Red Kites Life

Have you already tried to stop drinking for a while? Or maybe you thought you'd slipped into drinking a bit more than is good for you and that it might be wise to cut back a bit?  If you're the kind of person who can just have one glass of wine or a pint of beer and then stop, then I'd hazard a guess that this blog and Dry January groups or other sober-curious communities probably aren't where you're at.  For the rest of us who find moderation somewhere between 'a challenge' and 'nigh on impossible' ... well, read on!   There's so many posts about people who are embarrassed that they cannot have just one drink, or who set out with the right intentions but then somehow a switch is flipped and they lose control and then drink to excess. This might be exacerbated by friends (not friends?) who seem to positively delight in watching us fall off the wagon.  There's a great deal of shame expressed, not only about what you might have done when under ...

  So if our brain likes to deal with familiar situations in familiar ways, and that involves reaching for a beer, or going to the pub, or pouring a glass of wine, we need to find other ways to behave in those familiar situations that do not involve alcohol. But we also need to make the new choice as easy as possible for our brains to accept.  Each individual's daily or weekly routine will be very different. So in mentoring we will explore those situations when your habit is to reach for alcohol. You can do this for yourself by thinking through a typical week and identifying when "choosing boozing" is simply a normal part of what you currently do. The specifics of each situation will help us identify alternative choices. Ideally we will also make those choices in advance, because decision-making on the hoof often results in sub-optimal choices (ie ones when the brain will ensure you revert to doing what you always do).  Some of these ideas may be relevant, others not so mu...

  "Habits are mental shortcuts learned from experience ... whenever the conditions are right, you can draw on this memory and automatically apply the same solutions ... habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks." [source : Atomic Habits, James Clear, Random House Business Book, 2018] Consuming alcohol has become a habit. It is a mental shortcut learned from experience. When we are tired, or angry, or anxious, or happy we learned that alcohol delivered something that made us feel better (however we individually defined that). So we learned to drink without thinking about it.  When you want to change your alcohol consumption there are two reasons why it can be hard:  1. Alcohol is actually addictive, working in your brain just like any other (illegal) drug. It alters our brain chemicals in a way that eases our emotions, albeit temporarily.  2. The physical habits we have built up around alcohol, whether ...

This is my weight. Starting weight was the heaviest I had ever been in all of my 55 years on the planet, and the start date was 1 January 2020. Although I started my alcohol free journey on the same day, I didn't start Dry January 2020 with the objective of losing weight. That (alongside improving my fitness) was a parallel journey because, honestly, I just decided I'd had enough and needed to get a grip. I have been on a diet for literally all of my adult life, obviously not totally successfully! I had had an exceptional period of work-related stress and anxiety - and my response, like it always has been, was to eat (and drink) to excess.  But this was the worst it had ever been. At this point I was also on anti-depressants to deal with my "low mood" and anxiety, but still drinking. And eating. Yeah, I know ...  So why am I sharing this with you now? It's to emphasise that I'm not mentoring clients from the point of view of being a lifestyle transformation su...

Yesterday we looked at discussing your plan to moderate or go alcohol free for a period with friends or colleagues. Today : the family!  Now, I know from some posts in the groups I belong to that some partners haven't even noticed that their significant others are taking a break from alcohol. This might work for you if you always pour your own drinks and leave each other to your drinking habits when you're together. But honestly, I think that's rare! And sooner or later I think there's going to be a discussion, so always best in my view to be prepared, even if it's not something that needs to be done right away!   How this is tackled can vary depending on  which family members you are talking to (parents, siblings, partners, children are all likely to have different responses and raise different questions) the extent to which alcohol-fuelled gatherings matter to your family, or are "traditional" (how are we going to have a great family Christmas if you...

So you've decided to take a break from alcohol or reduce your consumption. Unless you live alone and never go out or meet anyone, you're probably going to get asked why you're not drinking, especially if your friends know your usual drinking habits. A lot depends who is asking, so this blog looks at friends or colleagues, and tomorrow I'll take a look at family discussions. Some people will say you're never under any obligation to explain why you're not drinking, so one option is to say "it's none of your business".   Whilst this is true, I personally prefer a slightly less confrontational approach.   I also think that "I don't want to talk about it" leaves the subject open to friends speculating and making too much of your decision. But whatever you decide, have your answer ready and say it confidently. Any indecision leaves you open to being persuaded to change your mind and especially in the early days you absolutely do not w...

Nervous? Don't be! Everyone on the dry or moderating journey had a Day 1. However many days sober warriors have lived through, each and every one of us had a Day 1. Several of us (yes, me too) had more than one Day 1. Some people have many Day 1s.  But you are you, and this is your journey to be travelled in a way that works for you. Plus you are here ready to start, which already puts you ahead of all those people who haven't even given it a moment's thought.  So, let's make some plans to make sure YOUR Day 1 is as successful as it can be. 1. Get your existing supplies of alcohol out of the fridge for sure, and preferably out of your home. Put the tins and bottles in the garage, under the stairs, in the boot of your car, leave them with a friend. Never was 'out of sight, out of mind' more appropriate than now.  2. Buy in supplies of what you will plan to drink instead. Remember you will probably be saving money by not buying alcohol, so if it's at all possi...

Hmm ... "should" is a complicated word. You have to set off on your journey on a day that's right for you. But, for the sake of argument, what's wrong with TODAY?  My birthday is in January and for years I talked myself out of starting any kind of regime (weight, fitness, other self improvement) as a New Year's Resolution because it was inevitably condemned to fail on or around my birthday. And then of course by the time the birthday came round I wasn't quite so motivated - and anyway, the blip in the middle of the month would make it a write-off - so maybe I'll start on 1st February instead, cos there's something fulfilling about a complete month. And then by the time February came around ... well, the enthusiasm had waned and the ship had sailed. A process to be repeated annually, shortly after Christmas for the following year. Of course, now I can look back and see this kind of mentality as looking at any kind of improvement as an exercise in ...

The whole question of alcohol free drinks / substitutes is so often debated, and for so many different reasons, that this will be at the heart of several blogs exploring the subject.  Two things to remember before we start:  1. This is YOUR journey to a destination of YOUR choosing. Anything I say about AF substitutes is therefore my opinion and not an instruction of what you must do, or think on this matter. Use AF drinks if you find them helpful. Avoid them if you don't. 2. Because it's a journey, how we think about AF options, and how we use them, is likely to change over time. I personally found them vital in the early days while I was breaking the alcohol habit, and while I rarely drink them now, I do still like a special bottle of something like Freixenet Zero (cava) for New Years Eve or a Leffe Zero (beer) at a drinks party or a Nojito on the sunlounger when a glass of water really doesn't hit the spot and makes me stand out in the crowd for not drinking. So, a lit...

I know I'm not the only person who has tried to better myself in one way or another over the years. The older I get, the more I think that half of making a lasting change is about what other people say I should have as a goal, often preceded by "you ought to ..." whilst the other half is them telling me what I have to do to get there.  Now, at one level this is an appealing concept. I don't have to agonise too much about the goal, because it's already been decided for me, and all I have to do is follow the instructions and the desired outcome will result. Which lies at the heart of why many plans for long term change fail.  It's because it's not MY goal, to be achieved for MY reasons, in MY way, to suit MY life.  This is why in working together, the first thing we will do is to explore your WHY, the real deep-seated reasons why you want to shake up your relationship with alcohol. Without that heart-felt reason at the root of your desire to change, it gets ...

It's a four-letter word and I read it a lot in the Sober Warrior community. I'm talking about Fail. I Failed. Last night was a huge Fail. Why am I such a Failure?  Of course, this word and the state of mind it implies can lead to another F Word - the F*** It moment - when you get so cross, frustrated, upset, disappointed, that you throw in the towel. This is by the way just as true for the sober journey, as it is for diets, or marathon training, or learning a language, or...   My view? If we see an episode of drinking, epecially when you had planned not to, or drinking excessively when you had planned to moderate, as a Failure then, if we're serious about making a long term lifestyle change, we need to think differently about what happened.  I also think it's important to use words that recognise the importance of what happened. Calling it a 'blip' or a 'hiccup' might make light of that drinking event. So much so in fact that we could lose sight of how i...

There’s a line of work in the Sober Curious community which is called “sober coaching”. OK, I guess if I tell you that this is what I do, you’d probably get the idea without too much further explanation, especially if you’ve already done some reading or listened to some podcasts on the subject.  But it’s a really bad job description on two levels.  Firstly, sober. Who wants to be sober? A quick trawl through Dr Google and we find that suitable synonyms for 'sober' are 'serious, grave, solemn, sedate, staid, sober, earnest, mean, not light or frivolous' [source: Merriam Webster] Anyone else fallen asleep already? Secondly, coach. The same source helps us define a coach as one who instructs or trains … especially one who instructs players in the fundamentals of a sport and directs team strategy, and coaching as 'to train intensively (as by instruction and demonstration)'.  So, honestly, I am neither sober nor a coach. I am alcohol free, and I will always use thi...