Does Quitting Alcohol Lead To Losing Weight?

Chris Scott: I ended up gaining 10 pounds first two weeks after I quit. The whites of my eyes started reappearing and yet I was bloated. And the only thing that I can attribute that to, which I've seen in various clients since then, is that I was chronically dehydrated when I was drinking all the time. And so when I stopped drinking, my body may have gone into emergency water retention mode.

Matt Finch: I'm freed from that obsession now. And as a result, it's easier to, like I'm 42. I'm going to be 43 in two months. And I have a nice thin belly, like the beginnings of a six pack, at age, almost 43 years old. And so that's like pretty hard to do for a lot of people.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning into the Elevation Recovery podcast. Your hub for addiction recovery strategies hosted by Chris Scott and Matt Finch.

Matt Finch: Welcome to episode 271 of the Elevation Recovery podcast. I'm here with Chris Scott and I'm Matt Finch. We haven't done this in too long. You've been traveling a bunch, so it's good to see you again and have a session with you. And today we're going to be talking about losing weight, weight loss after quitting drinking or after quitting another addiction. A lot of people, it's very common to gain weight. I remember when I first started going to AA meetings at the age of 24, I noticed that a lot of the sober people there, it seemed like the longer they had in recovery, the heavier a lot of them were. And that was my case.

Matt Finch: Every time I'd quit drinking or quit drugs, I would gain weight. Sometimes I would just, my body would just adjust back to a natural weight. Other times I would gain, when I'd quit and go on a sober run, I would gain more than enough weight. And I was like, "Whoa." When I worked at the methadone clinic, people would get on methadone and they would, after heroin, after pills, and they would start gaining weight rapidly because methadone causes opioid-induced endocrinopathy, which causes gaining lots of weight.

Matt Finch: And they're like, "I can't... No matter what I eat, I gain weight." Some people when they're drinking, they'll gain weight from alcohol, but I was always the opposite. Whenever I was drinking, I would lose lots of weight. My friends would make fun of me because I would be so skinny when I was drinking daily. And it's because I didn't eat food. I would have like the bare minimum of food. I'd have... I remember this one drinking bender was like three months long, just drinking all day, every day, totally physiologically dependent. But I was only eating maybe like a half of a little sandwich, or one slice of pizza, or a protein bar for the whole entire day. So I loved gaining weight when I would quit drinking, because I was like, I looked like a meth head, but it was usually just alcohol. So yeah, that's today's topic, losing weight, weight loss after quitting.

Chris Scott: Yeah. There's a lot that I could say about this topic. We're going to condense it into a relatively short episode, which will actually force me to hopefully convey as much information as I can in a short period of time. But it's one of the most common questions that I get. Is people who join the course or who sign up for coaching, like, "Chris, how do I, A, quit drinking. And B," and it's a quick B, "How do I lose the weight that I gained from drinking?"

Chris Scott: And obviously everyone's biochemically different. There can be hormonal reasons that certain people, or age related reasons that people find it difficult to lose weight. Really like a standard American diet and the standard American lifestyle is going to result in people being heavier over time on average, unless they're extreme ectomorphs, or people that just don't accumulate fat, or usually muscle. Who just remain skinny, just because of the constant insulin spikes, the degradation to the various stress response systems, the inefficiency of the liver in assisting with burning fat. That can be hindered by like high fructose sugar, and soybean oil, and hydrogenated trans fats all the time as much, or almost as much as by alcohol.

Chris Scott: But you're right, that there are people who tend to be really skinny when they drink. And it is almost a hundred percent of the time because they're not eating food. A lot of people will have 90 to 95% of their calories in the form of alcohol. And it might be wine. It might be sugary drinks. But it's not enough for them to put on weight or even to maintain their existing weight. But what you notice is they're losing oftentimes more muscle than they are fat. So they often look skinny fat, which is not a desirable state of being. I've been fat fat. I've not been skinny fat. I somehow didn't lose my muscle when I drank.

Chris Scott: When I was drinking a liter or more of hard alcohol a day, I was still eating a huge amount of food. And I remember sitting in my apartment in New York and I would order, there was this delicious Turkish place that had some zucchini stuff, and lamb, and chicken, and spanakopita, spinach pies. And I remember just shoving boatloads of food in my face, and then also drinking a few bottles of red wine and topping it off with vodka.

Chris Scott: Now what happens when you do that, and this is mostly for the people that tend to gain weight while drinking, is that the alcohol tells your liver to shut down the processing of anything else. This is an emergency. We have to get rid of this toxin. So it can't assist with fat burning and you need a functional liver in order to burn fat. So when you're eating food, I actually had a semi-famous bodybuilder tell me this once, in Las Vegas of all places, before I quit drinking. He said anytime you eat anything with alcohol, that stuff gets turned into fat. Of course, I'm skeptical of anything else he said. He told me that he didn't eat any carbs for 10 years and that turned out to be a lie. But that's actually pretty accurate.

Chris Scott: Most of what you eat, while drinking, is going to end up as fat. The more you drink, the more fat you're going to end up with, because the longer it's going to take your liver to process that. So that, accumulatively over time, if you're eating and drinking and eating and drinking, you're going to gain weight. And if you're just drinking and drinking and drinking and drinking, you're going to lose weight, but you're losing that quality muscle mass that you need in order to sustain a high metabolism.

Chris Scott: So a lot of people wonder like, "Why do I gain weight after I quit drinking?" And a few things could be going on, but it really depends which of those drinkers you are. The skinny fat drinker, or the person that's consuming 90%, or at least a way too high of a proportion of their calories as alcohol is going to gain weight because their body needs to gain weight. And it's actually, you should probably gain weight.

Chris Scott: Now, the person that is already overweight might also gain weight, which I attribute to... And I'm not a scientist. I'm not a doctor. But I actually had this phenomenon as well. When I went into detox, I think I weighed, by then, I think I weighed around 235, which I should not weigh 235. But the most I ever weighed when I drank was 253. I had lost some weight because I was depressed about a breakup. And I started becoming that person who was drinking a lot of his calories, maybe the majority, by the time I quit. So I'd lost a little bit of weight, but I still shouldn't have been that weight. I ended up gaining 10 pounds in the first month of actually no, in the first like two weeks after I quit. It didn't make any sense.

Chris Scott: Because my skin was starting to look a little bit better, which wasn't hard to do. I was at a low point. My eyes stopped being blood red and yellow or whatever they were. The whites of my eyes started reappearing and yet I was bloated. And the only thing that I can attribute that to, which I've seen in various clients since then, is that I was chronically dehydrated when I was drinking all the time. And so when I stopped drinking, my body may have gone into emergency water retention mode. And said like this, idiot's going to go back to that so we need to hoard water because we've been without water. Because alcohol is an extreme diuretic. And that's why you break the seal. You keep peeing.

Chris Scott: And then the next day you have to drink like two gallons of water and you're still thirsty. Your electrolytes are off. It's flushing out the electrolytes and the minerals that you need to retain water where you need it in your brain and in your muscles and in your organs. So my theory is that for a period of time, the body doesn't believe that you've actually quit drinking. It's holding onto water to kind of replenish itself from the damage you did and the dehydrated state you were in. And then at some point it realizes, if you keep it up and this is a good incentive for people who are interested in quitting drinking and keeping the weight off, if you keep it up, the body seems to realize like, "Oh, we're actually not doing that anymore." And you kind of flush out the water.

Chris Scott: There are things that can help with that. Electrolytes can help with that because if you have sufficient electrolyte levels, then your body doesn't need to hoard water. And this is, again, this is anecdotal. This is my experience. I really believe this, but I'm not a scientist who did a study. There may be studies on it. I haven't checked in the last like six months probably. But also with my clients, it seems that electrolytes, replenishing electrolytes, and there are all sorts of electrolyte products out there. A popular one now is I think... What's it called? It's something IV. I haven't taken that. But all of my training partners at MMA do. I've taken the Nuun, N-U-U-N, I think is what it's called at Whole Foods. And then there's a keto electrolyte powder that I really like called K1000 or something like that. But electrolytes very important after quitting to rehydrate and hopefully not retain too much water.

Chris Scott: So the point is don't be alarmed if you gain weight after you quit, because often it's a water balance problem. It's a water retention problem. But the more important thing is that you're fixing your metabolism. So the long term balance is going to be found in maximizing the proportion of lean body body weight that you do have, because the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolism. That's why exercise and working out my little pass routine, my pushups, my air squats, eventually when I could handle it, hex bar deadlifts were huge for me.

Chris Scott: I actually just had a friend recently who started doing hex bar deadlifts at the age of 35. And he's done them for maybe a few months. He's increased somewhere between 50 and 80 pounds from his baseline when he started. And he said, "I know you've been telling me this for years, but I feel like superhuman for the entire day after I do it. And my physique looks better. And I'm hungrier. And it seems that my testosterone levels are higher. My wife's happier with me." All sorts of great benefits from doing this profoundly muscle boosting, and bone density boosting, and metabolism boosting exercise.

Chris Scott: As they often say, intensity is the most important thing, which I really believe it's, I think there's a place for walking. There's a place for slow yoga. There's a place for jogging. There's a place for riding horses. Whatever people want to do for sure. But as far as a healthy metabolism, long term, it's two things, diet and intense workouts. And of course that's a relative term. If you're 95, your intensity is a different thing than it is if you're 25. And it also depends on whether you have health conditions. So people with high blood pressure should probably be careful about doing really intense workouts, especially if you have a heart problem. So again, everyone's different. Biochemical uniqueness is huge.

Chris Scott: But generally speaking, if you quit drinking, if you notice that you're gaining weight ask yourself what kind of drinker were you? Were you the type that were, that you had almost all of your calories from alcohol? Well, then you should be gaining weight. And you can really do the same thing that you would if you were the kind of drinker that ate a bunch of food and gained fat while drinking, which is stay off the alcohol, use the fat loss, and the muscle increase, which will happen if you stay the course, as an incentive to do exactly that.

Chris Scott: Restore your sleep. It's really hard to lose weight, to lose fat if you're not sleeping. I notice myself that periods where, especially if I had been traveling for a while and my sleep schedule is messed up, then I tend to gain fat. It's almost like independently of my diet. If I start getting five, six hours of sleep instead of seven, eight, or nine, I will... I don't know whether it's water retention from maybe stress or fat, but it seems to be fat a lot of the time. So sleep is super important.

Chris Scott: Exercise is super important. And then diet is a whole nother issue that I think we should figure out in a different podcast. But suffice to say, cut out the processed foods. Don't switch from alcohol to sugar when you do quit, because that's often what's happening in those AA meetings or places in recovery centers where people are switching from alcohol, the highly refined sugar to fructose or other somewhat refined, very refined still. But alcohol's like the ultimate high refined sugar. It gets absorbed very quickly. It goes right to the brain as well. And if the body can't get that, it's next favorite thing, it's going to be something like a Popsicle or Smarties or a donut or coffee with like a cup of sugar dumped in it. So avoid that temptation, if you can. Use amino acids like glutamine to help your sugar cravings. It really helps.

Chris Scott: And yeah, just stay the course. Because the best kind of fat loss is a long term balance one, it's not a crash diet one. I tend to do reset, like 30 day resets, but really what those do for me is help me sustain myself long term. It's like a correction period. So today I actually just started a 30 day paleo, with one once a week cheat meals. It's going to be at a restaurant, most likely. Places where I can say, "All right, I've done well this week. I'm going to reward myself." Similar to my Sunday cheat meals that I did right after I, when I was in my first year after quitting drinking. So I'm a fan of having some kind of balance there. But I will use that 30 days of paleo to get where I want to be, and then say, "All right, how much do I really miss eating bread or rice or whatever." And then I can think about it in terms of a logical trade off.

Chris Scott: I'm not forbidding myself forever to have something. I can do anything for 30 days. But it helps me realize, the last time, actually, the first time I did paleo, I think I visited you. And I was shocked by how much I didn't really miss carbs by the end of it. And I could, I honestly, I think I wrote down in my little, I have a notepad. I don't want to call it a journal, because most of it's like bullet points, and plans, and strategies. That's how my mind works. And but I wrote down I authentically genuinely value feeling good and clear minded, and not craving a meal like it's an emergency more than I enjoy eating donuts if they're around. Or putting sugar in stuff. And I, to this day, I don't have sugar cravings.

Chris Scott: If I eat bread it's because I'm not thinking. And every now and then, if I eat bread, it's because someone made it for me and it's homemade sourdough. I had a friend do that a few weeks ago. That was actually a family friend and I had no shame about doing that. That's fine. But if I'm out at a place and, if I'm at a cocktail party and I'm drinking my club soda with lime, if I find myself eating the crackers for no reason, like, "All right, maybe it's time for a little reset here."

Matt Finch: Yeah, love it. You just reminded me too, by talking about all that stuff. The last time I quit, which was a little over 10 years ago, the first month, the first approximately 30 days, here was my breakfast every day: a couple of Valium, one or two donuts from the OB Donut Shop that was right down the street from the home. Delicious donuts. I'd get a big, huge cinnamon donut. I'd get a large cone of coffee with a bunch of cream and sugar in it. And that was after I popped some Valiums, smoked some Camel crush cigarettes. So you could have a regular cigarette full flavor, or you could crush it right here where you put your mouth on it. You could crush it first, and that turns it into a menthol. So for the whole morning I was val... and I was going through opioid, alcohol, and benzo withdrawal.

Matt Finch: So short term that actually helped for me and I was super skinny. I wasn't worried about gaining weight. I was wanting to gain some weight. But after maybe two months of, about a month of that breakfast, and I got off Valium, and I stopped eating so much junk, but I still was eating some junk. I noticed that I was getting that skinny fat look that you said. Skinny arms, skinny face for the most part, maybe a little bit of double chin, just tiny amount, skinny legs. But I had a nice little pudgy stomach. It wasn't like huge. And so that's when I felt, "Okay, I'm through the post-acute withdrawals. I don't feel like I'm withdrawing anymore." Then I went and got a gym membership, started surfing again.

Matt Finch: And I was like in such the mode of rigorous working out, fucking five to six days a week, sometimes seven. With a super fast metabolism and all the cardio that I was doing and non cardio, like what's a anabolic, aerobic and anaerobic. There we go. Both aerobic and anaerobic. I was eating so much, it was a hassle. And this happened many times in my life, too. My metabolism and amount of high intensity exercise, whether it was at the gym or skateboarding, bike riding, in the ocean, all these different, wonderful things I like to do. I was never satisfied. I'd eat a huge meal, giant meal, then like an hour or two later, I'd start getting hungry again. So it was expensive. It's bad for your teeth to be eating like six to eight times a day. Because then you can't brush your teeth six to eight times a day unless you're super obsessive about it, which I wasn't. So yeah, this last time, at least for me not giving a shit about diet, at least until the bad withdrawals were over, worked really well for me.

Matt Finch: But then some people, a lot of people their addiction's nowhere severe as mine. They want to quit drinking. Maybe they're even drinking daily, but it's like a bottle of wine a day or something. They're probably not going to need to take a bunch of Valiums and eat donuts and cigarettes. And of course I didn't need that stuff either, but it was a really good short term strategy for me to alleviate the most severe heroin withdrawal symptoms. That was the main thing that I was suffering from. And electrolytes are amazing.

Matt Finch: Here's something, I don't know if I've mentioned either. People that are on SSRIs, a lot of the SSRI drugs super deplete people's electrolytes and most people don't know this. So simply taking a really good electrolyte supplement or maybe you have stuff at your home that's just Whole Foods or something, like some lemon juice and some sea salt first thing in the morning in a big glass of water.

Matt Finch: I like this company called Dr. Berg's. Dr. Bergs, I think it's just called electrolyte, but Dr. Berg has a great electrolyte powder. It's lemon lime. I've been out for a while. So I've been doing lemon juice with the sea salt that I just said. Additionally, green powders. So the first green drink powder I ever took was a long time ago, maybe eight years ago, nine years ago probably actually. And it was a supplement called pure MSM energy greens. And it was Tony Robbins' company. A lot of people don't know that he's got a supplement company too. That stuff made my weight better. It made my appetite lower. It made my junk food, sugar, fat cravings go way down, gave me more energy and focus. They changed the formula a few years ago though. And I didn't like it at all.

Matt Finch: I think they took the MSM out and it was like a different mixture of greens. But anyways, there's a lot of different high quality green powder things. Right now I'm using HealthForce. It's called Vitamineral Green. And also Spirulina, Hawaiian Spirulina. So I drink those almost every single day. I'll have a tablespoon of the pure, of the Vitamineral Green. When I can, when I'm feeling like extra spendy and getting lots of great supplements, I'll get Dragon Herbs' Tonic Alchemy, which you've used a lot of the time too. And then like I said, the Spirulina. So these green powders, when you just mix them with water, you could put a teaspoon in. Or if you don't like the taste, you could put like a quarter teaspoon in each glass of water that you drink throughout the day.

Matt Finch: When I was a counselor, a substance abuse counselor, when I first learned about the green drink stuff, I'd get that Tony Robbins' supplement I was talking about. I'd get a huge water bottle that I'd take to work with me for an eight hour shift plus the 30 minute lunch break. And I'd put a few teaspoons in there. And then each time I took a sip, I'd just shake it up first. And that really helped me to, like I said, lowered my appetite because I was getting such great alkaline, alkalinity, high density micronutrients, to where I was getting all these like trace minerals and phytochemicals and antioxidants and so many different micronutrients. Plus the alkalinity, the greener something is the more alkaline the food is.

Matt Finch: One of the most acidic things, alcohol. I gag just thinking about it, alcohol coffee, soda, meat, cheese, white bread. So whenever I'm eating meat, I typically like to also have some greens with it, whether it's avocado or a salad. Like the other night, I had this delicious meal with rotisserie chicken and this big, huge, delicious salad to kind of offset the acidity of the meat. So anyways, alcohol is super acidic. Soda, coffee, those things I was saying. One of the fastest ways to increase alkalinity, and increase weight loss, weight management, energy focus, and reduce food cravings is, like I was saying, those green powders. So oftentimes in the morning, almost always, I'll have a big shake and it's got lots of green powders in there and it's got other powders too. All these high micronutrients. It's got low calories regarding the fruit, and the water, and the olive oil or coconut oil.

Matt Finch: So that's another good strategy starting off the morning with the high powered, super high micronutrient shake. That's low in calories, but it's got good protein in there, and some good fat, little bit of carbs. Since I started to do that, like religiously basically, in combination with a few other things, I no longer get sweet cravings. And I'm like full admitting here that for most of my life I had a sweet tooth and it would drive me nuts. But now I don't have a sweet tooth and I haven't had a sweet, sweet tooth for quite some time. It's been at least six months, eight months.

Matt Finch: Like at nighttime, especially I used to always need dessert. Even if it was something small, I would often want to have some type of dessert after dinner. I'm freed from that obsession now. And as a result, it's easier to... Like I'm 42, I'm going to be 43 in two months. And I have a nice thin belly, like the beginnings of a six pack at age almost 43 years old. And so that's like pretty hard to do for a lot of people. I'll shut up now.

Chris Scott: Right. No, I think just a couple things in conclusion here before we wrap this up. I think one of the things that should be pointed out is that you and I have done a lot of optimization as far as amino acids, the basics really. Nutrients that have been shown to be useful for alcohol recovery and stabilizing brain function. That helps to reduce the impulsivity and the craving propensity that people have for alcohol or for sweets, if they've switched to sugar. So the first step for anyone logically is to rebalance your brain using supplements and using lifestyle strategies. It's not all supplements. This is stuff we talk about all the time on the podcast, and in the course Total Alcohol Recovery 2.0.

Chris Scott: How do you get back to the basics? And how do you balance yourself such that you can go through life feeling Zen, feeling optimized? Not having a bleak sense of life as if you're struggling with a disease with many different heads, whether it's the alcohol trying to bite you or the sugar trying to bite you or the weight gain trying to bite you. It doesn't have to be like that. And the most important thing is to balance your brain chemistry, which can be done.

Chris Scott: And then also I wanted to mention a few things that I think about now that I'm in either in maintenance or optimization mode. Or, as Tony Robbins would say, like continuous and never ending improvement, I think is what he says. I like to tinker with a few different strategies when I want to cut down a little bit. The first is my eating window. So if I've been eating first thing when I wake up or right before bed, if I get into a routine with that, which actually negatively affects my sleep, if I eat too close to bed. I found I can almost get a hangover. I used to be able to eat an entire pizza from Papa John's back, even maybe at the age of like 28, I could do that. And right before bed and I'd wake up feeling fine.

Chris Scott: If I did that now I would feel like I had five beers or something. So eating not close to bed is really good. Going to bed slightly hungry is something that I will, it's not fun, but you kind of get used to it. And you definitely, it helps the leading out process. So that doesn't mean starving yourself and going to bed starving. But you go to bed feeling a little, just slightly hungry, you're going to get over it. The funniest thing is that you tend to wake up, not hungry. So it's like, "What was that?" Then you realize it's just your body sending signals that aren't always valid. And that's an indication that you're doing some kind of portion control or you're not having so many calories that it's going to find it impossible to put on weight.

Chris Scott: I typically like to eat within the hours of about, well recently it's been like 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM. And that shifts sometimes. I like to have an eight hour window of eating, generally speaking. So sometimes it's noon to 8:00 PM. It's very rarely before 10:00 AM. I used to be the kind of kid, when I was in school, where I had to eat first thing in the morning and I needed, I was like passing out by lunchtime from hyperglycemia, because I was starving. Nowadays, [inaudible 00:28:31] amazing. I wake up, and I get all sorts of stuff done, and I don't eat until hours after I've gotten up, and I feel great. And part of it's the supplements. I'll use things like L-tyrosine, an amino acid that's very useful for alcohol recovery generally. But sometimes for a little mental focus, just a natural precursor for dopamine.

Chris Scott: And then there are some supplements that I will use in cycles, if I'm trying to cut... I'm a fan of green tea extract. You don't-

Matt Finch: [inaudible 00:28:59] you just read my mind.

Chris Scott: Green tea extract and... Can you remind me what's the catechin [inaudible 00:29:04] or the... Is it EGCG? Or is it-

Matt Finch: EGCG.

Chris Scott: EGCG. You don't want to have more than it's either 400 or 800 milligrams per day. Studies have found if you exceed a certain amount, you can get liver damage, which is not what you want, especially if you just quit drinking. I've never taken more than 200 milligrams. i tend to be a lightweight with certain things and the brand I use, I forget what it's called, but it also has caffeine anhydrous in it, which would just be, it's just pure caffeine. For some reason, studies have found that caffeine in coffee, even though coffee can be good for you, it's also not good for everyone, but certain people benefit from coffee. There's high antioxidants, et cetera.

Chris Scott: But it doesn't promote fat burning. For reasons, maybe it's canceled out by other alkaloids in the coffee. Whereas caffeine anhydrous seems to be better for pure fat burning. So you might want to consider that if you get all of your caffeine from coffee and you're trying to lose fat. You can also get it from tea, you can drink green tea and get some caffeine as well. And I'm also a fan of yohimbine, which is something that, and that's... It's yohimbine or yohimbine. It's-

Matt Finch: Yohimbine.

Chris Scott: Yohimbine, that's right. Y-O-H-I-M-B-I-N-E. I actually, again, being a lightweight, I got a five milligram, dosage of five milligrams per capsule. And I just ordered a two and a half milligrams because I get a little bit too fidgety when I have it. But apparently it helps with burning belly fat in particular. It binds to some receptors that makes it easier for fat stores in the midsection to actually get burned. There are biochemical reasons why your body doesn't want to get rid of them, but it can help with that. And so again, these are things that not everyone needs them. And again, start with the basics, but some people might benefit. You know, I'm not trying to look like a bodybuilder. I'm not. If I were, I would just go get shots of testosterone and I would take Clenbuterol or selective antigen receptor modulators or whatever. I'm familiar with all of these things. I've never, by the way, had taken any steroids. I get asked that a lot. But no, it's the heavy deadlifts in my twenties combined with just the basics.

Chris Scott: And now I'm in my mid-thirties and it is harder for me to keep a six pack. And I don't that I have one now, technically. If I have one kind of peeking through, but I know that for me, if I were to take some of the harsher substances, A, I would feel misaligned and, B, I would probably get like nervous. I don't love the way harsh things make me feel. I can barely handle most prescription drugs when they're prescribed. And so there are risks to taking certain things.

Chris Scott: But then again, I don't judge anyone who does, and I have good friends who take all of those things. And if they're listening, just that's your life. This is mine. So there are always shortcuts to get where we want, but it often ends up being the case that the shortcuts come with the trade off. And you may or may not like that trade off. I like feeling Zen. I like feeling my best. I don't like feeling wired in order to look optimal. I would rather feel as optimal as I can, or I'd rather look as optimal as I can while feeling Zen, and centered, and grounded, and not putting my health at risk, either in the direction of alcohol or in the direction of using potentially harsh or dangerous things to look a certain way.

Chris Scott: Hey everyone, Chris Scott here. If you like the information on today's episode regarding supplementation and empowerment strategies for addiction recovery, then please subscribe to the Elevation Recovery podcast and leave us a rating and review on iTunes. And if you benefited directly from this information, I'm confident in saying that you'll love the information packed online courses that Matt Finch and I have created. Matt Finch's Ultimate Opiate Detox 4.0 is a six module, 30 activity course that contains video lessons, written lessons, PDF downloads, worksheets, audios, and much more. And it has everything you could possibly need to know to conquer opioid addiction in the easiest and most comfortable way possible.

Chris Scott: My own course, Total Alcohol Recovery 2.0, is the most cutting edge resource for anyone who wants to transcend alcohol and build their best lives. To get these courses, to learn more, and to read testimonials, simply go to opiateaddictionsupport.com/ultimate. Again that's opiateaddictionsupport.com/ultimate for Matt's course. Or, for my course, go to fit-recovery.com/course. Again, that's fit-recovery.com/course. You can also go to elevationrecovery.com to see the show notes for this episode.