How to Stop Drinking: My Story, What Worked for Me, and How Recovery Changed My Life | Successful Life Podcast

Show Transcript

CoreyBerrier 0:32

Welcome to the Successful Life Podcast. I'm your host, Corey Berrier. And today's topic is how to stop drinking. And I'm going to tell you what worked for me, and I'll tell you what didn't work for me.

But I think this is a question in a lot of people's minds am I an alcoholic? Am I not an alcoholic? Or how do I cut back? How do I control my drinking?

These are pretty difficult questions. And if you are asking yourself those questions, then first off, I think they're good questions. And secondly, you may be an alcoholic. You may not be an alcoholic.

I certainly can't tell you whether you're an alcoholic or not, but I can tell you that I'm an alcoholic and I can tell you what happened for me and what's happened for countless other people. Good things and bad things. So how did I stop drinking? Well, it took many, many, many years of abusing alcohol and drugs, but we're going to keep it to alcohol today.

And um there were periods in my life where I drank significantly more than other periods. I mean, there were times when I would drink a pint glass of vodka on the way to work just so I could get through my shift. I was working at a restaurant. I was probably 21 years old.

And then there have been times that, you know, I'd wake up after partying all night, and the shakes would be so bad, and the anxiety and the fear of what happened the night before that I would have no choice but to drink to stop my hands from shaking. And it's a feeling like nothing else I've ever really experienced. And um it's very hard to not jump back into the bottle when you're feeling that your hands are shaking and your your uh anxieties through the roof. A quick solution is that you drink again, and unfortunately that's what causes the vicious cycle of not being able to quit drinking.

Now, a lot of normal people don't wake up with the shakes and they don't wake up with these awful call you can call it hangovers or or whatever you want to call it. But a real alcoholic has consequences, and uh some of those consequences could be legal, some of them could be in your marriage or your relationships with your job. And you know, you may think it's normal to have two or three or four drinks every night, and for a lot of people, that becomes pretty normal. But the reality is, you know, even if you're having a drink every day, there's some dependency issues there.

And you may think, well, Corey, I just I just have a drink to relax at night, or I have two drinks to relax at night. Yeah, I understand. But then you have a two one or two drinks every single night to relax. If you're not, you know, if you don't have addiction in your family, or maybe you don't feel like the addiction is something within yourself, you could just try to quit for 30 or 60, 90 days and see how you feel.

And, you know, that anxious feeling that you get at night when you do have those right before you have those drinks, those drinks to just relax, you know, when you cut that out of your your daily routine, you'll start to realize that you really kind of depended on those one or two or three or four, ever how many drinks you were having, to kind of function the rest of the night. And you may not have ever had any consequences from that. You may not have ever had a DUI, you maybe have never gotten fired from a job. Maybe none of those things have happened, but that doesn't exclude you from being potentially an alcoholic.

And I don't think everybody by any stretch is an alcoholic. In fact, about 10% of the population is an alcoholic, whether they know it or not. And I do hear the term functional drinking. You know, I'm a functional alcoholic.

Well, there's no such thing as a functional alcoholic. You're just an alcoholic that hasn't had any consequences yet. And um, you know, you can go on for years drinking without consequences. I went for quite many years without having any consequences, like visible, legal, or consequences that I would tie to alcohol.

You know, I just uh my first DUI thought, well, I just you know, I just got I was I had too much to drink that night. Well shit, man. I got thirty one 30 days later, and I thought, man, this dude must be scouting me out. But the truth of the matter was I was full-blown alcoholic at that time.

There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't drink. There wasn't a holiday. There wasn't, I mean, dude, there wasn't a single day. It doesn't matter what the day was, I drank.

It didn't matter if I had something really cool happen, I drank. Something really crappy happened, I drank. If nothing happened, I drank. So how to stop drinking?

How did I stop drinking? Well, you know, I got those two DUIs that I mentioned, I lost my license for eight years. Do you think that made me stop drinking? Absolutely not.

I just didn't drink and drive anymore. But fast forward past those eight years with no incidences, I was able to get my license back. And, you know, as soon as I now look, I was still drinking, like I told you, but I did get my license black and I had back, and I had to put this blow thing in my vehicle, which, you know, if you've ever had that, you understand what I'm talking about. If you haven't ever had it, initially it's pretty embarrassing when you're sitting in the bank line and you got to blow into your car to keep it running.

You know, but after seven years of that, I got pretty used to it. But when I first got it, I was still drinking. So I set it off. And when you set off this machine, it sends a report to the DMV.

And then the DMV that shuts your car down, then the DMV, you have to contact the DMV in order to get it restarted or recalibrated. And the step before getting all that done is that you have to go explain what happened. And if you've told them, and you know, if they think that you're drinking and driving after you've been, you know, had DUIs and license suspension, and they gave you another chance, you're going to be in trouble. And fortunately for me, the DMV officer that saw me when I set mine off two or three days after I got it put in, gave me another opportunity.

And that was the day that I quit drinking. Because I knew the way I drank, there was no way I could manage my drinking and know when to cut it off and when not to cut it off so I could blow into my car the next day to go to work. There was I I couldn't manage that because when I start drinking, usually I drink not necessarily to get completely drunk, but I'm going to get a good buzz. And for me, that's 10, you know, eight or 10 beers.

Well, there's no way to get that out of your system by the next morning to blow into a breathalyzer to start your car. So I had no choice but to stop drinking because otherwise I was never going to be able to drive again. So that was part of the driving factor for me. But most importantly, that put me in a position to find help.

I had to find help. I couldn't do it on my own. And so I entered into a 12-step program. And fortunately, you know, I haven't had a drink in about 17 years at this point.

And I think because of that program is the reason why, not because the thing that was in my car. That was just the mechanism to get me to go into this program. And what I found is, you know, working through the 12 steps in this program, the drink really didn't wasn't really the problem anymore. That awful feeling of needing a drink left after a period of time.

And I don't know how long that was, but it did leave after a period of time, and I didn't think about drinking anymore. And so that was a huge relief to me. And honestly, it was a miracle because I'd been a heavy drinker since about 17. And when I say heavy, like I very heavy.

And for me, that's not something I could just put down. And so to have that obsession removed was a miracle. I didn't think it was ever going to be removed. In fact, I thought I was going to be a drinker my entire life.

I just thought that's the way it was going to be. And I would just have to figure it out. But fortunately, I got that thing in my car and and risk never driving again. And I just didn't want to do that.

I didn't want to, I didn't want to, I didn't want to take that risk. So I got serious about my recovery and decided to work those 12 steps. And when in doing that, I had a spiritual awakening. And um that spiritual awakening awakening taught me how to live my life in a way that didn't revolve around alcohol.

It taught me to live in a way that was a more honest person. It taught me to think about other people, other than just myself. And um, and that's how I stopped drinking. And um, you know, I don't believe that necessarily works for everybody, but for me, I was in enough pain that it did work for me.

And I was scared enough that if I did drink again, there was a good chance I'd never drive again. And that just wasn't in the cards for me. My life didn't look very fruitful being chauffeured around by somebody for the rest of my life. I just wasn't very interested in that.

And um one of the things that I think is the coolest thing in this program that I've been in is we get to help other people. And uh, I got to pick up a guy, I got to meet a guy on Thursday night who'd been drinking. He came to the meeting, which is perfectly fine. Not the place I'd want to be if I'd been drinking, but he showed up and uh I checked in on him the next day, and he drank again that night, and that's okay.

We're alcoholics, we're supposed to drink. That's what we're supposed to do is drink. Not what you have to do, but it is what we're pre-programmed to do, whether it's genetic disposition or whether it's a learned behavior or both or what uh all the above. And so I met him the next day at a meeting, and and what I got to see was very powerful for me because I got to see me 17 years ago, hand shaking, nerves completely through the roof, anxiety through the roof, fear like you can't imagine, and just the most uncomfortable feeling that I've been able to see in a long, long time with somebody.

And um, so we left the meeting early and got some sugar, got him some sugar, which helps with that god-awful feeling, certainly doesn't solve it, but it helps. Because the really the the withdrawal from alcohol, a lot of that's the sugar that you're ingesting. And so putting sugar in your body certainly helps. So if you're going through that, one you should do it medically because it can kill you, and that's a fact.

And so fortunately, he agreed to go to the emergency room and I took them. And uh therefore, they you know, they're at the emergency room, they replenish you with some um vitamins and you know, some uh what word am I looking for? Liquids basically get you re-hydrated. And they give you some, you know, some medicine that helps you to stop shaking and some maybe some nausea medicine, and also some medicine, I think, to so you don't cramp up or I can't remember all of it.

But just hanging with him during that time brought all of what happened to me 17 years ago, almost 18 years ago, back in full color picture. And you know, it reminded me that if I pick up another drink, that's exactly how I'm gonna feel. So and I'm really grateful for that experience. And I hate he's going had had went through that, but the good news is on the other side of that on the other side of that, there's a whole new life that you can't even imagine when you're in that.

And it's tough. My heart goes out to anybody that's going through that because it is it's painful, it's scary, and it is life-threatening. So one of the things that you may or may not know about you know stopping drinking is that the withdrawal symptoms are really tough. They're probably not as bad as heroin.

I can't speak from experience from that because I've never done that, but they're really tough. You feel really rough. And unless it's medically supervised, there's a good chance that you could have a seizure, you could uh maybe even have a heart attack, but the medical repercussions of trying to do that on your own is very hard. So I was really happy that he decided to do that and that I was able to, you know, spend that time with him, you know, while he was getting rehydrated and and medically had and medical attention.

If you're wondering how you could stop drinking, you know, there's multiple avenues I'm sure you can go, but for me, it was only one way, and that was I had to look at myself and I had to get honest. And um, it took a little while for that because I was full of shame, I was full of fear. And um, you know, one of the hardest things that I had to do is admit that I was an alcoholic. I knew I was an alcoholic deep down, but to say that out loud made me feel less than, it made me feel like a loser, it made me feel like that I had failed, but in reality, it was one of the most powerful things that I could have said, and um and if you are struggling with alcoholism or you think you might be an alcoholic, there's probably a decent reason why you think that.

And if you are waking up with the shakes or waking up with the hangover, and you're having to drink in the morning, or drink at lunch, or drink it every single day, or all of those things, you know, there is a solution that will relieve you of that constant hamster wheel that you're on. And it's a big decision, it's a hard decision, but it's the best decision that I could have ever made. And uh, I don't know personally what else works because I it's the only thing that ever worked for me, is I had to get in touch with my spirituality, I had to get in touch with the reality that I was not okay, and that for years I had not been okay. And unfortunately, we have to get to a point where there's massive amounts of pain in order to change.

That doesn't have to happen for everybody, but for the most part, until there's problems, you know, why would you change? You know, if you're drinking three or four whatever you drink every night and things are okay and work is okay, and maybe you're not waking up with the shakes yet. But at some point, at some point, my friend, that's gonna change if you're an alcoholic like me. You're gonna eventually that that solution every night is gonna turn into the problem.

And alcohol was the solution for me for a long time until it wasn't. And um I'm grateful today that I have a path that I can follow that's proven for 90 years, it's been proven to work if you follow the steps. And look, if you're afraid to walk into a 12-step program because of who you're gonna see, if you see somebody you know, guess what? They're in the same program as you are.

So it's not gonna be weird. It's not gonna, it may be weird to you, but it's not gonna be weird to the every every other person in the room. And we're happy when people come in because we know the pain they've gone through, and they we also know that that solution of those 12 steps is a path to freedom, freedom from the garbage you've been living in, and freedom from that addiction that plagues you every day. If you plan all of your dinners around how you're gonna drink during that dinner or lunch, or golf, or pickleball, or whatever you do, you know, that may sound insane to some people because it probably is, but to a real alcoholic, that's not insane.

You know, we plan our daily activities around when we can drink, how we can drink, who we're gonna drink with. If you're not a drinker, I'm probably not hanging out with you if I'm a drinker. If I drink, if you drink like I did, you're not hanging out with people that don't drink like you do because you look like an oddball and they look like an oddball to you, and you're not interested in hanging out with those people. And um, but listen, there is there is a way out of this.

And how you stop drinking otherwise is tough. You know, there's some medications that you can take that'll curb your your um that'll curb your cravings. And I encourage you, if that's something that you need to get started, I think you should do that. There's also medications out there that you know that you can take that'll make you sick if you drink.

That's also an option. Whatever it takes to get you sober is what I'm up I'm I agree with whatever it is your path is. I just know for me, my path was taking the 12, you know, going into a 12 step program because I didn't really know how to stop drinking. I didn't really know how to put the bottle down, I didn't know how to stop the hamster wheel of life that I was on.

So I needed help. And uh treatment centers, I've been to treatment centers. That's also a good option if you, you know, if you have insurance, then it's a good option to go check yourself into a treatment center. And you might be thinking, well, Corey, how the hell am I supposed to do that?

Because I've got a job, I've got a wife, I got kids, I got a dog, I got this, and I've got that. And, you know, I'll fit that in sometime later on. But right now, my life's just too busy. Well, it's probably just going to get worse, and life will continue to move on for those 30 days that you're in treatment or two weeks, or ever how long you decide to go for, things will be okay.

Your bills will get paid somehow, or they won't, and you'll pay them when you get out. And there may be some consequences that you're gonna have to face if you check in that 30 days. But what I can tell you is your life will get significantly better. It is a small price to pay to check into a rehab for 30 days.

It is a small price to pay to go to a meeting a day. It's a small price to pay to give a little bit of your time that you already give to drinking. Just take how much time do you spend drinking every day? Is it two hours?

Is it three? Is it four? Is it five? Even if it's an hour, you know, a meeting is an hour long.

So you're really trading the same amount of time that you are using to drink to get sober. And to find a uh a life that is unlike anything else. You know, I mentioned this in the last podcast. I just moved to Wilmington, and the community down here is unreal.

The people in it are unreal. It's you know it's like I've never seen anything like it. And I can't guarantee in your area that that's gonna be the same thing. But what I can tell you is it's gonna be very similar.

And um, people want to help you, but you gotta be willing to reach out and ask for help. And I know that's difficult, especially if you're a dude. For me, that was hard. That was hard to say I needed help, but it was vital to my recovery, and that rule still applies today.

It's pretty it's fairly easy for me to ask for help today because I've had to do it so much and accept the help. You know, a lot of times I feel like I don't deserve to be helped. And the crazy part is I'm really kind of taking an opportunity away from somebody else if I'm not allowing them to help me, especially early on in recovery. You know, I I wanted to be the cool kid in the class and look at the differences opposed to the similarities.

But when you're sitting in a room with a bunch of other people that are trying to get sober, then you've got one common thing between the everybody in the room is you're all trying to do the same thing. Whether you're homeless or whether you're running a five Fortune 500 company, it doesn't matter. We're all in the same room for the same problem. And for many years I looked for the differences of why I was different than the people in the room, and it kept me on the outside.

And until I started looking at the similarities, until I started saying, Well, I'm in here for the same reason they're in here. You know, it kept me from some of the gifts that I get today because I'm not on the outside. I'm on the inside, and the inside is where it happens. And if you are in recovery and you're feeling like you're on the outside, get in the middle, find the winners.

Stick with the people that are working the program, stick with the folks that are doing things and that are working and that have a successful career and have good marriages. And look at those things and just know you can have the exact same thing if you choose to put the drink down. And man, once you put the drink down, the rest of it, that's really when the work comes in. Putting the drink down is not as hard as you think, it just seems like it's hard.

Because let's just be honest, that drink is your friend, whether it be one or two every night or whether it be ten, that friend's always there, and you can rely on that relief temporarily from your friend. And you don't want to let that friend go because they're the solution to the problem. The problem is the problems continue to come. The problems never go away, they just subside from the time you start drinking to the time you wake up the next morning.

You still have the same problems, and believe me, that's gonna end also, you know, eventually, eventually that relief that you get at night is gonna subside. And uh one of these days you may take a drink and it just not work. And then what do you do? Your friend's gone, your friend's there, but he ain't doing his job anymore.

So, what do you do? Oh, well, I'll tell you what I did. I drank more because I can just drink enough to where that feeling's gonna come back. And unfortunately, things just go more sideways when that happens.

And I'm just speaking from my own experience. I'm not telling you what you need to do, and I'm not telling you that you're an alcoholic because I don't know what you are, but I can tell you from my experience, this is what has been the case for me. And um you don't have to go through the same stuff as I did, you don't have to get multiple DUIs, you don't have to get in trouble with the law, you don't have to have uh all kinds of other stuff happen, may have problems in marriages. The list goes on and on.

You don't have to do all that, you don't have to do all that, you can avoid all of that if you just decide to make a change in your life, and you can make a decision to quit, but if you don't put action behind it, then it's worthless. Oh, I'll quit tomorrow. No, you won't, because tomorrow comes and you're gonna say the same damn thing, and then really tomorrow never comes. So if you want to get off the merry-go-round of this, am I an alcoholic or how do I stop drinking?

There is a way, and I found that way to be a 12-step program, and that's what actually worked for me. And um it's not easy, but it's pretty simple. And uh, I hope that if you're listening to this and you are questioning whether or not you have a problem with drinking, maybe I've maybe I've shed some light on whether you've got a problem or not. And um it's up to you now to decide and to take action on solving that problem.

I can't solve it for you. I can't solve it for anybody except for myself. And so far I've successfully done that, and um not super successfully, but I've successfully not drank. And I believe that the reason for that is because of the 12 steps and doing the things that I get to do today.

You know, I don't look at the other day getting to spend that time with that individual in the hospital. There wasn't an inconvenience, it was a blessing, it was great. I mean, it wasn't a party in the hospital, but being able to sit with another guy that was just like me that long ago was pretty dope. It was pretty cool.

And that's some of the benefits that I get by being sober, is I get to carry this message to people that were just like me. And that's powerful. And that kid's been sober a couple of days now, and I hope he's sober tomorrow. But if he's not, I can't do anything about that.

But what I can do is answer the phone when he calls. I can check in on him, I can do my part. And if you are wondering how to stop drinking, you can do your part. Your life will get significantly better.

That I guarantee, without a shadow of a doubt. I guarantee it'll get better. And if it doesn't, you can always go back to drinking, but I guarantee you won't if you get just a little bit of what I'm talking about today. I've seen amazing things happen in my life since I quit drinking.

And I'd love to see those things happen in your life. And uh hopefully today's conversation answered some questions for you. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. It's hard to say, but I just felt like a lot of people ask themselves how to stop drinking.

And this is how I stop drinking. Again, it's not the only way, but it's the only way that I know. So I appreciate you guys listening. I hope you tune in next week.

And uh, I don't know exactly what the topic's gonna be next week, but it's gonna be around how you can recover and live a great life. If you've not already subscribed to the podcast, please do. If you haven't left a review, that'd be awesome if you could do that. If you listen, if this is something that you enjoyed today, you can share it with somebody, maybe somebody that's struggling.

We all have people, either a friend or a family member who we think might be in this position, but we really don't know how to handle it. Maybe you just shoot this podcast over to them and let them listen to it. I wouldn't try to cram it down their throat, but maybe, just maybe they've heard something here today that will move them in a direction of a sober life. I appreciate you guys listening.

We'll see you next week.