The Buzz: The Affects & Aftermath of Alcohol

Chris Scott: These are really associative memories or euphoric recall experiences, associations between the substance and our past experiences that then cause us to anticipate feeling a certain way. And so then we do feel a certain way. And another way to put that would be that there is a placebo effect, which kind of demystifies it too much maybe, but the power of suggestion, I think is a better way to put it.

Matt Finch: So the power of the mind, the power of the placebo effect, the power of our conditioning. Like I said, our biochemical conditioning, our cultural societal conditioning, our friends and family, community, all the past experiences we've had with alcohol, that our body stores all those memories.

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 284 of the Elevation Recovery Podcast. My name's Matt Finch. I'm joined here with my co-host and friend, Chris Scott, I'm drinking a nice cool mint flavored organic yerba mate. Let me take a good sip of that. Ah, delicious, yerba mate energy drink. Nice and refreshing on a summer day. Alcohol I'm just going to read a couple sentences on alcohol. Drug class sedative, hypnotic, individual drugs, beer 3 to 7% or less alcohol, 18 to 14% alcohol is wine. Fortified wine, 17 to 22% alcohol, spirits, liquor, whiskey, 40% or more alcohol. Common terms, liquor, whiskey, booze, hooch, wine, beer, ale, and porter, the buzz... And this is the last part I'm going to read and we'll talk about it. See where this thing goes. The buzz, when people drink alcohol, they feel pleasure and relaxation during the first half hour or so, often becoming talkative and socially outgoing.

Matt Finch: But these feelings are usually replaced by sedation, drowsiness as the alcohol is eliminated from the body. So drinkers may become quiet and withdrawn later. This pattern often motivates them to drink more, to keep the initial buzz going. And in my experience if you wanted to, you could say there's two types of people in the world. There's one type of person that will socially drink. And these are the types of drinkers, if somebody doesn't drink, that's another category. Three categories, people that don't drink, people that do drink and when the alcohol wears off, they don't think anything of it. And then people that keep drinking more and more and more, every time the alcohol starts to wear off, or usually before it even starts to wear off, to keep that energy, motivation, talkativeness. And I used to laugh at my friends. We'd go out to eat to a restaurant they'd order like this big, huge burrito or a double bacon cheeseburger fries, and they'd get a beer with it.

Matt Finch: And they would sit there and they'd drink a little bit of the beer. Then the food would come and then they'd eat a bunch of the food and they'd be drinking the beer with the food. And whenever I tried to do that, it just made me too full from the food and it didn't get me buzzed. So back when I was a drinker, I used to love empty stomach drinking. And I used to love to drink so consistently taking sips of the alcoholic beverage that I didn't even let my body get to the point where the alcohol was wearing off. Because it's so short acting. Fast onset, fast offset, because if I was drinking, I wanted to keep getting more and more energy. So the problem with that was there's a fine line between having a nice buzz and maintaining it and then getting drunk and then getting blacked out and making all sorts of horrible decisions for my life.

Matt Finch: And oftentimes not even remembering what I had done part of the night or most of the night from blackout. So what do you think about that, Chris? How there's some people that drink and then it wears off and then they're fine. There's other people that drink and as soon as it starts to wear off, they're like, "Oh no, I don't like that." So they keep the drinking going. What do you think about all this?

Chris Scott: Well I used to have a phobia of alcohol wearing off. It was my least favorite thing ever. And I would do anything I could to keep that from happening. And so that inevitably involved drinking more. And of course over time, my dependence on alcohol became worse and worse. So I didn't like it wearing off in the middle of the night or the morning. So I would, by the end of my drinking, I would get up. And I literally drank a bottle of bitters once because it was all I had and I could feel the alcohol wearing off at 3:00 AM or something like that. I woke up, sense of impending doom. So I'm chugging this bitters. And bitters bottles, it comes out in little drops. It doesn't pour out. So I'm like shaking this bitters bottle into a cup and I'm like, "What am I doing?" I think I eventually stuck a knife in it.

Chris Scott: And I'm like, "I'm a psycho this is really dumb and weird." And I had to do it though because I didn't want to have what I now realize was probably borderline glutamate toxicity in my brain. Alcohol had subbed in for GABA activity, normal calming brain chemical activity for so long that I produced so little GABA that alcohol wearing off was literally putting me at risk of having a seizure. And so I had this instinctive reaction was to drink more. But what I think is interesting actually is the fact that I spent 10 years plus heavily consuming a substance, a toxic substance whose effects I really understood so little about. And I knew that alcohol was bad for my liver in some vague way. I knew that it could cause massive problems. I knew that I could drink myself to death if I wasn't careful.

Chris Scott: And I knew that people could have seizures if they stopped drinking and they were so-called alcoholics, which was a vague, mystical term that I didn't really understand either. And that was about it. But now I've demystified the substance. I think that's the beauty of the biochemical approach. We can look at the substance objectively and we can figure out what effects from alcohol are actually objective or biochemically inevitable or universal to some degree, to the degree to which anything is universal. I mean, obviously some people eat broccoli and they love it. Other people eat broccoli and they hate it. Some people eat carrots and they have hives and bumps all over their tongue and other people eat carrots, it's their favorite. So everyone responds differently to different things, but there are some things that we can universalize, I guess, about alcohol in terms of objective effects.

Chris Scott: One of them seems to be that people who drink tend to experience an increase in GABA activity because ethanol as a molecule is structurally so similar to GABA. And we know that GABA has a seesaw like relationship with glutamate, which needs to exist in balance with GABA because glutamate increases electrical activity in the brain, GABA reduces electrical activity in the brain. So when people say that alcohol, it lowers inhibitions or at calms you or relaxes you, I actually think, and of course I'm not a scientist or a doctor, but to me, those strike me as subjective terms. What does it mean to be relaxed. Or they'll say alcohol causes euphoria. Really? Is euphoria a medical state or an objective state, or is it a product of perception?

Chris Scott: And I think that the most universal thing we can say about the effects of alcohol is that it reduces electrical activity in the brain during the time in which it's used, but for people who are dependent on alcohol, and we know that the dependence has to do with the GABA neurochemical as well and the glutamate neurochemical, the brain turns down the dial on the production of natural GABA because it says, "Hey, we've got alcohol coming at 5:00 PM." Or whatever time this person likes to drink. And so we're going to keep the natural GABA low. We don't really need it and it doesn't automatically bounce back to levels that you would need the natural GABA just because you quit drinking.

Chris Scott: So you end up with an imbalance too much glutamate and you're feeling maybe twitchy. Maybe you have reflexes that are too exacerbated. So I remember going into an elevator when I was really... What I thought was hungover. Really I was in low grade withdrawal back when I lived in New York. And if the elevator door made a sound I wasn't expecting, I would jump. I was jumpy and things seemed to be more scary and frightening than they should be even just normal, mundane things.

Chris Scott: So we know that there's that possibility for people who are addicted of having these longstanding brain imbalances, which we know we can help to ameliorate with the help of natural supplements to get that natural GABA activity back, et cetera. But what I find to be really interesting is that the other effects that people commonly attribute to alcohol, such as euphoria or relaxation, confidence, these things are actually within your power to create if you want. I now know having not been a drinker for however long, quite a while now that if I want to feel euphoric, I can do that. I can go to the gym. I can go hang out with some friends, especially friends who are anchors for me in kind of a NLP or neurolinguistic programming sense, anchors for euphoria. So I have some friends who are really funny, just seeing their face puts me in the mood to... This is a funny person.

Chris Scott: I'm probably going to laugh in the next half an hour that we're hanging out. Or you, people who... You're a big teddy bear. I see you, I'm like, "I'm going to give Matt big hug. Thank God he's here. This is good." I get euphoria, but no one would say that X dosage of Matt Finch causes euphoria. It's a perception result. And I think the same thing is really true of alcohol in that these are really associative memories or euphoric recall experiences, associations between the substance and our past experiences that then cause us to anticipate feeling a certain way. And so then we do feel a certain way. And another way to put that would be that there is a placebo effect, which kind of demystifies it too much, maybe, but the power of suggestion I think is a better way to put it. And there's nothing wrong with the power of suggestion.

Chris Scott: I mean, I think that when I was addicted to alcohol, I underestimated the degree to which my experience of drinking was influenced by the power of suggestion. So I thought that alcohol was inherently a euphoria inducing compound, and I experienced lots of euphoria when I drank, but I underestimated the, I guess you call it the setting effect. People talk about this with marijuana, for example. And for some reason, people seem to be aware of this for marijuana. They'll say if you smoke, make sure you're with people you like, or if you're using hallucinogenic drugs, make sure you're in a safe environment. It's going to influence the trip that you have. If you want to minimize a bad trip, then you need to have a caretaker or whatever. So obviously alcohol, unless you're in severe withdrawal is not a hallucinogenic compound, but it is psychoactive in that it influences your perception and your experience and different emotions.

Chris Scott: And so for me though, I started to notice at some point that I would be euphoric as soon as I saw whiskey or wine being poured into a glass. What is that? That's not a biochemical effect of alcohol. That's an effect of my anticipation of alcohol, which is to say that there is a placebo effect there, it has to be. Or the second you feel it hit your tongue and there's the warm burning sensation that causes a cascade effect. At that point, I started releasing endorphins and dopamine, and we know endorphins, those are the real pleasure chemicals and pain relief chemicals. Dopamine is like the seeking chemical it's the... There's a reward there, and now we're going to go into monk mode to get that reward. So I'd release dopamine and the dopamine would cause me to seek more alcohol, which I think is a useful way to understand my state of mind when I didn't want the alcohol to wear off.

Chris Scott: But there's a great book that touches on this subject called The Freedom Model. I forget who wrote it. And as with all books, I always say, my motto is whether it's my book and even my book, I feel this way because I wrote it years ago or other people's book, I'll say, take what helps you and discard what doesn't. I don't judge a book based on whether I agree with a 100% of it, that almost never happens, especially in a topic as nuanced as addiction or with a substance as complex as alcohol, which we know affects different neurotransmitter systems in complex ways. And across individuals affects those individuals in different and complex ways.

Chris Scott: So I'm not saying that the only thing alcohol ever does is that it reduces electrical activity. It does other things, but I think we have to parse between how much of that is inevitably caused by the chemical compound ethanol and how much of that is caused by our perception of alcohol, our expectation of what we're going to get and the power of our existing perceptions on our future experience in the near term. Because I can tell you, and back to that book, The Freedom Model and their whole premise is that you can start framing addiction as a choice, which is very heretical thing to say, I think in my opinion, that book would be made much better if they had touched on the biochemical piece, almost no book does, but I love their approach to once you reach a certain state of consciousness, you can control your life and you can decide whether or not you want to do something and you can make trade offs.

Chris Scott: And there are subconscious trade off calculations that happen with anything from going to work out as a habit, to participating in an addiction for the rest of your life or deciding to stop tomorrow, it's really up to you. But one of the things that they say, or they point out, the authors is that it alcohol is said to cause relaxation, euphoria, and confidence and talkativeness, but does it do that at funerals? Does it do that when you're drinking alone because you just had a terrible breakup? No. In those cases, alcohol is said to cause extreme sadness and depression and people will go, "Well, alcohol isn't depressant." And so you're just hanging out and feeling really blue and you attribute that to the alcohol, but what alcohol did was take whatever emotions you were already experiencing or the emotions you were prepared to experience or the emotions that you subconsciously wanted to experience and magnify them.

Chris Scott: So it seems to be a magnifier of certain things. It seems to open you up at least to the power of suggestion. And I think that the reason this is important and not just a random rabbit hole is that once you grasp that you can disentangle alcohol, the toxic substance, which is what we know it is with all of those experiences that you think you need alcohol for. You're perfectly capable. You probably know you're perfectly capable of being sad after a breakup without alcohol, but what you might not have reflected on is that you're also by the same token, perfectly capable of being super euphoric and excited and talkative with your friends. You go to parties just like when you were a little kid, there's about a 20 minute period where no one wants to talk to each other or people are a little awkward or they're feeling it out.

Chris Scott: By that point, the alcohol kicks in at adult parties. It didn't kick in when you were a kid, because presumably you weren't drinking I guess, depending on where you were. But the same thing happened. Everyone loosens up, you start having a good time. People are joking around. The kids are wrestling on the floor, wherever the adults are they're having a blast. It's not the alcohol doing that. The alcohol is associated with doing that. The alcohol might change. It changes your perception while you do that, but it's not a prerequisite for that. So you don't need to assume that alcohol is an essential ingredient for any of the emotions that you've experienced in the past that have been accompanied by alcohol. And I think that is a really empowering thing to recognize.

Matt Finch: The level of conditioning and Pavlovian conditioning and cultural advertisement conditioning, collective consciousness conditioning that all plays a huge part. The placebo effect is so powerful as well that it's mind boggling. Totally mind boggling. I remember like you were saying soon as you saw the whiskey start to pour into your glass, like you go to a bar and someone's pouring you some whiskey in a glass and you're like, "Oh, I'm about to drink that." Let's say you just had a really stressful day working your career in finance. And it was just really hard to get through, just so stressed out, so not feeling good at all, just wired, fearful. Then you get to the bar after work, before you go home. And then like I said, you see that whiskey pouring and all of a sudden just being in that environment, getting those visual environmental cues, then the smell from the alcohol, all of a sudden, you don't even need to ingest it and you start getting relaxed, more confident, more euphoric.

Matt Finch: Meanwhile, you haven't even tasted it yet. Then you take the first sip, just the taste of it brings back all these memories, at least unconsciously. So your body goes, oh, I know I'm about to get more of this. This is about to get into my bloodstream and get into the GABA receptors. And here's a couple stories that go along with that. My mom hardly ever drinks. Both of her parents, my grandparents were heavily addicted to alcohol, especially my grandpa. And so she grew up just hating alcohol because she saw what it did to her family. And so now she's barely drank her whole life. And every once in a while, let's say we go to a family dinner. Let's say we have family visiting in town, and we all go to a nice Mexican restaurant.

Matt Finch: Maybe my dad orders like a Negra Modelo, cold bottle of beer, or maybe he orders a glass of wine or something. My mom never orders her own drink. Sometimes, not always, sometimes she will share the beverage with my dad. So this is my mom with a glass of wine. Hasn't drank any alcohol whatsoever. Soon as she grabs the glass of wine, I can notice an instant change in her energy, her body language, her vibration, the emotions, everything. Soon as she grabs it, she starts to get more relaxed and sentimental, just holding a glass of wine. She could take one tiny sip and that's all it takes for her to get a buzz. Now it's not because her tolerance for alcohol is so low. That's part of it. That's part of it. But the other part of it is she just associates, alcohol with getting a buzz and so her brain gives her what she expects.

Matt Finch: One time when I was... This is another powerful part of the placebo effect. One time I was in heroin withdrawal and it was probably 11:30 AM in the morning and I hadn't had any heroin when I was out and I needed more. And I was definitely in mild opioid withdrawal. It wasn't severe yet, but I was feeling the symptoms, which are no fun. And they only get progressively worse for the next couple of days, which is scary. So my heroin dealer at the time was not awake. Sometimes he would just sleep in so late. And it was really frustrating for me because I would fiend, not because I wanted to go get high, that was part of it. But primarily at that point, because I just didn't want to get sick. I wanted to prevent the withdrawal syndrome.

Matt Finch: I wanted to at least feel normal so I wouldn't be debilitated throughout the day. And I remember this one time very clearly, all of a sudden I got a text message back and I'd probably been awake since 7:30, 8:00 in the morning. No heroin to start the morning off, used the rest of it the night before. And I'm like... So here I am waiting hours and hours throughout the morning, which was going by slowly because I was waiting for a text back, waiting for a text back. Finally, I checked my phone, like I said, it's around 11:30 and I see a text message. And my dealer had text me and he was finally awake. And he was like, "Can you meet my guy?" I forget if it was like McDonald's parking lot or Arby's, or there was all these different meeting spots where he would tell everybody, okay, how much do you want?

Matt Finch: Get all these orders going. Then he'd prepare all the orders and then he'd send it with his runner who would go walk to one of these parking lots that was close to their hotel room, where they lived. Then all the people would meet there at the same time. And then he'd go around to each car and hop in and we'd do the transaction. And sometimes he'd be meeting five people, other times, 10 people, other times 20 people, other times just one person. So anyways, I got this text. It's like, "Can you meet my guy at this certain place in 30 minutes?" Or something. And I was like, "Yeah, I'll be there. I want a gram."

Matt Finch: I didn't even have to look at the heroin. I certainly didn't have to use the heroin. I didn't have to smoke it. Just seeing a text message saying, "Yes, we can get you going. Meet here at this place. What's your order?" Knowing that for sure, 99.9% chance sure, I was going to go there, give them my money and get that. Chris, my mild withdrawal symptoms instantly went away. I was jumping up and down and excited. Then I felt happy, confident, euphoric. I didn't feel any of the symptoms. That's how powerful the mind is right there. Just knowing that within 30 minutes or so, I'd have it, then I was going to smoke it in my car before I even got home because I couldn't wait. So just knowing that it was that soon that after all those hours of waiting and starting to withdraw that I was going to get that.

Matt Finch: So the power of the mind, the power of the placebo effect, the power of our conditioning. Like I said, our biochemical conditioning, our cultural societal conditioning, our friends and family, community, all the past experiences we've had with alcohol, that our body stores all those memories and so at least with alcohol, it's pretty much effective most of the time for most people, you and I have both got to the phase in our drinking addictions where drinking alcohol, we just kept vomiting it up no longer would even work, but you can usually... And you can get a big tolerance to alcohol, but you can still get drunk every day if you want to. With opioids and with benzos and stuff, there seems to be this level to where now all of a sudden you need a ton just to feel normal. And it takes a lot of certain drugs to actually feel like a really good high euphoric feeling.

Matt Finch: Alcohol seems to be the... I hardly remember any times ever where a six pack couldn't get me a nice buzz. Even if I had a huge tolerance, it was still effective, affordable, easily accessible, socially praised, aggressively advertised and mystical, cunning, baffling, and powerful. So that's why I love doing episodes like this with you on alcohol to demystify alcohol addiction, recovery, to demystify the cunningness and the bafflingness and the powerfulness of a substance that's just a inanimate substance chemicals, chemical. We are an eternal soul with a super, super, super computer brain with an unconscious mind, a subconscious mind, a super conscious mind, a conscious mind, an intellect, intuition. So many different aspects to us, multidimensional, the soul aspect. And here we're giving so much power and weight to this little inanimate beverage. It doesn't have a brain, alcohol doesn't have a brain, alcohol doesn't have an eternal infinite soul.

Matt Finch: So it's really about getting super clear on why do I drink alcohol? What are my triggers? Why can't I stop like normal people? Why do I keep chasing that high? Why do I become out of control? If I say I'm just going to have one or two, why do I have six or eight? Why can't I control it? If I say I'm not going to drink, then I go somewhere and then all of a sudden I'm drinking but I didn't want to. Why is all this happening? There's so much power. And we've said this bunch of times, but it bears repeating. There's so much power in knowledge therapy. Then you just apply it. You get the knowledge and then you apply some of the things. And then through that application of some of the things you learn, you get feedback, you get experience points, you get a larger referential index of life.

Matt Finch: So many people are just wired, programmed, conditioned to just drink alcohol and not really think about it. Not really think, well, why am I drinking? And it'll take a lot of people to really dark places before they give it a serious effort. And then when they go out into the world, they get programmed at alcoholics anonymous, or they get programmed at inpatient or outpatient treatment programs by their counselors, by their peers there, by their sponsors. We're in control of our programming, not a 100% because you can't help all the things that you see and hear as you're going through life.

Matt Finch: But you can be very conscious and intentional about programming yourself with the information and the habits and the identity that's going to help you to actually make a change with your drinking behavior and not continue to go on benders, binge drink, get physiologically dependent, get some sober time and ultimately just to slip or relapse and get back on alcohol and stay in that endless cycle of getting drinking, experiencing the effects of alcohol, then recovering from alcohol, then drinking alcohol, experiencing the effects of alcohol, making bad decisions, getting your life all fucked up, then having to fix those, get sober for a while only to keep the cycle going for months or for more people years, and for some people let's be honest decades.

Chris Scott: Well, I think alcohol is an anchor. It's a symbol for people and adults who are stuck in the alcoholic spiral and who associate all good things with alcohol are in the adult version of a little kid who's enthralled with Ronald McDonald and the golden arches and having to go to McDonald's. And then that same kid grows up later it's like, well, why don't you make your own grass fed beef or bison burger on sprouted grain bread with your... And that's to you and me because our perceptions wire differently through accumulated experience with a optimized biochemistry and a different mindset. What I just said, the natural version sounds better to us, but to someone who all of their experiences are anchored to fast food. If they have this fast food addiction, they'll be like, "No, that doesn't sound good. I want to go, I want to see the red and the yellow and the way it's packaged and get the toy." Or whatever it is that people like about fast food. I don't know.

Chris Scott: But I mean, that's a real thing as well. I mean, fast food addiction, food addiction generally, but it's important I think to try to distinguish between what are the objective effects of alcohol. And we're not saying that it's easy for anyone to quit once you figure out what your perceptions are. Obviously there are difficult biochemical hurdles for anyone, whether it's alcohol or heroin or anything else, real things go on in the brain. But it's important to distinguish between those real things. There's objective biochemical things that are hurdles that need to be taken care of. And how much of your attachment to alcohol is really a product of perception that you were unable or unwilling, in my case, both to control and to take control of. And that's why I loved reading Tony Robbins books in early recovery. Because I was like, "Wow, I can actually learn how to create my own euphoria on command. That's amazing."

Chris Scott: And there are NLP techniques whereby you can do that and that's outside the scope of this discussion. But yeah, I think it's an important subject for people. It's obviously one of those things where it's easier to grasp this intellectually than to fully experience what your transformation can be like once you control your perception. But I think the goal here is to reach people who might be ready to start trying to take control. And the experience that you brought up with heroin, feeling relieved and like your withdrawal was ameliorated the second you knew you were going to get heroin. Every person who I've ever talked to who's been addicted to alcohol can relate to that in terms of all right, you've been debating all day about going to a liquor store. You're like, "Should I drink or, and should I not drink? I know I need to quit, but I don't know, today doesn't seem like the day my brother called and he's mad at me and my boss is being an ass and I didn't get enough sleep last night. So maybe the red wine will help me sleep."

Chris Scott: Whatever. You do that little debate in your head, you end up at the liquor store, you buy the liquor and your hands are shaking or you feel anxious when you buy it. But as soon as you walk out of the liquor store, you're calm. You're like, "It's going to be okay." And you start feeling warm. The alcohol has not entered your system yet. And so that's an important thing. Notice that next time it happens and ask yourself if it wouldn't be possible now that you've went, apparently you made your decision. If it wouldn't be possible to go home and crowd out the alcohol from your schedule that night and to leave it in your bar area or whatever, but go reorganize your guest bedroom or your basement, or make a painting or watch your favorite series and chug water, or take a hot Epsom bath. See if you can't crowd it out from your thoughts and your schedule and go to sleep. What's the worst thing that happens? And then maybe it actually becomes a pivotal experience for you.

Matt Finch: Yeah. I love it. If you saw me right there, kind of jumping up and down and having a hard time sitting still, it was because I want to end this. I got to go in six minutes with the client, but I want to end this with one little thing to kind of encapsulate what we just talked about and that it... This is kind of term that we can use to encapsulate this topic we just talked about, positive anticipation and the benefits of having a positive anticipation to make you feel good in the moment, just to look forward to something later on. With myself and the story I gave, I knew that within about 30 to 40 minutes, maybe even a little less, I was going to be smoking heroin off aluminum foil. So that gave me such a positive anticipation that I felt really good immediately just from thinking about that.

Matt Finch: With you, when you were saying... And I did this a bunch of times too, "I don't want to drink. I don't want to drink. Should I drink? Should I not drink?" Quiet, that's my session alarm. Should I drink? Should I not drink? You keep going back and forth then, like you said, you make the decision. Okay, fuck it, I'm going to drink. And then you go there and then I remember just walking into the liquor store, I'd be all happy like yeah! Driving home or walking home with the beer, like yes, yes. And I haven't even drank it yet. So yes, there can be a huge positive anticipation for alcohol or for drugs. But what you were just saying about crowding alcohol out is one of the things we can do to crowd out alcohol, to crowd out drugs is to develop a sense of positive anticipation. Intentionally proactively come up with a daily system and maybe a weekly system too, every morning and then every Sunday or something.

Matt Finch: For example, where you come up with things that you're really stoked to anticipate. For me, for back in the day for me, it was drugs and alcohol and going on dates with girls and falling in love. That gave me positive anticipation. Nowadays, a new docu-series episode coming out or a new film coming out or the other day, actually Saturday night, we had a jam session at my dad's new house, big, huge garage. We got a huge set up there with his drum kit, which is amplified, a keyboard which is amplified and guitars and bass. So my uncle brought his bass and his bass rig. One of my dad's friend brought his electric guitar and his amps and his pedals. And I switched off between acoustic guitar and keyboard. And we played for about two hours and I brought a can of Dram's CBD.

Matt Finch: And so it was like no alcohol and yeah, that's great. And so it was like so amazing jamming with friends. And now that we had... This was our first jam, all of us together, all four of us, it was so magical. The energy was so good. It was just easy, effortless, jamming together. We're all good enough musicians to be able to do that. And so now we're going to play again this Saturday night and I'm going to get a new 12 pack of Dram, shipment coming tomorrow. And now I'm going to bring a bunch to share with my dad and uncle and the other dude, I forget his name because I only had one can when I went last time and they're like, "Oh, did you bring some for us?" So now I've got this huge positive anticipation for this Saturday night to turn them onto some Dram Sweetgrass CBD adaptogenic, sparkling water, and have a great jam session.

Matt Finch: Oh, we also chugged a bunch of my dad's super powerful homemade ginseng, six year old ginseng root extract. Tasted disgusting. So now next week, we're all going to have the ginseng extract with a Dram to chase it down, play music. We have the garage door open. It's beautiful out at nighttime. So yeah, I guess my long winded way of saying that is there's so many things that we can positively anticipate. And then when the time comes, engage in the behaviors that are not alcohol, that are not drugs, it takes a while before you can get rewired and reconditioned to enjoying those types of normal things and looking forward to those types of normal things. But it doesn't have to be... You don't have to be permanently obsessed about alcohol. I can't have fun without alcohol. Life's too boring and life's too stressful without alcohol. That is conditioning, biochemical wiring, and it can definitely be totally reversed in my opinion, cured in my opinion.

Chris Scott: Change your biochemistry, change your perception and change your life. 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.