6 Things To Expect At 6 Months Alcohol Free

. If you stopped drinking alcohol for six months , what can you expect ? Well , after not drinking myself for almost seven years and through helping hundreds of clients get to the six-month mark , I'm going to unpack six things that you can expect when you go six months alcohol-free . Hey , but listen , I'm not going to be some motivational speaker here .

That's just going to be like , hey , things are going to be great , happy days . No , I'm actually going to give you some of the things that you might not expect to happen , but I want to do it . So you're prepared . Don't get me wrong . Good things are going to happen .

But the fifth thing that I'm going to talk to you about I mean that one is going to be touchy , but it could save you , so make sure to watch this entire video . A very quick introduction . My name is Leon Sylvester . I'm the founder of SoberClear . We're a coaching company that helps business owners . We help professionals .

We help people get control of their drinking quickly . We have a totally new method and if you want to understand how it works , I've just finished off a totally new video training that shows you how it works , but it also breaks down the science behind the method .

What we do is totally different to everything else out there and in this new video training is actually break down the findings of what this academic psychologist

found , who we commissioned to go and study the efficacy of our new method . So if you want to access a video training that shows you how to use it and shows you the findings of this report , just click the link down below to go and watch that . There's nothing for sale on that video .

It's totally free , but it will show you a new way to control your drinking fast . So what I'm going to ignore at this point now is what method you've chosen to use , because the thing is is there are different ways to stop drinking . Some people are going to have stopped drinking with willpower , right . Some of you are going to have used AA meetings .

Some of you might be watching this video just purely curious about what you could expect at six months . So I'm going to ignore intricacies of different methods and stuff like that . So I'm just going to presume you've stopped drinking and not think about the methods .

So the first thing that you can expect at the six-month mark is energy levels have started to stabilize .

So what can happen when you stop drinking is the first week you can feel slightly rough , you can feel pretty down , you can feel pretty lethargic and it's kind of like this whiplash , because you've been drinking , you've been elevating your dopamine through a drug . Then all of a sudden the artificial dopamine's gone . So you can end up with this kind of crash .

And this all depends on the individual , right . But by the six month mark things start stabilizing . Now , for me my energy came back almost instantly . But you know , I stopped drinking in my twenties . I didn't stop drinking in my fifts or my 60s , and I've worked with clients who have drank for 50 years . Right , they've drank their entire life .

So for them it was a very different process . It took time for them to kind of feel normal . So by the six-month mark , 99.9% of people , the energy will be fixed , they'll feel totally normal and it'll feel stable . But it all depends on the individual . The months leading up to that it can fluctuate . We have good days , we have bad days .

It all just depends on the person , and , alongside energy levels , other good things start happening , like general well-being starts to just be there . You just feel good about yourself and also your mood generally stabilizes around this point as well .

But what you can really expect at six months is pretty much every single person across the board will start to feel stable and again , like I said , for me , that happened within the first week . For others it can take six months , but by this point you're stable

Now . The second thing you can expect is now . This isn't going to be relevant to everybody , but it was definitely relevant to me but things like anxiety and depression should have lessened . Now I'm not here to diagnose people with things like this . All I can really do with this is share my own experience .

What I found is that when I drank alcohol is I would often get like this crippling anxiety , and it would always happen Like the night after a heavy night . I'd wake up the next day and I would just feel so anxious . They call it anxiety , and when I stopped drinking alcohol , I made a video about this , like when I was maybe one year sober .

But what I found is that it wasn't this miracle cure . Anxiety is typically about a fear of something happening in the future . Not always right , but a lot of the times we feel anxious about the future . And when I stopped drinking alcohol there were still so many unknowns . My life was still a disaster . I destroyed everything .

I destroyed my business , I destroyed a relationship , I'd run out of money , I was in a bad place , and just by stopping drinking alcohol didn't miraculously fix my entire life like that . But what happened is I just kept putting one step in front of the other and just slowly started rebuilding things . That fear of the future started to drop dramatically .

But I'm not saying there weren't days in that first six months where I didn't get anxious . There were , but by the six month point it lessened dramatically . The same with depression symptoms . Now , I don't think I ever truly suffered with depression , but when I drank I did feel depressed .

I'm not saying I would ever have been necessarily clinically diagnosed with that disorder , but when I stopped drinking alcohol , like any depressive symptoms , they pretty much just went out the window . Anxiety was a little bit of a different kind of thing , but feelings of depression for me I think they just completely disappeared .

I don't think I felt depressed in stopping once . So for me , I know that there was a massive link to feeling crap and drinking alcohol , but by the six-month point these kind of things they should have dropped dramatically . I'm not saying that they're going to go away completely , but alcohol often exacerbates these two things .

The third thing at the six-month mark is the trust in your relationships will have started to rebuild

. Now I don't know exactly where you are in your journey . Right , I've worked with people who have drank for years . You know alcohol has strained so many of their relationships and they're kind of beyond repair .

I've also worked with people whose marriage was really on the rocks and you know they were at a place where , you know , the wife was just so upset with them , the husband was so upset with them , but they were willing to give them another chance .

So , whilst I can't promise anything at six months , what I typically see happening amongst the people that I work with and in my own life is that the trust that you've lost in certain relationships because of alcohol is starting to rebuild .

My daughter is absolutely delighted with me and she actually said you know , I've got my dad back , which was an awesome thing , because I didn't know . You know I've told you before I didn't realise they'd gone . My relationship with my wife is , I mean , just a 180 degrees . It's just been phenomenal . My marriage has definitely been so much better .

My wife and I are just on a completely different level . My kids are very supportive Because , instead of you promising somebody you're not going to drink .

You're now six months without a drink , because a lot of the times when it comes to relationships is I don't know about you , but I've told my friends and family a million times that I'm going to stop drinking alcohol , only to let them down .

But when I finally did it and I stayed sober , they're starting to think all right , he's for real this time and it's a great feeling . But on this topic of relationships , it's not just about your external relationships . The other amazing thing that starts happening is the relationship you have with yourself improves in ways that you cannot imagine .

I tried to stop drinking for 10 years , so can you imagine the relationship I had with myself ? I kept trying to stop , I kept making promises to myself and I kept breaking them . So when I finally stopped drinking and I went six months without drinking , I felt this new belief in myself .

Now , that actually happened really early on , I felt that self-trust come back . I don't know in the first week , but by six months I had so much trust in myself that I could start thinking bigger . I started setting bigger goals . I started thinking , okay , if I could do this , I could do that , if I could do that , I could do this .

And I started rebuilding self-confidence and self-trust and that was one of the best things that happened to me , and I hear that all the time with the people that I work with . The fourth thing to expect is the and now this is where I'm going to start getting

realistic with you . At around the six-month mark , you will start to feel grounded in your decision to not drink , but you will still think about drinking alcohol . It is impossible to not think about drinking alcohol . I don't know if you've read Stop Drinking Books before , but they'll always bring up this topic . You cannot stop thinking about alcohol .

We live in a world that is dominated by this drug . It's in every supermarket , it's in every TV show you watch , it's in every movie . The world is dominated by this drug and whether you're a week sober , six months sober , sometimes even people that are three years sober , you'll still get these thoughts of drinking .

But I wanted to let you know that these thoughts are totally normal . During the first year of me stopping drinking is , I'd get the thoughts a lot more regularly and then over time they just dropped until it was like every six months . And then , after a year of not drinking is , maybe I'd think about drinking , like I don't know three times a year .

Then it might have been every year and , to be honest , I think the last time I thought about drinking alcohol was like two or three years ago now , like it just is out of my head . But during those first six months you can expect those thoughts to come up . But the important thing is what you do with the thought .

If you start thinking about alcohol and start thinking that you're missing out by not drinking , then it's a recipe for disaster .

But if you can counteract those thoughts with feelings of like okay , what I'm doing is awesome , and if you've truly reframed the way that you view alcohol , those thoughts can actually be very positive because it can remind you of the amazing decision that you've made rather than make you feel like you're missing out on something .

Now , again , this is something that I specialize on doing If you want to go and learn more about the program , the method , how I actually help people . Go and watch that free video training that shows you more about the reframing process that we use . So you can click the link in the description to go and learn about the report , the method , all that stuff .

But just expect some thoughts to come up and maybe even expect some kind of emotional wobble . I told you I wasn't going to be 100% positive , but I want to be realistic , which leads me

to the fifth point . Now this one is going to be the harshest of all , but it's the most important . So please pay close attention . Once you reach the six-month mark , you will feel normal . What I mean by this is not drinking alcohol will just be your new baseline .

See , when you first stop drinking alcohol , you'll go through this temporary dip that can last a few days , maybe a couple of weeks , but then what will happen is that you will then start feeling good and in your memory you'll remember how bad things were .

So you have this very clear point of contrast , and what can happen is , over the first few months of stopping drinking alcohol is you're just feeling better and better and better . But there will be a point , maybe at the six month mark , maybe at the three month mark , but you'll get to a point where things just stabilize . You just feel normal .

This is your new baseline , and what happens at this point is we forget what it was like , we forget about the pain , we forget about the hangovers , we forget about the upset relationships and everything just feels kind of normal . But that severe contrast that you had when you were first getting started has gone .

So one of the most powerful things that you can do is never forget why you're doing this . What I get all my clients to do is write down 10 reasons why they're committed to actually going through with this , so they can look back at this six months down the road when those thoughts are coming back . Because , trust me , I've been there .

I've been six months sober , I've done it with willpower , and then that thought came back and then boom , I'm straight back to drinking again . Before you know it , life's back to ground zero . But I want to warn you that things will just feel normal . You'll almost forget that you drank . Now the sixth and final thing .

I really want to leave this on a positive note , but I just wanted to be realistic

with you . But the sixth and final thing is this If you're six months sober and you make it to six months , firstly , congratulations . But what you've got to realize is this is just the beginning . Six months of not drinking is awesome . It's an achievement , right ? It's a great thing to get to .

But I'm telling you , once you get that long-term sobriety right One year , two years , five years , 10 years I just don't think you know how good life can become . See , a lot of the people who I've helped had no idea what they were capable of . So just keep focused , keep locked in , keep the momentum going .

Thanks for checking out the Stop Drinking Podcast by Sober Clear . If you want to learn more about how we work with people to help them stop drinking effortlessly , then make sure to visit wwwsoberclearcom .