Can't Keep My Mouth Shut - Sober October & Quitting Alcohol For Good

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

I hate to break it to you all (including myself) but the negatives definitely outweigh the positives here. Let's explore the effects of booze and binge drinking on your physical, mental and emotional health! With love, Nixalina. ​For more awesome content to read including beauty, fashion or dating & love features, please do head over to my digital platform www.nixalina.com. Don't be shy, come say hai! Head over to my Instagram or Tiktok @nixalina to slide into my DMs.

This podcast contains strong language and discussions about relationships, sex, and love. It may not be suitable for younger listeners. This is the Can't Keep My Mouth Shut podcast, and I am Nixalina. Hi, it's Nixalina. Welcome back to another episode of me. Today is a very important topic of which I've never discussed before, ever, ever, ever, ever. And it is called Sober October slash quitting alcohol for good. What? What? Okay, so before I really get deep, balls deep into this episode,

I will explain the quitting alcohol for good bit. Yes, it is my intention to quit alcohol for good. That being said, I'm not entirely sure if for good, good, or I don't know, a month or six months or a year. But for now, the mindset is no alcohol for the foreseeable future. and you might be like what nix you love to party we see your instagram we see this we see you out you are the queen of the party you're the middle of the room you're in the middle of the dance floor you can drink beer like water and yes yes yes yes you're correct on all of the above that being said i've had some epiphanies of late and this is why i thought i would share all of the but what i'm about to share with you and it's perfect timing because we have sober

october incoming um i done it once before i did 40 days no booze one sober october i did a week before i think a week after yeah week before um and then since then i haven't really done it and I've never done dry January either. So this is what happened. This is what led me to this episode. This is what led me to get here. There's three pillars of why I want to quit alcohol. And we're going to go through them all together. And I'm hoping that this will encourage anyone who is sober curious, who is considering it to join me, even if you just join me on Sober October. That is fantastic. If you're like, you know, we do Sober October together and we're thinking, hang on a minute, this is fucking awesome. Let's continue. Also fantastic. But let's

start off at the beginning. So I guess my slap, you know, I'm pausing, so I'm trying to work out. My slap in the face was basically one of my girlfriends was like, look, we agreed to do wholesome stuff together and you seem to be out out more than before you're drinking more than before like what's going on I thought you wanted wholesome so we had this conversation and I was like yeah I did and actually going out out now isn't doing it for me anymore and it's been a knock-on process um I guess from say last maybe three years and two relationships have really had me now thinking about my lifestyle and my partying. And it doesn't satisfy me anymore. And as I'm getting older, which I'm going to cover all this in the three

pillars, my three core pillars of this whole episode. But as I'm getting older, I'm starting to address lifestyle choices. I'm starting to address future goals, relationships, partner choices and all that jazz. And for me, alcohol is having a negative impact across the board. So let's delve in, shall we? Let's start off with pillar one, which is what alcohol does to your physical health. Now, I know, I know I have some weird Benjamin Button type gene where I seem to age backwards right so even looking at like my body this year from last year my abs are like so much more pronounced like I don't know what's happening I do not look 37 that being said if I didn't have that I know I would have a really puffy face I would have a beer belly

I would like not you know like tired skin all that jazz because of what alcohol does to your physical health right it is not good for your appearance and it's not good for your physical body inside it's just not good so I started doing a lot of research on like this was maybe one hangover doing a lot of research on what it does to your body and I had no idea now alcohol is pretty much as big of a carcinogenic I think I've said that correctly a cancer forming product as like say tobacco and smoke so we all go oh you know smoking's bad tobacco you know it gives you lung cancer alcohol is just as bad and particularly for females and breast cancer and that scared the fuck out of me I'm like what I didn't how did I not know this it's I mean we know alcohol is a

toxin but like it's a fucking poison right and I know it sounds like people like you've only you got you got to 37 and you work that out obviously we all go oh I'm hungover it makes me feel shit but do we actually ever know what it does to our body and it's it's everything it fucks up your your heart um it helps create cancer it helps create pancreatitis it gives gout it helps create leaky gut. Your gut is, of course, one of the main, I say of course, you might not know, one of the main creators of serotonin, which affects your mood. Your serotonin is your happy hormone. And most of it comes from your gut, not actually your brain. Alcohol also affects your brain. It kills off cells. It kills off cells. Memory loss. It's awful, right? I'm not going

to sit here and delve into all the adverse physical effects of alcohol. Go and Google it, but fuck me, it's awful. So my slap with that wasn't necessarily my looks or my body because I'm in great physical form. So I had a health screening in March and everything came back great. Everything come back normal. So I thought, great, fine, like liver function, normal kidney function, normal, great. Like my cholesterol is amazing. Like my good cholesterol, sky high. my bad cholesterol super low lung expansion fantastic all that jazz so for me I could carry on drinking and smoking and whatever and I will get to smoking in a bit but what what's my slap with the physical health was when I started googling egg freezing so at 37 I am childless

I will tell you now it's through choice and all I'm gonna say is I know I'm capable of getting pregnant. Okay, we'll leave that there. But I can. And it's through choice, of which I am still not a mother. That being said, I want to know in the future, I have an option. And I know I can. So I'm like, good. Okay, cool. But obviously, the older you get, the eggs start to, you know, they're not as sprightly as they used to be. And I started exploring egg freezing at 37 so that when I get to my early 40s, then my eggs will be better. I'm not saying I won't do that. So if you have an episode down the line, I might be like, hey, this is my egg freezing journey. I'm not saying I won't do that. But what I realized is it's going to cost me about 10 grand to egg freeze.

it's going to be including hormonal injections which I can't imagine I'll enjoy and surgery and I thought hang on a minute how can I want to go down that road when the easiest quickest method of making sure my eggs are at optimum is to just fucking not smoke and not drink why would I why would I go down that road before going down this road and of course I could do both together but it makes no sense to carry on drinking socially binge drinking smoking and then go oh but I want to freeze my eggs so that they're like they're better later on no they'll be better later on if my body's healthier it's a fucking no-brainer so that was my physical slap right and I just then started researching the effects of alcohol and for me as a smoker I'm not a smoker

during the day right I don't smoke during the day as soon as I have that one drink I can chain smoke so not only would quitting alcohol help regenerate my body it will help me look younger it will help me feel more energized. It will help my insides, my organs repair, my eggs will be better, all that jazz. It will also impact my smoking because I won't smoke. So then that adds another like layer of health benefits. So I was like, yeah, how have I got to 37 and gone like, I don't know, it just took the egg freezing research for me to go, what the fuck am I doing? Okay. And maybe if I'd had my health screening in March and they might be like, girl, you got fatty liver, I might have been like, oh, okay, no, that's not cool.

But my body's great. But I thought it won't be great forever. And if I don't change something now, I'm going to be 45 and 50 and 55 and I'm going to still be in the same fucking cycle. so for me the potential motherhood egg vibe is what triggered my want to quit alcohol for my physical health once I googled all the benefits I thought why am I still drinking like why am I still drinking the benefits are incredible to not drink um and what I will say for like I don't I'm not preaching. I'm not preaching to people that love to drink. I've done it my whole life. We know

this. We know this. Okay. But if you go off and you realize the toxin damage, nasty shit it does to your body inside and out, it's fucking scary. And I am not an everyday drinker. I am a party drinker. I'm a socialite. And I have done my whole life every week, press event, champagne, press event, champagne every fucking week. Or then I'll go out with my friends after another press event. So twice a week. I don't do hair of the dog. I don't drink every day. But those twice a week is still enough. Because once I start, I'm drinking until like I pass out, right I'm like next champagne next champagne next beer next beer and I can drink beer like it's water I used to think it's a superpower but now I'm like it's a problem so when I do go I fucking

go and that's my issue so I was like just try and fucking life where I don't have the first one so the first one won't lead to 10 and let's see what happens I'm not not drinking forever but I just want I want to prove to myself I can but I also just want to wake up and feel the physical benefits from it and it's not just physical it's also mental so that leads me on to my second pillar which is the effects alcohol has on your mental health and this is also my main driving force so after the slap of the egg freezing after the slap of talking to my best friend the other slap was my anxiety now I've been processing a shitty breakup since April and I've done what everyone does where you go out and like oh get drunk yeah oh my god I feel so good

now and it's not it's not helped it's made it worse of course it has alcohol is a fucking depressant so for me as someone who deals with generalized anxiety disorder I have spoke about that many years ago I can resurface that episode for you if you want to talk to me about my GAD but for me the alcohol doesn't work with the anxiety it spirals and I'm also on Sertraline which is like a Zoloft and I've been on it for years like an everyday small micro dose to help manage the generalized anxiety. You shouldn't drink on Zoloft or Sertraline. It's not a good combo. And I've known this, and I've known this for years, but because I'm able to drink and it never causes any insanely large problem, I've kind of carried on. But what it does do, the Sertraline

interferes with the alcohol. So I will black out or get like, I'd say slurry drunk way quicker than anyone else. Because the Zoloft slash Sertraline, it's the same thing, but I think everyone's more, what am I trying to say? Everyone is more aware of the word Zoloft. I think it's more of a popular word. But basically it enhances both the medication and the alcohol effects. So my, I don't know, five beers can lead me to blackout, whereas someone else can have 10 to 15 beers and remember everything because of the drug in my system so that bit scares the fuck out of me because I'm like well I don't remember getting home like what the fuck I don't remember getting home and it started to become normal and I'm like this is just not normal and it's terrifying

and also I don't want to be on Zoloft forever I don't think I need to be on Zoloft even now but I've never tried not drinking and the drinking causes anxiety. Alcohol causes anxiety and depression. It's scientifically linked, right? So for me, I'm like, what am I doing? I'm taking sertraline to calm the effects of an anxiety disorder, but then the alcohol creates anxiety. Then the alcohol mixes with the sertraline to give this blurry, drowsy, exacerbated feel and a blackout, a cut short of short-term memory. So then that creates more anxiety. What?

You know when you're like, what am I fucking doing? So my mental health is now, I'm at the point where I'm like, no. I need to cut out one to cut out the other. And I also have a hint of health anxiety as well. So like my brain goes, oh my God, I'm destroying my organs. Oh my God, I'm smoking. i'm gonna get cancer um i mean i know we all most of us have these kind of thoughts but my brain really goes there so just to eliminate that eliminate the alcohol then i won't smoke because

like i like i said it's just social for me and eliminate the alcohol eliminate the smoke and then the anxiety is going to be down to one two out of ten and once my anxiety is under control, then I can eliminate the search link. Do you know what I mean? It's the concoction of failure versus an easy concoction win for just insane success. And I don't think enough discussions are out there on alcohol and mental health. Because what a lot of people do, which I think I was doing in my 20s, is you self-medicate with alcohol. So if you're having any anxiety if you have any depression or social anxiety even once you have a couple of drinks it feels great right and all that goes away or if you're an overthinker like me and your brain just

goes alcohol just goes puts that quiet voice away for a bit and you're like oh that's great and you end up numbing how you feel with alcohol so at the time fucking fantastic and this is why after breakups people go to alcohol it numbs it out right it's why any and not just breakups any traumatic life event. Alcohol, drugs, alcohol. Because it does, it numbs it out. But what does it do long term? It makes it so much fucking worse. And you really need to have your own personal slap around the face like what I've had. I keep talking about slaps. No one slapped me, no one. It's all metaphorical, okay? But yeah, I gave myself a fucking slap because I was like, girl. No, you really want to be stuck in this cycle until you're 40? Is that your plan, girl?

And also, by the time I'm 40, I do want to have a relationship, a husband, potentially a baby on the way. Which leads me to my third pillar on why I'd like to quit alcohol. And that's the effect it has on relationships. I've witnessed my last couple of partners cause issues in the relationship because of alcohol. My fiance, ex-fiance was admittedly an alcoholic. He knew he was. He was very open about it. And I used to say to him, like, baby, I don't need this much alcohol in the house I don't want this many times we go out because I can easily slip into that and I was like and I don't want that for me like you know I want to be able to go out a couple of times and maybe we go out together once a week and then we go out with

friends once a week and that's it right but I didn't know the level of what I was dealing with bless him and yeah alcohol really took over the relationship and caused a lot of problems and um and that was like an eye-opener for me to be honest after living with an alcoholic because also it was so easy for me to slip into that and I remember one Christmas um he met my family and they were afterwards they were like we were really concerned about you because you just were drinking non-stop and I also looked fucking disgusting I look at photos of myself when I was engaged and I don't recognize myself and I'd slipped into his world and because he had so much money and it's what he does for a living and because I fucking love

champagne and beers it was just it just evolved around alcohol so that one thing really kind of like after I separated from him it did start me thinking about the effects of alcohol in the and then the killer was the boyfriend after him in which there was just one night I bet basically we argued over him going out all the time and there was one night where I cooked dinner I ate my alone because he wanted to go out with his boy mates and he was always out work clients boy mates I never like I never got time with him during the week where it was like us time he wasn't interested. And he'd be out three times a week, like Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. And then at the weekends, he just want to mong out on the sofa. And I was like,

this isn't what I wanted. And I, one night he comes in, I've ate dinner alone. I'm sober. I'm home alone. I'm like, fuck sake. And he's obviously been drinking and he just gets so enraged at me. And he stands up and he points at me and he says, if you want me to go out just twice a week, you fucking beg for it and it was awful it was awful and I thought this guy would rather go out and drink with his friends and workmates than cultivate a loving healthy relationship with me at home that's his preference and I'm having to beg for him to drink less right and I was like what the fuck is going on and I used to say to him like darling you don't go to the gym anymore you used to go to the gym when we met you used to be active more active you used to look better

you're putting weight on like I can see it affecting your mental health like please please drink less like go out once a week with me go out once a week with your mates like that's surely twice a week is enough and I used to really argue with him about it because it wasn't enough for him he wanted to go out as much as he wanted and it then do you know what I did because the relationship started deteriorating I then would sit on the balcony and drink so I'd be like fuck this why am I the one trying to salvage this why am I the one trying to make it healthy and I would sit and I would drink and I'd ignore the fact that my relationship's toxic as hell so then I'm perpetuating alcohol and drinking. And then I'd feel worse the next day. Then I'd feel anxiety.

Then I'd worry about the arguments. And then I took all the responsibility of the arguments when I look back and realize it wasn't me. And, you know, it's just the alcohol in the relationship it was so prevalent and it was also because I met the exes when we were drinking both of them like the first time like the first maybe month was always out drinking and I mean drinking till 4am 7am like drinking drinking you know and it's fun and I loved it I really did it's super fun but then like no then it's no and then both times I'm like right we're in a healthy pattern now like okay we've had our fun we've done the honeymoon fun thing like this isn't sustainable I've put on weight I want to lose weight you've put like come on and then I try and pull it back and it

was unsuccessful both times and I realize on top of that if I had been sober I would have seen some red flags across the board way earlier. But alcohol blinded me. I got all the butterflies, all the excitement, all the happiness. Oh my God, we had the best time last night. It's so funny, so funny, so funny, so fun. And all like the inner characteristics of the man, all the deal breaker parts of a future I ignored and overlooked. And I could have happily easily have seen it if I'd been sober and also and I'm most this is my take on why I'd like to quit alcohol but I know in terms of relationships with friendships with family members with colleagues people struggle right I'm not that's not my bag you know I'm not at that level um but it's just

me noticing that like if I want a healthy relationship with a healthy man who wants a loving home life, the choices I was making is not going to lead me to that. You know, my participation in that was I chose these people. I let them into my life. I let them into my house, you know. And then I'm arguing to try and like create some sort of fucking healthy living routine. It's mental. I'm like, how am I even arguing about this? And if someone prefers to booze over like loving you, then fuck, let them get on with it. So yeah, they're my three core pillars on why I am choosing to quit alcohol. I'm excited, but I'm sure we're going to have bumps and turbulences along the way. And I'm going to do Sober October and then I'm hoping

to continue and we'll see how we'll see what happens I will definitely update you with this because I think it's such an important conversation to have and probably one that none of you expected but here we are I'm full of surprises and yeah let's hopefully if you all want to join me you can dm me and instagram and let me know if you're doing sober october as well and let's give it a good go and see how we feel because I guarantee we're going to feel fucking amazing and we're going to be like, I never want to go back to that life again. So on that note, I will love you and leave you and I will see you all next week. Thanks for listening to the Can't Keep My Mouth Shut podcast. Produced and hosted by me, Nick Salina. I'm recorded in the Splice Cast Studios

in Singapore. I'm available to listen to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google and all major podcast listening apps. Do subscribe to enjoy a new episode every Monday evening. Please do give me a five-star review. It helps other people also find my podcast. For more content and features to read, you can check out my website, nixalina.com. That's nixalina.com. I'm also on social media. simply search at nixalina n-i-x-a-l-i-n-a to find me don't be shy come say hi