Motivation Daily by Motiversity - QUIT DRINKING MOTIVATION - The Most Eye Opening 60 Minutes Of Your Life

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

https://bit.ly/Motiversity_Mindset 👈 Download Mindset app for free and listen to all the world's best motivational speeches.What happens when you quit drinking? Your body and mind heal and your life improves. This is the motivation you need to quit drinking alcohol.Countless people including Jordan Peterson, Ben Affleck, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Rich Roll, Daniel Radcliffe, Brian Rose and Jack Canfield explain why you need to stop drinking alcohol."Alcoholism is to give up everything for one thing. Sobriety is to give up one thing for everything."Special thanks to our partners and to these channels, subscribe to them here:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeuhttps://www.youtube.com/@JordanBPetersonhttps://www.youtube.com/@richrollhttps://www.youtube.com/@hubermanlabhttps://www.youtube.com/@lewishoweshttps://www.youtube.com/@VALUETAINMENThttps://www.youtube.com/@TheDiaryOfACEO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The link is in the description. Alcohol-related deaths in the U.S., especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Americans struggled to cope with stress and isolation. Even moderate drinking is not good for your health. More Canadians seriously thinking about their alcohol consumption. As many as 20% of Canadians drink more than the current guidelines recommend. So yeah, alcohol's bad news and it can turn perfectly good people. into quite the impulsive and dim-witted monsters.

Going out, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, drinking. If you want to do something extraordinary with your life, those two things are incompatible. I was trying everything to drown the pain and the frustration and the suffering of those losses by overworking, over-drinking, over-smoking. The horrific impact that alcohol leaves on the world has dramatically increased over the past five years.

Increased isolation and decreased social connections have left millions of people turning to alcohol to numb their pains and traumas. The saving grace of alcohol, though, is a myth. Instead of finding a refuge from pain, alcohol can only promise you a new battle. One that separates you further from loved ones, drains your bank account, and increases health risks. The problem is, is when you're drinking, you think you're cool, but, you know, you have those same delusions that Homer Simpson's friend Barney had when he was drinking, that you're this kind of, you know, elegant and sophisticated comedians.

and it just makes everybody stupid. I would argue that the real problem is that it does that. And everybody was at the fence and she had so many friends that loved her so much, but nobody got inside the fence. And it made me so, so sad. I drank myself into an inability to wake myself up. Yeah, well, alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug. Alcohol is so dangerous because of the way you become addicted.

Alcohol triggers the release of dopamine in the brain. in the brain, creating a pleasurable sensation. With repeated use, the brain adapts by reducing its own natural dopamine production, leading to tolerance and the need for more alcohol to achieve the same effect. This reinforces the cycle of consumption to regain the initial euphoria. Over time, the brain becomes reliant on alcohol to maintain normal dopamine levels, leading to a biological need for alcohol.

In fact, most addiction does not begin with the search for getting banged up. banged up. You know, most addicts didn't wake up one day and go, I want to get really banged up. They woke up one day and said, I want to feel normal. And it was a search for normalcy that led to an addiction. We also call it the reward circuit, right? Eat when you're hungry, you get a pat on the back when you do a good job, you get an award. All of these things promote your evolutionary success. Alcohol and nicotine, they artificially stimulate this center. And some of them can hit it like a nuclear weapon and give it a stronger blast than any natural behavior can do. You have an alcoholic, they're a different version of themselves, entirely different set of morality, the way they act, whether they're aggressive, whether they're willing to lie, like all these things.

Like, they slot into a very knowable set of personality traits after their next drink. When a negative event happens, we get depressed, or we feel petty for ourselves, or we talk about. turn to quick fixes like drugs, alcohol, and it makes our situation worse. With how insidious alcohol can be, is it even possible to overcome it? Even people who have been to rock bottom and back time and time again can tell you, yes, it is possible. The battle is always worth fighting, both for yourself and for your loved ones. Your purpose isn't big enough, right? Because if the purpose is big enough, then that stuff pales so far in comparison. My son is to

talking to me and he tells me, I thought you was going to die last night. I ain't never been this scared dad, but I'm scared you're going to die. I lost grandpa already. I can't lose you too. Can you please stop drinking? Can you please get back to the daddy that I know you to be? Talk to me about your relationship with alcohol and how it's changed. I pretty much barely drink anymore.

I used to drink numerous times per week. There was always at least one extreme. heavy blow out the weekend. What is going on here? When you're having 15 or 20 drinks a week, you're pretty much constantly in a state of being either drunk or hung over. If you really like alcohol, it does two things to you. It makes you more extroverted and enthusiastic and more full of positive emotion. And the second thing it does is reduce anxiety. Alcohol targets mitochondria. Alcohol poisoning is due to mitochondrial disruption and impairment. There were times I was like, man, I could never be a sober person. It was just alcohol for me always, if you took,

If you took something fun, alcohol made it more fun. And if you took something boring, it made it less boring. So when somebody dies of alcohol poisoning, the cause of death is poisoning the mitochondria. The one thing that always knocks me off track the most, it's always alcohol. Most people are drastically underestimating its impact. Right now as we speak, at least one in ten Americans meets the criteria for either alcohol abuse or alcohol dependence, which we now call. alcohol use disorder. We were on to like two or three glasses a day, then half a bottle, and it just went really fast. Alcohol is, it's a hell of a, it's a hell of a drug, man. When it comes to quitting

drinking, one of the challenges many people face is the influence of their social circle. If someone's friend group consists of heavy drinkers, it can make it incredibly difficult to maintain sobriety. The peer pressure, normalization of excessive alcohol consumption, and fear of missing out on social activities can create a constant temptation and undermine an individual's efforts to quit. Breaking away from such friend groups or finding new supportive social networks becomes crucial in providing the necessary environment for sustained recovery and personal growth. If you're trying to get your life together and your friends get in the way, that's actually real useful for you because you've now identified who your friends aren't.

And you might think, well, I can't give them up. It's like, oh, yes, you can. And not only can you, you should, and it would be better for them. Because if they're aiming down and they want you going down with them, there's nothing good about what's happening to them, and there's certainly nothing good about that for you. Similar to quitting smoking, the body can heal, but it takes time. In this next clip, Mark Manson, author of the subtle art of not giving a fuck, addresses his relationship with alcohol. Despite being a heavy drinker for most of his life, he made the decision to quit completely. While attempting to moderate his alcohol intake, Mark experienced prolonged negative effects, feeling physically and emotionally drained.

effects that are common after a blackout night, but were surprising to him after a simple glass of wine or two with dinner. You know, if you've been a heavy drinker for multiple years, it can take six to 12 months for your system to actually entirely reset, for your brain to go back to the way it was, your internal organs to go back to the way they were. And I was like, God damn, I've been doing this basically since I was like 18. Half my life, almost two decades. Yeah, it's incredible. It's incredible. It was, I'd say, within a few weeks, waking up with more energy, sleeping like a baby.

You know, and one of the things, you know, I had cut back quite a bit before I quit completely. I'd say I'd cut back to drinking maybe two, three times a month. And when I drank, it was like just two or three glasses of wine. And it's funny, like something, I feel like something you notice when you cut back that you don't notice when you keep drinking heavily. Like when you drink heavily, you just expect to feel like shit. So when you feel like shit, you're like, oh, yeah, well, of course, I drank. a lot. But when you drink very moderately, it actually showed me how much it affects you. Like I would go out and have two glasses of wine with dinner. And not only would I feel maybe 20%

worse the next day, I would feel 10% worse the day after that. And that was shocking to me. I was like, whoa, this is actually, it's not about hangovers. It's about just general lack of energy and motivation on a day-to-day basis and it lasts for multiple days. There's no hiding the fact that alcohol is a drug. It's a legal drug, accepted by society that rakes in billions of dollars a year. It's also well known that alcohol is harmful, especially in large quantities and over long periods of time. Why do millions of people continue consuming a poisonous substance? For the most part, people consume alcohol in order to get the net effect on the brain. The overwhelming majority of people who consume alcohol

that's to help unwind or, you know, celebrate the end of a day, or it's hard to deal with the stress at the end of the day. It's usually a mechanism to take you out of a less ideal place and bring you into a more relaxed ideal place. Alcohol really is a good drug for coping with anxiety. That's why people use it. So it does two, if you really like alcohol, it does, it does two things to you. It makes you more extroverted and enthusiastic. while you're on the ascending limb of the blood alcohol curve, which is why you have to keep drinking once you start.

Because if you plateau, that goes away. So you've got to keep drinking. Okay, so that's one thing. It makes you more enthusiastic and more full of positive emotion. And the second thing it does is reduce anxiety. And so if you are a bit more socially anxious, and you also have that positive response to alcohol, which everyone doesn't have, by the way,

then it's a great drug. But the problem is it's, well, it's a great drug for the moment. Right. Right. There's consequences. Yeah, this sounds when it's not great. Well, also, alcohol is an interesting drug because it actually doesn't make people stupid. This is being tested. Like, alcohol, people who are drunk will take far more risk. And you might say, well, that's because they're too stupid to understand the risk. It's like, no, they're not. If you ask them about the risk when they're drunk, they can outline it perfectly. What it stops them from doing is caring about the risk. During the healing process of sobriety, withdrawals are inevitable for people that maintained a heavy reliance on alcohol. Symptoms vary and the intensity can often make it harder for some people to stick with it. As with smoking, those cravings are powerful and can often push people back to substance abuse

to escape from the discomfort of withdrawal. Increase stress when people are not drinking. Diminished mood and feelings of well-being when people are not drinking. And changes in the neural circuitry that cause people to drink even more in order to get just back to baseline before they ever started drinking in the first place. You feel uncomfortable. You feel distressed. feel anxious and distressed and you basically start noticing you have more cravings and urges

to go back to drinking more alcohol to make these signs and symptoms get milder or go away. So basically you're self-medicating and kind of perpetuating the cycle because you don't want to feel this way and you don't want to feel this discomfort from alcohol withdrawal. Now in milder cases, these mild signs and symptoms may go away in one to two days. In more moderate cases, it could be three to five days, okay? But bottom line is, it's these withdrawal symptoms, even though they're mild, which may continue to perpetuate somebody's drinking, because they say, I don't want to feel this way.

And I notice that when I start drinking, it kind of goes away. And it may just kind of continue the cycle of problematic drinking. Alcohol, unlike other nutrients, cannot be efficiently metabolized by the human body to extract energy. Instead, the body treats alcohol as a toxin, triggering a cascade of processes to eliminate it. From the moment alcohol enters the bloodstream, it affects not only the liver, but also the entire body system. It disrupts the balance of neurotransmitters, impairs cognitive function, compromises the immune system, and places strain on various organs, leading to a wide range of negative health consequences that extend far beyond the liver. When you take a step back, when you look at the big picture of life, cells in the human body,

are all there to perform a function, but they all need nutrients. They need nutrients to replace the parts that need to be replaced. Without nutrients, you're dead. In order to understand why cells in the human brain or body malfunction, we have to go all the way to the basics of biology,

which is every living cell at the end of the day depends on metabolism or energy. And it's the only way to connect the dots. This is a gross oversimplification of nutritional biochemistry. Essentially, we can look at most of at least macro nutrition, not micro nutrition, but macro nutrition. In other words, the things that we consume that give us energy, And there are three primary sources of macronutrients. There are protein, fats, and carbs.

And the challenge with ethanol or alcohol is that when alcohol comes into our nutritional equation, there's nowhere for it to go. The liver is responsible for detoxifying the alcohol that we ingest. Could it really be? Could it really just be that the last thing to go is the alcohol, that it could be that impactful? I dare you to try. If somebody comes up to me and says, I can't stop drinking. Can you help me?

I can say yes and follow up and do it. That's the best thing. And I've said this for a long time. When I die, I don't want friends to be the first thing that's mentioned. I want that to be the first thing to mention. And I'm going to live the rest of my life proving that. Most people, when they drink, they feel a little kind of queasy and a little silly, and then they stop.

But for me, that's what happened, want more and more and more and more. You start partying with your friends, but you notice that your friends stop and switch to coffee at 11 o'clock at night. Or maybe your friend goes, no, you know what, I've had enough, I'm going to have a glass of water.

But you don't stop. I was the last girl at the bar going, come on, come on, let's have Zambuca shots at this point. I didn't know what an end was. An end was me just going to bed. So that's not normal. My relationship with alcohol was different from that of my peers because I would be the last person to leave. I was immediately sneaking drinks.

I was the one who was throwing up and blacking out when everyone else knew what time it was to go home. And there was nothing really sexy or romantic or rock and roll about it. It was just really kind of sad and pathetic to the point where at the end I was alone, alienated from my friends. my family didn't want anything to do with me until I sorted this out. Just a brief lesson in alcoholism for you guys that don't know, and addiction, of course. It's a disease. That's the first thing I didn't know. In 1956, I think the American Medical Association said it was a disease. And it's a two-prong disease. Two things happened to me and Tenlin. and other people in the United States,

if it's an obsession of your mind. Feel nothing. Feel nothing. Except deep, deep grief and the obsession to get more. I think that's the hardest part about the disease of addiction is this pull, is the compulsion and the obsession for more, yet knowing that more is the thing that is leading to,

depression, the rock bottom, the not wanting to be here anymore. And then there's an allergy to your body, which means once you put in the martini, your body basically goes, okay, now give me everything you did last time and more. There's two problems. There's severe addiction and whatever comes with that, the neurobiological consequences, and all that everything comes with addiction, and then there's the trauma. So, you know, you can't... on to. Oh, sure, it's in their body. It's embedded in them. It's not, it doesn't, it's fixed. It's a fixed phenomenon once somebody's been traumatized. And, and, but that trauma can't really be treated until the addiction is well in hand. You can't start treating the trauma straight

off the top. First of what, they can't access it. Secondly, it just fuels the addiction. It has nothing to do with weakness. It's a disease that we have and we don't know that we have it. And if somebody says, just stop, you know, you want to punch them in the face. You know, for so many of us, I think that there's this notion of just stop. Why don't they just stop? Just stopping doesn't work. There needs to be a support system. There needs for the attic.

We need 12-step meetings. We need therapy. We need, you know, to evaluate our mental health. We need to work the steps. We need a sponsor. We need a community of people that share our very same struggle so we can see ourselves and experience the therapeutic value of one addict helping another.

That is our piece. But until we get there, just stopping is almost impossible. He turned me around and said, just remember, it's not your fault. And I went, what? He said, it's not your fault. And I went, say that again, it's not your fault. And I said, what do you mean?

It's not my fault. I'm the one who's doing it. What do you mean? And he explained addiction and alcohol to me, and he saved my life. You have to eliminate that from your thought process because the people who've gone through addiction, this is not a choice. Nobody is asked for this to happen. This is not his fault.

So let's start there and start with love and support and say, look, I want to help you. What most people do is say, why can't you just stop? Well, ask somebody, why can't you stop breathing? When you have a compulsive disorder of the brain, it's not logical. Why would I put a poison into my body that is ruining you? my life. That's not logical. So to tell me to stop is not, doesn't make sense. Clearly there's something wrong with my brain. I've learned this compulsive disorder. I can't drink because if I drink, I can't stop. So I've gone to AA for a long period of time. And, you know, a lot of people

have said to me if hard work and muscling it in would get you sober, you would have been sober 20 years ago. because I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried. But it's ultimately some kind of spiritual connection that you need to have some kind of faith in. Oftentimes it's a destructive pattern, whether it was sex or with drugs or, you know, whatever, of trading in what I truly wanted, what I truly believed to be the truth. Because my truth is that I am the best version of myself when I am clear. You know, I choose to call it God, but that God presence, that being is absolutely moving through me. I've never been able to feel that without a spiritual practice.

Music has always been a spiritual practice for me. But I think that it's made me who I am. I've made tons of mistakes. And since I've been famous, I made tons of mistakes that were influenced by the drugs that I was doing. or, you know, the positions that I got myself in. But those also turned into learning moments. They turned into maybe a song or maybe a conversation or maybe the thing that I needed to share about

in a 12-step meeting that saved someone's life. I don't know. I don't know. But I know that I'm here. I know that I'm here for a reason. And it took over decades of my life, and I pray to you, if you worry that you're having this problem,

or you know somebody that is raise your hand find somebody who's smarter than you about this and talk to them and be honest about it because the secrets are what kill us if you're struggling with some kind of addiction like I was it's not easy to say that but I wanted to change I just didn't know how then I had to find a way to fill myself up with other things that could replace the habits that I had And 24 hours turned into one day, turned into two days, three days, four days, five days. And soon enough, soon enough, I started building a new habit and a new lifestyle. One person, all it takes is one person to break the curse of any family. Two DUIs in a row, ridiculously high blood alcohol contents. Looking at jail time, the precipice of getting fired, chaotic disaster that I weathered,

very much linked to my alcoholism. It's also the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive. I didn't know what was going on. I started to drink more and more and more, and it was really hard for me to accept that that meant I was an alcoholic. I woke up with the worst hangover. Alcohol used to be this social thing I used to connect with people and go out, had now become something I did nightly alone by myself.

You know, those situations created such a deep level of shame inside of me. that I wasn't able to shake alcohol in the wake of those experiences. Real Lucy came out when she was drinking. I was drinking. Just trying to take the pain away. Sobriety first. I got and stayed sober by overcoming denial, finding people to talk to, being honest, holding myself accountable, working a program,

and helping others and working with a sponsor. It's really only when I created a solid foundation of sobriety that I began to expand in other areas. Having a lot of time, I think a lot of people had this same sort of thing, alcohol. It was just really, it was getting earlier and earlier. Yes. Easier and easier to go to. It was a situation in which no matter what I did,

you didn't quite get the validation that you were seeking, so you're always chasing it a little bit more, a little bit more, to the point where unbeknownst to me or on an unconscious level, like I needed to escape that paradigm. And my first escape was through drugs and alcohol. Every time I had done something or said something that I regretted, It was when I was drinking. And I thought at one point,

maybe I don't want to live a life where I'm continually wishing that I hadn't said or done something. And I just spiraled out of control. I didn't care. I didn't want to live. I'd lost a passion to live because whatever is in the alcohol

puts you in a bad state, I didn't care. It was like, oh, you've worked all your life for this. He's not bothered me, wife, I'd say, no, I don't care if I had nothing. I don't care if I was dead. My parents had reached the level of their tolerance threshold with me.

And basically, my dad said, Listen, we love you, but we just can't continue to watch you destroy yourself like this, and we can't have anything to do with you. I know I was just spiraling out of control. The only thing I could think of to make it better go away for a bit was getting drunk. And that just led to problems after problems after problems. So the answer to that question is nothing can make it go away except medical advice. I live in the moment because that's the only thing we have in our lives are moments, moments in time.

And as soon as I've gone out of that door, we can never reverse back. and play it again because it's real life. It's not a dress rehearsal. So I really care what happens five minutes ago. I'm just going to keep going today and living today and enjoy myself because I know what God gives God can take away in the flash of a second. It can all be turned upside down and I've experienced it. But I believe it was a massive test because sometimes in life when everything's going great for you

and you don't know good from bad, you need to experience a little rain sometimes so you can enjoy the sunshine again. Alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious tree. And if you're inclined towards it, you can be inclined towards it because you're sensitive to its anxiety-reducing properties. Or you can be sensitive to it because it enhances social communication or because it produces a psychomotor high like or all of those at once. And if you're particularly predisposed to alcoholism, you can experience all three at once. My business partner, when we started the business, became an alcoholic about three, four years in because it was just too tough. And then he had like severe side-line.

severe side ideation. He actually didn't tell me at the time. And this is why when I was reading about your story, I could relate to so much of it because I didn't say what I was going through to him. He didn't say it to me. And then it was like after we'd sold the business that he was like, I used to stand on the train platforms and think about jumping in front of the train. I didn't know what alcoholism or really mental health was at the time. But I'd go downstairs 3am in the morning and I'd open up the laundry room and he's in there with a bottle of wine at 3 a.m. The lights are off and he's just drinking it, sat on the clothes. And I read similar think similar sort of story or narratives in your story where you know you were having moments of

that kind of like ideation you were having moments of style ideation and yeah i mean there's there's some stuff that i've definitely like never never spoken about to do with it there was really really really severe and it was a problem and and it was only until i saw myself after that i was like right i need to fix myself it was like few pictures of me on a boat and i'm all like bloated out and i call it pills and boo's face. And I was like this. Like my face was just like 10 times more than it is now. And I just didn't like myself very much. Then I made a change. The problem we had in the band and I don't blame anybody for this. I don't want to seem like I'm whining or moaned. Oh my God, look at my life. Whatever. But it feels to me like when we were in the band, the best way to

secure us because of how big it got was just lock us in our rooms. And of course, what's in the room? Mini bar. So at a certain point, I thought, well, I'm going to have a party for one. And that just seemed to carry on throughout many years in my life. And then you look back, how long you've been drinking and stuff. Jesus Christ, that's a long time, even for someone who's, you know, as young as I was. Fitness really saved my life when I was in the depths of despair, when I was incarcerated on felony drug charges. And up until that point, I was the most unhealthy person you could think of. I was managing some trauma with some super unhealthy ways, such as, you know, drugs, alcohol, all that

stuff. My life was really spinning out of control. And so what really helped me was when my cellmate took me, looked me in the face and he said, Doug, you can either be a man or you can be a bitch, because I was complaining to him when I was in jail. I was like, dude, I have so many problems. My parents are this. My friends are this. I was bullied. I was picked on.

I was all kinds of made fun of. And he's like, well, Doug, like, bitch, you made the choices in those situations that got yourself incarcerated. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And he was like, you're here, aren't you? And I really believe, Tom, that we're not defined by our circumstances. We're defined by the choices we make in response to our circumstances. And he said, when I was in jail, you know, he's like, you can be a man and look yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, take responsibility for yourself.

You got yourself here. You're here right now. And you can, you know, man up and do what you need to do to get better. Or you can be a bitch. Go cry in the corner, blame everybody for your problem, say, woe is me. And where I came from where I grew up, I mean, being called a bitch isn't cool. And I was like, you know what, I'll take the opportunity of being a man. It's tough.

And I think, especially when we don't believe, have that belief in ourselves, when somebody says, I believe in you and you can do it. And I'm going to help show you the way to get you started. I was like, I'd never have. had anybody do that to me before, that unconditional love. I just felt like this void being filled from, you know, whether it was the friends I had that were just using me for drugs or whether it was my relationship with my parents. And that to me was just like what really kick-started that belief in me and inspired me to take a chance. It's your responsibility to change. No one's going to do it

for you. You have to look at yourself in the mirror. Alcohol, because it enhances sociability and also suppresses anxiety is a good social anxiety medication. But the problem is, is you don't learn how to conduct yourself as a sober individual in social circumstances. And you learn very rapidly to rely on the alcohol, not only as a social lubricant, but as the basis of your social behavior. And I would say, you know, to young people who are watching listening, that's a stupid plan. You should learn how to be in a social group with others when you're sober so that you bloody well know how to do it. I had a friend in Montreal. They had this monkey ranch on St. Kitts, and they used to go down there and study the effects of alcohol on green monkeys, which 5% of whom would drink to coma

on first exposure. And they had videotapes of these damn monkeys drinking, and it looked like a frat party, you know, but 5% of them on first exposure would drink to coma. And those were the monkeys that had a biological predisposition to alcohol to alcoholism. And alcohol is a really bad drug, you know. 50% of murders take place in an alcohol-fueled environment, either the victim or the perpetrator or both is drunk. It's almost the sole cause of domestic abuse. It's almost the sole cause of so-called date. If you dig into criminal behavior deeply enough, well, hell, you don't have to dig much at all before you find alcohol. That actually makes people more aggressive, not merely because they don't know what they're doing. We did experiments at McGill showing that if you

took drunk people and put them in a competitive environment where they could be aggressive and had them keep track of their aggression, so they were actually conscious of it, they became more aggressive even rather than less. So yeah, alcohol's bad news and it can turn perfectly good people into quite the impulsive and dim-witted monsters. So with my mum,

she was an alcoholic. I then got into recovery and then came the thing of how long do I go along with my mum being an alcoholic without saying you're an alcoholic and you need to do something about it because it's getting really bad. And after a few years of being in recovery, talking to my sponsor, going to meeting, sharing about it, I thought, I'm going to confront her about it.

And I said, you're an alcoholic, you need to do something about it. And then she got really angry with me, and she didn't do anything about it. Eventually, I just said, look, I can't see you until you get sober. And she got sober. And I invited her to my wedding. I've been happy at different points in my life, but I hadn't ever experienced joy. And to me, the difference in happiness and being joyous, joyous is long-term and sustainable, and it doesn't come from anything external.

It comes from here. Basically, what alcohol did for me, it was like this feeling of, oh, my God, this is what I've been searching for my whole life. I'm my truest self, right? Like, I'm so much funnier and cooler and people like me. That's all bullshit. Guess what? Not true.

I was not myself, not my truest self. But it started with, wow, I can be free and funny and boys will like me. This is when I'm younger, right? And I just like held on to that belief that real Lucy came out when she was drinking. Guess what? Real Lucy did come out, but it was that rage and pain that I had been holding on to for so long. But it also quieted my mind. And I'm not the only person on the planet that.

deals with this, but like my brain just goes, doesn't shut off. It's exhausting. But when I drink, because I was like textbook binge drinker, like blackout, wouldn't remember what I did, what I said, which is scary. And it's also hard to explain that type of drinking to someone because people who haven't experienced it or dealt with it personally, like addiction is such a topic that is still so taboo because it's because people would just tell me, well, Lucy, don't drink. Oh, thank you. Oh, okay. Thank you so much. I'll try that. Thanks. I get emotional when I speak about these things because I just love where I've landed in my life. And it's been a really, Jesus, I didn't know I'd get like emotional this early on. It's just been a really powerful and painful.

insightful, joyous, horrible journey, and I love that I can sit across from you now and be my most authentic self. I've always kind of felt like an open wound, if that makes sense. Like, even as a kid, I just felt like I felt things in a really deep way. You could call that maybe codependency or taking on problems that weren't mine. But now I get emotional because of the perspective and just having pride in the choices I've made. And it's not emotional tears in a sad way. It's more just joy.

You'll ruin your life somehow, some way. It is everywhere. It can pass into all the cells and tissues of your body. It was a very progressive decline in my aspirations. Alcohol is normalized in our society. You want to figure out something that you're doing with your life that's worth not getting drunk and screwing up. I drank in search of happiness

and in search of a lifestyle that I thought would bring me to happiness. It didn't, and I woke up one morning going, wow, I've drank a lot, but I'm still not happy. What's that about? I recall in high school, the motivational speakers will come to my school and say, don't do drugs. But absent from those talks was any reference to alcohol.

Alcohol got introduced to my life. You might say, well, why do people drink too much? It's like, if you like alcohol, that's a stupid question. It is ingrained. It's the social glue that sticks everything together. And my mom was chiming in with, it's way bad. You don't want to do it. You don't want to end up like that.

Over three million people worldwide will die this year to alcohol-related causes. From baby showers, christenings, fresh as week, weddings, parties, funerals, barbecues, celebrations, and everything in between. So she's in my ear making it sound very much. really logical to not do it. And I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it. We've been brainwashed into thinking that there are just two types of drinkers. There are those at rock bottom, alcohol dependent, and there's everybody else, happy social drinkers who are just occasionally a bit lightweight and can't hold their beer. You do stupid things when you're drunk, you hurt yourself, you compromise your health, it's really hard on the people around you. You

tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life. Yeah, it's like, yeah, but it's pretty Fun. Yeah, well it is, but you need something better than that. And I burned every bridge that I had virtually unemployable. My options had been eliminated. My life was eviscerated. My family didn't want anything to do with me. I'd lost my friendships. I had no way forward. In fact, the reality is very different. It's a spectrum. I would highly recommend you get off the booze elevator before it hits rock bottom. And I just continued to dig that whole. deeper and deeper and deeper until one day I had that moment that you hear with people who are in recovery, that moment of clarity where I realized I just couldn't live this way any longer.

My elevator had, you know, gone down to the bottom floor. And I met my pain threshold, you know, back to this thesis around pain. Like I had reached a point where I could no longer tolerate the pain of my current situation. And the fear, the pain associated with the fear of change, was eclipsed by the pain that I was feeling in that moment. And that's what motivated me to change. I went to a treatment center where I lived for 100 days, which is pretty long time to be in a rehab center. And I did that because I knew if I didn't get this right, that my life was done. And so I took that opportunity seriously. I recognized that despite the fact that I think I'm a smart guy, my best thinking had me literally institutionalized and that if I couldn't get a

grasp on how to live and develop some new skills and a new toolbox for how to approach my life that that I was going to end up in jail or I was going to kill somebody else or myself. You know, now we're about a year and a half later and it's and my life has been as turned around, immeasurably. It's a wonderful thing. And I say to anybody, watch, or you're listening to this, that, you know, it's, um, there is a lot of pressure on young people not to drink necessarily, but to find happiness through going out and getting mashed. Like, and, and, and that's fun, and have a good time and good luck to you. But if it doesn't work for you, and if you keep waking up going, hmm, I don't see if you

having nearly as good time as most of my friends, uh, then, you know, then think about it. It doesn't have to be something you do, is what I'd say to people. And what's better isn't being straight and not making mistakes. It's like that's all prohibition in some sense. What's better is, no, you need an adventure, man. You need to get out there and have something to do and something worth waking up for. And that's the substitute for the addiction.

Excessive drinking is considered 13 or more drinks a week. If you have three glasses of wine every night, which would be splitting a bottle of wine with your friend, your husband, whatever, you fall in that category. An alcoholic is defined as someone basically where they can't stop once they start. Often they'll drink until they pass out. Wow. Or they'll drink to where they become dysfunctional.

They become the kind of person. Everyone goes, my God, you're slurring your words. You're not safe to drive. They get DUIs. Their boss has trouble. Like you need to quit coming to work hungover. But an excessive drinker is 13. If you drink six drinks a week, if you're a woman, you have a 40% higher incidence

of breast cancer. If you drink up to 10 drinks, it goes up to 70% higher chance of getting it's incredible. So just the health benefits, one of the things that's coming out of England is research that if you stop drinking for 30 days, just come back. And what they're finding is people are living longer that's clearing out their kidneys. It's arterial sclerosis is being reversed. You know, people are having all kinds of more energy. They're losing weight. of the things that we do that are addictions are to numb out our anxiety, to numb out our pain, to numb out the memories of trauma, to numb out our discomfort around being people in a social, being with people in a social situation, the fear that I won't have fun, I won't be interesting,

I'm more relaxed, I'm more fun, you know, and that's the big myth is I won't have a fun life. There's something about my mom. She has a way of like making it sound like a really bad a fucking idea and my I had a lot of aunts and uncles and second cousins and stuff that were all Alcoholics drug addicts and watching them I thought ooh that is not a good look real like some real white trashy stuff yeah, and so I was just like no and my mom was chiming in with it's way bad You don't want to do it you don't want to end up like that so she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it and I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it so I just thought yeah when I thought I was gonna have kit I wanted to ask my mom, like, you were so good.

Like, neither my sister or I ever got into trouble. We never did drugs. We never drank, no trouble, nothing. My sister, to this day, is like the most straight, narrow person you will mean. So when you tried it, what was it like for you? Oh, alcohol made me feel like I was suppressing the urge to dance on the table. It is awesome, and I love it the most. I just don't let myself do it because it's not in,

it's not congruent with wanting to live forever. There's just too many downsides, but that shit is fun. So like, I get how people get in trouble. I just don't have an addictive personality. So for me, it was easy to be like, yeah, this is fun, but I can weigh it against the disadvantages, and there are way too many. Unlike a lot of substances and drugs

that actually attach to the surface of cells, to receptors, alcohol actually has its own direct effects on cells because it can really just pass into those cells. And the fact that it can pass into so many organs and cells so easily is really what explains its damaging effects. Ethanol produces substantial damage to cells, because when you ingest ethanol, it has to be converted into something else because it is toxic to the body.

And if you thought ethanol was bad, acetylaldehyde is particularly bad. Acetylaldehyde is poison. It will kill cells. It damages and kills cells and it is indiscriminate as to which cells it damages and kills. That's a problem, obviously, and the body deals with that problem by using another component of the NAD biochemical pathway to convert acyldehyde into something called acetate. acetate is actually something that your body can use as fuel. And that process of going from ethanol to acetylaldehyde to acetate does involve the production of a toxic molecule.

Again, acetylaldehyde is really toxic. If your body can't do this conversion of ethanol to acetylaldehyde to acetate fast enough, well, acetylaldehyde will build up in your body and cause more damage. So it's important that your body be able to do this conversion very quickly. And the place where it does that is within the liver. And cells within the liver are very good at this conversion process. But they are cells and they are exposed to the acetylaldehyde in the conversion process. And so cells within the liver really take a beating in the alcohol metabolism events. It is the poison, the acetylaldehyde itself, that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk.

I think most people don't realize that, that being drunk is actually, a poison-induced disruption in the way that your neural circuits work. Alcohol used to be this social thing I used to connect with people and go out, had now become something I did nightly, alone by myself. I woke up with the worst hangover, and for the first time ever, I had this voice in my head that said, this is not okay. Those situations created such a deep level of shame inside of me that I wasn't able to shake alcohol in the wake of those experiences.

And I just held on to that belief that real Lucy came out when she was drinking. Up until I gave it up, alcohol played a major role in my life. I started drinking young. People who drink every day have smaller brains. I was drinking just trying to take the pain away. I actually didn't know who I was until very recently. Alcohol is not a health food. I kind of thought to myself that if I can give up alcohol for a whole year, that proves I'm in control,

I'll be able to go back to it and this won't happen again. But obviously, that's not the case. the case. Sobriety first. I got in state sober by overcoming denial, finding people to talk to, being honest, holding myself accountable, working a program, and helping others and working with a sponsor and doing an inventory and making amends. And it's really only when I created a solid foundation of sobriety that I began to expand in other areas like being vegan and becoming this middle-age endurance athlete. The coping mechanisms I discovered worked for me were like incredibly self-destructive and self-sabotaging.

I really do feel like there's been a weight lifted off my shoulders that I didn't even know was there. I genuinely thought I enjoyed alcohol, but I hated the fact that a few times here I'd get way more drunk than I intended to. You know, I've been working on getting sober since I was 20. I'm 33. It takes time. It took time, and it took patience with myself. And not drinking has made me realize this is still there? Things as simple as self-love. You know, why do I feel like I have conditional love for myself, where I'm only good for whatever,

for what I do and the metrics and the numbers and what I accomplish. But can I take away all of that and just love me for a person and my character and what I do for others? When my drinking got more and more dire, my parents had reached the level of their tolerance threshold with me. And basically my dad said, listen, we love you, but we just can't continue to watch you destroy yourself like this. And we can't have anything to do with you. Fitness really saved my life when I was in the depths of despair, when I was incarcerated, I don't feel any drug charges. And up until that point, I was the most unhealthy person you could think of.

I was managing some trauma with some super unhealthy ways, such as drugs, alcohol, all that stuff. My life was really spinning out of control. And so what really helped me was when my cellmate took me, looked me in the face, and he said, Doug, you can either be a man or you can be a bitch. Because I was complaining to him when I was in jail, I was like, dude, I have so many people problems. My parents are this. My friends are this. I was bullied. I was picked on. I was all kinds of made fun of. And he's like, well, Doug, like, you made the choices in those situations that got yourself incarcerated. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And he was like, you're here, aren't you?

And I really believe, Tom, that we're not defined by our circumstances. We're defined by the choices we make in response to our circumstances. And he said, when I was in jail, you know, he's like, you can be a man and look yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, take responsibility for yourself, you got yourself here, you're here right now, and you can, you know, man up and do what you need to do to get better, or you can be a bitch, go cry in the corner, blame everybody for your problem, say, woe is me. And where I came from where I grew up, I mean, being called a bitch isn't cool. And I was like, you know what, I'll take the opportunity of being a man. It's tough. And I think, especially when we don't believe, have that belief in ourselves, when

somebody says, I believe in you and you can do it, and I'm going to help show you the way to get you started. I was like, I'd never had anybody do that to me before that. unconditional love, I just felt like this void being filled from, you know, whether it was the friends I had that were just using me for drugs or whether it was my relationship with my parents. And that to me was just like what really kick-started that belief in me and inspired me to take a chance. It's your responsibility to change. Like, no one's going to do it for you.

You have to look at yourself in the mirror. So with my mum, she was an alcoholic. I then got into recovery and then came the thing of. how long do I go along with my mum being an alcoholic without saying you're an alcoholic and you need to do something about it because it's getting really bad and After a few years of being in recovery talking to my sponsor going to meeting sharing about it. I thought I'm gonna confront her about it and I said you're an alcoholic you need to do something about it And then she got really fucking angry with me and she didn't do anything about it eventually I just said look, I can't I can't see you until you get sober and she got sober and I invited her to my wedding.

No amount of alcohol is safe. Drinking alcoholic beverages can be harmful to our health. It's the most damaging drug to society as a whole. The danger goes up with every additional drink. Alcohol is actually considered a class one carcinogen or cancer-causing agent, so that's the same category as benzene and tobacco smoke. It is the poison, the acetylaldehyde itself, that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk.

Canadian health authorities had previously said that a low-risk amount of alcohol was about 10 drinks per week. Your risks start to increase at one standard drink per week. Even just seven glasses of wine across the week, there is going to be some degeneration of your brain in response to that alcohol intake. I was wanting to be a certain person

but making all the wrong decisions. Citing some of this research about alcohol's impacts suggested lowering that to two drinks per week. In Western cultures, alcohol is the most harmful drug overall because it's the most harmful drug to society because it's the most widely used drug. A very small percentage of individuals in the world can quit anything on their own.

And really, our main message is that less is better. You know, when it comes to health, you know, less is more. What do we know about alcohol's impact on us? Alcohol is one of the leading behavior-related causes of health. problems and deaths and also some social problems and economic costs, ranging from things like injuries and accidents to cancers and actually heart and cardiovascular disease. Shoveling alcohol, you know, hiding, hiding away the problems has been something we've been very, become very expert. But the really sad statistic is that only 10% of people suffering

from an alcohol use disorder seek treatment. I hit rock bottom. I got lost in the sauce of drinking. Out of those 10% of the people, only one will have any form of long-term success. This is why I don't like alcohol, and this is why I don't like drugs, because I don't, you're not in control. A substance is doing that. And that means 90% of people who are offering right now aren't going to seek treatment. And you know why they're not going to seek treatment? It's been told that all they can do is quit and go to meetings for the rest of their life. I remember having a conversation with Patrick one night.

He picked me up in his car and we're sitting together. And it was awkward silence for a good 15, 20 minutes. So eventually one of my friends who was going through a bad, I was at prison to pick him up. I'm sitting outside until 3 o'clock in the morning. Finally he gets out, gets in a car. This was like his fourth or 50 UI. We didn't say anything to each other.

And we're driving home and I don't say anything to him. And he says, hey, Pat. How come you're not saying anything to me? I said, you know, just to be honest with me, I just see you being in pain. Finally, I said, I don't know why I choose to do what I'm doing. And he says, you always have a choice. And we started talking a little bit about two words. He said, you know, Mario, perspective and gratitude.

And those two words change everything from me. But as we were having a conversation, I just want to see you get out of this thing. I don't know what you're going through, but you're in pain. And I hope you realize there's value to life. I don't know how to help you. I don't have a method. The only thing I know is what I've seen others go through, whether it's AA and all these other programs.

Key went into asking me who I want to be, what do I want to do? And we just went through a whole conversation, and it was a human conversation. It was a people conversation. It was no business, no numbers. It was just relationship. But I hope you figure out it would get through this. Do you know that I love you?

Yes. You think I care about you? Yes. Do you think I want the best for you? Yes. Do you want to be friends long term? Yes. Are we family? Yes. Do you want to change? And that's the one where I got stuck. You have to want to change if you're struggling with some kind of addiction like I was. It's not easy to say that. But I wanted to change. I just didn't know how. And eventually he figured out the way to get through it and he's doing great. He's changed his life, you know, in a complete different way. Yeah, but what you said to him, people should be aware of God. That is love and support. And it's visceral because people don't want it to be true. There are two things I would say about this. The first is both a conscious and a subconscious level. People are fearful of other drugs, illegal drugs,

because it helps deflect their attention away from the problems of alcohol at a personal level, but also at a political level. Politicians love to get hysterical about a new drug because it means they can do something about drugs. They don't have to be held to account over their failure to deal with the problems of alcohol. So that's the first thing. Second thing is that I would say that there's almost no family in Britain,

if you look at an extended family, three generations, in which doesn't have someone who's been damaged by alcohol, through addiction, through violence, traffic accidents, or being a victim because of someone else who was drunk and violent. Almost every family in Britain is affected. But we don't own up to it. Right. We kind of push it under the carpet.

We know there's a problem, but we don't talk about it because we don't know what to do about it. We're embarrassed. And so that shoveling alcohol, you know, hiding away the problems has been something we've been very, become very expert at. We know the pharmacology of alcohol in the brain and how it does that. We can explain an enormous amount of what's going on with alcohol. I mean to me, I find that quite exciting because, you know, it's a, as a brain scientist, that's what I want to understand, I want to understand the brain. And alcohol is a very interesting probe of different brain systems.

And the changes we see underpin the effects of alcohol, you know, are relevant to all sorts of disorders. They're relevant disorders like sleep disorders, relevant to epilepsy, relevant to anxiety, depression. This drug which you can just go and buy in the shops can produce these enormous changes in people's lives. Sometimes some habits concerning to lifestyles, and certain lifestyles don't lead to all the benefits and all the amazing things that life has to offer. Some lifestyles lead to very dark paths, depression, anxiety, stress, and if not controlled, can also lead to some of the worst-case scenarios out there in life. One of them being never reaching your capacity, never really having an identity or a self-worth, losing all integrity. all dignity and losing yourself. Just a few years ago, I was in a very dark place in my life.

They say that depression comes from the inability to construct the future in your mind. I couldn't see the future. I didn't know who I was supposed to be. I was wanting to be a certain person but making all the wrong decisions. I made a lot of mistakes. When it comes to alcohol itself,

which is something that I was struggling with at the time, it went slowly from being a work hard, play hard, have a drink, to two to do you. have a drink, to two drinks, to three drinks, to then a habit, to then a daily habit, to then a 24-7 habit, to then a every weekend habit, getting lost in myself habit. Sometimes if you don't watch the kind of habits that you're building, they become lifestyles. Before I knew it, I was digging myself a hole, and everywhere I looked, it was so dark, and I lost myself. I spiraled into a sense of no self-worth, and I struggled a lot,

and nobody knew. I hit rock bottom to the point where I almost lost my job. to the point where some people had to have very tough conversations with me. Some friends had to deal with my drama. And they say hurting people hurt people. I was hurting inside and I was hurting others and didn't even know it. Just stopping is almost impossible. You need to figure out something that's more important to you than drinking. And also think through very hard the negative consequences of continuing.

You had to let a lot of you die when you start. start being an addict and something new be reborn. If you have big ambitions, you want to do something big with your life, stay the hell away from drugs and alcohol. You see, I didn't know back then that alcohol is the second most addictive drug on planet Earth. A crazy first time drinking alcohol that never stopped for me. Alcohol is the most harmful drug on planet Earth. You see, if alcohol was invented now, it would be banned as a substance.

Alcohol is the deadliest drug known to mankind, killing three million people every year. It seats into every aspect of our society. Why, though, have we allowed alcohol to have such a strong influence over our thoughts, behaviors, and actions? Maybe we are predisposed. It's a combination, I don't know, but I do see that a lot of people are trying to escape. But overall, they have to be in enough pain that they want to change. The overall risk of liquor outweighs any known benefit. He says alcoholics, we want to see one piece of the puzzle and see the entire picture.

It doesn't work that way. When we get addicted to drugs and alcohol and we have demons, they can tend to bring out the worst in us, make us do things we never thought we'd do. I was going to alcohol as my way to either escape, to feel better, to feel confident, feel good about myself. I think I'm probably in my 30s in terms of how many people I know that have died from the disease of addiction. Friday night at 5 p.m., the wine bottle would be opened, and I started really hating who I was. And for the first time in my life, I knew that drunk Julie

was too powerful, that I couldn't control her, and I needed help. Alcohol can kill people, and I was super close. I think there's a good chance I could be dead. Yeah, I'd be dead. Why does society encourage us to drink? Perhaps it is because many find a false sense of confidence and intoxication, leading to easier but less fulfilling social obligations. Perhaps it is because the numbness provides distraction. Perhaps it is because alcohol is a $1,600 billion industry worldwide. Many people fuel this industry, but few are awakened to the reality of alcohol. What would happen in your life if your negative habits got out of control?

And one of the things that can really help you control your alcohol intake is to really, really think through what you're giving up and where you could be in five years if you don't get it under control. And proclivity to alcoholism can be a really vicious thing. You know, lots of people get dragged down into the mud by alcohol, excess alcohol intake, especially if they're sensitive to the opiate response that alcohol can produce. You could tell that if when you drink, you know, you get alert and, let's say, more enthusiastic and energetic, and then you don't want to stop drinking. That's definitely a bad sign with regards to developing alcoholism. So I would say you need to figure out something that's more important to you than drinking. And also think through very hard the negative consequences of continuing it. I have performed psychological sacrifices, you know, I suppose, when I decided to give up something that I needed to give up.

so that I could move forward into the future. That certainly happened when I quit smoking and when I more or less quit drinking. And that was a sacrifice. I couldn't continue to drink. Again, I said I was from Northern Alberta. It was a pretty hard drinking culture and I really liked alcohol,

but I couldn't drink and write and do my PhD and manage my family responsibilities. It was too much. And so I stopped and that was a good thing. So that was a sacrifice. Alcohol depresses the central nerve system, slowing down brain activity and leading to a sense of relaxation and impaired coordination. At the same time, it inhibits certain neurotransmitters, causing further cognitive impairment

and slurred speech. The combination of these effects results in intoxication, including impaired judgment, reduced motor skills, and altered behavior. Every time I did drugs, every time I got drunk, every time I got messed up, I didn't have a bad time. But every time I had the worst night in my life, I was high or I was, I was drunk, or I was messed up. So it's not like every time you do something, you ruin your life. But every time you ruin your life, you're on some shit. I would see guys start doing stupid things. And I'd be like, they're doing this on purpose because they're giving themselves an out.

Because it's an incredibly hard thing to be like, I didn't make it because I just wasn't good enough. But now to be able to be like, oh, man, if I just stopped drinking. And then you give yourself that little bit of out that it wasn't. me. You talk about that awkward being socially anxious. You talk about like a guy who goes to a bar. There's a kid who goes to a bar. I can't talk to a girl. I don't have the confidence unless I'm drunk, unless I'm high. And it's like a socially acceptable way to break that ice. They're not hooked on whiskey. They're hooked on that culture because that's how they identify. Totally. Being able to get in, you know, so like when you talk to kids and when you have these

conversations, it's not about like, don't do it or else. It's like, dude, you have to figure out a way to be confident in yourself and take care of your spiritual and your mental well-being so you're not susceptible to these things. You know, for so many of us, I think that there's this notion of just stop. Why don't they just stop? Why are they hurting themselves? How could they do this to me? We make it about us, right? Like, how could they do this to me? How could they lie to me? How could they go out and say that they were going to quit and then keep going? Why don't they see who they turn into? Just stop. just stopping doesn't work.

There needs to be a support system for the attic. We need 12-step meetings. We need therapy. We need to evaluate our mental health. We need to work the steps. We need a sponsor. We need a community of people that share our very same struggle so we can see ourselves and experience the therapeutic value of one addict helping another.

That is our piece. But until we get there, just stopping is almost impossible. possible. I described this moment where we had kind of like an intervention being my best friend. And it was really a day we met on a Sunday in an office after the Saturday before, he'd got very, very drunk and caused a lot of problems with team members. It was a surrendering the day after. And you used that word before. Yeah. We met in the office and it was the first time I came with anger. And it was the first time he told me how he felt. And he cried in front of me. And that was, and then my anger immediately evaporates because it's the first time I've heard that this individual is suffering with something.

And there's a pain and that was the day. He became sober, went to therapy, went on that journey. And he's been sober for eight years since then. But it was that surrendering moment. It was that like him reaching out and saying like, I need help and me actually like listening. Yes. You see him for what he is in that moment, which is hurting, which is an immense pain. He doesn't want to be like that.

He feels the guilt and shame of his actions. He's tried to start and stop and go back and forth and thinks that, okay, maybe it's just heart alcohol or dark alcohol or maybe it's beer, maybe it's the combination of this. He's tried everything and he's hurting and he doesn't know how to stop. He doesn't have the tools. And I think that that surrender that you talk about is one of the most beautiful moments for an addict or an alcoholic is like waving the white flag. We think about surrender as a weakness, right?

Like, you don't surrender. You keep fighting. You keep going. No, with this disease, the greatest thing that we can do is surrender. It's to snitch on ourselves, is to wave that white flag, is to let other people know that we are struggling on our own internally, that this is something is broken, and I have no idea how to get out of this. And what did that do when he was able to be human to you?

You were like, okay, now I can come from a place of love. because I'm pissed off about what you did last night. And I'm pissed off that you've done X, Y, and Z, and that we've had this conversation or whatever the situation is. And you know, you ask what can you do as a 25-year-old friend coming from a place of love. And I think compassion. And even if it's not, you know, empathy isn't possible

because that's not what you're going through. I think that that compassion is what makes people feel they actually care about me. It's not just like I'm pissing them off, but they actually care. Just kind of like letting go of our own expectations of people and meeting them where they're at is always, you know, the best place to show up from. When was your moment of surrender? God, I've had many. I think my biggest moment of surrender I was 25 or 26 years old. All the happiness.

Any serotonin was gone. It was one of those moments of, I remember like walking outside and it was summertime and summer. Seattle, which is like the most beautiful place in the world in the summer. And I remember walking outside on tank top. And I'm like, you know, I just started bawling being outside because I couldn't feel any sort of happiness. It was gone. It was like it had evaporated. And I didn't really want to be here anymore. Like there was that moment. It was like there was no real suicidal ideation or her plan. But it was just this like, maybe this world's not for me because I don't know what I'm doing here anymore.

I feel nothing, feel nothing, except deep, deep grief and the obsession to get more. And it was shortly after that, I went to a family function and I'm trying to, you know, piece it together and just be presentable and just get through it. And my dad pulled me aside and I think my mom had asked him to talk to me. You know, we didn't grow up having too many heart to hearts. It was mostly with my mom. But my mom, I think, urged him to do it. He pulled me aside and just asked me, are you happy? That was my surrender moment.

I couldn't lie to him. Couldn't lie to myself. It was a very clear answer of absolutely not. I am so broken. I don't even know what happy is anymore. and he asked me to go to rehab.