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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help
you make stopping drinking asimple, logical and easy
decision.
We help you with tips, toolsand strategies to start living
your best life when alcohol-free.
If you want to learn more aboutstop drinking coaching, then
head over to wwwsoberclearcom.
(00:21):
When you think of an alcoholic,what comes to your mind?
Well, I'll tell you what comesto my mind.
I think of maybe somebodyhomeless, somebody unshaven,
somebody with long hair, dirtyclothes, somebody that's
drinking super cheap ciderthat's like $2 a bottle, someone
that's begging on the streetjust to get their next drink.
But is that really the case?
(00:41):
Would you picture a successfulbusinessman with 100 employees?
Would you picture an athlete?
Would you picture a lovingparent that has an amazing
family and goes to church?
Well, more often than not, wewouldn't picture somebody like
that.
But the typical idea that wehave of what an alcoholic is is
(01:01):
very, almost far-fetched.
What we're really looking at islike this bottom 1% of
alcoholics, the people who havegone so far that there's no
question about it.
But how can you tell if you'rean alcoholic?
How can you tell if you're analcoholic for real?
Today, I'm going to show you myjourney of discovering what it
meant to be an alcoholic.
If I am an alcoholic, how Ifixed my drinking problem, and
(01:23):
I'm also going to show you howyou can test if you're one as
well.
But this isn't going to be likean AA test or anything like
that.
So the first thing I want to dooh, actually, I can't go in the
sun.
That is hot.
I need to stay in the shade.
So a little bit of backstory isI'm 32 years of age.
I've not drank for almost sevenyears.
I stopped drinking when I waslike 25 because alcohol was just
destroying my life.
(01:44):
Now, when I first wanted to getoff drinking, stop drugs, I
didn't know what to do, right, Imean, there were no videos like
Sober Leon videos back then.
There were.
I don't know if there were anybooks.
I couldn't find any books.
I didn't know what to do.
So I asked my family.
I said, mum, I want to stopdrinking, I want to stop smoking
(02:08):
weed, I want to stop doing allthis stupid stuff.
What do I do Now?
My mum, at this point, had beento AA.
She's now been for way over 20years.
At this point it might've beengoing for 18 years or something
like that.
And because of drinking, becauseof drugs.
I actually left home at 17years of age and pretty tragic,
but that's the kind of stuffthat happened to me when I was
drinking.
And I remember, you know, lifehad just got really bad.
And I don't I don't want toshare the stories, I just hate
sharing the story but I went.
I basically I'm not going toname it because it's not really
(02:29):
fair, but I went to live with afamily member and when I live
with this family member I drankmore than ever.
You know, they gave me my firstline of cocaine.
I mean it was pretty tragic.
And I remember, you know Ihadn't been, I hadn't had like
the best relationship with mymum and my stepdad.
And I remember calling my mumup and I was like I want to come
home, like, and I want to stopthis lifestyle, I've had enough.
And she said, if you go tomeetings and you get sober, you
(02:50):
can stay at home again.
And to me, when I was maybe 18or 19, I was like, oh my God,
yes.
So I did it right.
And my mum's found success withAlcoholics Anonymous.
My mum is an alcoholic in hermind.
She does a 12-step program andshe's not drank for 20 plus
years Program saved her life.
As a result of that, myupbringing was fantastic, up
until about 17, right, but I hada very nice house, lived in a
(03:12):
really good neighborhood, it wasvery safe, so I did have a
pretty privileged upbringing.
So Alcoholics Anonymous to mehas had so much impact on my
life probably more so than thepeople that stopped drinking
with it, because I've been thealmost like the consequence of
somebody who stopped drinkingwith alcoholics and all this
right.
So I am not here to slade thatprogram, but we'll get to my
problems with it in a second.
(03:33):
You'll see where this is going.
But she encouraged me to go tothese meetings right, and you
know I did smoke a lot of weedback then and I was also like
sniffing drugs as well and,right, I almost felt like the
drugs and stuff was like a phasethat I went through when I was
a teenager.
But then when it came toalcohol, that's when things got
(03:55):
really bad and that's when I'ddrink and then sometimes take
drugs as well, but it was alwaysalcohol that was a problem.
So I don't really talk too muchabout this, but for this video
I'll tell you about it.
So she said go to thesemeetings, right.
So I remember I go to my veryfirst meeting and I go to this
meeting and there was maybeseven or eight people there.
It was a narcotics anonymousmeeting, so this was for drug
addicts, right.
And I go there and I rememberthe guy who he did this thing
(04:19):
called a main share, and themain share is where basically,
somebody tells you their storyof how bad things used to be,
and then in the second half ofthe meeting then everybody
starts introducing themselves.
They'll be like, you know, myname's Gary, I'm an addict, and
blah, blah, blah.
And then in AlcoholicsAnonymous, I'm John and I'm an
alcoholic, blah, blah, blah.
And I went to some NA meetingsand then I started reading this
book and then I startedlistening to all these people
(04:41):
and everybody's got the samestory right, they're all there
because they drank too much ortook too many drugs, or to
varying different degrees.
But I kept hearing thesestories and I thought, well,
hang on, I must be one as well.
I must be one as well, I mustbe one of these people as well,
and you don't want to feel leftout.
So I started giving myself thislabel.
I started saying, okay, I'm anaddict, I'm an alcoholic.
That's what I am, and I carriedthis label for 90 days and I
(05:02):
think that's how long I got myfirst big sober stretch, and
that's a great thing.
That was the first time Istopped drinking for 90 days.
So I found some success in thatprogram not here to slate it but
then I did find some problems.
Later on I knew a few peoplethat died through relapses in
that program and then I starteddoing a little bit of research
into AA and this word alcoholic,and I've done a lot more
(05:24):
research in it now.
But what I started realizing isthat words are powerful,
they're freaking powerful.
And if I'm to call myself analcoholic and I do drink again
am I going to drink two drinksor am I going to remind myself
of all the stuff I got told inAA and am I going to go insane?
Am I going to drink a bottle ofvodka?
Well, to me, I think I'm goingto go on the bottle of vodka
route, because it's almost likeI've got this excuse.
(05:44):
It's almost like now I believethat I truly have a problem.
Does that make sense?
So after I started having theserealizations and these moments
of like wait a minute I juststopped going and you know I
stopped going.
I did drink and and party again, I'm not gonna lie.
But then I remember I did likehave this day where I just I
wanted to go back to a meeting Ican't remember why, probably
some massive hangover and I justremember walking out of a
(06:06):
meeting and this guy chased meout of the meeting it was
actually a really nice guy untilI decided to leave and he
chased me me down and he waslike Leon, you got a fucking
disease.
If you go back out there you'regoing to die, jeez.
Okay, well, that was completelyincorrect.
Actually, I'm absolutely fine.
I've not drank for seven yearsand I'm living the life of my
dreams.
Anyway, not here to prove himwrong or anything like that.
(06:27):
I'm sure he had the bestintentions, I'm sure his heart
was pure, I'm sure he genuinelywanted to help me.
But where am I even going withthis?
I speak to a lot of people andthey say to me a lot of the
times like, oh, I'm afunctioning alcoholic and we
never really questioned thisterm and I think it gets misused
(06:49):
a lot.
I had a drinking problem and,being somebody who is an
alcoholic, if I have a drinkingproblem, right, that's a problem
I can fix If I'm an alcoholic.
I can never fix that becauseyou have it for the rest of your
life.
So to be clear here, the wordalcoholic is a made up term.
It's a self-help term thatcomes from AA, alcoholics
Anonymous.
No doctor will ever call you analcoholic.
(07:09):
If you actually go on thewebsite and do the criteria to
find out whether or not you'rean alcoholic, I mean, probably
most drinkers, probably 80% ofdrinkers, are going to go
through that and they'll be toldyou might be an alcoholic.
So the criteria is very looseand no doctor will ever give you
this medical diagnosis.
There's actually a book, Ithink it's the NACSM, where they
give you like 11 questions andif you have that then there's a
(07:30):
high likelihood that you have acertain level of severity of
alcohol use disorder.
So do you see?
The difference here is I had adrinking problem but I wasn't
the problem, because if I was,the problem I can never be fixed
and technically the only fix tobeing an alcoholic is to go to
alcoholics and on this meetingsthat's what they say.
You've got no known cure.
The only solution is the 12steps You've got to go to these
meetings for the best of yourlife and recruit new members,
which is a little bit cult-likeas well, I'm not going to lie,
(07:52):
it's a little bit cult-like.
But hey, I'm not here tocriticize that program.
If that program works for you,I am so happy for you because
maybe you go and build a greatlife for your family and I'm so
blessed to have AA in my mom'slife, right?
So, going back to this thing ofare you an alcoholic?
Well, I've got a betterquestion for you who gives a?
Who gives shit?
(08:13):
If you are and I'm not beingmean, I'm not trying to be rude
or anything like that but like,what are we trying to do here?
Like a lot of people when theysay, you know, I'm a functioning
alcoholic or you know, I hearit a lot as well.
I've probably spoke to like2,500 people, by the way, who
have got a drinking problem.
I've had in-depth conversationswith them, plus the hundreds of
videos I've made and the tensof thousands of messages and
(08:33):
emails.
I hear it a lot of the timeslike, well, you know, leon, I'm
not an alcoholic and I'm like,what are we doing here?
What are we trying to justify?
Well, I'm not as bad as him,I'm not as bad as her.
It's not like I can't hold downa job.
It's not like I don't.
You know, I'm a very fit andhealthy.
This is another one here.
I'm not a very, I'm a very.
(09:00):
I mean, what are we doing here?
Are we just trying to compareourselves to everybody else?
And it's pointless, right?
It's just a pointless questionto ask yourself whether or not
you're an alcoholic, becausewhat you're trying to say is
it's almost like when I'm thatbad, then I'll stop drinking.
All you need to do is askyourself this is alcohol causing
problems in your life and doyou want to change?
That's all that matters.
And what we need to do is weneed to separate the identity
that we're the problem with theproblem itself.
Because once we can distinguishthe two and we can attack the
(09:24):
drinking problem, we can attackalcohol.
Then it becomes a fixableproblem like any other problem.
We don't see people who havestopped smoking call themselves
nicotineaholics for the rest oftheir life, do we?
We don't see.
I don't know people who havegot gluten intolerance call
themselves gluten-aholics forthe rest of their lives, do we?
They don't walk past croissantsand beg God to help them and
(09:45):
have to go and do a 12-stepprogram and make amendments to
people so they don't eat afreaking croissant.
See, we need to stop askingourselves whether or not we
think we're an alcoholic.
But we do need to get real withourselves and ask ourselves do
we have a drinking problem?
And the likelihood is nooffense.
But if you've watched thisvideo this far and these stories
are resonating and you'rethinking, oh, maybe this guy's
making sense, maybe you do havea problem.
But that's not for me to say.
(10:06):
Right, that's for you to say.
But I want to say this Thanksfor checking out the Stop
Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear.
If you want to learn more abouthow we work with people to help
them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit
wwwsoberclearcom.
Welcome to the Stop Drinking Podcast, where we help
you make stopping drinking asimple, logical and easy
decision.
We help you with tips, toolsand strategies to start living
your best life when alcohol-free.
If you want to learn more aboutstop drinking coaching, then
head over to wwwsoberclearcom.
(00:21):
When you think of an alcoholic,what comes to your mind?
Well, I'll tell you what comesto my mind.
I think of maybe somebodyhomeless, somebody unshaven,
somebody with long hair, dirtyclothes, somebody that's
drinking super cheap ciderthat's like $2 a bottle, someone
that's begging on the streetjust to get their next drink.
But is that really the case?
(00:41):
Would you picture a successfulbusinessman with 100 employees?
Would you picture an athlete?
Would you picture a lovingparent that has an amazing
family and goes to church?
Well, more often than not, wewouldn't picture somebody like
that.
But the typical idea that wehave of what an alcoholic is is
(01:01):
very, almost far-fetched.
What we're really looking at islike this bottom 1% of
alcoholics, the people who havegone so far that there's no
question about it.
But how can you tell if you'rean alcoholic?
How can you tell if you're analcoholic for real?
Today, I'm going to show you myjourney of discovering what it
meant to be an alcoholic.
If I am an alcoholic, how Ifixed my drinking problem, and
(01:23):
I'm also going to show you howyou can test if you're one as
well.
But this isn't going to be likean AA test or anything like
that.
So the first thing I want to dooh, actually, I can't go in the
sun.
That is hot.
I need to stay in the shade.
So a little bit of backstory isI'm 32 years of age.
I've not drank for almost sevenyears.
I stopped drinking when I waslike 25 because alcohol was just
destroying my life.
(01:44):
Now, when I first wanted to getoff drinking, stop drugs, I
didn't know what to do, right, Imean, there were no videos like
Sober Leon videos back then.
There were.
I don't know if there were anybooks.
I couldn't find any books.
I didn't know what to do.
So I asked my family.
I said, mum, I want to stopdrinking, I want to stop smoking
(02:08):
weed, I want to stop doing allthis stupid stuff.
What do I do Now?
My mum, at this point, had beento AA.
She's now been for way over 20years.
At this point it might've beengoing for 18 years or something
like that.
And because of drinking, becauseof drugs.
I actually left home at 17years of age and pretty tragic,
but that's the kind of stuffthat happened to me when I was
drinking.
And I remember, you know, lifehad just got really bad.
And I don't I don't want toshare the stories, I just hate
sharing the story but I went.
I basically I'm not going toname it because it's not really
(02:29):
fair, but I went to live with afamily member and when I live
with this family member I drankmore than ever.
You know, they gave me my firstline of cocaine.
I mean it was pretty tragic.
And I remember, you know Ihadn't been, I hadn't had like
the best relationship with mymum and my stepdad.
And I remember calling my mumup and I was like I want to come
home, like, and I want to stopthis lifestyle, I've had enough.
And she said, if you go tomeetings and you get sober, you
(02:50):
can stay at home again.
And to me, when I was maybe 18or 19, I was like, oh my God,
yes.
So I did it right.
And my mum's found success withAlcoholics Anonymous.
My mum is an alcoholic in hermind.
She does a 12-step program andshe's not drank for 20 plus
years Program saved her life.
As a result of that, myupbringing was fantastic, up
until about 17, right, but I hada very nice house, lived in a
(03:12):
really good neighborhood, it wasvery safe, so I did have a
pretty privileged upbringing.
So Alcoholics Anonymous to mehas had so much impact on my
life probably more so than thepeople that stopped drinking
with it, because I've been thealmost like the consequence of
somebody who stopped drinkingwith alcoholics and all this
right.
So I am not here to slade thatprogram, but we'll get to my
problems with it in a second.
(03:33):
You'll see where this is going.
But she encouraged me to go tothese meetings right, and you
know I did smoke a lot of weedback then and I was also like
sniffing drugs as well and,right, I almost felt like the
drugs and stuff was like a phasethat I went through when I was
a teenager.
But then when it came toalcohol, that's when things got
(03:55):
really bad and that's when I'ddrink and then sometimes take
drugs as well, but it was alwaysalcohol that was a problem.
So I don't really talk too muchabout this, but for this video
I'll tell you about it.
So she said go to thesemeetings, right.
So I remember I go to my veryfirst meeting and I go to this
meeting and there was maybeseven or eight people there.
It was a narcotics anonymousmeeting, so this was for drug
addicts, right.
And I go there and I rememberthe guy who he did this thing
(04:19):
called a main share, and themain share is where basically,
somebody tells you their storyof how bad things used to be,
and then in the second half ofthe meeting then everybody
starts introducing themselves.
They'll be like, you know, myname's Gary, I'm an addict, and
blah, blah, blah.
And then in AlcoholicsAnonymous, I'm John and I'm an
alcoholic, blah, blah, blah.
And I went to some NA meetingsand then I started reading this
book and then I startedlistening to all these people
(04:41):
and everybody's got the samestory right, they're all there
because they drank too much ortook too many drugs, or to
varying different degrees.
But I kept hearing thesestories and I thought, well,
hang on, I must be one as well.
I must be one as well, I mustbe one of these people as well,
and you don't want to feel leftout.
So I started giving myself thislabel.
I started saying, okay, I'm anaddict, I'm an alcoholic.
That's what I am, and I carriedthis label for 90 days and I
(05:02):
think that's how long I got myfirst big sober stretch, and
that's a great thing.
That was the first time Istopped drinking for 90 days.
So I found some success in thatprogram not here to slate it but
then I did find some problems.
Later on I knew a few peoplethat died through relapses in
that program and then I starteddoing a little bit of research
into AA and this word alcoholic,and I've done a lot more
(05:24):
research in it now.
But what I started realizing isthat words are powerful,
they're freaking powerful.
And if I'm to call myself analcoholic and I do drink again
am I going to drink two drinksor am I going to remind myself
of all the stuff I got told inAA and am I going to go insane?
Am I going to drink a bottle ofvodka?
Well, to me, I think I'm goingto go on the bottle of vodka
route, because it's almost likeI've got this excuse.
(05:44):
It's almost like now I believethat I truly have a problem.
Does that make sense?
So after I started having theserealizations and these moments
of like wait a minute I juststopped going and you know I
stopped going.
I did drink and and party again, I'm not gonna lie.
But then I remember I did likehave this day where I just I
wanted to go back to a meeting Ican't remember why, probably
some massive hangover and I justremember walking out of a
(06:06):
meeting and this guy chased meout of the meeting it was
actually a really nice guy untilI decided to leave and he
chased me me down and he waslike Leon, you got a fucking
disease.
If you go back out there you'regoing to die, jeez.
Okay, well, that was completelyincorrect.
Actually, I'm absolutely fine.
I've not drank for seven yearsand I'm living the life of my
dreams.
Anyway, not here to prove himwrong or anything like that.
(06:27):
I'm sure he had the bestintentions, I'm sure his heart
was pure, I'm sure he genuinelywanted to help me.
But where am I even going withthis?
I speak to a lot of people andthey say to me a lot of the
times like, oh, I'm afunctioning alcoholic and we
never really questioned thisterm and I think it gets misused
(06:49):
a lot.
I had a drinking problem and,being somebody who is an
alcoholic, if I have a drinkingproblem, right, that's a problem
I can fix If I'm an alcoholic.
I can never fix that becauseyou have it for the rest of your
life.
So to be clear here, the wordalcoholic is a made up term.
It's a self-help term thatcomes from AA, alcoholics
Anonymous.
No doctor will ever call you analcoholic.
(07:09):
If you actually go on thewebsite and do the criteria to
find out whether or not you'rean alcoholic, I mean, probably
most drinkers, probably 80% ofdrinkers, are going to go
through that and they'll be toldyou might be an alcoholic.
So the criteria is very looseand no doctor will ever give you
this medical diagnosis.
There's actually a book, Ithink it's the NACSM, where they
give you like 11 questions andif you have that then there's a
(07:30):
high likelihood that you have acertain level of severity of
alcohol use disorder.
So do you see?
The difference here is I had adrinking problem but I wasn't
the problem, because if I was,the problem I can never be fixed
and technically the only fix tobeing an alcoholic is to go to
alcoholics and on this meetingsthat's what they say.
You've got no known cure.
The only solution is the 12steps You've got to go to these
meetings for the best of yourlife and recruit new members,
which is a little bit cult-likeas well, I'm not going to lie,
(07:52):
it's a little bit cult-like.
But hey, I'm not here tocriticize that program.
If that program works for you,I am so happy for you because
maybe you go and build a greatlife for your family and I'm so
blessed to have AA in my mom'slife, right?
So, going back to this thing ofare you an alcoholic?
Well, I've got a betterquestion for you who gives a?
Who gives shit?
(08:13):
If you are and I'm not beingmean, I'm not trying to be rude
or anything like that but like,what are we trying to do here?
Like a lot of people when theysay, you know, I'm a functioning
alcoholic or you know, I hearit a lot as well.
I've probably spoke to like2,500 people, by the way, who
have got a drinking problem.
I've had in-depth conversationswith them, plus the hundreds of
videos I've made and the tensof thousands of messages and
(08:33):
emails.
I hear it a lot of the timeslike, well, you know, leon, I'm
not an alcoholic and I'm like,what are we doing here?
What are we trying to justify?
Well, I'm not as bad as him,I'm not as bad as her.
It's not like I can't hold downa job.
It's not like I don't.
You know, I'm a very fit andhealthy.
This is another one here.
I'm not a very, I'm a very.
(09:00):
I mean, what are we doing here?
Are we just trying to compareourselves to everybody else?
And it's pointless, right?
It's just a pointless questionto ask yourself whether or not
you're an alcoholic, becausewhat you're trying to say is
it's almost like when I'm thatbad, then I'll stop drinking.
All you need to do is askyourself this is alcohol causing
problems in your life and doyou want to change?
That's all that matters.
And what we need to do is weneed to separate the identity
that we're the problem with theproblem itself.
Because once we can distinguishthe two and we can attack the
(09:24):
drinking problem, we can attackalcohol.
Then it becomes a fixableproblem like any other problem.
We don't see people who havestopped smoking call themselves
nicotineaholics for the rest oftheir life, do we?
We don't see.
I don't know people who havegot gluten intolerance call
themselves gluten-aholics forthe rest of their lives, do we?
They don't walk past croissantsand beg God to help them and
(09:45):
have to go and do a 12-stepprogram and make amendments to
people so they don't eat afreaking croissant.
See, we need to stop askingourselves whether or not we
think we're an alcoholic.
But we do need to get real withourselves and ask ourselves do
we have a drinking problem?
And the likelihood is nooffense.
But if you've watched thisvideo this far and these stories
are resonating and you'rethinking, oh, maybe this guy's
making sense, maybe you do havea problem.
But that's not for me to say.
(10:06):
Right, that's for you to say.
But I want to say this Thanksfor checking out the Stop
Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear.
If you want to learn more abouthow we work with people to help
them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit
wwwsoberclearcom.
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