Overcoming The Fear of Quitting Drinking

Hey, it's DC fam. I'm back with another episode this morning. My name is Barty Rez. I'm your host. I'm the stop drinking coach. And kind of my routine this past week or so has been waking up and doing a TikTok live for like 15 minutes to half an hour. And it's been really fun just being able to connect with people, seeing some similar faces pop through and just be super supportive, people engaging in the comments and asking really great questions and being able to just offer people coaching and support and insight around their process, their path and their journey of going alcohol free. And yeah, it's been really sweet and I've been really enjoying it. And part of the reason that I do that is it helps get my creative juices flowing so that I can come through and find an angle, something that I want to talk about so that I have some substance and some material for this podcast. And what came through today was talking about a few core concepts, the first one being that like the idea is that when we have been drinking alcohol, what we have effectively been doing is we've been sitting on the shore. Okay, the shoreline is everything that we have come to know and understand and feels familiar and safe, right? Our lifestyle currently. The way that we live, the way that we show up, the way that we manage our time, our habits, our routines, where we go, who we hang out with, et cetera. But the reality is is that when you're drinking alcohol, that shoreline is gonna continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller over time. This is not up for debate, this is a fact. This is, you can't argue this and it's for two reasons. Number one, every one of us are aging every day and the system is slowing down. You're never gonna have as much clarity, energy, excitement, and motivation as you do today. Well, that's not necessarily true, but what I mean is like today is the youngest you're ever gonna be, we're all moving closer and inching closer towards our death. So at some level, the shoreline of our life is getting smaller. The second piece is that when you drink alcohol, it's poisonous, it's damaging, it's killing your brain cells, it's carrying your neurons, it's damaging your liver, it's aging you, it's doing all the things that is not ideal, it's slowing you down, it's reducing your motivation. And literally every drink you take is like further wiring the looping cycles of instant gratification and instant relief that you seek through alcohol. So you have to remember that, like they say alcoholism is progressive, so if you're drinking a few drinks a day now, six to 12 months from now or a couple years from now, it's gonna be double that likely, because that's just how it works, that's how the brain works. You build tolerance, your dopamine receptors begin to die out. You need more and more of the drug to feel the same effect. And if you're drinking a few days per week, it's gonna continually increase to multiple days per week and then potentially every day. So it's this idea that the shoreline that we're on is shrinking. And if it's shrinking, what that means is, if we want our life to get better, if we want our life to improve, if we want our life to change, we have to build a boat and we have to begin to cross the water, we have to begin to cross the ocean. And the reality is is that everything that you want in your life, that you currently do not have, is gonna require you to build a boat or to get on a boat that somebody offers you and to begin moving over that ocean, begin moving over that state of uncertainty. And so this is really the core topic of this podcast today. It's understanding that life fundamentally is simple. It's not complicated. Even if you have a family, if you even if you're a high-power CEO and you manage and lead 10,000 people, like fundamentally who you are and what you are is very simple. Okay. You are this conscious witness, this ephemeral spirit that resides in this body. Okay, and you have your five senses, you have what you can see, what you can feel, what you can taste, what you can touch and what you can smell. These are like your main data points, right? And then from there, you have two core things that drive your reality. That's it. You have your thoughts, you have the voice inside of your head and basically the stories that you tell yourself about what's happening. This is good, this is bad, this is helpful, this is not helpful, this is exciting. I see hope here or no, this is scary and I'm not cut out for it and there's a really good chance I'm gonna fail so I should stay away from it and do what's safe, right? You've got the voice inside of your head. You've got the story, the narrative, the meaning that you attach, right? When you look back at your past and you say, my mom never loved me and my dad was a piece of shit and this person screwed me over and that person and right, we've got stories and narratives that we apply to experiences, we have ways that we label things and apply meaning to them. And that determines our reality. Okay, so that's like the first mode, that's the first filter of life. The second filter and there's only two core filters. You can't really have anything else as you have feeling and emotion, you have sensation. You have sensations that flow through your body, which are a combination, which are a result of your brain and the way that you structure in orient things, right? Through language, narrative, inhabit and routine and then you have your nervous system which is producing signals, feelings of calm and safety or feelings of fear and anxiety or threat. So basically you have two things that direct your life. You have your thoughts and you have your feelings and emotions and through that you're gonna have a behavior. Either you're gonna not do anything, you're not gonna take action and you're gonna just keep doing the same thing over and over again because you're in survival mode and that's what feels best. Or you're going to look at that data, you're gonna look at the thoughts and say, okay, well, my thoughts are telling me that I shouldn't and my body is telling me to definitely avoid that and then that's how you make your decisions. But the truth is, the undeniable fact is that if you want to change anything in your life, if you wanna have better health, if you wanna have better relationships, if you wanna be alcohol free, if you wanna make more money, if you wanna feel more aligned and have more purpose and more meaning and wake up with a reason to wake up, if you wanna feel drawn and pulled to something in the future that feels good and feels aligned, you have to be willing to get on a boat and take a risk and move over that ocean of uncertainty and that is the basic constituent requirements for success. Is you have to be willing to take risk and you have to be willing to move towards uncertainty. And the brain and body doesn't like taking risk and it doesn't like moving towards uncertainty because it thinks threat might lie there because the safe, the comfortable, the known and familiar might dissolve and it might break down and you might have to do things that require more energy and require more concentration or more focus or more effort. And then you're gonna meet all the edges of your nervous system that might not be familiar with that new sort of zone of reality and then all of your little limiting beliefs might come through of like see you shouldn't have taken that risk or see you always fail or see you're not good enough, you tried and look at who you are now and for a lot of people like the reason we don't try to go out and become successful, the reason we don't take as much risk as we would like is because we have these deep underlying fears and core wounds of like not being good enough, not being able to trust ourselves. We've got all these this data bank of like memories and experiences from our past where we tried to do something and then it didn't work out, right? And then our mom or our dad scolded us or berated us or we were embarrassed or judged or shamed and gilted and all these different things. And so we're just like fuck it. I'm not even gonna try anyways. I'm just gonna do what feels good in the moment and it's like at some level you can't blame people because that's just how the human operating system is designed. Right? But it's like you have to make a choice. Okay, you're a sovereign adult, you have a family, you have goals, you have dreams. Are you gonna continue listening to that old patterning and programming or are you just going to get on the boat and see what fucking happens? Right? Like that's kind of the game. That is evolution, that is growth. I myself just invested in a coach and it was over $10,000 and he's gonna be there to help me and support me in the restructuring of stop drinking coach because I'm changing up the business model. I'm changing up the way that I introduce my content to people. I'm gonna start running ads. I have this email marketing, there's automations. I'm creating another group. There's, I'm creating all different types of digital products. There's like so many new layers of complexity that I have experience in because I was in digital marketing for about a decade before I got into coaching. But it's been over five years since I've been inside of a Facebook ad account and Facebook has changed and the algorithm has changed. And so it's like I'm totally moving into this whole new experience, this whole new model, this whole new dimension of how I'm gonna be running stop drinking coach, of how I'm gonna be running this sobriety and life coaching system. And so I invested in a coach. Why do we invest in a coach? It's not because we think the coach is going to save our life. We invest in a coach because this guy has been doing this business model and this marketing strategy to expose content to more people through ads and stuff like that for over a decade. And he's done it with hundreds of people. And so he's got a system. He's got templates. He's got all types of things that make the process faster, easier, reduces time wasted and reduces money wasted. So I'm like, okay, great. Like this guy clearly shows results. He's got all these testimonials. He like shows his account. He shows his revenues. He's like, hey, when you apply and follow this marketing strategy, it's really good at being able to help people get access to your products. And it builds trust and build safety and it builds connection. And then people naturally want more. They want more support or they want more structure. They want more accountability. And then there's a really awesome, like, safe, trust-based path for people to get exposed to your stuff. And I'm like, okay, that's great. And so I'm getting ready to launch that like in the next month, month and a half. And there's parts of me that are like, scared. It's like, oh, well, what if it doesn't work out or what if it requires more of me, you know, the way that I've been running my program now is very different from how I'm going to have to be running it when I move forward. And that's okay. But that naturally brings up fear. That naturally brings up anxiety because I'm making an investment. I'm taking a risk. But if I have a vision of building stop drinking coach to a certain level, and I want to be able to help thousands or tens of thousands of people get exposed to neuro repatting and get an opportunity to immerse in my coaching structure and get my blueprints and get my craving support tools and just get access to everything that I have. And that I've built that helps people through recovery that accelerates the process that has an edge over AA and IOP and therapy and addiction counseling and all these other methods like that is going to require me to do things that are different that I haven't done before. And if I just wanted to say no, I'm just going to keep creating organic content and one day it's going to happen like it just doesn't work that way. Certain models, certain systems can get capped. And so I'm really excited about this new change because I'm focusing on the good. I'm focusing on the expansion. I'm focusing on the possibility. I'm focusing on the positive outcomes that are going to come as a result of me taking this risk and moving into a state of uncertainty. And when we go to quit drinking, you have to do that too. You have to focus on the positive outcomes. When you imagine a version of yourself that's sovereign, that has self control, that is alcohol free, that wakes up full of clarity and energy that's motivated, maybe you're a real estate agent, you're going out and you're closing more deals. One deal can net you 5, 10, 15, 20, 30,000 dollars. When you think about leading your family, when you think about showing up for your wife or your husband, and just how much more fun and playful and connected and intimate that relationship is going to be how much more quality time you're going to be able to spend with your kids. Those are the things that you want to focus on. If you keep focusing on the fear of the looping cycles of negativity, if you keep focusing on, you know, I don't know if it's possible for me. But I've tried. I've gone to AA. I hired a coach before. I went to a sober group and I just I did it for a month and then I went back. If you keep focusing on the parts that show limitation, then you're never going to be able to break through. Think of Edison. He created a light bulb and it took like 2000 attempts or 3000 attempts, but he kept going. If by the 500th attempt, he was like, listen, man, I'm throwing the towel in because obviously I've tried. I've tried every configuration. I've tried every which way. It's not possible for me. Imagine if that dude gave up. Maybe someone else throughout history would have done the same thing. But like, dude, thank God that guy didn't give up and he just kept trying. And on his 2000 something attempt, he finally created the light bulb and it transformed the world forever. And so you have to look at yourself like that. Like, stop giving into the hopelessness. Stop giving into the fear. Stop giving into the anxiety. Remember, if you're watching this, if you're listening to this, every single person, every single person who has gotten sober, who is just like you, if not worse, I likely was much, much worse. It's not a pissing contest. It's not comparing. We all have a different brain, physiology, tolerance, whatever. We all have different reasons for why we're drinking psychologically and emotionally, socially within the construct of our life and how everything is oriented. Every single person who quits drinking, who loves alcohol just as much as you did, says life is so much better. So much better. So you have to get out of your own head. You have to fucking stop being in denial and recognize you are not different, my friend. You're not unique. Your desire to just maneuver the system and just have to hear in there and then just make sure you control it. Dude, it's all the same thing. You're a human. I'm a human. You have a brain. I have a brain. I have a desire for pleasure and relief of pain. You have a desire of pleasure and relief of pain. You just want to do it sometimes when you're out with your friends. I want to do it sometimes when I'm out with my friends. You just want to use it for XYZ and then just dude, it's all the same. You're not unique and you're not different. We're literally the same person living in a different body because we're living in a very similar meat suit. Our subtleties fine tune differently, absolutely. But you have to remember that the path that you're on is a path of growth is a path of healing is a path of expansion. Just wave a magic wand. If you're stuck right now drinking alcohol and you have a desire to quit at some level and you haven't been able to just ask yourself take yourself back to when you were like 10 or 11 or 12 or whenever you start before you started drinking. Imagine being that version of yourself and playing the tape forward and being like, okay, there's two versions of myself. There's a version of myself that drinks multiple days per week and feels like shit and hungover and is feeling really limited by being able to expand and grow and have the ideal relationship and bank account and health and confidence. And then there's this version of myself that doesn't and they just are consistent and they're dialed and they keep making progress and life keeps getting better and they keep magnetizing and materializing cool new opportunities that keeps taking their life to the next level. I don't know about you guys like who's here listening. But when you go alcohol free and you dial in your mindset and your energy and your behaviors and your consciousness and you're no longer living by fear and anxiety and limiting beliefs of unworthiness and dead out of this and that. Dude, life keeps getting better. I don't know how old you are or if you've had this experience. But for the last five years since I've quit drinking every quarter to every six months, life presents some new timeline, some new dimension that I didn't I didn't was in sometimes like some there's things that have happened that like I absolutely was thinking about like I've achieved several goals that I've journaled out that were like these big things that I was like holy fuck if I get here like I've made it there's been those things. But then there's also been these things that I wasn't thinking about didn't anticipate didn't expect where like I've just moved into these incredible new timelines it's just like amazing life is so much more present so much more rich so much more fun so much more adventurous there's so many cool new opportunities that are presenting themselves there's like unlocks of my personality in my vision around who I am and what's possible and what life could be. Like it just keeps getting better and and I know that might sound crazy but it's so true and I can't tell you how many of my clients who have gotten sober who check in with me every six months or every year when they just had a new milestone and they share little tidbits about what's happened it's like dude that's what happens like there is a real thing I don't care what your religious background is or what you believe in like regardless of dogma regardless of what you call it him or her the the field the higher power god Jesus Buddha all like whatever there's like the way this universe is designed is that it is a universe of energy and frequency energy and frequency and your mind your thoughts transmit an electrical signal there's an impulse that goes out into the field and your body the way that you feel whether you're calm or neutral whether you feel a sense of confidence and conviction whether you're afraid and scared and retracted or you're anxious in this anticipation of something bad happening that is a frequency that is a level of consciousness your unconsciousness just isn't just appear like in your head it embodies like your your entire being is just like that entire being is in a field of consciousness and when you get deep into this stuff I think they call it the toroidal field if you look up the toroidal field on Google images you'll see it it's like this this energetic bubble that you're engulfed in that goes out like six feet and vibes are real right you know that as an adult when you go out to meet friends or Are you going to a social thing and you see somebody and you get the vibe? You're like, I don't know about that person. There's something about it, right? It's just it's not resonant. There's something, and they didn't say much and maybe they didn't even express a ton of eye contact. But there's something intuitively. What is that intuition that is our ability to read energy? Energy is real. It is absolutely real. You have to start thinking bigger. You have to like one of the things about addiction is that because you're in this constant state of self-management and self-servival, just managing your own relief and being selfish in the way that you're not considering downstream consequences. You're not considering the impact on your family or your kids or your partner or the boss that hired you to pay you to perform and you're just trying to manage your brain and nervous system because you've gotten caught in the state of alcohol use disorder addiction. When you're not thinking about those things, you're operating from your ego. You're operating from the third dimension. I don't know about you guys. If you've ever sat with plant medicine, whether you've done psilocybin or there's plant medicine like ayahuasca, I'm generally personally. I'm not promoting it. But for me, these medicines have been incredible in transforming consciousness and healing trauma and doing so many different things. They're not for everybody. You typically have to feel intuitively called towards them. Your family has a history of psychosis. Bipolar schizophrenia, definitely not for you because these things can take you into very altered states of consciousness that not everybody is ready for. When you're in those states, you see that reality is not just what we see in our third dimension. It literally opens up spaces of consciousness, doors of consciousness that have always been here that you literally didn't know exist. You can see the fields of energy and you can see the beings and all the other things that exist. I know this sounds insane and I don't want it to turn you off. I'm speaking to the fact that I am a human walking this earth just like you have. I've been incredibly passionate and curious about trying to understand the nature of reality which is what led me here and what leads me to do this work. I want to continue to better understand the mind, psychology and everything in between to help and support people. What I'm getting at is that there's more to this dimension. My last episode starts talking about how to think fourth dimensionally, how to get out of the problems of what you're constantly seeing and go into your mind which is the source of creativity, consciousness is the source from which everything emanates from because if you turn off consciousness, there's nothing. Consciousness is the spring. It is the womb from which all experience emanates. Without consciousness, there's nothing. Therefore, consciousness is fundamental. It is the base layer and most people don't know how to use and manage consciousness and that's a big part of recovery. When we get exposed to alcohol at an early age, 16, 15, 14 and our early 20s, our brain has not developed. We don't have a broad contextual understanding of reality. We were just a kid 10 years ago, fully dependent on our parents. Even though we think we've got it all figured out, we don't know anything. We know nothing. A big part of the recovery journey is beginning to expand your mind, beginning to expand your consciousness into like, "Who am I? What am I here? What are the laws and rules of this universe? How do I engage with myself? How do I engage with the world so that I can get more of what I want?" When I naturally get more of what I want, I become happier, healthier and more successful. When I do that, I can then give that back to other people. I can help and support and be a leader, a coach, a mentor to my family, to my kids, to my buddies that I meet up with from time to time. It's really, really important to understand that like if you want to get to the next level, you have to begin taking risks. You have to throw yourself into the ocean despite not knowing how deep the ocean is or how far you have to go to get to the next piece of land. But what if you knew what if you had with clear convicted certainty that if you get on that boat and you just don't get off, you will eventually get to land that has all your goals and dreams. One of the things one of my really good buddies who I used to live with, he was a little bit older than me. He was in my heavy, heavy drinking phase around 25, 26. We would go through like a bottle of tequila a night together. He was like a mentor to me. He was really wise and he was super smart and he was super creative and just was super disciplined. He'd wake up at like 4 a.m. every day and the guy is like, he's like a shaman now. He's just incredible. He's, yeah, I won't go too deep into his life. But one of the things he used to tell me was like, he's like, imagine you're at the edge of a football field. Okay. Let's say you're at the end zone. And then you're looking across to the other side of the football field. And imagine right at the end zone, like the first line of the end zone, there's the huge, super clear, crystal clear glass pane that was in front of you. That was like, let's say, I don't know, 5 feet thick. And it was made of mild bulletproof glass. So you can't just punch it. You can't just hit it really hard with your hand. You would have to use a pickaxe or a sledgehammer to break this thing down. It's going to require like 10, 20, 30, maybe 40 swings at it to break that glass pane down. And then on the five yard line, there is another glass pane and then on the 10 and the 15, the 20. And there's these glass panes all the way through. But in the end zone, on the other side, and you can see it clearly and you can see it perfectly, or all of your dreams, or all of your goals, or all of your things that you want, whether it's the body, the relationship, the confidence, the money in your bank account, the life of purpose and meaning, it's all right there. It's all right there. He was like, how motivated would you be every time you took a risk and every time you swung that fucking pickaxe against that glass pane, knowing that with every step you take forward, you are getting closer to that thing. I was like, dude, I would do it so fast. Like you, you couldn't pay me to do it. Like I would be breaking it down like crazy. Every micro opportunity I saw, every time I was able to pick that thing up, I would swing it. And he's like, yeah, that's what life is like. When you have clarity around where you want to be, right? I talk about this in my last podcast when, when you know what point B is, you're like, okay, I want this type of relationship. I want to show up and be this way. I want my parent personality to be this way. I want to be confident. I want to be able to go up to a social circle and chit chat and crack jokes. I want to be super disciplined with my health. I want to have a Greek God body or I want to just be looking super good and confident in the mirror. I want to have an amazing sex life. I want to have a beautiful partnership with my significant other. I want to have, be able to spend awesome time with my kids and lead them and guide them and inspire them to be the best version of themselves. I want to be the best leader for my company. I want to grow my organization. I want to make more money. I want to be able to retire by XYZ by learning how to invest and starting a side business and like whatever it is, right? If you have perfect crystal clarity around what that thing is and you allow yourself to begin to feel what it would feel like if that was your reality now. This is the key. Every manifestation book, the law of attraction, the whole thing that came out. This is all it is. If the universe is energy, if the universe is frequency, then what you are doing is you are learning to tune the frequency of your field, of your consciousness, of your mind and body out of bullshit survival states. "Oh, let me manage my craving. Oh, let me manage my fear. Oh, let me manage my anxiety." And you say, "Fuck all that." That's old identity. That's old version of me. That's old survival, living like a dog, managing his instincts version. Let me begin to think about and dream and envision what would that version of me be like. Listen, you're not going to quit drinking or become successful or move into and become the version of yourself that you want. Listen, life's not about success. If you're just like Bardi, you're cool, but like, I'm chilling, man, I'm comfortable. I just want to find a way to quit drinking and just live my life. That's okay, too. There's a version of yourself that's even more cool and even more collected and even more comfortable. And you can have that version if you want. But you have to clarify what it is and you have to get clear. This is such a big piece. This is what helps you sustain through cravings, right? When we meet the edge of our nervous system, which is the debt collector coming back and saying, "Hey, you've borrowed interest. You've borrowed all this money. There's interest. You've borrowed all this neurochemistry. Now you've got to pay it back. When we get that craving, you've got to be like, "Okay. I've got to have something that's going to sustain me through it." If you don't have a vision, if you don't have clarity, if you don't know where you're going, it's going to be impossible, my friend. You're just going to give in. You're going to say, "Fuck it. Let me just manage this now." Right? So you've got to get clear on who you're going to be. you want to be and where you're going. And so if you knew that if you took a risk, if you hired the coach, if you invested in yourself, like, could I get there if I just didn't give up and stayed on the boat? How much more committed would you be when the person laid out the path and said, okay, follow this. This is the structure. Make sure you do this at noon and make sure in the evening you remember to do this. And you're like, okay, wait, so this is what you did to experience all of this. And this is who you were before. I can see myself in you. You don't seem that different. In fact, like, you seem just like me in a way. And this is exactly what you did. Great. Let me just fucking throw all my bullshit out the window. And let me surrender to like just whatever's happening and just be like, okay, maybe I don't know everything. Maybe some people have an edge on certain aspects of, like problem solving that I just don't know about. Right. And so let me invest in this person. And then they can invest back in me. And then together we can collaboratively move towards the thing that we both want to experience. You know, that's the way that you have to think about it. Like if I was like, oh no, I'm not going to hire this coach because, um, you know, what if, what if I try to do it and I fail and it's expensive and then I'm going to waste my money. And it's like, if I just give in to all the things, all the reasons why not, could I still become successful on my own? Sure. Would it take potentially a lot more time? Yeah, absolutely. I know that. Would it also cost me a lot more money in testing a bunch of different things within the plan and structure that I could save just by following a predefined successful template that we know works. Absolutely. So I'd probably end up wasting more money and wasting more time rather than having, rather, I have this consultant in my back pocket. Who I could be like, yo, so I just created the landing page. What should we do with this section of the landing page? He's like, oh, that section of landing page you want to have this information. I was like, why? He's like, because XYZ, oh, perfect. Okay, great. So let me just do that instead of creating my own version of it and then sending a bunch of traffic and wasting money and not knowing the right angles and that, you know, and so that's the way that you want to look at it. Everything that you want, everything that you desire exists on the other side of risk and exists on the other side of uncertainty. That's just the way the world works. There's evidence for it all around you everywhere. If you're 50 pounds overweight and you're like, I'm fucking tired of looking at myself in the mirror and I can tell my partner is like, you know, it's just like not the same. They don't have the same fire for me that they used to. You're like, all right, I'm going to have to pay for a gym membership and I'm going to have to get my ass in the gym three days a week. And that is risk and that is uncertainty because what if you apply all this time, energy and effort and you don't lose the weight or what if you aren't following the proper diet or what if you aren't exercising with the right strategy or protocol? You're not doing enough reps or you're not going heavy enough or whatever. It's like you're taking a risk and you're having to manage uncertainty through the process and you're experiencing pain along the way or discomfort. But if you get on the boat, if you get the gym membership, if you hire the trainer and you stay consistent, eventually you get there. And it's the same thing with anything and you've been doing it your entire life with everything. You were dating your partner and then you took the risk and you got married and you moved into a state of uncertainty. You've never been married before. You don't know what it's like to maybe live under the same roof. You took the risk of having kids. You didn't know what that was going to be like, what troubles or challenges or things were going to come up from there, but you did it. And then it transformed your life in a lot of beautiful ways, maybe ways that sometimes made it more challenging that you had to problem solve, but also in other ways that were beautiful. When you were 18 years old and you maybe went off to college, like at some level you were excited because you're like, I get to break away from my parents, I get to develop my own identity, I get to finally get out of my small town and I get to make new friends and I get to explore all types of new cool, fun stuff. But then at the same time you're like, maybe a little scared. Maybe it's like, fuck, what's it going to be like? What if I fail? What if I get off track? What if like, how am I going to manage my finances? That other thing that I'm off to get a job, I'm off to pay for school. It's the same thing. We've been managing risk and uncertainty our entire lives. And just imagine in your own life, if you never took those risks, if you never allowed yourself to hurl yourself into that state of uncertainty and just stayed committed and convicted to managing your safety and your pleasure in the moment. So many of so much of your maturity, so much of your wisdom, so much of the way that you perceive and process reality would have not transpired. And recovery is the same way, right? I know you like the dopamine. I know you like the quick fix. I know you're afraid of feeling your emotions, but you have to understand, when we go to quit drinking and get sober, it's like our consciousness is still in first grade. I know. I felt it. I get it. I quit it 29. I literally thought my life was over. I was a fiend for the dopamine. I was a fiend for the alcohol. I was a fiend for the excitement of the rush of get of driving, you know, off work and throwing music on and getting fucked up in my car before I went into the house. Like it was like it was a lifestyle. It was a ritual that made me feel better. It made me feel more confident. It let me exhale. I get it. But the downstream consequences of that means a small limited life. It means not being able to ever expand and meet my bigger goals, meet my bigger vision, become the version of Bardi that's speaking to you right now that is infinitely more expansive and happy and connected and fulfilled and has way higher quality relationships and is in a relationship with a woman that is unrecognizable compared to my last relationships. It's like, and I'm living in a place that is literally like my dream and it's so many different things. I have so much more connection, so much more creativity, so much more purpose, such an awesome, incredible group of friends. Was all of this fully present five years ago? None of it. None of it. But I just knew that like what I'm doing right now doesn't work and if I keep doing this thing, it's going to get bad and I'm going to waste time and I'm really going to hurt myself or end up accidentally hurting someone else in a way that like I might not be able to change. You know? So all of life is about two things, managing your mind and managing your nervous system. That's basically it, my friend. That's kind of it. If you can get really good at managing your mind, really good at talking to yourself and telling yourself good stories instead of constantly fighting yourself and arguing with yourself and like just creating resistance. And if you can develop a nervous system that knows how to feel calm and safe in the face of danger and threat. And you can stay regulated and you can make sure your prefrontal cortex is online and you're able to survey the landscape. Like look at like military special operations, Navy seals, right? Like Marine Force recon, Green Berets, whatever the case is, right? Like these people are highly trained to be able to stay calm in the face of danger and threat. And as a result, they are the most bad ass human beings on earth. They can literally show up to any situation and have complete control. They can lead the situation. And if anything gets physical, they are going to win. They are the alpha of the space. That's just how it works. So what what's happening here? How do you produce those types of people? You produce those types of people by teaching them how to manage their mind. And you do it by training their nervous system to be able to handle stress and to be able to handle sensation and to be able to bear that load while their brain still stays online. The addiction is the opposite of that. Addiction is the complete opposite of a sovereign, incredible tip of the spear special special operations like leader, right? They can manage an incredible amount of sensation and stay calm, stay clear and stay regulated. Addiction is the complete opposite. You can't handle any amount of sensation and immediately your mind collapses and goes to the first source of relief. It's like, dude, you would crumble in war. And if you look at life at some level, it is war, right? Like there's a competition. You're competing against your employees. You're competing against the market. You're competing against XYZ, right? Whether we're competing for the best partner or whatever the case is, right? Life at some level is like hey, we got to figure this thing out. We got to survive. We got to make enough money. We got to say for retirement, we want to look good. We want to maintain attraction. We want to maintain leadership. We want to be a good role model. We want to continually find and seek fulfillment in life so that like life isn't stale and boredom. We want a combination of adventure, but we also want a combination of certainty, right? So it's like, you got to come back online and remember why you were born. The reason we're drinking alcohol is because we're trying to make it. manage pain or access pleasure in a way that's a shortcut. And our brains like, yeah, that's great. We never had alcohol before for two million years. We just had to fight our fucking way to be able to regulate and gather resources. But why would I do that now? When I've got this alcohol thing that's literally three, five, 10 bucks at the store. Dude, it turns you into a slave. You don't need it. I thought I needed it, but I'm telling you, you don't need it. You're so much, I'm infinitely better without it. And you will be infinitely better without it. But you have to be willing to see the game, the picture, the contacts. You have to be able to look out, zoom out 50,000 feet, look down and be like, all right, what kind of, like, look at the, look at the chess board. Who do you want to become? What are the possibilities? And this is a big piece of it. How much time do you have left on earth? You know, so many of us like, I think the average human being, like, is not thinking about their future. And it's hard to think about the future in addiction especially because, because it, it, it, it, just the way your brain gets adapted is for survival. You can't think beyond like your next drink realistically because your system is in a state of survival. You're either feeling okay, all right. Kind of shitty recovering from the hangover. And then as soon as you start to feel better, your brain starts triggering cues for more alcohol. Like dude, it's a fucked up slave system, you know? And so like think back to when you were a kid before you started drinking, when you had more hope and vision of like, what do you want? Wouldn't it be tight to like lose 10 or 20 or 30 pounds again to the best shape of your fucking life and be jacked and lean and strong and feel good about who you are in the mirror? Wouldn't it feel good to be able to like, put alcohol aside and then over the next 18 months to three years find a way to double or triple or five X to your income by maybe finding a better job or starting a side business like dude in 2026, there's so many other ways to like make money besides just working like a traditional thing. There is and that's just the reality of it. Like you can help support your family and achieve your dreams in whatever pursuit or context. You can go become a yoga instructor. You can find a way to start traveling more. You can whatever whatever you want to do is 100% possible and it's easier and faster and probably cheaper to do it than it's ever been. Why? Because of the internet, because of what's available. Literally, you can learn anything from anyone. There's a thousand people that teach the same thing wherever at some level. And like, that's what my program is about. It's not just like, hey, I'm going to work with Bardy. I'm going to join this program to quit drinking. My program is like a life coaching system that helps you quit drinking along the way because what you discover is that it's not about alcohol. As soon as alcohol is not in your mouth, the way that you sustain being alcohol free is about learning how to manage your mind and learning how to manage your emotions. That's it. And through that process, you're going to begin to reorient your consciousness. You're going to expand and understand and reinterpret reality in ways that you're like, huh, I never really considered that before. And as you do that consistently over time, your brain changes, your prefrontal cortex comes back online, your amygdala begins to soften. Your nervous system starts if you're more safe and calm and grounded. You start to notice different opportunities within your life. People start engaging you differently. You have more clarity and energy when you wake up in the morning. Your relationships become better. Sure, does that mean you have to give up going to the bar every weekend? Yeah. If you want a new life, if you want a life that's way better than it is now. But that's a decision you have to make, right? Life is about taking risk. Life is about moving into a state of uncertainty. Anybody you revere, anybody you look up to an admire, whether they're in your family, your grandparents, your uncle, one of your friends, somebody online that you follow. Like, if you look at them and you're like, damn, I love the way they speak. I love the way that they carry themselves. I feel inspired by them. I wonder, how do they build this thing? How do they do it? They started just like you. They grew up in an environment that some level was likely unstable. And what's interesting, too, is the people who tend to be the most successful or like people who have some sort of like thing that you're attracted to or magnetized to are also people who had it pretty bad or like pretty rough growing up. And the reason for the cause of their ability to go out and like make some really cool shit happen is because they've experienced the contrast of it being really shitty. So if you've had it rough, just know, right? If this is like a little scale right here, you can't really see it. Like if you've gone down 50 points, right, at your darkest, like you have the ability to go up in equal and opposite direction to the positive side, 50 points or 75 points or 100 points, right? Like the contrast of life is important. And so remembering that like part of the reason why we're here, maybe the main reason why we're here and I continue to iterate this over and over again, is like we're here to learn, we're here to evolve, we're here to learn how to drive our human car and to figure out the tools and techniques and strategies that other humans who are hanging out on earth just like us trying to figure it out, have figured out and have been like, yo, if you do it this way or if we problem solve it this way or look it at that way, it's gonna help you get to the next level. And then at some point you just have to get over your own bullshit and your commitment and your attachment to the story of like, yeah, but this has been me and this, but what, you know, and the pain and it's like, dude, I validate that and I support the truth of that and the realness of that for you. And but at some level, at some level we have to make a decision. So okay, enough is enough. I lived in the story, I experienced it, it shaped me, but guess what, it's no longer working. I can't keep drinking because I don't wanna feel my emotions. I'm gonna be alive for another 40 or 50 years. It is not sustainable to move through this dimension of reality and to be cut off from 50% of what my experience as a human being. Like the system is gonna decay and be chaotic and dysregulated and dysfunctional. If I can't feel my emotions, you know, and what's crazy is once you get to the other side of learning how to feel your emotions, you're like, how the fuck did I spend 10 or 20 or 30 years afraid to feel sensation? That's all an emotion is. If you've got a bunch of grief under there, like allow yourself to feel the grief and cry at the fuck out in a pillow and scream and cry and slam the pillow and allow your body to release that energy. Why are you so afraid to feel it? I know it's hard. I know losing that person was just fucking rocked your world. But guess what? Like we have to process energy has to move. If it keeps staying stagnant, you will literally suicide yourself. Unintentionally, death by a thousand cuts. Drink by drink by drink by drink by drink because your consciousness doesn't like, it's not willing to process it. And listen, if you've gone through some real shit, talk to a therapist, find a specialized coach who can be there and walk you through it. Step by step by step by step. You don't have to let the whole waterfall come down. You can just poke a little hole and just let a little bit come out, a little bit at a time and find a really good therapist to just kind of inch away closer. My program helps you in that significantly with neuro repatoning. It takes you through experiences and exercises to help you heal your inner child and look back at memories that were painful, that caused limiting beliefs. And it helps you reorient the way that you see them and process them and then reintegrate them back into your mind and into your body, which literally changes the way that you feel about it now. Which literally changes now the quality of thoughts and beliefs that you have, which completely opens up new dimensions of timeline for your future. Because now you're not limited and stuck by that old energy. There's so many layers to this. And that's why when you go to try to quit drinking on your own and you get a week or a couple of weeks or six months and then you go back, it's like, well, of course you went back. You're a conscious witness inhabiting a human meat suit, a human vehicle that is multi-dimensional and has a lot of layers in it. And there's a lot of layers influencing this thing. And if we have no idea what is influencing it, how are we ever going to optimize it? It's like, imagine you have a car and you're given a car and it has different stats. But then you have to put that car on a track and you have to race it. And every car has the potential to hit 250 miles an hour. 250 miles an hour. But if you don't understand any aspects of the car, you don't understand how an engine works. You don't understand how the radiator works. You don't understand how to change the tires or what kind of tires you need. And you don't know about the braking system or the exhaust system. By the way, I'd know next time. nothing about cars. And so if you do know about cars, you're probably laughing because these are the only things that I can bring up. Pistons, I don't know. I don't know what about cars. But if I knew that like I only had one car to drive and like the mission was to try to figure out how to get this car to move as fast as possible to have the best acceleration, the best handling, the best top speed, so that I can experience the goal and the desire, I would figure out everything there is to know about it. Right? And that's kind of part of the fun. I don't know how deep you've gotten into personal development. I don't know if you've explored spirituality or philosophy or different like lineages of various types of like wisdom, eastern, western, right? Like different personal development gurus, various concepts of like meditation, of the quantum field, like, dude, there's so much to learn that is incredibly fascinating about the thing that you are, the suit, the body, the vehicle that you have been traveling in all these years. And that's kind of the excitement of it. It's like, yeah, alcohol has been helping us manage our social anxiety and our fear and our loneliness and our isolation and our dissatisfaction with our job or our husband or wife or whatever. But there is so much more. There's so much more and it's so expansive, it's so healing, it's so it literally like it melts your reality and rebuilds your paradigm. And it's amazing. It's amazing stuff. If you would have told me five years ago that this would be my life today with all the nuances that I'm not going to share with you because they're personal, which my mind would be blown. And you best believe that all the challenges that I went through over the course of those five years to say sober. If you would have told me it's like, hey, dude, I know you're having a craving. I know you want to do it out. You want to do this. You want to do that. But hold on. Five years and four months in, this is going to be your life. These are the stats, these are the details. These are going to be the circumstances. This is what you know, I would have been like, fuck yeah, you best believe I'm moving through this discomfort. You best believe that I'm going to make the right decision in the moment. I'm going to make the decision that favors my long term goals and vision over whatever other sensation is like bothering me right now. And that's why it's so important to like follow a system, follow a structure, don't think getting sober is just putting the bottle down. There's things that you can do on a daily basis that literally expand consciousness, that begin to regulate and heal your nervous system, that transform the way that you interpret reality. Literally, when data comes in through your five senses and you're looking at your car or your couch or whatever it is that you're listening to this, your computer, your phone, you will literally change the way that you see the thing. It'll have a different meaning. It'll have a different tone. It'll have a different texture. That's why you can watch a movie when you're like 15 years old and then you go back and watch the movie again when you're 30 or 40 or whatever. And you're like, oh, I see an experiences in a totally different way. You read a book and then you reread it again years later and you pick up all of these new things. Did the book change? No. The fabric of your consciousness did the fabric of your experience did your nervous system, your wisdom, your beliefs, the way that you process reality. You've had way more experiences to filter that paragraph through. So now it has a completely different storyline, a different arc, a different message. And that's what the journey of recovery or getting sober or quitting drinking is about. There are spirals of consciousness that move up. Like that's what we're doing. We're healing. We're evolving. We're becoming more expansive. We're moving towards the fundamental energies that life wants that are giving. Like connection, unity, harmony, presence, abundance, generosity. Like these are the things that are life giving. When you learn how to tune your mind, your body, your energy system to these things, you look back and you're like, why the fuck would I drink? Alcohol is the worst drug. It destroys me. It hijacks my system. It makes everything else like less desirable and fun. And it's like at a certain level, human beings are moving through like a collective evolution of consciousness. And if you're drinking alcohol, it's because at some level, your consciousness, it doesn't mean you can't be a billionaire and still drink alcohol. Like at some level, if you're a billionaire, you are 0.0001% of human beings when it comes to like managing money or success or building businesses or investments or finances or whatever the case may be, leadership or technology or whatever. But then there's other parts of your consciousness emotionally that are rooted and even psychologically in the way that you connect to and tell yourself story about alcohol and relationship that's still rooted on a totally different lower frequency relative to what you've been able to achieve in terms of resource or wealth. And so it's like that's why we're here. It's a journey of refinement. It's a journey of discovery. It's a journey of understanding what's possible and who we can become. Right? I don't know about you, but like I really am hoping and amings that the way I live my life ultimately leads me to a place that when I die, whenever that ends up being, that I look back and I'm like, fuck yeah, like I am proud of the life I lived and to die with no regrets. Like I did my best, I emptied the tank, I followed the nudges when opportunities presented themselves. I took them even though they were scary, even though there was risk involved, even though I didn't know what the process was like, how long it would take if I was capable. I just did it and I got to experience and I got to learn and if it worked out amazing and if it didn't learn, if it didn't work out, I got feedback. I got data and it made me wiser so that next time I'm presented with an opportunity or decision, I have more context, I have more filtering, more data to filter through to make a better decision and that's life. Like, you know, it's not that complicated, right? It's your mind and it's your nervous system. If you want to have and build and create a better life, learn how to better manage your mind, the stories that you tell yourself, what you pay attention to in when you close your eyes, that sphere of consciousness where you can imagine, where you can talk to yourself, you have a little voice in there, learn to tune that better and then learn to learn to apply tools and strategies over time that create a system in your body that's not constantly producing threat signals. And when you do that, man, life becomes insane. It becomes so possible, so expansive. Things just start magnetizing to you because you're not living in fear. You're not living in self-doubt. You're not living in anxiety. You're confident when you show up, you're confident in the way that you speak and the way that you carry yourself. You add value to people's lives, right? You have an idea and you want to move towards it. You just move towards it. There's no fighting. There's no constant procrastination. There's no, uh, what about this and what about that? Like, dude, the whole energy system gets clearer and your ability to create and move towards and materialize a reality in the way that you hope and the way that you dream just becomes possible. But it starts by having the courage to get off the shore, having the courage to take the risk and to just go, learn, get better, refine, understand, practice and just keep doing it. And if you just do that, it'll all work out. It always does. You know, just think back on your life. Like, how many times you were in a pinch, how many times your back was stuck against the wall? You're like, I'm really fuck this time or like, you know, and then it worked out. It worked out one way or another. A sobriety thing going alcohol-free, it'll work out, but you have to take action. If you just sit around, it's not going to happen. So I trusted this episode was helpful. I trusted this episode, connected some dots for you. And if it hit, leave a comment below. Let me know what part of it resonated with your soul. And I just want to thank you so much for continuing to listen to this podcast. This podcast is some of my most heart-centered soul-aligned work. Literally when I'm speaking, I'm like, channeling. It is my truth. It is my, it is like the source of my essence that's coming through because I want to help. I've been there. I lost my dad to it. I was stuck in it for 15 years. And I'm like, I'm looking back and I'm putting a hand out because it's like, dude, I get it. I get the fears. I get it. But I promise you that it gets better. The only reason it feels that way is because your system is tuned to those behaviors and patterns and neurochemical outputs and frequencies over and over again. But there's a whole new landscape that's available. That's infinitely better. But it starts with you having the courage to meet the edge and to move through it. So thank you so much for listening. Share this with somebody, a friend or a family member who you think would benefit from it. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave a review. And if you'd like to work with me, go to www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com. I offer one-on-one and group coaching. Thank you so much. I love you and I hope you have a wonderful day. See you in the next episode.