Aware & Aggravated - 137. How To Take A Break From Alcohol- Tips After 142 Days

Episode Date: July 28, 2024

My biggest tips to break the habit of drinking alcohol. Addressing the anxiety, criticism, and self hating voice that is silenced after consuming alcohol. How to take control and feel free without it!    😁 WWLD Submissions: https://forms.gle/sNtQjjwvXUisfdgh9    ✅ FOLLOW ME HERE: https://www.instagram.com/leoskepi https://www.tiktok.com/@leoskepi https://www.snapchat.com/add/leoskepi   👕 Clothing/Merch:  https://leoskepicollection.com    📱 MY APP POSITIVE FOCUS Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/positive-focus/id1559260311 Google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.positivefocusapp&hl=en_US&gl=US&pli=1    🔒 MY PRIVATE FACEBOOK SUPPORT COMMUNITY  https://m.facebook.com/groups/851294735925522/?ref=sharehttps://m.facebook.com/groups/851294735925522/?ref%3Dshare&exp=7ffb&mibextid=I6gGtw    Business Inquiries: [e-mail]

All the questions you guys asked me about sobriety, I'm gonna hit it in this episode. I'm currently 142 days without alcohol. I haven't drank in 142 days. And this is a What Would Leo Do. So that's where everybody writes in. If you're new, hi. This is where people write in and you ask me questions about certain things and I give you my advice from what I would do.

WWLD. What Would Leo Do? So the way that I structured these with this episode is we're gonna talk about my why and questions around why I stopped drinking. Then I'm going to go into the mindset and questions around the mindset of staying sober and not drinking and doing the whole mental battle of it. And then I'm going to go into my tips and I'm talking tips for everything. That's also a lot about self-control and discipline, all those things. But let's jump into this.

So the first question, what is your why behind being sober? Here we go. I gotta take a deep breath because I'm gonna talk a lot of sh**. So the reason I stopped drinking is to remove anything that allows me to tolerate bullshit and tolerate things that I do not like. I noticed with alcohol I used it as a way to shut myself up and tolerate a lot of things I didn't want to tolerate. There was a lot of things that I would drink to get myself to feel better about doing I wanted to stop Bullshitting myself and tolerating things

I did not want to tolerate another thing with alcohol is it became an excuse for other people's behavior Where certain things if I was sober would piss me off but because I was drunk or because I was drinking I would be like, oh like I could brush it Like, oh, maybe I'm not reading it right. Maybe I'm just a little tipsy and I'm aggravated or I'm reading the situation wrong. Maybe I'm emotional because of the alcohol. It gave me the justification to not trust my own judgment of situations, people and behaviors that I wasn't okay with. And I could kind of bullshit myself of like, oh, it's not that I'm not okay with it, like, oh, I'm just drinking, or I would drink

so I felt more okay with it. Does that make sense? I wanted to get very clear on what I wanted out of life and what I wanted to improve and alcohol was my buffer to make me feel better and feel fake happy and fake excited about shit I wasn't really excited about and it allowed me to tolerate a lot of shit and a lot of behaviors and a lot of things from people

that I didn't like. For what I want to accomplish and what I want to do, I have to be very focused, lasered in, and 100% set on my judgment and be able to trust my judgment and my perception and reality of things going on. Alcohol took that away, so I had to take alcohol away. That was my main why for why I wanted to quit drinking.

The other benefits of it, to be honest with you, the health shit didn't really care. I wasn't drinking enough to have that bad of a health impact but it is poison. So the whole health risk of it, I didn't really give a fuck. I just wanted to quit because I wanted to get my tolerance to shit down that I didn't want to tolerate. I wanted it to be very clear what I needed to stop doing or remove from my life.

And that's what I did. The other thing was recovery days. I was tired and fed up with recovery days because you drink one day and then the next day, you're tired, you whine, you're a little emotional, upset. I was sick of that. I was sick of everything I was working on and doing, being on pause because of one night drinking or going out. I was just sick of it. The next person asked,

how do you know when you should stop using something? When the conversation in your head flips from, okay, I know I should stop this thing. I can stop it. Whatever. As soon as it flips to, can I stop? You have to stop immediately. That's the way that I live my life and I get a grip on what I'm doing and using and how I'm living. What is it flips to, can I stop? You have to stop immediately. That's the way that I live my life and I get a grip on what I'm doing and using and how

I'm living. You know what I mean? You're picking up what I'm putting down. Okay, I don't even have to wink at you. You get what I'm saying. As soon as you question, can I stop is when you need to fucking stop. No questions asked. You need to prove it to yourself that you can stop.

And if you're at that point where you just noticed that flip of like I want to stop to can I stop you need to catch it quick before it turns into a really really big issue and you're on like full-fledged addiction and running your life into the ground. Okay someone asked when did you start noticing benefits from removing alcohol? It took a minute. A lot of people say it gets better after 30 days, 90 days, a year, whatever. I committed to a year of no alcohol. The whole year that I'm 26, I'm not going to drink. Just because I want to see if it's worth the hype. So far, I understand it and I get it. I'm probably going to drink again after the year, but it will be a very, very short amount of times. It will not be a weekly thing.

It won't even be a monthly thing. It will be like a celebratory thing. Because like I just bought a house and I'm moving in in a couple of weeks and I wanna have a little champagne to celebrate like a big accomplishment. I'll bring alcohol back in after this year. I'm not gonna drink when I close on the house.

I'm gonna drink after my year because I committed to myself and gave myself my word. A year, you ain't drinking, fucker, so I'm not. But after that, I feel like special occasions, I will drink and just go from there. But I'm giving it a full year. My opinion might change. I might say, no, I'm done with alcohol forever.

But I really didn't notice a benefit for a few weeks a month. I did notice benefits mentally. The mental clarity was on. I did notice weight loss was way easier and like my fitness goals were way easier when I cut out alcohol. I felt a lot more stable in my mood because alcohol does fuck with your emotions and I noticed the benefit with like not spending so much money and not going out so much but noticing benefits. One thing people don't tell you about is phantom hangovers. I don't

know if anybody else experiences that, but I experienced that. Like when I was in a routine of going out every weekend on Saturday, I'd wake up on Sunday, even when I was sober and my body would like, remember how it usually feels. And I would feel hung over when I wasn't. And I'd wake up and be like, Oh, I need to drink a Pedialyte or I need to drink a liquid IV and like hydrate. Oh my God. And then I was like, wait, dumb ass. You didn't drink. You're not hung over.

You're fine. And I'd be like, oh, then I'd go to the gym and do what I wanted to do. But that was one thing nobody really prepared me for and no one really talks about is the phantom hangover shit. So as far as benefits with the way that you feel, it's pretty immediate, but you also have to take into account when you stop drinking, a lot of things are going to be a lot less enjoyable. If you try and go out sober your first few times, you're going to have an adjustment

period to getting used to it. One thing I noticed is like when you're out in public, you feel drunk, like you'll start to feel drunk as everybody in the room starts drinking more. It's the weirdest thing. Even if you're not drinking, like just being around it, you start to be like, whoo, I feel drunk, but you're not. But the best part is when you walk out of the club or you walk out of the bar and you can fully drive. It's like, you know, nobody got to call the Uber. That's one thing that got expensive too, is Ubers.

As far as benefits with like everything else, it takes a minute. Like it takes over a month for you to really be like, okay and adjusted. So you're gonna feel better without the alcohol, but there are so many things in your life that are gonna change and feel different where you're not gonna notice the improvements yet. Does that make sense? Okay, the next question I wanna hit is,

how do you deal with wanting to drink and wanting to relapse? A lot of people ask that. So the way that I deal with this is I do not make a decision until I check in with myself. And what I mean by that is I make a list. I pin to paper every decision I'm gonna make. So I almost drank the other day.

I was like 130 something days sober and I almost drank because I was like, let's go have fun, whatever. And I was thinking about when I buy my house, oh my God, I wanna drink. But when you play the tape forward for the days you want to drink, you have to fully play the tape forward.

Play forward the experience. Okay, you're gonna drink. What's gonna happen? You're gonna go to whatever you're gonna go to that night or you're gonna just be at home and drink and like whatever, chill with your friends. What are you gonna feel like? You're gonna feel a little drunk, gonna feel tipsy, whatever. You're gonna wake up the next day like fuck. You're gonna feel like hell. I fully go through the experience

as if I already drank. I'm like okay how am I gonna be feeling? What am I gonna be doing? What's gonna feel different? And I usually quickly notice it's not worth it. I'm like okay like whatever. It's not gonna be worth it to go through the whole day after. And it's not going to make this experience tonight or whatever I'm going through better or more fun. It's a weird thing in your brain, convincing you know, it's going to be better. And it's really not. If you actually think about it, you can go out and you can do what you're going to do. You're going to drive home. You're going to be just fine.

You're going to have accurate, like precise judgment, you're gonna wake up with no hangover. The consequence, look at the consequence of your fucking actions. Which consequence do you wanna choose? Do you wanna choose heightening this experience just a little bit, breaking your word to yourself if you said you were not gonna drink

for a certain amount of time, like me, for a year? Is it worth breaking that? No, but the other thing that you have to ask yourself and check in about is what is it that you want relief from every single time I've had the urge to drink? It's because I'm going through stress. I want to calm down. I have to go to something I don't want to go to, or it's just a relief from how you're feeling when you're at home or doing

something. If you're really stressed out, what you want is relief. So that's the other thing when I say check in with yourself before you decide, what is it that you want relief from? And can you give it to yourself or get relief without drinking or without using whatever it is you wanna use? Those are the things that I ask myself and it always gives me a clear decision I'm gonna make and it's always not to drink or not to do

the thing that I was considering going back to. It always happens like that, but you have to fully play with tape forward. And live the experience from both sides. If you drink versus not, make a fucking list. I do it every single time I wanna drink. And then the other side is, what is it that you want relief from?

What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to feel or not feel? Get clarity on that, because you'll see other ways you can do it and get the relief or feel the way you wanna feel without the alcohol. Making a list and figuring out why you actually want to drink will give you the clarity

and help you make an accurate decision in line with logically what you want, not emotionally, or the version of you that wants relief and you take an action from that side of you. You want to get the logic side of you in control before you take that action. So if you have the urge to use or the urge to do something You don't let that urge take control you notice it you step back and you get a piece of paper out and you write that

Shit down. That's what I do. No, okay Let's hit the social anxiety aspect of it. One of the questions says how do you deal with the social barrier for drinking at social events? I'm good on the daily, but if I'm out with friends or at an event It's hard for me to practice self-discipline. Any tips? Other people said they have such crippling social anxiety that they always feel the need to drink and they feel uncomfortable if they don't drink and they want to leave a situation right away because of how bad their anxiety is around new people.

So you're going to have to go through the process of removing the alcohol and facing your anxiety, removing the alcohol and facing your anxiety. Removing the alcohol and putting yourself in the situation, letting yourself get a little panic attack, letting yourself get anxiety, learning how to deal with it and not giving yourself a way to escape it or numb it or get away from it. That's when you find a way of dealing with it and getting through the situation and not letting your anxiety make you leave shit or act crazy or do things.

It's gonna feel like hell the first time and the first few times. But every single time you go into a situation and you don't drink and you get anxiety, you will find a new tool to have in your tool belt of how to deal with it and how to not let it cripple you. You have to go up against this head-on. You can't use this little medicine and use this little coping mechanism forever. You can't bullshit and buffer yourself forever and expect to get a hold of your anxiety. And you can't let your emotions run you and

cripple you and make you a bitch forever. Sorry. I know that's tough, but it's the fucking truth. You can't let your emotions bitch you out forever and you cannot stay a victim to anxiety where you force yourself to drink poison to calm it because of those feelings. Your feelings are there, your feelings are valid, your anxiety is not gonna go nowhere till you face it, till you look at it till you observe it. What in the situation is causing you anxiety? Get in a bird's eye view, observe the situation. What thoughts you're thinking? What feelings are you feeling?

What assumptions are you making? And what perceptions are you assuming people have of you? Every single human being has anxiety. I hate how normalized it is and how people use it as such an excuse to act out and lash out and be a certain way. Every single person breathing has anxiety.

People just know how to deal with it better than others. There are extremely severe cases, but then you get into other diagnosis and other disorders like PTSD will cause a level of anxiety that people with just social anxiety can't compare to. You think your anxiety is crippling until you see someone with real mental issues going through an anxiety attack or a panic attack. I don't mean to belittle nobody but get a grip on your shit. That's what I wish someone would have told me a lot sooner. You are a lot stronger than you think, and it's time for you to put that to the test. Rise to the fucking occasion.

But anxiety for a lot of people is caused by how they think other people are looking at them. Until you sit in a pit of anxiety and start questioning what thoughts am I thinking, you will never know what thoughts might be causing certain anxieties, and you will live with it forever because you're just going to take a shot or you're just going to keep drinking to get rid of it. You got to face it.

And you will literally shock the shit out of yourself with how strong you realize you are. You just have to do it. You can't keep babying the emotions and expecting them to go away. You got to face them. You got to cater to them. You got to embrace them and see what they're there to teach you. Your anxiety is making you aware of beliefs, perceptions, and thoughts that you need to let go of. They are ruining you. So you need to sit in it to understand what are the things you need to let go of and then let them go. This is one question that I got a lot and it baffles the

hell out of me. How do you stop drinking? You stop putting it up to your fucking mouth. But I am gonna actually give you a couple more tips with like the mindset part of it because I do sound like an asshole. You know I'm always here to help you. But I do gotta bully you a little bit because tough love, if you watch me, that's what you like. That's how I learn, that's what's gotten me

everything I ever wanted in this fucking life is the truth. A lot of people say it's like tough love. Maybe it's the truth. You know I'm always looking out for you, but to share the truth is loving. That is love. But with the mindset of going into drinking, because a lot of people also asked about

how do you make the process a little bit more seamless and how do you like help the process be a little easier. Getting in the mindset of when you stop drinking, everything's gonna feel different. You are going to go through things and go through experiences without a certain coping mechanism and without a certain feeling state, feeling drunk, feeling tipsy. You're going to have to go into things without that. You've done it before. Remember that.

You've been able to handle a lot of things before without this substance, without this alcohol, whatever it is, you can do it again. All of this advice is going to apply to people who just have a little bit of an issue and need a little kick in the ass with self-control and discipline. When it comes to full-fledged addiction and it's debilitating and ruining your life and you have no control over it, this advice is not going to apply and it's going to seem insensitive. So I want to clarify that's not what the fuck I'm talking about before you get your panties in a twist.

But the mindset around not drinking, prepare yourself for everything to feel different. So you are not blindsided when you feel different and you immediately start assuming that it's bad or something has gone wrong. Nothing's gone wrong, it's just different. You are living without this poison you are used to. At the end of the day it's poison. I like it, At the end of the day, it's poison.

I like it. I like a little poison here and there. It's fun. But what I'm saying is, you do not need this thing to function. And like I said before, don't try and get on me about people who are fucking addicted to it.

I've been drinking a bottle of liquor a day who will go through withdrawals and probably have seizures and die in the medical attention. I'm not talking about you, okay? I love you and I hope you're doing okay. But I just hate these little rats that get out here and just try to attack the shit out of me. The advice is not for those people

because I know about that, I'm a nurse. I know how that goes. But the people who just have a habit of drinking a lot and they want to quit, you can live without it. You will be fine, it's not water. You don't have to have it to function. Usually when you go out, it's like, okay, it's expected you're gonna drink.

You got to set it up in your mind that your default is no. That's your expected with every situation is no, I'm not drinking. I don't care what the fuck it is. You going out, you party, it's your birthday, whatever. If you committed to not drinking, okay, your default is no. So you don't have to deal with the whole like, oh, undecided, unconfirmed mindset of what decision you're going to make going out. Like when you leave the house, you're like, oh, I'm not going unconfirmed mindset of what decision you're gonna make going out. Like when you leave the house, you're like,

oh, I'm not gonna drink, I might drink, I don't know. You're always gonna drink if you go out with I don't know. If you go out with a baseline of no, I'm not drinking with every experience, you're not gonna drink. And it will get easier for you to do that. But with that being said, someone asked, how do you manage to stay sober when your friends always go out to get drunk

and only feel like you will be fun? Or have a good time if you're also drunk with them instead of being the only sober one out and then someone else asked How do you when you go out not get bored and want to be the first one to leave or feel like you're missing out? Because you're sober So when it comes to going out if you have to drink to want to go that's a sign You shouldn't go if you have to talk yourself into it and make yourself get out of your normal state of mind to feel better about doing something, you shouldn't fucking be doing it. That's what I've learned.

That's what I said in the why in the beginning. That's why I quit. You don't have to not have fun. Like you can still go out and be sober and have a blast. I have so much fun. It's a blast. One thing people don't get about alcohol and why they feel like they have more fun and they can let loose and like, Oh, when I go out sober, I'm not able to relax. It's cause that critical voice in your head shuts the fuck up when you drink.

The part of your brain that's over critical and analyzing everything shuts to fuck up. And that inner critic voice stops talking. It stops evaluating everything that you do. And that voice between you having an urge or a desire for something and you acting on it, the voice is the middle man that stops you. When you drink that voice shuts up. So when you have a desire and you want to do it, when you're drinking, you just do it.

You have a lot more seamless way of going about what you think, what you feel, saying what you want, doing what you want, and not really overthinking the consequences and going and dancing for a lot of people. A lot of people sober would not go dance in public because that voice in their head is so analytical and like judging the shit out of them and nitpicking them. That shuts up and you feel free to dance. You're never going to learn how to navigate that voice until you try and do it

sober. You will learn how to become more authentic and not need a substance to do it. The only goal behind that voice is not to wreck you, it's not to bully you, it's not to keep you small and keep you down and hold you back. The voice in your head that is so hypercritical is there to make sure you stay loved. That self-hating voice observes every action you take, everything that you say, every interaction you leave and you overthink it and that voice just won't shut up and overplay the situation. It's trying to spot anything that you said or did or before you take an action, it's

trying to spot anything you can say or do that will lead you to being rejected or not liked by people. That self-hating voice is actually your biggest supporter and is rooting for you more than you realize. The only goal of that voice is to make sure you stay loved and to make sure that you don't do anything that pushes people away. So that's one thing that's going to help you when you do go sober. Face that voice because you realize it's not an opponent you're facing.

It's your biggest advocate and you can use your judgment and trust your judgment to know when that voice is like, all right, girl, you're just trying to overthink. You scared. I get it. You can comfort that voice and shut it the fuck up and know that it's just there to help you. But that connects to going out with people and them thinking you're not going to be fun or have a good time.

If you're not going to have a good time, if you're going to be a fucking party pooper, if you're going to want to go home early and be like a fuddy duddy, don't go, don't ruin everybody's night. Let them go have fun. Like if you actually don't want to go, don't go. If you want to go have a blast, go have a blast, go have fun. Go see what it's like to go experience this night sober and just go about that. Any experience you go into sober that you usually drink, I'm going to go see what it's like to do this sober and then go do it. Go have fun. Go find ways to have fun. And like I said,

the voices in your head that are holding you back from certain things, holding you back from having fun because it's scared of judgment. You can see that it's invalid and you can give yourself the freedom to do what you want to do that will allow you to have fun. Cause honestly the last thing people want to do is be drinking, be having a good time and then having the back of their head have to be worrying about you cause you're not having a good time. Take care of yourself. Make sure you have a good night. Don't ruin everybody's night.

Don't be the person that has to be babied and catered to because you didn't want to drink and you just, you want to go be out, but you just want to pout and be in a bad mood. Go to fuck home or don't go. And also don't be the sensitive little priss that can't even be tempted by alcohol. I pour shots for all my friends before we go out or if we're doing something, everybody drinks around me. Don't be the asshole that's like, oh, because I went sober, everybody has to go sober. Don't be trying to get people to not drink.

Just do what you wanna do for you and let everybody do what they wanna do. If you don't wanna be around them, don't be around them. That's on you. This takes a lot of accountability. Not drinking requires a lot of radical radical responsibility you have to take. And a lot of people don't want to deal with it. They want to make everybody else the fucking problem.

And they start with that whole like, ah, I can't believe people are drinking. Like bitch, you're one day without alcohol, shut up. Like they want to come in and judge everybody. Don't do that. Don't be the person that's so weak with their self-control. You get like offended when people try and like offer you a drink. People offer me drinks all the time.

What are you drinking? What do you want? Here, try this. Or here, I bought you a drink. And I'm like, oh, I'm taking a break from alcohol. I'm not drinking right now. I politely shut it down. It's like no big deal.

Don't be the person that's so offended. I'm not drinking right now, but so insensitive or like I have to drink it because they bought it. No, the fuck you don't. Don't be that person, don't be annoying. One more thing I wanna hit on this is the person asking about feeling like you're missing out. You know what it's like to drink.

What are you actually missing out on? Before you go out, like I said, get the pen, pen and paper, put it on a notepad. Make a list for all the things you're missing out on, and then make a list for all the things you also don't have to deal with because you're not drinking. Because when you want to drink it's real quick for your brain to go and tell you oh you miss you now this could be way more fun

but your brain is not gonna see what you're actually getting to avoid by not drinking what are you getting from the situation not what are you losing because you're gonna see how you're not having fun how things could be more fun with the alcohol for a while that's gonna become a very easy thing once you do it in the beginning it will be intentional. But as you go along, like you see and remind yourself of what you're getting, not just what you're losing and play the tape forward. If you were to drink, that's my best advice. You know what it's like to drink.

You don't know what it's like to not drink at this point in your life. So go experience that. Okay. Next person said, how do you find friends that don't drink? I'm losing hope on finding my people. I don't know what to do. Help. Okay. When you go out and you don't drink, the sober people always gravitate toward each other. For my experience, it's the weirdest shit. Like you all of a sudden just start finding people when you're out who are also not drinking. It's so much fun.

One of my favorite things to ask people when I'm out is, Oh, what are you drinking? And it helps me see if they're drinking or not. people when I'm out is, oh, what are you drinking? And it helps me see if they're drinking or not. One big tip I have for drinking is when you're out, get a Diet Coke, get a water or sparkling water, whatever you want, put a fucking lime in it. Everybody thinks it's alcohol. Nobody's going to question you because that's really annoying when people are like, oh my God, you should drink, you should drink, you should drink. So I always have a drink in my hand. And I like that, like the social buffer of like something in your hand. People go out sober all the time.

People go out without drinking all the time. And you'll meet people like that. And when you see and meet someone else out or you go out with someone who's also sober, you see it can be done. You see other people doing it. Like, hey, I'm not alone in it, one, but two, it's possible. And everybody's having a blast. You're never going to find them by sitting around whining and booing and crying why you don't find people who can a blast. You're never gonna find them by sitting around whining and boohooing and crying

while you don't find people who can't drink. You gotta go find them. You gotta go out and be social. You gotta socialize. You gotta do some shit and you meet these people. The other thing is when you find other people who are out that are sober, you have actual conversations. When you're talking to people who are drunk,

it's like you take everything with a grain of salt. Everybody's talking all this shit, making all these plans, whatever. When you're talking to someone else who's actually sober, you'll have some real good conversation. That's from my experience. I've had some of my best conversations out meeting other people who are sober and we just talk about life, talk about shit and you have like actual deep conversations. You mean what you say and everybody's logical and you actually

meet more friends. Like you'll actually make a plan and stick to it because you were both sober. People are out all the time, but you find them by talking about it. Like my barber the other day, I was talking to him and I was like saying something about going out or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I wasn't drinking. And he was like, Oh, you weren't drinking. And I was like, no, I'm a hundred and something days without alcohol. And he's like, Oh my God, I'm 12 years without it.

Then you hear people's tips and tactics and mindsets who are a lot further along. And that opens the discussion for hearing their benefits, their why, their tactics, their tricks. It opens it up, but you have to talk about the fact that you're not drinking for a minute or taking a break from it. A lot of people ask, that's like one of the questions I wanted to read was, what is your go-to statement that stops people from asking and like digging into why

you're not drinking and like thinking it's a fucking issue and like just won't shut up about it. I always say I'm taking a break from alcohol. Like, oh, I'm not drinking tonight. Usually people shut up. And if you want to get into it with them and explain why you're not drinking, go for it. Send them this episode. I don't care. Hey, if someone sent you this, you was nosy. I want to get into some messy questions. So, this one. Someone said, speaking of discipline,

curious on your thoughts on people using drugs like Ozempic for weight loss, if it's cheating or the easy way out. I don't care. Do what you want to do. I don't really see it as like that big of an issue. It's an appetite suppressant. At the end of the day, that's how it works. It's like it just makes you eat less, makes you nauseous, so you don't want to eat.

There's a lot of scientific shit. That's kind of just what it does from the people that I know who are on it. Appetite suppressant makes you nauseous, so you don't want to eat. There's a lot more that it does to your body with insulin and all that but that's just the two things that make you eat less. So it's just a way to eat less. So I don't really care if people see it as like a cheat. Really if you want to look at it like cheating okay you could say back in the old days going and running outside and getting cardio in through running when the treadmill was invented. Oh, that's a cheat because you're not leaving your house.

You're just standing on something that's moving. I look at it like, really just do what you want to do. I don't give a shit. I don't look at people who use those. I pick and be like, Oh, like, that's, that's the pussy way. Yeah. I go least invasive to most invasive with things that I do. So I'm going to try everything I can to not put drugs in my body that I don't need to with weight loss to get the weight loss. But other people don't live a lifestyle where they feel like they care enough to put that

much effort into going to the gym and being healthy. Most people just want the aesthetic and they don't care about the health side of not being overweight. They just want to have the look. And if there's a woman who's a mother and she works full-time job and has like 12 kids, one kid's enough to be a full-time job. But if there's people that wanna do it,

I don't care, go ahead. Because there are other people who I know who have tried Ozempic or other things similar, Minjabo, that they eat through it. Like it's just a way to like suppress your appetite for most people. That's how they use it. But a lot of people have just eaten through it and like it wasn't enough to kill the urge. So you still have to just eat less.

I'm curious to see what's going to happen in a few years when people start researching this more and we start seeing some negative impacts and things like that. I'm steering clear of it for a while. Uh, but like I said, I don't really give a shit. Do what you want to do. It doesn't matter if someone thinks it's cheating or not. Did it get you to where you want it to go? Okay. So what the fuck is the issue if it didn't hurt nobody? Cheat shmeat.

Okay. This is another question about discipline. There's two of them and I'm going to talk about this from a deeper standpoint than I have before. I do have an episode called lack of discipline makes you ugly. That's a lot of people's favorite episode and it's very life changing for a lot of people. But someone said, how do you stay disciplined when you've been on track, but a day comes where you're just not feeling it. And then someone else said, how can I overcome the lack of hope and willpower that prevents me from

following through with plans or goals that I initially want to achieve? Which aspect of you are you going to let take over? Which aspect, which emotion are you going to act on? If you know you want to do something and certain actions are in line with something that will get you to where you want to go or get you a result that you've been wanting, just because one day you wake up and you have a feeling of like, oh, it's hopeless. You don't know if it's hopeless,

you ain't fucking done it yet. Unless you've done it consistently and exhausted every option, you don't get to say you're hopeless. You could say you feel hopeless, that's fine. But to say you feel hopeless, is that justification not to do something? No, I've felt hopeless plenty of times,

still did what I had to fucking do. But when it comes to me saying which aspect you're gonna let take over, are you gonna let the feeling run you? Are you gonna let the overwhelmed side of you take control? Are you gonna let the discouraged side of you take control? Are you gonna let the hopeless side of you take control over the actions that are gonna dictate

what the logical side of you wants? Which one are you gonna let take control? It's fully fine to feel unmotivated and tired and not want to do it and feel discouraged. It's totally fine. It's part of the process. But one thing to remember is negative emotions come up and things like this come up when you're getting closer and you're making progress towards something. You're getting closer to what it is you want and all these things are coming up. Because you wouldn't be feeling none of this if you just were staying still.

All these things are coming up because you're trying to make efforts to change things. When you can kind of visualize it and see it, you can remove yourself from it and see it, and be like, okay, these are the actions this part of me wants to take. My logical mind, the higher perspective of me, knows what I

need to do. Are you going to do it? Let the little hopeless side of you come with you. Let the little hopelessness come. Embrace the emotions that come up. A lot of people say embrace it and they don't know how to explain embracing it. Let it be there. Okay, hopeless. Look at it like, okay, I'm gonna put you in my pocket. We're gonna go, oh, you're just making this so bad. Oh, you're making me so drained. You're making me so tired. Look at you. Okay, we're still going. Come Oh, you're just making this so bad. Oh, you're making me so drained. You're making me so tired. Look at you. Okay. We're still going. Come on. And the other side with embracing the emotions is asking yourself,

what is that emotion teaching you? What is it making you see or think differently about? And if you have hopelessness around something you're trying to achieve or do, why am I feeling hopeless? What thoughts am I thinking that need to get removed so the hopelessness isn't there? Look for the thoughts and the things that you need to release by welcoming in the emotion. What are you making me aware of I need to clean out?

And then do it. Do it sad, do it depressed, do it tired, do it hopeless. Because what's gonna happen? You're gonna be in a better position than you were before. So even if you feel a little bit hopeless, still, at least you're making progress somewhere. You did something. You're not a victim to your emotions your whole life of just, Oh, everything's put on hold. All my goals get stopped because today,

I just woke up feeling tired and not motivated. So I'm just not going to do it. Keep doing it and you're gonna see how long that lasts for you to hit that point of frustration where you're like fuck this shit and you start bulldozing yourself. Keep fucking off. Keep letting your emotions dictate what you're gonna do and not do until you get fed up because you're spinning in circles and you get nothing accomplished. I've tried it. When that aggravation comes to visit you, hold its hand. It will guide you to what the fuck you need to do. I need to smoke a cigarette. I need a cigarette before I talk about this question.

Someone wrote in and said their ex is threatening to break their sobriety over them. And they're basically saying, if you leave me, I'm going to drink again because they're like 15 years or like 17 years without drinking and doing drugs. And they're like, okay, I'm going to break my sobriety and throw all my tokens away if you leave me or if you don't come back with me, that's a manipulation tactic. That is someone that has learned how to weaponize victimhood. They're not going to drink. They're not going to relapse.

They're doing it as a manipulation tactic to get you back. Cause when you stay gone, watch, they're going to be picking up a new token next month. And if someone goes so low as to say, if you leave me, if you don't stay with me, if you whatever, after they do something to you, I'm gonna break my sobriety, you're responsible, that's a pussy bitch who likes to deflect responsibility

and put it onto you. They're pretending like they're putting their responsibility onto you. They just want you to feel it so they can control your actions. They're trying to control you, they're trying to manipulate you. Don't pretending like they're putting their responsibility onto you. They just want you to feel it so they can control your actions. They're trying to control you. They're trying to manipulate you. Don't fall for it.

This should piss you off. You're not responsible for someone doing something to you or treating you bad and then you wanting to leave or set up a boundary and then, no, if I can't have it my way, I'm going to drink again and you're, you're, it's your fault. What kind of childish fucking shit? I've seen too many grown men do that to so many people in my life. Oh, my God. That is a piss poor and pathetic way to manipulate somebody.

At least do it sickening. At least manipulate in like a stronger way. Have some coot, have some decency, have some goddamn dignity to not be such a puss. If you leave me, I'm going gonna go break my sobriety. Go break it. How you gonna respect them ever again? How you gonna get aroused by them ever again?

How you ever gonna look at them and be like, yeah. No, they're a baby, they're a child. If you made it this far in the episode, comment a blue butterfly, because I wanna see who makes it this far. But I do wanna say I'm proud of you if you are sober and you're trying to keep with it, you've got this, you're fucking stronger than you think,

I'm proud of you for what you've done so far. And if you're thinking about doing it, everyone in the comments, comment below. And I also have a private Facebook community where you can request to join. I keep it private because a lot of little rats try to get in there and I kick them out. But if you're looking for people who are also sober and you want to talk to people or feel like you have a sense of community and other people going through it with you, go in there and talk.

I also have my binge eating episode where people jumped in that and everybody's been helping each other. It's free. There's no like catch to it. Just go in there for support. Like I use my platform to kind of bring everybody together because I've suffered with the whole loneliness shit before. I don't want you to have to go through it. So I'm making it easier for you than it was for me. But that's all I've got for this week's episode about sobriety. If you want to write in for next week, let's do another What Would Leo Do? But like, just write, let's do it random again.

I like the random ones. This one was cute about sobriety, but write in some situations. I put the link in the description. It's all anonymous where you can go in and submit what you want to hear my opinion on with the What Would Leo Do? I will also leave the link to the description. It's all anonymous where you can go in and submit what you want to hear my opinion on what the, what would Leo do? I will also leave the link to all of my social media in the description so you

can follow me and keep up with me. And for everybody asking new merches coming soon within like a next month or so, I changed my mind about a lot of things and I'm about to have to redo a photo shoot. So get excited. I'm not releasing nothing. Unless it's good. You guys know that. So I'm perfecting it. And a lot of things change with a lot of people that I work with so everything's back in my hands It is gonna be fucking good I know I keep toying with you guys about the new March

But it's coming and that is all for this week's podcast episode Leave me a comment Let me know if you liked it And if you're listening to the audio version on Apple podcast and Spotify leave me five stars rating you know But drove with that over you're playing with my cord now. I need to go. Okay, everybody be safe Take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you guys next Sunday