Thriving Alcohol-Free with Mocktail Mom

EP 60 Alcohol's Toll on Women: Exploring Its Effect on Anxiety and Brain Health with Sarah Rusbatch

• Deb, Mocktail Mom • Season 1 • Episode 60

Share episode

Send me a text message about the show!

Join me as I discuss the world of alcohol use disorder among women with the fabulous Sarah Rusbatch. Sarah, a certified Health and Wellbeing Coach, Grey Area Drinking Coach, and all-around motivational speaker, is on a mission to help women transform their relationship with alcohol. Together, we uncover the shocking truth behind the 80% surge in alcohol dependency among women over the last three decades, breaking down the web of factors that are driving this trend, from the relentless pressures of modern life to the seductive marketing of alcohol as a quick fix for stress and overwhelm.


Drawing from her own journey, Sarah shares incredible insights into the brain science behind alcohol’s effects on women, touching on specific diseases like cancer, Dementia and Alzheimer’s. Her discoveries have even served as inspiration for her latest book Beyond Booze, where she proves that alcohol is anything but self-care. So many truth bombs were dropped in this chat and I know you will love hearing Sarah as she offers up all the facts. Tune in now to listen!


Get in touch with Sarah!
Website | Instagram
Check out her latest book Beyond Booze

Order a copy of The Happiest Hour: Delicious Mocktails for a Fabulous Moms' Night In

A huge thank you to the sponsors of the Thriving Alcohol-Free podcast!
Sunnyside | Giesen 0% Wines

You are loved. Big Time Cheers!

Deb:

Welcome, friends, and welcome to the Thriving Alcohol Free Podcast. I'm your host, deb, otherwise known as Mocktail Mom, a retired wine drinker that finally got sick and tired of spinning on Life's Broken Record called Detox to Retox. Let this podcast be an encouragement to you. If alcohol is maybe a form of self-care for you or you find yourself dragging through the day waiting to pour another glass, I am excited to share with you the fun of discovering new things to drink when you aren't drinking and the joy of waking up each day without a hangover. It is an honor to serve as your sober, fun guide. So sit back and relax or keep doing whatever it is you're doing. This show is produced for you with love from the great state of Kentucky. Thanks so much for being here and big time cheers, all right. Hey, friends, it's Deb. Welcome back to Thriving Alcohol Free. I am so excited.

Deb:

Live from Australia is Sarah Rusbatch. Rusbatch, I'm saying it right. Yes, I have followed you for so long. This is like a treat of all treats to be looking at you screen to screen and to be able to record together. She is the brand new author of Beyond Booze how to Create a Life. You Love Alcohol Free.

Deb:

I want to just tell you guys a little bit about Sarah before we start, but I cannot wait for you to meet her. You probably already know her. Make sure you're following her on Instagram. Sarah Rusbatch on Instagram. It's her Instagram handle, so make sure you're following along. But Sarah is a certified women's health and wellness coach and accredited gray area drinking coach, which I know you studied under Jolene Park. She is a keynote speaker. She shares her journey to sobriety and the impact of alcohol on mental health to global audiences. After developing what she describes as a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol, sarah made the decision to remove alcohol from her life in early 2019 and has never looked back. She now works with women across the globe and guides them from feeling lost, stuck and out of control, which is something I know that you say, that you totally understand, and she just guides people to living a healthier and happier way of living. So, sarah, welcome, welcome.

Sarah:

I'm so happy to meet you. I'm so happy to meet you too, Deb. Thank you so much for having me.

Deb:

Oh my gosh, it's been so fun. I have followed you. I broke up with alcohol December 31st 2020. You were the first accounts that I followed, so, yes, I have been following you for a long time. You give amazing, just practical advice, tips, tricks, all of it for the sober community, so thank you for being on today. How are things in Australia? Oh?

Sarah:

it's so hot. We are in the middle of a heat wave, so it's over a hundred every single day. At the moment, I have to get up at five so I can walk the dog before like 6am, otherwise it's just too hot for him to go outside.

Deb:

Oh, the poor puppy. Why? Because it burns his paws, or it's just too hot. Just too hot, too much.

Sarah:

He's quite a fluffy dog, he's got quite a lot of hair, and so it's just like nah, I can't do it. So yeah, so we are in February. It's the middle of summer for us, so hopefully it'll be cooling down soon.

Deb:

That is so okay, I would love to come to Australia, Would love to come down there. I'm in Kentucky and it's very cold here right now, so it's nice to know that it's summer somewhere in the world. Okay, so how does it feel to be a brand new author? You've just come out with your book. How is it going? It's like a best seller already.

Sarah:

It is.

Sarah:

I am just so proud of it, deb, I think the reason I wrote this book was when I first started thinking about it was I could see that there are so many books out there about how to get sober. There's so many books about how to take 30 days off alcohol. There are so many books of memoirs and people's stories, but what I identified was there was no books about how to stay sober, about what it actually takes to create a life so that you don't feel like you're missing out and you don't have any desire or need for alcohol. And I have written this book for women. I'm a majority. I work with midlife women, so age between kind of 40 and 65. And it's everything in this book is practical strategies and tools to create a life where you don't want or need alcohol. And it's just flying off the shelves over here in Australia, which is so good to see, and it's just come out in the US and Canada and also in the Buchanis, so very excited.

Deb:

I'm so excited to get my copy, so excited. Yes, congratulations, it's huge. How long did it take you? How long were you writing? How long was the writing process? It was like the official writing process for you.

Sarah:

The official writing process was so quick it was all in my head so it wasn't like you know. All the information was there and I worked with someone who really helped me get my structure and get it out of my head onto paper in a really structured, thoughtful way. So in actual fact the whole process took six, seven months to actually get it all down, but then the editing process takes a long time.

Sarah:

So there was yeah, there was a lot of 4am wake ups, of getting up trying to get the book done before my full-time job, plus looking after the kids and everything else. So it was an intense full-on time, but the end result is something I'm so proud of.

Deb:

I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you. Okay, let's go back, because I know you're a gray area drinking coach. So what is a gray area drinker for anybody who's listening and maybe doesn't even know what that is? And how does somebody, how does somebody know if they fall into that category of gray area drinking?

Sarah:

Yeah, it's a great question. So historically, we've talked about alcohol use as being you're an alcoholic or you're not, and this is what keeps people trapped for a really, really long time. Because I never identified as an alcoholic For me I grew up in the 80s and 90s. My stereotype of an alcoholic was Sue Ellen and Dallas, who was sitting around in her nightie in the morning drinking vodka or whatever.

Deb:

Right, you're totally right. I forgot about that. You're totally right. I used to watch that.

Sarah:

Yeah, right. So that was my first little girl brain of what an alcoholic looks like is someone who drinks in the morning in their nightie and wakes up and needs to have a drink. And I wasn't doing that. So for me it was like well, I don't have a problem with alcohol because I don't drink every day, I don't drink in the morning, I can go for a period of time without alcohol, so therefore I'm okay.

Sarah:

But what we know with gray area drinkers is there's a scale of alcohol use and there's a scale of what we call alcohol use disorder, and it's not a case of one day you're a social drinker and one day you're an alcoholic. It's a case of we move from mild to moderate to severe alcohol use disorder, and mild alcohol use disorder is classified as above 14 units of alcohol per week. Now we can remember that some bottles of wine have got 10 units in them. I could drink a bottle of wine, sometimes two, on one night. So like sometimes I would have had my weekly units in One night, but because I didn't drink in the morning and I didn't drink every day, I was like now I'm fine.

Sarah:

So gray area drinking, if we think about a scale of one to ten. One being someone who doesn't drink. Ten being someone or maybe has a glass of champagne, a wedding, once a year. Ten, being someone with that physical Dependency on alcohol where they wake up in the morning, they need to drink and they need to have medical support to withdraw from alcohol, because we have to remember that alcohol is one Of only three substances that the human body can die from withdrawal from. If you've got a one and a ten Gray area, drinking is about a four to an eight on that scale. So we've passed the point of just take it or leave it drinking, but we've not reached the point where we're physically dependent and we need medical support to withdraw from alcohol.

Deb:

Wow, wow. I definitely fell right in that category and an exact same. Like I just thought, well, I'm okay because I'm not waking up drinking not drinking my martinis in the morning. I totally forgot about Su Ellen from Dallas, but it is I. In my mind it was like, well, I'm not, I don't, I can take a break. I can take a month off, you know, or do a health challenge and not drinking out of a you know paper bag, but, yeah, definitely huge problems. Okay, so can you share a little bit about, just about your journey to sobriety? How did you get to the place where you were in April 29th it was April 2019, right when you stopped drinking.

Sarah:

It was, yeah, but there was a long period of time prior to that where I was trying to change my drinking. But leading up to that point I was born in the north of England started drinking at 14. We used to fill up soda stream bottles with whatever we could find in our parents drinks cabinet my TV vodka, chinzano, southern comfort. You'd mix it all together, you go down the local park, you drink this disgusting concoction of alcohol, you'd have a little snog with the local boys and then you go home, throw up and do it all again the following weekend. Translation, please, yeah. So we would kind of like that was our initiation into alcohol and that was kind of what everyone was doing. And growing up my parents had been quite big drinkers and quite social. So to me as a little girl my immediate thought of alcohol was that's what grown-ups do to have a good time. So I was being modeled back all the time and of course we don't realize how our subconscious brain is just lapping up all of this Information, even though we don't realize it. But the associations for me were ha, ha, when adults are grown up, when, when we grow up and the way that we have fun and socialize is. We drink alcohol, so it was just a matter of time for me.

Sarah:

I was a big drinker. I wore it as my badge of honor. You know we're talking about going into the 90s, in the early 2000s, where it was girl power, it was sex. In the city, the girls can drink the same as the boys. We are independent, we don't need a man. We're making our own money. We can go and have our rooftop cocktails and do exactly what we like, and so we all locked it up and I was living in London at the time. I was working in recruitment. It was very much a work hard, play hard environment. You do client lunches that would start at 12 and finish at 2 in the morning. It was all company expenses. Oh yeah, it was. It was a great experience at the time.

Deb:

Like I, thought I was living the dream Right.

Sarah:

Yeah, back then the hangovers just didn't really affect me. I would got nothing that you know packet of crisps and a diet coat and sort out in the morning, and then you'd be back doing it the next day and I didn't drink that much on my own. I was a social drinker. I can remember a couple of times drinking on my own when something I remember having a breakup with a boyfriend and being really, really sad and my first thought was I need to drink, I need to have a drink. But I didn't even realize I was doing that. It was just like, yeah, I'm just gonna have a drink.

Sarah:

We then moved to Australia in 2010. I met my husband. By this point. We had two kids and I had two under two. I was on the other side of the world. I was very lonely, I was very homesick, I had no family around me. I was struggling to make friends because the way I'd always made friends throughout my entire life had been whilst drinking.

Sarah:

And all of a sudden, I was with two very young kids, breastfeeding, not drinking, and Just didn't know how to make friends without using alcohol. It was, it was quite foreign to me. And Then, once I stopped breastfeeding, I started drinking and I noticed, and I found, that when I drink, those really horrible feelings of sadness and loneliness and homesickness they go away. And so, even though I wasn't putting two and two together, that that was what was happening, I started to look forward to my evening wine. I started to use it as the thing that stopped me having to feel and, over time, I carried on with a set up of business. I was still drinking. I met kids start to go to school, the school, mom culture, mommy wine culture, lots of booze. I was the ringleader.

Deb:

Let's go and have a play date at the park and it was 10 in the morning and I was taking champagne, like it was so normal to do that.

Sarah:

But as I hit my forties it just really started to change, like my anxiety, how much alcohol was impacting my sleep, how much it was impacting the way I talked to myself. And so I'd wake up on a Monday morning, because Sunday was always my biggest drinking day, and on a Monday morning I'd be like, oh my God, I'm having a clean week, I'm not drinking this week. I've got to sort myself out. And I would still be punishing myself with like I was running and I was going to the gym all the time I was drinking kale smoothies and it was almost like I was trying to trick myself that if I do those things and my drinking isn't that bad.

Sarah:

And so I always had a rule I don't drink on Mondays and Tuesdays because gray area drinkers tend to make a lot of rules around their drinking. And then I started breaking my rules. So I can remember it got to a Monday and I used to hide in the pantry and have a bottle of red wine that was hidden behind like the olive oil and everything, and I would go in there with a coffee cup and I would pour a glass at the cup, I would drink the red wine, and then I would come back out into the kitchen as if nothing was wrong and it was almost like I was trying to pretend to myself that it hadn't happened.

Sarah:

It was almost like that and I was in complete denial. And then a couple of things happened in 2017 that were just me going a bit too far with the drinking. I fell over, I landed on my face, I cut my nose open. It was completely humiliating and I was like right, I need to take a break.

Sarah:

I just need to have a break from alcohol. So I thought I will do a 21 days, because they say it takes 21 days, right, to change a habit. Change a habit, right, yeah, yeah. So I did my 21 days and I was like, wow, I went Annie Grace's book. There was a Facebook community that I joined that was UK based, of women who were all changing their relationship with alcohol. There wasn't the books and podcasts that there is now, so I didn't have all of that available, but it was a new movement and there were people doing it.

Sarah:

So I kept going and I went to 100 days because I was like this is what it's like. My anxiety has disappeared, my sleep is incredible, my self talk is really positive, my skin is glowing, I'm losing weight, I'm showing up for my kids, my weekends feel endless and like they're just stretching ahead of me and I can do whatever I want. But I started getting questions Well, when are you drinking again? Well, come on, you can't never drink. Don't be so boring, come on.

Sarah:

And for me it was kind of, and people were saying to me why do you have to be so old or nothing, why can't you just have a couple? And that made me feel like there was something wrong with me, like why couldn't I just have a couple? Why was I the person that always drank way too much? And the story in my head was I've got to try harder, I've got to be able to moderate my drinking. So after the hundred days I was like okay, I don't have a problem with alcohol, because if I had a problem, I wouldn't have been able to just take a hundred days off.

Deb:

Yep, that was my thinking too.

Sarah:

Absolutely.

Deb:

Yep, so now.

Sarah:

I'll be a normal drinker and I'll go back and I'll just have one glass of wine with my dinner every now and then and everything will be fine. And I remember the first night I broke my hundred days and I went out for dinner with my best friend and her husband and my husband and I drove and I had my one glass of wine and I was like, oh, look at me, go, I am amazing. I am just someone that has one glass of wine and enjoys it with her dinner and doesn't want any more.

Sarah:

And within two weeks I was back to drinking the same amount as before, because that's how it works with gray area drinkers. And then for two years I fought so hard to moderate. I was taking breaks, I was going back to drinking. I couldn't understand why I couldn't get a hold of it. Why did I always drink too much? Why did I always go too far? Why couldn't I stop at the one or two? Why was I thinking about alcohol all the time? And then the more reading I did, the more podcasts I listened to, and the sober movement was growing and growing over that time that I kind of realized moderation was never gonna work for me and I didn't have that as an option. So the option was I carry on drinking as I am or I stop. And in April 2019, I made the decision to stop.

Deb:

Amazing, amazing and just what you said, like that, your self-talk, how your self-talk was so different, right, how that has changed since you stopped drinking. I mean, isn't it crazy how, during that, those cycles of the crazy cycles, the detox to re-talk cycles is that what we would call them you know where? It's like you're drinking, like you said, you're drinking the kale smoothies and working out and everything, but it's like all that stuff we're saying to ourselves.

Sarah:

Yeah, yeah. And I listened to something the other day where there was a woman talking about how do you increase self-belief, like somebody women I work with have very low self-belief and self-esteem, and she said the way you build self-belief is by keeping the promises you make to yourself. And so if every day you're waking up in the morning going, oh, you lose that you drank last night, you said you weren't going to then your self-belief and your self-esteem and your self-talk is going to be awful from the moment you wake up, whereas if your first thought in the morning is go, you you didn't drink last night.

Sarah:

I'm so proud of you. Then we start to grow and that's the thing that I've noticed the most, and I don't know if this is the same for you, but there are many benefits to sobriety. But one of the biggest contrasts for me is the confidence, the self-belief and the possibility in my life that has come from not drinking, because I back myself and I trust myself now because I know I can keep my promises to myself, Whereas before I was just breaking them most days.

Deb:

So true, so true. I'm waking up in the morning and, that being your first thought, like, instead of I did it again, I did it again. Like that shame, that instant shame, Now it's I did it again. Like I did it again, I am waking up hangover free, the feeling, yeah, and the confidence and the momentum that builds in ourselves over time. You know Exactly, exactly, Amazing.

Deb:

Okay, as you guys know, I love Giesen's Zero Percent Wines. Their Sauvignon blanc is my go-to on a regular basis, but they recently launched a delicious Sparkling Brute Zero Percent, which is quickly becoming a fan favorite. I am so proud to have Giesen as the exclusive non-alcoholic wine sponsor of Alcohol-Free Podcast. Giesen's Zero Percent Wines are created through the magic of advanced spin and cone technology to remove the alcohol from their full-edged wines. The award-winning winemaker Duncan Shuler and his team have done wonders in Marlboro, New Zealand, by creating an entire family of zero percent wines with all the flavor and deliciousness you expect from traditional quote full-edged wine. Their non-alcoholic wines maintain an aroma in the body to create a low-calorie wine that never contains more than 0.5 ABV.

Deb:

Globally available, look for Giesen's Zero Percent Wines wherever you shop for your non-alcoholic options. Their family of alcohol free wines include the most effervescent member of the family, the Sparkling Brute Zero Percent, which is absolutely delicious for any celebration. My personal favorite although I do love them all is the Sauvignon Blanc coming in at only 100 calories for the entire bottle. And, not to be missed, the other members of their zero percent family the Riesling, the Premium Red Blend, the Rose, the Pinho Gris. With Giesen's Zero Percent Wines, there's a de-alcoholized wine for everyone and every occasion. Give Giesen a try and let me know how much you love it. And if you wanna meet their winemaker, go back to episode 33 of the podcast, where Duncan Shuler joined me to share about the Giesen story. Okay, so alcohol use disorder in women has increased like 80% in the last 30 years. Why would you say that that is?

Sarah:

So two reasons, and I think that they both feed into each other.

Deb:

So number one is, I feel like, middle-aged women 52, so I might break, because that means I'm gonna be 104, so bring it all on. Yes, my midsection is definitely reflecting midlife.

Sarah:

I think I know to be true is that we are juggling More than we ever have. We are working longer hours.

Sarah:

We are taking on more of the Financial stress and financial burden of life. We're raising kids and it's you know we have very different challenges raising kids to what our parents had, when we're dealing with social media and online Bullying and and all of like. There are so many issues and stressors that come with parenting of teenagers now that our parents Certainly didn't have. We might be caring for elderly parents. We've got pressure to be. Are you making home cooked meals? Are you going to the gym? Are you meditating? Are you getting a tower sleeper night? Like it's like writing your journal, yeah, yeah.

Sarah:

Yeah, it is relentless the pressure that women are feeling. So we have that. And then, on the other side of that, over the last 30 years We've seen a distinct increase in the specific direct marketing of alcohol to women as the solution. So we've got all of these problems of I've got so much to juggle, I'm so overwhelmed, I've got so much going on. And then we've got alcohol, big alcohol, coming in and going hey, you deserve it, self care, go and have this glass of wine to relax and unwind. And so you've got the the perfect storm of here's the problem and here's the solution, and it all comes together. And what this has meant is that alcohol use disorder in women has increased 80% in the last 30 years.

Deb:

That's crazy, but you're exactly right. All the extra pressure that maybe I mean my mom Right, I mean just you just post you on social media, right? Just even if you, if you have a business right, you have to do so much more. It's not just unlocking the door right to the business.

Sarah:

Today, I mean people don't escape work now because you can be contactable all the time. It's not like parents that went to work at nine and finished at five and that was it. You know, we're on our emails until 10 o'clock at night with. I saw my friend for a gym class the other day it's up as five in the morning and she was on the phone to her boss. I think what are you doing? You can't speak to your boss at 5 30 am, you know, and so we can't escape it anymore.

Deb:

Yeah yeah, no, you're right, it's constant. It's so funny. We're, my husband, are walking in somewhere and there was like a telephone on the wall and it was so foreign, you know the site of it was just so foreign, you know. It was like, oh my gosh, it's me actually has a phone, a telephone. But the thought was like, wow, when I used to like go out, right as a kid, you'd go out and you'd come home and there'd be messages on the machine. Now, right, they can contact you 24, seven. You're getting text messages. It's just, it's relentless. Yeah, okay, something I would really really like to talk about, because I think this is and you mentioned aging parents and things like that but a huge issue is dementia and Alzheimer's and how that, how drinking, impacts our Chances of having Alzheimer's and dementia, and how drinking affects women differently than it affects men. Can we talk about that a little bit?

Sarah:

Yeah, so I talk about this a lot in my book around the impact that alcohol has on women, so we now know that. I think it's drinking more than four drinks a week significantly increases your chances of dementia, particularly a certain type of Dementia. Wks and anyone who drinks a certain amount needs to be taking a B1 supplement, because Alcohol causes a huge deficiency in B1, which is what can be super helpful for protecting the brain and again.

Deb:

No one is talking about this there.

Sarah:

There is no, no evidence out there about this.

Sarah:

The other thing that I talked so much about in the book is we've had this culture of Women can drink the same as a man, but a woman cannot metabolize alcohol in the same way as a man, so it's actually so much more dangerous for a woman to be drinking in those same amounts, and there's a couple of reasons for this.

Sarah:

So, number one women produce less of an enzyme called a LDH. Aldh alcohol dehydrogenase metabolizes alcohol and gets it out of the system quickly, so that less of it enters our bloodstream. Women have less of this enzyme, so what that means is more alcohol enters a woman's bloodstream than the same amount of alcohol being drank by a man, and it's alcohol entering the bloodstream. That is what causes all of the issues liver disease, heart disease, risk of cancer and all of the health concerns that come from alcohol. The other thing to know is for a woman, as she gets older, although we produce less of this enzyme anyway, and as we get older, that starts to massively decline even more, which is why so many women find in their 40s and 50s that their hangovers get worse. They can't metabolize alcohol in the same way. It's all to do with our physiology and the fact that our liver cannot metabolize alcohol in the same way in our 40s and 50s as it did in our 20s. Again, most women don't know this.

Deb:

Right, right, you don't know it and you don't even, you don't realize. You wake up at three in the morning and you're thinking it's just me and, like you said, like I can't get a hand, why can't I get a handle on this? You know, yeah, yeah, why can't I drink the same way? Yeah, affects you so differently.

Sarah:

Absolutely.

Sarah:

And then the other thing I learned is I didn't know this we have shrinking livers.

Sarah:

So, for a woman, our liver starts shrinking by a small amount from our late 30s onwards, and so, again, it's really important that we understand this is why we can't metabolize alcohol as effectively as we age. And then the other reason is that men physiologically contain more water in their body than women do, and so water dilutes alcohol. So, again, for a man, they will dilute more of the alcohol, whereas for a woman, that same amount of alcohol stays more concentrated in the female body. So this is why the research shows women are more prone to liver disease. We become addicted to alcohol quicker. And again, this is where we know more and more the information about why alcohol is a direct cause of breast cancer, other estrogen cancers and the other cancers that are related to alcohol. I think the seven are directly linked to alcohol. In fact, a study by the University of Oxford last year showed that alcohol has now been linked to 60, 6-0, acute and chronic diseases and illnesses, and 30 of those had never before been linked to alcohol.

Deb:

Really, yeah, well, I had estrogen positive breast cancer, so and I'm sure I mean I am sure it was I just brought it all on myself. I don't know if I never was a drinker, if I you know what, I mean, what I've not what, I've still gotten it, but like, at the same time, I'm sure it didn't help that I was, you know, drinking way more than I intended to, yeah, way more than I intended to. Yeah, okay, I love that. You have something on your Instagram it's from your book that alcohol postpones anxiety and then multiplies it. But I mean, it's so true, right? I mean, I'm not a person that struggles with anxiety. I think many of us maybe don't and it's like, but alcohol just makes it so much worse, right, we think it's helping. We think it's helping our anxiety, our stress? Absolutely not.

Sarah:

Well, this is the thing about alcohol it's in the short term it helps. So, in the short term, when we drink alcohol, it causes our brain to release GABA, and GABA is the neurotransmitter that helps us feel calm and relaxed. The problem is that our beautiful brain, it likes to have a delicate balance of all of our neurotransmitters, and when we get this big surge of GABA from having alcohol, the brain goes whoa, everything's out of balance now and it releases a surge of cortisol, the stress hormone, in order to balance the surge that's come from the alcohol, of GABA. What this means is that the GABA effect wears off and then we are left with more circulating cortisol through the body, which means that people who drink alcohol end up making themselves more stressed and anxious than people who don't drink at all.

Deb:

It's 100% true. Yeah, did you find that? That you were okay? So, like, early on maybe you weren't experienced that, but like when did that start in your 40s that you started feeling that the anxiety, or was it a part of that change?

Sarah:

Yeah, I'd say late 30s, early 40s, and I've never been someone that's had anxiety.

Sarah:

But the next day I would be overthinking things, I'd be doubting myself, I'd be worrying about things that I would never normally worry about, like my brain was just going to places that it really didn't wanna go to. I would have Monday mornings at work and I couldn't face most of the calls that I needed to make. I didn't have the confidence that I worked for myself, and sometimes on a Monday I would drop the kids at school, I'd come home, I'd crawl back into bed and I'd play Candy Crush all day. And that for someone who's a very driven, motivated person, on a hot sunny day, to be lying in bed with your curtains closed all day, just sitting on your phone playing Candy Crush it is soul destroying, and I say this time and time again alcohol, it killed my soul.

Sarah:

It took me away from the woman that I actually am, and I thought alcohol was what I needed to have fun, to be social. I'm Sarah, the party girl, and in actual fact, alcohol was robbing me of so much, but I just didn't realize it until I started to take these breaks and go. Oh, this is maybe who I really am. I have a morning person. I do love getting up and going for a jog in the morning, at six am, and coming back and having breakfast with my kids and talking to them and connecting to them, instead of just lying in bed, scrolling on my phone, getting out of bed, drinking copious amounts of coffee, grunting at the kids, dropping them at school and coming home and climbing back into bed. And what a different way of life.

Deb:

Totally different, 100% different. Oh my goodness, could you have ever imagined at that time that this is what she would be doing?

Sarah:

No, it's funny because when I had my book launch party last week, my best friend made a speech and I've been friends with her for like 25, 27 years and she said now, if you told me, of all the people I knew, who would be the person to be going on to support thousands of people not to drink and would have written a best selling book about it, I would not have picked Sarah Ruffman. But here I am.

Deb:

Totally showing up 100%. A lot. She's like no, it would not have been. Sarah, and the thousands of women that you are impacting. It's absolutely incredible. So I'm so excited for you, I'm so excited for your book. Okay, last question, Can I ask you a couple of questions around what you drink when you're not drinking, which is obviously now so do you have? I know you're in Australia, but do you have a favorite non-alcoholic beer, non-alcoholic wine? Do you drink mocktails? Are you a mocktail drinker?

Sarah:

Yeah, so I kind of go through phases. I don't know what it's like in the states there, but over here it is awful trying to get alcohol-free drinks when you're out Like it is so backwards, and if you ask for a mocktail, it's basically just loads of fruit juices mixed together with a bit of lemonade, and it's really sugary and mostly disgusting, and so I make them more myself at home.

Sarah:

I love the Liars range. I don't know if you get Liars over that. Yeah, yep, yep, ok, perfect. So I love making it. Aperol Spritz, nice. We have an alcohol-free champagne Again. I don't know if you've got it in America. It's called Naughty Thompson and Scott Naughty. Excellent, it's amazing, excellent. That is my go-to. It's low sugar, it's really dry, it's. They do a rosé and a chardonnay sparkling, so that's my go-to. And then beers. We're lucky over here. We've got a lot of really good beers, and so I kind of work my way through a few of them.

Deb:

Through the beers. Wonderful, wonderful, it's nice to have. I mean, for some people I think it's a trigger. I don't know, I find a lot of people who are in the gray area drinking that mocktails or non-alcoholic drinks actually are a tool For me. They help me stay, like they're the bumper rails, so to speak. I don't know if you have that term in Australia. They're the bumper rails of staying in my sober journey. Staying on my sober journey, sure, but I know for some people it can be a trigger.

Sarah:

No, I think the people for whom it's a trigger are people with more dependency on alcohol. I agree.

Sarah:

People in the gray area. I have got so many women who I've supported who have got sober from using alcohol-free drinks. I have a saying which is keep the ritual, change the ingredient. So 5 or 6 PM, if you normally come home and pour yourself a wine, then come home and pour yourself an alcohol-free wine or an alcohol-free beer and, notice, did that make the craving go away? Like over here in Australia we've got a boat, we do a lot of fishing and at the beginning it was really triggering Because that was the time that I would normally have a beer. But I would find taking an alcohol-free beer would just totally hit the spot.

Deb:

Yeah, yeah, ok, keep the ritual, change the ingredients. Yeah, it helps surf the urge right, we can get through that. You know just to. And that was it for me. It was like it was like dinner time. I was like, ok, I want to. Just, I still want something to drink. I just don't want to have a hangover tomorrow, Don't want to have any alcohol. So, ok, this is such a treat for me to meet you screen to screen and I really I am so grateful for you coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for your time. I cannot wait to get Beyond Booze. Everybody who's listening. Make sure that you're following Sarah on Instagram. Make sure you purchase her book Beyond Booze how to Create a Life you Love, alcohol-free.

Sarah:

So I was going to say I just wanted your listeners to know that the reason that I wrote this book is it's not about how to get sober, it is a book about how to stay sober.

Sarah:

So it is a book about how to create a life where you don't want or need alcohol, and there are so many tools, there are so many strategies. I've got a section on how to socialize without alcohol. I've got a section on what to do if your partner is still drinking and you want to quit drinking and navigating your relationship, because that was something I had to go through. I've got a section on sober sex, because a lot of my listeners actually haven't had sex with their partners sober or they're going on the dating scene if they're single and they don't know how to navigate that. I've got a section on what do you do for fun if you're not drinking and a big section on how to manage stress without alcohol. So if that resonates with any of your listeners, definitely do have a look at the book, because there's not any other books that I know of out there that are focusing on the what to add in when we take the booze out.

Deb:

Amazing, ok, I'm so excited to read it. I'm so excited to read it, yes, because there's tons of material on how to get sober. But how do we love this life right? It's a new life. It's navigating a new way of living without alcohol. So, ok, congratulations, sarah. Thank you, thank you, my friend. So happy for you. Thank you so much. Big time cheers to you for tuning in to the Thriving Alcohol Free podcast. I hope you will take something from today's episode and make one small change that will help you to thrive and have fun in life without alcohol. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social, send up a flare or leave a rating and a review. I am cheering for you as you discover the world of non-alcoholic drinks and as you journey towards authentic freedom. See you in the next episode.