Are you abusing alcohol or is society obsession with alcohol abusing you?

I had my first sip of alcohol when I was 11. I was firstly very drunk and disorderly, when I was 13, on a drink called 2020 just like all my friends. The way society glamorizes alcohol, of course encourages children to want to drink before they are legally aloud, but the question is, are we ever ready to consume alcohol regardless of age?

What I didn’t know when I was 13 but have started to discover was just how disorderly being drunk made me! How just one drink can make your whole being completely disorderly completely out of order and balance.

Alcohol is ethanol…

which is a chemical that is volatile and flammable which really makes it no surprise that it has the power to make humans totally volatile and for me it did literally set me up in flames every time. Alcohol is a great way to self sabotage…. eat healthy…… do yoga all week…… and then literally burn all your hard work with a glass of ethanol, I mean wine.

Alcohol because of its most powerful ingredient ethanol is a psychoactive drug. A psychoactive drug is a chemical substance that changes your nervous system and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition and behaviour literally creating disorder! Ethanol is also used in the manufacture of drugs, plastics, lacquers, polishes, plasticizers, fuels for cars and boats.

“The global wellness economy is estimated to be worth four trillion dollars. Four trillion dollars!!!! We are on an endless and expensive quest for wellness and vitality and youth. And we drink fucking rocket fuel.”

~Holly Whitaker just summed the former me up in two sentences.

When we drink, the brain’s reward system ( neural structure which involve pleasure as their core component) floods the brain with dopamine so we feel that hit! Alcohol triggers the artificially high release of dopamine. Dopamine lives in the midbrain which is the part of the  brain that is responsible for survival. Typically, dopamine is released when we are exposed to something that keeps us alive and the higher the dopamine hit the greater the pull to repeat the activity! Therefore over time with enough exposure to alcohol the midbrain  will eventually elevate drinking as a necessity to survival. To put it another way,frequent and habitual drinking is training our brain to do this!

When high levels of dopamine are regularly released into the system from use of alcohol (please remember just one glass can have an effect on your system as it metabolites ethanol)the dopamine is then balanced by something called corticotropin-releasing factor, a hormone that makes us feel anxious or stressed. Therefore if we flood our system with higher-than-normal levels of dopamine, we also flood our system with higher-than-normal levels of CRF which is why we can often feel anxious after drinking.

The reason we often turn to alcohol to cope is complicated, and the only way you can get at what is causing the need to escape and self destruct, is to look at the things that are driving that discomfort and to start adding solutions there.

I realized that a lot of my discomfort was coming from losing my dad and not being able to let go of past behaviors. It was almost as though if I stopped drinking then I am saying what I have done all the years before was wrong. This  thought or feeling was massively lead by fear, so I started to cultivate more love (embodying my LYS life) for myself and took myself out as much as I could from stressful situations because this was a massive trigger for me………..I began to say no more to things I knew did not serve me, creating a calmer life. I am so happy to say, that over the last 9 months,  I have been completely without Alcohol and I feel better than ever!

I spoke on my Vlog how alcohol can creep in everyday but this does not mean drinking everyday, this could simply be still feeling hungover and anxious till Wednesday from Saturday and then starting to feel anxious on Thursday about drinking at the weekend because you don’t want to……but there is an event. If this is you maybe this is your call to stop drinking and if this is you, me and my girls Vicky and Emma are here to support you because we have literally been there and done, and come out the other side happier than ever!

Maybe joining our stoptober plan might be the best place for your to start but in the meantime here is my top tools for living and living a sober life.

• see yourself with a morning routine whatever you need to do make that time of a morning to do it. Try to have at least 15 minutes to be you this could be dancing round your living room, doing yoga, drinking lemon water, reading, journaling meditating or all of the above (which is defo me ) Setting yourself up in the morning will give you so much strength!
• self soothe yourself throughout the day do whatever you need to do to keep your anxiety and stress levels low, if you need to lock yourself in the bathroom at work to get centered at lunch time do it! This will prevent the 5pm “fuck it I’m stressed I will just have a wine”
• learn to say no, if you don’t want to do something don’t do it, you may find people might not like it but your not here for them, you have to show up for you!
• drink fizzy water and lemon in a champagne glass on a Saturday to celebrate being sober while reading Quit like a Woman by Holly Whitaker!
• tell people you are not drinking but don’t put a time on it! You’re in the present and right now your choose you, over having a drink
• rain hail or shine get out in nature, use them none hungover mornings wisely and embrace the feeling of being fresh and free

Let’s make healing the new high and sober the new sexy, we got this! Time to be exactly who we are here to be, not what society manipulates us to be!