Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So there's a motivational challenge for you quitting alcohol. And
I think this maybe dovetails quite nicely with this RFK
Juniors push to maybe improve the health of America. I'm
happy to welcome to the fifty five Carcy Morning Show.
Dustin Dunbar, author of You're Doing Great and Other Lies Alcohol,
told me by way of background, he grew up in
poor Midwest America, had an abuse of alcohol addicted father
(00:23):
and grandfather, and he vowed never to be like them
and devoured psychology books and researched addiction into his twenties.
He earned a doctorate in psychology and well handpicked by
Ryan Seacrest for La Shrink and Dallas Life Coach by
Endemol Productions. Dunbar was the Shrink and the quote unquote
(00:43):
life coach on those pilots, but after drinking moderately and
responsibly and socially for twenty years, he found himself addicted
to alcohol. Welcome to the program, Dustin. It's a pleasure
to have you on today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Good morning. Thanks great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So but by way of your background, since you know
your the notes on your background talked about your alcohol
addicted father and grandfather, you vowing not to be like them.
How is it that you ended up drinking in the
first place? If you and you But again, read up
on a lot of this stuff heading into it, because
sometimes there's a genetic connection that predisposes people to alcohol addiction,
(01:19):
if I'm unless I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, So peer pressure, it's it's the biggest thing there is.
At age about fourteen fifteen, it started. And I still
don't understand the superpower that the teenagers who didn't drink
in my school in the Midwest, yeah, were you know,
It's just unbelievable. I was like, I look back at
that and I'm like, how did you guys not drink?
I'm with you because it was like you were the stupidest,
(01:44):
most nerdiest person ever, you know, and you weren't part
of the deal, and you weren't you know, aren't getting
the girls. I mean, it was everything. Yeah. So it
just bled also into college and then of course work
and sales, Corporate America sales, and it was just part
so much part of the culture that I look back
and I go, I don't think I had a chance,
Like I was just in there, right.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Brother, Yeah, you described my childhood too. There was like
two guys in the neighborhood who never ever ever drank
our crew of like thirteen in the neighborhood, plus everybody
else that we hung out with, everybody and vibe. Of course,
it just got worse in college because you've got to
give college fraternity membership and you know what that's all about,
like animal house. And then I was a practicing lawyer.
For me, I'm still a lawyer by trade, but uh,
(02:28):
you know, it was all part of the mix, especially
when you have British clients who absolutely loved their their
four hour lunches with massive quantities of alcohol. So I
hear you talking. What is is this this alcohol matrix
that you write about in your book?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Correct, Yeah, it's basically I had a dream and I
was laying on the gurdy and I was plugged into
all these wires and tubes, and there's all this vast
field of people around me, just like the scene in
the Matrix, with everybody you know, unconscious and being pumped
into this fluid pumped in and out of them keeping
them alive. And so it was me literally standing up
(03:08):
on this gurney and pulling these tubes out and saying,
get this stuff out of me, like what is going on?
And everybody else is still unconscious, laying there and not
aware that they are being said. This substance that is
addictive and causes cancer and it's ethanol. And that's my
big thing that I learned out of all the years
(03:29):
of doing this. Nobody ever told me, or nobody ever
says anything about the same substance. Alcohol is the exact
same thing as ethanol, and ethanol is basically car fuel.
And I'm like, wait a minute. This whole time, I
thought that alcohol is this life elixir and does all
these great things for us and makes us happy and
enjoy us and we get to have fun parties and
(03:51):
better sex. I mean, you name it down the road
and you get into it and you're like, oh my god,
this is just one hundred percent poison. And like you said,
you open with JFK JUNI, you're talking sugar and kids poison,
and that's what's coming out and it's just all new science.
And so that's just an awakening that we're having, just
like tobacco. We're having our tobacco moment, our cigarettes. You know,
(04:11):
we all thought, you know, bachwell, my mom and that
whole crew thought they were so cool, you know, smoking
cigarettes everywhere, and then we did it in the offices
and it was just part of the culture, right. And
then of course all the cancer stuff starts coming out
and everybody's like, oh god, everybody's dying. Wait a minute,
and now we're seeing the same thing with all the
cancer studies that are coming out with alcohol. And so
(04:32):
New Zealand just came out and they did a huge
study and it's two glasses of wine per week created
a fifteen percent increase in women's breast cancer. And so
now they're looking at prostate cancer and all this stuff
and men that they haven't done yet, but I guarantee
you we're going to sit there and go, oh my god,
look at this. This is where all this cancer is
coming from. And of course like things like sugar as well.
(04:54):
But it is. The thing about alcohol is it's on
the same level of carcinogen as tobacco, and most people
don't know that it's a it's a level one carcinogen.
So we've just got to really just start waking up.
And that's what I'm doing, is trying to raise consciousness
about it.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, what is the idea of an alternative. Now, I
think a lot of people enjoy that, you know, sort
of it's the end of the day. I had stressful day.
I got a stressful life. And there's a lot of
stress out in the world. I'm sure you can't deny that.
I mean, we seem to be having more and more
stressful situations every day, maybe driven by the Internet, social media,
pressures from wherever. But then it's like, ah, just exhale,
(05:31):
give me that cocktail because it's going to help me
wind down. I mean, are there are there alternatives to
that winding down? Is it sort of? Is it meditation?
I mean, what what where do we get that relaxation
that quite often most a lot of us get from
that that glass of bourbon or glass of wine.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, that's the biggest issue. Whatever, And that's where I
really wrote the book, is it's how to do things
like like wind down and be healthy about your you know,
issues instead of suppressing them and what that that's what
we're doing. We're numbing down. We're not winding down. It's
not a really it's not a healthy relaxation. You're you're
(06:11):
going underneath consciousness, you know, lowering your consciousness, right, instead
of heightening it and becoming healthy. So, yeah, meditation was
a huge factor for me, and because and then really
getting into my feelings and as a man, you know,
growing up in the Midwest, we didn't have we get
to be angry and we got to smile a little bit.
(06:32):
That was it, you know. And so and now you
see these these guys, these boys in there, we're teaching
them it's okay to have feelings. It's okay to sit
there and go, man, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm anxious,
and then we're going to feel them, and then we're
going to communicate and and we're going to listen, you know.
So that's what I'm really getting into, is we're because
(06:53):
you're you're so anxious at work, you know, and doing
all the things that are in the world today with
politics and stuff like that, that there's no real outlet
because you're not feeling it and then communicating it. And
it's okay for us men to get into those feelings
and be healthy about.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, there's I think there's a lot of negative social
situations and perceptions in society about seeking treatment from alcohol.
Oh my god, while they just can't manage themselves and
I think that's fading away to a large degree. Counseling
and seeking counseling for mental health issues is becoming more
and more normal and and and accepted. But it's I
(07:34):
guess some people aren't inclined to go to an AA meeting,
you know, And is that the right path for everybody?
And I think a lot of people have concluded no,
it isn't. Are there alternatives to find this what sounds
to me like needed social network where you can discuss
your feelings and your problems and and and and sort
of wind down emotionally that way, as opposed to turn
into the bottle.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, that was another big thing that I did as
I got into Empowered Man group and was able to
speak to the other guys, and it was definitely not
AAAA did not resonate for me at all. And I
love AA. I think they're amazing people. This is not
a competition, you know, and how to become alcohol free.
It's it's we're all a team together. But it wasn't
(08:17):
for me. And that was the other reason that I
wrote the book is to give people an alternative. And
what I found out of that was exactly what you're saying,
is like It's the key to this is really being
vulnerable and being like, hey, I was born into you.
Whenever you start researching this, you're like, oh my god,
we were all born into this addicted world of alcohol.
(08:38):
And like we were saying earlier, like it's just this
social thing, and then with the science all coming out too,
is it's one addictive substance. So earlier you were talking
about genetics and things like that, and oh all this
other stuff. This is a That's one thing that AA
really has to evolve on is they say it's only
a certain class of people that get addicted it. That
(09:00):
is one hundred percent false and needs to be changed
in their big book. And that that key right there
to know that you have been totally brainwashed. We see,
as an average forty year old male, we've seen over
forty thousand ads just on TV by the time we're
forty saying how it's the elixir of life. It is
(09:22):
this fun, sexy, you know thing that you got to
have at every party. And then that's just TV ads.
We're not even talking about all the radio, all the billboards,
everything else. So we we just really got to get
in there and go, wait a minute, we're being lied to,
just like big alcohol, big tobacco did to us for
so many years. It's the same thing going on the
big alcohol.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Well, and if it was heroin substituted for you know,
the beer or the bourbon or the whiskey or tequilla
or whatever, no one would abide. I mean, and you're
essentially saying it's heroin.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
In a way, Yeah, it's a drug. I mean, it's
a liquid drug, and that if it had smoke coming
out of it, you know, I was bothering eighties in
the bars and all this other stuff, we would be
done with it, right, And if the mothers would be like, no,
we're done, but it's liquid, it's only doing us. But
then at the same time, oh my god, I can't
imagine the times, you know how many times I stunk
(10:14):
and smelled and then I was belligerent and like just
acting like an idiot. So it does still very much
affects other people, but not right there, you know, in
their vicinity.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, and I guess I have to just point out
alcohol is categorically a depressant. So for folks who are
self medicating, who are depressed and they turn to alcohol
to sort of deal with their depression and put that
dark cloak over reality, which will work for a little
while until you wake up the next day. You're exacerbating
the problem, right.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, that's what I did. I might like we were
talking about my grandfather and father. They were both and
then I had a rough, kind of abusive childhood, and
so I just basically numbed out those you know, childhood traumas.
And I didn't really know doing it. I was like,
you know, a couple of nights of wine during the
(11:04):
week and then more on the weekends, like a social
you know, responsible drinker that they always talk about, And
that is exactly what I was doing. Looking back, I
was numbing. And what it is, your central nervous system
is what it numbs, which handles everything in your body.
And so you're just basically numbing that with f andol
and people, now we're taking that away, and then we're
(11:26):
getting them to really go in there and work on
that personal development in many different ways. And then you
realize that you're safe, everything is okay, and you deal
with those things and you take that band aid off
and really heal.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Dustin Dunbar the book described as raw, hilarious, and deeply
insightful to help you maybe turn away from alcohol, and
that's a wonderful and the timing, I think again, going
back to RFK Junior and this health awareness, it couldn't
be better for your book the name of it, you're
doing great and other lies alcohol told me by my
guest today, Dustin Dunbar. It's been a real pleasure to
have you on the program, Dustin. I appreciate the work
if you're doing and happy to share it with my
(12:01):
listeners and I'm glad you're able to come on the
show today.
So there's a motivational challenge for you quitting alcohol. And
I think this maybe dovetails quite nicely with this RFK
Juniors push to maybe improve the health of America. I'm
happy to welcome to the fifty five Carcy Morning Show.
Dustin Dunbar, author of You're Doing Great and Other Lies Alcohol,
told me by way of background, he grew up in
poor Midwest America, had an abuse of alcohol addicted father
(00:23):
and grandfather, and he vowed never to be like them
and devoured psychology books and researched addiction into his twenties.
He earned a doctorate in psychology and well handpicked by
Ryan Seacrest for La Shrink and Dallas Life Coach by
Endemol Productions. Dunbar was the Shrink and the quote unquote
(00:43):
life coach on those pilots, but after drinking moderately and
responsibly and socially for twenty years, he found himself addicted
to alcohol. Welcome to the program, Dustin. It's a pleasure
to have you on today.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Good morning. Thanks great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So but by way of your background, since you know
your the notes on your background talked about your alcohol
addicted father and grandfather, you vowing not to be like them.
How is it that you ended up drinking in the
first place? If you and you But again, read up
on a lot of this stuff heading into it, because
sometimes there's a genetic connection that predisposes people to alcohol addiction,
(01:19):
if I'm unless I'm wrong.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, So peer pressure, it's it's the biggest thing there is.
At age about fourteen fifteen, it started. And I still
don't understand the superpower that the teenagers who didn't drink
in my school in the Midwest, yeah, were you know,
It's just unbelievable. I was like, I look back at
that and I'm like, how did you guys not drink?
I'm with you because it was like you were the stupidest,
(01:44):
most nerdiest person ever, you know, and you weren't part
of the deal, and you weren't you know, aren't getting
the girls. I mean, it was everything. Yeah. So it
just bled also into college and then of course work
and sales, Corporate America sales, and it was just part
so much part of the culture that I look back
and I go, I don't think I had a chance,
Like I was just in there, right.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Brother, Yeah, you described my childhood too. There was like
two guys in the neighborhood who never ever ever drank
our crew of like thirteen in the neighborhood, plus everybody
else that we hung out with, everybody and vibe. Of course,
it just got worse in college because you've got to
give college fraternity membership and you know what that's all about,
like animal house. And then I was a practicing lawyer.
For me, I'm still a lawyer by trade, but uh,
(02:28):
you know, it was all part of the mix, especially
when you have British clients who absolutely loved their their
four hour lunches with massive quantities of alcohol. So I
hear you talking. What is is this this alcohol matrix
that you write about in your book?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Correct, Yeah, it's basically I had a dream and I
was laying on the gurdy and I was plugged into
all these wires and tubes, and there's all this vast
field of people around me, just like the scene in
the Matrix, with everybody you know, unconscious and being pumped
into this fluid pumped in and out of them keeping
them alive. And so it was me literally standing up
(03:08):
on this gurney and pulling these tubes out and saying,
get this stuff out of me, like what is going on?
And everybody else is still unconscious, laying there and not
aware that they are being said. This substance that is
addictive and causes cancer and it's ethanol. And that's my
big thing that I learned out of all the years
(03:29):
of doing this. Nobody ever told me, or nobody ever
says anything about the same substance. Alcohol is the exact
same thing as ethanol, and ethanol is basically car fuel.
And I'm like, wait a minute. This whole time, I
thought that alcohol is this life elixir and does all
these great things for us and makes us happy and
enjoy us and we get to have fun parties and
(03:51):
better sex. I mean, you name it down the road
and you get into it and you're like, oh my god,
this is just one hundred percent poison. And like you said,
you open with JFK JUNI, you're talking sugar and kids poison,
and that's what's coming out and it's just all new science.
And so that's just an awakening that we're having, just
like tobacco. We're having our tobacco moment, our cigarettes. You know,
(04:11):
we all thought, you know, bachwell, my mom and that
whole crew thought they were so cool, you know, smoking
cigarettes everywhere, and then we did it in the offices
and it was just part of the culture, right. And
then of course all the cancer stuff starts coming out
and everybody's like, oh god, everybody's dying. Wait a minute,
and now we're seeing the same thing with all the
cancer studies that are coming out with alcohol. And so
(04:32):
New Zealand just came out and they did a huge
study and it's two glasses of wine per week created
a fifteen percent increase in women's breast cancer. And so
now they're looking at prostate cancer and all this stuff
and men that they haven't done yet, but I guarantee
you we're going to sit there and go, oh my god,
look at this. This is where all this cancer is
coming from. And of course like things like sugar as well.
(04:54):
But it is. The thing about alcohol is it's on
the same level of carcinogen as tobacco, and most people
don't know that it's a it's a level one carcinogen.
So we've just got to really just start waking up.
And that's what I'm doing, is trying to raise consciousness
about it.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Well, what is the idea of an alternative. Now, I
think a lot of people enjoy that, you know, sort
of it's the end of the day. I had stressful day.
I got a stressful life. And there's a lot of
stress out in the world. I'm sure you can't deny that.
I mean, we seem to be having more and more
stressful situations every day, maybe driven by the Internet, social media,
pressures from wherever. But then it's like, ah, just exhale,
(05:31):
give me that cocktail because it's going to help me
wind down. I mean, are there are there alternatives to
that winding down? Is it sort of? Is it meditation?
I mean, what what where do we get that relaxation
that quite often most a lot of us get from
that that glass of bourbon or glass of wine.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, that's the biggest issue. Whatever, And that's where I
really wrote the book, is it's how to do things
like like wind down and be healthy about your you know,
issues instead of suppressing them and what that that's what
we're doing. We're numbing down. We're not winding down. It's
not a really it's not a healthy relaxation. You're you're
(06:11):
going underneath consciousness, you know, lowering your consciousness, right, instead
of heightening it and becoming healthy. So, yeah, meditation was
a huge factor for me, and because and then really
getting into my feelings and as a man, you know,
growing up in the Midwest, we didn't have we get
to be angry and we got to smile a little bit.
(06:32):
That was it, you know. And so and now you
see these these guys, these boys in there, we're teaching
them it's okay to have feelings. It's okay to sit
there and go, man, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm anxious,
and then we're going to feel them, and then we're
going to communicate and and we're going to listen, you know.
So that's what I'm really getting into, is we're because
(06:53):
you're you're so anxious at work, you know, and doing
all the things that are in the world today with
politics and stuff like that, that there's no real outlet
because you're not feeling it and then communicating it. And
it's okay for us men to get into those feelings
and be healthy about.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, there's I think there's a lot of negative social
situations and perceptions in society about seeking treatment from alcohol.
Oh my god, while they just can't manage themselves and
I think that's fading away to a large degree. Counseling
and seeking counseling for mental health issues is becoming more
and more normal and and and accepted. But it's I
(07:34):
guess some people aren't inclined to go to an AA meeting,
you know, And is that the right path for everybody?
And I think a lot of people have concluded no,
it isn't. Are there alternatives to find this what sounds
to me like needed social network where you can discuss
your feelings and your problems and and and and sort
of wind down emotionally that way, as opposed to turn
into the bottle.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, that was another big thing that I did as
I got into Empowered Man group and was able to
speak to the other guys, and it was definitely not
AAAA did not resonate for me at all. And I
love AA. I think they're amazing people. This is not
a competition, you know, and how to become alcohol free.
It's it's we're all a team together. But it wasn't
(08:17):
for me. And that was the other reason that I
wrote the book is to give people an alternative. And
what I found out of that was exactly what you're saying,
is like It's the key to this is really being
vulnerable and being like, hey, I was born into you.
Whenever you start researching this, you're like, oh my god,
we were all born into this addicted world of alcohol.
(08:38):
And like we were saying earlier, like it's just this
social thing, and then with the science all coming out too,
is it's one addictive substance. So earlier you were talking
about genetics and things like that, and oh all this
other stuff. This is a That's one thing that AA
really has to evolve on is they say it's only
a certain class of people that get addicted it. That
(09:00):
is one hundred percent false and needs to be changed
in their big book. And that that key right there
to know that you have been totally brainwashed. We see,
as an average forty year old male, we've seen over
forty thousand ads just on TV by the time we're
forty saying how it's the elixir of life. It is
(09:22):
this fun, sexy, you know thing that you got to
have at every party. And then that's just TV ads.
We're not even talking about all the radio, all the billboards,
everything else. So we we just really got to get
in there and go, wait a minute, we're being lied to,
just like big alcohol, big tobacco did to us for
so many years. It's the same thing going on the
big alcohol.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Well, and if it was heroin substituted for you know,
the beer or the bourbon or the whiskey or tequilla
or whatever, no one would abide. I mean, and you're
essentially saying it's heroin.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
In a way, Yeah, it's a drug. I mean, it's
a liquid drug, and that if it had smoke coming
out of it, you know, I was bothering eighties in
the bars and all this other stuff, we would be
done with it, right, And if the mothers would be like, no,
we're done, but it's liquid, it's only doing us. But
then at the same time, oh my god, I can't
imagine the times, you know how many times I stunk
(10:14):
and smelled and then I was belligerent and like just
acting like an idiot. So it does still very much
affects other people, but not right there, you know, in
their vicinity.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well, and I guess I have to just point out
alcohol is categorically a depressant. So for folks who are
self medicating, who are depressed and they turn to alcohol
to sort of deal with their depression and put that
dark cloak over reality, which will work for a little
while until you wake up the next day. You're exacerbating
the problem, right.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah, that's what I did. I might like we were
talking about my grandfather and father. They were both and
then I had a rough, kind of abusive childhood, and
so I just basically numbed out those you know, childhood traumas.
And I didn't really know doing it. I was like,
you know, a couple of nights of wine during the
(11:04):
week and then more on the weekends, like a social
you know, responsible drinker that they always talk about, And
that is exactly what I was doing. Looking back, I
was numbing. And what it is, your central nervous system
is what it numbs, which handles everything in your body.
And so you're just basically numbing that with f andol
and people, now we're taking that away, and then we're
(11:26):
getting them to really go in there and work on
that personal development in many different ways. And then you
realize that you're safe, everything is okay, and you deal
with those things and you take that band aid off
and really heal.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Dustin Dunbar the book described as raw, hilarious, and deeply
insightful to help you maybe turn away from alcohol, and
that's a wonderful and the timing, I think again, going
back to RFK Junior and this health awareness, it couldn't
be better for your book the name of it, you're
doing great and other lies alcohol told me by my
guest today, Dustin Dunbar. It's been a real pleasure to
have you on the program, Dustin. I appreciate the work
if you're doing and happy to share it with my
(12:01):
listeners and I'm glad you're able to come on the
show today.
Brian Thomas News
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