Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:00:00) - Hi there Sober Warriors, welcome to Flat Pack Sober, your catalog of tips, tricks and tactics to help you design your alcohol free life. I'm joined today by a really exciting guest. So Esther used to drink a lot of booze, and she thought that it helped her to run away and to fit in and to have fun. In fact, she thought it held her together until, of course, it didn't. And she fell apart. And she had what she termed a very necessary breakdown. I have a feeling that might resonate with a few of our listeners, but of course she came out the other side, and when she came out the other side, she had a yoga teaching qualification, a better way of handling stress and dealing with her feelings. But more important than that, a better relationship with herself. These days, she's on a bit of a mission to prove that sober is the new rock and roll, and that you can have a lot of fun whilst being sober, which means you've probably concluded she is in absolutely the right place.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:01:06) - So what she does day to day is write and coach and teach and generally be an all around good guy. Oh, Esther, welcome to the podcast.
Esther Nagle (00:01:16) - Hello. Very happy to be here.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:01:19) - Cool. Well, thanks for joining us. Before we go any further, I always like to start with Ikea. You are familiar with Ikea, I assume.
Esther Nagle (00:01:28) - I went there was. Well, you.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:01:30) - And the ones. Okay. You get the general idea behind Flatpack furniture, right?
Esther Nagle (00:01:35) - Oh, yes.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:01:36) - If I asked you to assemble some Flatpack furniture, would you approach me?
Esther Nagle (00:01:40) - I normally swear lots of swearing. Generally. Yeah, generally. So I buy something that requires assembly. Leave it in the passage for a few weeks. Months, maybe in a couple of years. When I eventually get around to doing it. I normally complain at how incomprehensible the instructions are and then figure it out for myself with much swearing and cursing and wishing I'd never started. And then, yeah, normally. In fact, if I manage to get it done, I'm generally quite surprised and very pleased with myself.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:02:14) - So it's sort of like the instructions aren't any good. Kind of get in, get on with it, get into it. Would you say that sums up your sort of like approach to living and learning and stuff? Are you quite practical? Do you like to just get on with stuff and find the way?
Esther Nagle (00:02:30) - I want to say I'm very practical. I will put things off for a very long time before I do. I'm not the sort of person who will see that, you know. Oh, that shelf is a bit wonky. I'll go and fix it. Now I will notice that the shelf is wrong. Do you think I'll fix it later? And then six years later I might remember, but I am very. I'm a single mum and I have been for a really long time, so generally I've got to get on with stuff because there isn't anyone else who's going to do it. So if I need something to be done, I've got to do it, which sometimes is quite a challenge in itself because I am very ADHD.
Esther Nagle (00:03:05) - So I will put things off for a very long time. But if it's something that I get really into, then I stopping me is the problem. Then yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:03:15) - It becomes a full on obsession. So yes, until I.
Esther Nagle (00:03:19) - Get bored.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:03:21) - You'd have built the entire Ikea catalogue.
Esther Nagle (00:03:23) - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:03:25) - Oh, okay. The reason why I like to start with that is because I like to kind of get how people get a feel of where you're coming from and how you how you do things, how you learn stuff. Because obviously, you know, a lot of what you're going to say. It's going to jail and it's going to resonate with some people. But, you know, there's a lot of information on the internet, and some of the time we find it doesn't really make sense to us and it doesn't gel with us. And we feel bad about that because we think, wow, you know, look at Esther. She's so successful. I must do everything that Esther does.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:03:56) - But obviously not everybody's likely. So by giving people a bit of a flavour about how you do things, I think it helps them to kind of like, appreciate which bits of your advice is necessarily going to work so well for me, and what they might kind of think a little bit more about. So let's get right into the bottle, as it were. Well, that's what did you use to get sober?
Esther Nagle (00:04:17) - Yoga teacher training.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:04:20) - Yoga teacher training.
Esther Nagle (00:04:21) - So yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:04:22) - Famous that famous?
Esther Nagle (00:04:23) - No.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:04:24) - No. Yeah.
Esther Nagle (00:04:25) - I didn't go at all. I mean, I didn't at no point did I go to anyone and say, I need help with this. I went on a yoga teacher training course. And what I learned there, I learned to breathe. I learned to relax. I did an awful lot of reflection and free writing, so I was like getting stuff out of my head. I kept trapped there for a long time. I basically I replaced not initially, but I replaced drinking with yoga as what I did during the week.
Esther Nagle (00:04:58) - Yeah, I was going to. At night so that I could get up early in the morning to do my daily practice. And then at the weekends, I was making up for lost time. And because during the week I was learning all these relaxing practices, I was connecting with my body in ways that I never had before. I was connecting with myself. I was processing my emotions, and then at the weekends, I was returning to my former patterns, my drinking patterns. And, you know, it was like, I'm going to have a drink tonight. So it's going to be four cans of cider and a bottle of wine and 20 cigarettes and a bit of weed, if I could get it. And I was it was weird because like, physically, my body was sort of rejecting it more than because I was. I was doing all that cleansing work. And then the hangovers got worse. I'd never had hangovers before. I just thought this kind of general foggy tiredness. But I started having really bad hangovers and I didn't like that.
Esther Nagle (00:05:59) - That was painful. And also I became really sort of conscious of actually, I'm causing myself harm here, and I'm spending all week caring for myself, for my body, for my lungs. I'm doing all this detoxifying stuff. And then at the weekend, I'm using the same deep breathing that I'm learning to do through the week so that I can take a good puff on a giant, and I'm pulverizing my liver and why. And it gradually got to the point where I stopped kind of really knowing why I was drinking because I didn't need it anymore. Because I was dealing with my problems, I was dealing with my emotions, and I was doing good things to relieve my stress. And then once I took that out of the equation, I didn't know what I needed to drink for because that was when it came to it. That was what I was drinking for. And on the 12th of October, 2014. So it's nearly nine years now. I woke up and I was in so much pain with this.
Esther Nagle (00:07:02) - However, because I'd been up drinking until 5:00 in the morning and I was just in so much pain, I just thought, this is so stupid. I don't want to do this to myself anymore. And that was the last time I did because I didn't need it anymore. It's often feels like I did recovery the other way round for most people.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:07:19) - So there's a ton in that. First thing that I really wanted to kind of get at was it sounds like a little bit of it was this sort of like bottom up therapeutic approach that you'd started doing so much with your body that you started to feel things in a different way. And I if I got that right.
Esther Nagle (00:07:36) - Yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:07:37) - Yeah. So, so the actual feeling of drinking was, well, it's never pleasant. It just you became more aware of your bodily sensations. So you actually started to realize how unpleasant smoking, drinking, drugs, how bad they actually are. That's a big part of it, I guess. Yeah, I.
Esther Nagle (00:07:54) - Think that was it.
Esther Nagle (00:07:54) - I mean, I remember being in a pub beer garden one night and I was smoking, and I was so conscious because I'd been doing such a lot of work on learning to breathe properly. I'd never noticed what I was doing when I was smoking, and I became really conscious of what I was doing. And like, I'm using these same breathing techniques right now, and it just seemed like such a bizarre thing to do.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:08:21) - I mean, I work a lot with smokers, and I don't know why it continues to surprise me because I was exactly the same. You know, the number of times that we sort of talk about the taste and the smell and the effect that it has on me, and I said, just go outside, have a cigarette, you know, but actually pay attention this time they'll come back in. And that was horrible. And I'm like, yeah, they were all like that. You just didn't notice. Yeah, I know, I smoked, I smoked for 20 years, so I didn't notice for a long time.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:08:47) - But so that's that kind of like that bottom up physical stuff. I think that's really, really interesting. But it sounds an awful lot like you figured out my favorite adage, you know, that the pen is mightier than the therapist, right? You were actually doing a lot of the sort of the more top down kind of stuff. You are finding new ways to process and kind of confront your emotions as well. Yeah.
Esther Nagle (00:09:09) - I've often said that my, my recovery path was basically writing and breathing. I breathe and I wrote and I got myself sober because we had to do these essays, and I was supposed to be keeping a practice journal, which never did. But I did these we had these essays, and they would become this stream of consciousness. And I dread to think my poor teacher, the things she was reading, but I was I was processing all this stuff. And I remember one day writing all this stuff and it was like, really? Like I just was in my my fingers were doing something, my brain was going somewhere else.
Esther Nagle (00:09:45) - And I remember sitting back in my chair and I would shut because I had just written. I noticed, without even being aware of it that there was a direct link. There was a direct path from the. Eating disorder that I had after my first son was born to my drinking, and I had never spotted that before. But I worked all this out that they were both connected and I never know.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:10:11) - That's really interesting as well. We'll get into that in a second. So you kind of like you said, that you think your recovery journey was a bit backwards because you kind of did the therapeutic stuff first and then got stopped drinking. But you've noticed that a lot of people tend to stop drinking and then do the therapeutic route, so they stop drinking and then get into yoga. Yes. But honestly, I've met lots of people who have done the therapy and then realized that they no longer needed to drink anymore. And I think I personally have some views about that. But do you think there's any kind of real strength or any benefit in doing it that way round?
Esther Nagle (00:10:47) - It wasn't a struggle for me when I decided I wasn't going to drink anymore that time.
Esther Nagle (00:10:52) - It was almost effortless to not drink, because I'd already got to that point where I didn't feel like I no longer had that need. So at no point in the whole nine years I've had some really, really intense personal challenges to work through, and at no point of I had to stop myself going to the shop to buy a bottle of wine because I just haven't wanted it. And I tried in the past, like the year before. I tried to do sober Go sober for Macmillan, and I failed on day three. And because I had I was going through family court at the time and it was really horrible day. I went to my friend's house. She offered me a glass of wine, a bottle and a half later. I wasn't going to do any more sober October that month, but by doing it the way I did it, I'd shifted my relationship with alcohol and with myself before I got to the point of deciding I didn't want to name. So it was that it wasn't a giving up drinking.
Esther Nagle (00:11:51) - I was choosing a different way of life. I was choosing a healthier life. I wasn't giving anything up. I was choosing something that felt better. And I've never felt like I gave up drinking. I didn't want it anymore.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:12:04) - You kind of like you changed your life enough that whatever utility you believed it was providing, you no longer needed, that you removed the need for it.
Esther Nagle (00:12:14) - Yeah, there was a lot. I mean, there was a lot of work that I obviously I had to still do a lot of growth work in that. But yeah, there was no longer that emotional charge or drinking that made me feel like it was ever going to. You know, I still struggle to get through life, but at no point did I ever feel like, right, a bottle of wine. That's going to be the answer for me right now. There was one time when I was really upset and I was quite. I got really angry that I couldn't, but that was it. It wasn't a desire.
Esther Nagle (00:12:45) - It was just really irritated that I couldn't. I couldn't have a bottle of wine, but I didn't want one. It was a really weird few minutes that because I couldn't quite work out what I was feeling. Yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:12:55) - That is really genuinely interesting and I maintain there is only one right way to stop drinking, and that's the way you stop drinking. So congratulations. But would you mind me asking a little bit about your interview?
Esther Nagle (00:13:08) - Yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:13:09) - No, no, that was my question. That was.
Esther Nagle (00:13:11) - The question. All right. Yes. So yeah, I think it was it was a long time coming. Probably my first addiction was sugar, I would imagine as a child. And when I was a little girl I was very skinny, you know, I had a really my tummy was quite concave, you know, there was nothing of me. And then I hit puberty and my tummy went the other way. And I developed this quite, quite a big pot belly. And I was always very out of place in school and not very happy and really low self-esteem.
Esther Nagle (00:13:46) - And I think that's got a lot to do with growing up ADHD in the 70s and 80s. And so I grew up with very low self-esteem and lots of issues about how I looked, lots of lots of issues, lots of lots of self-esteem issues. And when I was in my early teens, maybe 11 until I was about 14, I went to gymnastics, and it was the only sport that I actually enjoyed, and I loved it. I spent half my life upside down after I started gymnastics, and I was always doing cartwheels and forward rolls. I absolutely loved it. And I started going to this class where I was the only I was the oldest kid there. The all the others were a primary school and I was in the comp by this point. I was about 13 or 14 and the teacher must have only been about maybe 18, maybe 20, or she was still young. And one day I was doing something on the parallel class, and she poked me in the tummy and said really loudly in front of all the rest of the class was this.
Esther Nagle (00:14:51) - And I never felt so ashamed of my body as I did in that moment, but I never went back to gymnastics after that. And I suddenly realized, I don't think I'd even realize at that point that there was anything wrong with my tummy the way it was, but I became really conscious of it after that. And then when I was in the sixth form, one of the girls in school asked me very loudly in the common room if I was pregnant because I wasn't. And then after I had my first child, but 5 or 6 months after my first child had been born, my brother pointed out to me that I was very fat. And then I started trying to do something about it, which involved laxatives and huge amounts of sweets and chocolates and laxatives to wash them down with. And I knew that what I was doing wrong, because I was going to the shelves and I wouldn't buy the laxatives. I was stealing them from the shop. And because I knew that what I was doing was wrong, and I couldn't actually bring myself to go to the counter and pay for them.
Esther Nagle (00:15:50) - And when my mum found out about it wasn't dealt with in the best way that it could have been dealt with. It was dealt with by me being shouted up and told I had started eating again and threats. And I'd always been a fussy eater. So mum just kind of saw this as an extension of that, I think. I don't think she realised that it was actually a more deep, a deeper problem. And so I started eating again. But then not long after that I started drinking and the two went. It was it was a straight line from one to the other, I'm sure of it.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:16:26) - Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's not uncommon. I think a lot of people have the experiences around food and disordered eating, whether it's diagnosed or not or, you know, whether it's treated. You think maybe the two things were have a similar genesis.
Esther Nagle (00:16:45) - Yeah, I think so. I think and I think certainly the, the self-esteem issues that were behind the bulimia were definitely connected.
Esther Nagle (00:16:54) - They or they had the same issues at their core, without a doubt.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:16:58) - I mean, the statistics on it aren't particularly pretty. There are a, you know, a lot of people who get over eating disorders and remain very vigilant about their food and then start drinking a lot because then sort of kind of numbing effect, but then it cuts the other way that actually, if you dig into it, a lot of people that have gastric band surgery end up drinking heavily because they can't eat in the same way that they used to. But that's all the past. Let's talk about staying sober. And you know what? What is it? What's the main thing that's kept you sober? What do you think the most important thing is now?
Esther Nagle (00:17:36) - It's the fact that I just enjoy being sober. My sobriety is what keeps me sober. I remember how I used to feel in the morning when I woke up. And even though sometimes I wake up in the morning and I might be tired and I might be, you know, I might be feeling a bit low.
Esther Nagle (00:17:53) - I'm not having a great day. But even on the worst days when I've woken up feeling a bit crap, there's nothing compared to how I felt when I woke up in the morning and I couldn't remember getting to bed, or I couldn't remember getting home, or I'd done something that I really wish I hadn't the night before. Or, you know, I didn't know if I'd done something that I'd regret. And that was actually how I. How I got myself sober was by focusing on how good waking up in the morning feels. And every morning I get it. When I got up, I would say I remember going to bed last night and yay! My teeth don't taste disgusting. And so there is something about that, that just that joy of knowing that whatever might be going wrong in life, I'm actually here for it. I'm totally here forever. Even if I wish that I could escape sometimes, you know, I might go into the odd Netflix binge, but I'm here for it all. Other than that, in terms of like recovery capital, it's music to a very large extent.
Esther Nagle (00:18:55) - You know, lockdown showed me that I need to be able to listen to live music, and that's a really big part of my mental health wellbeing package is, is music.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:19:08) - But we'll get into the music for a second. I just want to pick up on that kind of starting the day thing, you know, because I very much remember basically starting every day with the oh my God, what did I do last night? Yes. Yeah. So not doing that. It's quite good. But I'm quite proactive about being grateful when I woke up. Is there anything specifically you do or do you just kind of feel better? Do you have a kind of routine or.
Esther Nagle (00:19:33) - No, I wish I could say I have a routine, I try and have routines. But again, the ADHD gets in the way of anything that feels like structure. But my morning routine, as much as it is, is I wake up, I go to the bathroom, and I brush my teeth. Even just that that focusing on.
Esther Nagle (00:19:53) - Yeah, your morning breath in morning mouth doesn't feel nice, but it doesn't taste of y. And it doesn't feel like I spent all night with my face in an ashtray. And so even that moment, just that couple of minutes where I'm not and I'm not in a state of anxiety because I should have woken up three hours previously and I slept through the alarm, and I don't have to rush to get my son to school, or he hasn't already gone without me even waking up, which used to happen. So while it isn't a routine, I still have that every morning. Just thinking it's nice to feel like this. You know, even when I want to stay in bed, it's still. I'm still aware that it feels good to wake up sober.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:20:32) - Yeah. And it's getting kind of like. Is it something that you particularly kind of do? Hang on. Brushing your teeth. It happens. Yeah, but I think that's really, really powerful. Let's get into the music then. What do you like? What's your kind of music? What's your thing?
Esther Nagle (00:20:47) - Music.
Esther Nagle (00:20:47) - So I big rock fan. I like rock music, folk music. It used to be an indie check in the 90s. Yeah. So I like everything I like and something I can dance to. Yeah, rock and indie rock and folk.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:21:00) - You like Bella?
Esther Nagle (00:21:02) - I do, yes.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:21:03) - Of course you do. It would be wrong not to like. These obscure music references. But, uh, so we might talk about Morris dancing later, but I, uh, Maurice dance with the dad of one of the guys from Bella. He's fighting to fame, right?
Esther Nagle (00:21:22) - Yeah, I tried Maurice dancing. I did a couple of dancing workshops in Beardy Folk Festival in the summer, and I loved it.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:21:32) - Yeah, yeah. It's awesome. Get yourself down to hobby and I'll teach you a few names. Anyway, obviously music is I mean, it is something you can just wrap your headphones on and listen to. Is that what you're talking about, or are we talking about it not happening in isolation, happening around other people?
Esther Nagle (00:21:48) - It's both I mean, I normally these are very far from my person.
Esther Nagle (00:21:54) - I've got three sets of headphones. So yeah, I mean, I put music on, I listen to music a lot. There is certain certain albums that I will turn to in sad times, like I'm a big, big, big George Harrison fan, and if I'm listening to his, um, All Things Must Pass album repeatedly, then I'm probably not feeling great because that's my real Comfort Blanket album. But I thought, yeah, I mean, I love listening to music on my own and I love to share it with my son, but I also love being a gig. I love, I love, love life, music festivals and gigs, and I realize just how much that's important for me. During lockdown when we couldn't go to any and I was really struggling. And I think I'm still making up for lost time because if there's a band playing there, I'd be there I can possibly get. I've spent way too much money on going to see bands in the last couple of years, but it's great, I love it.
Esther Nagle (00:22:53) - I just there's something magical about that feeling of being in a crowd and you're all dancing to the same music. Love it. It's the kind.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:23:01) - Of the more kind of like community aspect in as far as you go to these gigs, and you're seeing the same people and it's the same crowd. Or is it just like being part of something bigger than yourself?
Esther Nagle (00:23:13) - It's oh, no, because, I mean, I'm going to a gig tomorrow night and I'm going on my own because I don't. The person that I would be most likely to ask to come with me is actually looking after my son for me. So I'm just going to this gig. So it's just there's an energy about being a gig. And so it is, it is, is that being a part of it? And yeah, there's just something in the atmosphere. So I went to see Queens of the Stone age a few years ago, and I sort of really reflected when I was looking back at the gig, I was there with a friend and there were obviously thousands of people around me, but for the entire time it was basically just me and the music, and it was me and the band.
Esther Nagle (00:23:54) - You know.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:23:55) - That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, most people that I talk to, you know, they they have some kind of like communal thing that they do involving other people. But generally people tend to find stuff that either is entirely sober communities or. Now, to be fair, I haven't ever been to Queen of the Queens of the Stone age, but I imagine 1 or 2 people were drinking. Is that an issue?
Esther Nagle (00:24:22) - No. And actually that is so that's really interesting. I started going to gigs and not drinking a long time before I stopped drinking more than ten years. I went to see this band and I was going to London the next day. I was going to be driving to London the next day to see Queens of the Stone age, and I didn't want to do that with a hangover. So I said to my friends, well, look, I'll drive. You know, it'd be fine. I didn't know this band. He was Super Furry Animals, and I didn't really know them at the time.
Esther Nagle (00:24:50) - And I went, I think I had a glass, I had a drink at the start. I maybe one pint at the start and then I was just drinking water and. And blew me away. And I didn't stop dancing the whole time. I didn't know the music, and I was sober and I had the best night. And then I could remember it the next day, and I could remember it so clearly. And I thought, actually, this is better, because if I go to a gig and I drink, I tend to not remember it and I stay. So I started. We came away. I can control it. So I could go to the gigs and remember them. And sometimes I get people to buy me a ticket in exchange for the, you know, driving. So it worked out really hard. Yeah. But so, so by the time I gave up drinking, I already knew that I could enjoy going to gigs without drinking, so it was never an issue for me.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:25:42) - It's really interesting. I was like a friend of mine. I said to him, did you enjoy Glastonbury? He's like, I'm not sure. But then it's not something that I.
Esther Nagle (00:25:53) - Know, I know and know and I like going to go. I'll go with a bottle of water and fill it up at the taps. And I. You see the price people are paying, I think, well, I'm going to remember all this and I've still got money by the end of it. Who's having the most fun? You really.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:26:08) - Like ponies? Ponies? Oh, so any other sort of big changes in your life?
Esther Nagle (00:26:14) - I started running recently, which has been a bit of a shock, but that's not the big. The other big change that's happened since I stopped drinking is that I got diagnosed with ADHD, which. So the big change that came out of that is that I no longer are all the self-esteem issues that I had growing up. I've kind of eased off now because now I understand all the things that I used to think made me a terrible person.
Esther Nagle (00:26:41) - Turns out they're all ADHD traits, and so I understand myself better now. So that's a really big change, is that I actually am 50 years old and I finally learnt how to like myself. I annoy myself intensely a lot of the time because ADHD is not easy to live with. A lot of the time, but at least I know why. And I don't, you know, it's not like, oh, you're a really terrible person because you're doing this. So, so learning to like myself has been really nice in terms of other big changes other than different career than realising that I'm completely unemployable. So yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:27:19) - That was why I struggled at school, because effectively they want to teach you to be an employee. Yeah, I am unemployable too, so. I just want to kind of like, see if you have any thoughts on that, because I am pretty aware that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I do seem to be meeting quite a few people who have done that, kind of got sober, got diagnosed, particularly with ADHD.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:27:48) - Is that something you've come across?
Esther Nagle (00:27:50) - Yeah, I think that that I, I've got a theory that if you were to go into any treatment centre, any meeting of anything anonymous, any smart recovery, anything like that and test it, everybody that was there, you're going to find a lot of ADHD because, I mean, self-esteem issues have an impact on people's drinking, the impulsivity, the lack of an ability to tune, you know, no off switch. And you know that and the constantly seeking dopamine. You know, he started with me, you started with sugar, and then it became alcohol because there's a dopamine seeking thing that you're always doing. And, you know, the thrill of it and the, the, the recklessness with ADHD. You can become so overwhelmed by your emotions because, you know, you hyperfocus on things. And so, you know, if you're having a bad time of something, that's all you can think about. And so the only way to deal with that is to numb.
Esther Nagle (00:28:50) - You know, it can be really hard if you're feeling heartbroken or you're feeling stressed or you're grieving, it can be really hard to shift. You know, other people might be able to compartmentalize. And I don't understand that concept. If I'm upset about something that is coming with me wherever I go, I can't say right, okay, I'm going to work now. I'm not going to be upset until I get home. I know some people can do that, but I don't understand. So when you're carrying your unhappiness around with you all the time, numbing is very appealing. So yeah, I think people with ADHD are far more likely to end up taking drugs or drinking and addiction.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:29:32) - That's interesting, isn't it? Particularly when you say about the inability to stop is it's not so much just about your drinking. It's kind of almost character trait, because that is considered to be a fairly classic sign of dependent drinking, isn't it? Not being able to stop. So will you like that from the start? You know, like the moment you had your first drink, it was all, all or nothing.
Esther Nagle (00:29:53) - No. So no, it was after the particular. Yeah. Difficult, difficult time when I was 19. And yeah, it was a way to shut up the screaming in my head. I mean, up until then I would go out on a Saturday night and I'd have a drink and then I would go home again. But then life kind of fell apart when I was 19, and I made some devastating life choices that I instantly regretted. So it was a desperate attempt to numb and silence the just relentless screaming that was going on in my head. So no, up until that point is I remember I used to see my Nana drinking. My Nana was an alcoholic, and I used to see what it did to her. And I was when I was a teenager, I was I became very obsessed with finding out all the harms that drugs and alcohol can do. I knew I went into it knowing all the harm that it could be done, I launched her. I launched myself into a massive anti-drugs project when I was 14, and so it was not something that I ever anticipated.
Esther Nagle (00:30:57) - It was never something that really I thought I'd get into. But, you know.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:31:01) - Yeah. Mind you, I mean, as I say, I meet a lot of smokers and pretty common for them to, you know, have lost loved ones to lung cancer. We're about the same age and I, you know, anybody our age or younger, there's no way you can say you didn't know the harms of smoking. So maybe if you're in your 80s. But, uh.
Esther Nagle (00:31:24) - Yeah, when I was a kid, my brother and I basically terrorized my father into giving up smoking. We were like little, you know, we were awful. We just followed him everywhere. He went to the toilet, we'd be there waiting for him when he came out because we knew exactly what he was doing.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:31:42) - Well, yeah. At least you learned from the best. And so.
Esther Nagle (00:31:46) - Yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:31:48) - You found any particular product to be quite useful in terms of staying sober.
Esther Nagle (00:31:53) - So the stream. So first stream bar or that's it I yeah.
Esther Nagle (00:31:59) - Water. I mean water and herbal tea.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:32:02) - What's your brand of herbal tea.
Esther Nagle (00:32:04) - Oh, God. Whatever's cheapest these days. Uh, it used to be pukka. I, I don't have any brand loyalty with anything. I just, I go with what's on offer in the supermarket. What flavor.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:32:17) - Then?
Esther Nagle (00:32:17) - I really like the herby ones. I don't like fruit tea. I really like herby ones. So ginger cinnamon tea. I like herbal teas that have got a bit of punch to them.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:32:28) - I actually walk past the expensive tea section earlier this week, and I noticed they were doing two for 750 and I was like sign of the times. I'm sure those are two for a fiver like a year ago or something.
Esther Nagle (00:32:41) - That's so expensive, isn't it?
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:32:43) - It's like, and that's your idea of a deal now. So yeah. Yeah, I've started trying to drink more water. So I average about three liters a day and I, I find I drink a lot less, uh, tea because like, where do you fit it? So it was this kind of like experiment that after reading James Elliott's.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:33:04) - But I decided to try it, but I didn't realise it was going to save me money. But the SodaStream. Because you like the fizzy water?
Esther Nagle (00:33:11) - Yeah, I like it fizzy. And I mean, I don't think the SodaStream works out cheaper, but it's nice not to have all the plastic bottles. You know, I it's I environmentally I couldn't justify buying fizzy water and the SodaStream bottles. They are they plastic. But you use them many times before you throw them out. So yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:33:32) - So we talked about music. I mean are there any other communities that you.
Esther Nagle (00:33:35) - Got involved. Well, I, I'm involved with the single parent community, but I don't really have any sober community as such. I think part of that is when I, when I got sober, I was very involved in yoga, so I had my yoga community. So lots of them were sober but for different, you know, it was different for most of them. But, you know, I had that community there.
Esther Nagle (00:34:02) - And as a single mom going to, you know, going to any a lot of things is hard. But I've never felt that need for sober community. I have my friends and I go to business things and I go to I, you know, I go to single parent events, I go to lots of gigs. So there's one festival that I've been going to for the last few years, and I, I know a lot of people there, and I was so there is a community there, but I don't really have that strong connection with any community in the way that some people do with their 12 staff communities or the smart recovery communities.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:34:41) - The thing about, I mean, I've obviously never been to any single parent orientated events, but rather suspect they're not exactly drenched in alcohol, right?
Esther Nagle (00:34:50) - No they're not.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:34:51) - So while it's not a sober community, it's a community that are doing things largely sober, right?
Esther Nagle (00:34:57) - Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:34:59) - Fulfilling in me now. I think you're probably quite interested in ideas around mindset, I guess.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:35:07) - Any thoughts about shifting your mindset to improve your experience of being sober?
Esther Nagle (00:35:13) - Well, that was a big part of how I got sober. I've already talked about I was like not focusing on when I when I decided that day when I was laying on my sofa and I was actually I'd had this hangover and I was laying there wishing that I hadn't woken up, you know, like, if this is what it's going to feel like, I just I was wanted to be dead because it was so painful. I couldn't even open my eyes without it hurt and I couldn't move. I wanted to go for a walk that day and all these things I wanted to do, and I was really annoyed at myself. And so the promise that I made to myself in that moment wasn't, I'm going to give up drinking. It was, I'm staying sober next weekend. I'm going to stay sober. I was nothing about not drinking, and that was my focus the whole time. It wasn't. I'm not drinking today because I knew that when I was focusing in the past, when I tried to control my drinking in the past, the focus was always on, I'm not drinking.
Esther Nagle (00:36:09) - And that made me want to drink because I'm very contrary. You tell me I can't do something. I want to do it even if I'm the one telling myself that. So focusing on not drinking was never going to work for me. So I was focusing on I'm staying sober tonight, and I'd go to bed at night, and I always tell myself, I'll remember this tomorrow. And, you know, look at me, I'm putting my pajamas on and I remember to brush my teeth. Then I'm actually getting into bed and I'm not collapsing on top of it in my jeans. And so I focused on what I was gaining. It was always a focus on what I was gaining. And every morning, waking up and remembering dreams, being able to wake up, remembering going to bed, it was always about gain. And I think that's the mindset shift. And when you asked me earlier on what keeps me sober now, I've gained so much as a result of being sober. I've gained everything in sobriety that I thought I was getting in alcohol and when I was drinking.
Esther Nagle (00:37:06) - And so I it's focusing on what you're gaining rather than on what you're giving up, because what you're giving up is actually something that was causing you a lot of harm. And what you're gaining is poverty. And, you know, even if your life is a bit crap, you're they're living it, you know, checked out. And that's the big that was the big thing is focusing on what you've got, what you're gaining from. It was huge. Huge. Is it almost.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:37:32) - A little bit like if even if it's you, you don't like rules, even if it even if they're your rules. So if you're saying to yourself, don't drink, that's a rule. Whereas stay sober is actually an aim or an objective is there's some kind of difference in.
Esther Nagle (00:37:48) - Yeah, it was in staying sober felt like a positive I'm going to stay sober tonight wasn't about me not allowing myself to do some things. And because I'd had that experience of really dwelling on what alcohol had cost me on that last night, you know, there was a long list of things that I really honed in on that that night of drinking, which had been a really fun night.
Esther Nagle (00:38:14) - I'd had a lovely night with my friends, but it had cost me so much that it wasn't worth it. And yeah, it's about that opportunity because I could, I could have drunk get if I wanted to, but actually I was going to, I was going to gain so much if I didn't. And so that sobriety felt like something I wanted. And I and.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:38:33) - The other thing that I sort of picked up on, on what you just said. You know, you obviously have accrued many, many benefits. You've got lots and lots of gains from being sober. So would you say that you have gone a long way from where you were when you were drinking?
Esther Nagle (00:38:48) - Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I look back at pictures of myself now and I think back to how I was and it's it's like I'm looking at somebody else, you know, I still I mean, I'm still very much me. I can still look back and I, it's not like I don't recognize the person that I used to be, but I do feel like I'm a version of myself now that young me could never have imagined was even remotely possible.
Esther Nagle (00:39:14) - I still have really bad days. You know, I my mum died last year and she gave me a long time to get over that. But if I had been drinking when she was ill, well, I don't know if I would. I was that upset when she was ill, but I can't imagine how I would have dealt with it, and I certainly would have made her life more difficult if I'd been thinking through it. And yeah, I just say no. To know that I don't need to be that person anymore. Feels like. It's like, if I haven't got anything else to celebrate in my day, I can always celebrate that I'm 50 years old. I'm still alive, for God's sake. I wouldn't be still alive if I was still drinking. That's that's a big that's a big journey to. Come on.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:39:54) - Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Like smoking, eating badly, drinking a lot. Uh, mid-forties, stressful life. That is heart attack. Yeah. So.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:40:04) - Yes. But it's.
Esther Nagle (00:40:05) - It's like, you.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:40:06) - Know, you do actually have quite a bit more than that. Like, you have come quite a long way from from where you were. So would you, would you say that you were beyond alcohol now.
Esther Nagle (00:40:16) - Oh yeah, I can't imagine. I mean, I've come through my mother being terminally ill and dying. I've come through heartbreak, I've come through Covid, I've come through global politics over the last few years and what that's been, you know, all that stress, all sorts of, you know, the vast list of things that would have sent me running straight to the shop, feeling completely justified in buying a bottle of wine every night. And it doesn't even cross my mind. It just doesn't come into my head at all. The only time I think about it is if I'm talking about it in terms of being a recovery coach, and I'm talking about it to somebody who maybe doesn't know I don't drink. But in my head when I'm looking at like, how do I deal with this problem, there's a lot of things I might think of I could do, but alcohol just it just doesn't enter my head anymore.
Esther Nagle (00:41:07) - It is.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:41:07) - Yeah. No, I'm with you on that. I'm with you on that. So you just you just mentioned coaching. What sort of an approach do you take with coaching?
Esther Nagle (00:41:14) - What is the recovery coaching? I've also done embodiment coaching. So that's all about connecting into your body. And you know like really digging into the wisdom of the body. And I think that that as well as the writing and the breathing, I think that was part of what helped me was that I formed this new relationship with my body. So there's a really strong embodiment aspect on it into in the coaching that, you know, you stop and ask your body what you need in this moment and it will tell you. I'm also big on getting people out into nature. You see, my background is mountains. You know, that's my other recovery toolkit is being outside, being in nature, walking. And it's all about connection. Ultimately, it comes down to connection. You get people connecting with their bodies. You get people connecting with nature.
Esther Nagle (00:42:05) - Actually, that if you were to put a headline on my recovery journey is, is connection. It was all about that connection with my body, with my connecting the mind and the body as well. So, you know, you're learning breathing techniques to calm your mind and your body connecting with nature. And I think that if more people did that, then we probably would have a very different landscape in terms of people's drinking.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:42:30) - Yeah. I mean, I frequently quote Johann Hari, I don't entirely agree with everything he says, but he's a hell of a writer and, uh, the idea that the opposite of addiction is connection. Yes. Yeah. Hard to argue with that.
Esther Nagle (00:42:44) - It is. And it really is. Yeah.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:42:46) - I think that's something that, you know, we could probably record another 45 minutes just talking about that. But, um, I just thought I ought to mention that I am wearing my converse high tops. You know, they're red and we can go and show you, but I can't get my leg far enough up to the camera.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:43:03) - Maybe I'm not doing enough yoga after all. But, you know, I've got a bit of a thing about shoes, so, um. Yeah. Why? Why the red shoes thing?
Esther Nagle (00:43:12) - Anyone who knows me will say that. It's very funny, because my favorite color is purple. Normally, everything is purple in my life, but red shoes came out of. It's from red, the Wizard of Oz. It's a it's a rejection of the a you must admit powerlessness idea, essentially, because I don't believe for one second the telling people who are struggling with addiction that they. Have to admit, powerlessness is a way to help them free themselves from addiction. I think it's the opposite. I knew I could free myself because I was in power. I empowered myself to be able to do it, and so that I would try to think when I did my training, I was trying to think like, what am I going to call this recovery coaching business? I had lots of ideas. And then I was trying to think about this idea that we've got the power that you have, the strength you need within you.
Esther Nagle (00:44:01) - You just need help finding it and believing that you have that strength. And then you know, that line from The Wizard of Oz just popped into my head and I thought, of course it's got to be something to do with The Wizard of Oz, because that you always had the power. You just have to find it. That is essentially that's everything I believe about recovery is that if people can believe that they can do it, then they can do it. And so then playing around with that and Red shoes recovery popped into my head. And I just a three weeks later, I was still in love with it. So then I thought, oh, maybe that's it then. I haven't got bored with it yet. Maybe that's the one. No, it's cool.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:44:40) - And you know, if you're ever doing any like speaking you already, you can start your outfit from the bottom up. Can you.
Esther Nagle (00:44:49) - Solve a.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:44:49) - Few issues? Honestly, I thought it might be a bad thing when we start talking about music, but, um, The Wizard of Oz is awesome.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:44:57) - And my daughter was in a dance version of The Wizard of Oz earlier this year, and as a result, we bought her the film on Amazon Prime, and she has watched it maybe a thousand times. And, you know, sometimes you get those kind of like moments of just pure random connection. As she was watching it the other day. And there's the bit where they kind of pull back the curtain and they reveal the wizard for who he actually is. I think a lot about the alcohol industry and the kind of the illusion that it creates around alcohol and the fact that it is basically a trick and they all kind of like it's like, ah, it is. It's the Wizard of Oz standing behind a curtain. What we need to do is pull back the curtain. And just after they do that, he says, Dorothy says something along the lines of like, you're a bad person. He says, no, I'm not a bad person. I'm a good person, just a bad wizard. And I genuinely, genuinely believe that the vast majority of people that work in the alcohol industry, they're not bad people, they're good people.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:45:56) - They're just not very good wizards. And that's what we need to do. We need to pull back the curtain. So you be Dorothy and I'll be the scarecrow. Yeah.
Esther Nagle (00:46:06) - Brilliant. I actually sat down and watched the film after I sort of decided this was my business name. I watched the film and I got about three pages of notes somewhere. Of all the different metaphors I found in it, it was so much that I just thought, well, I'm never going to write that because I was going to write a blog post about it, and I was just like, there's just too much in your blog post to.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:46:28) - Write blog posts for about a year.
Esther Nagle (00:46:30) - I just thought that was the trouble. I was just like, oh, I just got overwhelmed by it and it's still okay.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:46:37) - So I love to have you back in about a year. Once you've written a book, just before I do let you go, you say, you said you only been to Ikea once. It's this mean you've never tried the Ikea meatballs?
Esther Nagle (00:46:49) - Well, I'm vegan, so there's no chance it's fine.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:46:53) - They jumped on that particular bandwagon. They have plant based meatballs, obviously. No, you know McDonald's doing it. But it's my theory about the meatballs is that everybody hates them because they're not actually that nice. But it's sort of like when you're there, you have to go and eat the meatballs in the cafe. It's kind of like the thing you have to do. You don't want to do it. You have to do it. Now. Thinking about sobriety and recovery, is there something that people need to do but they don't want to do.
Esther Nagle (00:47:23) - In terms of being sober? They have to be prepared to be uncomfortable. You have to be prepared to not always feel great and to just be okay with that, because life isn't easy and it's never going to be. And sobriety doesn't stop the problems from coming, but it means that you're able to face them and deal with them. And ultimately, you can solve your problems a lot faster. If you're sober, then you can if you're drunk and making them worse when you're drunk.
Esther Nagle (00:47:54) - But you have to be prepared to sit there and just hold on when it's raging storms going on in your head. And that's hard. That is really hard. And even with all the tools, you know, with all my breathing practices and I can go up walks and I'm a music on and I can write even then at a times when I don't want to feel, I don't want to feel what I'm feeling because it hurts. But you have to hold on because you'll actually heal and grow and learn from your struggles a lot easier if you're actually there dealing with them.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:48:31) - Yep, I completely agree with that. So. Look, thanks very much for coming along and sharing all your wisdom. If people want to find out a little bit more about you, get in touch. Read the. The blog posts.
Esther Nagle (00:48:44) - Are. So my website is Red Shoes recovery.com and you can find me scattered around. Well, a few of I don't do TikTok, but I'm on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. So it's either Red Shoes Recovery or Esther Nagel.
Esther Nagle (00:48:58) - And yeah, I'm there popping up, talking about how great it is to go to see bands sober much of the time. Well, that's, you know.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:49:09) - It's super easy to be rock and roll, isn't it?
Esther Nagle (00:49:11) - So absolutely is. Yes.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:49:13) - Keep up with the rest of them. So I'll put all of the, um, links in the show notes and everything else that, you know. Thanks so much for your time. And I don't know, maybe, maybe I'll see you at a concert.
Esther Nagle (00:49:23) - Yes. I'll be the one dancing like a madwoman at the front.
Duncan Bhaskaran Brown (00:49:28) - Yeah. So that'll be good. All right. Thanks very much. And have a good day. Bye.