You Are The Mountain - It's Time To Start Climbing

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. Hey, welcome back to another episode. My name is Barti Arez. I'm the Stop Drinking Coach and I'm very excited to be jumping into another podcast today. I apologize to all of you guys, all of my listeners, the last couple weeks have just been super, super crazy. I've had so many different things going on that I haven't been able to sit down and record one this weekend. I'm actually moving. And so, yeah, just this whole month for me has been super, super crazy, handling so many little details, admin stuff, getting ready to move, all that. Yeah, I'm super excited to be diving into another episode. And one of my clients actually gave me the topic and the topic of today's episode is the mountain is a U. Okay, the thing with this journey, the thing with this journey that's so interesting and you hear me say this all the time between my TikToks and my podcast. It's like, dude, quitting drinking, living an alcohol-free life, it has nothing to do with alcohol. But when we're stuck in this cycle, when all we're doing is drinking and we keep going back and forth and we get a day sober or two days sober or a week sober and we keep going back, we think the problem is alcohol. We're blaming the alcohol because it's the alcohol which seems to be causing all of our issues. And don't get me wrong. To some degree, it is the alcohol. It is alcohol is what disrupts our neurochemistry and takes us through this emotional rollercoaster. It is the issue. But the journey and process of quitting drinking and staying alcohol-free has nothing to do with the alcohol. Once you escape the dopamine feeding cycle, which usually, you know, it's that first couple weeks, which is the toughest, it becomes significantly easier, right? Like, you can ask all of my clients and I'm sure many of you that have gone many weeks or months or even some of you have gone years, alcohol-free. When you slip back, right, it's not that dopamine feeding cycle, which is just that insane, neurochemical, anxiety-driven compulsion to drink. It's, you know, at that point, it's more of a conscious decision down the road, right? So the game that we're playing here, this whole journey of quitting drinking and staying alcohol-free, it is really an internal game. It is an internal game. It has nothing to do with the alcohol. Has nothing to do with your neighbor or anybody else. It's the journey of waking up. It's the journey of evolving and learning how to better regulate yourself, mentally, emotionally, energetically, in the way that you manage your mind, in the way that you manage your emotional state, in the way that you manage boredom, in the way that you manage stress, in the way that you manage discomfort. Right? Look at it very simply, right? We develop a problematic relationship with alcohol when alcohol becomes more than just a take it or leave it thing, right? So now we become tethered to it. We look to alcohol to satisfy or to change the way that we feel inside. Maybe we're stressed out from work. Maybe we're overwhelmed by our kids. Maybe we feel really bored. Maybe we feel lonely. Maybe our life isn't what we thought it would be. Maybe life didn't work out or pan out by the time we're forward to year 50 or 60, in the way that we imagined it. Or maybe we have a lot of dysregulation inside us, dysregulated emotional or mental patterns because we've experienced a lot of trauma in our childhood. Maybe as a result of having a lot of different adverse childhood experiences in the way that we grew up with our mom or our dad or in the family life that we were part of, you know, we were really restricted in our self-expression. Maybe our emotions were denied. Maybe our parents didn't provide a safe, loving, nurturing environment. So we internalized these belief systems of, "I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy or I'm not capable or I could never do this or I could never do that." And so that creates turmoil, right? That affects our confidence, that affects our self-esteem. And so as a result, we grow into being an adult and it's like we feel limited, right? It's like the way I like to, I almost visualize it is, you know, we're this conscious witness, we're this conscious agent, but we're kind of behind bars, right? Like in the way I explain it to my clients is I teach them mindfulness and meditation and how to interpret themselves and how to manage themselves to develop more agency. I'll explain it to you. There's three layers of reality. Most people think of themselves as a singular unit. You say, "Okay, I'm a human." And this is who I am. This is my body. The thoughts that I have inside of my head are my own, meaning I am the voice inside my head and, you know, if I feel anxiety, then I'm anxious. If I feel a state of stress, then I'm stressed out, right? Like, so we're fully identified with the voice in our head and we're fully identified with the sensations, the fluctuating energy inside of our body. But really, what we actually are is consciousness. We're the witness to this vehicle, to this experience, right? Who you actually are or what you actually are is the person sitting in the movie theater watching the movie screen. And what's on the movie screen are your thoughts and what's on the movie screen is the fluctuating energy that moves through the vehicle, that moves through the body. And so through mindfulness and through meditation and through expanding your consciousness, expanding your awareness, you begin to be able to step back and you develop the capacity to begin to observe the stories and narratives of your mind independently, like you're watching a movie. And you begin to observe, you begin to gain the ability to observe the fluctuating energy in your body, the fluctuating sensations, what people call emotions, right? And then you have feelings, which is how you interpret those fluctuations of energy, your personal subjective experience of how that energy is moving through your body, right? And so the game that we're playing here, the actual real internal game of quitting drinking is the process of becoming hyper-aware and hyper-connected to, maybe connected as in the best word, but hyper-aware, hyper-present to the pre-programmed mental patterns and the pre-programmed emotional patterns that have been driving our life, right? Like, if we drink alcohol, ultimately, it has a positive intention, right? And this is something that you learn, you know, in therapy and in deep levels of coaching is that every action, even if that action is highly like dysfunctional, has a positive intention because the underlying biological system that we inhabit, right, is optimizing for survival. So even if the program or pattern is broken, it was at one point useful. And this is really important to recognize. When I do deep healing work with my clients, or if you've done some deep healing work in therapy, they talk about parts, right? And so if there's a part of you that drinks, it's because that part of you thinks that by drinking, you're accomplishing some sort of positive intention. And maybe it is, maybe it is, maybe it is helping you de-stress. Maybe it is in a moment helping you relieve a sense of frustration. Maybe for a moment, it connects you to the present moment and makes you forget about, you know, the compulsive thinking or whatever, right? And so that's what slows it down. But understand that that strategy, it's not useful anymore. Maybe it worked when you were 16 or 17 or 20 or 25. But when you abuse that strategy over 10, 20, 30 year period, the strategy stops working. And in fact, the strategy then it becomes suicidal at that point. So a part of this healing process, a part of this evolution in our consciousness is to recognize the human operating system in how it's performing and how it's functioning. So to acknowledge that part of yourself, acknowledge the part of yourself that is trying to relieve stress through drinking and put your hand on your heart and close your eyes and connect to that part of yourself and appreciate it, recognize it. That hey, I know you're just trying to relieve my stress. I know you're just trying to relieve my social anxiety. I know you're just trying to. stop the compulsive thinking. I know you're just trying to keep me away from a deep sense of internal pain. But that strategy of drinking alcohol is actually no longer useful. And there's other strategies that we can begin to implement in our life, to begin to heal, to begin to optimize, to begin to relieve our stress, to relieve our frustration. Right? It's about understanding that alcohol is not a useful strategy. It doesn't work anymore. So the mountain that you're climbing is you. It's completely an internal game. It's an internal evolution that you experience. Right? Alcohol may have served its purpose in your life. You know, you discovered it when you were in high school, you drank through college, you did your parting, you had your fun, you did the things, you went to the vague, you went to Vegas, you did the boats, you did the, you know, the craziness, you know, maybe there are some drugs involved like you did it, you experienced it. But you have to like get to a place internally like we kind of have to wake up and we have to grow up. Like how old are we? I'm not sure. How old are you listening to this? Like how much longer are we going to keep the party going? Like what are we so afraid of? Like I'm telling you, man, I'm two and a half years sober. Like I don't care about partying. Like your value system changes. You adapt. You know, you adapt. That's what humans do. We adapt. And those that don't figure out how to adapt, they die. That's what nature does. You know, stress comes on to the system. Stress comes on to the genetics and the genetics either figure out a way to adapt or they die and they weed themselves out of the gene pool. You know, and like, you know, it's, it's, it's just kind of crazy to think about, you know, you don't need the alcohol. You never needed it. Because the thing is, is that even before you thought you needed it or you started to use it as a strategy to cope, when you were 10 or 8 or whatever age you were before you started drinking, you just got up, you did your thing, you went to school, you played your sports, you came home, you did your homework, you played outside, and you weren't thinking about alcohol. You didn't feel like you were missing out. You didn't feel like you were fomowing. There's no fear of missing out. There's no, oh, playing outside with my friends would be better if I was drinking. Like it, it wasn't a thing for you. And I believe that we can all get back to that state. You know, you can just get to a place where life is good and you're not living in the shadow of missing anything. But in order to get there, you have to develop the courage and willingness to confront the pain that is inside you, the discomfort. This is how you grow and evolve my friend. The way that you grow, the way that you evolve, the way that you become a higher, more expansive, powerful, elite version of yourself is by developing the internal courage to walk through the fire. That is how you do it, right? Like there is no other way and you have to accept that. You have to accept that. That is your personal evolution. That is your spiritual evolution. You cannot bypass doing the work. And that's why this is an even playing field I like to say, sure, we all come at this from a different place with a different background and a different, you know, mental and emotional system like whatever. But regardless, we all have to feel the cravings. We all have to feel the discomfort. We all have to feel the shitty sleep for the first week or two. Dude, it's just, it's just part of the deal. Like alcohol is a drug. Imagine if you had been abusing heroin or cocaine or Xanax or oxycon or or something else for as long as you've been abusing alcohol. Imagine, replace alcohol with cocaine. Do you think that if you've been using cocaine multiple days per week for the last decade or two decades or three decades? That, you know, in 30 days or 60 days life was just everything else is just going to change. Like it takes a little bit of time for your mind, body, emotional system, your neurochemistry to reharmonize. And you have to be okay with that. It's okay. It gets better, right? Remind yourself that from the moment you were born till this very moment, if you ever scraped your knee or cut your finger or fell down or tripped or sprained your ankle, the body with no effort on your, on your end, no conscious intention, sent white blood cells to the area to begin healing. Every time you cut yourself or you scraped your knee, your knee healed itself. Like there, this, the underlying intelligence that is beating your heart, digesting your food and working 24/7, having trillions of cells inside of you. You've got a hundred thousand miles of blood vessels just in your brain or, you know, of, of, of, of arteries, a hundred thousand miles of blood vessels and arteries. If you laid them end to end in your body, got trillions of cells working in perfect unison to keep you alive, to keep you healthy, to be beating your heart for 70, 80, 90, 100 years, 110 years. I don't know. Like do you think that system is probably has some level of intelligence? It's like, yeah, you can barely put IKEA furniture together. You, but you get frustrated putting IKEA furniture together. But there's a system at play that is trying to keep you alive. All it's trying to do is, is protect you, right? And this alcohol thing, it's a protection mechanism, right? You're using alcohol as a way to protect yourself against internal pain, whether that's boredom, whether that's loneliness, whether that's stress, whether that's frustration, but you have to understand that your personal evolution, you growing into the next version of yourself, doesn't come from continually running from that pain. It comes from you facing it, you turning towards it, right? Just like somebody who goes to the gym, right? The only way for you to develop a six pack to have a boot like the physique that you want to have big biceps, like maybe if you're a woman, whatever it is, put it in your perspective, tone, body, whatever. It comes from applying stress to the organism. You have to go through the discomfort of grinding through bicep curls and reps and progressively overloading it. Every time you hit a new level to allow more and more stress to go onto the cells, to cause hypertrophy, to grow more muscle cells, to make them thicker and stronger, to grow more muscle fibers, then you have to drink protein to feed the fuel to have it grow. And our mental, emotional, spiritual and energetic operating system is the same. So the next level of who you're capable of being comes through you turning towards the discomfort. And the beautiful thing that we begin to discover through this human experience is that this system is more intelligent than you can begin to imagine. The very things that you're afraid of, that you're anxious about, that you want to move away from, is the very thing. It is the signal that tells you, John, Joseph, whatever your name is, Sally Susie listening to this, Amanda, like if you turn towards that, that is where your adaptation and evolution and biological upgrade occurs. You already know what you need to work on. You already know what you need to turn towards. You already know what you need to begin healing, right? You already know you just have to develop the courage inside you. Courage is just, it's just a sense of bravery to take the first step, even though you don't know where you're going. Right? It's the willingness to dive into the deep end of the pool, not knowing how deep it is, but trusting, trusting that there's going to be support there, that there's going to be other people in the deep end who have taken that, that dive. You know, and, and understanding and trusting that like, hey, dude, at a macro level, the universe isn't here to fuck you. At a macro level, the world isn't here to destroy you. At a macro level, this universe underlying source energy, the thing that created you, that electrical thing that just keeps your heart beating with no conscious effort, the thing that just keeps you breathing with no conscious effort, this system, the plan that it has for you is more beautiful, more incredible, then you can begin to imagine, then you can begin to imagine. But you have to develop the courage to take the first step and quitting drinking is your hero's journey. It is your hero's journey. If there's a book written about you and it's 10 chapters, this is going to be the major chapter. This is going to be the main turning point in your life. I promise you, you talk to anybody who's 12 months over, five years sober. None of them are complaining about it. Every single person who got sober says it was the best decision of their life. I'm telling you, there isn't a single person. You go to those videos on my TikTok page where, you know, I said, I fucking respect people who quit drinking. It wasn't to alienate people who are drinking. Okay, it was to recognize all the people. who got sober, I knew I knew it was gonna go viral. It has a few million views and like, I don't know, 20,000 comments, something crazy. It really struck a chord with people. You go through those comments and you will see all the people who got sober who finally got called out and recognized every single one of them. 12 months sober, 18 months sober, 580 days, seven year sober, best decision, best decision, best decision. And those people were just like you in the exact position that you're in now, right? Those people aren't different. Okay, if somebody got sober, if somebody chose to live alcohol-free, it's because they were at the juncture that you're potentially at and they're like, this shit ain't working. But I'm fucking scared. I can't imagine a life without it. But you just have to develop the courage to take that first step and work a good program. That's the key here, guys. Like, if you've tried to quit drinking on your own and have been unsuccessful and you think that this program or you think that this process and journey is purely about abstaining from alcohol and making no other changes to your life, then you're mistaken. And I can understand why you feel the way that you feel. But there's so much to it. And this is why working with a good, good program, good coach like myself is so, so key, right? You don't have to work with me. If you resonate with somebody else, work with them. But like, it starts with you having that courage to take that first step, right? Like, you're not alone. You're not alone. The fear, the craving, what's my life going to be like? How am I going to handle vacations or social situations or whatever it is? Whatever we go to the, I've got so many clients. Many of them, entrepreneurs or business owners, executives, we go to the lake house every summer. My buddy's got the place that we go. We go snowboarding or whatever. How am I going to do it? You just do it one day at a time. Bring yourself back to the present moment. Remind yourself that, hey, dude, I might not make it till, till that time. And I'm talking about me. I don't know how long I'm going to live. I'm hoping I have a long, healthy life. But for me to future trip and worry about what's going to happen six months from now with alcohol, it's irrelevant. All I have is this moment. All I have is today. And the only commitment that you ever have to make on this journey is that you're just not going to drink today. That's it. That's the trillion, billion, gadrillion, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett secret. How everybody does it. Eventually, you take it one day at a time enough while working a good program that's proactive, that's going to help you heal and harmonize mentally, emotionally and spiritually and empower you to develop the awareness and consciousness to really develop agency over your life. And one day it just clicks, man, you just wake up in your identity as a non-drinker really becomes established. And it doesn't really take effort anymore. Doesn't mean you don't stay vigilant because if you have one drink, it's going to go back to the same thing. No amount of time and sobriety fixes a drinking problem. And that's why they call it a disease because there's no way to heal it. But your ability to completely alter the trajectory of your life and transform your life with enough time and sobriety six, twelve, eighteen months compounded. Dude, just imagine whatever you are, whoever you are, whatever you've built for yourself in your life, whatever level of a success you've been capable of achieving. If you remove alcohol long enough while taking a proactive approach to your life, which is the system that I create and set up for for all my clients, dude, you cannot begin to imagine what is available to you on the other side. Two and a half years ago when I ripped my shoulder out of its socket, I was drinking four to six bottles of wine a day, basically committing a suicide. Like, I had no idea I would be here transmitting my voice through this podcast. I've always wanted to have a podcast since I was like 18, 19 years old. I was always scared. I didn't think I was good enough. I didn't. What was I going to talk about? Like, now I'm here. And it came as a result of making one decision, the scary decision, the hard decision, to quit drinking. Dude, alcohol was God for me. It was the best solution I had found to everything, to my boredom, to my stress, to my frustration, to my weekends, to my free time. Like, dude, I get it. I get it. And now I'm on the other side. Just sharing the story, sharing the message. You don't need it. I know it doesn't feel that way in the beginning. But you have to trust. It takes time. You're the mountain that you're climbing. This is your personal internal spiritual, mental, emotional progression. This is you going from being an eight year old to a 30 year old, from being a 30 year old to a wise 50 year old. There is a mental, emotional, and spiritual progression. There is a level of awareness and understanding that you tap into, that you don't know that is available to you. You have to just pause and question yourself. How is it that every single person who gets sober, that was in the exact same shoes as you, says it was the best decision of their life? Are all of them lying? We all think that we have such a unique situation, but it's really hard for me, Bardia. You don't get it. I really get stressed out. I really get frustrated. My life is really hard, but my partner, my kids, my work, you don't get it. Listen, you're not unique. We all, dude, being a humanist tough, we all have to figure this shit out. We all do. The challenges never stop. When you get sober, the challenges never stop. It's just being a human, addict or not, problem-hatic drinker or not. Everybody has problems. Everybody has stress. Everybody has, but quitting drinking, it forces you. It teaches you how to evolve so that you develop more agency over your mental, emotional, and behavioral patterns, which is going to open up life for you. Just imagine yourself 12 months down the line. You're 12 months sober. You've healed from many things in your past. You've learned to reprocess, reinterpret, and reintegrate them. Your baseline level of energy is more calm and safe, so your nervous system doesn't activate every five seconds and think everything's a catastrophe. You have more agency over how you manage your mind, how you manage your emotions. You're more productive. You're more consistent. You're business. You're health. You're work. You're relationships. Imagine who you could be. You have to think about the future. My last episode, "Play the tape forward." We got to play the tape forward. Play the tape forward and let it one scare you and then play the tape forward and let it excite you. Those are the two things. Those are the two things that I've summed up that are key to this journey. You have to get super clear on the pain. Not only the pain that alcohol has caused you and is causing you now in every capacity. Relationships, family, health, money, career, future potential. But compound that into the future. Play the tape forward. If you do not stop and this thing keeps getting progressively worse because it's going to. It doesn't get progressively better. It only gets progressively worse because you're an organic finite meat suit and every time you drink this poison, it's doing more damage to your organs. It's killing your cells, atrophying and shrinking your brain and disrupting the sensitive neurochemical balance in your brain causing you to become more dependent. It makes it harder down the line to quit. Allow that to scare the shit out of you because fear and pain is a more powerful motivator than the pursuit of pleasure. We are more motivated intrinsically, biologically, to avoid pain than to pursue pleasure. That's why we're here in 2023 and our species did not get extinct. Allow that to scare you. Be scared. I'm terrified of what would happen if I went back to drinking. When I have the idea of thinking about alcohol and I start maybe romanticizing it, I'm like, oh yeah, this and that. I immediately just take myself back to the four to six months leading up to me quitting and I'm like, oh yeah, that's what alcohol actually is. It's not the 30 minute dopamine rush. It's not the relaxation. It's not whatever fucking story and narrative I want to create in my mind. What alcohol is for me is four to six bottles of wine a day and mangling and dislocating my left shoulder and really hurting myself. Really, I mean, fuck. I pray to God, I don't know, I might have to get shoulder surgery at some point. I don't fucking know. But it's still an issue. My left shoulder isn't what it could be. It's not healthy. Yeah, rehab it. I work on it, but it's like, it's not 100% and it's like, you just don't know, dude. Playing the alcohol game is Russian roulette, especially when it's gotten to the point where it's become problematic in your life. You don't know what's going to happen. Sure, one out of 10 times, two out of 10 times, you drink and it's somewhat manageable. But you have to look at the trend, man. Look at the trend. If you're placing bets, if you're putting money on yourself in the way that you play this alcohol game, it's not going to turn out well. So you have to develop the courage to just take the first step and you just take it one step one day at a time. I'm not asking you or encouraging you to make this decision that you're never drinking again. I still haven't made that decision and almost everybody who really develops a problematic relationship with alcohol who goes alcohol free Doesn't make that decision because it is irrelevant It's counterintuitive and irrational because you think that when you make decisions decisions are forever But it's like dude You just all you have to do lighten the load just tell yourself. I'm just not gonna drink today And then when you wake up tomorrow You just you just make that decision, but your only focus today is to move through the 15 minutes to an hour of Discomfort of craving to breathe through it do some Wim Hof breath work and Get to the other side and watch you'll see the craving passes. I Know it feels like it in the moment that that craving, you know your brain literally goes into survival mode life or death You get tunnel vision you think that nothing matters except getting that drink and literally everything goes out the window I know I used to speed home on Fridays because I couldn't wait to get that first drink I know the feeling but trust me that feeling is impermanent It's impermanent it lasts 45 minutes an hour max go work out go for a run Breathe distract yourself and watch what happens in an hour It'll pass you're gonna go back to a relative state of homeostasis and neutrality and you're gonna be like holy fuck. I did it When you work a good program when you stay proactive on optimizing mind body spirit and neuro chemistry, which my program helps you do Dude, you don't know what's available to you on the other side my mentor in this last video is like I wish everybody could get sober long enough to just see to just see It is an awakening process So you are the mountain that you are climbing my friend This is an internal game. It is an internal you evolving to the next chapter you evolving into a higher More advanced version of yourself that has more agency and control over its internal environment over its internal state of consciousness Over its body over its behaviors. That's what this game is Right, let's remember alcoholism using alcohol. It was a coping strategy. That's it So there's other ways to cope. There's new ways. There's so many different ways to relieve stress There's so many different ways to manage boredom. There's so many different ways to manage frustration I'm telling you. I'm telling you It's it's all available to you So all you need to do is take that first step you need to develop the courage to to start this process and Listen if if if I can do it you can do it Millions of people have done it when you take this step you are going to be met with so much support so much understanding from so many people Don't think that you're going to be the weird one. Don't think that you know, you're going to be left out Like you're not the weird one, right? quitting drinking choosing to live an alcohol-free life is such an is such a maturity process man It is such an awakening process You know, you've read every personal development. You know, you've read personal development books. You've listened to these motivational seminars and podcasts It's super simple. They all say the same thing. They say look at the crowd look at what everybody's doing and do the opposite You want to have a good life? You want to be able to have the type of life that you want? Look at what the crowd is doing and do the opposite. I'm sincerely convinced man. We are not the weird ones. We are the ones who awaken Mensely, emotionally and spiritually to our programs to our patterns and The ones who who you know become independent become independent agents who have a sense of agency over their life so I'm gonna go ahead and cut it there. I hope this episode was inspiring and lightning and Motivating for you. I hope it helped you think about this in a slightly different way and in a more positive way and in a more Encouraging way and I hope it gave you the mental and emotional resources To take that next step Reach out to me if you need support. I offer private coaching I'm gonna be launching group coaching here pretty soon But the program I'm building man. It is in my opinion the most comprehensive powerful system out there And that is my goal that is my vision and I'm just getting started, you know I'm just getting started once you once you work with me. You're gonna have access to my community my resources And I'm continually gonna be pumping new stuff into there. So Visit my website www.thestopdrinkingcoach.com Fill out an application make sure you scroll down to the bottom of the of the website and just see what other people have said about working with me and They're and their experience in my program. So I hope you have a great rest of your day. Keep fighting the good fight Take it one day at a time 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