QUIT DRINKING MOTIVATION - The Most Eye Opening 20 Minutes Of Your Life

want to go drinking tonight thanks but I'm actually sober now uh okay no problem can I ask why I'll show you I'm sober for a couple of years and then I thought you know I want to just drink like a normal person and I want to have wine at dinner and so on and I and you know I was able to for about eight years I'm embarrassed how many times I quit and couldn't do it well I was at a point in my life where it was like this has gotta stop because my hangovers were

getting so ridiculous and debilitating for a whole day so I'm not doing this anymore and I read a book and then I was done I had my first beer at 11. one of my cousins gave it to me it's that awful thing that you hear every alcoholic talk about and if they don't talk about it they're lying like it's you just become an awful human being like you just um you're selfish alcohol consumption even in the low amounts causes harm to the entire body so many years that like the narrative was for me is this

has a hold over you you will never break this cycle you are a prisoner of your own weakness addiction is really anything we do or use compulsively to make ourselves feel better that has negative consequences I for maybe the first time am proud of myself that I didn't quit quitting because it's demoralized like to truly be powerless over something is [ __ ] demoralizing and so rough if you stop drinking for 30 days just cut back and what they're finding is people are living longer that's clearing out their kidneys arterial sclerosis is being reversed people

are having all kinds of lower energy they're losing weight to me I know that alcohol is uh usually like bad for you but I didn't know like how bad it was I started to drink more and more and more every day when I come home from work and I start to drink and I just sit there drink to pass out on the couch from 15 to 24 I drank and used my way through life and eventually ended up in Boston at that point my addiction had gotten so bad that I was paranoid and afraid of

everything to keep it simple we use for one or two reasons so to either start feeling something or to stop particularly the path that I'm on is uh it's one that's it's it's one I wished I could have been on a long time ago you'll ruin your life somehow some way it is ever FS into all the cells and tissues of your body it was a very Progressive decline in my aspirations alcohol is normalized in our society you want to figure out something that you're doing with your life that's worth not getting drunk and screwing

up I Drank In Search Of Happiness and in search of a lifestyle that I thought would bring me to happiness it didn't and I woke up one morning going wow I've drank a lot but I'm still not happy what's that about I recall in high school motivational speakers will come to my school and say don't do drugs but absent from those talks with any reference to alcohol alcohol got introduced to my life you might say well why do people drink too much it's like if you like alcohol that's a stupid question it is ingrained it's

the social glue that sticks everything together and my mom was chiming in with it's way bad you don't want to do it you don't want to end up like that over three million people worldwide will die this year to alcohol related causes from baby showers christenings freshers week weddings parties funerals barbecues celebrations and everything in between that so she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it and I'm watching people act the fool are doing it we've been brainwashed into thinking that there are just two types of drinkers there are those

at Rock Bottom alcohol dependent and there's everybody else happy social drinkers who are just occasionally a bit lightweight and can't hold their beer you do stupid things when you're drunk you hurt yourself you compromise your health it's really hard on the people around you tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life yeah it's like yeah but it's pretty fun yeah well it is but you need something better than that uh and I burned every bridge that I had virtually unemployable my options have been eliminated my life was eviscerated my family didn't

want anything to do with me I lost my friendships I had no way forward in fact the reality is very different it's a spectrum I would highly recommend you get off the booze elevator before it hits rock bottom and I just continued to dig that hole deeper and deeper and deeper until one day I had that moment that you hear with people who are in recovery that that Moment of clarity where I realized I just couldn't live this way any longer my elevator had you know gone down to the bottom floor and uh and the

and and I met my paint threshold you know back to the the the this thesis around pain like I had um reached a point where I could no longer tolerate the pain of my current situation and the fear the pain associated with the fear of change was eclipsed by the pain that I was feeling in that moment and that's what motivated me to change I went to a treatment center uh where I lived for a hundred days which is pretty long time to be in a rehab center and I did that because I knew if

I didn't get this right that my life was done you know and so I took that opportunity seriously I recognized that despite the fact that I think I'm a smart guy my best thinking had me literally institutionalized and that if I couldn't get a grasp on how to live and develop some new skills and and a new toolbox for how to approach my life that um that I was going to end up in jail or I was going to kill somebody else or my self you know now we're about a year and a half later

and it's and my life has been has turned around immeasurably it's a wonderful thing and I I say to anybody watching or you're listening to this that you know it's um that there is a lot of pressure on young people not to drink necessarily but to find happiness through going out and getting mashed like like and and I'm sure and that's fun and you have a good time and good luck to you but if it doesn't work for you and if you keep waking up going hmm I don't seem to be having nearly as good

time as most of my friends uh then you know then think about it it doesn't have to be something you do is what I all I say to people and what's better isn't being straight and and and and not making mistakes it's like that's all Prohibition in some sense what's better is no you need an adventure man you need to get out there and have something to do and and something worth waking up for and you need that's the substitute for the addiction excessive drinking is is considered 13 or more drinks a week if you

have three glasses of wine every night which would be splitting a bottle of wine with your friend your your husband whatever uh you you following that category an alcoholic is defined as someone basically where they they they can't stop once they start often they'll drink until they pass out wow or they'll drink to where they become dysfunctional they become the kind of person everyone goes my God you're slurring your words you're not safe to drive they get DUIs their boss has trouble like you need to quit coming to work hungover but an excessive Drinker is

13. if you drink six drinks a week if you're a woman you have a 40 higher incidence of breast cancer if you drink up to 10 drinks it goes up to 70 percent higher chance of getting it's incredible cancer so just the health benefits one of the things that's coming out of of England is research that if you stop drinking for 30 days just cut back and what they're finding is people are living longer that's clearing out their kidneys it's arterial sclerosis is being reversed you know people are having all kinds of um more energy

they're losing weight most of the things that we do that are addictions are to numb out our anxiety to numb out our pain to numb out the member memories of trauma to numb out our discomfort around being people in a social being with people in a social situation the fear that I won't have fun I won't be interesting I'm more relaxed I'm more fun you know and that's the big myth is I won't have a fun life there's something about my mom she has a way of like making it sound like a really bad idea

and my I had a lot of aunts and uncles and second cousins and stuff that were all alcoholics drug addicts and watching them I thought that is not a good look real like some real white trashy stuff yeah and so I was just like no and my mom was chiming in with it's way bad you don't want to do it you don't want to end up like that so she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it and I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it so I just thought

yeah when I thought I was gonna have kids I wanted to ask my mom like you were so good like neither my sister or I ever got into trouble we never did drugs we never drank no trouble nothing my sister to this day is like the most straight narrow person so when you tried it what was it like for you look at it oh alcohol made me feel like I was suppressing the urge to dance on the table it is awesome and I love it the most I just don't let myself do it because it's

not in it's not congruent with wanting to live forever there's just too many downsides but that [ __ ] is fun so like I get how people get in trouble I just don't have an addictive personality so for me it was easy to be like yeah this is fun but I can weigh it against the disadvantages and there are way too many unlike a lot of substances and drugs that actually attach to the surface of cells to receptors alcohol actually has its own Direct effects on cells because it can really just pass into those cells

and the fact that it can pass into so many organs and cells so easily is really what explains its damaging effects ethanol produces substantial damage to cells because when you ingest ethanol it has to be converted into something else because it is toxic to the body and if you thought ethanol was bad acetyl aldehyde is particularly bad acetyl aldehyde is poison it will kill cells it damages and kills cells and is indiscriminate as to which cells it damages and kills that's a problem obviously and the body deals with that problem by using another component of

the NAD biochemical Pathway to convert acetyl aldehyde into something called acetate acetate is actually something that your body can use as fuel and that process of going from ethanol to acetyl aldehyde to acetate does involve the production of a toxic molecule right again acetyl aldehyde is really toxic if your body can't do this conversion of ethanol to acetyl aldehyde to acetate fast enough well acetyl aldehyde will build up in your body and cause more damage so it's important that your body be able to do this conversion very quickly and the place where it does that

is within the liver and cells within the liver are very good at this conversion process but they are cells and they are exposed to the acetyl aldehyde in the conversion process and so cells within the liver really take a beating in the alcohol metabolism events it is the poison the acetylaldehyde itself that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk I think most people don't realize that that being drunk is actually a poison-induced disruption in the way that your neural circuits work no amount about all is safe drinking alcoholic beverages can be harmful to

our health it's the most damaging drug to society as a whole the danger goes up with every additional drink alcohol is actually considered a class one carcinogen or cancer-causing agent so that's the same category as Benzene and tobacco smoke it is the poison the acetylaldehyde itself that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk Canadian Health authorities had previously said that a low risk amount of alcohol was about 10 drinks per week your risks start to increase at one standard rate per week even just seven glasses one across the week there is going to

be some degeneration of your brain in response to that alcohol intake I was wanting to be a certain person but making all the wrong decisions citing some of this research about alcohol's impacts suggested lowering that to two drinks per week in Western cultures alcohol is the most harmful drug overall because it's the most harmful drug to society because it's the most why they use drug a very small percentage of individuals in the world can quit anything on their own and really our main message is that less is better you know when it comes to health

you know less is more what do we know about alcohol's impact on us alcohol is one of the leading Behavior related causes of health problems and deaths and also some social problems and economic costs ranging from things like injuries and accidents to Cancers and actually heart and cardiovascular disease shoveling alcohol hiding away the problems has been something we've been very become very expert at but the really sad statistic is that only 10 percent of people from an alcohol use disorder seek treatment I hit rock bottom I got lost in the sauce of drinking out of

those 10 of the people only one will have any form of long-term success this is why I don't like alcohol and this is why I don't like drugs because I don't you're you're not in control a substance is doing that and that means 90 of people who are suffering right now aren't going to seek treatment and you know why they're not going to seek treatment it's been told that all they can do is quit and go to meetings for the rest of their life I remember having a conversation with Patrick one night he picked me

up in his car and was sitting together and it was awkward silence for a good 15-20 minutes So eventually one of my friends who was going through it bad I was at the prison to pick him up I'm sitting outside till three o'clock in the morning finally he gets out gets in a car this was like his fourth or 50 UI we didn't say anything to each other and we're driving home and I don't say anything to him and he says uh hey Pat how come you're not saying anything to me I said I said

you know just to be honest with me I just see you being in pain finally I said I don't know why I choose to do what I'm doing and he says you always have a choice and he says you always have a choice and we started talking a little bit about we started talking a little bit two words about he said you know perspective words change everything and those two words change everything for me but as we were having a conversation I just want to see you get out of this thing I don't know what

you're going through but you're in pain and I hope you realize there's value to life I don't know how to help you I don't have a method the only thing I know is what I've seen others go through whether it's AAA and all these other programs he went into asking me who I want to be what do I want to do and we just went through a whole conversation and it was a human conversation it was a people conversation it was no business no numbers it was just relationship but uh I hope you figure out

a way to get through this do you know that I love you yes you think I care about you yes do you think I want the best for you yes do you want to be friends long term yes are we family yes do you want to change and that's the one where I got stuck you have to want to change if you're struggling with some kind of addiction like I was [Music] it's not easy to say that but I wanted to change I just didn't know how and eventually he figured out a way to get

through it and he's doing great he's changed his life you know in a completely different way yeah but what you said to him people aware of that and it's visceral because people don't want it to be true there were two things I would say about this the first is both a conscious and a subconscious level people are fearful of other drugs illegal drugs because it helps deflect their attention away from them the problems of alcohol at a personal level but also at a political level politicians love to get hysterical about a new drug because it

means they can do something about drugs and they don't have to be held to account over their failure to deal with the problems of alcohol right so that's the first and second thing is that I would say that there's almost no family in Britain if you look at an extended family three generations which doesn't have someone who's been damaged by alcohol through addiction through violence traffic accidents or being a victim because of someone else who was drunk environment almost every family in Britain is affected but we don't own up to it right we kind of

push under the carpet you know we we know there's a problem but we don't talk about it because you don't know what to do about it we're embarrassed and so that shoveling alcohol you know hiding hiding away the problems has been something we've been very become very expert at we know the pharmacology of alcohol in the brain and how it does that it's we can we can explain an enormous amount of what's going on with alcohol right you know I mean to me I find that quite exciting because you know it's a as a brain

scientist that's what I want to understand I want to sound the brain and alcohol is a very interesting probe of different brain systems the changes we see underpin the effects of alcohol you know are irrelevant to all sorts of disorders they're relevant disorders like Sleep Disorders epilepsy relevant to anxiety depression this drug which you can just go and buy in the shops can produce these enormous changes in people's lives [Music] Sometimes some habits can turn into Lifestyles and certain Lifestyles don't lead to all the benefits and all the amazing things that life has to offer

some Lifestyles lead to very dark paths a depression anxiety stress and if not controlled can also lead to some of the worst case scenarios out there in life one of them being never Reaching Your Capacity never really having an identity or a self-worth losing all Integrity all dignity and losing yourself just a few years ago I was in a very dark place in my life they say that depression comes from the inability to construct the future in your mind I can see the future I didn't know who I was supposed to be I was wanting

to be a certain person but making all the wrong decisions I made a lot of mistakes when it comes to alcohol itself which is something that I was struggling with at the time it went slowly from being a Work Hard Play Hard have a drink to two drinks to three drinks so then a habit to then a daily Habit to then a 24 7 Habit to then a every weekend habit getting lost in myself habit sometimes if you don't watch the kind of habits that you're building they become Lifestyles before I knew it I was

digging myself a hole and everywhere I looked it was so dark and I lost myself I spiraled into a sense of no self-worth and I struggled a lot and nobody knew I hit rock bottom to the point where I almost lost my job to the point where some people had to have very tough conversations with me some friends had to deal with my drama and they say hurting people hurt people I was hurting inside and I was hurting others and didn't even know it [Music] thank you foreign [Music]