivation to go to the gym. And I’m just frustrated because I did this to myself, kinda shot myself in the foot.

And that anxiety just doesn’t set you up for a really confident day or for you to be in a really empowered place. Now, this is not to say that I get up every morning and go to the gym. first of all, as I mentioned, I was pregnant for a lot of this, certainly did not work out every day. And even now that I’m not pregnant any anymore, I don’t do that either. But the difference is I’m able to just own the decision and say, I don’t wanna go to the gym today. It’s as simple as that, I don’t have alcohol to make me feel guilty about if I’d be making a different decision because I didn’t drink it the night before. I just own my decision and say, no, I just don’t wanna go today. And that’s okay, I’m human. I don’t have to go every single day.

I don’t have to drive myself crazy with these things. And I don’t have to make myself feel guilty or look for a reason why I’m a bad person, because I’m not doing this particular thing. I just own it and move on. And that’s been very freeing, very empowering. And it really does show up in so many different places of my life because I no longer have to wonder, would I have made a different decision if I drank no and just make the decision and own it, whatever the decision is. And that feels really, really good. 

I did not realize how much I second guessed myself or doubted my own decisions. Um, really honestly, just because of alcohol. Another huge difference is the, the second biggest difference I noticed from being an on drinker are the magic of the mornings. If you have followed me for any length of time, you know, how much I love an early morning to myself, it is really how I built the first year, few years of my business.

I’d get up early before my nine to five job. And I would work in the early hours of the day. And I loved it. Honestly, it was me time. It was focused, it was quiet. Um, but even then, you know, I, I was drinking. And so sometimes you wake up and it’s just a little cloudier than other mornings. And then as I got a bit older, it really is true that as you get a bit older, alcohol is just harder for you to digest than when you’re younger. So those mornings, even if it was just a glass or two of wine were harder to really focus on, sometimes it’d feel like I just take full advantage of the mornings. So ever since I stopped drinking mornings are just full of clarity, especially in those early days. When I be, when I stopped drinking, waking up every night with a full night sleep, I would sleep like nine hours when I first stopped drinking, not waking up once throughout the night, which near the end of my drinking, that was the biggest issue was that I would just wake up in the middle of the night for like an hour or two, and I hated it.

So not waking up in the middle of the night and waking up in the mornings just felt so refreshing every day. It felt like Christmas every day. And you know, now I have a newborn, so my mornings don’t have quite the clarity that they did in the early days. But certainly if you are, you know, not pregnant or not in a newborn, if you don’t have a reason for your mornings to be disrupted, I think you’ll very much enjoy them, um, as a sober person, because the, the experience of having a full night sleep and then no alcohol in you from the night before, and the ability to just start fresh with whatever you wanna put into your body with no cravings or no need to kind of like readjust from something the night before is so brushing and empowering and you just feel so good.

You know, you feel physically great to that note. The third biggest difference I noticed in my life are magical nights as well. I didn’t, I’m not a night owl at all. I’ve always liked to go to bed early. So I never really thought much of the nights. I was just so fine with a somewhat regular routine of, you know, having a glass of wine or two with dinner or going out for happy hour or, um, just having a, you know, a drink at home after a work day or whatever. And the nights would just sort of be about relaxing after that. So it would just kind of be like, am I gonna have a drink and talk to my husband? And maybe we’ll watch a movie or we’ll go out to a bar or go on a walk or whatever, and don’t get me wrong.

Those nights were a lot of fun and I enjoyed them. But when I stopped drinking, I realized that I also do get spurts of in of inspiration at night that I now act upon, you know, or sometimes I can get things done at night that I didn’t during the day, if that’s what I decide to do, or sometimes I even have a late night workout, if that’s kind of what I’m urged to do, or I take a long bath and it’s nice to have that bath with no alcohol in me, because I can listen to a meditation or something that really allows me to go inward in a way that even one glass of wine in you doesn’t allow you to do so, having those nights is just kind of total clean slates for whatever I need to do to tie out my fully and not having to just dismiss that because, Hey, I’m gonna have a glass of wine in me is so refreshing.

And it honestly just feels like my day got longer because that’s exactly what happened. So even if you aren’t a night owl and you maybe enjoy the nighttime ritual of having a drink in you, there’s nothing wrong with that, but there are a lot of doors that can open up when you are just completely sober for them, kind of inviting yourself to have that as a blank canvas for whatever would tie out your day on a beautiful note. 

Okay. The fourth, um, fourth biggest difference. I see this is something I never would’ve predicted. And honestly, this is something that has grown over the year and I feel more strongly about than ever. And that might be because I’m a mom now, but I no longer have the, what if fears about alcohol? And I wanna explain this. So I didn’t really experience this when I was drinking, but nowadays when I watch a movie or read a book or read a new story, or hear a story from a friend about something negative that happened with alcohol, someone got into trouble drinking, or someone, you know, ended up having an addiction issue, or someone made a huge mistake while they were drunk or someone, um, just, you know, alcohol affected them in some negative way or affected their family in a negative way, or they did something foolish.

Or even if it’s not like that catastrophic, you know, you hear about, or you maybe have experienced where you’re like at a work event and you drink too much and you end up embarrassing yourself or whatever the point is. I no longer have fears about what ifs of alcohol. I’m no longer afraid of. What if, and one day this ends up affecting me negatively, you know, um, when I became a mom, when I got pregnant, um, I started kind of seeing a bit more into, to the genre of like mom alcohol, which is branded toward women as like mommy juice or, you know, needing wine to end the day with your child. Uh, like after a long day with children or whatever. And I’m not judging anyone who does that, I’m not, but I remember sometimes I’d get nervous. Like, Ooh, I don’t want alcohol to end up becoming a crotch toward, um, parenting.

And I just don’t drink. I know that it doesn’t. And maybe I would’ve experienced fear about that if I was still drinking, maybe that would’ve ended up happening if I was still drinking or you just hear sad stories about, um, you know, people doing something that really doesn’t sound all that farfetched, just cuz they have a little bit of alcohol in them and that can be really scary and I no longer have those fears. 

So now when I, you know, hear about tragic stories of addiction or um, tragic stories in involving alcohol, I almost feel a sense of relief because I just feel like I’m a lot less likely to be someone that those things happen to because I just don’t drink. And that’s not to say that I had a, a problem with alcohol before or that I made mistakes with alcohol before, or really any reason to believe that I was on track to any of those things beforehand.

But it’s just so much safer of a bet now that they, for sure won’t because I don’t drink at all. So that’s really freeing and honestly just has a sense of safety with it where you feel like whew, huh. You know, there’s obviously things that could happen to me. Life won’t be perfect and challenges will be thrown my way, but I love that I’m eliminating a huge chunk of risk by just not putting this really harmful substance into my body anymore. All right. The fifth biggest difference that I notice is more decision making power. I talked about this when I talked about how this helped me hit seven figures and it’s worth reiterating that I just love that I no longer have the, you know, brain capacity to worry about alcohol.

So as I mentioned, it takes the same amount of energy to make a decision, whether it is a big decision or whether it is a small decision. And so you’ll hear a lot of newers minimize the decisions they need to make in everyday life so that they free up their decision making power. Uh, Steve jobs famously wears the same thing or the same thing every day. So does mark Zuckerberg, um, I hear you hear of entrepreneurs that eat the same thing for lunch every day and every morning be or breakfast because they just don’t wanna have to think about it. They find something nutritious and call it a day. There’s a lot to be said for that. Where can you suck out meaningless decisions? Just so you can spend more time on the decisions that really matter. And I really have noticed that with alcohol, you know, no longer having to wonder, well tonight, am I going to drink?

If I’m going to drink, what am I going to drink? If I’m going to drink, is that going to affect me tomorrow? Do I need to plan accordingly? How many drinks do I need to have? Um, know all those things that might seem like they’re small decisions. They really do matter. And they really do take up time. So if you’re trying to do something big in your life, in your career or whatever the case may be, and it really takes all hands on deck, uh, then really consider where you’re making decisions and where you can shave them out so that, you know, things just become more streamlined. And I really do enjoy not ever having to think about that and to that. Um, well let me pause there actually. So those are the five biggest differences in my life as a non-drinker to recap first, I no longer experience regret or anxiety around my decisions.

Second I experienced magical mornings while I did before I had a newborn . But no, I mean, mornings are magical and their own way. Now I’m just more tired. Uh, three magical nights, four, no fear of what ifs with alcohol. No worries about, you know, the challenges of life involving alcohol and five more decision making power. The biggest lesson for me in all of this is the true power of your mind. I talk a lot about the power of mindset and the power of your mind on this podcast, because that really was such a big influence in my entrepreneurial journey. And it still is. But I also want to reiterate the power of any decision that you make because before I did this, because alcohol was such a regular part of my life, such a common part of my life, I would’ve thought that there really would’ve been no way that I could’ve done it.

You know, I, and it it’s not because it would’ve, I thought would’ve been so challenging. It just would’ve felt like a huge change, like huge lifestyle adjustment. Like I would’ve been something that I really had to think through because it was such a part of my social life, such a part of my, um, personal life, such a part of my, you know, commonly something my husband and I did together. Um, it was just, it was part of my brand. 

I constantly was having champagne everywhere. It was just so regular. And the second I decided not to do it, it just really wasn’t that hard. So apply that to whatever thing in your life you wanna cut out, but feels impossible to do. So maybe that’s stress about money. Maybe that’s fear of what other people think. Maybe that’s crippling anxiety over what might happen if you go all in, in your business.

Oftentimes the fear of what it would look like to implement these changes is so much scarier and so much heavier and so much harder to navigate than simply making the decision and no longer thinking about it or involving it in your life. I’m sure for most people, the idea of navigating life without alcohol, the idea of re-routing their social life or rethinking what their and them and their partner do for fun or their brand, that’s all pretty daunting. And it is, even as I say it out loud, if I would’ve been planning this in advance, it would’ve felt like I don’t even know where to begin. Is it really even worth it? It’s not that big of a problem in my life. I’m just gonna focus on something else, but because I just simply cut it out, everything else fell into place really naturally. So think about something in your life that if you could just cut out mentally, it would free up so much space and just allow yourself to see what it looks like for you to no longer entertain a life where you have room for that and see how much easier it is than you think it can be.

Our minds are so powerful. And when you tell them to do something, you know, they, it listens , it listens and it adapts around everything else. So never underestimate the power of your mind. You can truly do anything depending on how you think about it. All right. I have a few questions from Instagram from you guys. Um, the first question is, do I ever crave alcohol? So I do not ever taste the, I do not ever crave the taste of alcohol. I don’t miss it. And I also frequently drink non-alcoholic version of alcohol. I drink athletic and, um, groovy non-alcoholic beer. Uh, my husband and I love that. Um, if I, if we go out, I will sometimes have mocktails, um, or non-alcoholic beer. If they have it at restaurants, there’s a few bars near where I live in New York city that actually have alcohol free spirits.

So you can get like gin and tonics that are alcohol free. So, you know, everything that I missed taste wise, I can still get, but nonetheless, I don’t really crave the taste of it. Anyway, sometimes I crave or I miss the experience of drinking, kind of what I associate alcohol with. Like sometimes I miss being able to go out to bars in happy hour or just miss the spontaneity of it or miss the kind of, you know, association we have of it taking the edge off of like a long week or something I do sometimes miss that. I will admit, however, I sometimes don’t really try press that. I miss the drink about that situation as I just miss the experience. I honestly think that I more miss the experience because we’re still living in a pandemic. And so that type of going out culture, happy hour culture, um, spontaneity around going out just isn’t really the same anymore.

Um, and then on top of that, I was pregnant. So I really, even if I was not someone who totally gave up alcohol, I still wouldn’t have been like going out to happy hour the same way. I mean, I had a belly going on. It would’ve been weird to see me at a club. So there were just other factors going on that made that sort of experience, just going out for happy hour, going out spontaneously no longer part of my life. 

So I’m not really sure if it’s the taking away alcohol that makes me miss it, or if it’s that we’re in a pandemic. And so I kind of miss pre pandemic life or if it’s because I was pregnant. So I kind of missed pre pregnant life, or if it’s just maybe part of getting older where you no longer really wanna party the way you did when you were younger, but that doesn’t mean you occasionally don’t have a nostalgia for it because let’s face it.

Life gets more serious and you get responsibilities. And all of those things are such blessings, but sometimes I think it’s only normal to have the nostalgia for, you know, your early, earlier 20 days. It certainly does not mean that I wanna go back to them at all. So I kind of have a hard time answering that question because there’s so many more factors in play about what I miss other than just alcohol. But I do miss that sometimes I will admit, um, and you know, know, I just wanna be honest about that, but, uh, I still do go out to bars sometimes, and I just have non-alcoholic beer or I’ll have, you know, a diet Coke or I’ll have a, um, soda water with, with lemon. So that pretty much does it for me. I don’t ever really miss the alcohol. It’s just kind of the experience and association I have with alcohol.

Yes, sometimes I do. I do miss. So that’s my experience with that. Okay. Another question I got was what was the hardest part of giving up alcohol? Um, the hardest part, I guess, really it hasn’t been hard as I’ve kind of alluded to several times in this episode, once I made the decision, it was no longer something I had to think about. I did didn’t remake the decision every day. I’d never really questioned it. It wasn’t like Friday night came around and I was like, do I really not wanna drink? Or I had a stressful day. And I’m like, do I really not wanna drink that doesn’t really happen? Maybe, you know, a few times I’ve had to remake the decision, but enough that I could count on one hand. Um, it’s definitely not something I regularly thought about daily or anything like that.

So not drinking was not hard. I guess if I had to pick something hard, it would be explaining it to people. I think that there’s still a stigma around choosing not to drink and trying to navigate that without giving someone like my life story about how I made this superpowered decision, because I wanted to have more decision making power and I didn’t wanna have any anxiety. And like, the whole 40 minute spiel I could go on about why I decided to stop drinking people aren’t really interested. 

So you kind of have to shorthand it. And I think that a lot of times people just associate the decision to not with, you know, alcoholism or, you know, having being forced to stop drinking or something, which isn’t the case. That’s not my experience. Um, but then also wanting to make sure that I don’t sound judgmental toward people who do still drink.

So if I’m like explaining it to someone who is still does still drink and they’re like, why don’t you drink anymore? And I sort of say, well, I’m just not comfortable with alcohol. I don’t think it’s a good thing to put in your body. I think it really impairs judgment. I think it’s really harmful to us and they’re sitting there with, you know, a beer and I’m sort of like, yeah, and I’m not judging you for doing that. So that’s been a little bit challenging to navigate just because I don’t wanna make anyone feel like I’m judging them and I’m certainly not. And at the same time, I also don’t want to associate my decision with reasons behind choosing to not drink. That just aren’t true. Um, but I don’t, it doesn’t really bother me. I mean, you can’t control people think about you and it’s really not my business anyway, but I guess I would say that that is the hardest part.

All right. The last question that I got was, do I ever think that I will drink again and I guess never say never. I don’t really the think that it would be a huge problem if I drank again, I don’t really think it’d be a huge, bad thing. I’m, I’m honestly just sort of over it at this point. It’s like, I don’t think it would be a hugely negative thing if I drank, but it would be so not positive that I don’t really feel the need to, or want to, um, it just seems so powerless and it just seems so insignificant that I, it really doesn’t excite me to ever do it again, but by the same token, I think if I did, then either I’d be able to stop very quickly or I just, you know, wouldn’t do it very frequently or whatever. So, um, I guess never say never, but I have no plans to, I have no desire to, and I think that that’s the coolest part of this all, is it really, hasn’t been like a white knuckle experience of quitting.

And I think before my experience giving up alcohol, I always thought that it would’ve been, I always thought that it would’ve been something that felt like I was being deprived, something, you know, and with deprivation around if only I could drink or if only I could have that, or how do I navigate this huge loss in my life? And at first it felt like a huge gain. Like I gained a lot of freedom, but now it just feels like it’s, I mean, I still think I’ve gained something. I still feel regularly. 

I gained more energy, more time, more happiness because I don’t put this in my body and I just don’t have the desire anymore. So it’s really not a hard decision. It’s really not something that I think about. It really has been so easy. Um, and I think that that’s the biggest reason why it’s so easy is because it shifted from something that felt like something I was being deprived of to something that I really just don’t want anymore.

And I really just don’t have any desire for. So that has been my experience giving up alcohol. I hope that this was helpful for you. I hope that you enjoyed this. If this resonates with you at all, please feel free to DM me. I’ve really been so touched by so many of your messages and comments. Um, really throughout the whole year, I got people messaging me saying that they heard the episode and it really clicked with them. 

I do think that this is an important conversation to have, um, especially based on how many messages I’ve gotten about it, because I think so many people have thought there really is more harm about alcohol than we as a society admit, and people are sick of it, but they’re afraid to admit it because what if it is challenging to give it up? What could that mean about me?

Um, PS, it means nothing about you. Alcohol is truly an addictive substance. It doesn’t mean you are an addict. It just means that you are a human being because it is an addictive substance . So, you know, the more we can have openly the conversation about just the decision to not drink alcohol for no other reason, then you just wanna see how much happier you could be, how much better you could be, how much more energized you could be. It, it, it needs to be normalized a little bit so that there’s less of a stigma and people have more permission. And if that is you right now, please feel free to message me. I love connecting with you guys, guys about this, and I really hope that this episode served you in some way today. All right, visionaries, I will talk to you soon. Here’s your biggest vision.

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