What's It Gonna Take?

Hey, I'm Barti Arez and I'm the Stop Drinking Coach. Welcome to my podcast where I teach you how to stop drinking, how to quit craving, and how to begin the journey back to yourself so that you can transform your life. After a 14-year binge drinking career, starting and stopping dozens of times and trying everything in the book from AA to therapy, I finally discovered the key to sustainable sobriety. And on this podcast, you're going to learn practical tips, tools, and strategies to help you quit drinking alcohol the easy way so you can finally step into the next chapter of your life and begin fulfilling your potential. For private one-on-one or group coaching, visit www.TheStopDrinkingCoach.com and book a call with me. This is D.C. fam, we are back with another episode and in today's episode, I want to ask you a question and I want you to really dig deep and I want you to reflect on this and I want you to be honest with yourself and I want you to not beat around the bush and I want you to get out of every nuance of denial that you might be in. And I want you to ask yourself a question, what is it going to take? What is it going to take for you to wake up? What is it going to take for you to start making changes? What is it going to take for you to finally start facing and confronting the parts of yourself that you know you've been numbing out and avoiding and running from? Like what's it going to take? If you're drinking right now, then you're presently aware of the psychological, emotional, and physical damage that you're incurring. Feeling like crap every day when you wake up knowing that it's siphoning your energy and your life force and your motivation and that you've fallen behind on the things that you know are truly important to you, whether it's like showing up for your partner, being fully present for your kids, pushing as hard as you know you can be at work to be able to make the money that you're trying to make. When you look in the mirror, your physical health, your appearance, maybe your face is more puffy, it's getting more bloated, maybe you've got more weight around your midsection. Do you have to light your life on fire? Do you have to get served divorce papers? Do you have to push your relationship so far and so deeply that the person that you're in partnership with can bear to look at you? Do you have to destroy all trust? Do you have to destroy all respect and self-respect? Do you have to lose your job before you wake up? Like honestly, ask yourself, "What are you waiting for?" Because the buck is going to have to stop, right? There's going to be a point in time where if you're on this path, you're on this track, you're listening to this podcast because you're looking for knowledge and information and motivation and support to quit drinking. There's going to be a moment where you're going to have to have your last drink and then you are going to have to be present to what happens after that, right? You can push that off another six months or six years and then do it and it'll be harder then because you're going to be more neurochemically deficient. You're going to have patterned and wired in additional six months to six years of addiction-based behavioral programming, right? You're going to have changed your brain that much more. So you really have to ask yourself, like, what are we doing? What are you doing, right? With the time that you have every day, what are you doing? What's important to you? You know, in this episode, I really want you to reflect on what is truly, truly important to you. Is it your family? Is it your kids? Is it your own health? Is it fulfilling your potential and being able to die and rest your head on the pillow of your deathbed knowing that you emptied the tank and that you did your best? I really want you to take a moment and reflect on what is truly important to you. I want you to think about how this drinking deal, it's not just affecting you. It's affecting your partner. It's affecting your kids. It's affecting everything. It's affecting you. It's affecting how you feel about yourself. You're just delaying the inevitable. You're just procrastinating on who you could be and what your life could be because you're afraid of being present to the discomfort. See, you've heard me say this time and time again in every episode, the discomfort that you're feeling in the early parts of this process aren't going to last forever, my friend. That's just man to man, man to friend, coach to friend, coach to mentor, like brother to sister. I don't like how else can I explain it? I know you're scared. I know the thought and idea of being without alcohol is deathly terrifying. What is life? What is social? What is fun? What is my evenings? But everything recalibrates, right? I want you to think back to a time in your life where you had no skill at something. Let's say you're listening to this and you're a good artist or musician or you're a really good, I don't know, financial planner or entrepreneur or you're a nurse or you're like you were an athlete, right? Think about something that you're good at and that you're competent in and that you enjoy. Now think back to the time where you first got started and you were wobbly and you had no context and you had no map around what you were doing. You didn't know what all the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle look like. You only had one or two pieces but it was a hundred, there was a hundred puzzle pieces here and you only had one or two, right? You were trying to put the puzzle pieces together but you didn't even know what the picture was. You were just grabbing pieces and trying to fit them and it was arduous because you had to literally go through all these different pieces, right? You didn't know that there was a face here and an arm here or a landscape here in mountains and clouds and a lake. You had none of that. You were just grabbing pieces and putting them in. Imagine that process. Imagine right now if you were trying to put a puzzle together, there's a hundred pieces. You had three of them and you had no context of what it was. You would have all these puzzle pieces and they would have these different shades of colors and these different shapes but they all look similar and you just start fitting them together. You fit one, doesn't work, fit the next, it doesn't work, fit the next, it doesn't work. It's like that process isn't super fun and exciting and comfortable in the moment but eventually if you have the diligence to keep grabbing each puzzle piece and there's only a hundred of them so it might take you 10 minutes to get the right one to fit it. Imagine it's going to feel good when you finally get that puzzle piece and then the next puzzle piece might take you nine minutes and 30 seconds and then nine minutes and then eight minutes and 30 seconds and then eight minutes and 15 seconds. You can see how in the beginning it's front loaded with not a lot of map, not a lot of context, not really sure exactly what you're doing in that creates a sense of uncertainty and resistance but once you have 50 puzzle pieces now you have like half of the map. Now you're like okay I can see the colors I know what I'm looking for I can see that there's a mountain range here and a lake over here and some trees over here and a little animal off to the bottom left and you're like okay and you can see the colors and you know what you're looking for. Imagine how much faster and easier it's going to get to build that map, to build that puzzle right. So much faster, so much easier. And that's what sobriety is like right in the beginning this process is front loaded with various forms of discomfort insert the blank for you right loneliness having to make adjustments having to accept aspects of your life or your ego or your family or you know not going to that Christmas party because it's just too early and you're just you may not be have a good foundation to go yet right like whatever the case may be right you're a little border you want to make dinner and you always have wine with dinner and it's like oh my god what am I going to do with myself right you just stay present through it you just stay patient through it you allow yourself to fully feel right what you have to fundamentally understand about this whole journey is that the the reason that we arrived here is because you've been afraid to feel that's it that's it the only reason that you're here is that you're afraid to feel certain emotions there's certain things that appear in your consciousness and in your body that you're like oh no I don't want to do this call it the craving call it the impulse call it loneliness call it stress call it feeling hurt. or disconnected, right? And you're like, no, no, no, we can't feel this. Right? So you drink alcohol and it raises your dopamine. It literally like floods the reward center like a jackpot. And it gives you the illusion that because you're in pain, you can get rewarded. See how insidiously fucked up that is? In order to feel reward as a human being, you have to put effort in. You have to apply some level of effort to get to feel good. That's how biology is designed, my friend. You look back at our evolution all the way back to whatever we evolved from, whether it was monkeys or chromagnens or homo-happelists or whatever the hell it was, right? And like, you had to apply effort to survive. You had to go out and hunt, you had to forage, you had to compete against other animals or whatever your ancestors to like get a mate and to have sex and to procreate and to bear offspring. And then you had to do a lot of things to produce like an experience that would optimize your survival, right? And the things that were good for your survival produced dopamine, which would be like, ooh, that's good. Let's do more of that. This is a feeling that's favorable, right? So not only do you get the reward, but dopamine also is tied to the motivational pursuit of that thing. So we get the reward and then dopamine says, ooh, this feels good. Whatever helped us get here, let me motivate you to do more of that. That's alcohol. That's alcohol almost as much as cocaine in terms of the dopamine response. So see the game that you're playing with yourself. Every time you feel bad, you want to reward. Like imagine if you were training a child or a dog to do that. Every time the dog shit the bed, every time the dog pissed on the couch, every time the dog like, you know, ripped or the cat like ripped up the couch or the carpet, you like gave it a treat. That's like what we're doing when we drink alcohol. We go out, we live our life. We do things that are like good for us. And then we drink alcohol, which or and then we start to like feel bad at some point in our life. And then we drink alcohol and make ourselves feel better. But it's like we're we're rewarding ourselves when something isn't like, do you see what I'm saying? Like it doesn't make sense. You train yourself to get a reward every time you feel bad. Now you're also getting the suppression and the relief from that thing of course through GABA. Right. But it's it's it's a really warped drug in that sense. And really like addiction is is warped in that sense. Right. It's it's a it's a pain relief strategy. It's a pleasure pursuit strategy. But it just doesn't work because you're going to build tolerance and then you're going to need more and then your body's going to crave more in the absence of it. And then you're just going to be stuck in this looping vicious cycle. So people are like, but Barty, how do you quit? I've tried. How do you stop? But how do you actually quit? There's there's it's not a secret. It's not complex either at all. You you stop. And then whatever happens after that, you don't pick up a drink no matter what just one day at a time. So you're going to go through a short term withdrawal. Right. I mean for everybody it's different. For most people alcohol withdrawal even if you are not a big drinker and you have alcohol, it's going to last a few days. Alcohol's a pretty hard drug. Okay. So you're going to go through that and then from time to time you're going to have impulses or cravings to drink. You know, connected to a lot of the triggers that you have. And you're just going to bear through it. You're going to cope through it with different tools and strategies and mental models that I teach inside of the program. And then when you get through it, then like your body is going to slightly re-adapt. And then the next time you have an urge or craving, it'll be a little bit easier at some fraction of a level. And it's going to build confidence that you got through it. And then it'll happen again at some point and then you'll get through it. And that'll build a little bit more confidence. And it's going to have deep-potentiated all of the patterning from the past a little bit more. So the next time it'll be a fraction of a percent easier. And over a long enough time period, your mind, your body, your nervous system, everything is going to recalibrate. Everything's going to recalibrate. Think of it like this. Like right now if you have a water bottle and it's full of mud. Okay. What you're doing by removing alcohol this journey and like your chant, like it's your whole operating system is sort of akin to that too. Right? Because at the end of the day, for those of us who are drinking, not only are we just drinking through like the and managing the short term withdrawal and pain relief cycles and the dopamine feeding cycle, but we've all got stuff that's unaddressed underneath it. So it's like think of your operating system. It's full of mud. Right? It's got these energetic blockages and distortions and you know, you've got these limiting beliefs and these stories and experiences and memories that are rooted in your mind and body from the past that are, you know, restricting you and really painful and you've got resentment and guilt and shame and all these different things, right? So it's like you're this water bottle filled with mud. You're like, man, how am I ever going to get all this like mud out? It's going to be impossible. Like what do we do? Right? So how would you get the mud out? You pour clean water into it. Right? So what would happen if you had a water bottle full of mud and then you know, you have like a spiket of, you know, you're holding it under the sink, let's say and you're running clean water through it. Like eventually that mud is going to filter out and then it's going to be full of clean water. That process might take a few months. It might take six months. It might take a year, might take 18 months. It might take longer. But that's okay. Right? It's really, really okay. Like I want to be super real with you here. Right? I'm not going to sit here and say that as soon as you quit drinking, everything in your life is going to get better. A lot of things are going to get better. I would say 90% of my clients, like their life is positively like improved within 30 days in like a lot of different ways. You know, and your neurochemistry starts to recover by that 30 day mark. But is everything going to be fixed? Is your relationship all of a sudden going to be perfect? No. No. Like life is, life is a long term game that we're playing. And the way that you have to think about it is like if you're struggling with alcohol and you've been struggling for 10, 20, 30 years, whatever it is, 40 years. Okay? Are you willing to put your head down for six to 12 months so that the next 40 years of your life, the next 39 years of your life, you're pretty much free. You don't really have cravings and urges to drink anymore. Right? Like everything is just different. Alcohol is a thing of the past. You can experience that and life can get that way. But you have to be willing to recognize that like you're going to have to put some work in. Right? Quitting drinking is like your personal hero's journey. It's the thing that it's the dragon that you have to learn to slay so that you can unlock all of the gold and all of the riches and all of your dreams on the other side of it. That's literally what it is. It's literally what it is. 100%. I don't care who you are. In your own way, in your own life, that is what it represents. And yeah, it feels difficult and it feels scary. But the thing is, is you just take it one day to time, meaning you only have to get through a craving today or tomorrow. I mean, you only have to get through a craving like in the morning maybe if you get up in the morning or like once in the evening, or maybe two in the evening. Right? Like it's, it's, you just take it in 24 hour increments and it's super possible. It's super manageable that way. Right? And it's like, oh, well, Bardi, I've tried doing that and then I relapse in like three weeks. It's like, okay, we'll just, we'll cause you to relapse. You just got to be super honest with yourself and not bullshit yourself. It's like, oh well, I don't know. I got bored and I went and hang out with my buddy that I normally drink with. It's like, okay, got it. That then you don't get to hang out with your buddy for a little bit until you build a better foundation or you don't go to that particular place. You know, or instead of going out for drinks like you guys go to the gym together or they come over and you guys like door to ask some food and watch a movie or something, right? You hang out in a different way. Right? So it's a refinement process. It's a learning process. And as I say, you're not quitting drinking, you're learning to live alcohol free. So it's literally a learning process. You're learning how to re-acclimate in your mind and body. So that's why it requires an increased level of self-awareness and increased level of mindfulness around who you are, your patterns, your programs, the way that you talk to yourself. The stories that you tell yourself, are they limiting or are they resourceful? Are they open and full of possibilities in expansion or are they rooted in you not being good enough and unworthy and in the end. inadequate and not cut out for it. Like literally, these are the very things that will determine whether you're an alcoholic or free from alcohol. So you have to like get honest with yourself and begin looking at the fact that your alcohol consumption isn't just tied to you putting your hand to your mouth and drinking. There's so much more than that. There's so much more about like going inward and like looking at the parts of yourself that you're not like willing to acknowledge and talk about that you're struggling with. That's what we're doing here. That's why you're on earth. So why are you delaying the inevitable? Like you came to earth to learn, to grow, to heal, to evolve, to mature, to become wiser, to get better, to experience and expand into more of your potential. So why did you stop? Why did you stop? And at one point did you like, like you believe that that's okay to stop growing, to stop evolving. You know? And so why are you doing this? You got to get clear on why you're doing this. All right. Your why is going to help sustain you through the urge, your help, your why is going to help sustain you through the craving. And if you're not really clear on it, then you're not going to quit my friend. And it's not up to anybody to discover it for you. It's your job. It's your life, your an adult. There's no more pointing fingers and anybody else at all. That's just not how it works. At the end of the day, like you have full 100% personal sovereignty and personal responsibility and ownership over your being in every context and every sense of the word. We can't really blame anymore. I mean, you can if you want to, but it's not going to get you anywhere. And that's like the hardest part, right? When you're like operating in that frequency, where you're like really rooted in like the ego and you're really rooted in like your pain. And don't get me wrong. Like the pain is real and the damage and the destruction and the trauma or whatever it is that we incurred is very, very, very real. So I'm not bypassing that. But I'm also illustrating and explaining here that like when you're really living from that perspective, like, yeah, you're right. Yeah, it does suck. You know, people are, you know, hurtful. You know, life is unfair. All those things are true. But what are you going to do about it? You know, it's really like facing the mirror. It's like looking, looking deep, being like, who am I? What do I want to do here? And how much longer am I just going to keep playing the same game with myself? That's really what I want you to ask. How much longer are you going to keep playing the same game that ends the same way? Listen, I know it's safe. I know it feels comfortable. I know it's super familiar. I know that the thought and idea of changing it up means having to open yourself up and like experience yourself in all these different ways. It's like, oh, God, who am I? What's it going to be? It's like, what else are you going to do? Life is already uncertain. We might already die in any moment. You know, you got to like dive into the deep end. You got to be willing to take a chance. You got to be willing to trust and to surrender and stop trying to control every minutia detail of your life. You got to surrender. You got to trust that if you just start moving and swimming in the right direction, which is being free from alcohol and then taking a proactive approach and optimizing your life and like beginning your like healing journey and all these different things like that life is going to get better. You just have to trust that and you have to kind of pull yourself out of your own ego and recognize that we're all in pain. We've all got discomfort. We've all got things that we're working through. You know, so join the club. You can either continue to stay in your corner and keep drinking or you can look at all the people who were doing the same and then just develop the courage and say, you know what? Like, I want to join your guys as club. I want to start getting better. I want to start improving. I want to start trying to make things different. I want help. I want some coaching. I want advice. I want support. I want to connect with other people who get it. Like, wouldn't that be better than just trying to do this thing alone? Of course. Of course. You know, they say the opposite of addiction is connection. So what if you were a lot more satiated and fulfilled by people around you and the quality of the conversation was better? And you had a more similar lifestyle and you were pushing for the same things and you were reading the same information and learning the same stuff and like growing and expanding and blowing your minds together and discovering parts of yourself together. Dude, it's the best. It's the best feeling in the world. Having good community that you're connected to, good friendships, good relationships is like the most impactful indicator of like your quality of life and how happy you are. They've done several studies on this. You can Google it. Like, your relationships are the most influential factor on your life. So if you're around a bunch of people who are not doing much and are complaining and just full of drama and like, you know, all they do is drink and like that's their only orientation and compass is like watching the game and drinking and bullshit. So I do that's empty. That's living in distraction. You're not doing anything on a personal level. You're projecting all of your energy to things outside of you that are just fabrications that aren't even real. What's going on with you? What have you overcome lately? What's happening internally that you're trying to optimize for? How are you serving the world? What have you done that's like nice for people lately? Like the other night, last weekend, I was on Sixth Street here in Austin and my buddy has these electric scooters that we've been riding and I just ordered this one that's like super crazy. And it was like midnight we were grabbing pizza and you know each had a few slices of pizza and I was walking the corner like with the box to go throw it away. And you know there's this homeless dude in a wheelchair like you know it's kind of like right on the corner of this wall as I turn and he looks at me with like the most sincere eyes and like kind of calm demeanor and he goes, "Hey man, is there any leftovers in there?" And there's no leftovers. We ate it all. And I was like, "No man, but I'll grab you a slice, come over." And so you know we walk 30, 40 yards or I walk, he wheelchairs over to the little pizza stand. And you know I just kind of like drop down on my knees and I just start talking to him and I was like, "I ask his name like where he's from, where he stays, he's like, "Yeah I'm homeless." And this and that. And you know I've got a spot over here that I usually stay at and I was like, "What happened to your legs man?" And he's telling me the story of like he got into this accident and he like had to jump off of like a 20 foot building and he shattered both of his ankles and then like there was a complication with the surgery and then they had to you know get rid of his leg and you know and so like I just I sat and I connected with him a little bit and then I got him a slice of pizza and a drink and I had some cash on me and like I threw him a hundred bucks and like he looked at me and he was like in shock, he was like in awe, he's like "Dude are you serious?" Like and I was like, "Yeah man, it's yours like take care of yourself." And you know I thanked him for you know just just meeting him and just the opportunity to drop in real quick and and then I left and like that felt so good you know that that feeling of generosity of just like a going and connecting with another human who like could use help who could use support like I don't know if you guys ever been broke before you know but the thought and idea of like when you when you have zero or you've got like 30 bucks in your bank account right and you you don't know where the next thing is going to come from right and when you're operating with like that level of like resource right like a hundred bucks is like really a lot of money it's it's like it's a lot like it'll get you through another week it'll get you through another couple weeks you know and like the feeling that I got from like helping him out there is is better than anything else like there there's there's a real technology that's built inside of us that like you get a hit of like dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin from being generous and helping others that's like more rewarding than any drug you know and So. like I really encourage you to like deeply reflect on like, how are you living? What is the relationship you have with yourself? What is the relationship you have with the people around you? Like are you showing up in the way that they need you to be showing up for your kids or for your husband or for your wife? You know, or for your friends or for your community or for your employees? You know? So I think I'm gonna leave you with that. You know, what's it gonna take? What's it gonna take for you to change? Like do you have the ability to step into a level of like foresight and wisdom within yourself and to find like the thing in your life that is worth fighting for, that is important to you, that if you lost it, like would be devastating. If you're to lose your marriage and then have to incur like the painful divorce and everything that comes from that, like, is that what it's gonna take for you to have to change? Right? Are you gonna have to like lose the respect and trust of your kid? Are you gonna have to spend six months or two more years or five more years drinking to literally like imprint these like, these programs into your kid for them to like look at you and then for them to begin to really accept and believe that it's just you cope through alcohol so that they fall into the same path in pattern when they get into middle school or high school or college. You know, it's like, dude, your actions have real consequences. The way that you show up impacts people. What you say, how you behave, fucking matters. You know, and when you're living in like lower frequencies and in energetic distortion, you don't really care because you're just trying to survive. You're just trying to manage your withdrawal cycles and pain and you like your consciousness does not have the capacity to connect to and see how your actions are literally like impacting people, you know? So ask yourself, grab your journal, like, what's it gonna take? What's worth fighting for? Is it your family? Is it your kids? Is it your potential? Right? Thought and idea of like dying, having pissed away, like who you could be because you're afraid to just be present and feel some cravings and make some adjustments to your life and lifestyle. Like, come on, get honest with yourself and really reflect on that, you know? And whether it's with me or someone else, you know, work a program. Okay, I keep saying this over and over and over again, work a program. If you try to do this thing on your own and it's not working, you need support, you need accountability, you need community, you need a path to follow, you need structure, you need to know like what mountain you're climbing. 'Cause if you don't know, it's like, if you don't know what to look out for, what to optimize for, what you're supposed to like begin healing and changing and it's damn near impossible. At least it was for me. I was a bad case, you know? The program that I run is the same program that I use to go from drinking, you know, 15 years have been drinking to four to six bottles of wine a day. So if it worked for me, I'm confident it can work for you. I've only worked with a couple people who were drinking more than me and one of them is alcohol free now, you know? So I really, really, really, really encourage you to deeply reflect on like, what's it gonna take? You know, establish some vision, get clear on why you're doing this. And then take action despite not knowing what's on the other side. That's how you get anything in your life. You take the leap, you take the risk. All right. Visit www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com. I have one-on-one and group coaching. I'm gonna be launching Facebook and Instagram ads here very, very soon within the next week or two, okay? And the investment for my program is gonna be increasing substantially by like 25% on both ends. So if you're listening to this, I really, really encourage you to like stop procrastinating and just take action and do it. If you've been on the fence, you've been thinking about this, you haven't been really sure or like, you're like, okay, next month or next week, like now is the time. Or you can do it in a couple of weeks and invest a little bit more. That's fine too, you know? www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com. I appreciate you listening and I will see you in the next episode. Hey, thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review and share it with your friends or someone you know who might be struggling with alcohol. And if you feel like you're ready to finally transform your relationship with alcohol, visit www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com and book a call with me. I offer private one-on-one and group coaching to make letting go of alcohol easier and more sustainable than you ever thought possible. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode.