“Not Able To Quit Booze - I Was Sad, Depressed, Desperate - THEN I Started Looking”

0:00Hey, how you doing? Welcome to another video. We're going to go through another comment today and this is from the other side of the spectrum. This is somebody who has been stopped alcohol for quite a long time and it's from that success point of you. I think we talk a lot about the first few weeks and months of this journey, how to get into preparation, all the downsides of drinking and I really wanted to go through this today just to highlight where somebody came from and how far they've come in the journey. So I'll read the pertinent parts of this and then you can pause the video if you want to watch more of it. It's from Johnny Rucker and he said hi Kevin. Nine years ago I was a heavy drinker, I was sad, depressed and desperate. I wanted to quit but I wasn't able to. Then I started looking at videos on YouTube and I found yours. I've watched many videos and they've helped to keep me motivated during my withdrawal and you know you got us on to say that he found strength and inspiration and courage and he's

1:02started to find different desires and his life. Look this is all down to you, Johnny. You know it's when you put the hard work and it takes a lot of courage to step across that line in the beginning to make that decision. Look at how often and how much we put this off. You know where we sweep our problems underneath the rug and say you know whether this is not happening or it's not happening as bad as that and you know it's only really when we get to that stage where our perceived problems or the perceived costs outweigh the benefits, the perceived benefits that we're getting. So you know it's there's no longer a trade off that we're willing to make and it's always something that happens. I mean most people when they stop they're in a vulnerable position. I'm not saying that you know we're down and out and we're living in a doorway but I am saying that there is a spot in your life when you no longer believe in what you're doing.

2:04You no longer believe that this path that you're on is taking you anywhere good and that's when change happens. So you know it's one of the reasons I I'm not going to piss on AA right as an organization. I think it helps a lot of people right but the idea is behind AA I think a lot of these places catch people when they're vulnerable and they kind of keep people in that vulnerability for a long time. If not forever you know when people start believing that they are an addict for the rest of the lives that they're they've got problems the rest of the lives without going all wondering away from all that kind of stuff. I don't agree with that and I think it keeps people in that victim integrity right. So I think it takes courage to do this on your own it takes courage to to face into that vulnerability and sometimes it needs you know the courage comes from a rage at something something specific you know I looked at myself when I started out this journey and I saw myself as being a bad

3:09father in that particular sense that I was teaching my son how to drink or I'd let him down that road into this path however much my culpability was in that you know it's I always say this to to dads you know your your children look up to you more than anyone else in this world you and and mom right and as a parent it's your responsibility more than anything else to to be a good good role model for your children and I think drinking alcohol for me anyway was something that we know when I look back at that gave me rage that I did that same thing is he's still a smoker and I was a smoker when he was born and that it still gives me rage so those kind of things it's like I look at my son now he's 31 years of age and it's up to him what he does you know it's his choice at the same time but at the same time is that I look at myself and I go well yeah and a lot of that responsibility is down is down to me so saying with

4:11the courage part of this you you build courage as you're moving forwards you know the more experience you get with yourself not drinking the the easier it becomes to be courageous right with the self confidence and self belief that you build it you know you build a good life you you build more self confidence you build more belief in yourself and that gives you courage but the real courage is when you feel invulnerable when you're not sure about things you're not sure about this life and you step across that line you made that decision and you step over regardless of what's happened so the second part of this you were talking about was the sadness and the depression you said I was sad and depressed and desperate we'll cover the desperate in a minute but sad and depressed you know this is part of the game of drinking you know any amount of alcohol when when you start using any drug right I'm not talking about this I'm talking about any physical drug that you're putting into your body or any

5:12negative habit that you're taking up you know I mean I know people who who have a run-in habit so badly that they can it becomes an obsession with them you know when something is an obsession it's stopping you from doing other things in your life like there are there are good things I get up every morning I read for two hours every morning right and then I go out for a walk and normally it's about an hour so that's three hour block of time in the morning if I don't do those two things I feel bad about myself but it pushes me in a in a good direction you know I feel better because of the most things it's a positive outcome when I was drinking it was it was the opposite you know we've got the same amount of time as a drinker as as an undrigger when I look at myself same 24 hours in the day same seven days in the week but you have a different energy right think about all the energy that's going into processing the alcohol right processing the damage think about all the the

6:12energy that you're putting into the negative thinking about it you know I shouldn't have done that should have done this now all of that energy you've gotten now to move into something else now think about from the other perspective of when you're drinking you're not building the energy so you you supposed to go to sleep at night to regain recharge yourself that's not happening when you're drinking so you're starting out the day with a lack of energy to you know to begin with so once you stop drinking alcohol that stops being an issue and you're burning less energy you're burning you know the more that you work on yourself the more that you work on your exercise for instance you die all of these things that you're now all this time that you're used to put into alcohol now you're able to put into yourself all of that energy that you build can now be put into different parts you just you using your you build it more energy in the beginning and you're using that energy a lot more efficiently so you know as time goes on it doesn't matter

7:18whether you're you know we we talk about alcohol has been on a spectrum so somebody who's drinking occasionally and somebody who's drinking every day a lot they're still in the same spectrum you still put an alcohol inside your body right if you get up in the morning and you don't feel good for it you know you feel in hangover or you feel in a headache that's going to affect you for the day or it's going to affect you for an hour or two hours whatever it is there is an effect from it because you're putting a toxin into your body and your body is instead of you know I'll give you an instance of I wake up in the morning now I'm fresh and ready to go for the day I'm looking forward to the day ahead I go to bed at night looking forward to the day tomorrow that's the general idea of my life and sometimes it doesn't work out at that you know sometimes you just tired whatever you know but it in general and you know when you put a toxin into your body you're putting a handbrake on that you're putting an impediment in your own way and you know that you're doing that right it's not as if we don't you know we can rationalize this and we can push it

8:21under the carpet as much as we want we still know that we're doing it to ourselves so even even though small amounts of alcohol that we're putting into our bodies slow us to a degree from getting to the goals that we want to achieve right you know and there's a conflict that conflict of you knowing that the alcohol is bad for you you knowing that you're doing this to yourself that nobody else is forcing you to do this to yourself but at the same time you wanting to believe that you're a smart person it is where it is so you know when we're talking about the sadness and the depression there you know there are two words that don't describe the the fact that we've got a hangover or that we've got a headache or we know we're tired the next morning they describe the fact that we've got this horrible feeling that our life is slipping away right and this only happens after you've done 10 years or 15 years of drinking you know it doesn't happen the next day you feel the next day

9:23you get up and you think I'm tired you know I've got to hangover today boo who feel sorry for myself right but it's only when you've done that for a long time and you realize that all that time and energy combined what you could have done with that energy and time so it's going back and looking at from that perspective and you know when we're thinking about things from the perspective of he said at the beginning all that glasses it's one of the things with age right I was sad depressed and desperate right so he's desperate now at this stage and I think it takes a lot of time desperation is another word for rock bottom or your particular version of the rock bottom like I said you don't have to be in the gutter you don't have to be living in a doorway right begging for scraps of food and rock bottom can happen to to anyone any particular time of life it's just that desperation comes about when you say to yourself you know I can't do this anymore I'm more afraid of moving forwards and doing the same

10:25things that I'm doing now rather than making the change happen you know it's weighing things up so you know how many times I tried moderation and moderation just keeps you trapped and everyone goes through this cycle like I said 10 15 years you're trying to you're trying to talk yourself out of the real fact of what's going on so you can keep doing what you're doing keep doing the keep the drinking going and keep the lifestyle going keep the fact that you don't have to make those changes now I'm not saying I think periods of alcohol away from periods that you have where you don't drink any alcohol I had 10 months with the longest day of the day before I stopped all together but it gave me good experience of what my life could look like getting up every the morning without hanging over been able to do things and get things done and feeling good about myself all of those kind of things that gives you good experience of what to expect now the longer period you can have the better you know anyone who goes into it and says well I've had two weeks or a month and a

11:26dry month it's you know it's also the fact but it's not the same thing moving forwards in terms of the psychological benefit of you saying I'm never gonna drink alcohol again but that's a different story and you know eventually hopefully you get to a stage where that desperation that you have that you know if you've had experience of not drinking and then you go back to it and then the same cycle starts up again that can add to that desperation and get you to move make those movements that you need to make but that desperation then can can get you to really consider stopping drinking alcohol for good as being a viable option in your life right in your particular situation and then you stop and low and behold you start sleeping better you've known my hangovers you start to use your time and energy better you're starting to hit goals that you've you know even if they're only moderate goals minor goals but you start to hit those goals you're starting to go well

12:29I'm gonna do this today and then you get that done today then you do the same thing tomorrow so on and so forth and that sadness that that Johnny was talking about earlier on that sadness lifts and you start to feel a bit more optimistic about the life without alcohol right and maybe excited about the life with that alcohol like I said focus forwards instead of backwards going backwards and thinking about all the alcohol that you're missing out you're not missing out on anything this guy proved you know he said at the beginning he was a heavy heavy drinker of sad depressed and desperate right but like I said it's not you've said in depressed and desperate because of the alcohol because of the alcohol wasn't causing you negativity in your life if it wasn't sending you down this horrible road right then you wouldn't be sad and depressed so it's the life that you're creating for yourself that is making you sad and depressed and desperate so

13:31like Johnny said at the beginning first thing to do is to start looking for people who have been in the same situation as you you were in now right I mean I've read a lot of books from people talking about alcohol and stopping drinking alcohol and there's some good advice out there but it's always better advice if somebody understands it doesn't have to be from somebody who's drinking or although it helps it has to be from somebody who understands there's a great book called Is it the dopamine? the author is an elemk I think it's dopamine I can't remember the name of the book anyway I'll put it up on there down here and she's talking about different people who are how the dopamine the neurochemical dopamine can really get you addicted and can keep you addicted and she talks about herself and she's addicted to reading romance novels now

14:32you have to read this how she's describing this to really understand how it is affecting her and her life and it's what we were saying earlier on if you're putting this up time in energy into something it doesn't matter if it's alcohol or something else I mean the alcohol a drug has got a physical component to it right so it's going to walk around with your health and your mental health but something like that something like reading like porn or reading trashy novels stuff that is not going to it's not delivering you anything of benefit to yourself I mean like I said I read two hours every day and I read trying to read stuff that is going to help me with my life or it's going to help me with my job trashy novels is not going to do that I mean my thing is science fiction I could read science fiction does pop science fiction but you know where it's leading it's not leading anywhere it's the same story it's the same outcome so try and find some help from somebody who is there that's why I made these videos to try and help people I was in that situation hopefully something that I said you never know what's going to affect people so

15:37and also try and find help from somebody who is going to the place that you want to go now I'm not talking specifically exactly like I live in Spain I want to spend time with my family I want to do all these things that is specific to my life but in terms of values and beliefs and principles I think there's a lot of shared values and beliefs that we can have that drive us forwards and move us you know like we want to get to goals but it's the journey that matters it's learning it's building yourself as you're moving forwards you get up one day and you're you're thinking to yourself yeah I've got all this stuff to do today but I'm happy where I am so even though you know that you're moving forwards to something better you're still happy where you are right that's what I'm talking about with having proper values and beliefs and principles and then you can you can start to think about the consistent outcomes that you want in your life and move towards those and then the final thing is to pass it on you know

16:41once you've got to that stage where you're saying to yourself I'm never going to drink again I'm so happy that I've gone through this journey pass it on even if it's only leaving a comment or multiple comments on videos like this one telling people about your journey because you wouldn't believe how helpful it is for somebody in the beginning of that journey or when they're trying to make that decision to move across and start their journey how helpful it is for them to see that people have done it before people who are just like them in their situation doing their job living their life you know that kind of stuff it really helps so it's to it's the proper word of encouragement we talked about courage at the beginning of it and it's in the word encouragement right to to give give courage to somebody else to encourage somebody else to do this and to take that trip to encourage somebody else and to to give them the inspiration that you don't need alcohol that alcohol is going to take you backwards it's not going to move you forwards in any way shape or form you might think it's it's a tool that is helping

17:45you in the moment but add all those moments together and they build up to a whole heap of nothing in fact it's taken in the in the opposite direction so anyway I'll leave it there today if you have anything that you want me to cover in the videos any topics that you'd like me to cover any problems that you have any comments like this that we can that we can help other people with and make videos to help other people then please don't hesitate to to write them down we're going to be putting up a Google Doc soon so you can you can use that as well I haven't sorted that out yet so Habits V2 is our website if you want help from me all the videos are done we've got a program over there that is daily videos right through preparation to two videos a day one in the morning one in the evening and it just helps you from that perspective of where you were to get to that next stage I mean you know it's a full year to get you to a full year alcohol free and I think it's the best course around from my perspective it just teaches everything that

18:49that I've learned and everything I want to teach so we've also got some one-on-one coaching as well with me there's nobody else it does the coaching take care of yourself and I will speak to you again very soon almost in our ports keep the alcohol out of your mouth by now