Alcohol Minimalist: Change Your Drinking Habits!

You're listening to breaking the bottle legacy with Molly Watts, episode one. Hi, I'm Molly, after a lifetime living under the influence of family alcohol abuse, spending more than 30 years worrying about alcohol and my own drinking, believing I had an unbreakable daily drinking habit, I changed my relationship with alcohol forever. If you want to change your drinking habits than breaking the bottle legacy is for you. My goal is to help you create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, past, present, and future. Each week all focus on real science and using your own brain to change your relationship with alcohol. Nothing has gone wrong, you're not broken, you're not sick, it's not your genes. And creating peace is possible. I'm here to help you do it. Let's start now. Hello, and welcome to the very first episode of Breaking the bottle legacy with me, your host, Molly watts, this is really an exciting moment for me. And I'm thrilled to be launching this podcast and everything that is coming behind it. And I really looking forward to helping people who want to change their relationship with alcohol, past, present and future. I say past because I hope that my fellow adult children of alcoholics are listening. And I want you to know that I have a true heart for those of you who grew up in an alcoholic home, and now struggle with your own drinking habits. So before we get into who I am, and why I'm qualified to talk about any of this, let's talk first about who you are, and why you should be listening to this podcast. So you're someone who has a habit of drinking more than you want to simply put, you might also be an adult child of an alcoholic, but not everyone listening will be. And if you are, I just want you to know I'm right there with you. Either way, whether you grew up in an alcoholic home and now struggle with your own drinking, or you simply have a habit that you'd like to change. What you really want is a peaceful relationship with alcohol. You want it to be a non factor in your life, you want to not worry about how much you're drinking. Whether or not you should drink can drink won't drink, how much you or your parent drank in the past. You want freedom from all of the anxiety and pain that alcohol has brought. You want peace, and hopefully I'm going to help you get there. What I'm going to share on this podcast might sound a little different than what you've previously heard if you've ever tried to change your drinking habits before. So let's talk about that a little. First of all, first and foremost, number one, I do not believe you are powerless over alcohol. Alcohol with all of its addictive properties does not have power over you. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol 100% Number two, I also don't believe in ultimatums and that you have to choose sobriety as the only option to achieve a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Number three, I believe in science, wellness and emotional intelligence to empower choice. Number four, I believe in balancing risk and reward and fully understanding perceived benefits versus real solutions. Lastly, I don't believe in using alcohol to numb away emotions. And I'm here to build awareness of emotional numbing and how it drives many habit drinkers. Alright, so who am I and why am I qualified to talk about all this? Well, let's straight out from be very clear about who I am not. I am not a doctor. I am not an addiction expert or a psychologist. The purpose of this podcast is education and information and cannot be substituted for medical advice. There we go. Disclaimer check. My name again is Molly watts, and I am recording this podcast from the beautiful state of Oregon. I have lived here in Oregon now for more than 30 years. And I'll just tell you, if you have never been to the Pacific Northwest, then you really ought to visit. You should however, wait until the summer right now. I'm recording this in December and it's been extremely soggy and you'll be listening in January I don't anticipate that changing very much. And even after 30 years of living here I still don't like the rain even though by now you think I would be used to it right? I'm someone on the outside who's always appeared pretty successful. I'm a proud graduate of The University of Oregon, can I get a Go Ducks? And I've been married for 30 years, mom to four. Yes, I said four young men. I have a great circle of friends, including a group of women who have been my closest friends since all the way back in grade school. And I've successfully navigated a career before my kids were born, and a reinvention of it after I stayed home with them for more than 12 years. I love my day job working for a senior living community. And in my spare time, I have even had a successful podcast and passion project before. It's called Five for life and the live happier longer podcast which you can check out. And both are all about building the habits of a happier, longer life. So it was while I was doing my research into habits for five for life, and really figuring out my own ability to walk my talk, that it became very obvious what was my own biggest hurdle. I really believed and still believe in everything that I was sharing on that podcast. But while I was passionate about it, and am passionate about it, I also felt like an impostor. Yes, I was working on building positive habits. But until 2019, I also hadn't been able to stop the one habit that had caused me a lifetime of anxiety. And that was my 30 plus year daily drinking habit. In my podcast before, I wanted to focus on the positive habits that I saw in my dad, who on January 18 2021, will celebrate his 93rd birthday, happy birthday in advance Craig whew, curry. And so I wanted to focus on those habits that I saw him he had employed to build, you know, and incorporate into my own life so that I could age with optimism the way he had. I wanted to help myself and others avoid aging like my mom. What I downplayed, and didn't talk about all that much was that my mom died just after her 81st birthday as the result of an alcoholic binge. My mother had abused alcohol for more than 40 years. And ultimately, it cost her her life. If you listen to that podcast previously, thank you first for following me over here. I hope you keep going with those positive habits, I certainly work on them daily. But I what I realized at the end of 2018 Was that my drinking habit was preventing me from living my best life. And as much as I wanted to focus on the positive habits, move, learn, share, given let go that I talked about in five for life and live happier longer. I couldn't ignore any longer how much alcohol was impacting my life. So along my path of building that podcast, I learned about the self coaching model from burka steel. In early 2019. I decided to dive deeper into self coaching and the model as it's called and realized that I could apply it to my drinking. I also realized that while I learned a lot through self coaching scholars and from other life coaches like Rachel Hart and her program take a break, which is geared toward changing alcohol habits. Nothing really addressed my deeper experience with alcohol as the adult child of an alcoholic. And so I took a little bit from a lot of different places. I researched popular recovery programs participated in several of them, read multiple quit lit books, myself, became certified as a life coach, and this podcast and all along the way, I developed my own new relationship with alcohol. And this podcast and all the pieces of breaking the bottle legacy are the results of my journey and education. So what I am 100% certain of now is that you can create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, past, present and future because that is exactly what I have. And I'm here to help you do the same.
I was 13 when I confronted my mother on a Saturday morning, she had vodka, which I knew she was drinking. It was sitting on her ironing board in plain sight on the rocks designed to look like ice water. And I was shaking and furious when I asked her if she believed she was an alcoholic. I asked her with the intent of catching her with the childish belief that if she realized that I her youngest child knew the truth that she would want to and could stop her own drinking she would want to change because of the pain it was already causing our family. But as you can surmise, that didn't happen for my mother, she tried multiple times, went to rehab four different times, including her last attempt at the age of 77. Now, it's important to note that the last program was a long term, nine month residential program. So obviously, when she came out, she was no longer physically dependent on alcohol. But she had not been able to conquer the psychological dependence and drank three weeks after her release. So my mother never believed or understood that she had the power to change her relationship with alcohol. She tried, she believed she had a disease. And all of the rehab programs that she tried were based on the 12 steps that are the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous. So just a heads up, I really don't subscribe to most of them. And if they work for you, and your you've used them wonderful, I have nothing to say negative about anybody that's finding solutions for changing their drinking habits. But for my mom, and for many, many people, the 12 steps just simply don't work. It's an important part at the introduction of this podcast to clarify that if you have a physical dependence on alcohol, you likely need medical help to change your drinking, and I encourage you to get it. This podcast will help you after the physical symptoms are solved. But first steps need to come first. And how do you know if you have a physical issue? Well, again, as a reminder, I'm not an addiction expert. So please take all of this as education and information from someone who has experienced alcohol use disorder, both as an observer and as someone who would have been classified as a heavy alcohol user, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. So if the term alcohol use disorder is foreign to you, it's what's used and preferred by psychiatrists and addiction experts these days instead of the term alcoholic, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the most recent version called the DSM dash, V, or five, which established the term alcohol use disorder and it defined it with three severity levels, mild, moderate, and severe. So I will link in the show notes to both the naa and the DSM five. So you can see, you can check that out. For myself, I was on the high side of mild and borderline moderate for alcohol use disorder. But I never experienced extended physical symptoms like tremors, nausea, racing, heart, sweating, or seizures. And according to the CDC, I'm not alone. So in a study published in 2014 90%, of heavy or excessive drinkers don't meet the criteria for physical dependence on alcohol. It's possibly why the term functional alcoholic became popular not too long ago. But however you want to phrase it. I agree with the study. And I believe most people who are drinking more alcohol than they want to are not physically dependent, or addicted. As I've said, if that is not you and believe you in you believe you are having physical symptoms, you need to seek medical attention first. What I do believe is that I and many other people develop a psychological dependence on alcohol. You may not be aware of the psychology and may believe that you just have a bad habit, but your brain is definitely a part of the equation when you're drinking more than you want to be. For me, I was not happy with the level of with my level of alcohol use and its effect on my health. I lived in a constant state of anxiety, worrying that I was going to become an alcoholic like my mother, and worrying that I didn't want to have to stop drinking to prove that I wasn't. I worried about the consequences of drinking on my health, but I felt completely unable to stop. I believed that I had a genetic disposition towards alcoholism and that I desired alcohol more because of my genetics. And even though I loathed what alcohol had met in my life, how much it had cost my family and my mother, I still couldn't seem to kick what felt like a completely oxymoronic habit. I had been dealing with alcohol for most of my life because of my mother, and yet I still couldn't seem to stop drinking. Until I learned all about the self coaching model and focused it squarely on my relationship with alcohol. That's when my 30 year long habit started to change. Because of my upbringing, and all the stories I had been telling myself about alcohol for years, I had more work to do on my past and needed to use the tools that I learned to look back and find some of the old stories from my childhood that I was still carrying with me. I had to let go of the label alcoholic, that I used to separate myself from my mother's drinking, to understand how my drinking while different than hers was not anything that can be deemed healthy. So if this sounds familiar to you, if you've had a decade's long drinking habit that you cannot change, despite trying lots of different ways to cut back, if you are an adult child of an alcoholic who is drinking more than you want to, or if you simply do not want alcohol to be an issue in your life anymore, and you want to create a peaceful relationship with it, then this podcast will give you the tools I used, and still use to have that relationship with alcohol. Alcohol is no longer an issue in my life, it is a non factor. I don't worry about it at all. I don't feel like I'm missing out when I choose not to drink. I'll also tell you that this podcast is not about being completely alcohol free, if you don't want to be. If that's what works for you, and you feel at peace with that then by all means, be alcohol free. But if you think that you'd like to be able to have a glass of wine now and again, that's okay, too. I'm going to share a lot of alcohol science with you the truth about quote unquote, safe quantities and recommended guidelines. We're also going to talk about myths, the alcohol industry and society's rules in alcohol use, we're going to use our brains to find a level of drinking that you are at peace with. I'm going to shoot straight. So if you want to play the victim and claim that your life your genes, your desire, your cravings are just different or worse than other people's harder. I'll just have to call BS because those are challenges and excuses. And you will need to clean up your thinking around them. I will also be curious and compassionate with questions. But I'll be firm when I tell you it's not your life, your genes or the alcohol itself that's causing your habit. So what is different about what I'm going to share with you and the work I've done to change my relationship with alcohol and my alcoholic parent? And yes, my alcohol parent, alcoholic parent is deceased. And yes, I still was able to change my relationship with her. First, I believe anyone and everyone is capable of retraining their brain and changing their relationship with alcohol. Even if you are like I was and haven't missed a day of drinking, or very rarely in 30 years, you can do it. I call it the behavior map results cycle. And beyond changing your relationship with alcohol. Mastering this process applies to every area of your life and it's a complete game changer. Second, with these tools I teach you I believe adult children of alcoholics can create a calm and peaceful relationship with alcohol, past, present and future. The past of adult children of alcoholics might bring up a lot of strong emotions, but I'm going to teach you why that doesn't have to be the case. Third, I'll be focusing on the science of alcohol. It's important for me to share the clearest message I can about the safety of alcohol, because a lot of what we hear seems contradictory and very confusing when it comes to drinking. To that end all say simply and clearly that alcohol is a drug. It has a limited therapeutic benefit that can can quickly turn negative. Its impact on an individual basis is dynamic and changes basically every time you drink. What doesn't change is this ethyl alcohol. The alcohol in our drinks is a known carcinogen and consuming it increases your risk of several different cancers. The associated risks increase based on the amount of alcohol you consume. But there is no known quote unquote safe amount of alcohol for physical harm other than none. We're going to dive deeper into the science of alcohol. And we'll also assess other areas of our lives that alcohol impacts beyond physical wellness. We'll examine financial and social wellness in evaluating our own risk reward analysis. Lastly, we'll explore psychological dependence and emotional numbing. Long before we become physically dependent on alcohol, we develop a psychological dependence on it. I firmly believe that most people who misuse alcohol are not physically dependent, but have a psychological habit regarding drinking. It's a misguided attempt to change how we feel with a temporary buffer. I will teach you how to feel better without changing all the circumstances in your life. Despite your upbringing, your job, your family, whatever else is quote unquote causing you to drink more than you want to. We'll stop believing that we need alcohol to help us relax, unwind or deal with our lives. So that is a lot of information packed into this episode. I hope that you will join me next week and every week after to learn more about changing your relationship with alcohol. Upcoming, I have some great interviews scheduled with authors, researchers and psychologists. And we'll ask them to weigh in on alcohol truths. These are their these guys are some of the thought leaders and real scientists, so I'm super excited to share them with you. I'm also getting ready to publish a book by the same name as this podcast called breaking the bottle legacy. And if you would like to get notice of when that book will be available, all you need to do is go to www dot Molly watts.com. That's Molly watts.com. Molly with a why watts with an S and sign up. You'll also get a free copy of my special report alcohol truths, how much is safe? So head on over. I would love to answer your questions about changing your relationship with alcohol. So please reach out to me directly at podcast at Molly watts.com. Your feedback and input is very appreciated. And if you have time and post review on wherever you listen to podcasts even better. Anyone who does leave a review this month, January 2021 will be entered into a drawing for an amazon giftcard. So with the last thoughts of this podcast, my episode one for breaking the bottle legacy. I want to dedicate this effort to my mother, Shirley Ann Curry. My mom held on to stories from her past and became overwhelmed with her present and gave up on her future. I wish she had understood that her genetics were not at fault, and she was not suffering from a disease. I wish she believed that she could change her life. Though she lived in a life of relative security. She never accepted those things with authenticity and gratitude. I hope she is resting peacefully now. And I thank you mom for giving me the exact life I needed to become the person I am today. Okay, that is it for this week. I will see you next time. And until then, choose peace. Thank you for listening to breaking the bottle legacy. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Take something that you learned in today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible you have the power to change your relationship with alcohol. Now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com