February 13, 2024 • 56 mins
Have you tried taking a break from alcohol so that you can reset your tolerance…only to fall back into default habits that leave you hungover?
The cycle is exhausting. We vacillate between trying to outsmart the urge to drink and feeling hopeless and ashamed because we failed.
And the more our focus and energy revolve around alcohol, the less happy and fulfilled we feel.
The reason the average over-drinker struggles for ten years before asking for help is because we assume we have to quit drinking forever. And the idea of sobriety feels like a vow of celibacy. Or agreeing to be neutered.
But millions of people for whom COVID proved to be the tipping point into alcohol addiction are now embracing evidence-based strategies to escape the cycle of self-defeat. And they are discovering the best way to stop over-drinking is actually the way that feels most inviting to YOU.
My guest today is James Swanwick, the host of the top-rated Alcohol-Free Lifestyle podcast. In this episode, you’ll learn:
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How to know if you need an extended period of sobriety
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What happens to the 95 percent of people who don’t stick with AA
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Why joining a like-minded community that aligns with your desired identity makes changing your drinking habits so much easier
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How to choose goals that make you happy so that drinking less (or not at all) is connected to a greater sense of purpose.
Find more with James Swanwick at https://www.jamesswanwick.com/
Register for the FREE Masterclass on the 8 core principles of the Accelerated Recovery Process that you must master if you want to drink (and not drink) like a normal person.
Click here for the link to my new SECRET podcast....get the Foundations of Emotional Sobriety audio course delivered right to your phone!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Have you tried taking a break from alcohol for a week or a month or longer to reset your tolerance and done well with that only to end up falling back into the default patterns that leave you hung over? The cycle is exhausting. We vacillate between trying to outsmart the urge to drink and feeling hopeless and ashamed when we fail. My guest today is James Sandwick.
(00:29):
and he is the host of the top rated alcohol-free lifestyle podcast. And he is here to join me in a deep discussion about both the best practices and the pitfalls of getting sober or quitting drinking or however it is you're framing the change you want to make and why it is so important for you to find a like-minded community that aligns with your long-term
(00:58):
identity so that changing your drinking habits feels like you're leveling up.
My name is Colleen Cashman. I'm a sober-ish recovery coach, helping high-achieving women get emotionally sober so that drinking less or not at all feels like a superpower. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your brain chemistry and nervous system and also develop a growth mindset so you can feel proud.
(01:33):
confident and resilient with or without a drink in your hand because it's not about the alcohol.
So the conversation you're going to hear with my guest today actually took quite a turn, because I challenged him on the holes that I see in the sober or alcohol-free lifestyle messaging. I believe that we have a responsibility as leaders of group coaching programs that are designed to help people who are struggling with alcohol in some way break the habit.
(02:13):
and move on with their lives. And the gap that I see, that I faced personally, is the idea that changing the way you drink, quitting drinking, requires you to adopt a non-drinker identity. I see that as a short-term solution that can actually bite you in the ass. Because while making the decision to take alcohol off the table completely for an extended period of time is
(02:43):
very helpful, at some point, your motivation to not drink cannot be simply fueled by fear that you can't trust yourself or that somehow you're not capable of drinking like a normal person. And while understanding that alcohol is a class I carcinogenic, neurotoxic, depressant, addictive drug is helpful,
(03:09):
because most drinking problems arise out of ignorance. We simply are unaware of the side effects of using alcohol on a regular basis. We don't understand how it affects our cortisol and our dopamine and our thought processes. We're simply told to drink responsibly, and yet given no responsible information as to what that actually means. But...
(03:35):
Completely demonizing alcohol as a substance that should never be consumed is not realistic in our society. People drink alcohol. They always have. They always will. And so denying that you may have a desire to drink again socially in the future or demonizing that desire as a sign or a symptom that something has gone wrong with you is ridiculous.
(04:05):
And so the gap that I see in the sober community is that people are shown wonderful ways of how to quit drinking and how to enjoy sobriety. But for anybody who decides that they do wanna reintroduce alcohol and drink in moderation, there's no clear path for that. Nobody's talking about what that looks like.
(04:30):
and as over 50% of people who at some point qualify as certified alcoholic eventually return to drinking successfully without suffering further symptoms of addiction. This is something we need to be talking about. And so I'm gonna talk about it before we dive into the episode. I'm going to share with you what I would call a reoccurrence of alcohol use disorder.
(04:57):
that happened to me just this last Friday night. So I've got a lot of stress going on in my life. You may know that I'm going through a divorce. I am working to build my business. My home is an upheaval. I'm not sure where I'm going to live or what all of that's going to look like. So I've got a lot going on. And by the end of the week, I was super stressed and knew that the only thing I wanted was a completely relaxing
(05:27):
evening on Friday night by myself practicing self care. And in the next chapter, which is my group coaching program for women who want to learn how to be emotionally sober, we have a breathwork class with a certified badass breathwork coach on the second Friday of every month. So I was very much looking forward to breathwork. And then I was excited to start
(05:53):
the season three of The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. And I love that show. So that was my plan. And I did the breath work and I felt amazing. And so I made myself a nice stir fry for dinner and then sat down on the couch only to be greeted by really intrusive thoughts that took me by surprise. You know, I was able to quit drinking cold turkey.
(06:21):
and have no second thoughts, no regret. I was very goal-oriented. You know, at the time, I thought I was quitting drinking forever. So I did jump into that non-drinker sober identity, but I didn't experience a lot of cravings for alcohol. I craved sugar and I had a lot of mood swings and other issues, but I wasn't sitting around wishing that I could go back to drinking. I was able to flip a switch, make the turn.
(06:49):
Before and after, I'm done, let's move on. I still experienced some intrusive thought patterns, but most of them were about my relationships, or my business, or other stressful things in my life. It wasn't until I reintroduced alcohol that I had to confront intrusive thoughts about alcohol. And this is where the rubber meets the road. Alcohol use disorder is a thinking problem.
(07:18):
not a drinking problem. And if you are not equipped with the skills to handle the inevitable, if you reintroduce alcohol, your brain is going to invite you back into old thinking patterns. And that's what happened to me on Friday night. I'm sitting there trying to enjoy myself, and all of a sudden, my brain is like, hey, there's an open bottle of wine on the counter. We should probably drink.
(07:48):
The rest of that, there was like half a bottle left. We should drink the rest of that because it's gonna go bad if we don't. And I was like, no, I'm not pouring alcohol on stress, not interested, tonight it's not about the alcohol. And five minutes later, Jennifer Aniston's on the screen and she's drinking vodka out of the Grey Goose bottle in her freezer, which was eerily familiar and reminiscent for me. And suddenly, like I had a visceral memory of what that vodka would taste like.
(08:17):
And I was thinking about that. I don't have any vodka in the house, but my brain was just like, oh, that does look so good. And then my brain tried again. All of a sudden, I was thinking about hot toddies, and maybe I should make a whiskey with hot toddy, and I don't have any whiskey. And I'm thinking, well, maybe I should keep some on hand. If not for me, then when my dad comes. I kid you not, I had over 10 intrusive thoughts.
(08:46):
that were either invitations to drink or thinking about what kind of alcohol I need to buy at the store next time I'm there. And whether or not you have any intention of drinking again in the future, knowing how to respond to intrusive thoughts about alcohol is a skill. The mistake I would have made in the past is to think that these thoughts meant that I really do want to drink or that I miss drinking like I used to
(09:15):
that is proof or a sign that something is wrong with me and that I shouldn't drink, or maybe that I should drink and just get it over with. I remember in the old days when I was drinking, if I would say I'm not drinking and then the intrusive thoughts would come in, I'd finally just be like, I might as well just pour a drink and get it over with because I'm not gonna sit here and listen to this all night. I know that eventually I'm gonna have a drink. And so I might as well get it over with. Well.
(09:43):
Believing those thoughts are akin to thinking that that song that's stuck in your head means you just really like that song, even though it's actually really annoying and you hate that song. You know, the only way to recover from alcohol use disorder is to realize it's a thinking problem and you have to learn how to manage your mind. Pay more attention to how you're thinking instead of what.
(10:13):
your thinking. Stop believing everything that you think. And so I was able to look at the symptoms of what I was experiencing, which are intrusive thoughts, to be a sign that my nervous system was a little bit dysregulated and there was some unacknowledged emotions that I really hadn't processed for my week. You know, I saw the intrusive thoughts as a symptom, not as the truth.
(10:39):
And the way I handled it, the way I teach my clients to handle it was, in this example, I stopped, like I would pause the TV every time I noticed the thought. I would check in with my body. I would put my hand on my heart. I would say, what do you need right now? How can I help? Do you want to turn off the TV? Are we not having fun? Is there anything else you'd rather do? Like, I just practiced self-care. I didn't overthink the thoughts that were popping into my head. I didn't make them a problem.
(11:09):
They were annoying, and that's the end of it. And that is the skill that you need and that I think is missing from the majority of sobriety programs out there that do help you bridge the gap between overdrinker to whatever version of normal you want to have in your future. That is what they don't teach you. It's not the thought or the intrusive thought that's the problem. It's your response to it. Your brain is either solving problems or it's creating problems.
(11:39):
And when those thoughts are popping in, if you respond to them as though they are true and that they mean something bad, like you can't do this or you just really love alcohol, if you respond to them like that, then you're going to perpetuate the problem. Instead of thinking, why do I want to drink right now? And then letting your brain ruminate on that question, which of course, it's going to produce a list of all the reasons you want to drink, I responded.
(12:08):
to intrusive thoughts by asking my brain, how do I manage these intrusive thoughts? What do I really need? What's really going on here? And that is the difference. That is what allowed me to continue to practice self-care, stay present with myself, and not drink when I genuinely had no desire to drink. I know that the intrusive thoughts were a reflection of my nervous system, my stress level.
(12:37):
If my brain wasn't bothering me with thoughts about alcohol, it would have been bothering me with thoughts about something else. Like alcohol was just the shiny object in that situation. So learning how to properly diagnose what's happening and just as important, knowing how to respond to what's happening requires you to become emotionally sober. And I'll be honest, that doesn't happen overnight, which is why my group coaching program, The Next Chapter,
(13:06):
You have to join for a minimum of 12 weeks, and I also have one-year packages. And then I have a graduate program where you can stay on even longer. My accelerated recovery process is built on eight core principles that will give you the skill to think differently, to retrain your brain to solve problems instead of making tons of mountains out of little molehills. And if you're interested in working with me,
(13:35):
or even just hearing more about that, pause this episode and get into the show notes and register for my free live masterclass this Thursday so you can see the big picture, not just the immediate next step of changing your drinking habits, but what it's going to take for you to truly become a person with a level of personal power that you can't even imagine is possible right now. You can learn how to trust yourself.
(14:05):
in all situations. You don't need to promise you'll never drink again for the rest of your life, just to make you feel better in this moment. Because the truth is, you can change your mind anytime you want. The foundation of my program is built on the idea that you can drink however much you want, whenever you want. There's no, I can't drink or I shouldn't drink. The key to having personal power is to acknowledge that you have a choice.
(14:34):
and take full responsibility for whatever the consequences would be or will be or are if you already did it, so that you can learn how to tolerate the whole truth, the truth that you don't wanna drink and the truth that you do wanna drink, so that you're no longer held hostage by suppressed emotions. Like just put it all out there because your feelings aren't facts. There's no right or wrong way to feel and your feelings are like the weather. They're always changing.
(15:02):
Emotional sobriety is when you're no longer intoxicated by your own bullshit. Like you can feel anything. You're not afraid to feel. You don't have to hide parts of yourself. And that, my friends, is the only way you can ever actually trust yourself when you're radically honest with yourself. And you can tolerate the discomfort of telling yourself, no, that's important too. So.
(15:26):
I think you're going to enjoy this episode with James because we pull the bullshit filter off the sobriety messaging. We're going to talk about how to know if you need an extended period of sobriety and what happens to 95% of people who go to AA but don't stick with it. And also the importance of choosing a community that has your long-term identity in mind so that when you do change the way you drink.
(15:54):
it actually feels like you're leveling up because you know where you wanna go and you know the role models that you wanna follow. And then finally, how to actually choose goals with sobriety or anything else that make you happy so that any short-term discomfort that you experience in pursuit of a greater goal serves a purpose. So enjoy the episode. James.
(16:19):
Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to introduce you to my audience. Will you please introduce yourself and let them know who you are and what you do? Sure thing. Thank you, Colleen. My name is James Swanick. I'm an Australian American and I help mostly entrepreneurs and business professionals to stop drinking alcohol. I also help high performers to sleep better. I have a stop drinking coaching organization and I have sleep products.
(16:49):
Business, which produces blue light blocking glasses, which are those orange lens glasses that you, that you may have seen and yeah, I'm almost 50. I live between Medellin Columbia and the U S and my mission in life is to grow very healthy businesses and make the businesses be about genuinely making an impact in people's lives. Yeah. And the businesses are just an extension, I guess, of the lifestyle that I choose to live, which is holistic health.
(17:18):
and health, wealth, love and happiness. Yeah. I would love to just dive right into the alcohol portion because of course I do the same thing and I help people who find themselves in the weeds with a wee bit of a drinking problem. Can you talk to me about your overall approach? You know, what mistakes do you see people making when they realize there's a problem? What are they believing that isn't true? And how do you help?
(17:47):
them in a way that's different than other options or even pitfalls, dare I say. I'll start with the first question. What mistakes do I feel that people are making? Trying to moderate when you haven't gone at least a few months alcohol free, I think has proven to be incredibly ineffective.
(18:13):
Truly when you get to at least 90 consecutive days, alcohol free at that point, what I've seen anecdotally from coaching hundreds of people over the years is at that point, moderation becomes more realistic and possible. But if you're just trying to do moderation when you haven't quit for at least 90 days, you get stuck on this vicious stop start cycle where you stop for a while, then you start again, then you say to yourself, I'll only drink on weekends and
(18:42):
Then you say, I only have one each weekday and then all of that goes out the window. It's a very slippery slope. The other thing I see people making a mistake with is waiting too long to get professional support. In fact, there was a study that came out of the university of Sydney. Professor Nicola Newton said that on average, most people wait 10 years to get helped with their drinking habits just because of the stigma and we humans have a mistaken belief.
(19:10):
that we can just like that stop in many cases, decades of poor habits overnight using willpower and motivation alone. And it doesn't matter how many times I personally try to communicate to folks that you really need to have a like-minded community. You've got to have professional coaching. You've got to have some accountability. We human beings, we still like to convince ourselves that we shouldn't have to get help stopping drinking. We should.
(19:39):
just be able to stop on our own. And the fact that we can't stop on our own must mean we really are flawed. We really have a problem. So that's kind of like the mindset that I see people maybe embodying. And I think that if, and then just one more mistake as well that I see people making, and that is they think that drinking, that stopping drinking is going to be painful and hard and that they're going to be boring and dull.
(20:09):
Whereas the opposite is true. If you have a great system and a like-minded community, stopping drinking can be actually very simple and you will have more fun and more joy in your life than you could possibly imagine. Incredible amounts more than what you have in your life when you're drinking. And I can say that with conviction just from my own story and I can also say it anecdotally from seeing many people, clients over the years.
(20:36):
So that was the answer to your first question. I can't remember what your second question was, Colleen. I remember, but I'd love to follow up a little bit deeper. You know, one of the things that we tend to believe what we say, we tend to believe what we hear. And this idea that I was committed to for a long time that quitting drinking is hard or, you know, changing my habits is hard, not changing them is hard.
(21:01):
Do the math. This is a full-time job to manage something where all of your energy is being invested in a lost cause because this isn't going to get better on its own. And where I'd like to have you crack it open a little bit deeper is the idea that people do need help and a life, a community of like-minded people. Why do you think it is that we need help with this? Because
(21:30):
especially high performing, high achieving people who are very independent. It is one of those things where we do think that we should be able to use our willpower. What is the secret sauce then that is a community or professional support?
The reason why we find it so challenging, the reasons I should say that we find it so challenging include cultural conditioning. If we look back to when we were a little boy, a little girl, and if our parents drink, what did they say when we were, you know, under the age of 10? Oh no, little Colleen or little James, you can't drink. You can drink when you're older. And so what they're doing is they're implanting an unconscious belief system in the mind that alcohol is.
(22:16):
right of passage, alcohol is something that the grownups get to do. And once we get to 18, or a little bit later, when 15 or 16, then we can drink this attractively packaged poison as if this is a prize as if this alcohol is something to save you. So why is it so challenging to stop on our own because on an deep unconscious level, we've been told most of our adult life and certainly all the way back into our childhood.
(22:43):
that alcohol equals fun, alcohol equals bonding, alcohol equals a tribe, alcohol equals relaxation, alcohol equals celebration. And so it's very challenging to get into your 40s or 50s or 30s, 40s and 50s. And then have to really face the idea that belief system is mistaken is incorrect, that an actual fact not drinking alcohol is what you get to do and get to celebrate. And that being
(23:12):
clear and having energy and sleeping well is actually the reward, not the drinking of the poison and the toxins, but the not drinking of the poison and the toxins. So that's one of the reasons why it's so challenging cultural conditioning. Another thing, why being in a like-minded tribe is so important. There's a book, a New York times bestselling book called the power of habit by Charles C. Doohig. And in that book, he says, change becomes
(23:41):
probable when you do it in a like-minded group of people with a shared goal. So that means if you are a 40-something attorney, if you're in a group with a bunch of other 40-something attorneys and they're all trying to quit drinking alcohol, the chances of you quitting alcohol are far superior and higher than if you're going to an AA meeting, for example,
(24:08):
And you're sitting next to a 19 year old meth addict who's holding up gas stations. There's no relatability there. Likewise, I can't tell you how many prospective clients stop drinking process will decline becoming a client because they say their wife or their husband is going to help them be accountable. Let they're going to be in the corner, cheering them on. And they say to their husband or wife, you don't need to do this professional
(24:37):
coaching, I'll support you, I'll hold you accountable. That's one of the most ineffective formulas that I submit based on what I've seen anecdotally over the years. You really must be in a group of like minded people because then according, at least according to this New York times bestselling book, that's when change becomes probable and certainly that's what I have seen over the years. Coaching, you know, many people.
(25:02):
It is human nature and it is science. The fastest way to change your mind is to change your tribe. And we tend to believe what we hear and are exposed to, so consistent repetition. But you bring up a factor that speaks to identity and being able to see what you want in someone else and co-create an identity. What is your opinion on the identity?
(25:30):
of really working to create an identity of a non-drinker. I mean, you know this podcast is, it's not about the alcohol. And one of my strategies is to help people not identify with alcohol at all, not as somebody who used to have a drinking problem, not as somebody who can't drink. You know, in any given moment, you're saying yes to yourself, not no to alcohol. And so how do you work with clients and what have you seen as an effective strategy?
(25:59):
in terms of the identity of alcoholic versus non-drinker versus, you know, like for me, I identify as a woman who takes good care of herself and I identify as a sleeper. I wanna sleep and alcohol, you know, does not coincide much alcohol for me will affect my sleep. So it's not a good fit for me. But how do you see the identity portion impacting
(26:28):
how quickly or the effectiveness of the behavior change. Yeah, it's everything. It's so powerful. I like to walk around in my mind saying, I'm the type of man who, or I'm the type of person who. So for example, I'm the type of man who takes care of his family no matter what. I say that to myself. I'm the type of man who keeps his word.
(26:51):
So I'm always striving to keep my word. I'm the type of person who practices optimal health every single day. So I practice optimal health almost every single day. I'm not saying that I get it right every day. I'm flawed and a human just like the rest of us, but I'm striving to be that person all the time. This term alcoholic, I think gets thrown around far too loosely in society. I'm not sure what your view is.
(27:18):
on this Colleen, but I would submit that there are millions of people across the US and the world mistakenly thinking that they're an alcoholic because people have told them that they're an alcoholic. If you take on that identity, then your whole life is going to be, oh, I'm an alcoholic. Therefore, I'm this type of person. Therefore, I'm broken. Therefore, I'm flawed. Therefore, I have to go to a meeting every day for the next 30 years and say, I'm powerless over this drug.
(27:48):
I reject that notion. Now, are there millions of people in the world who have a chemical dependency on alcohol? Yes, okay, I would submit that is correct. But all these people who have a habitual dependency on it that's not physical, not chemical, and it's just bad habits that have accumulated over the years, I would submit they are not alcoholics. They're just people who are drinking far too much at the moment. And with some simple technique changes, which I'm sure you...
(28:18):
You help your clients with Colleen. They can completely embody a different identity, which is I'm alcohol free. I'm a health conscious person who focuses on personal development and joy and sleeping great and eating nutritious food. That's a great identity, not I'm an alcoholic and I need to be away from alcohol completely different. So.
(28:45):
To answer your question, I'm a big believer in what you are proposing in terms of identity and its importance. And my mission really is to have the tens of millions of people mistakenly believing that they're broken and powerless to reframe that and embody the type of person who they really wanna be. Yeah, yeah, we're in alignment with that. And
(29:13):
I'm comfortable with the word because it's a word that gets used. I'm fine to say I used to be an alcoholic. You know, I used to be a yoga teacher. You know, that's something that I did. I drank every single day. I qualified. You know, if there was an alcohol Olympics, I would have gotten some sort of medal. I was there. I did that. But now I definitely don't agree with that. And what a turning point for me in my life, James, was
(29:42):
I was probably three years sober and still really, I would say, over identifying as a non-drinker. Like, I still divided the world between drinkers and non-drinkers. If you think of alcohol use disorder as a thinking problem, not a thinking, a drinking problem, I would walk into a party and who's drinking and who's not, and I had developed a positive, strong, confident identity around the not drinking. But then I took it to another level because...
(30:11):
I remember my brother said something, or he didn't have a glass of wine. And I said, oh, did you quit drinking? Did you get in trouble? You know, or did you get a DUI? And he goes, saying no to a glass of wine doesn't mean that I have an alcohol problem. And he goes, you're the only person that is still caught up in this alcohol is your identity. And it really kind of glitched my matrix where I realized…
(30:35):
that I've just been telling myself a story and I decided to let go of that story and no longer identify with alcohol at all. And what now I see, the research shows 50% of people who get caught in the weeds with an addiction because alcohol is addictive and if you drink it every day, you're going to have, you know, lower dopamine and higher cortisol levels, all the things. But what I realized was that 50% of people correct on their own because it's a bad habit and they want to be happy.
(31:05):
And those people, we don't call them alcoholics, and there's only one reason. They never told us they were. So the power of using our own voice to place ourselves in a box, really can be very limiting and then also very freeing as well. And that's why I think it's so important to choose the word wisely. You know? Yes, I'm in alignment with that, Colleen. And I love how you're using language.
(31:33):
to embody the type of person who you are, because I always say we arise in language, don't we? Like our words matter there. And it's funny because I hear a lot of clients on coaching calls saying, I need to quit. I have to quit. And I invite them to change that language. And instead of needing to do something and having to do something, which is very heavy, isn't it? It's very heavy. It's like this, it's got this shame and this kind of force to it. We just change.
(32:03):
one of those words and those sentences from I need to, I get to, or I have to, to I want to, or change the tense from something that we're going to do in the future to making it present. Like I'm choosing being alcohol-free right now. Every day I'm getting better at this. Every day I'm making improvements and those seemingly subtle verbiage
(32:32):
are actually quite incredibly impactful and how we see and experience the world. If we're walking around saying, oh, I have to do this. I need to, if we just change it to, I get to, I want to. Yeah. Completely different feeling. And I would submit a completely different result. It's neuro-linguistic programming and we believe what we think. And that's why I don't ever say no to alcohol.
(33:02):
I always say yes to myself. And occasionally a glass of wine fits in with whatever the plan is. But most of the time I'm a yes to myself. So if someone says, do you want a glass of wine? I'm like, yeah, I promised Colleen we were doing the gym at 6 a.m. So thank you very much, but I'm good with, you know, I'll have the club soda or whatever. And just those sorts of reframes, you know, the other thing with neuro-linguistic programming is the brain.
(33:30):
If you say, I want or I don't want or I can't drink, the, it's like the brain doesn't process the negative. It creates an image of the drink. It creates an image of what that means to you. And so that's why it's not what you don't wanna do. You wanna focus on what you do wanna do. Like for me, I want to sleep. I want to get up early. I want to stay grounded and connected here in this moment, focusing on what you are creating, what you are experiencing.
(33:59):
is so much more powerful for the brain to get engaged emotionally so that you actually feel connected. You know, we have this virtual reality. That's the biggest thing I see with my clients is it's not that they want to drink so much. It's that they don't have the same virtual experience of sobriety that they do for alcohol. It's just a big blank hole or like it's been photoshopped out. So I always say the only way to ever truly have a choice.
(34:28):
is to focus on experiencing sobriety as something that you want and enjoy. You know, and then you can choose, but first you have to rebuild those neuro pathways that enjoy not drinking as its own full experience that's even superior. Yes. The, what you said, I'm a hundred percent behind. We actually call it the pink elephant. We have our clients, we say to them, do not think about a pink elephant. Do not think about a pink elephant. And then.
(34:57):
Of course they think about a pink elephant. So when we walk into a restaurant and bar and we say, don't drink, I shouldn't drink, I can't drink, you know, we're telling ourselves what not to do. So we end up focusing on that thing and then we're more likely to actually consume the very thing. Yeah. Words matter. Neuro-linguistic programming, a lot of neuroscience around the power of telling the body and the mind what to do being so much simpler and easier than telling it what not to do. I think this is a
(35:27):
Also, where I would be a little bit critical of the way that AA tends to do it. And I do get challenged on this quite a lot, but a lot of people who find their way to us have gone to AA and they have found that that AA is very much, I can't drink, I'm not going to drink. And there's a lot of lamenting in the past. Whereas what we tend to do based on neuroscience is really make our efforts to support people aspirational and fun.
(35:57):
and positive and focusing on what you will do and focusing on the now and in the future rather than lamenting the past. Do you have any views on that, Colleen? I have a lot of views. And what I would recommend, have you read the freedom model? No. Okay. Don't hang up yet, but go get that because there's hundreds of studies and the people who identify as sober alcoholics have a nine times higher rate of binge drinking in the future.
(36:27):
because they've been programmed to believe that they can't control themselves. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so that is where, you know, provides the community. You know, I went into A on my day one, that's where I sought help, but I quickly realized I was signing up for a lifetime where they actually, the studies show, we all get taught how to talk about and create our story.
(36:55):
Within a few months, I had rewritten the story of my life from the framework of I'm an alcoholic. And we teach each other to speak in colloquialisms and phrases, you know, you can't unpickle your cucumber and once an addict, always an addict. And I've been an alcoholic since I was three before I ever took a drink. Like we, they, in AA and programs like that, in any program, you are taught how to think
(37:23):
and how to frame your experiences. So research shows that when you teach people at the most vulnerable time of their life, when they're struggling with an addiction, to think of themselves as they can't control it, that's the definition of a fixed mindset, that you couldn't control it in the past, you'll never control it in the future. So they're perpetuating this idea. And then if you have one drink, they define it as a relapse. Well.
(37:51):
then you know, that's what people go out and I hear wonderful people who identify as alcoholics, they work the program, but they're like, yeah, if I had one drink, I'd just go on a full bender because I have to go back to day one. So it perpetuates the binge drinking because one drink equals all the drinks. And it's a life or death decision. When in truth, it's not, it's one fucking drink. And if you don't know how to correct after the one drink, and you get up on the slope,
(38:20):
That's where, so the research is very strong and I encourage you to get that book. I just do it a little bit. You're just like me. Yeah, oh, it will blow your mind and it also will provide you a lot of good research that you can share with your people. That's quite a shift in the AA. Again, there's good people, but AA is dogma, not science. I like that. I might use that in some marketing hooks, Colleen.
(38:50):
Read my copy. That's what I teach. And here's the other thing that they get wrong. Once an addict, always an addict. Within six to 12 months of breaking the addiction, addiction is a learning process. So is recovery. Within six to 12 months, your prefrontal cortex, the gray matter, is denser. So you're better able to self-regulate than normal drinkers. In fact, you are.
(39:19):
more capable, not less of controlling. So past addiction has no bearing. If you have overcome the addiction, including the mindset, including the tribe, including the identity, and you've done the work, that is also a learning process. So there is no one drink sends you all the way back. Your dopamine has changed, your cortisol levels have changed, your growth mindset is in place. Six to 12 months, your prefrontal cortex has denser gray matter than
(39:48):
somebody who is a normal drinker who has never overcome addiction. You just got a PhD in recovery, my friend, when you break through and crawl out of the hole one broken fingernail at a time as we all have to do. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That's science. Yes. Yes. You know, brain systems are designed to keep us alive, but they become hijacked. And then the excessive reward from alcohol,
(40:15):
that we experience trumps any kind of natural feeling or reward. The brain learns to prefer alcohol and places that at the top of our needs, which is why we can be unconsciously driven to drinking as opposed to sit back and decide a healthier way to, to soothe our comfort. I really liked and appreciated the science that you brought to that Colleen as well. I could keep going because, but I won't, because I will say that.
(40:44):
The way a person who is in active addiction, their brain responds, they are at a dopamine deficit. So they experience a much higher level of relief than if I have a glass of wine. It doesn't do much for me because I'm not in a dopamine deficit and a hijacked up cortisol, you know, and all the mess. And you can correct, you can learn how to self-directed neuroplasticity. You can train your brain to act differently.
(41:14):
You mentioned that addiction is a learning process, and it's just jacked up by that feedback loop, which is true. But again, so is recovery. And once you direct consciousness into your choices, your dopamine repairs, your cortisol levels come back online. And it's just true that our brain is always changing. And you can choose the change, or you can just be chosen.
(41:43):
in an unconscious way. And you teach people how to work their own brain, then anything is possible for them. Yes. So where else do we need to go? Just one, just another thing on alcohol. What was interesting, I, there was a, there's a professor out of the psychology department at Canada's University of Victoria, his name's Professor Tim Stockwell.
(42:09):
And he co-authored a comprehensive study that reviewed more than a hundred previously published studies on alcohol consumption and mortality. And those 100 studies involved nearly 5 million research participants in all. And what his research revealed was that almost all of those study results that claimed that a glass of wine was good for your heart health were actually, the quote he used were,
(42:38):
was completely skewed and biased. In other words, all of those reports were biased towards the outcome that the people who were funding those studies wanted skewed in terms of the actual data that came through, there were only select parts of it, which were presented. And that concept is...
(43:04):
One of the best brands I think that's been going the past three decades because everybody, it seems almost everybody's, but isn't a glass of wine good for your heart? Isn't that good for your heart health? I mean, who, whoever came up with that was a genius marketer. I would submit because it's now taking a lot of work to try and scale that back and have people truly understand that's just plain not true. In fact, there was a study that came out of the UK in 2022. It was.
(43:32):
a study of 35,000 British adults, mostly middle aged adults. And it showed that even one seemingly innocent glass of, of alcohol per day was enough to destroy some amount of gray and white matter in the brain. And I don't know whether you've been seeing this now, but certainly I've been seeing a lot more of the public being educated about the damaging consequences of any minimum, minimal amounts of alcohol.
(44:00):
And I'm seeing a plethora of new alcohol-free alternatives hit the market. Certainly the conversations that I now listen in to when I'm at a dinner where alcohol is present, a lot of people are now talking about that. Whereas I would say 10 years ago, even eight years ago in 2015, when I started my alcohol-free lifestyle business, people weren't really talking about this. It was kind of under the table. It was kind of, you know, spoken about in
(44:28):
corners or not spoken of at all, whereas now people are really in the conversation. Are you seeing something similar, Colleen? I would definitely say that it's becoming a trend, the sober curious. I think that the younger generation, you're my age, almost, I'm 50, and my kids and mid-20s, they're not drinking as much because alcohol doesn't feel good.
(44:56):
And to speak to your point about the heart healthy bullshit is alcohol's a drug, not a food group. That's like a study that comes out and says a daily dose of Xanax is good for your heart. You know, it's like the whole question, the whole premise is that our culture, alcohol because of policy, like it's a class one carcinogen.
(45:20):
It is neurotoxic. It's a depressant drug with addictive qualities in the same vein as benzodiazepines. You have to go to your doctor and get monitored for that. I'm not demonizing alcohol. I'm just saying, let's call it a spade. It's a drug. And so in order to escape liability, just like big cigarettes, now they have to put a warning label. And again, I'm not demonizing alcohol, but the whole please drink responsibly.
(45:49):
Nobody says, please smoke responsibly. You know, it's like in our culture, alcohol is escaped responsibility. We blame the person instead of the product. And the product doesn't come with dosing instructions or, you know, the problems or the health consequences. Again, it's a class one carcinogen. One bottle of wine equals 10 cigarettes. And yet I grew up, you probably did too, thinking responsible drinking means I don't drive drunk.
(46:17):
I drink a bottle of wine every night, but I'm responsible because I don't drive drunk. And so the whole cultural narrative needs to shift. I personally think that within 25 years, alcohol will have the same thing as smoking. If you're a smoker, go outside and stand in the butt hut. Don't bring that into here. And I think it's just the turning over of the generations where it won't be...
(46:45):
know that it'll ever be demonized. But I think having a mocktail menu that's just as built out as the cocktail menu will just be normal. And so I think, you know, I adopted a plant based diet early on, you know, I couldn't get a salad without cheese, you know, 10 years later, it was there's vegan options. So I think the more people that honestly get in the weeds with alcohol and demand alternatives and stand up and say, there's nothing wrong with me. Alcohol is addictive.
(47:15):
You know, I didn't know that could happen. It did, I've corrected, I'm good. And now I want an alternative. So I think there'll be a tipping point in our society where more and more people are like, hey, we're not buying this bullshit that's heart healthy anymore. It's a drug, you can use it. I think of alcohol as birthday cake. Like a little bit here and there, okay. But sugar, you know, high fructose corn syrup is poison. You don't eat it every day. And the more you eat, the worse you feel.
(47:43):
And alcohol is the same way. I don't think we have to demonize it. I think we have to call it a drug because that's what it is. I agree with you. Yeah, it is a drug. I call it attractively packaged poison because a very clever marketer at some point decided to put this poison in very sleek, beautiful packaging and called it champagne. There you go. There's a beautiful bottle. Look at that beautiful bottle. And let's put a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a beautiful gown and have them drink champagne out of a
(48:12):
gorgeous glass and will associate this poison with romance and elegance and sophistication and celebration. Yeah. Genius marketing, I have to say. Genius. Well, and then the whole AA movement actually supports big alcohol because instead of blaming the product, if you slip and trip in your gown, you're an alcoholic and you need to go, you tap out and you can't stay at the party anymore. You're the problem, not the alcohol. So the whole thing works together.
(48:43):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm in alignment with that. We didn't get to sleep, but we are coming up on time. So perhaps I'll have you back. Will you just kind of maybe tell people about a little bit about your program, how to find you? You know, you mentioned that you have 98% results, which is amazing. You want to just talk a little bit about your alcohol-free program? Thank you.
(49:10):
The university of Washington conducted a scientific study on our stop drinking process in the first quarter of 2023. And the results came out at the end of 2023. You can dig into them if you like at alco slash study. It'll redirect you to the tech report that the professor at the university, professor Christopher Barnes wrote. And essentially we put about 160.
(49:40):
clients through a 90 day stop drinking process. And we looked at, or we deliberately had a third of them wait a month to begin. And two thirds of the studies that began our process. And then we looked at and we compared the results and what it showed was that folks who went through our stop drinking program, which we call project 90 reduced their drinking by 98% which is
(50:07):
pretty remarkable and there were a lot of, now just to be clear, this was self reporting. So we messaged those participants and we asked them, we didn't have them monitored up and went tracking them every single day. So it was self reporting, but even if we account for some people, maybe, uh, exaggerating or not filling out forms and not doing it essentially, even if it's a 90% reduction in drinking, that's still significant. I would submit that the reason why that
(50:35):
result was so high was because of what I described as five pillars. And that is simply coaching, accountability, community, having it be fun, and then having skin in the game. The reason why I think AA has a reported 7% success rate in terms of helping people long-term is because they don't really have those five things. I mean, they've got, I mean, they've got some of them, but not all of them. Nobody I would submit actually thinks that AA is fun.
(51:04):
Is it fun to go there? I don't know. I mean, I would suggest most people don't think that there's no skin in the game. Like you don't have to pay to participate. It is free. And so maybe there's no built in accountability there. The coaching and what they're coaching or saying, I don't, I'm not in alignment with, and it sounds like you're not either in, in some respects.
(51:27):
And the community, it's not like-minded, you know, it's not a like-minded community because just to borrow from the example I used earlier, you might have a well educated, articulate working professional in their forties and fifties who's sitting down next to the teenage meth addict, you know, and there's no relatability there. Um, now look, I, again, just to wrap this up, I don't want this to be like a, uh, an AA bashing session, but I, you know, I just think that the, that the days of people.
(51:55):
their knee jerk reaction going to, oh, I better go to AA to fix my drinking problem. I think those days have to be over because it seems pretty clear to me that it's ineffective for most people. For those that is effective, great work. Keep doing it. If it's working, keep doing it. But most people who try it, it doesn't seem to work. The way that we do it, which is more aspirational and fun, now is scientifically...
(52:21):
study backed, I guess, in the sense that we put it through rigorous university testing, seems to work, seems to be effective for those, you know, those five reasons that I submitted. And so if anyone would like to just, you know, check out the results and you're welcome to go to alco slash study. I'm also pretty engaged on social media. You can find me at James Swanwick on Instagram and Tik Tok. And we have a YouTube channel and a podcast called Alcohol Free Lifestyle. All right.
(52:50):
Thank you so much for being here. Colleen, thank you so much for having me and being engaged in this discussion. I appreciate you. So thank you for listening. I put James's information in the show notes so you can check out more about him and stay tuned tomorrow on Wednesday. I'm releasing another podcast episode with an energy worker channel writer and teacher of soul integration and esoteric knowledge.
(53:19):
whose name is Paul Quinton. And he's going to give us an introduction for all of us non-woo-woo people into how to access multi-dimensional states of your own consciousness. We're going to start with the stuff about alcohol and how it's possible to heal addiction and disable your triggers by tapping into the energy of your own emotions, and why relying on logic and being stuck in your head and being stuck in the past.
(53:49):
is why you feel like you can't trust yourself, because you're literally blocking access to your own innate wisdom that comes from your own higher state of consciousness. We're gonna talk about the difference between feeling your feelings and thinking about your feelings, which most of us get it wrong, and that's why feeling your feelings gets a bad name, because we're not feeling them, we're thinking about them. And then finally, how to harness the power of an intention.
(54:18):
so that you can get out of your head and no longer be debilitated by your own emotional baggage. It's a really great, fun conversation. So that'll go live tomorrow at 5 a.m. And then just as a reminder, if you want to attend the masterclass to learn more about my accelerated recovery process and the eight core principles that you need to master in order to become an emotionally sober person, get in the show notes.
(54:47):
and register. I'm doing it live on Thursday, 1 p.m. Eastern, and it is a great opportunity for you to meet me and ask questions, and of course the energy is just better when it's live. But I do send the replay out within an hour or two after the class is over, so you can still have access to the replay if you can't come live. And also, because there was so much content in this master class, this training, I divided it into two parts.
(55:16):
So as soon as you register, you will receive access to part one, which is a video from me that is the five mistakes that turn normal drinkers into over drinkers, where I lay out the entire innocent process that all of us get stuck in and end up somewhat dependent or addicted to alcohol. There's also a workbook that includes a quiz to test your knowledge on part one.
(55:45):
as well as a bonus resource to help you kind of map out point A to point B. So all of that is instant access as soon as you register. It truly is an all-inclusive comprehensive training that will change the way you think about alcohol use disorder and give you the big picture information that you need to make good decisions for moving forward. So I hope to see you there. As always, reach out to me if you have any questions.
Have you tried taking a break from alcohol for a week or a month or longer to reset your tolerance and done well with that only to end up falling back into the default patterns that leave you hung over? The cycle is exhausting. We vacillate between trying to outsmart the urge to drink and feeling hopeless and ashamed when we fail. My guest today is James Sandwick.
(00:29):
and he is the host of the top rated alcohol-free lifestyle podcast. And he is here to join me in a deep discussion about both the best practices and the pitfalls of getting sober or quitting drinking or however it is you're framing the change you want to make and why it is so important for you to find a like-minded community that aligns with your long-term
(00:58):
identity so that changing your drinking habits feels like you're leveling up.
My name is Colleen Cashman. I'm a sober-ish recovery coach, helping high-achieving women get emotionally sober so that drinking less or not at all feels like a superpower. Join me each week for evidence-based holistic strategies to regulate your brain chemistry and nervous system and also develop a growth mindset so you can feel proud.
(01:33):
confident and resilient with or without a drink in your hand because it's not about the alcohol.
So the conversation you're going to hear with my guest today actually took quite a turn, because I challenged him on the holes that I see in the sober or alcohol-free lifestyle messaging. I believe that we have a responsibility as leaders of group coaching programs that are designed to help people who are struggling with alcohol in some way break the habit.
(02:13):
and move on with their lives. And the gap that I see, that I faced personally, is the idea that changing the way you drink, quitting drinking, requires you to adopt a non-drinker identity. I see that as a short-term solution that can actually bite you in the ass. Because while making the decision to take alcohol off the table completely for an extended period of time is
(02:43):
very helpful, at some point, your motivation to not drink cannot be simply fueled by fear that you can't trust yourself or that somehow you're not capable of drinking like a normal person. And while understanding that alcohol is a class I carcinogenic, neurotoxic, depressant, addictive drug is helpful,
(03:09):
because most drinking problems arise out of ignorance. We simply are unaware of the side effects of using alcohol on a regular basis. We don't understand how it affects our cortisol and our dopamine and our thought processes. We're simply told to drink responsibly, and yet given no responsible information as to what that actually means. But...
(03:35):
Completely demonizing alcohol as a substance that should never be consumed is not realistic in our society. People drink alcohol. They always have. They always will. And so denying that you may have a desire to drink again socially in the future or demonizing that desire as a sign or a symptom that something has gone wrong with you is ridiculous.
(04:05):
And so the gap that I see in the sober community is that people are shown wonderful ways of how to quit drinking and how to enjoy sobriety. But for anybody who decides that they do wanna reintroduce alcohol and drink in moderation, there's no clear path for that. Nobody's talking about what that looks like.
(04:30):
and as over 50% of people who at some point qualify as certified alcoholic eventually return to drinking successfully without suffering further symptoms of addiction. This is something we need to be talking about. And so I'm gonna talk about it before we dive into the episode. I'm going to share with you what I would call a reoccurrence of alcohol use disorder.
(04:57):
that happened to me just this last Friday night. So I've got a lot of stress going on in my life. You may know that I'm going through a divorce. I am working to build my business. My home is an upheaval. I'm not sure where I'm going to live or what all of that's going to look like. So I've got a lot going on. And by the end of the week, I was super stressed and knew that the only thing I wanted was a completely relaxing
(05:27):
evening on Friday night by myself practicing self care. And in the next chapter, which is my group coaching program for women who want to learn how to be emotionally sober, we have a breathwork class with a certified badass breathwork coach on the second Friday of every month. So I was very much looking forward to breathwork. And then I was excited to start
(05:53):
the season three of The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. And I love that show. So that was my plan. And I did the breath work and I felt amazing. And so I made myself a nice stir fry for dinner and then sat down on the couch only to be greeted by really intrusive thoughts that took me by surprise. You know, I was able to quit drinking cold turkey.
(06:21):
and have no second thoughts, no regret. I was very goal-oriented. You know, at the time, I thought I was quitting drinking forever. So I did jump into that non-drinker sober identity, but I didn't experience a lot of cravings for alcohol. I craved sugar and I had a lot of mood swings and other issues, but I wasn't sitting around wishing that I could go back to drinking. I was able to flip a switch, make the turn.
(06:49):
Before and after, I'm done, let's move on. I still experienced some intrusive thought patterns, but most of them were about my relationships, or my business, or other stressful things in my life. It wasn't until I reintroduced alcohol that I had to confront intrusive thoughts about alcohol. And this is where the rubber meets the road. Alcohol use disorder is a thinking problem.
(07:18):
not a drinking problem. And if you are not equipped with the skills to handle the inevitable, if you reintroduce alcohol, your brain is going to invite you back into old thinking patterns. And that's what happened to me on Friday night. I'm sitting there trying to enjoy myself, and all of a sudden, my brain is like, hey, there's an open bottle of wine on the counter. We should probably drink.
(07:48):
The rest of that, there was like half a bottle left. We should drink the rest of that because it's gonna go bad if we don't. And I was like, no, I'm not pouring alcohol on stress, not interested, tonight it's not about the alcohol. And five minutes later, Jennifer Aniston's on the screen and she's drinking vodka out of the Grey Goose bottle in her freezer, which was eerily familiar and reminiscent for me. And suddenly, like I had a visceral memory of what that vodka would taste like.
(08:17):
And I was thinking about that. I don't have any vodka in the house, but my brain was just like, oh, that does look so good. And then my brain tried again. All of a sudden, I was thinking about hot toddies, and maybe I should make a whiskey with hot toddy, and I don't have any whiskey. And I'm thinking, well, maybe I should keep some on hand. If not for me, then when my dad comes. I kid you not, I had over 10 intrusive thoughts.
(08:46):
that were either invitations to drink or thinking about what kind of alcohol I need to buy at the store next time I'm there. And whether or not you have any intention of drinking again in the future, knowing how to respond to intrusive thoughts about alcohol is a skill. The mistake I would have made in the past is to think that these thoughts meant that I really do want to drink or that I miss drinking like I used to
(09:15):
that is proof or a sign that something is wrong with me and that I shouldn't drink, or maybe that I should drink and just get it over with. I remember in the old days when I was drinking, if I would say I'm not drinking and then the intrusive thoughts would come in, I'd finally just be like, I might as well just pour a drink and get it over with because I'm not gonna sit here and listen to this all night. I know that eventually I'm gonna have a drink. And so I might as well get it over with. Well.
(09:43):
Believing those thoughts are akin to thinking that that song that's stuck in your head means you just really like that song, even though it's actually really annoying and you hate that song. You know, the only way to recover from alcohol use disorder is to realize it's a thinking problem and you have to learn how to manage your mind. Pay more attention to how you're thinking instead of what.
(10:13):
your thinking. Stop believing everything that you think. And so I was able to look at the symptoms of what I was experiencing, which are intrusive thoughts, to be a sign that my nervous system was a little bit dysregulated and there was some unacknowledged emotions that I really hadn't processed for my week. You know, I saw the intrusive thoughts as a symptom, not as the truth.
(10:39):
And the way I handled it, the way I teach my clients to handle it was, in this example, I stopped, like I would pause the TV every time I noticed the thought. I would check in with my body. I would put my hand on my heart. I would say, what do you need right now? How can I help? Do you want to turn off the TV? Are we not having fun? Is there anything else you'd rather do? Like, I just practiced self-care. I didn't overthink the thoughts that were popping into my head. I didn't make them a problem.
(11:09):
They were annoying, and that's the end of it. And that is the skill that you need and that I think is missing from the majority of sobriety programs out there that do help you bridge the gap between overdrinker to whatever version of normal you want to have in your future. That is what they don't teach you. It's not the thought or the intrusive thought that's the problem. It's your response to it. Your brain is either solving problems or it's creating problems.
(11:39):
And when those thoughts are popping in, if you respond to them as though they are true and that they mean something bad, like you can't do this or you just really love alcohol, if you respond to them like that, then you're going to perpetuate the problem. Instead of thinking, why do I want to drink right now? And then letting your brain ruminate on that question, which of course, it's going to produce a list of all the reasons you want to drink, I responded.
(12:08):
to intrusive thoughts by asking my brain, how do I manage these intrusive thoughts? What do I really need? What's really going on here? And that is the difference. That is what allowed me to continue to practice self-care, stay present with myself, and not drink when I genuinely had no desire to drink. I know that the intrusive thoughts were a reflection of my nervous system, my stress level.
(12:37):
If my brain wasn't bothering me with thoughts about alcohol, it would have been bothering me with thoughts about something else. Like alcohol was just the shiny object in that situation. So learning how to properly diagnose what's happening and just as important, knowing how to respond to what's happening requires you to become emotionally sober. And I'll be honest, that doesn't happen overnight, which is why my group coaching program, The Next Chapter,
(13:06):
You have to join for a minimum of 12 weeks, and I also have one-year packages. And then I have a graduate program where you can stay on even longer. My accelerated recovery process is built on eight core principles that will give you the skill to think differently, to retrain your brain to solve problems instead of making tons of mountains out of little molehills. And if you're interested in working with me,
(13:35):
or even just hearing more about that, pause this episode and get into the show notes and register for my free live masterclass this Thursday so you can see the big picture, not just the immediate next step of changing your drinking habits, but what it's going to take for you to truly become a person with a level of personal power that you can't even imagine is possible right now. You can learn how to trust yourself.
(14:05):
in all situations. You don't need to promise you'll never drink again for the rest of your life, just to make you feel better in this moment. Because the truth is, you can change your mind anytime you want. The foundation of my program is built on the idea that you can drink however much you want, whenever you want. There's no, I can't drink or I shouldn't drink. The key to having personal power is to acknowledge that you have a choice.
(14:34):
and take full responsibility for whatever the consequences would be or will be or are if you already did it, so that you can learn how to tolerate the whole truth, the truth that you don't wanna drink and the truth that you do wanna drink, so that you're no longer held hostage by suppressed emotions. Like just put it all out there because your feelings aren't facts. There's no right or wrong way to feel and your feelings are like the weather. They're always changing.
(15:02):
Emotional sobriety is when you're no longer intoxicated by your own bullshit. Like you can feel anything. You're not afraid to feel. You don't have to hide parts of yourself. And that, my friends, is the only way you can ever actually trust yourself when you're radically honest with yourself. And you can tolerate the discomfort of telling yourself, no, that's important too. So.
(15:26):
I think you're going to enjoy this episode with James because we pull the bullshit filter off the sobriety messaging. We're going to talk about how to know if you need an extended period of sobriety and what happens to 95% of people who go to AA but don't stick with it. And also the importance of choosing a community that has your long-term identity in mind so that when you do change the way you drink.
(15:54):
it actually feels like you're leveling up because you know where you wanna go and you know the role models that you wanna follow. And then finally, how to actually choose goals with sobriety or anything else that make you happy so that any short-term discomfort that you experience in pursuit of a greater goal serves a purpose. So enjoy the episode. James.
(16:19):
Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm excited to introduce you to my audience. Will you please introduce yourself and let them know who you are and what you do? Sure thing. Thank you, Colleen. My name is James Swanick. I'm an Australian American and I help mostly entrepreneurs and business professionals to stop drinking alcohol. I also help high performers to sleep better. I have a stop drinking coaching organization and I have sleep products.
(16:49):
Business, which produces blue light blocking glasses, which are those orange lens glasses that you, that you may have seen and yeah, I'm almost 50. I live between Medellin Columbia and the U S and my mission in life is to grow very healthy businesses and make the businesses be about genuinely making an impact in people's lives. Yeah. And the businesses are just an extension, I guess, of the lifestyle that I choose to live, which is holistic health.
(17:18):
and health, wealth, love and happiness. Yeah. I would love to just dive right into the alcohol portion because of course I do the same thing and I help people who find themselves in the weeds with a wee bit of a drinking problem. Can you talk to me about your overall approach? You know, what mistakes do you see people making when they realize there's a problem? What are they believing that isn't true? And how do you help?
(17:47):
them in a way that's different than other options or even pitfalls, dare I say. I'll start with the first question. What mistakes do I feel that people are making? Trying to moderate when you haven't gone at least a few months alcohol free, I think has proven to be incredibly ineffective.
(18:13):
Truly when you get to at least 90 consecutive days, alcohol free at that point, what I've seen anecdotally from coaching hundreds of people over the years is at that point, moderation becomes more realistic and possible. But if you're just trying to do moderation when you haven't quit for at least 90 days, you get stuck on this vicious stop start cycle where you stop for a while, then you start again, then you say to yourself, I'll only drink on weekends and
(18:42):
Then you say, I only have one each weekday and then all of that goes out the window. It's a very slippery slope. The other thing I see people making a mistake with is waiting too long to get professional support. In fact, there was a study that came out of the university of Sydney. Professor Nicola Newton said that on average, most people wait 10 years to get helped with their drinking habits just because of the stigma and we humans have a mistaken belief.
(19:10):
that we can just like that stop in many cases, decades of poor habits overnight using willpower and motivation alone. And it doesn't matter how many times I personally try to communicate to folks that you really need to have a like-minded community. You've got to have professional coaching. You've got to have some accountability. We human beings, we still like to convince ourselves that we shouldn't have to get help stopping drinking. We should.
(19:39):
just be able to stop on our own. And the fact that we can't stop on our own must mean we really are flawed. We really have a problem. So that's kind of like the mindset that I see people maybe embodying. And I think that if, and then just one more mistake as well that I see people making, and that is they think that drinking, that stopping drinking is going to be painful and hard and that they're going to be boring and dull.
(20:09):
Whereas the opposite is true. If you have a great system and a like-minded community, stopping drinking can be actually very simple and you will have more fun and more joy in your life than you could possibly imagine. Incredible amounts more than what you have in your life when you're drinking. And I can say that with conviction just from my own story and I can also say it anecdotally from seeing many people, clients over the years.
(20:36):
So that was the answer to your first question. I can't remember what your second question was, Colleen. I remember, but I'd love to follow up a little bit deeper. You know, one of the things that we tend to believe what we say, we tend to believe what we hear. And this idea that I was committed to for a long time that quitting drinking is hard or, you know, changing my habits is hard, not changing them is hard.
(21:01):
Do the math. This is a full-time job to manage something where all of your energy is being invested in a lost cause because this isn't going to get better on its own. And where I'd like to have you crack it open a little bit deeper is the idea that people do need help and a life, a community of like-minded people. Why do you think it is that we need help with this? Because
(21:30):
especially high performing, high achieving people who are very independent. It is one of those things where we do think that we should be able to use our willpower. What is the secret sauce then that is a community or professional support?
The reason why we find it so challenging, the reasons I should say that we find it so challenging include cultural conditioning. If we look back to when we were a little boy, a little girl, and if our parents drink, what did they say when we were, you know, under the age of 10? Oh no, little Colleen or little James, you can't drink. You can drink when you're older. And so what they're doing is they're implanting an unconscious belief system in the mind that alcohol is.
(22:16):
right of passage, alcohol is something that the grownups get to do. And once we get to 18, or a little bit later, when 15 or 16, then we can drink this attractively packaged poison as if this is a prize as if this alcohol is something to save you. So why is it so challenging to stop on our own because on an deep unconscious level, we've been told most of our adult life and certainly all the way back into our childhood.
(22:43):
that alcohol equals fun, alcohol equals bonding, alcohol equals a tribe, alcohol equals relaxation, alcohol equals celebration. And so it's very challenging to get into your 40s or 50s or 30s, 40s and 50s. And then have to really face the idea that belief system is mistaken is incorrect, that an actual fact not drinking alcohol is what you get to do and get to celebrate. And that being
(23:12):
clear and having energy and sleeping well is actually the reward, not the drinking of the poison and the toxins, but the not drinking of the poison and the toxins. So that's one of the reasons why it's so challenging cultural conditioning. Another thing, why being in a like-minded tribe is so important. There's a book, a New York times bestselling book called the power of habit by Charles C. Doohig. And in that book, he says, change becomes
(23:41):
probable when you do it in a like-minded group of people with a shared goal. So that means if you are a 40-something attorney, if you're in a group with a bunch of other 40-something attorneys and they're all trying to quit drinking alcohol, the chances of you quitting alcohol are far superior and higher than if you're going to an AA meeting, for example,
(24:08):
And you're sitting next to a 19 year old meth addict who's holding up gas stations. There's no relatability there. Likewise, I can't tell you how many prospective clients stop drinking process will decline becoming a client because they say their wife or their husband is going to help them be accountable. Let they're going to be in the corner, cheering them on. And they say to their husband or wife, you don't need to do this professional
(24:37):
coaching, I'll support you, I'll hold you accountable. That's one of the most ineffective formulas that I submit based on what I've seen anecdotally over the years. You really must be in a group of like minded people because then according, at least according to this New York times bestselling book, that's when change becomes probable and certainly that's what I have seen over the years. Coaching, you know, many people.
(25:02):
It is human nature and it is science. The fastest way to change your mind is to change your tribe. And we tend to believe what we hear and are exposed to, so consistent repetition. But you bring up a factor that speaks to identity and being able to see what you want in someone else and co-create an identity. What is your opinion on the identity?
(25:30):
of really working to create an identity of a non-drinker. I mean, you know this podcast is, it's not about the alcohol. And one of my strategies is to help people not identify with alcohol at all, not as somebody who used to have a drinking problem, not as somebody who can't drink. You know, in any given moment, you're saying yes to yourself, not no to alcohol. And so how do you work with clients and what have you seen as an effective strategy?
(25:59):
in terms of the identity of alcoholic versus non-drinker versus, you know, like for me, I identify as a woman who takes good care of herself and I identify as a sleeper. I wanna sleep and alcohol, you know, does not coincide much alcohol for me will affect my sleep. So it's not a good fit for me. But how do you see the identity portion impacting
(26:28):
how quickly or the effectiveness of the behavior change. Yeah, it's everything. It's so powerful. I like to walk around in my mind saying, I'm the type of man who, or I'm the type of person who. So for example, I'm the type of man who takes care of his family no matter what. I say that to myself. I'm the type of man who keeps his word.
(26:51):
So I'm always striving to keep my word. I'm the type of person who practices optimal health every single day. So I practice optimal health almost every single day. I'm not saying that I get it right every day. I'm flawed and a human just like the rest of us, but I'm striving to be that person all the time. This term alcoholic, I think gets thrown around far too loosely in society. I'm not sure what your view is.
(27:18):
on this Colleen, but I would submit that there are millions of people across the US and the world mistakenly thinking that they're an alcoholic because people have told them that they're an alcoholic. If you take on that identity, then your whole life is going to be, oh, I'm an alcoholic. Therefore, I'm this type of person. Therefore, I'm broken. Therefore, I'm flawed. Therefore, I have to go to a meeting every day for the next 30 years and say, I'm powerless over this drug.
(27:48):
I reject that notion. Now, are there millions of people in the world who have a chemical dependency on alcohol? Yes, okay, I would submit that is correct. But all these people who have a habitual dependency on it that's not physical, not chemical, and it's just bad habits that have accumulated over the years, I would submit they are not alcoholics. They're just people who are drinking far too much at the moment. And with some simple technique changes, which I'm sure you...
(28:18):
You help your clients with Colleen. They can completely embody a different identity, which is I'm alcohol free. I'm a health conscious person who focuses on personal development and joy and sleeping great and eating nutritious food. That's a great identity, not I'm an alcoholic and I need to be away from alcohol completely different. So.
(28:45):
To answer your question, I'm a big believer in what you are proposing in terms of identity and its importance. And my mission really is to have the tens of millions of people mistakenly believing that they're broken and powerless to reframe that and embody the type of person who they really wanna be. Yeah, yeah, we're in alignment with that. And
(29:13):
I'm comfortable with the word because it's a word that gets used. I'm fine to say I used to be an alcoholic. You know, I used to be a yoga teacher. You know, that's something that I did. I drank every single day. I qualified. You know, if there was an alcohol Olympics, I would have gotten some sort of medal. I was there. I did that. But now I definitely don't agree with that. And what a turning point for me in my life, James, was
(29:42):
I was probably three years sober and still really, I would say, over identifying as a non-drinker. Like, I still divided the world between drinkers and non-drinkers. If you think of alcohol use disorder as a thinking problem, not a thinking, a drinking problem, I would walk into a party and who's drinking and who's not, and I had developed a positive, strong, confident identity around the not drinking. But then I took it to another level because...
(30:11):
I remember my brother said something, or he didn't have a glass of wine. And I said, oh, did you quit drinking? Did you get in trouble? You know, or did you get a DUI? And he goes, saying no to a glass of wine doesn't mean that I have an alcohol problem. And he goes, you're the only person that is still caught up in this alcohol is your identity. And it really kind of glitched my matrix where I realized…
(30:35):
that I've just been telling myself a story and I decided to let go of that story and no longer identify with alcohol at all. And what now I see, the research shows 50% of people who get caught in the weeds with an addiction because alcohol is addictive and if you drink it every day, you're going to have, you know, lower dopamine and higher cortisol levels, all the things. But what I realized was that 50% of people correct on their own because it's a bad habit and they want to be happy.
(31:05):
And those people, we don't call them alcoholics, and there's only one reason. They never told us they were. So the power of using our own voice to place ourselves in a box, really can be very limiting and then also very freeing as well. And that's why I think it's so important to choose the word wisely. You know? Yes, I'm in alignment with that, Colleen. And I love how you're using language.
(31:33):
to embody the type of person who you are, because I always say we arise in language, don't we? Like our words matter there. And it's funny because I hear a lot of clients on coaching calls saying, I need to quit. I have to quit. And I invite them to change that language. And instead of needing to do something and having to do something, which is very heavy, isn't it? It's very heavy. It's like this, it's got this shame and this kind of force to it. We just change.
(32:03):
one of those words and those sentences from I need to, I get to, or I have to, to I want to, or change the tense from something that we're going to do in the future to making it present. Like I'm choosing being alcohol-free right now. Every day I'm getting better at this. Every day I'm making improvements and those seemingly subtle verbiage
(32:32):
are actually quite incredibly impactful and how we see and experience the world. If we're walking around saying, oh, I have to do this. I need to, if we just change it to, I get to, I want to. Yeah. Completely different feeling. And I would submit a completely different result. It's neuro-linguistic programming and we believe what we think. And that's why I don't ever say no to alcohol.
(33:02):
I always say yes to myself. And occasionally a glass of wine fits in with whatever the plan is. But most of the time I'm a yes to myself. So if someone says, do you want a glass of wine? I'm like, yeah, I promised Colleen we were doing the gym at 6 a.m. So thank you very much, but I'm good with, you know, I'll have the club soda or whatever. And just those sorts of reframes, you know, the other thing with neuro-linguistic programming is the brain.
(33:30):
If you say, I want or I don't want or I can't drink, the, it's like the brain doesn't process the negative. It creates an image of the drink. It creates an image of what that means to you. And so that's why it's not what you don't wanna do. You wanna focus on what you do wanna do. Like for me, I want to sleep. I want to get up early. I want to stay grounded and connected here in this moment, focusing on what you are creating, what you are experiencing.
(33:59):
is so much more powerful for the brain to get engaged emotionally so that you actually feel connected. You know, we have this virtual reality. That's the biggest thing I see with my clients is it's not that they want to drink so much. It's that they don't have the same virtual experience of sobriety that they do for alcohol. It's just a big blank hole or like it's been photoshopped out. So I always say the only way to ever truly have a choice.
(34:28):
is to focus on experiencing sobriety as something that you want and enjoy. You know, and then you can choose, but first you have to rebuild those neuro pathways that enjoy not drinking as its own full experience that's even superior. Yes. The, what you said, I'm a hundred percent behind. We actually call it the pink elephant. We have our clients, we say to them, do not think about a pink elephant. Do not think about a pink elephant. And then.
(34:57):
Of course they think about a pink elephant. So when we walk into a restaurant and bar and we say, don't drink, I shouldn't drink, I can't drink, you know, we're telling ourselves what not to do. So we end up focusing on that thing and then we're more likely to actually consume the very thing. Yeah. Words matter. Neuro-linguistic programming, a lot of neuroscience around the power of telling the body and the mind what to do being so much simpler and easier than telling it what not to do. I think this is a
(35:27):
Also, where I would be a little bit critical of the way that AA tends to do it. And I do get challenged on this quite a lot, but a lot of people who find their way to us have gone to AA and they have found that that AA is very much, I can't drink, I'm not going to drink. And there's a lot of lamenting in the past. Whereas what we tend to do based on neuroscience is really make our efforts to support people aspirational and fun.
(35:57):
and positive and focusing on what you will do and focusing on the now and in the future rather than lamenting the past. Do you have any views on that, Colleen? I have a lot of views. And what I would recommend, have you read the freedom model? No. Okay. Don't hang up yet, but go get that because there's hundreds of studies and the people who identify as sober alcoholics have a nine times higher rate of binge drinking in the future.
(36:27):
because they've been programmed to believe that they can't control themselves. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so that is where, you know, provides the community. You know, I went into A on my day one, that's where I sought help, but I quickly realized I was signing up for a lifetime where they actually, the studies show, we all get taught how to talk about and create our story.
(36:55):
Within a few months, I had rewritten the story of my life from the framework of I'm an alcoholic. And we teach each other to speak in colloquialisms and phrases, you know, you can't unpickle your cucumber and once an addict, always an addict. And I've been an alcoholic since I was three before I ever took a drink. Like we, they, in AA and programs like that, in any program, you are taught how to think
(37:23):
and how to frame your experiences. So research shows that when you teach people at the most vulnerable time of their life, when they're struggling with an addiction, to think of themselves as they can't control it, that's the definition of a fixed mindset, that you couldn't control it in the past, you'll never control it in the future. So they're perpetuating this idea. And then if you have one drink, they define it as a relapse. Well.
(37:51):
then you know, that's what people go out and I hear wonderful people who identify as alcoholics, they work the program, but they're like, yeah, if I had one drink, I'd just go on a full bender because I have to go back to day one. So it perpetuates the binge drinking because one drink equals all the drinks. And it's a life or death decision. When in truth, it's not, it's one fucking drink. And if you don't know how to correct after the one drink, and you get up on the slope,
(38:20):
That's where, so the research is very strong and I encourage you to get that book. I just do it a little bit. You're just like me. Yeah, oh, it will blow your mind and it also will provide you a lot of good research that you can share with your people. That's quite a shift in the AA. Again, there's good people, but AA is dogma, not science. I like that. I might use that in some marketing hooks, Colleen.
(38:50):
Read my copy. That's what I teach. And here's the other thing that they get wrong. Once an addict, always an addict. Within six to 12 months of breaking the addiction, addiction is a learning process. So is recovery. Within six to 12 months, your prefrontal cortex, the gray matter, is denser. So you're better able to self-regulate than normal drinkers. In fact, you are.
(39:19):
more capable, not less of controlling. So past addiction has no bearing. If you have overcome the addiction, including the mindset, including the tribe, including the identity, and you've done the work, that is also a learning process. So there is no one drink sends you all the way back. Your dopamine has changed, your cortisol levels have changed, your growth mindset is in place. Six to 12 months, your prefrontal cortex has denser gray matter than
(39:48):
somebody who is a normal drinker who has never overcome addiction. You just got a PhD in recovery, my friend, when you break through and crawl out of the hole one broken fingernail at a time as we all have to do. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. That's science. Yes. Yes. You know, brain systems are designed to keep us alive, but they become hijacked. And then the excessive reward from alcohol,
(40:15):
that we experience trumps any kind of natural feeling or reward. The brain learns to prefer alcohol and places that at the top of our needs, which is why we can be unconsciously driven to drinking as opposed to sit back and decide a healthier way to, to soothe our comfort. I really liked and appreciated the science that you brought to that Colleen as well. I could keep going because, but I won't, because I will say that.
(40:44):
The way a person who is in active addiction, their brain responds, they are at a dopamine deficit. So they experience a much higher level of relief than if I have a glass of wine. It doesn't do much for me because I'm not in a dopamine deficit and a hijacked up cortisol, you know, and all the mess. And you can correct, you can learn how to self-directed neuroplasticity. You can train your brain to act differently.
(41:14):
You mentioned that addiction is a learning process, and it's just jacked up by that feedback loop, which is true. But again, so is recovery. And once you direct consciousness into your choices, your dopamine repairs, your cortisol levels come back online. And it's just true that our brain is always changing. And you can choose the change, or you can just be chosen.
(41:43):
in an unconscious way. And you teach people how to work their own brain, then anything is possible for them. Yes. So where else do we need to go? Just one, just another thing on alcohol. What was interesting, I, there was a, there's a professor out of the psychology department at Canada's University of Victoria, his name's Professor Tim Stockwell.
(42:09):
And he co-authored a comprehensive study that reviewed more than a hundred previously published studies on alcohol consumption and mortality. And those 100 studies involved nearly 5 million research participants in all. And what his research revealed was that almost all of those study results that claimed that a glass of wine was good for your heart health were actually, the quote he used were,
(42:38):
was completely skewed and biased. In other words, all of those reports were biased towards the outcome that the people who were funding those studies wanted skewed in terms of the actual data that came through, there were only select parts of it, which were presented. And that concept is...
(43:04):
One of the best brands I think that's been going the past three decades because everybody, it seems almost everybody's, but isn't a glass of wine good for your heart? Isn't that good for your heart health? I mean, who, whoever came up with that was a genius marketer. I would submit because it's now taking a lot of work to try and scale that back and have people truly understand that's just plain not true. In fact, there was a study that came out of the UK in 2022. It was.
(43:32):
a study of 35,000 British adults, mostly middle aged adults. And it showed that even one seemingly innocent glass of, of alcohol per day was enough to destroy some amount of gray and white matter in the brain. And I don't know whether you've been seeing this now, but certainly I've been seeing a lot more of the public being educated about the damaging consequences of any minimum, minimal amounts of alcohol.
(44:00):
And I'm seeing a plethora of new alcohol-free alternatives hit the market. Certainly the conversations that I now listen in to when I'm at a dinner where alcohol is present, a lot of people are now talking about that. Whereas I would say 10 years ago, even eight years ago in 2015, when I started my alcohol-free lifestyle business, people weren't really talking about this. It was kind of under the table. It was kind of, you know, spoken about in
(44:28):
corners or not spoken of at all, whereas now people are really in the conversation. Are you seeing something similar, Colleen? I would definitely say that it's becoming a trend, the sober curious. I think that the younger generation, you're my age, almost, I'm 50, and my kids and mid-20s, they're not drinking as much because alcohol doesn't feel good.
(44:56):
And to speak to your point about the heart healthy bullshit is alcohol's a drug, not a food group. That's like a study that comes out and says a daily dose of Xanax is good for your heart. You know, it's like the whole question, the whole premise is that our culture, alcohol because of policy, like it's a class one carcinogen.
(45:20):
It is neurotoxic. It's a depressant drug with addictive qualities in the same vein as benzodiazepines. You have to go to your doctor and get monitored for that. I'm not demonizing alcohol. I'm just saying, let's call it a spade. It's a drug. And so in order to escape liability, just like big cigarettes, now they have to put a warning label. And again, I'm not demonizing alcohol, but the whole please drink responsibly.
(45:49):
Nobody says, please smoke responsibly. You know, it's like in our culture, alcohol is escaped responsibility. We blame the person instead of the product. And the product doesn't come with dosing instructions or, you know, the problems or the health consequences. Again, it's a class one carcinogen. One bottle of wine equals 10 cigarettes. And yet I grew up, you probably did too, thinking responsible drinking means I don't drive drunk.
(46:17):
I drink a bottle of wine every night, but I'm responsible because I don't drive drunk. And so the whole cultural narrative needs to shift. I personally think that within 25 years, alcohol will have the same thing as smoking. If you're a smoker, go outside and stand in the butt hut. Don't bring that into here. And I think it's just the turning over of the generations where it won't be...
(46:45):
know that it'll ever be demonized. But I think having a mocktail menu that's just as built out as the cocktail menu will just be normal. And so I think, you know, I adopted a plant based diet early on, you know, I couldn't get a salad without cheese, you know, 10 years later, it was there's vegan options. So I think the more people that honestly get in the weeds with alcohol and demand alternatives and stand up and say, there's nothing wrong with me. Alcohol is addictive.
(47:15):
You know, I didn't know that could happen. It did, I've corrected, I'm good. And now I want an alternative. So I think there'll be a tipping point in our society where more and more people are like, hey, we're not buying this bullshit that's heart healthy anymore. It's a drug, you can use it. I think of alcohol as birthday cake. Like a little bit here and there, okay. But sugar, you know, high fructose corn syrup is poison. You don't eat it every day. And the more you eat, the worse you feel.
(47:43):
And alcohol is the same way. I don't think we have to demonize it. I think we have to call it a drug because that's what it is. I agree with you. Yeah, it is a drug. I call it attractively packaged poison because a very clever marketer at some point decided to put this poison in very sleek, beautiful packaging and called it champagne. There you go. There's a beautiful bottle. Look at that beautiful bottle. And let's put a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a beautiful gown and have them drink champagne out of a
(48:12):
gorgeous glass and will associate this poison with romance and elegance and sophistication and celebration. Yeah. Genius marketing, I have to say. Genius. Well, and then the whole AA movement actually supports big alcohol because instead of blaming the product, if you slip and trip in your gown, you're an alcoholic and you need to go, you tap out and you can't stay at the party anymore. You're the problem, not the alcohol. So the whole thing works together.
(48:43):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm in alignment with that. We didn't get to sleep, but we are coming up on time. So perhaps I'll have you back. Will you just kind of maybe tell people about a little bit about your program, how to find you? You know, you mentioned that you have 98% results, which is amazing. You want to just talk a little bit about your alcohol-free program? Thank you.
(49:10):
The university of Washington conducted a scientific study on our stop drinking process in the first quarter of 2023. And the results came out at the end of 2023. You can dig into them if you like at alco slash study. It'll redirect you to the tech report that the professor at the university, professor Christopher Barnes wrote. And essentially we put about 160.
(49:40):
clients through a 90 day stop drinking process. And we looked at, or we deliberately had a third of them wait a month to begin. And two thirds of the studies that began our process. And then we looked at and we compared the results and what it showed was that folks who went through our stop drinking program, which we call project 90 reduced their drinking by 98% which is
(50:07):
pretty remarkable and there were a lot of, now just to be clear, this was self reporting. So we messaged those participants and we asked them, we didn't have them monitored up and went tracking them every single day. So it was self reporting, but even if we account for some people, maybe, uh, exaggerating or not filling out forms and not doing it essentially, even if it's a 90% reduction in drinking, that's still significant. I would submit that the reason why that
(50:35):
result was so high was because of what I described as five pillars. And that is simply coaching, accountability, community, having it be fun, and then having skin in the game. The reason why I think AA has a reported 7% success rate in terms of helping people long-term is because they don't really have those five things. I mean, they've got, I mean, they've got some of them, but not all of them. Nobody I would submit actually thinks that AA is fun.
(51:04):
Is it fun to go there? I don't know. I mean, I would suggest most people don't think that there's no skin in the game. Like you don't have to pay to participate. It is free. And so maybe there's no built in accountability there. The coaching and what they're coaching or saying, I don't, I'm not in alignment with, and it sounds like you're not either in, in some respects.
(51:27):
And the community, it's not like-minded, you know, it's not a like-minded community because just to borrow from the example I used earlier, you might have a well educated, articulate working professional in their forties and fifties who's sitting down next to the teenage meth addict, you know, and there's no relatability there. Um, now look, I, again, just to wrap this up, I don't want this to be like a, uh, an AA bashing session, but I, you know, I just think that the, that the days of people.
(51:55):
their knee jerk reaction going to, oh, I better go to AA to fix my drinking problem. I think those days have to be over because it seems pretty clear to me that it's ineffective for most people. For those that is effective, great work. Keep doing it. If it's working, keep doing it. But most people who try it, it doesn't seem to work. The way that we do it, which is more aspirational and fun, now is scientifically...
(52:21):
study backed, I guess, in the sense that we put it through rigorous university testing, seems to work, seems to be effective for those, you know, those five reasons that I submitted. And so if anyone would like to just, you know, check out the results and you're welcome to go to alco slash study. I'm also pretty engaged on social media. You can find me at James Swanwick on Instagram and Tik Tok. And we have a YouTube channel and a podcast called Alcohol Free Lifestyle. All right.
(52:50):
Thank you so much for being here. Colleen, thank you so much for having me and being engaged in this discussion. I appreciate you. So thank you for listening. I put James's information in the show notes so you can check out more about him and stay tuned tomorrow on Wednesday. I'm releasing another podcast episode with an energy worker channel writer and teacher of soul integration and esoteric knowledge.
(53:19):
whose name is Paul Quinton. And he's going to give us an introduction for all of us non-woo-woo people into how to access multi-dimensional states of your own consciousness. We're going to start with the stuff about alcohol and how it's possible to heal addiction and disable your triggers by tapping into the energy of your own emotions, and why relying on logic and being stuck in your head and being stuck in the past.
(53:49):
is why you feel like you can't trust yourself, because you're literally blocking access to your own innate wisdom that comes from your own higher state of consciousness. We're gonna talk about the difference between feeling your feelings and thinking about your feelings, which most of us get it wrong, and that's why feeling your feelings gets a bad name, because we're not feeling them, we're thinking about them. And then finally, how to harness the power of an intention.
(54:18):
so that you can get out of your head and no longer be debilitated by your own emotional baggage. It's a really great, fun conversation. So that'll go live tomorrow at 5 a.m. And then just as a reminder, if you want to attend the masterclass to learn more about my accelerated recovery process and the eight core principles that you need to master in order to become an emotionally sober person, get in the show notes.
(54:47):
and register. I'm doing it live on Thursday, 1 p.m. Eastern, and it is a great opportunity for you to meet me and ask questions, and of course the energy is just better when it's live. But I do send the replay out within an hour or two after the class is over, so you can still have access to the replay if you can't come live. And also, because there was so much content in this master class, this training, I divided it into two parts.
(55:16):
So as soon as you register, you will receive access to part one, which is a video from me that is the five mistakes that turn normal drinkers into over drinkers, where I lay out the entire innocent process that all of us get stuck in and end up somewhat dependent or addicted to alcohol. There's also a workbook that includes a quiz to test your knowledge on part one.
(55:45):
as well as a bonus resource to help you kind of map out point A to point B. So all of that is instant access as soon as you register. It truly is an all-inclusive comprehensive training that will change the way you think about alcohol use disorder and give you the big picture information that you need to make good decisions for moving forward. So I hope to see you there. As always, reach out to me if you have any questions.
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