One of the hardest things while quitting alcohol is socializing with people drinking. These situations can be high-risk and uncomfortable for a number of reasons. Additionally, the discomfort in your own skin from being sober combined with people asking questions about why you’re not drinking can be stressful and difficult to navigate… especially if these aren’t planned for.
For example, here are common questions others that are drinking ask when you’re not joining in the social alcohol intoxication:
- “What are you drinking?”
- “Why aren’t you drinking?”
- “Are you an alcoholic or something?”
- “Why can’t you have just a drink or two like we’re doing?”
This is a mega-helpful episode on what to do, think, say, and plan to take a successful break from drinking alcohol without being noticed.
Links to Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Here are some ways to learn from this episode:
- Listen to the audio
- Read the transcript
- Right-click here and save as to download this episode on your computer.
Transcript on How to Take a Break From Drinking Alcohol Without Being Noticed
Chris Scott:
People would say dependent personality types that have a fundamental or a burning need to conform to what other people are doing, whether that’s conscious or not, might find it more difficult to be the odd person out or so it would seem at an event and be the person who’s not drinking, and I think really the best thing to do is come up with a reason that is valid that you feel comfortable talking about.
Matt Finch:
If you haven’t practiced for things like this and planned for it, all of a sudden you could be having a shitty day, you don’t want to drink, somebody hands you an alcoholic beverage without even asking you, then all of a sudden, it’s in your hand. So, unless you plan for these and prepare for these, they can take you out. Boom, taken out, then you got to quit again. Boom, then you’re drinking again.
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 277. My name’s Matt Finch, and I’m joined here with Papaya and Chris Scott. Today, we’ve got a very time relevant topic now that it’s officially summer and the weather is better. It’s been gorgeous weather out here. A lot of people doing things outdoors, a lot more people getting together than previously. So, what do you think about this, how to take a break from drinking alcohol without being noticed. So, for example, when I used to try to quit drinking, usually it was only a few days or maybe a week or two. When I stopped drinking, I was still going to bars back then, I was still going to parties, I was still hanging out with a bunch of people that drank. So, commonly, not only was I at events and places where everyone else was drinking, but I would commonly get asked questions. What are you drinking? Why aren’t you drinking alcohol? Well, if you’re not drinking alcohol, what are you drinking? Why aren’t you drinking alcohol, are you an alcoholic? So, it was like put me into these high risk, also uncomfortable situations.
Matt Finch:
So, one thing that people can do is whether you want to quit drinking long term, forever, one day at a time, or just take a break from drinking alcohol, then you want to do that incognito more inconspicuously. You want to be a non-drinker and you want to also go hang out with people and do things where people are drinking, but you want to be incognito about it. You don’t want to be like the sober alcoholic and recovery kind of only sober person there. You want to be more incognito, so where people aren’t asking you questions about it, or if they are asking you questions, how come you’re not drinking, you have good responses, how to also navigate refusal skills to where if you’re trying to stay sober from alcohol and have to have proactive strategic plans, and even down to phrases that you have memorized and rehearsed and written out.
Matt Finch:
That way, you don’t find yourself in a situation to where you have a goal of continuing to not drink, but then all of a sudden, you’re at a barbecue and somebody busts out a bottle of tequila, and they pour a bunch of people tequila shots, and somebody hands you a shot at tequila to do a group shot, or you go out to a dinner party with some friends and family. Soon as you come into the party, there’s already a bunch of other people there. Somebody says, “Hi, haven’t seen you in so long. Here, have a beer.” They reach into the cooler or they reach into the wine counter and they pour you a drink.
Matt Finch:
So, these types of things definitely happen. We’re going to talk about how to prepare for situations like this, and then also how to refuse alcohol, how to turn it down, how to answer people’s questions in a way where it’s not where you’re not doing self-disclosure, where you’re broadcasting, “I’m an alcoholic and I’m in recovery,” and this, that, and the other, because frankly, unless you want that to be other people’s business, it’s none of their business. It’s none of their business unless you make it. So, anyways, that was a kind of long-winded way of telling you that the topic is how to take a break from alcohol or how to stay quit drinking without a bunch of people knowing about it. For example, a client that I have right now, they recently had a business, a work dinner business meeting type thing, and we had a phone call, strategy call to plan for how he’s going to navigate this boozy work dinner without drinking and with also without being uncomfortable, without being the odd person that’s not drinking and being uncomfortable about it.
Matt Finch:
So, anyways, this happens a lot. It’s a really good skill to learn, and most people don’t have this skill. Most people just want to quit drinking or they even quit, but they don’t have these strategic plans and systems in place for when these types of higher risk situation, people, and events are all of a sudden in their present moment. It’s like oh crap. If you haven’t practiced for things like this and planned for it, all of a sudden, you could be having a shitty day, you don’t want to drink, somebody hands you an alcoholic beverage without even asking you, then all of a sudden, it’s in your hand. So, unless you plan for these and prepare for these, they can take you out. Boom, taken out, then you got to quit again. Boom, then you’re drinking again. So, anyways, yeah, I’ll shut up. What do you think about this topic, Chris?
Chris Scott:
Yeah, there’s a lot I can say about this topic because I remember probably two or three years before I quit drinking. So, this would’ve been back in, it was 2014 when I had my whole catastrophic downfall followed by renaissance personally that I tried to go to a party, probably in 2011, 2012, and I had brought a six-pack of diet root beer of all things to a party filled with people who I had known for quite a while. They knew that I loved drinking, and I decided that I was sick of how alcohol made me feel. I didn’t understand the biochemistry of alcohol. I didn’t understand anything that we talk about on this podcast.
Chris Scott:
All I knew was that I was going to try to take a break. I was white-knuckling, and I was shaking, I had a cold sweat, and here I am going to this get together where everyone else seemed loose and warm and joking around effortlessly, and they’re already a couple drinks in, and the reality of the situation was that no one wanted me to drink more than I wanted to drink by a mile, I’m sure that was the case. It was hosted by a very nice couple who would soon get engaged, great people, all around wholesome people, but they liked to party a bit, and the girl opened the door and looked at my six-pack of root beer and laughed, and turned around and handed me a six-pack, and took my six-pack of root beer before I even got in the door. So, I started drinking beer.
Chris Scott:
Now, so at the time, I concluded it’s impossible to not drink. You can’t go somewhere socially and not drink. It just can’t be done. People are going to make you drink, and obviously that’s a limiting belief, and it had to do with my identity at the time, and not just my identity as someone who really wanted to drink and didn’t understand what I was doing and didn’t have a plan, but the identity that I had forged for myself in that social crew which was the heavy drinker. I needed time away from that crew for a while.
Chris Scott:
In full disclosure, I’ve been able to hang out with these people since then. They know that I’ve had a transformation. They’re cool with it. No one’s ever tried to make me drink. I don’t blame her for doing that. I don’t blame her for thinking that it’s funny that I, of all people, would show up without alcohol, and in fact, and it’s kind of customary to bring something to a party. It doesn’t have to be alcohol, but I showed up selfishly with a six-pack of root beer for myself that I was going to try to white-knuckle myself through, and that was a stupid non-plan that didn’t end up working out, and I had confused other people and I had confused myself.
Chris Scott:
It didn’t become clear to me until much later that I could have gone about it in a different way if I really wanted to take a break. Obviously, if I wanted to make it easier upon myself, I would’ve had a full-fledged plan involving nutrient repair and exercise before social events so I could release natural endorphins and strategies to help myself sleep so that I’d actually feel good or at least have a fighting chance of feeling good without alcohol during that early withdrawal-prone stage or post-acute withdrawal-prone stage. I didn’t know any of that, and I didn’t necessarily need that at that time. I didn’t have terrible withdrawals. It wasn’t like seizures and hallucinations. It was more like feeling bummed out, having a cold sweat, little bit of shakiness in the hands.
Chris Scott:
What I could have done was come up with a reason that people can understand within this group-created identity of myself as the heavy drinker. Like, “Chris, why aren’t you drinking?” that’s a valid question for me at that point in my life from people who do care about me, but see me as the party guy. I could have said, “I’ve started working out in the mornings and I feel like utter crap,” or I could have said… And of course, I don’t want to feel like crap in my morning workouts, and people who actually care about you will not press you to feel like crap, will not press you to do something that will make you not feel good.
Chris Scott:
I could have said, and maybe this is a semi-white lie, which I’m not a fan of, but not really, I could say that every time I drink, I get terrible physical symptoms all of a sudden. I don’t know what they are. I get headaches. I get cold sweats. I can’t sleep. It disrupts my sleep. All of those things were true. They wouldn’t understand that that’s from withdrawal rather than from drinking, but I’m not obligated to tell them about the timeline there. It is the alcohol creating all of those terrible withdrawal symptoms. I don’t want to go through withdrawal. So, I could just say, “All of a sudden, I have these issues that pop up when I drink, so I’m just taking a break.” That’s a perfectly valid thing. You’d kind of have to be a monstrous person to keep pressing someone to drink when it’s going to have catastrophic physical consequences for them.
Chris Scott:
I know of people who have said that they’re not drinking to support someone else, or there’s a myriad of white lies you could tell, but I feel like it’s actually more empowering to give yourself a reason like, oh, you don’t work out in the morning? Well, why don’t you start working out in the morning? Start working out in the morning and see how you feel if you keep drinking, and it’s not going to be good. So, that can be your new reason to quit. Now, obviously, if someone has severe withdrawal and this is our disclaimer for everything, then seek help first before doing rigorous morning workouts. Don’t go totally cold turkey if you’re drinking a fifth of vodka every night and start a new workout plan. Taper yourself down, avoid social events if you have to, if that’s the case, and by the way, avoiding social events is not a terrible idea if you’re expecting a few difficult weeks. It can actually be relaxing. It’s always best to get some support from confidants, people that you actually trust who have your best interests at heart who know what you’re trying to do.
Chris Scott:
I’ve been very lucky to have some really good friends from high school and from college who I’m still in touch with to this day, one of them just visited for like an entire weekend plus a few days, and he knew about my entire struggle with alcohol and beyond. And so, if you have those people, then they can help keep everyone else at bay. So, it’s kind of like most people have a few close friends and then maybe a bunch of peripheral friends if you’re lucky. I know these days a lot of people are isolated. They might not have any friends at all. I would say if you’re brand new to a social circle, or if you’re considering creating a new group of friends, try to get yourself in order first. Go into that social circle with the identity that you want to have within it, rather than as the person that you are currently, heavy drinking, being kind of
a disaster. You can create a little space for yourself, do some work on yourself, and then present yourself to the world. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Chris Scott:
At this point in my life, I can’t remember the last time I went to an event and someone actually tried to make me drink, and I can’t remember the last time someone asked what I was drinking, and I think, for some reason, that seemed to happen a lot back in like 2014, 2015, and I think it was because I was subconsciously and unknowingly broadcasting the fact that I really wanted, I was craving and I wanted to drink, and I was probably saying things or acting in a certain way, staring at someone’s beer. So, naturally they’re going to say, “Hey, do you want one? You’ve staring at my beer for a minute.” So, if you act in a certain way, if your body language, the things that you’re talking about indicate that you’re in alcohol deprivation, people are going to try to get you to drink for your own, in their perception, your own good, like, “Someone get this guy a drink. He seems like he wants one.” They don’t have the whole story. They’re not necessarily malicious people.
Chris Scott:
But my line after my transformation became, I used to, and this was to people that I felt were genuine and deserved to know something about my life which is not the case with everyone. If someone’s not genuine or they don’t deserve to know about my life, I might not say anything to them. I might smile and walk away. But I would say, “I used to quit,” or sorry, “I used to drink too much so I quit.” That line is pretty simple to understand, and it usually results from a person who’s genuine and not some kind of weird, envious, monstrous person, usually results in them saying, “Wow, congratulations,” or a lot of people would pull me aside and whisper and say, “I wish I could do that. How did you do that?”
Chris Scott:
That was kind of an inspiring epiphany to have that is that there are a lot of people, and I would guess a huge number now post-lockdowns and everything, all the chaos and dislocations that we’ve had societally in the last few years, who are struggling with alcohol and are secret drinkers, a lot of people who go to parties and have one or two glasses of wine, and then they go home and have eight glasses of wine, or they go home and open up a bottle of vodka and watch YouTube videos on repeat or Netflix, five shows and it’s three in the morning, and they’re passed out on the couch with a bottle of wine or vodka or whatever beside them. Maybe that was 10% of the population 10 years ago. If that was the case, and I bet it was actually more then, it’s probably maybe doubled since then. We’re talking a lot of people, and of course, more potentially in big cities where people have been more confined, where there’s been more stress, more panic, more polarization, and more opportunities to drink.
Chris Scott:
When I lived in New York, it was like a giant playground with alcohol as the toy everywhere, and it seemed impossible to quit drinking there. So, it was a good thing that I eventually relocated. Now, I have to drive places, and I go to the gym, I go to yoga, I go to MMA, I go to the harbor to take my jet ski out. So, drinking’s not really an option, but if I lived in a tiny apartment in New York and I’m walking everywhere, I’m walking past cafes and bars and clubs and god knows what, it’s just, it can be overwhelming, and if anyone feels overwhelmed by that temptation then, I totally understand that.
Chris Scott:
But I think it’s all about your perspective and what you really want to do. So, the hardest person to convince is yourself. That’s always the case, and if you subconsciously desire something, other people are going to read that. Now, I’m not saying that people are mind readers, but what I am saying is that if you earnestly commit yourself to a plan and to change, whether it’s for a week or indefinitely, whether you want to take a little break from alcohol and see how it goes, or whether you want to quit forever and you’re ready, then you’re the first person you have to convince, and if you can do that, then other people will naturally follow.
Chris Scott:
I think it might hinge partially on personality type. I’ve always been fine with being independent. I’ve had a slight, it’s not actually slight, it appears slight, but I have a hearing impairment. I’ve had that my entire life, and so it’s made me comfortable with being different from other people. And so, that independent streak really helped me out when I became a non-drinker. It’s like, oh, it’s one more way that I’m apparently different from other people, but that’s been the case my whole life so that’s good, whereas other people, especially people with say dependent personality types that have a fundamental or a burning need to conform to what other people are doing, whether that’s conscious or not, might find it more difficult to be the odd person out, or so it would seem at an event, and be the person who’s not drinking, and I think really the best thing to do is come up with a reason that is valid that you feel comfortable talking about.
Chris Scott:
Also, identify the people that you can tell the whole truth because that’s going to blow off some steam. It’s going to release pressure from your own psyche, get that weight off your shoulders of being somewhere and knowing that you’re committing to something much more serious than anyone knows about potentially. If you have a few people there who understand that, they can kind of keep the hoards at bay, if the hoards are a little rowdy, or trying to get you to play some drinking game, or take shots of tequila, or whatever may be going on. I remember a wedding I went to probably four months after I quit drinking in 2014, and it was all of my college friends lined up at the bar, taking a shot, and I stayed at the table. I remember thinking, “This is a weird test.”
Chris Scott:
I could have gone over there, and I probably should have gone over there and just schmoozed with them with my glass of club soda, my club soda and lime which was my go-to, but I just kind of sat at the table, and some of them were looking at me. Some of them knew the whole story, others probably didn’t that I had just been to literally detox several months prior and that I’d had a tough post-acute withdrawal phase and that I was still figuring out the nutrient repair thing which I didn’t want to begin to try to explain to people. I hate boring people too. I never wanted to be the person who said, “Why aren’t you drinking?” “Oh, well, because there’s a whole new philosophy about how to quit drinking and I’m involved in it.” Blergh.
Chris Scott:
I don’t want to be that guy, tell people about my life story, unless they really want to know, in which case they’re one of my close friends and I wouldn’t be telling them that at some public social event. I would be telling them on the phone, and if they’re interested enough to listen, then they can keep listening on the phone in a private conversation. So, there’s kind of a balance between being a private person and then having a public persona that made it easy for me to keep my momentum going.
Chris Scott:
But I remember sitting at that table and all my friends took a shot at tequila. I remember thinking, “I could cave in and do that, but my best friends there would be very disappointed in me, and the people who I’m peripheral friends with who are kind of acquaintances wouldn’t care either way, and so I’m just going to keep being my independent person.” I looked over, someone toasted his tequila to me while I’m sitting there with my club soda, and I kind of winked and whatever. That was it. No drama. The sun came up the next morning and I felt good. I probably felt much better than they did.
Chris Scott:
So, I kept focusing on the good things, and I did get up and work out the next morning. I don’t think I needed at that point even to have an excuse that I needed to work out in the morning. Although, I do enjoy working out the mornings at group events like weddings that last several days where there’s a golf tournament and a rehearsal dinner and a reception. One of them was on Puerto Rico. It was one of my best friends, but people were boozing the entire time, and I was up in the morning doing sprints on the beach and people were emerging from their villas like, “Ugh,” barely able to see, bloated, puffy faces. Some of them looked fine, but they were probably the ones who naturally walk around with the glass of wine all night and don’t actually drink it, take two sips and leave it somewhere. So, good for them.
Chris Scott:
That’s another strategy, and I’ve actually had some clients who have not wanted to quit drinking completely, but have wanted to master the art of walking around with a glass of wine and kind of leaving it somewhere, and that’s fine too. If you can master that, then do it. You don’t need to worry about what other people think as much as you need to worry about what you think. I think that’s my main message here, but also, I’ve had some clients and former friends who are in sales. Sales can be tough and it’s a whole nother topic. I feel like I could devote a special coaching program for helping people that want to learn how to either moderate their drinking which is not the choice that I made, or to go through that kind of environment with a drink in hand and not get to the point of intoxication.
Chris Scott:
I think it can be done. It depends on your biochemistry being stabilized and your belief systems being overhauled. You have to have the knowledge that you’re walking around with a glass of poison, and that other people are going to drink that poison, and no one’s immune from the toxic effects. It’s not like the people who are so-called alcoholics are the ones that are stuck with the toxic effects and horrible effects and the shame in the morning. No, that’s pretty much everyone. I mean, my friends from college, the ones who still occasionally drink, none of them drink as much as we used to in college, but they will text me in the mornings after they do, once a month or however often it is, and say, and picture of their face, looking terrible, “Drinking sucks. Can you send me your book?” It’s somewhat tongue in cheek, but they’re serious. They’re like, “Alcohol’s so bad. It’s so toxic.”
Chris Scott:
It seemed like maybe when we were 20, we could eat a large pizza from Domino’s after playing beer pong for four hours, but now we can’t, and there’s nothing wrong with getting to the age where you just can’t process alcohol efficiently anymore. I’m sure that would be the case for me. If I tried to drink 10 beers, I don’t think I would be able to do anything for several days. It would probably be a total disaster. But I’ll tell you [inaudible 00:23:17]-
Matt Finch:
You’ll be in the bathroom peeing the whole rest of the day.
Chris Scott:
Yeah. Another trick, and I know I’m kind of all over the place, but our people don’t seem to mind our free flow style at times, I try to let the same things come out of the subconscious that might be useful, and hopefully we do a good job at that, but I’m always double-fisting. Right now, I’m double-fisting. I have a Suja Organics celery juice and lemon juice. This is expensive, but I like it. I was just telling you about some of the benefits that I’ve had for skin and other things, and I also have my Dragon Herbs Tea which is my go-to. I think every time we do a podcast, I have either this and/or a dram and/or a few shots of lemon juice and club soda which is my new go-to at any event.
Chris Scott:
I get a weird look sometimes from the bartender. I’m sure waiters are sometimes disappointed that they’re not going to have an inflated bill from me getting five martinis or whatever, but a couple shots of lemon juice with club soda, or even better, mineral water with a little lemon on the side, it tastes really good if you’ve weaned yourself off of sugar. It’s a great liver detox. So, you’re doing the opposite thing to your liver that everyone else who’s drinking is doing. You’re actually detoxifying your liver. You’re going to make yourself feel amazing before you go to bed and when you wake up. That’s my go-to beverage. The places where I’m a regular, I don’t even have to order it anymore. I sit down and they bring it to me, and it’s cool. That’s my cocktail at the moment. It can always change.
Chris Scott:
But this stuff, I’ve realized, this is the Spring Dragon, Dragon Herbs Tea, and I buy it. I have like an apocalypse stash of this. I have like 20 boxes of this in case I ever run out. Hopefully, I never run out. But in case they stopped producing it, I have it. I realized there’s so many things that you could do if you wanted to walk around and be kind of inconspicuous. Like, here’s a wine glass. If I were to pour some of this stuff into that, I don’t know, it looks kind of like a nice Chardonnay or something, smells like-
Matt Finch:
Looks like Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider.
Chris Scott:
Yeah, not a big deal.
Matt Finch:
Or champagne or something.
Chris Scott:
We’ll make that the thumbnail so we really confuse people.
Matt Finch:
Right?
Chris Scott:
Chris drinking wine on the podcast.
Matt Finch:
Whoa, what’s that?
Chris Scott:
But no, this is Dragon Herbs’ Spring Dragon Tea. It’s delicious. Most of the time, if you walk around with a club soda and lime, people are not going to be asking you why you’re drinking. They might assume it’s vodka. The only times in which you’ll get those questions is if, A, you bring it up, B, your body language is kind of indicating you’re uncomfortable for which alcohol is the socially accepted lubricant and palliative for that issue. And so, most of the time that question doesn’t come from a bad place. It comes from a curious place. It comes from a place of cultural or social norms that might be misinformed, or not even misinformed, but short-sighted.
Chris Scott:
There’s probably a parallel universe somewhere where people sniff lines of coke before they have dinner or whatever. If you’re not doing it, they’re like, “Hey, aren’t you going to snort like a lion? What’s wrong with you?” We would think that that was pretty weird, but I’m sure in that parallel universe, they don’t think it’s weird, and there are people having an identical podcast about why they don’t sniff lines of coke before dinner or at weddings or whatever.
Chris Scott:
So, I mean, at the end of the day, alcohol is a toxin. It’s a poison. It’s not something that’s required by anyone. You have all of the feel-good chemicals that you need in your brain already. You can figure out how to release them. I still, to this day, do a little workout. I’ll do my PAS routine, the pushups, air squats, pushups or planks, air squats or wall sits, and then some stretches, yoga-type stretches, deep nasal breathing, and I’ll do that before I go to some event, especially if I have to give a speech. I ended up giving a spate of a best man speeches or otherwise, like wedding speeches after I quit drinking. I felt like that was kind of a test. I’d given one wedding speech before I quit drinking and I don’t really recall it. So, I’m pretty sure my performance was better after I quit, but I don’t think anyone knew. I did the toast and everything, and I sat down, didn’t drink it.
Chris Scott:
But I had just done a lot of work on myself using obviously my fitness transformation, but neurolinguistic programming, biochemical stability with nutrient repair, finding alternatives that I actually liked to drink, especially when I was home by myself and then my go-to beverages at places, and then yeah, if anyone deserves to know the full story, I have no problem telling them the full story. The most concise way I can tell that is that I used to drink too much so I quit which that’s a story in itself. It’s very abbreviated, but if anyone doesn’t find that to be inspirational, then they might have a problem themselves. Sometimes it’s just best to say, “I have to work out in the morning,” or, “I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”
Chris Scott:
There’s a number of different things that you can say in order to get rid of any potential social anxiety or discomfort that might result from not drinking, and then over time, I always say that you need to accumulate new experiences with a new mindset and preferably a stabilized biochemistry as well, and an increasingly optimized biochemistry and an increasingly optimized mindset. So, as you keep doing this and you keep going places, and as you become the person who’s not known as the hard-drinking person for whom it would be funny if they showed up without alcohol, and it just becomes automatic, and people stop asking. The people who know you know. The people who don’t know you have no idea what’s in your glass and nor do they care because you’re not broadcasting anything.
Matt Finch:
When you think about marketing for alcohol, I’m imagining commercials that have been in on the past and even present day, commercials, magazine ads, big, huge billboards. So, that’s like the official marketing, and then also unofficial marketing where you’re watching a movie or a show, and in this particular movie or show, at a lot of points, they’re drinking alcohol. That’s free marketing for the companies. Now, when it comes to the official marketing, billboards and magazines and commercials, et cetera, if you think about one of those advertisements, one of those marketing pieces, it’s usually good looking people having fun without a care in the world in beautiful weather. So, it brings to mind just all this pleasure and joy and comradery.
Matt Finch:
So, due to our upbringing, anybody that was raised in America, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, there’s so many places where if you were raised there, you have been conditioned, most likely very heavily conditioned to have certain thoughts about alcohol. Here in the United States, going to a party where most people are drinking or a dinner or whatever it is, the event, there are a lot of people that if they see you without a drink in your hand, right, let’s say, everyone’s drinking and you don’t have a drink in your hand. Let’s say that you’ve recently quit, and you’ve also been worried about this particular event. So, you’re kind of worried, “Oh, I don’t want to drink. I hope it goes good.”
Matt Finch:
Number one, you’re putting that out into the universe, and so there’s like this tractor field that brings the experiences that we think about, we tend to experience those in some form in our lives, usually not too long after we think about them. So, number one, you’re magnetizing that experience to you of somebody asking you about why aren’t you drinking. Then, like you were saying earlier as well, as far as the law of attraction, there’s also the body language. If you’re uncomfortable not drinking and it’s an experience for you to make it through, a lot of people are going to pick up on that and they might just ask you, “Hey, why aren’t you drinking?” just because something seems wrong. But the fact that when we’re at an event like this, the fact that we even think about what drink’s in our hand and what other people have in their hands, that just comes down to marketing and conditioning. Like you said, in a parallel universe without alcohol but with cocaine or something, things are totally different.
Matt Finch:
So, when I first would quit drinking, back in the day, I try to quit, usually unsuccessfully, I was like, “Oh man, I’m going to this event,” whether it was a bar or a party or a dinner or a barbecue, so many events where my friends were at and they were drinking. And so, I would go there and sometimes I’d have a Red Bull on the rocks because it looked like an alcoholic beverage. Sometimes I’d do that with a Valium so I’d still get some type of relaxation and high, but sometimes I wouldn’t have a Red Bull on the rocks or anything, and people would ask me, “Hey, why aren’t you drinking?” I came up with all sorts of different answers, but I think the reason that people used to ask me why aren’t you drinking or what are you drinking was because I was attracting those experiences through my energy, and through my thinking, through my body language, my identity, my self-identity of how I thought about myself.
Matt Finch:
Nowadays, people don’t ask me that. I can’t remember the last time someone said, “Hey, why aren’t you drinking?” People just don’t ask me that anymore because I’m not thinking about those experiences and worrying about those potential experiences. I don’t have that body language at these types of dinners, events, parties, barbecues. I don’t have that energy going in there, like, “I hope somebody doesn’t ask me why I don’t have alcoholic beverage in my hand.” It’s been so long by now, it’s just not an issue anymore.
Matt Finch:
But people, you were also saying this too with the personality traits. I even wrote some of these down, the Big Five personality test which has the Big Five personality traits. I learned about this from Dr. Jordan Peterson. I was thinking on this brainstorm how having certain of these characteristics could make it a lot harder for a person to decline if somebody offers them an alcoholic beverage at a function. For instance, agreeableness, agreeableness is cooperative, prosocial behaviors, helping others, altruism, kindness, people that are really high in agreeableness and also if they’re high in neuroticism. Neuroticism is, I wrote that down, emotional, anxious, moody, irritable.
Matt Finch:
So, people that are really, really high neurotic and also high agreeable, if somebody offers them an alcoholic beverage at a party, even if they don’t want to drink, if they’re really neurotic and they’re negative emotionality and they’re super agreeable and they want to make this person happy, hey, I got you this drink, it’s really good. So, they want to be agreeable and they don’t want to be not agreeable, so maybe they just take it and just not to upset the other person to be rude. Then they start drinking it, and then all of a sudden, they can’t stop. People that are more conscientious, that’s strong impulse control, focus on goals, reliability. People with low neuroticism, high conscientiousness and especially low agreeableness, they’re most likely going to have a much easier time than somebody in the former situation with the personality traits.
Matt Finch:
There’s also the four tendencies. People that are typically obligers with their tendency, obligers typically respond to other people’s expectations of them. They do what other people expect. So, if an obliger is at a party or a barbecue and someone hands them a cold beer or something like that, well, an obliger could be more likely to drink the alcohol, even though they didn’t want to, even though they don’t want to than somebody that’s a rebel. Their tendency as a rebel, that’s the opposite of prosocial behaviors and norms.
Matt Finch:
Another thing too has to do with the will and has to do with the hermetic principle, one of the seven hermetic principles. This one is gender, the principle of gender. I think the principles are something like mentalism, these are laws of the universe, mentalism rhythm, cause and effect, vibration, polarity, gender, generation, and I’m forgetting the seventh one. Anyways, not important, but when it comes to mental gender, this doesn’t have to do with sexual organs, but mental gender, specific type of gender of energies, there’s a masculine gender and a female gender.
Matt Finch:
If you imagine somebody that’s got a really strong will, look at a politician. Let’s just take your run of the mill politician. They have a very strong will of describing their political ideologies and ideas, and if they’re trying to get elected, well, they’re trying to impart their will and their way of thinking, and they want other people to be influenced by them. So, let’s say for instance, somebody’s watching the news and this particular politician is speaking. Let’s say the person that’s watching the news at home has a really, really low will of their own. They tend to just look to others to lead them, to influence, to tell them what to think, and so none of these things are good or bad. It’s just the way things are. So, let’s say this one person has a very feminine mental gender to where they look to others for their strength and for leadership. Well, all of a sudden, that person, the politician is enforcing their will on the other person.
Matt Finch:
When it comes to somebody that is committed to quitting drinking, and then let’s say somebody’s got a alcohol-free week, one week alcohol free. Let’s say they go to a barbecue with like 25 people. One week off alcohol, they get to the barbecue, everyone’s drinking there. Now, on one hand, they don’t want to drink. They even told themselves before this barbecue that they’re not going to drink here. But on the other hand, if they’re just a week off alcohol, for most people, there’s one part of them that doesn’t want to drink, there’s another part of them that wants to drink, even if the other part of them is the subconscious. Typically, they wish they could drink, but just drink responsibly.
Matt Finch:
So, now there’s this kind of incongruency, this kind of multiple personality disorder where one part of you is a non-drinker, seven days off alcohol, doesn’t want to drink, another part really wishes you could drink for this example. So, there’s some ambiguity, there’s not a hundred percent conviction and will. So, let’s say this person’s like… Then somebody holds a beer to them, “Here, drink this beer. It’s freezing cold.” And let’s say the person goes, “No, I don’t want to drink that.” Then they go, “Come on. No, you’re at a party.”
Matt Finch:
If the other person has a strong will and they’re handing you a beer and they’ve got a strong… There’s no incongruency with them. They want you to drink alcohol. They haven’t seen you in a year, for this case, and they wanted drink some beer with you. So, they’re really excited about it. All their conviction is to get you to drink this beer, enjoying the beer, fun at the barbecue. Well, this person has a strong will and a very masculine mental gender, the person that committed to not drinking but also a part of them wants to drink, now all of a sudden, maybe the other person overpowers them. A lot of times, the person with the most certainty, the most conviction and certainty ends up influencing the person in the communication with less certainty.
Matt Finch:
So, in this case, this happened to me all the time. I’d go to a bar, I’d go to a party, I’d go to a dinner, I’d go to some type of function, I’d go to a concert, whatever it was, and I would be on a non-drinking little… I’d be on the wagon, but my will wasn’t that strong. It was kind of like, “Yeah, I don’t want to drink. I really wish I could drink, but I’m not going to drink because I can’t control it when I do, but I wish I could join in the fun.” So, it’s not the strong force of will of conviction.
Matt Finch:
So, what happened all the time was people would be like, “Why aren’t you drinking? Oh, here drink this,” kind of like when you went to the party with the six-pack of diet Dr Pepper or whatever it was. You weren’t a hundred percent stoked about and convicted that you wanted to drink that. You would prefer to be able to drink responsibly. So, as soon as one lady came up and she enforced her masculine mental gender, at least in this little meeting, your gender was, “Okay.” Her will overpowered yours because it was so much stronger. She knew without a doubt, no, you’re drinking, and there was a bunch of mixed emotions and mixed feelings and mixed energies within you.
Matt Finch:
That’s why it’s so important to have a plan. So many people will, okay, I’m quitting drinking, they’ll quit drinking. They might have a plan for the first few days, but beyond that, it’s like they’re just kind of living their life and not making plans. These types of situations happen. Unless you want to be a hermit for the rest of your life and don’t hang out with anybody, chances are, there’s going to be situations and experiences and places and events where people are going to be drinking, and unless you have plans for those, at least in early recovery, the more you can plan for these, not just think about it, but write the plan down, rehearse the plan, even if it comes down to running some lines with a friend or spouse or partner or another type of loved one, even a coworker, run some lines.
Matt Finch:
Say, for instance, you’re going to a company dinner. It’s going to be a really boozy company dinner, and you don’t want to drink, but the company you work for is a real boozy, alcohol-loving culture, and you have to go to this dinner, and the CEO’s going to be there. Well, you better come up with a super strategic plan for how you’re going to not drink at this because other people are probably going to be wanting you to drink. That’s several different wills wanting you to drink with them for this example. So, unless you have some type of strategy, plan, conviction and will of your own, it can be… That’s why these are such high risk situations.
Matt Finch:
Imagine yourself running lines like this before you go to one of these company dinners to where you’re sitting there with your wife, and you’re like, “Okay, honey, let’s run some lines.” Okay, so then the wife goes, “Hey, why aren’t you drinking?” Then you have these canned responses that you’ve practiced. So, then you could practice not just writing out a bunch of times what you’re going to say to get it into your nervous system and to get it into your brain and body, but then physically, verbally run lines with somebody, in this case, your wife, and say, “Oh, I feel like iced tea right now,” or whatever the line is, practice, say it a bunch of different times. Then when you go to this function, if the question does come up, why aren’t you drinking, boom, you’ve already rehearsed it a bunch of times, and then out it comes. All you have to do is stick to your lines, and that’s it.
Matt Finch:
I never used to do this, by the way. All this stuff is like, I didn’t have this type of strategies or foresight back then. This is all looking backwards, but I wonder how few people actually do this, and I wonder just how powerful this could be to rehearse lines, to come up… Like this client that I have that we just had a strategy call, his plan was to eat a good meal a couple hours before the dinner. So, it was to eat a good meal so he wasn’t starving when he got there, order appetizers when he got there so he could keep filling himself up because when he’s full, he doesn’t feel like drinking, have a time limit at the end of the dinner. So, preframe it when you get there, “Hey, I have to leave by this certain time and this is why.” That way you’re not some open-ended thing where the dinner could go four, five hours or maybe you go bar hopping after the company dinner.
Matt Finch:
So, there’s so many things you can strategize for the whole day too leading up to… Maybe you take a hot Epsom salt bath right before you’re going on a blind date with somebody that you met on Tinder and you don’t want to drink alcohol, but without alcohol you’ll be nervous. So, maybe you take a hot Epsom salt bath so that really relaxes your parasympathetic nervous system, and then you go meet them at a coffee shop or something. Then let’s say all of a sudden, the date asks you after the coffee or tea, “Hey, you want to go to the bar after this?” And so, if you don’t have a response to that already, if you haven’t already pre-thought of these things and planned for if they come up, what to say, what to do, how to be as far as your energy and your stature, these things can take people out left and right, left and right. So, many people could much more easily quit drinking if they did more of this upfront footwork. Okay, yeah, that’s all I got to say about that.
Chris Scott:
Yeah. No, I think that’s exactly right. I didn’t do a whole lot of preparation beyond fortifying my own will and then coming up with some basic lines. I did do work. I remember thinking to myself when I was in the shower, “How do I tell the people who inquire that I’m not going to be drinking, if they deserve to know that, without spewing my heart out and telling them my life story?” As a private person, I don’t like doing that, and most people don’t want to hear it. It’ll bore them to death anyway, and I settled on that, I used to drink too much so I quit, or I don’t feel like drinking tonight. Either of those things, totally valid.
Chris Scott:
And then, because I built my will up to be so strong during my transformation, it became like a… I would not shy away from a battle of the wills. Someone wants to try to haze me, good luck. What do you want to do? Have an arm wrestling contest? We can go outside. No, we’re adults. No one’s realistically going to try to do that, and if they are, they’re weird.
Chris Scott:
Now I want to correct something I said earlier because I said they’re monstrous if they keep pushing you to drink. That’s not necessarily the case, and I myself, by that definition, would’ve been monstrous back during my drinking years when I used to haze my own friends who I wouldn’t have seen for a while, none of whom, as far as I know, had an issue with alcohol, but all of whom had stressful jobs.
Chris Scott:
I remember once I had a really good friend of mine from college over to a beach house that we were renting, and he showed up, he was the last friend to get there. We’d been partying for several nights in a row, and as soon as he showed up at like four o’clock or whenever it was after we’d been day drinking or whatever, I took him into a room and I poured, probably a glass like this, a big glass full of vodka or something, gin maybe, and I was like, “Drink up.” And he was like, “No, I really don’t, I’m tired. I’ve had all this work stuff. I want to take a little power nap, and then we maybe go to dinner.” I’m like, “No. Drink.”
Chris Scott:
It became like college where it’s kind of funny to haze your friends. We were not in college anymore so it was less funny, and he ended up drinking. I overpowered his will, and this guy, he did not have a weak will. He was captain of the basketball team in college, very successful and bright and confident guy, but I overpowered his will in that instance because everyone knew that I was the drinker, and when I did drink, I could be aggressive. Not necessarily in a physical sense, I didn’t run around getting in fights, but in a sort of comedic caricature of myself way. I could be extremely persuasive. So, was I monstrous? Maybe. Maybe I was monstrous in a way, but I don’t think that I’ve always been a bad person or that I was a bad person when I drank, but now I can look back and say, “Why did I want him to drink?” I wanted him to feel the way that I did which was drunk because I wanted company.
Matt Finch:
The more the merrier.
Chris Scott:
Yeah, I wanted company in my drunk. I didn’t want to be the only guy being really drunk, and that was all there was to it, and I had a-
Matt Finch:
Or get euphoric with as many people as possible being euphoric.
Chris Scott:
Euphoric, yeah.
Matt Finch:
Get euphoric with your friends and have a fucking great time, you know?
Chris Scott:
Exactly. Now, what I didn’t realize is that I could only achieve euphoria with alcohol because I didn’t have any other ways to achieve it. So, there are plenty of ways. I’m euphoric all the time. I mean, last night I did an evening yoga class followed by dinner at a restaurant with a few friends, and I was euphoric a lot of the time, and I came home and I slept great. I don’t need alcohol to do that. I get euphoria out of interacting with people talking about-
Matt Finch:
I’m euphoric talking to you right now in this episode.
Chris Scott:
Yeah, I mean, it’s great. Everything’s great all the time, whereas back then, things were only great when I was drinking, and I didn’t realize the alcohol was giving me a sort of permission to feel euphoric, and also that I had so few endorphins and other feel-good neurotransmitters at the time, thanks to alcohol depleting them. When you drink, you’re spending tomorrow’s neurotransmitters today, tomorrow’s feel good chemicals today that I didn’t know it was possible to feel very good most of the time. All I knew was that it was possible to feel really good when you got hammered, but then of course I reached the point in my alcohol dependence where even getting hammered did not release any feel good chemicals because I had virtually none left and I was a cold bleak, black and white feeling shell of myself, and that was the point at which… That’s ultimately why I quit.
Chris Scott:
I didn’t quit because I had some religious epiphany. I quit because alcohol stopped making me feel good at all no matter how much I drank, and it also stopped working as a withdrawal aid for alcohol withdrawal. So, I was in this circular disastrous state, and hopefully we’ve prevented some people from reaching that point by talking about the biochemistry of alcohol and addiction, and I know that that’s huge for a lot of people. It’s understanding, wow, there are feel good chemicals that I already have in my own brain, and there are raw materials that I need to supplement with if I want to bring myself back into a state of balance.
Chris Scott:
Of course, there’s a synergy there between nutrient repair and lifestyle strategies and self-talk and understanding your window on the world, everything we’ve talked about as it pertains to social situations deals with your perspective, and everything’s about framing. It’s about how you frame yourself and your identity, how you frame the social event, the purpose of the event. If you can’t think of any reason for the event beyond you getting hammered, then you probably shouldn’t go. Take some time off. How do you frame other people, and how you frame your place in whatever that social circle is, and how you frame your relationships with people there? Are you able to feel euphoric talking to some people because of who they are? We all have people who are just, we know people who are really funny and talking to them is euphoria-inducing because they’re hilarious, and every other thing they say is as funny to you, even if it’s subjective, as watching your favorite standup comedian. Those are great people to know. You don’t need alcohol to enjoy those types of people.
Chris Scott:
Then, of course, we all know people who are kind of the opposite, Debbie Downers, and I realized there were some people that I needed to avoid after I quit drinking, and of course, there are people where alcohol would make them seem somewhat interesting because you had tomorrow’s neurotransmitters today in your head floating around. So, you could talk to a stone statue and probably think you were having a great time. But the reality is, if that’s the case, then you may as well be drinking at home because you’re not forging any new bonds with anyone. You probably won’t even remember their names, or if you do, you’re not getting a lot out of that relationship and you’re wasting time associating with and/or finding people who are going to be really fulfilling friends for you or partners or whatever.
Chris Scott:
It’s so much better to go through life with a clear mind and to have intention with everything that you do, rather than floating through life at the mercy of other people’s wills. Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with how willing you are to be somewhat independent. I don’t think that I’ve ever had a dependent mentality or personality type, but as you said, I was clearly the one submitting when I allowed my six-pack of diet root beer, I think it was, to get stolen from me and replaced with a six-pack of beer. But again, that was because of the identity that I had cultivated for myself. I had no one to blame but myself for the fact that it was kind of hilarious that I was showing up without explanation to a party of people who I had drank with hundreds of times or dozens or whatever, with a six pack of diet root beer. It’s kind of funny. There’s nothing monstrous on their part for correcting my error as far as they could tell.
Chris Scott:
And again, after I went through that transformation, people would privately congratulate me, and other people, the more acquaintance types, simply didn’t care, and after a while, after it became a new subconscious autopilot system for me going to these events and not drinking and not even thinking about not drinking, but going to them focusing on people when they talk. That was new for me. Rather than focusing on their shot so I can pretend this is fun or feel like this is fun while I’m not hearing what people are saying and just mindlessly bantering, but focusing on what people are saying, being a good listener, developing charisma beyond alcohol, which is kind of rare, by the way, and also developing an awareness of the fact that you’re not alone if you’re the one who’s not drinking.
Chris Scott:
If you go to a gathering of 25 people, like your hypothetical barbecue, statistically speaking, there are at least two and a half people there, I guess we’ll round it to three because no one’s half a person, and actually, it’s probably higher than that. So, say there’s three or four people there who either have or have had issues with alcohol. So, even in your state of feeling the deprived of alcohol, you’re not alone.
Chris Scott:
Now, some of those people who maybe should not drink, at least for a period of time to rebalance the biochemistry and rewire their brains, they might decide to drink, but do you really feel like you need to join them in the misery tomorrow when you both go back to your separate homes, and unbeknownst to the rest of the world, have four more drinks or alternatively make fools of yourself at the party and end up stumbling out or getting a DUI on the way home. Not to be too drastic, but I’m just pointing out that there are a lot of people with alcohol problems.
Chris Scott:
If you go to a wedding with 200 people, I guarantee you there’s more than a handful of people who are thinking the same thing you are. You don’t need to know who they are. You don’t need to identify them. Although, it [inaudible 00:56:47] to be a thing that after I went through my transformation, they would always seem to find me at parties or at weddings or events, and maybe it was because we had mutual friends or acquaintances and they would kind of tip them beforehand, like, “Hey, this guy has a thing, it’s called Fit Recovery and a podcast called Elevation Recovery.” And so, people sometimes would find out that way, but other times, they would just randomly come up in conversation as a topic, and people would say, “Oh, I actually don’t drink. I see you’re not drinking either.” Then you have a nice conversation with someone else who’s not drinking.
Chris Scott:
So, you never know what’s going to happen at these things, but it’s good to develop and practice the skill of being in control of yourself and your body and your will, and it is much easier to do that when you’re biochemically balanced. It’s not easy to do in a state of panic, and biochemical balance, as we know, we could talk about targeted supplementation all day, but also has a lot to do with the little rituals you have for yourself. Do you have anchors as we would say in NLP? Do you have a meditation mantra that you can use to calm yourself down? Do you meditate in the morning? Do you take Epsom baths? Do you exercise?
Chris Scott:
Exercise is the biggest one for mental balance over time. That’s why I called my website Fit Recovery is because that was the first thing that I understood was promising for me for rewiring my brain, bringing endorphin levels back into balance, and serotonin and dopamine and all of the other things. Of course, we know about exercise induced, what’s it called, hypofrontality, I think it is, where the prefrontal cortex will turn off or turn down the volume similar to when you drink. I’ve gone on long jogs. I’ve had an interesting phenomenon with long cardio sessions, I would almost get somewhat emotional in the same way that I used to at parties when I would be like 20 beers in, where you could feel the prefrontal cortex is turned off, the reptilian brain is activated, all the deep subconscious stuff is activated. You’re not thinking, you’re just feeling. I’m not saying I’m crying while I’m jogging, but it’s more like there are sensations in my brain that I haven’t felt except for when I’ve been in that state, and I’m getting it from cardio and with no negative toxic consequences.
Chris Scott:
So, all of the things that we think we need alcohol to experience, we actually don’t. That’s an illusion, and it’s best to start blowing up those illusions and reframe them through practice, and after a certain amount of time, whatever your routines and your supplements and your personal habits are that you develop into virtuous cycles, as opposed to the vicious cycle of drinking or everything that entails there, as part of your daily routine, the better equipped you’re going to be to deal with social situations again and again and again, and that’s the key. What does Tony Robbins say? The key to changing your states over time and your habits over time, it’s repetition and emotional intensity. If you can get a lot of good experiences without alcohol, that’s how you develop the subconscious autopilot system for not even thinking about the fact that you’re not drinking.
Chris Scott:
To this day, I could have a dinner, I have a wedding to go to, I have a social event, at no point do I even think about the alcohol. It’s not a factor there, and I’m looking forward to actually talking to people and enjoying their company. And then of course, if it ends up being people that I don’t enjoy, I’m not going out with them late. I’m not staying up late. I never go bar hopping. Even if I do enjoy the people, why would I do that? I don’t want to. I feel weird when I stay up till 3:00 in the morning. I don’t like being sleep deprived, but I might go back to my room at an event or a wedding or wherever at 7:30 PM after dinner. If there’s no one I can objectively enjoy, why am I going to waste my time pretending to enjoy people?
Chris Scott:
Maybe you could make a case that’s the one thing alcohol is useful for is giving you the illusion that you’re having a good time when you’re not, but why waste your time lying to yourself or using a compound that’s toxic and poisonous to lie to yourself?
Matt Finch:
Oh, great stuff. I’m glad you brought up the biochemistry to how… Once your nervous system is stabilized, once somebody’s been off alcohol and/or drugs for quite some time, it typically just gets easier and easier. Like you said, repetition is the mother of skill. So, these are things that take practiced, systematic desensitization, then increasing the frequency and the duration of these types of exposure to potentially high-risk situations, people, places, experiences. You also said too one of those Tony Robbins’ sayings that I love is the only way to make the changes you want long term is to raise your standards. Like you were saying, you do that with repetition, emotional intensity.
Matt Finch:
I have a few other things I want to talk about. Number one, I’m just going to throw out a couple of these. So, strategies, we already talked about this stuff, but a little review. Have a game plan written out. So, here’s some actionable tips. Rehearse your game plan to the extent that you can, practice turning down alcohol. If you’re about to go to some type of event that you’re worried about and even if you’re just mildly worried, write out the responses to the questions why aren’t you drinking, or are you drinking, why aren’t you drinking, what are you drinking. All these different questions, come up with a response for each one of these, write it down a bunch of times, and then even role play with someone, or at least say it out loud in front of the mirror.
Matt Finch:
Have a beverage with you if it’s like a barbecue, or if it’s… Obviously, if you’re going out to a dinner at a restaurant, you’re probably not going to bring your own beverage there, but if it’s a place you can bring your own beverage, bring a DRAM Apothecary CBD beverage, or if you’re, like a restaurant or something, order a iced tea, or a Arnold Palmer, or a mocktail, or whatever you want. These are just ideas so you could be more prepared. Self-disclosure, it’s no one’s business what your history with alcohol is. So, if you don’t want to tell people, “Oh, I can’t drink because I’m an alcoholic,” you don’t have to at all. It’s none of their business. If it’s your husband or wife, that’s their business, obviously. But I mean, if it’s just someone that you’re acquaintances with or not that good of friends with or a stranger, yeah, you don’t have to disclose.
Matt Finch:
Here are some of the questions and answers. Why aren’t you drinking, question? Here’s some responses. I don’t feel like it. Iced tea sounds way better. Simple, because I don’t want any right now. First, answer me this, why are you drinking? Turn the tables on them. Here’s another question, what are you drinking? Nunya, nunya business, ha ha ha, or iced tea, or whatever I feel like drinking. Then if somebody asks, “Are you an alcoholic?” then you say in response something like, “Is this an AA meeting or a barbecue?” or, “Is this a therapy session you’re giving me or is this a party we’re at? Why, are you an alcoholic? No, alcoholics go to meetings.”
Chris Scott:
Well, exactly why alcoholics drink.
Matt Finch:
Yeah, right.
Chris Scott:
It can be all sorts of things. I’ve tended towards nonconfrontational things because I’m not trying to start something with someone, not that I would most of the time be in trouble if they did, but it’s usually pretty easy to disarm people like that, and sometimes I feel more facetious, and other times I just feel like giving no-nonsense answers. But I couldn’t help thinking while you were saying that, I don’t want to spoil this for anyone, but the new season, I think the last season of Peaky Blinders which is out on Netflix, and I don’t think this will spoil much, but the main character who’s a flawed person to say the least but a compelling one, a compelling character, Thomas Shelby, and he’s not drinking. He’s I think not had alcohol for four years or something like that, and some guy’s trying to get him to drink at a bar and he beats the crap out of the guy. Yeah, so I’ll let people watch that for themselves.
Matt Finch:
Wow.
Chris Scott:
I had to chuckle because I remember thinking that is a caricature of how I sometimes felt. Now, again, I was not a bootlegger in the 1920. I didn’t live in the 1930s and I didn’t have a little cap with razor blades in it, nor was I a member of a gang, but yeah, I had to laugh at that and I said I have to bring this up in a podcast, but it was because someone was trying to get him to have a drink with him and not in a friendly way. But anyway, I’ll leave it at that.
Matt Finch:
Man, when I was jotting down this brainstorm, I didn’t even think about that. Why aren’t you drinking? Just don’t say anything. Just beat them up. There’s always the one too that I just thought about right now where if somebody asks you why aren’t you drinking, “Oh, you’re not drinking? Why not?” where you just look at them, and then you just walk away. You just kind of look at them, then you just walk away. Make a weird face and just walk away. That’s going to turn the tables on them. They’re going to be like, “Whoa, what the hell?”
Chris Scott:
Well, my thing, I probably unintentionally ignored people who have asked that because I don’t hear well. It’s not obvious in one-on-one interactions, but if there’s a bunch of noise, I’ve almost certainly done that, and I’ll look at someone and often they’ve said something to me but I have no idea. So, it’s kind of nice. I have like a selective hearing. You can pretend that you have a hearing impairment if that helps you. It [inaudible 01:07:05] works for me.
Matt Finch:
Yeah, yeah. Someone says that, you can pretend you didn’t hear them and just walk away, then that’s going to make them feel super uncomfortable, and it’s not like they’re going to ask it again. It’s a stupid fucking question. It’s like it’s none of your business what I’m drinking or why I’m not drinking or whether or not I drink. Are you my girlfriend? What the heck’s going on here? What did you drink this morning when you woke up? Oh, is this a game where we get to play what we like to drink? So, I mean, that’s something that… And then the more your circle of friends and people that you’re with, the more you’re close with them, then it can usually just become a non-issue. Unless, you’re one of those people where you don’t tell even your friends and family that you had a drinking problem. There’s a lot of people like that too. But all these same strategies can work as well.
Matt Finch:
So, let’s check this out. Just a few more things. Here’s how to feel more comfortable at events when you’re planning on not drinking and you don’t want to drink, but other people are going to be drinking. Arrive there on a satisfied stomach with a nice healthy meal of proteins, fat, and carbs. You could bring some capsules of glutamine in your pocket. Take some glutamine powder. You just pop the capsule open underneath your tongue and let that dissolve while you’re there. Another thing you could do is bring liquid L-theanine, put that in your pocket or purse. When you get there, get a non-alcoholic beverage, like a tea or a juice or water or whatever, or bring your own drink, and then lace it up with the L-theanine liquid.
Matt Finch:
Let’s see, other things you could do, take a hot relaxing bath before you arrive somewhere. What some people do is, and I learned this from you, Chris, is there’s a medication called propranolol. It’s something that they give people for stage fright, performance anxiety. I guess it’s like a blocker to where it blocks the norepinephrine. So, what some people could do, for instance, lots of actors, actresses, musicians, people that give speeches, people that if they get nervous speaking or performing in front of a crowd, you could take a PRN. This is a prescription medication. You could talk to your doctor about this if this idea is sounding great. It’s certainly not necessary. This is just a list of all these different strategies.
Matt Finch:
So, we talk about some natural stuff. Say, for instance, you’re going to give the speech, the best man speech at a wedding, but you’ve only been off alcohol for two weeks and you’re nervous. Well, maybe you have a doctor’s prescription for propanolol and you pop one of those before it’s time to get up there and give the speech. It’s probably going to block the norepinephrine from making you fearful, and all of a sudden, you’re calm.
Matt Finch:
There’s also things like, I wrote this down, Ativan and a torpedo sandwich. This is something that I did back in the day. I would take an Ativan or Xanax or a Valium, some type of benzo. This was if I was going to go to an event and didn’t want to drink. This was a game-changer for me. I hardly ever drink after doing this. If I took an Ativan and had a huge torpedo sandwich, just a giant foot-long Italian sub with a bag of chips, ice cold bottle, a really good root beer and an Ativan or two Ativan, or a Xanax or two, or whatever it was, right, then I’d go to this event, and I’d be high on the Valium or the benzo, whatever the benzo was, and I’d be stuffed off this gigantic protein carbs, fat, high calorie meal, then I’d get there, I would’ve no desire to drink. I’m not telling people to go get on benzo.
Chris Scott:
I see the blog headline, Matt Finch recommends benzodiazepine addiction and junk food as cure.
Matt Finch:
No. Researchers at university get grant to study new therapeutic message to quit drinking which is Ativan and torpedo sandwich, a synergistic combination.
Chris Scott:
I will tell you, so Ativan was what I used to detox from alcohol, and it was greatly effective. It’s the only time, besides one other time where I think I borrowed, I borrowed, I took a clonazepam that a friend had the day after I’d been drinking. For that day, it made me not have withdrawal, but it was very effective. Obviously, I was actually aware of the risk of benzodiazepine addiction which is why I didn’t want to keep taking those. If I had not understood that, I think I easily could have slipped into a benzodiazepine habit, but I used propranolol to stop panic attacks in their tracks because I didn’t want to take benzodiazepine because I didn’t really trust myself with substances in early recovery, and propranolol worked really well, as you say, by blocking the epinephrine and keeping your blood pressure from getting elevated. That was it for me.
Chris Scott:
But I can also say there is something to eating something. I think if I had a sub sandwich and a root beer, I would pass out and feel awful for a day, maybe because I’m a fine-tuned machine at this point, but a lot of people find that they have their worst cravings and their worst anxiety symptoms when they have low blood sugar. So, if there’s an event at 8:00 or 9:00 PM and you haven’t eaten since 5:00 or even 6:00, it might be a good idea to eat something, or as you say, bring out glutamine, and make sure you have protein and good fats to stay satiated. We won’t get into keto and other things. People will say they get some euphoria and energy from ketones. That’s a whole nother thing, but for some people, it’s carbs and most people are in a semi or moderate or even extreme carb addicted state.
Chris Scott:
So, if that’s what you need to keep going, then do it, and I will say that I actually, I would let myself have regular soda at events in early recovery because I would get a high from the blood sugar increase. Now, of course, I wouldn’t feel awesome when I was going to bed, but I wouldn’t feel as bad as I would if I drank alcohol. So, there is a bit of a harm reduction strategy or a philosophy that can successfully be used to the point where, I mean, I did things that my former, the AA, 12-step, highly dogmatic types who ran the treatment center that I detoxed, they would be apoplectic if they knew that I’d done this, but I would occasionally stack phenibut. It’s actually from Russia, I think that’s where it was discovered, but I think it’s a GABA B agonist It’s similar to benzodiazepine but slightly different effects in that it is not drowsiness inducing. So, it increases dopamine a little bit and stimulates GABA activity.
Chris Scott:
Now, it can be addictive. People are going to yell at me for even mentioning it, but whatever. I would take a little bit of phenibut, maybe 100 or 200 milligrams, and then I would take some kratom as well which I would bring in a little… The high quality kratom, organic kratom. I would never use anything from a gas station or a sketchy smoke shop, but you get a good company like Top Extracts. You get maybe the white Borneo or the yellow strain, yellow Indo or whatever it is, and have maybe two or three at most grams of kratom, and that’s even, I couldn’t do that now. I don’t think I’ve had kratom in like two years at this point. But at the time, that combination was similar to me as the sensation of alcohol without the toxicity because it’s actually much less toxic than alcohol, both of those compounds, and there was a synergy with them.
Chris Scott:
But I stayed aware, my motto for people who do harm reduction of any kind is respect your brain. So, don’t do things multiple days in a row. Don’t do things on the same day of every week because it could spill over. It’s like every Wednesday, I’m going to get high on kratom and phenibut. That’s a terrible idea because it’s going to be Wednesday and Thursday’s, it’s going to be Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or it’s not going to be but it could. But don’t routinize these things. I don’t know if that’s a word. Don’t turn these things into routines.
Chris Scott:
But I had some success with harm reduction methods that did not involve alcohol but did involve some things that are somewhat frowned upon. Some people find great success using marijuana or THC tinctures or whatever after they quit drinking, and some people don’t and it leads them back to drinking, and I think that’s a combination of an imbalanced biochemistry and a flawed belief system. By flawed, I mean to the extent the subjective beliefs can be wrong. You start developing the belief that now you need marijuana for all of the things that you used to need alcohol for. That’s a belief and that becomes a habit and then can become a dependency. But we would be remiss not to mention the possibility of harm reduction with a wide range of compounds, not including meth or heroin or whatever, but there are [inaudible 01:16:20].
Matt Finch:
An Ativan and a torpedo with some peanut butter and kratom.
Chris Scott:
I’m very averse to benzodiazepines. I’m not saying no one should do it. Phenibut is arguably as dangerous, but for whatever reason, I feel… I don’t think I would ever get to the point myself where I just casually took an Ativan. Phenibut, on the other side, maybe, but I don’t think I’ve had phenibut in like three years at this point. They were kind of like crutches, the kratom and the… Well, the propranolol, the kratom, and the phenibut were occasional crutches that I sometimes used before or during social events in very low dosages because I respected my brain and I don’t regret using them.
Chris Scott:
Now, I would’ve regretted using them if I had let myself use them irresponsibly, or if I had believed the absurd that they say in 12-step centers which is that if you’re addicted to one thing, you’re addicted to everything. If I had really believed that, then I would’ve been doomed once I had tried one of those things, but I didn’t believe it and it’s not true. But it’s really up to everyone, and someone who has a huge amount of neuroinflammation, and are sleep deprived, and they don’t exercise, and they have low will, or weak will, which you can strengthen, but they’re in that state, then they should probably be very cautious about harm reduction methods, period. But that was a little spiel. We can start to wrap it up. It might be our longest ever podcast, actually.
Matt Finch:
I’m glad you brought up harm reduction, and yeah, I only have one or two quick things I want to talk about, but I’m glad you brought up harm reduction too. That’s something that I’m a huge proponent of. What do you think’s easier to do? Let’s say this person, this example, someone’s 30 years old. Let’s say they’ve got a alcohol problem, but they’ve never had any problem with any drugs. They got a pretty strong drinking problem. Maybe they could get diagnosed with moderate alcohol use disorder, but no problems with any other drugs, tried some weed in high school or something and that’s it.
Matt Finch:
Well, what’s going to be the hardest thing for this person, going the rest of their life without any substances ever in a rule, like you can’t have anything else, or what do you think’s going to be easier, quitting drinking one day at a time, rebuilding your biochemistry, your character, your habits, your body, and all that, then six months down the line, a year down the line, then rethinking the situation because there’s a lot of people that can go from severe alcoholism to, after a period of abstinence, can go back to being able to moderate their alcohol use. It’s just not something that people hear about too much because for whatever reason, those people that are able to do that, they’re not writing. There’s not blogs about it and stuff for the most part. Usually all the recovery companies and blogs and YouTube channels and everything, it’s usually ones that are mostly abstinence based or even all abstinence based.
Matt Finch:
So, harm reduction is something that gets a bad rep, but it only gets a bad rep from the people that have fully invested, developed ego investment in the one-path recovery matrix, the kind of only one path to recovery which is total abstinence of all mood-altering, mind-altering, psychoactive substances. So, that is a ideology. Once an alcoholic, you can’t do anything ever again, even if it’s weed or even if it’s this, that, or the other, or somebody that was addicted to opioids, oh you’re quitting opioids, you can’t drink any alcohol. You can’t…
Chris Scott:
That was a weird one. I never understood that one.
Matt Finch:
Right?
Chris Scott:
That didn’t even make sense to me when I was temporarily brainwashed for a week in one of those places that why someone who is shooting up heroin and never had an issue with alcohol suddenly have to start worrying about future alcohol intake. It seemed like added stress.
Matt Finch:
We might as well not eat food then because you can develop food addictions. Hey, you are addicted to opioids, no, you can’t have food.
Chris Scott:
Sex addiction, no more sex. Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.
Matt Finch:
[inaudible 01:20:45] they tell that to food addicts, people that were addicted to food. Oh, now you can’t shoot heroin in the future because you’re in food recovery.
Chris Scott:
Right, yeah. I know people who have quit smoking who have an occasional cigarette. So, that shouldn’t be possible either. Now, of course, that doesn’t mean that some people won’t get re-addicted or get addicted to other things. Of course, people are going to do all kinds of things, but I think we’re looking at the wrong thing. There’s the positing of some universal truth which is obviously not universal. If there’s one person who can moderate, then it blows up the alleged universal truth that no one can. But rather than focus on that, I think we should be focusing on how good can people feel physically and to help them to crowd out negative, repetitive, compulsive habits from invading their lives in the future because then that subconscious trade off in any given moment of should I get hammered right now or should I start drinking beers, should I have a beer at 1:00 PM on a Tuesday during work hours. That doesn’t occur to someone who is balanced physically and mentally.
Chris Scott:
That’s why I feel like the focus should be on attaining balance physically and mentally, and then you get to the point where you and I are at where if someone offered us a Jägerbomb on a Tuesday morning, there’s zero appeal, and in fact it’s almost like a visceral disgust reaction, and I don’t even have to swear off alcohol or opioids or whatever forever. In fact, if I got in a horrible car accident and all the bones in my body were broken, I would hope that they’d give me opioids. I’m not particularly worried about it.
Chris Scott:
There’s something that happens once you understand the biochemistry of addiction, which is not well understood, and there are very incomplete PowerPoint presentations given at a lot of the rehab centers where they focus on incomplete research, but that’s another issue. But once you understand that, you can say, “I respect my brain.” I didn’t realize that this is why alcohol or opioids or whatever had overtaken my life, and now I’m not going to… It’s not just that I’m going to be careful with this substance or that I’m going to quit this substance, but I’m going to be careful with everything because I have a better idea and understanding of how my brain works and that should be an empowering epiphany, rather than a disempowering one that limits you for the rest of your life.
Matt Finch:
Beautiful. Yeah. I don’t need anything else to talk about. There’s a couple other little things, but we kind of already covered them. So, yeah, to sum it up, folks, thank you so much for listening. Hope this gave you some extra ideas, some extra inspiration and confidence in yourself and your ability to continue to improve your life, continue to learn more and more, continue to implement and embody more and more. And with that being said, take good, good care of yourself. We love you guys so much, and we’ll see you on the next show. Take care.
