Dry January Tips for Teachers: Judgement Free Advice for Sober Curious Educators with Casey McGuire Davidson

This week's 🎙️ episode is for anyone who has ever wondered if they are taking our "drink to escape/cope" culture too far. As teachers, many of us joke about needing our "lesson planning juice," but some of us have a nagging feeling that maybe our life would be better without alcohol. Educators, this is a judgment-free zone. 

Listen along to my conversation with sobriety coach Casey McGuire Davidson, where we discuss all things "sober curious" for educators, including:

• The Allure and Cost of Teacher Drinking Culture 🍾
• The Benefits of Going Dry for 30 Days 🏋️‍♀️
• Making a Lifestyle Shift Through New Rituals 🧘‍♀️
• Honoring Your Health and Reclaiming Time For You ⏰

Casey shares her wisdom, encouragement, and a great resource to help you get started on a 30-day alcohol-free experiment (try it and see how you feel and what you learn)

Free 30-Day Sober Guide - https://hellosomedaycoaching.com/30-day-sober-guide/  
Podcast - https://hellosomedaycoaching.com/podcast/ 

The Hello Someday Podcast For Sober Curious Women

➡️ To get your FREE 🎁 PDF Guide The Professional Teacher's Guide to Saying "No" visit: www.gracestevens.com/sayno

Want to truly thrive in teaching without sacrificing your personal life? Check out the Elevated Teacher Experience here
Check out the best-selling Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book here
And the #1 new release for educators Beat Teacher Burnout with Better Boundaries book here

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Transcript

 All right. Welcome to the show, Casey. Thank you so much for being here. And could you let the listeners know what exactly led you to become a life coach and more importantly, a sober coach?  

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me on Grace. I'm really excited to be here. So I am a life and sobriety coach for busy women.

I mostly work with high achieving  Uh, working mothers, um, and but I also work with nurses and doctors and teachers and you name it. Um, I also, um,  sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me.  Give me two seconds. We'll fix it. I'll start. Let me start over.  Yeah, I am a life and sobriety coach. I mostly work with women, working women with kids.

I became a sobriety coach after 20 years in the corporate world. I spent, you know, years and years climbing the corporate ladder, getting married, having kids, and holding on really tightly to my love of wine. I actually described myself as a red wine girl in the same way that I said, Oh, I live in Seattle.

I'm married. I have two kids. I'm a red wine girl. I work. Part of 

your 

identity, right? 

It was a huge part of my identity. Yeah. And I thought that drinking with dinner was just what adults do.  My parents, when I was growing up, always had a bottle of wine on the dinner table. Nobody in my family drinks like I did.

But what started with a glass or two of wine over years became the bottle of wine. And It was pretty normal for me to drink a bottle of wine, and weirdly it wasn't that problematic at all, meaning nobody commented on it.  My husband didn't comment on it, you know, all my friends would give me wine for gifts, um, and It was sort of more of a death of a thousand cuts.

I was sort of worried about my drinking for a while.  Um, I tried to make all the rules. I tried to be like, I'll only have two glasses of wine a night, or only drink on the weekends, or I'll sign up for an early morning workout class so I won't drink too much the night before. And that might last for a little while, but not too long.

And I was sort of, my anxiety was off the charts. I woke up with a headache. I had the 3 a. m. anxiety wake ups that are really common. Um, and wine was just becoming increasingly important to me, meaning like I'd be driving to pick up my kids from daycare and be like, Ooh, do I have enough at home? Do I have time to stop at the grocery store to pick up a bottle?

Yeah. And so I ended up stopping with the help of a sober coach. I, um, did not intend to stop forever. That was my worst case scenario in life. I started with a hundred day challenge and I couldn't make it four days before that. And I just slowly over time  built up days. I. It started feeling so much better, less anxiety, more optimistic, more patient.

Um, and my daughter was two and my son was eight years old and that was eight years ago. 

Wow. So let me.  I can relate to this very much. So you were functioning. It's not like anybody was like calling an intervention, right? Like, no, you were getting stuff done, right? You were functioning as a mom, you were functioning, doing all the things, but you knew you had that kind of, uh. 

I want to say that kind of intuition, that sneaking feeling because I've been there where you're like, this might be part of the problem. Like you really don't want it to be part of the problem because you really enjoy drinking, right? But you're like, let me see if life would be better without it. Yeah.

And then you find that life is better with it. So I think a lot of teachers find themselves, um, in this situation where, um, We're all functioning. Of course, we can't drink at work. There's a whole part of the day. There's no way, right, that we can, but at the same time, like  getting, I really noticed it ramp up myself during COVID, to be honest, right, that we would stop online teaching at a certain time earlier in the day, then it would be like, Oh my gosh, I guess I'm a day drinker now, right?

Like, Oh my gosh, now suddenly I can drink a little earlier and a little earlier. And, um, having the sneaking suspicion that like, it probably, it's like that. That quick win, right? Like it's no different than eating a candy bar in my mind. Like, oh, I know it isn't good for me in the long run, but right now it seems really good.

But exactly 3 a. m. when I can't sleep through the night and I have terrible anxiety, we should call each other. That was, that's my time. The witching hour is 3 a. m. for me. Like, you know, you know, it isn't helpful in the long run, but you enjoy it. And there's, It's so social. There's, let's talk about this.

There is such a kind of, um,  culture around 

it, right? Yes. And in every industry, literally,  I, you know, have worked with hundreds of women and the teaching they say is a big drinking culture. You, you know, you go to the bar afterwards, you get together for wine, or you talk about drinking, um, marketing, you know, sales.

Technology. I mean, in startups, there's, you know, beer and wine Thursdays where they literally drive a cart around to every desk and there's a beer on tap in the break room.  Lawyers are big drinkers, you know. Investment bankers are big drinkers, literally in our society, everyone is a big drinker because we have been taught that drinking is good, that it helps you relax, that it's required for dates, that it  makes you more sophisticated, you know, there is a different alcoholic beverage that supposedly is best paired with every season, every sports game, every occasion, I mean, you Every type of food and it's all marketing.

It is 100 percent 

marketing. Yeah, well, part of it, you know, in my own culture, I really related to like red wine on the table. I'm Italian. My parents are Italian. So, you know, I didn't actually drink until I was 27 and they always thought I was just being difficult. To be honest, like, well, what do you mean you're not going to drink?

So anyway, so you ended up eliminating alcohol from your life, finding out  so many positives from that. So let's talk about the positives, positives for a moment.  What could one expect if one reduces their intake? Let's not talk about like quitting, otherwise people are just gonna like freak out. 

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's interesting because there are a lot of things that we are not.

aware of with alcohol. And actually the truth is the exact opposite of what you believe to be true. So one thing that people don't know is we think that alcohol helps us sleep, right? Or helps us relax or helps us transition from day to night. And the truth is that even a single glass of wine or a single drink, it actually doesn't.

People also think wine is better for you than hard liquor or possibly beer. It does not matter what you drink. It is a single drink because the recommended amount for each of them is different.  And so a single drink will reduce your sleep quality by 24 percent and two drinks reduces your sleep quality by 40%. 

So it is, I mean, I know when I stopped drinking, I had not had a good night's sleep in years. That was amazing to me. And one thing people talk about when they take a longer break from drinking is the sleep. Is amazing. The other thing that people are not aware of is that we think drinking helps our anxiety helps us relax to let go of stress.

Take the edge off, right? Yeah. Yeah. The substance of alcohol, it's really interesting because it's both a depressant and a stimulants  stimulant. So when you drink. It literally slows your brain function. It slows your resources. That's a lot of the reason that, you know, you shouldn't drink and drive, right?

Because your, your reflexes, your brain function in addition to balance and everything else is significantly worse. Um, but it is also a stimulant, meaning that's why you wake up at 3 a. m. 4 a. m. And  drinking is like pouring gasoline on anxiety. So not only are you not sleeping the way you should be, you may not even realize it, but you also are increasing your anxiety.

And it takes about a week for the cortisol to go back down in your body to when you start to feel more relaxed and, and longer is better. The other thing we may not know is that. Alcohol drinking, um, will make you less happy and less emotionally stable than you would be without it. So we think alcohol makes us happy.

In our body, in our nervous system, what alcohol does is it spikes your dopamine levels really high. And your body wants to maintain balance. So, It artificially suppresses both your dopamine, which is your happy hormone and serotonin, which is your, your hormone for mood and balance. Um, and it takes about 30 days for that to even out.

So if you feel like you are more irritated and less happy when  You're not drinking,  like if you try to take a week off, if you try to take four days off, you're not imagining that. You truly are, but it is because of the alcohol.  On the good stuff though, stop drinking. Your skin will look so much better.

Your eyes will look so much brighter. You will have less bloating. You will have more energy. It's amazing how much your looks and mood and body improve simply with getting rid of this substance. And the reason is, it's actually toxic to your body.  

So let me ask you this, because all that sounds great. You could have just stopped it.

You'd sleep better. Yeah. If you sleep, I mean, honestly, if you sleep better, all those other things come along, right? More patient, more, you know, teachers. We are stinking exhausted. Exhausted. Exhausted. And, um, for me, I always find like  very easy for me to fall asleep. Very easy for me to fall asleep because I'm worn out at the end of the day.

I do practice good sleep hygiene. Okay. So that I, I do know like, you know, turn off the devices, you know, read a book, do something relaxing like a bath or a shower or some stretching, right? So I do have that good sleep hygiene. But, um, you know, yeah, I do enjoy a glass of wine before bed, so I can fall, uh, not before bed, but you know, with dinner, you know, whatever, end of the day, I like, actually, it started out just to like to, um, drink a glass of wine when I ate food, turns into I actually like to drink a glass of wine when I'm preparing food.

Yep. Right? Like it's, it's very, it's part of the ritual, right? I open the bottle and I'm cooking and it's nice and whatever. But anyway, so I fall asleep real easy, but when I wake up,  I cannot go back to sleep. That's when the brain starts churning every, you know, unresolved trauma from the day from children, from what do I need to do tomorrow to where's that?

Where's that kid sleeping tonight? Like what, what am I going to do? You know, like start worrying about these parent meetings, all that parents first thing in the morning and it's going to be, you know, you, you play in that,  that movie in your mind that may or may not happen, but it never has a happy scenario, does it?

So like, that's the problem with waking up at three, if it was just waking up at three o'clock, turning over, it's like, no, it's like, then you get into this. Fire. All right. With all the anxiety and all the unprocessed stuff from the day, which has teachers, there's no way we process everything during the day.

We need a good night's sleep, but all those other things, clear eyes, clear skin, all those things sound fantastic. So let me ask you this, because I've done this in the past. So you tell me if this is helpful. If I'm a, like, I'm just going to drink on the weekends, kind of girl. Does that help or is it just, oh, you just got it out your system for a little bit of time and now you're starting all those problems again?

I mean, I would say that drinking just on the weekends is absolutely better than drinking every day or more times a week, right? I mean, harm reduction is real. And, you know, if, if it's not impacting your life in a major way, if you truly are having like one drink on the weekends or two drinks, um, we all do stuff every day that we know is like, maybe not the best for you, but.

You know, we're human and you have free choice and you can do whatever you want. Yeah. Um, I was not that drinker  Even if I only drank on the weekends like I would be like, all right, I wanted to get the buzz I wanted to get that feeling and um, it does, you know when I work with women To take a break from drinking.

I highly recommend Doing 30 days or 50 days or for me, the sweet spot is 100 days and the reason is, even if you only drink on the weekend, so say you take five or six days off each week, you are constantly in this craving withdrawal cycle. Yeah. So your body is literally withdrawing from alcohol. And then you're adding alcohol again and then you're withdrawing.

Um, you never get that, that boost of not having that extra anxiety. You never get the benefit of raising your dopamine. So you feel  daily more content. The other thing I would say is I take a behavioral and habit change approach to, you know, creating a life you love without alcohol or having alcohol be More inconsequential in your life.

And if you are drinking every week, every weekend, you're essentially having alcohol be your reward for getting through the week. The thing is you deserve a reward. We, you know, the week is hard. The day is hard. You absolutely deserve to reward yourself.  And  part of removing it for 30 days or longer, you get to explore other ways of coping and enjoying life.

Someone said to me that our reward system has somehow shrank all the way to just bars and bakeries. And there is so much more out there.  So I used to, when I was. You know, in early, early days, not drinking, I would plan a, what I call sober treat for myself literally every single day. I would know every day, one thing I was doing to reward myself to take care of myself.

And I would say, this is my treat for not drinking. And it could be as simple as coffee in a quiet home before the kids wake up. It could be. Taking a walk and or like going to a coffee shop and reading a magazine by myself  or Sushi takeout on a Friday night or a massage on Saturdays. I saved So much money not drinking you can repurpose that money To get a babysitter and get a massage or a pedicure  to do All these good things.

And by the way, you can still get up and feel fantastic on Saturday morning and go for a walk or go for a run or go to a class. I mean, whatever you want. 

Yeah, that sounds like, I really feel that, like, you feel like, Oh, I deserve this, right? And then you have that internal banner. It's like, ah, it's a, that constant weighing of what I want now versus what I want eventually, 

right?

Well, the thing is that what I want now goes away pretty quickly, meaning like in the beginning You feel deprived and irritated and you rationalize like, do I need to do this? Do I want to do this? Everybody drinks. It's not an issue. I like women to look at it as an experiment and something they're excited about to.

To just imagine it as a period of time of true self care where you're not numbing out, but you are instead learning how to decompress throughout the day and seeing how your body feels. And then you can decide, Oh, I felt better when drinking was my reward. The end of the day or drinking was my reward at the end of the week.

Or now that I'm not drinking, I'm doing all these things I said I would always do. Mm-Hmm that I never had time for Because our social  cir circle and our activities and our interests really tend to shrink. Yeah. To revolve around, oh, well is there gonna be cocktails there or X, Y, Z, and you don't realize how much until you remove it. 

Yeah, 

yeah, I find for myself, like I'll tell myself like, Oh, my reward, you know, at the end of a big, you know, big day of teaching and then you come home and there's still the lesson planning and the grading and the this and the that and yeah, I want to, you know, go for a walk or, you know, be present, um, with my pets, you know, my, my kids are adults now, but certainly when, you know, they were younger, I wanted to be present.

Present with my kids, but even like the simplest thing I tell myself, like every day I'm going to do one nice thing for myself. And for me, like I want it for me, I'm an educator. Like my mission is to learn and to teach. Like, so I'm always learning. And so I'm always learning like something like even goofy stuff.

Like I wanted to learn to watercolor. I wanted to learn to quilt, like something that was, you could produce something with your hands. Like in teaching, you don't really. It's not like you, you, you know, you're an architect and you build a building and you step back and you're like, look what I did. Like we're teaching sometimes, you know, you don't know, right?

You trust,  you get those lovely love notes, but it's not like there's something tangible. So I remember particularly at one point where I was like, yeah, I'm going to go home and I'm going to work on my water painting. And then I'm like, let me just, you know, have a drink first  and sit down for a minute.

Guess what? I won't get up again. I just want to get up again and then I'd be so annoyed I'll go to bed and I'm like, listen, my whole life I dreamt of having like two hours to myself. I was so busy. I'm young kids. I was a single parent. I worked a side hustle on top of teaching because, you know, teaching doesn't pay a lot.

And I really like found myself that time in my life where I was like, Oh, I'm going to have all the time in the world, um, to do the things I want. And then that glass of wine would steal it.  

Yeah, and just so you know, I, I completely understand the stresses and difficulties of being an educator, being a teacher.

My husband actually taught 6th grade for 12 years and the lesson. Decade, he's been a dean of students and a middle school principal, so he's, he's been in it for 2022 23 years and my sister has also been a high school teacher for 24 years. So, I know, you know, a lot of people think that teaching, oh, you have your summers off, you have your afternoons off, like, yeah, total crap.

It is all consuming. Yeah, it is hard. So. I understand that and I've worked with teachers and I have to tell you that removing alcohol, like you said, does free you up to do things that you never had time for before. Um, Claire Pooley, who wrote a book that I absolutely adore, it's called The Sober Diaries, and she basically chronicled her first year alcohol free, sort of week by week, month by month.

But, She was on my podcast and said it wasn't so much the things she did That she regretted when she was drinking because she didn't do anything. Yeah, not bad, and I didn't either. Yeah  But she said it was all those Nights and weeks and years just slipping through her fingers. Yeah, and that's how I feel about it Yeah, 

no, that's what like I said for myself To be a little vulnerable.

That's what I've noticed too. It isn't like, you know, I never drink enough to get like, you know, drunk, or I would never, you know, I have a lot of self control, like I wouldn't, you know, you hear people who like have these awful stories, right. They make bad decisions and they drink and they drive or, you know.

They're home alone and something happens to their kids. And they're like, Oh my God, what am I going to do? Like I'm impaired now, right? Like it's just, you know, you, I don't have any of those stories. I've never done anything bad when I was drunk, but I, um, I do feel that it isn't when you're like, Oh, well, drinking takes time.

It's like, it doesn't, you pour it. It doesn't take long, but yeah, then you sit down and then you've lost your motivation to go do those other things. And it does steal your time. Yeah. And especially then when you, when you're not sleeping well and it's, um, you know, and I, I think of, um,  how much anxiety has taken from me in my life.

It's like, you know, when you add it all up, it really is a very big tally, 

right? It really is. Yeah, and the other thing I would say is when you are a very busy woman and you're still doing well, and there's no major issues, you know, that anyone externally might notice. I mean, I know internally I, it was sort of this ticker tape in the back of my mind.

Should I drink? Should I not? Only two glasses. This is the rule. I'm not that bad. It's not an issue. My friends drink. How will I go on vacation? Like this constant ticker tape. But for all the women I see, it's basically like you're trying to run this marathon with a ball and chain tied to your ankle and you don't know how much easier.

And better your life will be until you get away from it for a while. I felt like when I was drinking, I was a director at a fortune 500 company with two little kids. My husband worked as well, and I felt like I could barely cope with my life. I felt like one more thing would be the straw that broke the camel's back. 

I stopped drinking and, you know, after the first month or a little bit further, you know, it takes a while to rebuild your habits. Um, I had the exact same job, the exact same kids, all that stuff. And I was able to go back to coaching school and build a business on nights and weekends and do it with ease.

I mean, it's incredible. And the only way you're going to know that is if you try. I see stopping drinking just as any other health and wellness choice. It does not mean you have a problem. It means, you know, you in the same way that some people decide to become vegetarian or remove sugar or gluten for a period of time, like see how your body feels without it.

And it's not the biggest, it doesn't need to define you. 

Yeah, yeah, I know. I really feel that. I don't, you know, my own journey, I was in the corporate world, super successful. Before I was a teacher, I was a second career teacher and  everything that I thought I wanted in life,  you know, and so stinking overwhelmed, didn't even participate in my life.

Outsourced it, who looks after the kids, who does this, who does that. Anytime, I would be afraid to be alone. Anytime I was alone,  I would literally burst into tears. Like I was just so overwhelmed. And, um, I just kind of, you try and numb yourself through it. And, and it's like, you know, you can't get those years back.

I mean, I know that sounds like a huge. Um,  cliche and it is, but I was really blessed that I made, um, the choice, um, and I had the resources and was able to sacrifice to go back to school and become public school teacher. It had purpose. It had joy. It had all the things I felt I wanted. Um, and I. It was amazing.

And then within two years, I'd created the same circumstances for myself, overwhelmed, overstressed, like, you know, right. And now I'm making like, you know,  a third of what I was making before. So it's like, you know, I like to say your passports have problems. Like, you know, wherever you go, there are your problems, right?

You take them with them. So you have to really, you know, kind of make healthy habits. That's why, um, my whole kind of career now as a teacher empowerment coach is to empower people. Teachers to let them know you have choices and, um, so much in education, everywhere feels out of control. There's so much you can control and you know what the ultimate control is.

You can control what you put in your mouth.  Nobody's making you drink, right? But let's talk about the pressure because I know, like, I think, you know, I've mentioned in the intro, like I have two wine glasses that say lesson planning juice. Um, right. There's this whole, when you say marketing, there's this whole kind of, um,  culture, the teacher, all the t shirts that we're like, Oh, we can't wear that at school.

Cause it has a wine glass on it, but like all of that, and there's a secret kind of, so as well as kind of like the, the cultural kind of like, uh,  like, come on, have a drink. Like, you know, I used to, it used to be easier because I used to say I'm the designated driver, but now it's like, Oh, we'll just call an Uber.

So that. Yeah, 

I mean, I think there is, um, at least  a big tradition, you know, where I live of giving teachers bottles of wine, you know, as your end of year gift when you go into Trader Joe's here, which is, you know, a big grocery store,  they have just cases and cases of wines stacked up in, um. In September with a sign hanging off the roof with an arrow that says back to school supplies here, um, you know, there's, there's bottles or glasses that are like, it's 3 30 somewhere or whatever.

I mean, it's, it's marketed to teachers in the same way as it's marketed to mothers, you know, just the idea of, you know. I whine because you whine or, you know, because middle schoolers or whatever. Yeah. So it's very deliberate and as someone who spent 20 years in marketing and, um, communications and websites and advertising, I know the degree to which  this is very calculated.

That we do focus groups looking at which messages resonate with which audiences we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to influencers who have a big audience of, you know, moms of young kids or style influencers or teachers or you name it, empty nesters to. Literally put alcohol and make a joke of it and put it in their, um, social media posts and normalized drinking, you know, the alcohol companies, their goals are to make you drink more and drink more often.

They want to get a higher share of your wallet and what's interesting is that that's shifting the biggest drinkers these days are Gen Xers and baby boomers. And Gen Z and Millennials are drinking significantly less than their parents and grandparents did at the same age. Um, part of that is all the information that's come out about the mental health impacts of alcohol in terms of anxiety and depression, as well as the, Significant, um, downsize, uh, for your physical health that, you know, people used to be like, well, red wine's good for your heart or the antioxidants are good in red wine.

And the truth is. That is completely untrue there, you know, red wine or any alcohol is very bad for your heart. It is, you know, linked to seven different kinds of cancer in the same way that cigarettes are, um, you know, drinking a bottle of wine, which by the way, no judgment I did all the time is the cancer risk equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes.

Wow. 

Yeah, no, it's, it's a lot. 

It's a lot. So again, cut back. That's great. Um, that is, that is significant improvement over if you, you know, if you were drinking two glasses of night drink, drink one. If you were drinking four glasses a week,  drink two and I recommend taking a period of time without it because you will gain clarity about how it has been influencing your life and your mood that you won't have if you just cut back.

Yeah. 

Yeah. No, I, I, I, I, I feel that I see that like I really do. Like I said, I, I know that, you know, drinking only on the weekends is better than drinking every day. Um, but you want to have that opportunity. to really see what it does for you. And I like your idea of looking at it as an experiment. Let's just try it and see, try it and see.

And for me, the clarity around that is going to come that, um, especially if it's harder than  you thought it was going to be, right? Like, Oh, okay. Well, there's something I learned. Right. And then, um, so how would you, let's say, I know, so I purposely, um, this episode is January 2nd when this is playing, right?

Because there's this huge, um,  this, you know, this huge, which I, I really enjoy is, um, you know, taking January off from drinking because traditionally, especially in the United States, we have two holidays back to back, right? We have Thanksgiving, and then we have Christmas, um, in Europe, where I'm from most.

Most businesses, because we don't have a Thanksgiving, Christmas is a really big deal. And most businesses are closed. Yeah, exactly. Are closed between Christmas Eve and January 1st in Italy, where I grew up, January 6th. Right. So like, there's like a lot of drinking happening those two weeks. And so, um, everybody's looking at January to cut back.

Do you think? Now's a good time to do it. I mean, you can do it anytime, right? There's no shame. But January 

is fantastic. And one of the reasons I love it, you can do it anytime. And that's great too. One of the reasons I love January is that it is a huge global movement these days  to take a break from drinking specifically in January.

And it's called Dry January. Last year in the United States.  Past couple years, somewhere between a fifth and a third of American adults participated in dry January. So you will not be alone. You'll not be alone. Yeah. And if you, you look at the media in January, the Sober Curious Movement, the rise of non-alcoholic beverages like non-alcoholic beer and sparkling rose and and white wine.

Mm-hmm. and spirits. Um, there you can buy non alcoholic vodka and, and all those things, um, is all over the news. Last year in January, the New York Times and NPR and Vogue and Women's Health and the Today Show and every outlet. You can imagine covered dry January had articles about it. So it's a fantastic time to do this with a lot of support without a lot of questions about while you're doing it.

You won't be alone and it's something to be proud of. 

Yeah, I think, I really think that because I think there's a lot of, um, you know, there's kind of shame around it still. I mean, there's so many more resources than there used to be. Um, I know on my Facebook feed, I see all the time these fantastic looking, um, mock tales, right?

Yeah. And even when, um, you know, I, um, I live in San Francisco and so, you know,  Restaurants kind of a little bit trendy and a lot of them now, I see it very, very, um, common on the menu to say mocktails, which I have to say the mocktails cost as much as cocktails. Like what am I paying 15? It has no stinking alcohol in it.

Uh, you know, it looks pretty and, um, and it's not obvious to anybody else at the table or the restaurant, like why should they care? Like it's your business. What I put in my body is my own business and nobody else's. I, I, I feel that to my soul, um, because I have some dietary restrictions that I stick to because not that I don't push on anybody else that I don't preach to, to everybody else, but I feel like it's the last autonomy.

What I put in my body is my choice. And so I don't think that people should, um.  I feel the need to justify or hide or like, Ooh, let me have something that looks like it's a cocktail, but it's so much easier now. And especially, yeah, like you said, dry January, like it's thing, like people take pride in it.

Yeah. I had no idea that many people participate in it. I think that's fantastic. Um, so if somebody is, yeah, if somebody is really looking to do it now is a fantastic. Um, time to do it. You have a lot of company, you'll have a lot of support. Now what if, um, somebody is binge listening, um, to my podcast?

Let's say they find me in April and they're like, let's go back and listen to all the episodes. Yeah. 'cause you know, it's so fabulous and they happen across us and they're like, oh, be, it's not January. So where would you recommend they start? I think you have a resource, right? That people can start with no matter 

when.

Yes, I do.  . Um, if you go to my website. It's HelloSomedayCoaching. com I have a completely free guide, 30 tips for your first month alcohol free. And in there, you'll, you know, get advice on what to eat and how to substitute different beverages, different things to do during the witching hour, um, how to handle day five and your first weekend and, um, podcasts to listen to and great books to read and all this.

Other information. I really feel like information is power. I feel like looking to a guide or a coach or a course to stop drinking is, is similar to joining a couch to 5k running group or hiring a personal trainer or nutritionist.  If you've been trying to cut back and you haven't been able to do it,  um,  it's, It's nothing to be ashamed of.

There are people who've done this before you and and don't make it mean Anything big. I mean, I, I hired a personal trainer to get in shape and it was because, yeah, of course I could have looked on YouTube and gotten a million different, um, workouts, but I needed accountability. I wanted someone to show me the shortcuts to give me something that's just right for me.

And that's 

available. Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously I'm a coach. I see the value in coaching, you know, I sell a course. Yeah, go your own, go watch it. You know what? You're going to buy it. You're not going to start it. If you know that you're going to, I'm going to be calling you every week. We're going to have a call and we're going to help your role play and we're going to, you know, do all the things then you're going to be more successful, right?

I liken it like this. Um, I did Weight Watchers about, um, yeah.  I don't know, 20 years ago, lost a ton of weight, really successful with it, um, and became a lifetime member and then I moved and then I never found a, um, a good place to go. So when you're a lifetime member, I don't know if people know me, probably a lot of the listeners do know, if you're a lifetime member in, in Weight Watchers, it means that you, you don't have to pay any more as long as you stay within your.

weight goal range and you go and you get weighed in. Okay. So since then I've tried Weight Watchers with just the app. I want to say a million times pretty much every other Monday for, you know, 15 years, never successful with it. Right. I need that accountability piece, but I think your free resource, if somebody at least wants to start somewhere and they don't.

have the resources or they're embarrassed or whatever to reach out to somebody, right? And they don't want to say, Oh, I've got to wait till next January. No, you don't, you can make a healthier decision for yourself in the next five minutes. Um, so I will be sure to put your link  in the show notes. I think that's a fantastic thing.

So I really want to thank you. Um, I think this is a really important conversation. I felt obviously a hundred percent, um, um,  safe and supportive with you. It's nothing I've ever talked about before. And I feel like a lot of listeners, it might really have them set just a little alarm bell. Like, mm, let me look at it.

Let me just think, is this something that has been nagging at me that I think I can make a difference to? And I do want to point out, right, I know that you focus on, um,  you know, busy moms, educated moms, all those things.  It works for men too, right? The physiology of alcohol is, there's no magic in their bodies, 

right?

Yeah, it, it definitely, I've had lots of men tell me that they've taken my course, that they listen to my podcast as well. Um, and I think that women have a unique set of triggers, um, the reasons they drink, whether they struggle with boundaries, whether they struggle with saying no, whether, um, being a mother is hard, um, not having time to yourself, having to be creative about how to get that.

Um, So it is geared towards women. That's who I specialize in working with. Um, but I've certainly had a lot of, I have had men take my course and say it was great. I have men listen to my podcast and they like it because it's a habit and behavior change approach. Yeah. Do stopping drinking without labels or any of that crap that honestly you do not 

need.

Yeah. So one more time for the listeners. I'm going to put in the show notes where they're going to find your resource. Um, and then your podcast is Hello Someday podcast, right? Yes. And so Hello Someday podcast. And I think that's an excellent place to start, especially if you're just going for a walk or trying new habits and you want some ongoing support, listen to the experts.

I know you have a lot of experts and you're an expert, but I know you have a lot of other experts on your show too. So, oh, I 

do. I have therapists and. Um, quitlet authors and other coaches and we talk about on the podcast, not just  how to stop drinking and why we drink and all that. But we also, I have experts on about perfectionism and imposter syndrome and parenting and marriage and all the reasons that we drink, you try to numb out. 

All 

the triggers. Oh my gosh. All the same. Exactly. It's yeah. So anyway, this has been such, it has been so enlightening. And just like, you know how I said with teaching, one of the reasons I like to quill or make something physical is you don't really.  Automatically see, um, the effects of what you're doing, but I want to reassure you, Casey, just like with education, what you are doing is changing lives.

And I know a lot of people, you know, reach out to you and tell you that, but the ripple effect,  right, where mummy stops drinking. Mommy's life just doesn't get better. Everybody's life gets better, right? So I want you really, I know that from myself  that, that you are changing life. So I want to thank you for that.

And I want to thank you with your generosity of your time, because you are, you're not going to say you are a big deal. People want to talk to you. You're all over the place. So I appreciate you took time to. Come to our Hum. Humble podcast. Obviously your heart is with teachers. I mean, you can't do any better than marrying a middle school teacher.

No, I'm gonna tell you that. no.  So that's fantastic. So thank you so much and um, I wish you continued success and, um, for everybody else, um, I'm gonna sign off. You already know what I'm gonna say. You can create your own path, bring your own sunshine, and be well.  

Thank you.