Rethinking Drinking When Our Kids Struggle With Substances; Why and How You Might Consider a Change, with Casey Davidson

SPEAKERS: Casey Davidson, Brenda Zane

[00:00:00] Casey: The acceptance of women drinking a bottle of wine a night, it is not uncommon for that to happen. I was certainly there, but so are just thousands and thousands and thousands of women. newsflash, alcohol is addictive, right? It is designed to, spike your dopamine in your brain and then send you into withdrawal where you actually need the substance to get back to feeling normal. 


And if you start drinking and then you drink more and then you drink more, like it’s not anything wrong with you. It’s actually the substance working as designed. 


[00:00:46] Brenda: Welcome to HopeStream, the podcast for parents of kids who are misusing drugs or alcohol or who are in active addiction treatment. or early recovery. I’m your host, Brenda Zane, fellow parent to a child who struggled. So I’m right there with you. If you’re enjoying the podcast and want to hang out with me and a bunch of other great moms after the episodes, you can check out the stream. 


It’s a positive online space where you can get support and take a breather from the stresses of dealing with your son or daughter. Just go to thestreamcommunity. com to learn more. Now let’s get into today’s episode. Hello and welcome friends. How are you? I’m happy to be back today with an episode that I believe It’s super important, and it might be a little uncomfortable for some of you, and that is okay. 


And if that’s you, then this episode is especially important for you. So I’m talking about parents and drinking, specifically when we have a child who is struggling with substance use because I’ve come to believe it’s a little bit of an elephant in the room. And this isn’t because any of us are bad or we’re not aware. 


But because alcohol is so ingrained in our culture and society and in our social lives and our homes, that we may not even be aware that this is a thing that we should be paying attention to. So before you hit the stop button, just know a few things about today’s episode. First, it’s just meant to get you thinking, not to make you do anything. 


Two, it’s based on my personal experience and the experience of several other parents I know. I quit drinking during COVID, so I know first hand everything that we’re talking about today. So I’m right there with you. And third, we’re sharing some facts and information that you may not know so that you can make an informed choice about the role of alcohol in your life. 


That’s it. So before I share the conversation that I had with my guest, I thought it was important just to say something up front. The end goal here is for us as parents to be modeling behavior that we want to see in our kids. We want to be showing them the healthiest ways of coping with stress that life brings so that they can then also find healthy ways of dealing with their issues. 


This role modeling applies to our mental health, the way we interact with each other as human beings, how we participate and show up in our work and our communities, and how we treat our own bodies. And there are lots of HopeStream episodes where I talk about doing your own work, looking at your thinking and your way of being as a parent. 


But I’ve never approached the subject of how we as parents may use substances ourselves. And it can feel incredibly vulnerable and icky. What I do know is that many of you are incredibly stressed out. Obviously, if you’re listening to this podcast, you are one stressed out person. And what I also know is alcohol is a really quick way to just quote unquote, turn off when we’ve had a day with our kids or just Coping with everything in general. 


And just like I say about our kids and their substances that they’re using, there is absolutely no judgment or shame or blame in this discussion. Alcohol works until it doesn’t. And then once it doesn’t work anymore, it’s already done its job of becoming incredibly hard to stop using. That’s how it’s chemically constructed. 


It’s not that you are weak or to blame somehow. It’s a highly addictive substance. So if you’re wanting to drink less or not at all, and you’re having a hard time doing that, that is completely logical and normal. So don’t hit the stop button. Just get curious, learn some information, and then choose what you want to do with it. 


That’s all that I and my special guests really want you to do today. So speaking of my guest, let me introduce Casey Davidson, a certified professional life and sobriety coach, the creator of the Sober Girls Guide to Quitting Drinking and the host of the Hello Someday podcast, which is a podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. 


Casey actually lives in the Seattle area and we hadn’t met yet when we recorded this, but then we got to meet, I think, a few days later. And so I got to spend some time with her and I can tell you that she is an all around amazing woman. Like me, she spent a very long time in corporate life heading up big teams and marketing at L’Oreal and had from the outside looking in the perfect life. 


So you’ll hear Way more about Casey’s story during our conversation. So I won’t go into lots of detail there, but know that Casey’s experience lies in working with women with full calendars, overflowing to do lists, who are doing all the things, dealing with all the crazy of life, and then coming home and drinking to forget about those things, or at least to fade them out just for the night. 


Her work helped me. make the decision to remove alcohol from my life. And so I can’t wait for you to listen in now to this incredibly important conversation with Casey Davidson. 


Welcome Casey. I’m so excited to talk with you. It’s so funny. We live in the same city. We talk about the same thing, And we’ve never met. So this is really fun to have you on to connect with somebody who’s local and also to connect with somebody who helped me in the journey that I’m on. 


So welcome to HopeStream.  


[00:06:48] Casey: Oh, it’s so amazing to be here. I absolutely love your topic and the work you do. And it’s super cool to meet another podcaster and another coach and woman help talking about addiction in the local Seattle area.  


[00:07:04] Brenda: I know, and maybe now, post COVID, we’ll actually get to meet each other one of these days. 


I know, I would love that. before we hit record, we were just chatting for a minute about this topic of women, in particular, drinking, but in my case, it’s really parents who find themselves with a teenager. Who is misusing drugs or alcohol, and it obviously causes a lot of disruption in your life, they’re getting into trouble in school and all these things, and then you do this, weird moment where you look in the mirror and you go, wait a minute, I drink alcohol every night, or most nights, maybe I’m smoking some marijuana or vaping or using gummies or whatever it is, and it, it becomes very uncomfortable, And I haven’t heard a lot about being talked about. 


And so I thought I would tackle it on my podcast because why not, we talk about all the weird stuff on my podcast, all the hard stuff, as do you. And so when I started thinking about it, I know that the majority of my listeners are women who are trying to figure out how to navigate. this situation with their kids. 


And so because I stopped drinking during COVID, I was a, I was one of those weird people that stopped drinking alcohol and started drinking coffee again, which is a whole nother conversation. I thought, you know what, let’s just talk about it because your work helped me while I was trying to make that decision. 


transition Trying to decide because I was the classic like I don’t really think it’s a problem, but it’s not really doing a lot for me So is this something I need to quit and everything that you talked about helps so much and really reframing it for me. So anyway, all that to say super excited for this conversation because It is uncomfortable. 


It is super important for parents who have a kid who’s either struggling currently, in treatment right now, a lot of times this becomes Something that you start thinking about once your kid is in treatment. You’re like, ooh Now i’m paying a lot of money for my kid to be in a treatment program What am I doing? 


Not just from a substance use standpoint, but also How is my mental health? How are my relationships? Am I overworking? Am I overeating? Am I over exercising? all of those things. So anyway, it should be fun. It should be a good conversation. And there’s lots of ground to cover. But before we get into all of that uncomfortable stuff, maybe you can just give us some background on who you are, what you do, what your family looks like, just the Casey one on one. 


[00:09:52] Casey: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really interesting that you were talking about women drinking more to cope with stress, and there are a ton of studies out there that women who drink more do so to manage stress, that statistically women tend to tilt towards drinking to reduce the effects that feel good. 


Uncomfortable negative emotions instead of actually drinking for pleasure. It’s a numbing and coping strategy, and I know that was true for me. And, we do it a lot of times not even aware of the fact that drinking actually Increases your anxiety and really ruins your sleep and has all these negative physical effects that nobody talks about because we’re always told It’s for pleasure, you know in society. 


We tell each other like You’ve had a hard day You need wine have some wine. It’ll help you relax and we truly believe it So who I am I am I am 46. I am married. I’m a mom of two kids. My daughter right now is seven. My son is 13. I spent 25 years in the corporate world, climbing the ladder at startups and at big fortune 500 companies. 


I was a director of digital marketing. And, thought my job was pretty stressful and it was fast moving. There were lots of layoffs. There were lots of reorgs. I worked at eight different companies over the course of those 25 years. And I would come home and I always drank, but I would, towards the end, I’d be drinking a bottle of wine a night, seven nights a week, 365 nights a year. 


And weirdly, it didn’t seem that unusual to me, it was just what I did. I used to always have a glass of wine to Increasingly three after work, right with dinner later on doing homework with my kids in the beginning, got him down to bed open the wine. It’s my signal that I am an adult that I am a more than a mom. 


It is my, reward. In fact, it is what I am do for basically adulting in my life and that’s A lot of women who drink a lot surround themselves with other drinkers as well. So all my friends drank, my husband drank, every event was centered around alcohol, let’s go wine tasting, we go out to dinner, we go out to happy hours. 


It was just super normal. In my social circle, and then as life got more stressful and more busy, and I, no longer was, was young and able to go to yoga and Pilates and all the things that I used to do for self care, it just became my number one sort of source of pleasure, source of, coping. I thought it was making my life better. 


And then, for a while, I was like, Oh shit, this is a problem. No one said anything to me. I didn’t have any big bottoms. I You know didn’t have any any major issues. but I was Increasingly anxious if i’m being honest I was waking up with a headache and a hangover every single day and trying to pull myself together And trying to go to work. 


My anxiety was off the chart I would wake up every morning at 3 a. m. I hated looking at myself in the morning. I was dragging, my eyes were bloodshot. I had weight I couldn’t lose. And I wasn’t remembering the ends of the end of shows. it was just standard practice that we would drive together to an event, or maybe I would drive and my husband would always drive me home because I was never okay to drive. 


And yet I was just like. Hey, I’m just having a good time. Nothing to see here, et cetera. And so I made all the rules. I made the rules about I’ll only have two drinks a night and I’ll only drink when I’m out or alternatively, I only drink when I’m home. I’ll only drink white wine because I loved red wine, all the things. 


And it was, unless I was white knuckling And, holding on for dear life, I would drink a bottle of wine every night. And so once all the rules didn’t work and I was still feeling like crap, I finally hired a sober coach and she really, life coach, sober coach. She really helped my hand through the process of taking an extended break from alcohol, giving me the tools and the messages and, and not making it. 


The biggest deal in the world, not promoting like you have a disease, helping me just use better self care and that was five years ago. Wow. Yeah. And immediately my life got so much better. being a mom was easier. I was better at my job. I felt less anxiety. I slept better. And yet. I didn’t stop for the longest time because I thought my life would suck. 


I thought I would not have any pleasure in my life, any relaxation. And it just wasn’t the case. So a couple years later, I decided to transition to life coaching. I actually I am now a sobriety and a life coach and I work exclusively with high achieving, busy, successful women who want to drink less and live more. 


[00:15:45] Brenda: Wow, that is amazing. There are a couple of things that you said in there that I related to about feeling like. That glass of wine at night was just the reward for like I made it through the day I made it through all the crazy that i’m dealing with I made it through You know navigating my kid my husband my job my family my all the commitments And not really realizing that it could be Dragging you down instead of lifting you up and also that it, it does start to feel like a big deal, Hmm, this is feeling like now I’m paying attention to it. 


Whereas I think if, if it’s never occurred to you, because I, before I went through my divorce, I don’t even remember buying wine. I don’t even remember ever having wine in the house. Like it just wasn’t a thing. So I think you, you get to a point where you realize this is a thing I’m thinking about now. 


And do you see that with your clients that you work with? And in general, that at some point it becomes a thing that you start thinking about. And is that a signal that maybe it’s something that you should start thinking about?  


[00:17:03] Casey: Yeah, I think that a lot of women start drinking because it’s fun and, to be fair, we live in a culture that puts alcohol on a pedestal and we’ve been bombarded by messages from marketing and advertising, but also from our parents and our friends that drinking is fun, drinking enhances your work. 


connection drinking is required for dinner. You go to a restaurant, the wine glass is on the table. The first thing they bring you is the drinks menu. Like it is expected that if you’re over a certain age, you’re going to drink alcohol. If you go somewhere, they’ll say wine or beer. So it starts out as fun and it’s also pushed on you. 


It’s, it’s so normalized. And then at some point I started to, Drink every night. That didn’t seem that unusual to me. A glass of wine at dinner was just sophisticated and fun and, felt good. I started drinking more and more and what I noticed was then I started thinking, do I have enough? I’d be leaving work and being like, Ooh, do I have wine at home? I should probably pick some up. Like it was important to me to have it available in the house. And then it was, do I have enough, not only wine at home, but do I have enough that I want to drink? I would go out to a restaurant and wouldn’t be able to completely relax while talking to my husband because I was trying to sleep. 


Signal the waitress to get another glass of wine before the check came. Like, how do I make this casual? And yet it’s occupying a big part of my mind space. It was important to me, right? That was what I knew it was important to me. And, then I would just start to be like, we’d go out to dinner and of course I wouldn’t have too much. 


Cause I wanted to drive. I’d come home and open a bottle of wine. Oh, I just want one more glass. And. That was just the way it progressed. Like I said, nobody said anything to me necessarily. Like sometimes my husband would be like, seriously, you’re opening another bottle of wine on a Tuesday? And I’d be like, I just had a hard day. 


I just want one more glass, But I knew. He never realized quite how worried about it I was to the point where like the week before I stopped, and this is a full Four years after I had really been worried about it, but never talked to him or any of my friends about it because I was, terrified to tell them that I was worried that I might have a problem and even more terrified to stop. 


if I said it out loud, then I might actually have to stop. And to be honest, that was my worst case scenario. In life because I loved it so much but the week before I actually quit for the last time My husband said to me you’ll get this because we live in seattle chateau saint michel. It’s a winery Literally three miles from my house. 


I live three miles from 90 9 0 wine tasting room. Oh my gosh Which is classic. I am positive. It is the reason I moved here But he said to me casey Why don’t you just join their wine club that way you don’t have to go out A couple times a week for a couple bottles of wine. And I was just like, Oh my God, listen to that. 


Like he’s, just was clueless as to my constant debate back and forth about this was a problem and then no, this was what was holding my life together.  


[00:20:52] Brenda: Yeah. That 90 wine tasting rooms around you. if that is not enough to make you have to really be strong in your, in your decision, I don’t know what is. 


That’s funny. Yes. And my, before I left corporate America, my last account, one of my last accounts was Chateau Saint Michel winery. Oh my gosh. So I was required. Part of my job was to be at the winery a couple of days a week, and they are actually very strict, like you never ever drink if you work there during the day, but of course there’s all the events and all that, and I was like you in marketing, I was in the advertising agency world forever, and You just like the wine and beer got opened at three o’clock. 


Oh my God. Yeah. Normal.  


[00:21:37] Casey: There used to be beer 30 at my startups where they would literally come around with a cart and bring you beer at your desk.  


[00:21:44] Brenda: Yes. We had the same thing. We had a beautiful little cart and we had a committee of guys who were the party committee and around three o’clock. 330. The cart came out and yeah, everybody started drinking. 


So it does just start to become very normal. And I know as I started reading more about what’s going on with alcohol in the industry and women in particular, I really didn’t know that there’s a very specific marketing Effort towards women and alcohol, which shocked me. And I got really pissed off actually when I started about it. 


Can you tell us a little bit about that?  


[00:22:24] Casey: Absolutely. Like advertisers for years have been targeting women to drink more and more often. And, it’s very, very calculated in order to increase. They’re marketing, share of wallet, they need to expand their customer base. And they are, they obviously changed the type of alcohol they have. 


They, they made them sweeter, they made hard, hard seltzer that Is going on, they just really targeted women in their advertising campaigns. They stopped doing, the, men drinking in the bar and started doing the women at the bar. And. It just took off and it has worked over the last 40 years women are drinking more and more often Than their mothers and grandmothers the most common group now to struggle with alcohol Significantly is actually white women aged 35 to 65 That is the fastest growing segment of women having health problems from alcohol  


[00:23:35] Brenda: consumption Wow. 


and I am guilty of part of that, which is why in partially, I just feel so dumb because when I was working in advertising and Chateau Saint Michel was my client, a couple of the brands that we worked on, it was an intentional effort. Like part of my job was to seek out influencers in The kind of mom wine culture space and we would pay these women, mostly young women with young children. 


I recall paying one 10, 000 if she would go on a hot air balloon ride with her husband for her anniversary. And bring our rosé wine with her and photograph it and post it on Instagram and all the hashtags and I don’t know. It just never occurred to me at the time like is this really good? Is this really what we need to be doing and telling women that they need? 


[00:24:33] Casey: Yeah. the marketers have zeroed in on why women and what will get them to buy alcohol. So alcohol marketing used to be sexualizing women to sell alcohol to men to now they’re trying to align their products with sophistication with women’s empowerment with female friendships. And, I’ve read multiple articles and studies Saying that this is right out of the tobacco industry playbook, right? 


Where their campaign is trying to cash in on women’s empowerment, career women, moms, this is quote unquote, what you need to bond for female friendships. And it’s really working. it has really, really worked in terms of just the consumption of alcohol by women. The acceptance of women drinking a bottle of wine a night, it is not uncommon. 


I gotta tell you for that to happen. I was certainly there, but so are just thousands and thousands and thousands of women. And, newsflash, alcohol is addictive, right? It is designed to spike your dopamine in your brain and then send you into withdrawal where you actually need the substance to get back to feeling normal. 


And if you, start drinking and then you drink more and then you drink more, it’s not anything wrong with you. It’s actually the substance working as designed.  


[00:26:10] Brenda: I was going to ask you about that. And for the parents who are listening to this, we spend a lot of time. Researching our kids and especially marijuana. 


There’s, just such a huge prevalence of teenagers using marijuana and So we understand for the most part. we understand the idea of addictive substances and it’s incredible to me That we don’t think about it for ourselves in terms of alcohol, but maybe you can give us a little like education 101 on how alcohol works in our brains and in our bodies because like you said and and like I experienced I wasn’t falling down drunk or You know having any like big I guess you could call them consequences other than not feeling great. 


Feeling sluggish, sometimes having a headache, even after two glasses of wine, and I’m 53, so I’m thinking, maybe I’m just getting old, maybe, but, but maybe you can just talk to us a little bit about why that is, oh, I used to be okay with just one glass, but now I really want two. What’s going on in our bodies? 


[00:27:21] Casey: Yeah, absolutely. I actually, I think you mentioned, or you might not have, I host a podcast for busy women who are ready to drink less and live more. And I’m mentioning it because I’ve done two really great interviews. on the subject. The first was with William Porter, who I listened to that. Oh, you did so good. 


I love him. And he wrote this book, Alcohol Explained, and he really gives a great description of what alcohol does to your body in terms of the fact that it really does impact you even in smaller doses and that you truly go into withdrawal. So alcohol is really interesting in that it both makes you feel relaxed immediately and then wakes you up. 


At 3 a. m. It’s both a depressant and a stimulant and you know really causes anxiety the next day so one of the things that Women don’t really realize is that it also Has a terrible effect on your ability to lose weight. Like I know that I used to, log everything I ate and be super careful about like I’m having egg whites and asparagus and salmon and, whatever. 


And then I would like literally be like six glasses of wine, which is crazy and would show it to my nutritionist. And I’d be like, no, no, I’m in my calorie count. area. But one of the things that alcohol does is it is toxic. The body sees it as poison. It really is. And it will immediately, once you consume even a glass, stop any other processing in your body to flush it out of your system, to immediately remove it. 


So you can, have a glass of wine. And it will stop you from burning anything else, any fat, any other calories in your body. So I also did a podcast with Gil Teets, who talks about, she’s a sober scientist, talks about what alcohol does to your body. And she said that if you’re trying to lose weight while drinking alcohol, it actually slows your ability to lose weight by 90%, nine zero. 


Oh, you are only burning like 10 percent of the calories that you could. So it affects your brain activity. It slows your brain activity. It’s horrible for your sleep. You may not have gotten a good night’s sleep in years. If you’re drinking definitely spikes, your anxiety makes it hard to lose weight. 


Even with small amounts, you are going into physical withdrawal from alcohol. After you’re doing it, that can last two or three days And the benefits To your body and your brain when you take a break from drinking are incredible in terms of how you feel physically and emotionally. Drinking really makes your emotions all over the place. 


You go super high and then super low. So if you’re dealing with stress in your life with a child with addiction, you’re very emotionally unstable, much more so than you would be without alcohol.  


[00:30:48] Brenda: Absolutely. Absolutely. And, oh, so much I wanted to say about all of that. The first was that, Alcohol Explained episode was incredible. 


So I would encourage everybody to go listen to that. And I’ll put a link in the show notes directly to that and to the other one that you mentioned with, is it Gil or Jill? Gil? It’s Gil. Gil. Those two I listened to and they’re amazing. And what I learned too from, I think it was the Alcohol Explained one, is that alcohol is actually listed as a cause. 


Carcinogen. Is that true?  


[00:31:20] Casey: Yeah, it’s absolutely true. And here’s what I, here’s what I think is, is super interesting. Claire Pooley, who’s a British author who wrote the Sober Diaries, and also did a TED Talk on alcohol, cited a study done on drug harms. In the UK, it’s called the NUT report, N U T T, and what’s interesting in terms of harm caused to drugs to the individual, to an individual consuming it, alcohol is number four in terms of the harm caused. 


Number one is crack cocaine, then heroin, then meth, then alcohol. Above cocaine itself, right? More harm to the individual. And in terms of harm caused by drugs to the individual and society combined, alcohol is number one. It is more harmful to individual and society than heroin, than crack cocaine, than meth. 


than cocaine itself and that is for many reasons Including the fact that what 80 90 percent of adults drink on a regular basis,  


[00:32:33] Brenda: Right, you know you get to a certain point where you think you know stuff and then when you learn new stuff You’re just like this can’t be for real like when I started looking into processed food, and I think there’s so much and I You You know, I got mad when I learned that too at my doctor’s because when I I went to the doctor I think I don’t know at some point in my son’s journey. 


It’s all a blur, but I said, I can’t sleep I just can’t sleep and because I keep waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning, right? And of course, I’m drinking wine every night And so what does he do? He gives me Xanax. Oh, this will help you sleep. So then I’m drinking wine And taking a Xanax,  


[00:33:15] Casey: hello, we’re, I took Ambien because I went to my doctor and said, I can’t sleep and I was like, I have insomnia and you don’t know what you don’t know. 


I literally did not know that the 3 a. m. wake ups. Were related to my wine. Like I was clueless. I didn’t know that my anxiety was related to my wine consumption. Shockingly stopped drinking and my wine consumption, decreased. not my wine consumption, my anxiety decreased so significantly. 


And I don’t know if you experienced the same thing or not.  


[00:33:53] Brenda: I totally did. And what I was going to say too. So the sleep thing is huge. The 3 a. m. wake up and it’s not just waking up like, Oh, I’m awake. It’s like this, like this panic attack almost waking up with your heart racing, which I described to my doctor. 


And that’s why he gave me the Xanax. So really, really pissed me off when I figured that out. And then yeah, the, the emotional rollercoaster, because yeah. As parents of kids who are struggling with their substance use, you are highly emotional. And so what I started noticing when I started actually paying attention to this was like, I just was getting so sad at the end of the day. 


Like in the morning I could, I could have an optimistic outlook and I’d be like, okay, we’re going to get through this and he’s going to be okay and we’re going to get him into treatment. And I just, I had a little bit more optimism, but then as. The night went on after I’d had a glasses, a couple of glasses of wine. 


I was like, so everything was horrible. And at 3 a. m. Everything is horrible and tragic and, like magnified by a thousand. And at the same time, I was also taking an antidepressant because of the craziness with my son. So here, what a mess, right? Like I’m taking an antidepressant, but I’m also drinking a depressant. 


That was insanity. And then I just, I, I, and the reason why I wanted to do this episode and, and I want to talk about it and we’re talking about it more in, in my community is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And then all of a sudden you start feeling like, Oh, I must be a bad person because I can’t handle this. 


Drinking alcohol. And it’s wait a minute. It’s a toxic, addictive carcinogen. Who, who is supposed to be drinking and how are you? How is your poor body supposed to be handling it? There was something I saw. I can’t remember where it was. I’ll try to find it and put it in the show notes. But it was this video about what happens in your body. 


And it was like a It was an animation. So this wasn’t like a x ray or anything, but it was like this animation of what happens when alcohol flows like through in your mouth and down your throat and into your body and your body is just get it out, get it out, get it out because it is a poison. 


And so yes, of course, you’re not going to lose weight because your body is going to spend. Every available calorie and ounce of energy to get that out of your body So if you’re drinking daily, especially it just never has time to rest i’m sure there’s I’m, not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination So i’m just repeating things that I have learned about And there’s obviously doctors who do talk about this and they’re qualified to about the really the Physiology of what’s going on in your body is shocking. 


[00:36:54] Casey: Yeah, and I would say if anyone is listening to this and being like, fuck no, I’m not going to stop drinking, I feel you and I hear you, I did not want to stop drinking. I absolutely loved my wine. I couldn’t imagine My life without wine. I was worried about everything from how I would hang out with my friends to how I would go on vacation to What would happen at dinner parties to what I would do in the evenings like I was like What the fuck do sober people do do they just sit there and stare at each other? 


Like I literally was so Immersed in my life that drinking was my constant companion. It really was my best friend. So what I would say is if you’re listening to this and you’re feeling a ton of resistance, I hear you. That is okay. And what I needed to do was literally to just try to stop for a hundred days to not say forever, to not say never again, but to say, 20 years. 


And I feel like crap and I want to see How good I can feel with a hundred days without alcohol in my body Because the question is not I do not subscribe to Necessarily any labels. I don’t use labels with myself. I don’t go to a 12 step program. I don’t think Calling yourself an alcoholic is required. 


I actually think that It holds so many people back from literally saying not is this bad enough to have to stop But rather is this good enough to keep going and how can I feel with? Without it and someone described to me and I absolutely loved it. I spent years trying to moderating like trying to be like i’ll drink water in between i’ll only drink on the weekends I’ll only have two drinks at a time And that is incredibly hard to do Because you’re constantly debating and deciding Whether or not you’re going to drink and willpower and motivation Can Literally will only take you so far, like in any behavior change studies being constantly exposed to a cue, which triggers a craving and trying to resist it will not work over any kind of long term and instead someone described it to me as taking a period of time. 


Without alcohol to see how good it can feel being the equivalent of Going on a commuter flight like you’re on a flight. You’re gonna land in 45 minutes You’re just trying to get through the flight versus taking a cross country flight or I recently flew to Hawaii and it was amazing. It’s about five or six hours from Seattle. 


And if you know you’re going on a six hour flight, you might download something on your iPad to watch a movie. You’ll wear comfortable clothes. You’ll sit back, you’ll bring a good book. And You’ll try to enjoy the process, and so that’s what happens with a longer period of time without alcohol. 


You actually have to create like a new evening routine. You have to do something during the time you would normally drink. You have to find other rewards and treats to decompress from your stressful life and your worries, and you actually get to be like, oh, Oh my gosh, which I know you told me you experienced, Brenda. 


I’m happier. I love my mornings. I don’t wake up dreading the day. I feel more optimistic. I have more energy. I’m doing better self care. And you can’t do that if you’re just holding on for the weekend.  


[00:40:47] Brenda: Right, 100%. And I think that emotional steadiness for me was really important. And I think it’s really important for parents who are listening because you already have so much drama going on in your life. 


you can’t make up the stuff that these parents are dealing with. It is complete insanity. And so then when you add in A substance that’s going to only increase that roller coaster ride is just not good and I loved what you said in this It was really a turning point for me to reframe from is this something I have a problem with to Is this something that’s good enough for me to keep in my life? 


if this was a human being if this was my a neighbor Who made me feel depressed? Made me wake up at three o’clock in the morning, , all these things. Would I wanna hang out with that neighbor or that friend? Probably not. So I think it allows you to, to take charge of the conversation, of the decision to say, wait a minute. 


I get to choose who and what is in my life, and if it’s not markedly making my life better or easier. I don’t want to have it there and it’s unfortunate that we put so much social pressure on alcohol as being the thing that you should just be able to drink and be fine because I do think that that holds people back and there was a couple of books and I’ll ask you for your recommendations, but there was one either book or podcast that I listened to that said, it’s interesting that if somebody quit smoking cigarettes, We cheer them on and we’re like, Oh, that’s amazing. 


Good for you. It’s great. And then if somebody says, Oh, I quit drinking. You’re like, Oh, Did you have a problem?  


[00:42:33] Casey: Yeah, it’s yes. I had a problem Yeah, that’s the difference because everyone is so protective of their drug of choice, especially when it’s so normalized in society That what we try to do with alcohol is we put it on a pedestal Even though it’s it’s hugely addictive And everybody gets that about cigarettes, right? 


Cigarettes are addictive. They are bad for your health. They cause cancer, by the way. Alcohol causes cancer, too. The correlation is huge. Breast cancer, other cancers, and, right now the American Cancer Society fights it. Finally, finally changed their guidelines to say no amount of alcohol is safe in terms of risk to cancer. 


But with nicotine everybody quote unquote knows that and by the way that didn’t used to be the case right with tobacco Advertising the doctors used to be smoking in the ads or this person is not a doctor, but they’re playing a doctor So with alcohol, we just don’t want to hear it. We don’t want to believe it And so what we do Is as opposed to demonizing the substance, right? 


By the way, I drank an addictive substance every night in social situations. Of course, I became dependent on it physically, emotionally, mentally, habitually. But we say, if you have a problem with alcohol, You’re the one who has a problem. We try to be like, you are an X category, which is awesome because I’m not in that category. 


And therefore I can still drink as opposed to saying like cigarettes. Of course, you became dependent on it and good for you for breaking that habit. It amazes me how much we all concentrate on what we put in our bodies and what makes us feel good and what doesn’t, so much conversation about gluten, right? 


Is the gluten free. Gluten doesn’t agree with me gut health, and yet we don’t even discuss in any way, shape or form alcohol the way we discuss sugar, Right. People are always talking about, oh, sugar, I’m having trouble staying away from the sugar. The sugar might be addictive. I need to cut it down. I consume too much. 


I don’t feel good. And like alcohol is the third rail. No one wants to touch it.  


[00:45:02] Brenda: Yeah. And that’s, that’s exactly why I wanted to do this because I do think it’s important to talk about. And, and again, and like you said, there are going to be people listening who are like, Nope, they probably actually have already hit stop on the, on their phone or wherever they’re listening. 


and I get it. I get it. Totally, totally get that. But. If you are still listening, and if you are buying organic food and buying natural products and all of the things that we do, paying 10, 000 a month for your child to be in treatment, it might just be something to think about. And I think maybe we can kind of transition into what that can look like as, and you said a hundred days is a great place to start. 


And I love the concept of the six hour flight versus the one and a half hour flight. I think that’s brilliant because you do, you, you just make other changes in your life that allow you to go on that six hour flight. So if somebody is still listening, Now, after we’ve just ruined everything, and I, I’m not kidding about that when I say that because I do know and I felt like this for so long that that was my, that was the only thing I got to have. 


This is the only thing I had all kinds of stomach issues, which I know lots of parents do because you get really sick when your kids are sick. So it’s I can’t really eat very much food. At the time, I couldn’t even drink coffee because my stomach was so messed up, I had to cut out coffee, so now I don’t have food, I don’t really even have coffee, I can’t really go have fun because my kid’s off the rails and in treatment, and I have no money, so I can’t really go, so like my only thing was that glass of wine, it was so nice, and so I get it. 


And I know you get it as well. So how do you even start that thought process? If you’re like, okay, I’m curious enough to maybe give this a go. What would you say? Yeah.  


[00:47:03] Casey: I would say that it is so much easier to take it off the table for an extended period of time than to try to keep managing it. 


People who truly can take it or leave it don’t think about alcohol. They don’t think about, for me, it’s like ice cream in my fridge. I know a lot of people are not like this, But there could be ice cream in my fridge for four months. I wouldn’t think about it when I walked past the fridge, it didn’t appeal to me. 


Someone would offer it to me and I would truly be like, and trust me, you put M& Ms in front of me, I will eat all of them. But for some reason, ice cream, take it or leave it. People who truly. can take or leave alcohol, don’t think about it. They can be offered it and like literally be like, do I want it? 


Do I not? Eh, not really. And so most of us think about it a lot. We think about it way more than we care to admit, consciously or unconsciously. We, we think about how much we have, we think about how much we can drink, we rationalize it, and. And I would say that if you’re in that place debating what to drink, how much you can drink, what the issues are, you are going to feel so much better without alcohol. 


You truly are. But it is so much easier to just drop the rope for a period of time and think about it like a health kick. Think about it like an experiment. Don’t worry about forever. Don’t think too much. People will quote unquote, think you have a drinking problem if you stop drinking, which is so insane. 


I thought that I was worried about what people would think if I stopped drinking, because I thought nobody stops drinking unless they have a problem, you will be shocked how many people don’t care. I was shocked how many people shrugged their shoulders. I told everyone it was a health and fitness initiative that, when I didn’t drink, I just slept better, had more energy, and was more likely to do better self care. 


All of which completely true. So no labels, if you are trying to get away from alcohol, it helps to tell everyone the amount of time you’re planning on doing it because that’s built in accountability and you get less pressure, right? If someone’s Oh, not even tonight. It’s so much easier than saying not tonight to say, Oh, I’m doing a hundred day challenge, less anxiety, feel better, more optimistic, better sleep. 


And. I’m on day 22, right? It’s harder to be like, Oh, just have one tonight. If you’re like, dude, I am like a fifth of the way through my hundred day challenge. Yeah. Don’t mess me up now. I know. The other thing that helps with framing it that way is people love to talk about themselves and about their own fitness. 


Health things like it’s like the universal bonding thing to talk about either. Oh God, I should do that or I used to do that or I just got a Peloton or I’ve been trying to walk every day. So you mentioned that and literally everybody starts talking about themselves, right? Like immediately it’s shocking. 


Those are some tips for getting started. The other thing to know is if you have been trying to take a break from alcohol and you get 4 days or 5 days or 14 days and then drink again, you’re literally doing the absolute worst and hardest part over and over and over again. That’s so much better and so much easier. 


[00:50:56] Brenda: Yeah. Just stick with it. And I think, it’s important to go back to the science of it. It’s that it’s not a willpower thing. It’s not that you don’t have willpower. You can’t willpower your way through getting a toxic substance out of your body. And I think that’s where a lot of people have this downfall is, you get two or three days or four days and it’s hard. 


Like it, it can feel bad and it’s not that you’re a bad person. It’s that your body is getting a toxic substance out of it and it’s used to having it. And so how do you replace that? Like, When you start feeling that and I’m going to put a link because you have an amazing guide. It’s the first, is it the first hundred days  


[00:51:43] Casey: or is it the first 30? 


It’s 30 tips for your first 30 days. And it’s actually like a 30 page guide. It’s free, super comprehensive and takes you through literally like What to do on day one and day three and day five and how you’re going to feel right and mindset shifts that are super helpful. And my favorite thing is sober treats like tell us about summer treats in the first. 


Two weeks. I want you to get a sober treat literally every single day every single day You should have something that you’re saying This is my reward for the day Because I’m not drinking and it’s super important to link those two right right because I’m not drinking Our mind will immediately say, my life sucks. 


This is hard. And I don’t even get my wine. Cause wine is the easy button, right? It’s like the easy button. Yeah. Yeah. Until it’s not exactly. And in the first two weeks, I don’t try to combine it with the diet. Please, please don’t, I had a woman who was like, Oh my God, I haven’t eaten Brie in three years. 


And I just had brie and crackers and this is the best fucking thing I’ve ever tasted. Oh my gosh, I love it. where we don’t have dessert because we want to save calories for wine. I started on Friday nights because I was you have that psychological God through the week, I need a reward. 


I would get a pedicure. Or I would get takeout sushi, or I would go to the, farmer’s market and buy myself fresh flowers, all of those things. You’re like, this is my reward because I’m not drinking. And if you think you don’t have money to spend on it, you do because alcohol costs. Money. It really, I calculated in my first 30 days not drinking and you may not drink as much as I did, but I saved 550 not drinking. 


That is a ton of pedicures and fresh  


[00:53:49] Brenda: flowers  


[00:53:49] Casey: and massages, right? Yeah. and even if you don’t have time, between work and home and kids and struggles to go do that, you have time to buy new face cream, to start an evening routine, to buy some essential oils, to, listen to a meditation on Insight Timer, which is free. 


You can do a lot of things that make you feel really, really good without. Drinking and you deserve that because this is an incredibly hard habit to break.  


[00:54:25] Brenda: Yeah It’s so true and the treats I think are often something that there are things that we have Like you said left behind that we’ve cut out of our life for whatever reason and in our community in the stream We really focus on self care And so the ultimate self care is to give yourself those things. 


And what I found too, in those first few days is that you do have to replace, cause it’s a ritual, right? There’s a, there’s a certain ritual or expectation. Like it’s the end of the week, it’s Friday. And what I realized, And I don’t know if this you can tell me if this is something that you felt or that your clients do is that It was really only like an hour and a half or so where I was like, okay Normally, I would be pouring a glass of wine so then I would just get really busy during that hour and a half and I didn’t really think about it again because My body like had passed that that physiological stage of oh, this is when I normally would be doing this So I thought oh, wait a minute like All I have to do is get through an hour and a half each day. 


That’s really hard. I can do that. Like I can do way harder. It  


[00:55:34] Casey: decreases so quickly. Yes. cravings in the beginning can be cued by time of day, someplace you’re driving by, going into your kitchen, sitting on the couch, like all of these are cues to drink, which trigger a craving. Cravings have a beginning, a middle and an end, and they do not last that long. 


It might be an hour and a half your first couple days. Then it will be 20 minutes. Then you literally will go through a Friday night and not even think about it. And what I would say is your biggest trigger to drink is hunger. Anytime a client says to me, I want to drink. My first question is, have you eaten? 


Because it’s a huge trigger. so many of us, are so busy. We don’t eat often. So I used to set an alarm to have some kind of a snack with protein at four or 4 30 PM. You don’t want to be driving home from work or reaching the end of your day when you’re so tired. And be hungry. And then after that, emotions, right? 


Emotions are really huge triggers. And I imagine your audience deals with it all the time. All the time. Anger, frustration, irritability, anxiety, fear, sadness, huge emotional triggers. And so what you need to learn to do is to say, okay, why do I want to drink? Meaning, what emotion am I feeling, what do I want to feel instead, what do I want to numb out, what do I want to highlight, and then how else can I meet that emotion, because we’ve actually gotten super lazy, you said the easy button, our universe of Things that can help care for ourself has shrunk down to seriously bakeries and bars. 


That’s all there is and there is so many incredible things that can give you comfort and joy and You know alleviate your sadness And you actually need to just get back to life before drinking was so important to you to be like, what else brought me joy? What else helped me when I was in a bad mood? 


What else helped alleviate me when I was feeling fearful and sad?  


[00:57:48] Brenda: Yes, absolutely. And I think you have, I remember getting, it was either an email or maybe it was in your 30 day guide, like this massively long list of sober treats, which was super fun and helpful.  


[00:57:59] Casey: Oh, yeah. And there’s so much such good ideas. 


I have an online course, it’s called the sobriety starter kit. And in there, I have So many lessons about SoberTreats and you get this SoberTreat guide that’s 20 different pages of like examples from my clients. So you can see like what’s in their toolbox, how do they care for themselves? and for every person, it is so different and individual, but the ideas really help. 


[00:58:27] Brenda: Wow. so much. this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it’s a great introduction to even starting to think about it or just starting to notice, how do you feel after a couple glasses of wine at night? Is it really making you feel better or is it just making you tired, more depressed? 


Are you waking up at three o’clock in the morning? If you are that’s a big sign that Your body is get this toxin out of me And again, it’s not a moral thing just like when we’re thinking about our kids and we’re trying to tell our kids, you know Who are using marijuana or heroin or whatever it is that they’re using? 


It’s not you like how could your body survive and not get addicted to heroin? alcohol is also an addictive substance and it’s not just addictive for kids, it’s addictive for all people. So great, great, great information. I will put a link in the show notes to your website, the Hello Someday podcast, I love the name by the way of your podcast and your coaching and I’ll put a link to your guide and all that because it’s really, I think what I loved about finding your work was that it’s, there’s no. 


Shame. There’s no blame. There’s no oh, you’re an alcoholic. It’s just take a look at what this is doing in your life. If it’s not incrementally making your life better, just take a look at it. And like you said, try 100 days. And that was just a really refreshing way to look at it.  


[00:59:55] Casey: and it really helped me also when I stopped drinking, I literally did not know a single other person in my life who used to love drinking like I did had stopped. 


And once I found the universe of cool, smart, successful women who still love to travel, who still love to relax and bond with friends, and by the way, who have real problems and struggles in their life, and, you Quit drinking and said they’re happier and healthier and better able to cope And feel better than they have in years without alcohol. 


It wasn’t until I heard that that I started being like Ooh, maybe things are going to be better if I stop, maybe I won’t feel this way, maybe I won’t take, because by the way, you are not the only one on antidepressants, and I was on a sleeping medication, and I drank alcohol, no wonder I could barely cope with my life, like that’s, I’m not helping myself, I’m counteracting everything I’m trying to do for good. 


[01:01:04] Brenda: Yes, and, and you’re probably not being told that by your doctor, which is so infuriating to me. Doctors are  


[01:01:11] Casey: part of society, too. They’ve been immersed in it, a lot of them. I coach a lot of nurses and doctors. They have their own challenges with alcohol. It’s not that they necessarily are the ones who are going to say, Yikes. 


Maybe you should cut out alcohol, and by the way, even if they say it, we’re usually so resistant to it. Yes. And most people don’t even tell their doctors the truth. the old adage is, however much you tell your doctor you drink, double it or triple it. every single person I’ve talked to who struggled with drinking and gave it up used to go into their doctor when they asked the question and say, A couple of glasses of wine a couple times a week, right? 


That is the standard answer. And so your doctor is if they’re not aware of alcohol, what it does, the problem, the link to sleep, they might be like, that sounds okay.  


[01:02:07] Brenda: Exactly. And you’re like, but you’re not in my bed at three o’clock in the morning when I wake up in a complete panic. 


So yeah. Yeah. Are there any resources obviously other than yourself and what you do, like anything that helped you early on either a podcast or a book or anything that you would recommend? Yeah. there is  


[01:02:25] Casey: so much good stuff. I have interviewed almost all of my favorite, amazing. Authors and thought leaders on my podcast that really helped me as I was starting on this journey. 


honestly, the best place to start is the Hello Someday podcast. there are so many amazing books by women who’ve stopped drinking again, without labels, without, Oh my God, I had to hit a horrible bottom. And I actually on my site have a guide. To the best quitlet. That’s what we call it, you know For women, I have a podcast episode on the best quitlet for women where 25 women I know talked about what books touched them What they loved about it how they helped them and so that’s super useful because you can hear from other women Why they liked a particular book, but like you said the alcohol explained interview with william porter Was hugely Interesting, and I love his voice. 


He’s British. He’s very calming. This naked mind by Annie Grace helps a lot of people. They love it. Holly Whitaker wrote quit like a woman, which is really amazing, but go to my site. I’ve got the full guide and so many good interviews.  


[01:03:45] Brenda: Yes, you do. So I will, I will point people there because there’s just a wealth of it and you can just start soaking it in and see what you think. 


So awesome. thank you so much, Casey. This has been great. And if anybody is still listening, hopefully there are some people still listening that haven’t said Oh, I’m out of here. You’re crazy. I’m not, not leaving my wine or whatever it is that you drink. Just know that. It is so much incredibly better. 


[01:04:14] Casey: and the other thing people worry about women worry about is like I can’t go through my life wanting to drink and depriving myself of that like In your first two weeks, of course, you really want to drink or if you are in early, early days and you go to a book club and everybody’s drinking wine and you’re like, this is so hard. 


I cannot feel this way for the rest of my life. I just want you to know you will not. That passes. It becomes so much easier. You look at alcohol and say, yeah, I used to love that. And I feel so much better. It is not worth it to me anymore. Like the cost benefit just doesn’t work out. Exactly.  


[01:04:58] Brenda: Thank you so much for listening. 


If you would like to go to the show notes, you can always find those at brendazane. com forward slash podcast. Each episode is listed there with full transcript, all of the resources that we mentioned, as well as a place to leave comments if you would like to do that. You might also want to download a free ebook I wrote called Hindsight, Three Things I Wish I Knew When My Son Was Addicted to Drugs. 


It’s full of the information I wish I would have known when my son was struggling with his addiction. You can grab that at brendazane. com forward slash hindsight. Thanks again for listening and I will meet you right back here next week.