The Wellness Scoop - Sobriety, Insecurity & Transforming Your Life

Episode Date: July 9, 2019

How do you make a huge shift in your life, especially one that may make you feel isolated or insecure? This week we’re talking about alcohol, the social constructs that exist around our drinking culture, the rise of sobriety and our fear of being seen as boring. Through the lens of one woman’s journey from alcoholic to teetotaller, we look at how to be vulnerable, how to make a change, how to honestly identify when we need that change and how to deal with the fear of being different to those around us. Our guest this week is Catherine Gray, author of ‘The unexpected joy of being sober’. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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business partner ella mills hi guys so today we're talking about drinking why we drink the social constructs that exist around it, that fear of being sober, the fear of things like sober sex and sober dating, and then the rise of the teetotaler and one woman's brilliant journey through alcohol addiction. Now, I just have to make a quick note before anyone switches off. This is not an episode aimed at making anybody give up drinking or becoming a teetotaler themselves. It's just interesting to explore the space around alcohol because it obviously plays such a big part in our culture. Yeah, it's been really interesting to see how this conversation has evolved over the last few years. I think drinking has traditionally

played a pivotal role in our culture across the rest of the world, but things do seem to be changing. There seems to be a lot of press around things like sobriety and being sober curious and looking at some of the stats, we're undoubtedly seeing a huge shift in our habits. There's a fifth of British men now and a quarter of British women labelling themselves as teetotal. And a lot of the growth in this is being driven by the younger generations. I think there's a 40% rise in millennials choosing to be teetotal. So I've got particular interest in this episode because when I got sick back in 2011 I couldn't go out and I couldn't really do anything my body wasn't functioning so I obviously wasn't drinking and I didn't drink at all for a couple of years and even as I started

to kind of re-immerse myself into the world again I still wasn't really drinking I had really horrific reactions to alcohol and it's not ever become a big part of my life again I now have this really being totally honest this massive hang-up of being boring because people have brought it up time and time and time again and I've definitely become quite subconscious about it and it was really interesting when we started to look at this episode and I asked listeners and readers for questions the number of people who got in touch and said the exact same thing, that they were looking to maybe drink a bit less for their mental health, things like anxiety or for their physical health. Someone even said, I am so happy I'm pregnant because no one's pressuring me to have an extra

drink anymore. And I thought that was really, really interesting. So to delve into this topic, we have the absolutely brilliant writer and journalist Catherine Gray with us today, whose book, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober is honestly absolutely brilliant. So welcome Catherine thank you so so much for coming. Thank you. So if you don't mind I'd love to start with your relationship with alcohol and what prompted you to explore this topic. I think we were both blown away by your honesty in the book which starts with the story of you waking up in a prison cell in Brixton after being arrested for being drunk and disorderly, swearing a policeman. And if you saw Catherine right now as you see her, you would not expect that to be the case. You said that you started

drinking at 12. And by 2009, you started to recognise that you didn't have a grip when you were drinking. And by 2013, you were in all the throes of a serious addiction to alcohol. So can you tell us a bit more about that whole story? Yeah, sure. So let's start with the Brixton thing. So that was 12 years ago. I was 27 at the time. And I was working in a magazine and I got invited to a lot of free drinks parties. And I'd been to one of these free drinks parties and I tended to get absolutely hammered at them. And so I was stumbling around trying to find my way home. And this policewoman, she was really kind and she tried to help me get home and I told her to f off and I have no recollection of it at all the first thing that I remember is coming to

in the cell and then they told me what I'd done and the worst thing about it was when they discharged me from the police station they gave me my belongings back and it was like this plastic evidence bag and the only thing in it was this tiny pink child's hairbrush that I'd never seen before in my life I had no keys no phone no bag no nothing and just I thought it was a one-off I thought it was like okay stop going to free drinks parties they're bad news I'll be able to get control of this I'll be able to learn how to drink one or two but was it affecting your professional life as a result? Yeah, definitely.

But I was getting away with it mostly. So I was doing things like showing up late, but I was still good at my job. So I was definitely getting told in feedback that I needed to stop being late and be more consistent. But I was getting promoted at the same time and still being able to churn out good interviews and stuff like that so in many ways I was getting away with it and I just stayed in that cycle then until I was 33 of trying to moderate and failing and wondering why I couldn't get it

and why I couldn't drink one or two drinks until eventually it got really bad and I was drinking every time that you drank you'd even just have one drink, it would always turn into you getting really, really drunk? Or were you ever able just to have one and stop? I was. I did on a handful of occasions. But it was one time in a hundred. Most times when I had a drink, I had four or five. Or I would finish the bottle of wine. I would be drinking at home.

I would open a bottle of wine and I would finish it. So it got to the point where I was drinking seven or eight bottles of wine a week and just felt terrible so I knew that something had to change but I was so scared of being sober and being boring in inverted commas so one question because I think we've talked about this a lot kind of personally and here as well as I think being really honest with ourselves is really really really hard and I know like my only experience kind of in this sort of space is when I was ill and I just couldn't acknowledge that I was actually quite ill and I know like my only experience kind of in this sort of space is when I was ill and I just couldn't acknowledge that I was actually quite ill and I needed to change and I needed to help myself I didn't want to be a sick person so I didn't want to admit it and it took me

so long to be able to kind of look myself in the mirror and say you've got to step up you've got to take responsibility stop putting responsibility on other people and was there a moment of awakening or a rock bottom or just a moment in which you said you know what enough is enough I have a problem yeah there was definitely but I would also say that there was hundreds of those moments and there was hundreds of like tiny rock bottoms leading up to the final one where what was so different about the one that the final rock bottom I think it was that I realized that even though it might take until 50 or 55 I was going to die prematurely if I continued drinking at the rate that I was and all of a sudden I turned around and I didn't want to stay in that cycle of self-harm anymore

so it was almost like my self-preservation kicked in finally because I'd finally acknowledged where I was like you say and I knew I needed to turn that ship around but was there an underlying reason for for your drinking or was it just that you loved and were addicted to alcohol in its in its own sense well I think that there was definitely reasons the social anxiety I was a shy kid parties aren't my natural environment you know I'm an introvert there was definitely things about my personality that made drinking a soother for me but i think we should focus more on the fact that alcohol's addictive whereas with other things like cigarettes or cocaine we know they're addictive so when people get addicted to them we're like well that's the

substance but with alcohol we tend to ask what's wrong with the person, which I think is the wrong question. I think it's a combination of the two. I think that's so interesting. And I just want to pick up a little bit on what you said there, because I completely relate to it. I'm a massive introvert myself. And actually, ironically, for what we do actually get quite nervous putting myself out there in front of people. And we again, had a lot of comments from readers saying I would like to drink less but I'm really scared basically of the vulnerability of that and of going to a date and not getting drunk because basically you're scared of kind of completely exposing who you are and being comfortable in your own skin and there was a

quote in the book which I just wanted to pick up about that vulnerability because I thought it was beautiful he said the world was brighter, louder, roarer and scarier than a car full of hostile clowns. Without alcohol as your armour, I felt utterly naked and vulnerable. And I just thought that was it was so, so true. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you came to accept that it was okay to have that vulnerability. And it was a very kind of human thing yeah I think I mean we do it before a date we do it at a wedding we go in and we feel naked and a bit jangly nerved and a bit like oh it's loud and there's too many people and we drink to soften that and it's like putting

armor on that's exactly what it feels like and so when you don't drink it does feel like you you don't have that armor all of a sudden and you have to just completely be yourself. And if you're anxious, you can't down a glass of wine and take your way into being relaxed quickly. There's no fast lane. There's no easy button. You have to wait until that relaxation comes naturally, which takes a bit longer. And so it's scary. It's really terrifying at first. But then you learn to realise that actually being vulnerable is quite beautiful and people really respond to that.

There was a really interesting study that took people in a cafe and the first bit of the study, the person didn't knock over a cup of coffee and the second bit, the person did knock over a cup of coffee. And when they knocked over the coffee, people liked them more. So actually people gravitate towards people who are klutzes or make mistakes or are vulnerable or who are nervous but we seem to be in this quest for perfection like impenetrable confidence and that's just not realistic it's not human yeah it's so true and it's something that we always want to explore on here because it is exactly that is that actually we all suffer from different challenges with our mental well-being actually probably 80 percent of people

at that wedding are nervous that they don't know that many people there that they might be sitting next to someone that they've never met before and they might say the wrong thing and if we could all just acknowledge that we're all in the same boat we wouldn't feel the need to dampen it or feel that we were the odd one out but we're all too scared to admit it, basically. Yeah, it's so true. So when you made that step to make the change, what did that first month look like? What were the tools that you reached for to keep yourself on the straight and narrow? Well, again, it was terrifying. You know really was it was really brutal and did you still continue to do the same kind of social things so you would still go out as much but just not drink

so is it kind of a true light for like or is it something where you really just removed yourself from the situations and so we're going out less in the first 30 days i didn't tend to go to big parties i remember i went to a pub once for a meal and I freaked out and had a panic attack and had to leave. But that was actually the only time that I've ever done that. That's the only time I've ever had to leave. But I knew that I was probably going to drink if I stayed because I was in a pub and it smelled of booze and I was getting triggered and I just needed to go. But my friends completely understood. So I would say for the first 30 days, for me, it was the right decision to keep myself away from drinking environments. But then I was very much adamant that I wanted to just live life as normal. And if my mate was having a party in a bar, I was going to go. You know, it's her birthday. I'm going to go. Had you seeked out professional help or was it something where you just made the decision yourself and you went with it well i went to see an addiction counselor so that was really really helpful and i got that free on the nhs i don't know whether we still do that

and there's all sorts of things that helped exercise was huge it was so helpful because 10 minutes of exercise can slay a booze craving if you feel like you want a glass of wine just 10 minutes can get rid of it and it was just a very up and down time the first 30 days, it was brutal, exquisite, terrifying, beautiful, all at the same time, I would feel complete euphoria and then complete despair. But a lot of that was just my brain readjusting. Because when you drink a lot, your brain is used to it. And it's to do with dopamine and serotonin and all that sort of thing. And it gets to the point where the only thing that produces pleasure is a drink and so your brain has to readjust and so I was going through all of that and at first I wasn't sleeping then two weeks in

I started having the best sleep of my life and just everything about my body and how I felt was changing so it was so hard but so worth it. I love how you say when you talk about it, that you said you studied for being sober, like you were studying for a degree. And I really respect that. We actually did an episode last season with a behavioral psychologist on making a change and breaking habits. And that kind of was her big takeaway

was that you've got to expect it to be hard and you've got to kind of take it seriously. Like if you want to fundamentally change something in your life, it's not just going to happen. As you said, it's going to be hard and you've got to kind of take it seriously like if you want to fundamentally change something in your life it's not just going to happen as you said that it's going to be incredible moments and really hard moments and you've got to find a way to sit with it and I think it's showing how important it was to prepare yourself read as much as you could kind of understand your whys and that piece of education does feel really really I would love that you share that but that you also share that one of the things you said that really helped you was

also just crying your eyes out and I love that again because it's completely honest that it wasn't easy in any shape or form yeah it wasn't and actually crying makes you it releases stress because apparently cortisol the stress hormone comes out in tears which is incredible so when you feel all bunged up and angry often what you need to do is just have a really really good cry gets it all out yeah and when it comes to change I think what you said is so wise and I think we begin the process of preparing ourselves for change long before we actually make the change so it took me five months of stopping and starting of being sober to actually get it long term and in those five months I thought I was

failing but what I was actually doing was learning reading everything I could about it and preparing for the day I was going to finally get it and I would say one of the things if you want to make a change if you're struggling with anything be it social anxiety disordered eating depression read everything you can about it because information is power and it really helps you make that change on that point though for information is power how did you go about seeking making sure you got the right information for this rather than going down as i think some people can do is you go down this kind of google hole where you just start yeah you start on a path that leads you maybe to worse places so how did you go about making sure that you were reading the right stuff well I think I just read everything and then kept what I liked

and dispensed what I didn't like I also tried going to AA for a while I went for six months and that just wasn't the right fit for me and it was actually once I stopped going that I stayed sober so for many many people that is really helpful but for me it wasn't the right path and so I would say just try everything and then see what fits and what makes you feel good and what doesn't make you feel good. It's just trial and error, really. Did you struggle with a sense of failure for effectively falling off the bandwagon to begin with? Did you find that kind of really knocked your self-esteem where you said,

you know what, today's the day I'm not going to drink again. And then a couple of days later, during those five months before you were able to kind of really knocked your self-esteem where you said you know what today's the day I'm not going to drink again and then a couple of days later during those five months before you were able to kind of really take the plunge did you did you struggle with your kind of mental well-being around that yeah that was so hard because you you feel like a bad person yeah and actually once you learn about what goes on in the brain when you're making a change all you're doing is creating a new neural pathway and it's exactly the same as learning how to do anything it's like learning how to play an instrument or do a handstand or anything like that learning a new language you're gonna mess it up to begin with you're not going to be perfect right from the get-go because you're creating a

new neural pathway and it's like fighting your way through an overgrown forest trying to make a new one so learning about that the neuroscience behind it really helped me forgive myself for not getting it straight away yeah I love that I think that's really important and then one other thing I wanted to pick up on when you were talking about those first 30 days one point that you said which I really liked was that you realized that you had to take responsibility for your own happiness and you made a kind of big gratitude adjustment and i remember this moment you said you like you were like i would just focus on what i was grateful for even if it was the dishwasher um which by the way is great yeah the best invention ever and these are kind of just two topics that come up for us it seems in like literally every episode completely accidentally no matter what we're talking about

so i would love to just tap into those because I think as you're saying, that then taps back into whether it's, you know, disordered eating, or all kinds of different issues that people have, social anxiety, etc. What was it that allowed you to kind of take control of your happiness? And have you, have you kind of continued with that ever since? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think we live in a society where we're told that we can buy happiness you know whether it's a car or a food or a necklace and that just doesn't work we can't do that and we also live in a society where you hear a lot of people saying when they've broken up with somebody they didn't make me happy and nobody can make you happy you make yourself happy so it's something that I wake up every day and I'm like this is my choice today even though you know I can have a day where it's

a bad day but I can do things to make it a better day I know what to do I've got a list of things at home there's like 33 of them and they're all free and they all make me feel better from you know stroking a dog or listening to music or going for a run so I can do those things to make myself happier yeah I absolutely love that I think it's it's so powerful and as you said it's actually incredibly empowering when you start taking your life into your hands in that sense where as you said like everyone's gonna have really difficult days where they're dealing with difficult news or you just wake up and you're for whatever reason you're not you have quite a low mood but

it is amazing as you said there are a lot of things out there that just instantly can turn that day around to some extent so I do I want to go back kind of the beginning and the boring question yeah yeah because I'm personally interested in it but as I said a lot of our listeners and readers are thinking about it how do you deal and this isn't I think just about being teetotal this is you know just generally like drinking a little bit less or not wanting to drink that night um we're so quick to judge each other yeah and but it is true like even you know I remember going to a dinner party when I wasn't drinking at all and I was literally I, I was just like, just getting a bit better from being in bed basically for two years. And they said, but aren't you really bored? And I was like, is that your way of telling me that you're really

bored sitting next to me because I'm not drunk? And it just, that word boring comes up all, don't be boring. You know, I'm okay. I don't need another one. Don't be boring. And obviously as someone who spent a lot of time researching this I would love to understand what your thoughts are on the social constructs that exist around drinking and it feels very much to me like we put a lot of our insecurities on other people there and which which is fascinating yeah well I mean I saw a meme once that said sober is an anagram of bores for a reason if you walk into any gift shop looking for a gift for somebody all the cards will tell you that drinking is fun and being sober is boring and then we also have like sober as a judge which

nobody wants to be judgy um and we have stone cold sober nobody wants to be stony and cold either yeah so everything around it like like the language, the merchandise, the messages we get in films and TV tells us that being sober is boring. And think about Fun Bobby from Friends. Do you remember Fun Bobby? He's an absolute drag when he's sober and then he's the funnest person ever when he's drinking. So I was haunted by Fun Bobby for so long.

I thought that that was going to be my fate. But when you actually think about it, when you strip it back and strip away that social conditioning, which we've been taught to believe, it's preposterous that a person is boring just because they don't drink alcohol. That would be like saying that if you don't drink cake, you can't tell anecdotes.

Or if you don't drink coffee, you're not spontaneous. Putting something in your mouth can't make you less boring. It really can't. It can make you feel like you're less boring. There's definitely been times where I've had a drink and I'm like, oh, now I can kick ass with this anecdote. Or now I can go and dance with that guy or whatever. But that doesn't mean that's the truth.

Because actually, generally, the most interesting people at the party and dance with that guy or whatever but that doesn't mean that's the truth because actually generally the most interesting people at the party are the people who are the most sober the people who are the most drunk are the ones that you sort of avoid which is something you only see once you're sober but it's definitely ingrained in our national belief that sober is boring and it's totally not true so when you decide to do this like in terms of your confidence for like sober dating you know it's true it's like I mean we've all said it a hundred times you're like you're going on a first date you're like god I couldn't have sex without a drink you know you're just like you're basically these things are terrifying and you think okay well I

need something to take the edge off and the obvious thing is a glass of wine or whatever it is and again this isn't saying that that's a bad thing at all but if you decide you're not going to rely on that how did you find that you know doing a completely sober date was that terrifying it was hard when I first got sober I actually started seeing someone that I'd known for a long time so that was okay that wasn't difficult but then I took a whole year off which is another story because I wanted to disentangle from like love addiction and then when I got back out there I had to meditate for about half an hour before my first sober date and I literally did not know how to kiss someone no sober I just did not know how to go about it I was so awkward about it but then actually what I found was once you get over the initial barrier of the actual

contact which generally is fine they they do it for you but um once you get over that everything just flows like you you just remember how to do it yeah you don't have a problem but it's the initial contact the first hand holding the first kiss that is so hard but now I wouldn't even think about it and it's your norm yeah and actually that came quite quickly that I just got used to it and it got to the point where now I'm generally the one who kisses them because I just want to get it over and done with almost I love that come here let's just do it and it's you just learn how to do it and if you've never done it then you're not going to know how to do it if you started drinking when you were 13 or 14

which we tend to in this country yeah then you generally didn't kiss people when you were sober so of course you're going to have to learn how to do it yeah it's so true and it's I think there is just this kind of sense of like you're cool if you're drunk and you're not cool if you're sober and you also then list in your book like all the celebrities that that don't drink and that all their great quotes and you've got people like Brad Pitt Bradley Cooper I mean who doesn't think Bradley Cooper's cool um and you know you've got Colin Farrell, Fern Cottonhead, Shira Nomi Campbell, Calvin Harris, Jennifer Lopez. Like, it's a really serious list.

It's just when you look at it like that, I always give people a list of like, when people are like, God, veganism is so weird. And I'm like, yeah, but look at all these people that are vegan that you think are really cool. And so now does it change your perspective on it? And it is true. So I did really enjoy that bit, actually.

And of course, now Kate Moss is sober yeah the archetypal party girl and actually loads of that indie primrose hill type set are now sober so half of Hollywood is basically sober and what's really interesting is that people like Bradley Cooper he plays obviously that really heavy drinker in The Hangover Olivia Pope in Scandal she averages like two bottles of wine a night and Kerry Washington is completely teetotal obviously that really heavy drinker in The Hangover, Olivia Pope in Scandal. She averages like two bottles of wine a night and Kerry Washington is completely teetotal. So I love knowing which celebrities are sober because then I'm like, you are not drinking red wine, you're drinking blackcurrant juice. You're just pretending.

So talking about the kind of health implications of it, you've obviously did a lot of research on this. Were there any things that kind of really stuck out to you where you thought, gosh, that is quite powerful? Yeah, there was loads of things that I discovered that I did not know were related to drinking. Like towards the end of my drinking, my hair had started to thin. It had become quite fine. And I found out that drinking promoted hair loss because my hair just went back to normal. I had dandruff. I had no idea that was related to drinking. It turns out just went back to normal. I had dandruff. I had no idea that was related to drinking.

It turns out it was because now I don't have dandruff. Anxiety. I thought that drinking was helping my anxiety, as we've already discussed. But long term, it actually exacerbates it, which would explain why I was a complete bag of nerves the whole time when I wasn't drinking. And then I would have to numb the anxiety by drinking and all sorts of things that you just do not realize your sleep you can't go into REM sleep when you are drunk so that means that you wake up so in REM sleep it's like Marie Kondo in your brain it's like when your brain takes out all the rubbish. And so the reason

why you wake up the morning after a night drinking and your brain feels heavy and cluttered is because your brain has literally not been able to dispose of the trash that it doesn't need. And also it's when your brain beds in new memories, new things that you've learned that day. So obviously that's pretty crucial it just has so many different effects on us that we don't even realize so interesting it really really is so we've got some readers questions that i'd love to go through so what is your standard answer now when someone asks you why you're not drinking do you give them the whole story or do you give them a i just hand them the book yeah no i don't uh it depends on the situation so if it's a group of people and I feel quite on the spot I'll tend to

make light of it and I'll say something like it's safer for everyone if I don't drink and then I'll tell a story like the time when I was working at Glamour magazine and I decided it was a really good idea to get into a hot tub topless at our work's Christmas party which obviously was not very good for my career and then everyone's like whoa no drinking for you you shouldn't drink so that's quite a good way to get out of it just telling quite a shocking but funny story or if somebody's quite vulnerable and I can tell that they're asking me because they're worried about their drinking, I'll simply say I was addicted to it and now I'm much happier and completely open myself up to questions. So it depends, really.

So one question, and I guess that taps into that answer here, is a few readers were asking if someone close to them or a loved one they feel is maybe kind of slightly misusing alcohol or creating an unhealthy relationship with it what do you feel is the kind of best way to tackle that to open up that conversation I think that you can be honest with them and you can say things like I prefer you when you're sober um I don't like these aspects of your personality when you're drunk. But ultimately, you can't help them quit. I mean, you can help them quit, but you can't get them to quit, which is what a lot of people try to do. They try to sort of get their loved one to quit.

And you can't control that. It's got to be up to the person. So I would say just be honest with them and then offer help but then back off and don't judge their drinking because if they feel that they can talk to you about their drinking then they're much more likely to come to you for help rather than if you say you can't drink I'm not going to talk to you if you drink so that would be my advice so be really open and supportive and I guess as you know great learning from your experience was it took you five months of trying before you were able to get yourself into a space

where you felt like you could actually succeed in it and so giving people time and space and respect for the fact that this is an you know as with making any big change in your life it's incredibly difficult and that needs to be really admired and seen as brave rather than like someone's failing yeah you've hit on a really important point multiple day ones are completely normal so that's something everyone needs to know nobody turns around and says right i'm quitting drinking and they get it straight off they just don't yeah so i would say for them to bear that in mind to be patient yeah what is the average amount of time it takes i actually read once that it was four years but i don't think i'm not sure

that it's as long as that i would say it's probably about six months that is probably about right because sometimes people do it in secret they try and quit or they try and do it like i said i trained for a triathlon and i told everyone that to begin with because I wasn't comfortable with saying I think I've got an issue with drinking so people will do soft launches and often say it's to do with fitness and then eventually they'll get it so I would say probably six months to a year okay and for those people who you know they really want to keep alcohol in their life and enjoy that lovely glass of red wine or you know glass of champagne but they sometimes struggle to say I'm okay thanks after one or two or three drinks what's your kind of best piece of advice in finding a sense of sort

of moderation I have no idea that would be like asking me how to fly to the moon I have no clue um yeah I'm afraid I just don't know how to moderate there's loads of good books out there though for them to read um I would say it's a lot easier to have none than it is to have one that's something I definitely know there was a really nice bit where you again said in terms of this kind of non-judgmental space of you know it is an addictive substance just like smoking which we're a bit more respectful of the addictive nature of and you shouldn't feel like you're a failure because you can't moderate it's really difficult to moderate and for lots of people they're going to struggle with that so there's nothing wrong with admitting that that's really hard yeah I mean we know with smoking that

if you start then it's going to snowball right whereas with drinking we that's really hard. Yeah I mean we know with smoking that if you start then it's going to snowball right whereas with drinking we don't really acknowledge that and I think we need to. The average Brit drinks 26 units a week which is 12 units above the recommended so as a nation. Is it 14 the recommended? Yeah 14 is the recommended so 26 is two and a half pots of wine so as a nation we're collectively not great at moderation so a normal drinker is actually one who's failing to moderate whereas we're told that a normal drinker is somebody who can easily have one or two yeah so if 14 units across a week what does that look like that's a bottle and a half of wine okay still quite a lot oh i was gonna say it's

actually not that much across seven days so one question we had which I thought was a really brilliant question is other ways to relax you know you sometimes you've had a hard day or a hard week or a difficult conversation or whatever it is or you want to just blow off some steam but you're you are kind of struggling with alcohol you just want to be drinking a bit less for whichever reason what what have you found is the kind of take the edge off when you get home from work or you go meet friends or what do you do uh well I love to go spinning like for a really fierce spinning class and then go to a beautiful restaurant or I like to um do yoga workshops and then go to comedy nights basically what I find is because I've got so much more money now and so

much more time now that I'm not spending it all on bottles of wine. I'm just doing all the cultural things that I didn't do before. And it's really cool. But actually, I don't find it hard to relax now because I've got used to not using that wine as a segue, which I think yoga helps a lot with that, actually. Yeah, I think I read that you saved £23,000 in four years from not drinking. I mean, it's extraordinary. It's way more than that now.

I'm not sure how much it is. Yeah, it is extraordinary because I included all the contraband cigarettes that people tend to have after a few glasses of wine and also the taxis and the midnight pizzas. You know, I included all of that money as well because I don't spend that money as well because I don't spend that money now yeah and I don't get fined for going over my overdraft limit or not attending my

class pass class so all of that money mounts up you know it just makes a change to everything yeah as I said I don't really drink now obviously I'm pregnant now but it doesn't really agree with with me and so it's same like I find if I'm stressed or really hung up like it's amazing like I can go to yoga and just like cry and it feels so good oh my god I've cried in so many spin classes it's unbelievable but it feels so good and the sense of release that you have when you walk out is really powerful and it's certainly more powerful than anything I've ever had from something else before because you do feel like you've actually worked out those emotions so perfectly so I wouldn't massively recommend that to anyone no it's so true I find

my crying trigger is running so often I'll stop in the middle of 7k or whatever and sit by the ocean and just like bawl my eyes out and if anyone looking at me would be thinking oh my is she okay but I'm I'm actually happy yeah it's like just releasing all that stress and all that anxiety that gets bunched up that's how I release it now and one last reader question which is FOMO uh fear of missing out which I think is something that is a challenge for a lot of people especially in the kind of social media world that we live in today even I will admit there are times where I know I've gone home at like 11 p.m and my friends have stayed out you know it's at a hen party or something

till like two three o'clock in the morning and they have this collective experience together that I am not a part of and they have these funny stories about those you know drunken moments and McDonald's or this person did this or this person did that or the next thing and you know even there are moments where you kind of clock and you think gosh you know am I gonna be not as good friends with these people am I gonna be left out and again do they think I'm boring how how have you kind of managed the the FOMO uh, in my first few years, I used to try and stay out to the bitter end. Yeah. Because I didn't want to miss out on those moments.

And then I soon realised that nothing really good ever happens after 1am. Even though people will turn it into a funny story, it is just messy after about that time. And so now I tend to leave at about midnight one. And that's the right time the easy way or the hard way but I think everyone gets there eventually I mean I'd love having a glass of wine with dinner and or a gmt on a Friday night but when I was younger I used to go out my friends till late and whenever you'd wake up the next day and be like oh my god what happened last night I'd always be off to one o'clock you'd be like oh my god why did I do that yeah so I really don't feel FOMO I genuinely don't and also

I had a lot of time doing that you know I spent my 20s doing that so I had loads of nights out like that so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything I feel like this is a different phase of life for me so we finish up each episode with our food for thought section where we ask our guest about five tips or take homes for listeners to have. OK, great. So I would say number one would be to remember about the neural pathways. Yeah. And remember that when you're making a change, you really are like building a new road in your brain rather than going down the motorway that you've been going down for years and years and years which is why it's difficult number two there's a really interesting study that shows that when you do make a change after 66 days it becomes habit so when people quit drinking for 30 days they're not getting to the bit where it's easy

so even though I love dry January I think people should take three months off so that's something that I ask people to remember yeah and I would say it's so important if you quit drinking to create a booze-free haven at home because we have drinking pushed to us everywhere from the supermarket to play dates even pregnant women get pushed to drink oh I yeah people are like don't you just want some I know no one of my friends was about seven months pregnant she went to a party and she ended up holding a glass of prosecco because everyone was so annoyed that she wasn't drinking and pretending that she was drinking it because she got such a hard time that has fascinated me honestly beyond belief yeah so i would say it's really important to create a space at home where you

can relax even if it's just that you don't keep the craft ale or the sauvignon blanc that you like to drink so that you don't have to think about it and i would say to tell people that what you're trying to do whether it's three months off or you want to do forever and ask for their support rather than grief um to do shots and finally i would say exercise because just 10 minutes can get rid of a booze craving that's so cool and you can go cry in a spin class and everything will feel cry by the beach well katherine thank you so much it was so insightful and i think you know that everything we've talked about is obviously so applicable if you are struggling with a relationship with alcohol, just wanting to drink a bit less, but it's so applicable to anything in life about making a change and kind of taking control of your life and the way that you're living and your happiness

as a result. So, so appreciative of your honesty and sharing your experience. Thank you so much for coming in. Thank you for having me. It's been a joy. And Catherine's book is The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober and it is a really, really brilliant read. So I massively recommend it. And if you have enjoyed this, then please do rate us and review us

because it makes all the difference in the charts. And please do share it with your friends if you think it would be helpful. And please also come back next week, next Tuesday for our next episode. Have a lovely, lovely day bye you're a podcast listener and this is a podcast ad heard only in canada reach great canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from libsyn ads choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements

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