but a very, very simplified way for me to look at my own addiction at least to alcohol or any sort of micro-addictions I've had in sobriety is compulsively not wanting to feel. I feel good, I feel bad, I don't want to feel, I feel uncomfortable, I feel anxious as fuck, I don't know how to be this anxious in life. In fact, that's why I was at threat in early sobriety to drink, to relapse because I felt so uncomfortable in my skin. So it became a priority for me to learn how to feel comfortable in my skin, how can I call my anxiety down? How can I call my emotions down? How can I get through this day, this hour, this minute? How can I continue? What do I have to do to be sober today? What do I have to do to not drink today? (upbeat music) - Hello, courageous bestie, I'm Kirsten Johnson and welcome to the sobriety bestie podcast where we adventure together through emotional sobriety, unapologetically expressing yourself and building a purpose-driven business because the world needs your wisdom. Each step you take opens up infinite possibilities because your transformation's not just for you, it's a beacon of light for those you're called to serve. So get on comfy, repeat your mantra, this is courage and take that next-aligned step into creating the business and life of your dreams. I'll be your guide. - What's up, courageous bestie? I am Kirsten and I am so glad you are here today. I'm gonna tell you these sentence that liberated me, that freed me, that really unlocked an entire new possibility in life for me when I was an early sobriety. It's a simple sentence, but it's something that had never occurred to me because it had never been my experience until another sober woman said it to me. Now I wanna, well, the first 30 days of my sobriety I was in rehab, so this was probably like somewhere between 30 days sober and 90 days sober and I was just making sober friends. And she said to me, you never have to drink again. You never have to drink again. So I'm saying that to you, you never have to drink again. You might drink again, you can drink again, but you never have to drink again. That never occurred to me. I never thought of it as something that I'd never had to do again because I always had to do it. I had to do it, you know, I was so anxious. I had to drink to calm the anxiety down, right? And maybe that's why you're here too with me. It's because the anxiety, it's like the anxiety and the alcohol go together. So at least that was what it was like for me. When I first started drinking it, calmed down all the anxiety and that was great. I love that. I love that it made me feel comfortable in my skin. It made me feel connected to the people, the humans. Me, I started dating. I had friends, I was going out dancing. It gave me everything that I always wanted, you know, that the anxious version of me before I drank never could have dreamed of, never would have been possible for me. So it completely calmed and regulated my nervous system to a level which I could function in society and like be social and all of my high school dream. And I continued to drink after that for 17 years. And a lot of that time alcohol was able to calm me down in a way that helped me manage stress, manage emotions, manage life, manage breakups, manage the good times and the bad times. So when things were hard, I would drink and when things were good, I would drink. It was always like somebody in rehab said it was like an exclamation point. Exclamation point? How do you say that? Exclamation point. So whether it was good or bad, high or low, whatever was happening in my life, it was like always followed by a drink. And that was certainly true for me. So the idea that I never had to drink again, it was literally mind blowing. And now like I've been sober almost 15 years. So it's like, I can't imagine drinking again. I don't even think about alcohol. It's not even on my mind, it's not on my radar. When I'm having a good day or a bad day or a high or low, it doesn't even cross my mind to drink. It's so out of my life. But in the beginning, it was hard to think that way. If you're in the beginning right now and you're struggling to even imagine a world without alcohol, that's where exactly where I was. And it might not be possible for you to really imagine that right now. That might be the life beyond your wildest dreams. It was beyond my wildest dreams. I didn't think like when I was in rehab in September 2009, I didn't think it was possible to go one year without drinking. I wasn't even sure if I was gonna go 30 days in rehab, right? But I don't know, I wasn't gonna drink in rehab. At least it wasn't possible. It didn't cross my mind. I was institutionalized, right? We're locked in. And so when someone said that to me, it just really opened up my mind to like, what if I don't drink again? Wow, what do you mean you don't have to drink again? What does not having to drink look like? And so I couldn't really like process that, but it was a seed planted in my brain. And the way that I watered that seed, that's the invitation I'm giving to you, a way to water that seed that you never have to drink again, is as cliche and annoying as it might sound, or maybe you love this phrase, I certainly did not like this phrase. I was allergic to like any sort of recovery or sobriety phrase when I got sober, but it's one day at a time. I stayed sober in the beginning, one day at a time. I'm no longer one day at a timing it with sobriety. It's not hard for me not to drink. In the beginning, it felt impossible. I was one day at a timing it in the beginning to not drink sober. So I couldn't think I never have to drink again, but I could think I never have to drink today. Make everything simple. Just don't drink today. I'm not gonna drink today. Or if you get the big mood, the hard mood, the high mood, the low mood, whatever it is, 'cause I always drink over emotions, right? A lot of us did. And so when you have a big feeling, and your mind is thinking a drink would be a good idea, or maybe it's like more, a lot of us relapse because we're having like this romantic idea, but maybe just a glass of wine would be okay. Or a couple of glasses of wine will be okay. It'll be different this time. We start believing this lie, this BS that flows through ahead about why it's safe to drink when we don't have a lot of evidence that it's safe to drink. If you drink like me, maybe there wasn't a lot of evidence that it was safe for you to drink on the whole. Like sometimes you would do things like lose expensive phones, or lose your dignity, or whatever it was, whatever the consequences were, when you were drinking. And so, I mean, sometimes it was okay, right? But not always. And so how do you not drink? How do you never have to drink again? And it's just that bite size little bit just for today. Just for today, I'm not drinking. There's actually a recovery meeting in Bali and painted on the wall on the meeting and it says just for today. And so as annoying as some of those quotes might be or ideas, or even something in that, what I'm saying right now might be it's how we do it. We just do like the next step, the next step, the next step, any big goal is the next step. And so what is the next step with staying sober? The next step with staying sober is not fucking drinking, right? That's the step. And then from there, it's like, okay, so if I don't drink today, what does that look like? Do I call a friend if I'm freaking out? I would call people when I was freaking out in early sobriety that I barely knew. Like I would, I met some friends in recovery and so I had them in my phone and I would call and people, like we didn't all answer our phone, right? 'Cause I don't know, it's 2009 was weird. I think it's even weirder now. People don't always answer their phone. But I would literally just call people or today I guess you could text people and say like, I need help or can you talk to me or I'm freaking out or whatever. But even alone, the act of reaching out can reassure us and help us out so that maybe, just maybe that's gonna help change our mood a little bit so we no longer feel that overwhelming desire to not feel. (sighs) To me, that's what it is. To me, like addiction, very, very simplified and non-scientific but a very, very simplified way for me to look at my own addiction at least to alcohol or any sort of micro-addictions I've had in sobriety is compulsively not wanting to feel. I feel good, I feel bad, I don't want to feel, I feel uncomfortable, I feel anxious as fuck. I don't know how to be this anxious in life. In fact, that's why I was at threat in early sobriety to drink, to relapse because I felt so uncomfortable in my skin. So it became a priority for me to learn how to feel comfortable in my skin. How can I call my anxiety down? How can I call my emotions down? How can I get through this day, this hour, this minute? How can I continue? What do I have to do to be sober today? What do I have to do to not drink today? And so you never have to drink again. It's wild AF, like literally the woman who told me you never had to drink again, she told me that in the fall/winter of 2009, 'cause I got sober September 29th, 2009, so she told me somewhere in the fall winter of 2009 and she, and it's true, I have not had a drink since September 2009, so I never have had to drink again. There's been some times where I've wanted to drink since then, and that happened more frequently in the beginning, any change we make in our life is harder in the beginning, so if you're in the beginning of overcoming anxiety, you're in the beginning of sobriety, you're in the beginning of overcoming sobriety without alcohol, wherever you're at on your journey, right? It's always hardest in the beginning. A part of the reason why is because we are outside of our comfort zone, we are literally burning new pathways in our brain, I think of it like trailblazing, we're blazing new trails in our brain, and once those trails have then blazed, it's easier to go down that path. Literally, it's like a highway, right? I mean, not literally, but think of a highway like in your brain, once you blazed that trail, the electricity that the nerve impulses can blast down that trail, so if that trail is not drinking and doing things that are sober and reaching for sobriety instead of reaching for a drink, when you feel like you wanna drink and you reach for a sobriety or recovery instead, that's blazing a new trail in your brain, whether it's calling somebody, going for a walk, I always think it's best to put some activity between you and the thing that you wanna do. If you're feeling impulsive, and a lot of the relapsing comes from being impulsive, right? A lot of the drinking when we don't want to, the addiction stuff, it's part of it's from being impulsive. I'm simplifying things here, but we're just gonna keep it really simple, part of it's from being impulsive. We have this feeling that we don't wanna feel, which is quite often what happens, maybe it's around a breakup, maybe it's around finances, maybe it's around feeling unlovable or unworthy, or whatever the feeling is, whatever the thought is, we don't know how to cope with that or we feel uncomfortable with it, so we wanna numb it out. So then our job, if we wanna never have to drink it, it's also learning how to live sober, learning how to live without using alcohol as our coping skill. For me, alcohol was my coping skill. That's what I coped with, alcohol. So there's a lot of different coping skills that you can learn in sobriety. And the only thing I wanna give you right here as a takeaway, the simpler, the better. So we're gonna keep it super simple today. And that is, you never have to drink again. So that means don't drink today. Don't drink at the event that you're going to today. Don't drink in the next 20 minutes. Don't drink right now. Whatever that time period you wanna put between right now and when you go to bed or when you wake up the next morning, right? 'Cause some of us woke up in the middle of the night and drink. Oops. So it wouldn't matter what it is but before you wake up to morning, you're not gonna drink. And we keep it that simple. And that's how we never have to drink again. By not drinking the rest of today. Because any, any big goal, we just take that next step. And so it's just dang sober for this next period of time. And those next period of times that we get through add up. I think the last time that I ever felt like drinking that I had the idea come into my head, I was six or maybe seven years sober. I don't remember. I remember where I was living. I was in Bali and something major happened. It was really bad news that ended up not even being true. So sometimes like the emotions come and they're not even like full on reality because more is revealed, right? And so I was having a big feeling. I was feeling devastated by something. And I opened up this cabinet where downstairs by the pool area, there's the different houses in Bali we shared a pool. So I opened up a cabinet down there and there was a bottle of tequila and I looked at it and I was just like, oh my God, I could totally drink that. And then I was like, wait, what? I haven't had a thought like that in forever. I didn't have a desire to drink it. I had a desire to not be in the circumstance that I was feeling about, right? Which ended up not being true. But when I looked at it, I had the thought I should have a drink. And that's the last time and so what? So that was when I was six. Let's say it was when I was seven years sober, but it might've been six. If it was when I was seven years sober, I'm almost 15. That was eight years ago. I literally don't think about drinking ever. Like it's not, it's not a thing. It never comes into my mind. It came into my mind all the time in early sobriety because I was still brain blazing, trailblazing nude pathways in my brain in order to create that new life. So whatever the changes you're embarking on right now, if it's the change of never having to drink again, it's doing the work to blaze that new trail. And everything that you do today, instead of drinking, if that comes up as a thought, especially if you're in early sobriety, right? Is everything that you're doing instead of drinking is starting to blaze that new trail. You have a new trail then of calling somebody, of going outside, of doing jumping jacks. I had a client one time who wanted to shift her unhealthy eating and I was like, we'll still eat the thing, but just do 15, 20, 15, 20 jumping jacks before you eat the thing. Like I gave her a very specific amount of jumping jacks to do. So you do the jumping jacks and if you still wanna eat the thing after you do the jumping jacks, eat the thing. But just put something before you and the activity that you're trying to break. This is how I quit smoking as well. I put an activity before me and the cigarettes, like visualizing breathing fresh air or the jumping jacks or whatever. It's so much easier to add something to our life than to stop doing something. How do you stop doing something? It can be tricky, especially when the thoughts come. So instead of acting on that impulse, and here's the trick, alcohol damages. I say damages, but I hesitate when I say that because I don't want to create like a negative feeling in you, but alcohol does damage our ability, our impulse control, our executive functioning, the prefrontal cortex, some of our executive functioning in our brain. One of the things is our impulse control, our ability to control those impulses or to not act on them. So we are more compulsive when we are in active alcohol addiction and when we are in early sobriety and that part of our brain is rebuilding. This is the longer that you stay sober, the more that your brain is going to rebuild itself. By not doing the thing, your brain is going to change in another way. So you get some of your executive functioning back. Now it's not clear whether you get all of it back from what alcohol may have shrunk or like taken away, but you do naturally by doing nothing, by just not drinking, it is going to grow back. So your impulse control grows back. So a lot of us will relapse because of impulse control, right? We have a thought to drink and we just drink without really thinking about it. And next thing we know, we're drinking. So do what you can to not drink today. Do the jumping jacks. You have a thought you want to drink. Do a bunch of jumping jacks. I'm not saying jumping jacks is going to keep you sober. I'm saying changing the wiring on your habit of drinking and your addiction of drinking, changing the way that your brain is wired, changes the way your brain is wired. That sounds so silly, but it's true. Just do something different. Just do what you can to not drink today. Then you worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. And eventually it doesn't have to be like that anymore. Like I said, the thought of having a drink hasn't crossed my mind in a really long time. If you are excited about going on a journey to freedom and want some tools to help you with is never drinking again, you can come to sobrietybesty.com. Sobrietybesty.com/roadmap and get my roadmap to freedom. There are seven ways in there to conquer anxiety and to regain control over your life. They're super helpful and they can help you in early sobriety as well. Ah, I wish you so much peace and so much freedom on your journey. I will see you in the next episode.
