Episode Transcript
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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):
So I haven't touched a drop ofalcohol for seven years, and it
all happened after I learnedthis really simple thing.
In fact, it's so simple thatit's totally overlooked by 99%
of the population.
So today I'm going to break itdown for you.
So my name is Leon Sylvester.
I'm the founder of a coachingcompany called Sober Clear.
I've not drank for seven years.
(00:42):
I struggled with alcohol foralmost 10 years and I've worked
with hundreds upon hundreds ofclients.
And I'm going to give you adifferent spin on things right
now, because you might think I'mgoing to sit here and tell you
that alcohol is a poison andit's a drug and all of a sudden
you're going to be cured.
No, if it was that simple, thennobody would drink.
But I want to give you athought experiment.
(01:02):
I want you to imagine for asecond that you were born in an
alternate universe and in thisuniverse, alcohol is totally
illegal.
You know, we've got the war ondrugs.
Well, in this country we've gotthe war on alcohol, right, like
, alcohol is just a no-go, it'savailable but it's totally
illegal, right?
So imagine you're born intothis country.
So I don't know if you got thiswhen you were at school, but
(01:24):
when I was at school there was alesson called PSHE and I think
it was physical, social, healthand I don't know economics,
environment.
Basically it was a class thatwe got that prepared us for life
and you got things like sexeducation, you got things about
racism, you got what else wasthere?
Drug education, there were allthese kinds of, like you know,
(01:45):
life education things that wegot taught at school.
And I'll never forget theyshowed us this.
It was like this made updocumentary of drugs and the
whole purpose of the documentarywas, I think it was to scare us
into not smoking weed, becauseyou know, the big thing back
then was like weed is thisgateway drug and if you smoke
weed it's going to lead towhatever God knows what right.
(02:05):
So I remember seeing thisdocumentary and you know drugs
were seen as really bad.
And then I remember there wasanother documentary on heroin
and that one like I mean the onewith weed.
It was like a bunch of friendshaving fun.
It didn't look that bad.
If I'm honest, right, I'm notsaying that it persuaded me to
take drugs, but like I watchedit and I was like I still kind
of want to do it.
When I watched the heroindocumentary I thought, oh my
(02:26):
gosh, like that stuff that isnasty.
Now imagine this In thealternate universe.
In school they don't showheroin documentaries or
marijuana gateway drugdocumentaries.
What they do is show alcoholdocumentaries.
And in this alternate universethere are two types of
documentaries they show onalcohol.
The first is the scientificside.
(02:46):
They show exactly what alcoholis.
They show how it impacts thebody, how it destroys pretty
much every cell it comes intocontact with, how it's a known
carcinogen that causes cancer.
If they knew about our universethey'd know that it kills 95,000
Americans each year.
Globally it kills hundreds ofthousands of people.
So they'd show this side ofthings.
(03:07):
And then on the other side ofit, they'd show how it damages
the individual on a societal andan individual level.
So it might show the impactthat it has on somebody's family
.
It might show somebody gettinga phone call from a doctor
saying you've got cancer, you'vegot cancer of the pharynx,
you've got cirrhosis of theliver, and the documentary shows
the real, raw reality ofalcohol and it kind of portrays
(03:30):
it in the same way that itportrays heroin, like in our
society.
Because I don't know about you.
I mean, listen, I took drugs,right, I've taken a lot of drugs
in my life.
A lot of my friends took a lotof drugs, but heroin was always
the one where it was like whoa.
If you go that far, you're adrug addict.
But I promise you this rightnow if there was an alternate
universe where alcohol wasdiscovered today, there would be
(03:50):
documentaries in every school,there would be news, there would
be, you know, there'd be somuch conditioning about not
using this drug because of thedamage that it can do to society
and to the individual, nobodywould dare drink it.
It's quite interesting to thinkof it this way, right?
So I said I learned somethingand it got me to stop drinking.
Well, if that's what alcohol isa cancer-causing, poisonous,
(04:15):
toxic substance that isn't forhuman consumption, if that's
what it actually is, then whatdid I learn?
Because you already know that.
I already knew that when Idrank.
In fact, most people know that.
If actually there was a studydone that showed that most
people don't know that alcoholis a carcinogen.
Very interesting, it is acarcinogen, but anyway we know
that it fucks our body up.
Yet so many people, millions ofpeople, tens of millions of
(04:37):
people, hundreds of millions ofpeople still choose to drink it.
But why?
Well, think about it for asecond right.
Think about how thatdocumentary on heroin
conditioned my mind to nevertouch the stuff.
I've been offered it right Inparties.
You know when I drank I wasaround the wrong people.
I've been offered it.
I know people that have diedfrom that drug.
I'd never touch it because Iwas conditioned from day one of
(04:57):
being born to know that that iswhere you don't go.
In our society, alcohol is notseen that way at all, despite
killing more people, despitedoing more harm, despite doing
more damage, despite costing theeconomy so much more.
Now, what do we see alcohol as?
Just go and turn on anadvertisement for alcohol?
We don't see somebody in anabandoned flat shooting up
(05:18):
heroin into their arms with nomoney left.
Does alcohol do that to people?
Yes, are there people that maysmoke heroin casually and never
get fully addicted to people?
Yes, are there people that maysmoke heroin casually and never
get fully addicted to it.
Yes See, there's always aspectrum with drugs, but with
alcohol they don't ever show usthe spectrum of destruction and
death and despair.
They show us the glamour, thesophistication, the good times,
(05:40):
the happiness.
Right, we go to the doctor.
Right, we say we've got adrinking problem.
What do they say?
Oh, just drink less.
You know, we've got theserecommended daily allowances One
, two units a day, no problem.
Who the fuck listens to thatadvice?
Anyway, Alcohol's a drug forcrying out loud.
If I go to a doctor and I say,dude, I've got this problem with
crack cocaine, it's like yo,get yourself into a rehab,
(06:01):
you're a drug addict.
I go and say I've got adrinking problem, don't we all?
It's madness, right.
So what did I learn aboutalcohol?
Why do I keep saying I learnedsomething?
Well, do you know what Ilearned?
Nothing?
I did the opposite.
What I had to do to get controlof my drinking and when I say
control, I mean I had the choiceand I always choose to not
drink it.
I can drink if I want to.
I never choose to drink.
(06:21):
What I had to do was I had tounlearn all of the stuff that
I've been told since day one ofbeing born.
I almost feel like I've nowwatched the heroin documentary
for alcohol.
So I stopped seeing it assomething that adds value to my
life.
You know, when I see James Bondordering his martini shaken,
not stirred you know, lookingall cool and confident and cocky
and sexy and thinking he's theman, I don't see the man.
(06:43):
I see somebody drinking a drug.
When I see, you know, a coupleget married and they're having a
glass of champagne, I don't seethe champagne as anything that
adds anything to that event.
Yeah, sure, I'm happy for thepeople getting married, but I
see them drinking a drug and Ithink I just killed a mosquito.
I hope I did, because I don'twant to get dengue fever again.
I got dengue fever last year.
I'm so scared of mosquitoes atthe moment.
(07:04):
Hang on, anyway, back to it.
So what I had to do was unlearnthese ideas that were put there
by somebody else that alcoholis a good thing.
Right, because that is howsociety sees alcohol, whether we
like it or not.
I never forget, you know, myfirst week of university.
You have this thing calledFreshers Week.
I don't know if you have thatin the States.
Freshers Week in England iswhen you know, the first week of
university.
You've got all the first yearstudents and everybody goes out
(07:26):
every single night, getsabsolutely blasted and listen.
It is what it is.
But the teachers would alwayslaugh.
They'd be laughing at howhungover everybody was.
It's the first week, you know,everyone's just getting
accustomed to it, First timebeing away from home, and at the
time, you know, I didn't thinkmuch of it.
I probably laughed as well.
I was probably hungover as well.
But when I look back, whathappens?
Everybody was coming back off acrack binge, right?
I feel terrible.
(07:47):
What would the teachers thinkthen?
You took crack cocaine.
No alcohol, alcohol is in adifferent category and what did
it for me was unlearning theideas that were put there.
I don't know who they were putthere by right.
My theory is that you know bigalcohol.
These huge alcohol companieswant us to see alcohol a certain
way because guess what?
It creates more product sales.
I don't believe governments arereally that bothered about it
(08:09):
because they get so much moneyfrom tax.
And do you know what?
Most politicians are probablydrunks themselves, except Donald
Trump.
Very interesting fact DonaldTrump has never touched alcohol
in his life.
But politicians aren't botheredabout it.
(08:30):
You know they're moreinterested in keeping power.
So if they were to, you know,start banning alcohol and start
having, you know, campaignsagainst alcohol.
Guess what?
That's going to create uproarin the people and they're going
to lose their positions of power.
So it's never going to happen.
So we don't need to learnanything.
The trick to not drinking andfeeling totally okay with it is
to be mindful.
When you start seeing thesemessages, advertisements, right,
(08:51):
I don't know publications onthe news saying alcohol drinkers
live longer.
When you see that beautifulpackaging in the seltzers I
don't know if you've seen thoseseltzers now, but it looks like
I'm about to drink some healthyvitamin I don't flipping know
what flavoured electrolyte water.
No, I'm drinking freakingpoison.
So when you see this, you needto understand that this is big
business, this is big money.
(09:12):
And guess what?
The people selling this stuffdon't care.
They don't care if you die fromit.
Nobody gives a shit.
And I promise you, when youstart seeing through these lies,
through this nonsense, and youunlearn what you thought you
know was true about alcohol.
It's like a light bulb switch.
Now this is what I help peopledo in my program.
We use a mental model calledfirst principles thinking and
it's funny, a lot of my clients,when I teach them the stuff
(09:34):
that I tell them, they alwayssay dude.
I feel like I've known this allalong and it's because they
have.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Seems so simple to
say it.
But whatever, for some reason,the approach that you developed
made it almost like ah, oh, yeah, that makes sense, you know,
instead of these other thingsabout oh it's negative, oh it's
bad, oh God, it's really hard,all this stuff.
I think you cracked the code onthis mental model thing.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
You know that alcohol
is bad.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
You know that, but
the sober clear program really
helped me understand whatalcohol was.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
And once I really
understood what alcohol was it
really, really was easy to quit,because there was a time, maybe
when you were a kid, maybe whenyou were a very young teenager,
where you had the beliefs thatI have now.
But through the years, throughdifferent interactions with
people, through differentmessages, new beliefs have come
into our mind.
So what I'm kind of doing isbringing it back to what it was
(10:20):
like before.
Those beliefs were there, andthat's why people say it's like
I've known this all along.
I just needed somebody else toshow me.
Now, if you want to see ifworking together could be a good
match, I am accepting newclients right now.
If you want to see if workingtogether could be a good fit,
then all you need to do next isclick the link in the
description to book a freeroadmap call.
These are short, 30-minutecalls where we just have a
conversation, learn a bit moreabout your situation and then
(10:41):
I'll explain an actual plan foryou to follow to get in control
of your drinking quickly.
My program is totally new.
It's totally different.
It's like nothing else outthere.
It's not like AA or rehab ortherapy or stop drinking
coaching.
It's nothing like that, and oneof the best things is it works
quickly.
It can work in as little as 48hours.
Usually it takes maybe three,four, five days, but it can work
in as little as 48 hours.
(11:02):
We've already helped clientsfrom NASA, from Forbes, from
PayPal.
We've had $500 million CEOs inthe program.
We've had people who have runthe largest companies in certain
countries.
We get some really awesomeclients.
But, most importantly, theclients don't matter.
What matters is the programworks.
So click the link down below.
Let's have a conversation andsee if it will work for you.
Have a great day.
Thanks for checking out theStop Drinking Podcast by Sober
(11:22):
Clear.
If you want to learn more abouthow we work with people to help
them stop drinking effortlessly, then make sure to visit
wwwsoberclearcom.