Red Kites Life

I've been thinking about this for some time and I've finally come to the conclusion that my experience as "sober warrior" can help other "sober curious" individuals on their journey, whether that involves simply exploring the alcohol free lifestyle ("sober curious") or completely embracing life alcohol free ("sober committed").  The thing is, it's a journey. So many times I read people writing that they have "failed Dry January". The F word deserves a blog all of its own ... watch this space! But like all journeys, sometimes we take a wrong turn (occasionally our choice, occasionally persuaded by others). Sometimes we just can't summon the energy to progress today. Sometimes life intervenes and all our best plans are thrown to the wind.  It's also like babies learning to walk. No-one ever accused a baby of "failing" for falling over. We encourage them to get back up and try again. And each time they fall, t...

Spoiler alert : There's a reason why this blog is not accompanied by a picture.  Back in the day I worked in financial services. Ads for pension products were always accompanied by happy couples, mostly grey-haired, wearing white capri pants, strolling along a sandy beach, hand in hand, and evidently very happy with one another and their situation in life.  Illustrations of advisers almost always showed male advisers talking to couples, but clearly engaging with the male of the always heterosexual almost always white couple. As a single woman it was very easy to feel that product providers and advisers really weren't on the same wavelength.  Adviser firms used to (and still do) frame "the ideal client" in terms of business owners, those approaching retirement, widows or those who had recently come into an inheritance or other "sudden money" situation, including big City bonuses (those were the days!). Basically, I'm interested in you if you're rich a...

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...