 Hip to be square is the way that the pop song goes hip to be square I think it was in the movie back to the future back of the 1980s, but is it hip to be sober? I'm the creator of the 30-day no alcohol challenge and my guest today is the creator of A blog and a program called hip sobriety Hip sobriety. It's hip to be sober. Is it really? I believe so. Well, I guess I haven't introduced you yet, but I'm gonna introduce him now. Sorry, I'm sorry that you were talking to me. That's okay. Holly Whitaker from hip sobriety. How you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you. So you and I, by the sounds of it, have kind of similar stories in the sense that Well, my story is that I was a social drinker. I wasn't an alcoholic, but I was a social drinker. I had a few drinks during the week, had a few more on weekends. I got tired of feeling sick and tired. I took a 30-day break one day. At the end of it, I felt amazing. I kept going. I haven't drunk since 2010 and my life has transformed. It's a hell of a lot better. Is that a similar kind of story to yours? What's your story in relation to alcohol? Well, first of all, I don't really identify with the whole like trying to split out what's an alcoholic, what's not. I just think there's drinking and there's not drinking and there's problematic drinking and there's non-problematic drinking, but trying to like put a label on it is one of the things that I think keeps a lot of people from doing anything about their issues with alcohol. So that's the first thing I'll start off by saying, mine was, my story was I started drinking when I was 15 and I never would say that I had a happy relationship with it. I think that it was a lot of fun for me at the very beginning, but it wasn't very long before all of the stuff that comes along with drinking started to show up in my life. And so I never had a great relationship with it, but I also wasn't doing the like classical things we think of when we think of addiction. For me, though, I moved to San Francisco in 2006 and that accelerated my social drinking. And also around 2009, I started doing benders at home on the weekends while I was working long hours just to make it through. And so like make it through like a weekend deadline. And then over time that along with eating disorders for years, I smoked a lot of pot. Everything for me, I was working in ridiculous amounts, everything for me just came undone around 2012. And so I stopped drinking, I didn't work the program, I didn't work the steps, but I stopped drinking in 2012. And I did it fairly easy at first, like just stopped drinking for 60 days. And I did it through Alan Carr's method. Do you know who? Yeah, and that for me was the game changer because all of the sudden, I think, I think most of us in America at least, I can speak for I think we just have this idea that we have to drink and that there's something wrong with us. If we can't handle alcohol, which was negatively in our lives, then there's something wrong with us. And this framework Alan Carr's work really flipped it on its head and just allowed me to recognize the insanity of what it is to believe that we need to drink alcohol in order to have lives. And how damaging that is to us individually and us societally. And so I was happy to stop drinking. I was like, sign me up. I went out. Yeah. And yeah, just I've read Alan Carr's book. It's how to quit drinking now. I think it is. There's two. Yeah. There's two. There's one. The one I drank is called the easy way to control alcohol. The one that you read, not the one you drank. Yeah, right. Okay. No, but the one that I read, I haven't read both of them, but there is a very distinct difference between the two of them. So what was the one underlying kind of message or mental framework that you got out of that that helped you? Oh, that drinking is hell and that not drinking is freedom. And the choice was, it wasn't about giving anything up. It wasn't about sacrifice. The choice was about removing the thing that's keeping you from experiencing life. And removing, removing, like claiming your freedom. And that was the overlying thing. I was just, I had no freedom while I was drinking. And I never had, I never had freedom since the moment that I started drinking because I believe for the moment I started drinking that it was necessary then to be able to go on dates, be able to be fun at parties, be able to commune. And for me, it was like a, it was a total game changer. I went back to that place that I had just like wished I could go back to so many places, like so many times and back to the place before I needed to drink before like drinking was part of my life. I like literally reclaimed that part of me that was that I had lost when I was, you know, 1415. Drinking is hell, not drinking is freedom. That's so interesting. I think for me, it was, it was never drinking as hell. I think for me it was always drinking is holding me back. And that, well, maybe it depends on how you look at it. I mean, I didn't realize that it, I never realized that it was hell. I don't think it was hell. I don't think it was like, like a disaster, the way that I was drinking. It was just, I wasn't living the best life that I, that I could live because I was tired and lethargic and I wasn't sleeping well. So I wasn't clear in mind. So because I wasn't clear in mind, I wasn't making as much money and my relationships weren't as good. But it wasn't like I ever was like, Oh my God, this is hell. My life sucks. You know, I was prone to that, to those kind of thoughts at times, but generally speaking, I was all right, you know, like things, things were okay. I was born to good parents. I like, I wasn't addicted to the drinking. I was traveling around the world was doing cool things. It was generally speaking, I was, it was okay. So I didn't seem like it was hell, but it wasn't, it wasn't great. As you said, I could probably, I could probably relate more to the, to the, the second part of it, which is not drinking is freedom. I can relate to that certainly. Yeah. Yeah, well it is. I mean, it's God in so many different ways. It really is. So tell me a little bit about how the not drinking became freeing for you. I would say it was freeing immediately. There was something about going, I went out immediately. I went out like I stopped drinking on a Monday and I, you know, there was this like overwhelming sense of I'm too old to be doing this anymore. Like I just, I just felt like something I had, you know, I'd missed some part of growing up. And there was something just so beautiful about going out that first night and watching everyone else get inebriated and not, you know, and there's that right, which is just like having this amazing confidence that comes along with being able to stand on your own and not do what the whole pack is doing. And, and then so these other things just lead into it. It's not thinking about not, you know, not recovering from it. You know, the many, many physical side effects that come with it. And remembering everything that happens to you and being able to go into a social setting and own who you are and like be yourself without having to use a crutch like everyone else. You know, walking into a social scene and your first thing not being I need to drink or let's, let's, you know, like it's just, it's like removing this thing that you didn't this wet blanket you didn't realize that you had like over your life. And in every situation I mean from dating to like having sex to making friendships to I mean just every it touches every corner of your life. And just removing it just it's like shedding a shedding a layer. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when I first when I first quit I was in Austin, Texas it was 2010 I was at the South by Southwest Festival. I woke up with a hangover. And I went to an I hop international house of pancakes next door to this hotel I was staying in and the site of those menus in the I hop with the big bright colors and never these big kind of like overweight. Is it obesity overweight I'm not sure if that's the phrase but they were like very large people sitting in the I hop eating all you can eat pancakes with maple syrup and whipped cream and that site combined with my hangover was the moment where I was like you know what it's time I took a break. I'd put on a few pounds. I looked weathered. I mean it dries out your skin. I'm going to show you a photo of how I looked back then Holly and if you're if you're listening on the podcast you can certainly see this on the video version which is on my YouTube channel, which is James Swannick. Or if you might be watching this on the video version of the podcast as well because I release video and audio, but I'll try and as I keep talking I'll try and locate this this fat face photo. It was out of me when I was drinking. But when I when I finished when I quit drinking and I felt so amazing after 30 days I'd lost 13 pounds of fat my skin got better my looks improved. I had more energy and clarity and I just went you know what I'll just I'll just keep on going but on the first the first couple weeks that I went out friends. Tried to put vodka in my drink they're like oh here you go like they're like oh do you want to drink oh yeah grab me a soda water and then come back and hand me the drink and they would have. You know, thought they were very clever and they would have they put vodka in the damn thing and I went to put it to my mouth and I went did you put vodka in this and my friend. Who did it was like oh yeah I did like he was laughing like it was a big joke. I mean I was pissed. I was pissed. Well, because your friends are trying to slip you drugs. That's the first thing second thing it's like it's this whole tribe mentality people really like once you start to it's so it's such a big deal of this this is why putting drinking it's not just physiological and psychological societal you quit drinking the whole tribe is like wait a minute. And you know you're basically like, like you're the crab trying to run out of the pot and all the other crab stack on top of each other to pull you back in because you're violating the social contract that you have with these people. We get fucked up together. Oh, can I. I'm sorry. We get messed up together. So it's it's a it's not surprising. It's awful, but it's not surprising. Yeah, well, they're actually this tribal mentality. It goes back to caveman days actually when back in the day we were in we were in tribes of say like 100 120 people think dumb bars number is 120. And so, if you are ostracized from the tribe back when we roamed the land and caveman cave women were on the African mainland's whatever it is that, you know, whatever time and history we're doing that if you were ostracized from the tribe it was like certain death. Because you because you would get either killed by a rival tribe, or you get eaten by a bear. Wolf, or you just, you know, you just die. You just die. You were just. Yeah. And so there's an example that do you ever watch that M night Shyamalan movie called the village back in like 2001. And there was a character who was a little bit mentally affected mentally ill. He was what mentally ill. Yeah, he was meant he was mentally ill. And do you remember he he stabbed with King Phoenix's character. And so he got ostracized from from the tribe and he got sent off into the village into the woods. And you can see him like he's there by himself. Now he doesn't have this community. Now he doesn't have any support base. It's just him in the woods. Yeah. That's what it was like. That's what it was like. And so fast forward to today. And as we're recording this is 2016. Anything that threatens the tribe. We have this innate fear of it's like, oh, if I quit drinking, I'm no longer going to be part of the tribe. Maybe I'll be ostracized from the tribe and maybe I'll die. Now, even though rationally, that's ridiculous. On a subconscious level, a deep reptilian part of the human brain level, we still have that fear that if we don't toe the line, if we don't go along with the tribe will somehow be left to defend for ourselves and be kicked out of the tribe. The only difference is or the big difference is that today, if you get kicked out of the tribe, you can just join another tribe. That's right. It's called part of it, right? Like that's, I mean, when you, the people fear when people are looking to quit drinking the thing, you know, the question and the fears that come up the most or what are other people going to think? And what am I going to lose in this? And you're exactly right. It's tied up with our survival instinct. It's, you know, the thought of being rejected by our peer group or not no longer fitting within our peer group. It is a real and big fear and it's because of exactly that. Like this is, it's one of the ways that we survive in this world. And then if you put on top of that, just your sense of identity, like drinking and you know this very well, drinking is part of your identity. This is part of who you were in this world. And that's another survival instinct is creating this distinct and separate identity. And so when you go to quit drinking, you're losing your identity, at least the identity that you'd had up to that point, because it is a shift in identity. And then you're also sand to lose this tribe that you surrounded yourself with. And so it's this huge, I mean, the amount of the amount of hang up on that one point for people is enough to keep them from not even wanting to try it in the first place. Yeah, it's it's insanity. I found the photo you want to check this out. Yeah, that's too. There you go. Oh, well, maybe. It's not bad. That's the before and after. So if you're listening, I'm, I'm, I'm showing my, I mean, the thing that strikes me the most is you don't, you don't look as bright as you do. Your eyes look different. That's what I always see in these pictures is how people's eyes look different. Yeah. Well, you can see there in the photo of when I was drinking. I'm bloated. Like I just, I look puffy around the face, you know, like I look weathered. That's the word weathered. It's just tired. It's a tired look. Well, I mean, it's ingesting rocket fuel. I mean, it's, it's, it's, there's no health benefits to drinking whatsoever. It's literally the same thing is ingesting what we put into our cars. Okay. So the listener is going, Oh, but hang on a second. I read that article that says drinking a glass of wine a day is actually good for your heart and it's really good for you. One article, there's like one study that's been done to prove that. And then there's all these other studies that show how much it links to cancer and how like how even small amounts. And by the way, nobody drinks that amount that they talk about in that article, at least nobody that's running around and saying, I drink because the health benefits is doing that. We all like say we drink because of the health benefits, but nobody ever drinks the amount that is actually listed in that one study. But then there's all these other studies that talk about how it kills you slowly over time. I mean, it kills like one in 10, one in 10. It's the third leading cause of preventable death, but everyone holds on to that one article. And by the way, those benefits that you can get from that one, that one, whatever, like four ounce glass of red wine with reserve it all in it. You can get that same health benefit from doing a meditation practice, like a five minute meditation practice will do the same thing for your stress levels in your heart. That that, you know, one messed up study that really only I think applies to like men in a certain age group. Anyways, it's crazy, but yeah, people will look for that confirmation bias. They look for the look for the thing that will say it's okay to do what I'm doing, even though a part of us knows it's not working. Yeah. The, it is insanity how many people point to that article. One one one study that one study and everyone knows it, you know, but like the just there was just released. They just released updates on the number of cancers and percentage of cancers that are related to alcohol like breast cancer and nobody knows about that one. Like no one. Excuse me. And the interesting thing is that it takes seven to 10 days for the toxins from alcohol to actually leave your body. The National Institute of Health said that even if you have a if you have a glass of wine tonight or a vodka or beer or whatever, seven to 10 days those toxins are hanging out in your body. Yeah, that's amazing. No it is I mean it's it is it's one of the worst things people can do for themselves it is it's like been listed as the most dangerous drug. You know there's all there's all sorts of like compelling evidence that talks about I mean it's literally listed as the most dangerous drug in the world above heroin and above crack. But the thing with it is it's so normalized I mean it's like we don't look at it as a drug we look at it as like the like, but alcohol is okay, but you know and it's expected that we drink it's weird that we don't drink. And so it's just, you know, it's this whole, it's this whole crazy thing that our culture has gotten into but I'm assuming you've noticed this since you started your thing that there is a shift that there is a lot of you know there's hello Sunday morning and there's one year no beer and there's what you're doing and there's a lot of a rising consciousness and I feel very similar about this and I I feel very similar about alcohol or I feel very how am I trying to say. I feel alcohol is very similar to cigarettes in that I feel like there's a rising consciousness around this and that over time it is going to be less and less and less the socially acceptable thing that we just all drink. And that it's going to be this the socially acceptable thing that we don't drink and it will seem odd for those that drink I have this I mean in my heart of hearts this is where I believe things are going and you can't help but notice all these different things that are coming up where people are like I stopped drinking and my life. You know, I finally like got everything I wanted in my life. I don't know what are your thoughts about. I mean I see it I see it myself I agree with you. I don't think it's going to catch on mainstream to the extent that you that you hope. I think it's going to be like one of those things like I have another business. I produce these blue light blocking glasses. And only now after like a number of years of people starting to catch on to the idea that blue light that is emitted from your cell phone and from your TV screen and from your computer screen is disrupting your melatonin production and is messing with your sleep patterns. A lot of people have known about it for a lot of years. But they're only just, you know, people are only just starting to figure it out and it's really only in the bio hacking community at the moment it's not a mainstream thing even though Apple has brought out a setting on their phone called night shift where you can reduce the brightness level of that blue light. And this still hasn't really caught on and I think it's going to be the same with alcohol. I think it's going to take some time but we'll see little patches and the movement just gathering a little bit of steam. But it'll take a many years I watched Leonardo Leonardo DiCaprio is documentary that was released on National Geographic channel recently caught after the flood. And he's talking about global warming, you know, and the dangers of what we're doing to the planet. And it was very interesting. We've only been talking about this for 10 or 15 years global warming but he actually showed a clip from a 1950s video where the guy was talking about all of the use of our cars and coal and energy and stuff is create is is causing our planet to heat up. And if we don't do something about it then we're going to lose ice in the Antarctic and blah blah blah this is from like 60 years ago. So people with people knew about it 60 years ago and still we're fighting over whether it's true whether it's not true. Like, so I, I love your your positive outlook that this this will catch on but I think it's going to be a lot slower than what we both hope that global warming is not an it's not impacting me individually global warming me specifically personally right now as I'm sitting here in my apartment in LA is not affecting me like I can't see it right now it's not making my life really shitty alcohol on the other hand is a very individual thing and people are personally motivated right and I think over time the more and more people that start coming out with their stories lifting the veil of anonymity and also starting to introduce this broad spectrum right like you just you started off the podcast by saying I'm not and I was an alcoholic but I was you know drinking in America alone 51 million people fall into that category into the spectrum of people that have some sort of disorder drinking in some way or it's impacting their lives negatively. 51 million Americans you go into a room three out of 10 people. It's so anyways what I'm saying is that you. This is it's not the same as global warming which I think is just going to end up. And it's not the same as sleep disruption. It's something where it is it's in it's one of those things that I do believe when we start to actually look at it and like lift the veil and see that we've been drinking ethanol. And we've been teaching our kids to drink it we've been taking drugs and start looking at this in a different way. Because one thing Americans want they want to look good they want a good life they want a big life. And I do believe that over time it's one of these things that is going to catch on and be a much different we're going to have much different attitudes for its alcohol. I firmly believe this we're talking to Holly Whitaker who was the creator of the hip sobriety blog you can check it out at hip sobriety.com I'm having a look here at your hip sobriety manifesto Holly. Let's go over these shall we one by one you got 11 11 kind of like laws here I guess 11 kind of ideas. Number one says you do not need to hit rock bottom just explain that for us. Did you hit rock bottom. I mean, I didn't know I don't think I did. I don't think I did. We have an idea in our minds. Yeah now we have an idea in our minds that you have to be this like we I mean you if you look most people don't don't start working on addiction or alcohol issues until until they check off all the boxes on that questionnaire. Are you an alcoholic and all of our resources that are dedicated to helping people recover and stop drinking are dedicated that in spectrum. They're dedicated to this very far off this you know the guy on the street with the brown paper bag. This is who our resources are dedicated to this is what our idea is of somebody that needs to stop drinking. We don't understand that there's a spectrum and that that man with the brown paper bag started out as something else we think there's a very other range like thing going on here when it comes to alcohol. And so this is based this is just you you are the person that didn't hit rock bottom you were the person that decided this is not working in my life. And maybe you've hit your own personal bottom right like for me a bottom is the moment that you can actually start telling the truth to yourself. And that you don't have to lose everything and do this stereotypical, you know, like to DUI is less my wife, like less my job less my car. You don't have to stereotypical idea what we view so many that has lost their life to addiction in order to remove alcohol from your life. You can actually stop the moment that you can start telling the truth to yourself about whether or not it's doing you a favor. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. Okay, let's move on to the next one. Everything you want starts here. Yeah. Yeah, I mean when you start doing the work to remove alcohol from your life you like we use alcohol for for one thing one thing. It's it's a coping mechanism. Right. I mean a lot of us will say we use it to socialize. That's a coping mechanism that's allowing you to do something the other ways so you couldn't do, but it is alcohol is a coping mechanism and it's like a mask. It's something that we use and you know varying degrees for me using alcohol was it was it was how I it was at the end how I felt I had to do most things. And so when we do something like that when we numb our experience in our life when we numb our experience we numb the pain and any other reality of it. We also numb the bigness of our lives. And so we do this one thing and we actually start to look at this thing that's holding us back and look at like, and take away the coping mechanism, then we're actually left with our real life. And at that point this is when we actually start to do the real work right this is when we actually have to rely on our own, like our on what we were naturally given on our own inheritance. And also we start removing the numbing agent so we actually get to experience life. And the amount of like self empowerment that comes with this, like I can do this. It starts to lead to so many other things like for me it was, I quit drinking then I quit smoking pot then I quit smoking cigarettes then I stopped binging and purging right so these like low level thing not low level things but this like low hanging fruit of how I was killing myself. But then I started to say like okay if I can do that like I've also had this longing to have my own company I've also had this longing to travel extensively also. You know, I mean it just like opens up the world of possibilities when you do this one thing that to be honest most people feel that they can't do what you did most people I'm sure you've heard this time and again, like are amazed by the fact that you don't drink. Am I right. I'm amazed. But it's so boring. It's so boring to me now when people are so amazed. It's like, I don't mean that it's disrespect to people but I'm like, I'm just like really it's like, oh, it's like, I don't need to have alcohol to fit in for God's sake. So like, I haven't drunk in almost seven years. I feel amazing. I'm happy. Everything's cool. And you know what, here's the other thing. Holy, this is what I will say. If I drink again. It's okay. If I go back to having the occasional drink for me. It's all right. Just like people who take my 30 day no alcohol challenge. I don't tell them that alcohol is the devil and you should never drink alcohol again. I don't say that. Right. I say, listen quit for 30 days. See how you feel. Like it. Just keep staying quit. And if you want to go back to drinking, then go back to drinking and people who do go back to drinking holy usually go back at a far reduced rate than what they were drinking beforehand. So what's that sorry. It's harm reduction. And you're giving people an option away from abstinence only. Right. So I, you know, look, I might, I might go back, I might go back to Australia and Christmas and catch up with some friends on a Sunday afternoon and go and watch the cricket and someone might offer me a four X beer or a Fosters beer or something. And I might just go, yeah, what the hell? It's been seven years. I'll have a beer and I'll drink it and that'll be okay. And I'll tell my community and I'll say, yeah, I had a beer and I'll tell the experience. It's not like I'm all of a sudden I'm a failure because I had a drink again. It's not the devil. It's just, if it is affecting you, if it is holding you back, if it is slowing you down, if it is causing you depression, if you are feeling trapped, if you feel like you're using it for a crutch or a social crutch, then it's possibly the devil. But if you feel like you can enjoy the occasional drink and you genuinely enjoy the taste and it's okay, then it's okay. That's what I say. I don't, I don't know if I agree with all that. And first, like, first I want to say because I don't think that everybody can just go back and forth. I work with a lot of people that might have been, you know, not drank for 14 years and then that drink again and it does end up like putting them into, you know, a shitty back and forth. And so I don't think that everybody can just be as free with it. I don't think that I, I can never drink again. I'm never going to drink again. I never want to drink again. So I don't have that attitude towards it. I do have the attitude, I do believe that people are allowed to figure out their own path and that we have a very, very messed up idea of what relapse means or what what drinking means after you've tried to stop or you have stopped for some period of time. I think there needs to be a huge, like that's a huge area that needs to be overhauled because it's not failure. You don't go back to where you started like you were to drink right now wouldn't mean that you've lost any sort of changes that you've made. You go forward. And so, but I do believe that I mean for me, I don't I think that it's one of those things like the one of the most painful parts. And it is the cognitive dissonance which is that which happens to a lot of people and I think these entry points are really great like try it on see how it works. I think like, you know, I think harm reduction is great drink less. I do know when we get into this place, just from experience, I've worked with now over 600 people, right, like specifically in a coaching program to help people quit drinking intimately. And I understand one of the parts that makes this really hard for people is this I want it. I don't want it. I want it. I don't want it. I want it. I don't want it. And one of the things that was the most freeing part for me was just for questioning it was just getting to a point where I no longer had to think about it right like I'm not thinking am I going to drink when I go home on holidays. Am I going to drink at that brunch, because that for a lot of people ends up being one of the hardest parts which is thinking about it and the obsession that can come along with that. Am I going to drink tomorrow night or not, you know, how how much is everybody else drinking like the thinking about is the part that I have freedom from I never think about it, never think about it, ever. Never think about it. And that's because I'm never going to do it again. I never think about it either but I can also confidently say that if I have another drink again it's okay. That's you but that's you that's not somebody that is like on I mean addiction is a progressive thing and once it like starts to rewire your brain once you create specific neural connections into your brain. They never go away. Right. They never go away. So if you have an end brain and when you get into addiction itself not what causes addiction but addiction specifically the way the brain is is is connected. You never like it changes the wiring of your brain and your brain is plastic and you can change and I change and many, many people change the wiring of their brain that those networks they dormant and if you had if you were in a like a serious addiction with it. It doesn't just go away. All of those things all those things that came together that created that construct within your brain. They don't go away. This is why some people years later can like, I don't know for me I can like on a warm day. You know just for a second forget and like his different senses come together to remind me of what it was to have a beer at a barbecue on a warm day. Things don't go away and so I think for certain for some people you know for you you said at the beginning like you were just socially drinking too much it wasn't you know and and that's fine. But for a lot of people they're looking for that that like that oh I you know like I can do this and for a lot of people they just can't you can't mess with it anymore. Like I like for me I could go out and have cocaine. No problem. Never had a really big thing with cocaine. I can take a line and I'd be done. But with alcohol with pot with cigarettes. It wouldn't work that way for me. Yeah, I never pretended to be and I still don't pretend to be a doctor. I don't pretend to be anything other than what I am which is someone who considered himself to be a social drinker who quit one day and learned how to stay quit. So I always say to people who follow me either is you know if they're an official member of the 30 day no alcohol challenge or if they're just following me on my Instagram page where I do a lot of memes and sort of inspirational stuff around drinking. If you believe yourself to be more than just you know a social drinker and you feel like you're seriously addicted go out and seek professional help or go and go somewhere else like try somewhere else because I personally. I cannot relate to the addicted drinker like there's someone who's like full on alcoholic because I don't ever feel like that I was that person. So I'm saying you know I don't think drinking is the devil. I'm saying that from my own perception of how I drank for the first 35 years. Well actually I wasn't drinking since I was a baby. I started drinks I was 17 but for about 17 or 18 years that I was drinking until I stopped. So I think there's a lot of different ways to help different types of people depending on what their relationship is with alcohol. I just say in my 30 day no alcohol challenge this is a way for you to re explore your relationship with alcohol. And then from there you figure out what works best what doesn't work best Alan's Alan Carr's book works for some people other people that just doesn't. Alcoholics anonymous some people need alcoholics anonymous they have to go there they have to have a 12 step program they have to say my name's James and I'm an alcoholic in order for them to really go through it sure as hell wouldn't have worked for me. It doesn't sound like it worked for you. I know lots of people have gone there and said they hated it didn't work for them. So I'm not pretending that mine is the answer to fit every scenario but I am saying it's the answer for many for many people in a certain scenario. But like anything try lots of things like you said hello Sunday morning is good. Check out hip sobriety.com you can check out my 30 day no alcohol challenge Alan Carr's book books are very good. But just get into the conversation though because otherwise you just you just slowly killing killing yourself. Well that's the point is it's just and I don't I didn't mean to come off and say your ways wrong. I'm just all I'm saying is making that very clear that one very clear point that that's not the case for many people. But I think I think entry points are really important. A lot of the reasons that people don't a lot of the reasons that addiction progresses or it gets to a progressive state is because people don't look at it. Right there's no there's no stops there's no speed bumps along the way there's no like safe place for people to examine their relationship and something like regardless of how far along you are something like the 30 day challenge gives you that space to be able to serve and see what your relationship is with that it gives it in this US and assessment point so that you can then go out and free as yourself and do what you feel that the people really need this this they need this space to be able to explore it without stigma. Yeah, the space to be able to be like to be able to do it and not feel like it's the end of their lives with the end of the world, or that there are other. I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful what you're doing. Well, we're on the we're on the we're on the home would stretch here let's do the last few things here I've seen number eight nine 10 and 11 number eight of your manifesto is failure is a good thing. Number nine is that your hangovers go away and your social life does it just because you stop drinking does not mean your life ends on the contrary your life is just beginning you can. Yes, you love to do before the only difference is that you have natural real self confidence to aid you real happiness to support it and you remember everything just explain that a little bit Holly. Well, which part of it the whole thing I mean you're just a lot of people worried like we talked about of losing their social life they're really worried that I was only fun when I was drunk they're really worried that that was where they got their edge from. And like for me I drank whiskey needs and I lived in San Francisco and I went to fancy dinners with wine pairing and all of my social life was I mean even you know baby showers everything was wrapped up into alcohol and also this idea of who I was when I drank. And my connections have been made throughout also a lot of this this the fear that we have around quitting drinking is that we're not we're going to be boring. And we're going to lose our edge and that we also are not going to have like we're not going to be able to experience the things that we experienced before and it's just not true I mean, there's a period of adjustment like for me personally there was a period of adjustment. I still went out but for there is my friendships have changed. But the thing that's been the most surprising is that my edge has remained and I haven't lost that part of me at that like rebellious part of me it just finds healthier channels to come out. Because you cannot fundamentally change your like you cannot removing alcohol does not remove what was in you to begin with that had that social life that had that sense of humor that had all of those things that you were attributing to alcohol that ability to connect with people. It's just a mask it's just a shortcut and a cheap shortcut. And so the bonus here is that you do something that know that not a lot of people are doing right you start not drinking and you kind of have to start relying on this natural thing here and your own self confidence. And then you begin to accumulate more self confidence because you were doing this thing that no one else is doing and because you like have to stand on your own two feet without a mask. And then over time it just becomes this it's it's rich. And so for me, my everything when it comes to social is better. And I haven't lost anything that wasn't worth losing. And a lot of people have this very, very, very, very, this idea that you just go off into a corner and you die. You just stay in your corner and you watch movies and you know you find some friends and you laugh, you know like ha ha ha, it just like it's not like that it's so much bigger. Well thank you so much Holly thank you for those inspiring words make sure you check out Holly Whitaker's blog it's hip sobriety.com. This amazing content there. Where else can we find you Holly. I'm I do a podcast called home podcast and you can find us at home podcast.org. And I post quite frequently on Instagram and I'm just tips variety on Instagram. But yeah, thank you so much it's been awesome. Yeah, thank you for inspiring people and keep doing what you're doing Holly and to you the listener and to the viewer thank you for listening and watching and we'll catch you on the next one see you.