266. The psychology of alcohol

even more hours behind a microphone. One podcast wasn't enough. But Martra is basically a weekly podcast that I put out every single Monday that gives you a phrase and affirmation for your week to help you guide your week, whether it is I release the need for external validation,

I cultivate peace within I create my own reality. We go into what each mantra means at the start of every week to kind of give you some guidance and some inspiration as you start things off and as you get into it whatever it is you are going through. So the first episode was released yesterday on the thirteenth of January, and the love that you guys have poured

into that show already left me kind of speechless. So thank you so much for those who have already listened, already rated the show, who are following along on Instagram, every single little two second act, whether you're rating it, whether you're just playing the first you know, thirty seconds, whether you honestly just hit follow, means the world. So

I really really appreciate it. But with that aside, just to say a big thank you, I want to talk about today's topic, because today we are talking about alcohol, specifically what alcohol does to our brains, how it impacts us emotionally and psychologically, and also this shift we're kind of seeing in society today towards sobriety, especially in our generation of twenty somethings. A lot of us are starting to question whether our current drinking habits, both individually and

as a culture, are really what's best. And this has been a big topic of conversation in my life at the moment. It's been coming up everywhere I look because I'm doing dry January, and you know what, I just kind of said it as a personal challenge, and if I'm being completely honest with you all, I did not expect it to be as hard as it was. It honestly shocked me a bit because I'm not someone who's

ever had a problem with alcohol. I could always stop drinking when I wanted, But suddenly these thirty days have been hard, and it's really got me thinking about, well, the psychology of alcohol and the role that it plays during this decade of life. I think it's been so difficult because every social event or thing that's happening, every interaction or opportunity to out with my friends kind of

has alcohol at the center. Maybe not every single event, but probably every second one, whether it's going to the pub, going out for drinks, going to a party, a birthday of celebration, dinner, alcohol is very much at the center. And honestly, as someone who actually does like the taste of wine and who will have a few glasses of wine or a beer, I never really noticed how dependent those situations felt on drinking until I put myself in a position where I couldn't participate in kind of the

group activity. What I have noticed has been really interesting as well, both health wise, mental health wise, brain wise, but also social wise. So I want to not only discuss the role of alcohol on our brains and our bodies, because I think that's just something we should all understand. But also what happens when we quit alcohol, what changes you're likely to notice, how to deal with things like hangs out, and the rise of sober curiosity amongst us.

Also some of the things I've learned going out sober that might surprise you. I also want to go kind of more in depth into the psychology of dependence, substance abuse, why we do feel like alcohol is so conditioned into how we socialize, and so much more. I think this episode is really important and it's essential listening if you're in your twenties and beyond, because how often do we really pause and consider how big of a role this substance plays in our lives. You know, until recently, I

hadn't really done that thinking. So this is also such a really richly and deeply researched area.

pat first. How is alcohol process by the body? Why does it make us feel the way it does good and bad? What is the impact on the brain. Three things we really need to know. So first thing to know when you have a glass of wine, when you have a little apparol, sprits, your martini, your shots of vodka, whatever it is, insert drink of choice here. The key chemical or substance that we are interested in that makes alcohol alcohol is ethanol. This is what is going to

make you feel tipsy or drunk. And ethanol is really just a byproduct of the fermentation of a plant. So for wine, it's grapes, For beer, it's barley, for vode curates, potatoes or sugar or rice gin it's juniper berries. And fermentation basically just means that the fruit is rotting, it's fermenting. So when you drink alcohol, you're basically just drinking some

really funky juice. You know, something that is rotten. And it's important to note that our body actually sees that in some ways as poison, like it's not meant to be here, even if it feels nice. If you, for example, see someone throw up from drinking too much alcohol on a night out, that is basically your body being like, oh my gosh, we have been poisoned. Get this stuff out of me. And I remember someone telling me that

when I was at Uni. Actually she was like, that is your body responding to an overdose, a poison overdose, And it really changed my whole perspective on how much I would drink on a night out. Like binge drinking was just so casually prevalent in my university experience that hearing that person explain it that way like kind of really shocked me. So, you know, on a less extreme note, when our body metabolizes alcohol ethanol, even in small quantities,

a number of things happen. I'm not going to get too scientific, but essentially it can only be processed by our liver, which essentially does see ethanol as something that is harmful and it tries to clear it out of our system. It tries to clear it out of our body by processing it. But when we have more than the liver can process at any given time. This excess alcohol in our body is what starts to give us that loose, drunken, tipsy feeling because the alcohol is not

being processed as fast as it's coming in. That's not necessarily a problem at low levels. Only at high levels, and all those feelings that we are going to be experiencing occur because alcohol is not only a drug, but it's what we call a depressant drug. So in comparison to stimulant drugs like MDMA, cocaine, that sort of thing we have to press in drugs like alcohol marijuana. Now they're called depressants because of the impact they have on

the central nervous system. And the impact that alcohol or ethanol has is one of basically sedation. So your central nervous system, hear that come up a lot. It is made up of two things, your brain and your spine, your spinal cord. And alcohol is actually one of the few substances that can cross the blood brain barrier, meaning that it can almost reach into our brain cells and impact them directly.

all this information. And alcohol is like going into that warehouse and slowly turning down the lights so that none of those little worker neurons can see where they're going, and they can't talk as easily. That is basically alcohol's effect. It is kind of shutting down the systems, making it harder for your neurons to talk. Now, this, this depress an effect on our brain is what creates so many

of those typical effects that we associate with drinking. So big one feeling a little bit clumsy, a bit slower, but also less inhibited because all of those parts of your brain that would normally tell you to hush or would respond to physical stimuli, they are kind of quietening down. They're finding it harder to communicate with each other. Think about like, in a normal circumstance, you go to say something embarrassing or weird, and your brain goes Okay, let's

read this, Let's read the cues. Let's think this through. We're not going to say that, but when you're drinking, your brain gets to that realization a little bit too slow. It all so slows down our anxiety, meaning that your anxious thoughts for a lot of us finally seem quieter. We're going to talk about that in a second and why that's actually going to backfire on you. Another impact that alcohol has that comes from that sedative effect is

slurred speech. It's why you should also never drive when drinking, because your response times are slower, even if you don't think that they are. It's why we feel sleepy. Alcohol also causes our brain to release something called opioid peptides, which basically are the thing that signals the brain to release dopamine and serotonin. And when they do, those areas of our brain open the floodglates and they let out.

They make more of these neurotransmitters available to us, which is what makes us feel really happy and euphoric because of how this substance impacts our reward pathways and also the release of dolphins. So alcohol triggers opioid peptides, which trigger dopamine and serotonin and in the process also release releases in dolphins. It's interesting because they actually only really discovered that this is what was happening, this peptide to

don't mean to endorphin link about twelve years ago. You know, they long assumed it, but it was really hard to prove that this was what was why alcohol made us so happy. The way they did finally prove it was that they did a study back in twenty twelve where they injected twenty five people, half of whom were heavy drinkers, half of whom weren't, with a drug that would bind

to their opioid receptors. But then they radioactively tagged those receptors, so they basically gave them like a low level of a drug that stimulated their opioid receptors, and that drug would obviously attach to those receptors so they could see where they were in the brain. And then they asked them to drink alcohol. And the people who got particularly a lot of pleasure out of drinking, so heavy drinkers, they all those areas, those places where the opioid peptides

were located based on that previous drug insertion. They lit up even further, and so that really showed researchers and scientists only twelve years ago that that was the system and the reason why we get that euphoric feeling. So the effects of alcohol they're not just physical and biological, they're also really psychological, not just because of that happy feeling, but because of the impact on our mind and our

mood in general, and also our personality. This amazing paper from two thousand and eight titled why do we drink puts it really perfectly. We drink because of alcohol's ability to alter our emotional state and make us more like the person we actually want to be, even if just for a second. We want to be the confident person, the relaxed person, the disinhibited person, the less stress person.

And because alcohol gives us a gateway to this realization of the ideal self, that is actually what can make it so addictive and what can fuel dependency. You know, it's not just the feeling, it's who it makes us become in comparison to who we are in our everyday lives. You know, that is one factor. I also think the other factor why the other reason it's so normalized and while widely used, is of course, the social element to it. How can we forget that?

way of communicating and socializing. You know, the earliest evidence of humans making and drinking alcohol was from seven thousand BC, before Christ. That is a lot of years ago. That is definitely not modern history. Actually, where they found this wine was in China in what is now known as the Yellow River Valley, and it really goes to show that humans have for a long time used this substance to alter their state of mind and for enjoyment.

storing memories. So although you might be awake and you might be currently experiencing your reality, your brain cannot take those moments and store them properly. So that is what leads to those gaps in what you can remember everything that you're experiencing when you're really drunk on a night out or wherever you are. Basically, it's only able to be temporarily held in sensory and short term memory, which you know normally has a life expectancy of about a

couple of minutes. So that's why you might wake up the next morning and so, hey, this is so blurry, I can't remember saying that I can't remember doing that, even though you hadn't necessarily passed out at any point. When we pass out, on the other hand, what we're experiencing is as I described before, basically minor alcohol poisoning. And when I say minor, I mean less extreme than the worst case scenario. But honestly, any kind of alcohol

poisoning is not that great. And the next morning, you know, how can we talk about the psychology of alcohol and not talk about the next day. When we've drunk past that limit, we get a hangover, and that's typically due to dehydration and because when your liver breaks down alcohol, a byproduct is called en settle a hyde, which is what makes you really nauseous and gives you headaches. And then we also have anxiety as a component of that. I made a full episode on anxiety maybe two years ago.

The episode is called The Psychology of Anxiety that goes really into depth on this subject, but as a summary, when we drink, part of why we feel that calm feeling I was talking about is also because of the release of a neurotransmitter called gabba, and in response to alcohol, our brain dumps a bunch of this into our body. Gaba has that the sedative effect. It really slows things down. It reduces your anxiety, It reduces chata.

the right level and restore that normal chemical balance. So it's pumping in more glutamate, pumping in more gaba, pumping in more glutamating, and you know they're kind of trying to race to the top, and your anxiety is rising and rising. That is why you can feel really overwhelmed by, oh my god, what did.

wears off. You might feel uninhibited, but the next day you feel anxious again. And for me, alcohol also was just a really terrible contributor to my mental health because obviously, like you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you've had a really hard day, you might have a couple glasses of wine. But I was finding that I would wake up the next day. Firstly, I wasn't as productive. I didn't have a much mental clarity, which is so important to me.

But secondly, all of my anxious, stressful, worrisome feelings and sensations were just heightened and elevated, and it was unbearable. And that is something that I have noticed, you know, in this short period of time and the two weeks that I haven't been drinking, my anxiety symptoms have declined, like they're still there, but they feel manageable. Also, I'm getting, you know, writing less of a wave, like an up and down wave of spiked emotions from really jubilant to

really you know, terrified and sad. Very interested to see how that goes, like in the next two weeks, after a month, and even if I can do like six months, I don't know. I've got, you know, my book coming out. I kind of want to have a little glass of

champagne with that. But even in moderation, whether my alcohol consumption is something that is directly correlated to poor men health episodes for me, I do want to put in like a little disclaimer here, like this advice and information I'm presenting isn't presented in a way to just be like everyone be sober and trying to dissuade you from ever drinking again. Like I think I will eventually drink again.

I just also think that what I needed to understand was some of the consequences and you know, really reacknowledging myself what was happening in my body in response to alcohol and whether I was willing to opt into that interaction or whether I'd be better off without it. But I honestly do think like I'll drink again. I probably will get drunk again, probably a couple of times. So this isn't like a blanket if you're listening to this never drink again kind of episode. I just think that

any form of education gives you an informed choice. And you can take this and be like, cool, I'm still going to get blackout drunk, and I wouldn't you know, can, I wouldn't promote that, But it's still your choice as long as you know what you're doing to your body. All right, let's take a shit short break because something we haven't spoken about yet is the psychology behind alcohol dependency and addiction. I think that deserves its whole section of the podcast, so we will be back after this

short break. Why is it that some people cannot stop drinking when they start? Why do some people get really drunk, make terrible mistakes, ruin relationships and they still cannot quit. Basically, I think the question that I'm asking is what makes alcohol so addictive for some people? And it really, it really is, even if we don't acknowledge it. Researchers at Oxford University they've actually called it the second most addictive drug on the planet, second only to heroin. Like that's

wild to me, Yet it's so widely accepted. If you know we're all going around doing heroin every Friday, Saturday, in odd Tuesday, you best believe that your friends would be like, hey, intervention happening here. This isn't a good idea, But alcohol is just not treated with the same level of caution. What really makes alcohol so addictive, and I've already kind of mentioned it is what it does to us psychologically as well as physically and psychologically. What it

does is that it numbs us. But not only that, it also lights up the reward centers in our brain. So you know, of course our brain is going to continue to repeat behaviors, will tell us to repeat behaviors that are pleasurable, rewarding. And also, you know, alcohol provides relief in a sense from really hard things, from negative circumstances. When that association between you know, alcohol makes me happy,

alcohol takes away bad things. When that association becomes a pattern, that becomes a habit, it becomes a lot harder and harder to stop. We also have to acknowledge, you know, a lot of people feel more like themselves, I guess in their drunk state, and so of course they're going to continue to drink, and sometimes drink heavily to put them back in the shoes of this person they wish

that they were. This Really, this pattern and association is really the neurological basis for addiction, and we typically see addiction as happening in three stages. So for speaking of alcohol, often people begin with the binge and intoxication stage, where we're experiencing all the pleasure, we're experiencing, all the happy thoughts. We associate drinking with really fun things, environments, people, and

it hasn't gotten bad yet. But then we get to the withdrawal period, where it just feels crap to not be drinking because of the hangovers, whatever, and also the negative effects stage. So when we do stop, we become irritable, sad, depressed, anxious, anxious, so we drink again to reduce the stress of not drinking. And then that is really followed by the preoccupation and anticipation stage. This is when we have strong urges, we

have cravings when they're not acceptable. Maybe we are watching the clock for five PM with sneaking.

It's genetic factors, and recent studies, including one from only last year, have showed that there are certain genes associated with an addiction or dependency on alcohol, and those genes are inherited some you know, scientists, some researchers even call substance use disorders or alcoholism a complex genetic disease, a genetic disease like you know, those that cause birth defects or birth deformities. And it's also linked to generational trauma.

It's linked to environment, to learned behaviors, all of which are kind of passed down from those above us, passed down from our family. And you know, of course trauma comes into play here. You know, a study in Australia found that a third of adults who were exposed to childhood trauma go on to abuse alcohol later in life,

a third of them. And you know, as a country who has Australia being you know as a terrible history, a terrible, terrible history, you know, you can see why people whose families and whose culture have endured that suffering would have problems with alcohol because, as it's called it's a complex genetic and generational disease. That's how some people

really see it. This is why I really think that people who struggle with alcoholism or substance addiction or abuse of any kind, they deserve so much sympathy.

fall into that pattern. I've seen this in people that I know who seem totally fine and normal but have serious problems with alcohol. They're just able to hide it because they have a good support network, because of you know, other things.

to help us manage stress, bad thoughts, inadequacy. It does remove bad feelings, but it also prevents a deeper, truer form of emotional coping. I think we really need to articulate the distinction here between dependence, abuse and addiction, because they are used very interchangeably. Even I've been doing so so let's clarify this for a second. When people use the term dependence, they are usually referring to a physical

dependence on a substance. So what that is characterized by is symptoms of increased tolerance, so it's harder for you to get drunk even as you drink more. And also withdrawal, so obviously withdrawal is the removal of the substance.

psychological changes you know, linked to substance abuse. The substance, and in this case it's alcohol, becomes the main priority for someone who is suffering from addiction, regardless of the harm they cause to themselves or others. So this is a really important part, even if it's hurting family members, even if you're going to lose your job, like you

just cannot stop you just cannot stop. Something interesting, though, is that you can be addicted to alcohol and not abusing it or even using it, Like you could be completely sober and still addicted to alcohol, which sounds strange, but it's actually a very core philosophy of alcoholics anonymous that you're basically always going to be an addict.

be associated with this substance. So some people have said that idea that you're always an addict is not necessarily good for an optimistic internal environment.

like that is not something that they can do. So, wherever you sit on that kind of scale of whether you think it should exist, that you're always an addict or not, like it's very much an individual choice, what's going to allow you to move past dependency and addiction in the best way. There is also, I think one less severe level of alcohol dependence or abuse that I would call context based dependence. And I think this particularly applies to our twenties. You might not have a problem

with alcohol. You might be able to stop for weeks or months, maybe just weeks, let's say that, maybe a couple of days. But you know, every time your friends say, come out with us, let's go to the club. My god, I sound so old, Like let's go clubbing, let's go out, let's go to this party, you have to drink. You feel like once you're in that environment there.

who gets to the party and can't stop drinking. So I think it's really worth reflecting on whether the choice to drink in those moments is truly yours or if you're being influenced by the environment, by other people's expectations of you, and kind of just like this context based reliance. You know, if you don't feel good after drinking, and if you always like, God, I don't want to do

that again. If you feel pressured, if you know you want to go for a run the next day but you still end up going too far, I think that that's when you know it's a bit of a dangerous social habit. Perhaps even for you. It's more linked to FOMA right in the way alcohol juices stress in a situation or makes it feel like you belong. You don't

want to miss out on the fun. Perhaps it's a fear of social exclusion, of not being part of the interesting stories, of not being part of the moment, But it is something that I think if you're in your twenties, you need to recognize how does drinking and social acceptance go hand in hand. Something really positive that I've seen. You know, more and more though, is a lot of us taking the sober route or being sober curious, that's the name for it.

and sober curiosity. Is this amazing kind of lifestyle choice that doesn't require complete commitment to going sober for the rest of your life, but it does mean that you can choose to kind of dip your toes into occasional or periodic sobriety and just kind of modify your drinking

habits without feeling like it's all or nothing. You know, it's not because you're necessarily worried about dependency it's more that you've evaluated what drinking costs you versus what you would benefit from cutting down or going sober for small periods of time. I have noticed that more and more in my own social circles. Something I actually noticed recently was more non alcoholic drinks being available at parties.

You sleep better, you are less stressed because you're not artificially elevating and then lowering and then elevating again your gabber and glutamate levels, so your brain and body is able to find that sweet spot and stay there. You know, if you drink quite a bit and then you suddenly stop, sometimes you do experience like a strange spike and anxiety in the first few weeks because your brain is adjusting to not having this substance. To reduce or relax it.

But after a while, like it turns out that your body can manage that stress itself, it doesn't need the help of alcohol. We also see regeneration in the frontal lobe,

which is where alcohol hits the hardest. The frontal lobe and the cerebellum, and the frontal lobe is responsible for a lot of our executive functioning and decision making, self control, our emotions, personality, And sometimes you might not know it, but prolonged and heavy drinking actually kills off brain cells in that area and across the brain, and it causes your brain to shrink, It reduces brain volume. So that is why alcohol is so often implicated in neurological diseases

like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. When you are young and you cut back, you're giving your brain more of a chance, and you're allowing your brain space to prune, rewire, keep those cells healthy. And that's why you may see an increase in mental clarity. Oh my goodness, if I have not noticed that I have less brain fog, almost none. At the moment, you feel refreshed, you can get more done. Also, you know, because your sleep is likely improved as well,

Like this is all coming together. It's a common myth that you know, alcohol helps you sleep. It's where the term nightcap came from, like having a drink a cap of something to help you fall asleep. Actually, to myth, bust that one.

And it's still made a really big difference, Like, oh my goodness, even my hands and like my face is the big one where I just feel less like bloated and less like puffy. And it's really hard to like see I think if you are someone like just like a friend or a stranger and you weren't seeing my face every day, but obviously as someone who sees it every day, like I've definitely noticed this decline. Your liver

your heart. They both do better. And this raises a really important point I haven't spoken about yet, which is another myth, the myth that alcohol is actually good for our health. I listened to this fascinating podcast by The New York Times called How Bad Is Alcohol for You Really, in which they basically debunk this idea that alcohol has

any health benefit. Most of us have probably heard this suggestion or this quote unquote fact that a glass of red wine is like good for your heart, it has antioxidants, like it was even a fact that was like in the episode, like in an episode of the Office. It's so commonly spread. But actually, when you review the study that this fact is taken from the way they interpreted their data was really misleading, and now so many people

believe a false conclusion. When they conducted this original study, they basically looked at people who drank versus didn't drink. And you know, the people who did drink it was quite moderate, maybe a couple of glasses of wine. And what they found was that those who drank moderately were healthier than those who didn't drink at all. And it was this huge vine at the time. But what they didn't control for, and anyone studying psychology knows you need

to control for your confounding extraneous variables. They didn't control for the people who were in that sober group who had stopped drinking because they had a real problem and it had begun to impact their health. Now, it's kind of hard these days to find someone who is completely sober, and one of the reasons that someone might be completely sober is because they can't drink.

drinkers were healthier. That is a classic example in psychology research of poor sampling methods, not controlling for your extraneous or confounding variables, and knowing that now you know, there's been so many more studies come out saying, actually, this is not good for your heart, this is not good for your liver, this causes cancer. There are entire countries that have changed their dietary recommendations when it comes to alcohol, saying it is not safe for you to drink it all.

It will increase your likelihood of dying, maybe only by a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny bit, but still Actually, interestingly, as I'm recording this, it actually looks like the US will be the next country to make a recommendation that people shouldn't drink. Obviously, it's very harsh recommendation, but they want to do what's safe. All of this sounds very, very scary, but something to note that I found really fascinating.

Even the man who discovered the problem in those findings who said, you know, to everyone, for you, his alcohol isn't safe, we shouldn't tell people that he actually get this. He still drinks and he is very open about the fact that he loves a couple glasses of wine, and I think that is the important thing. Moderation is important. And it remind finds me of that quote, which basically says, like, you know, yes, son gives you cancer. Ice cream is

bad for you, Spending your money ruins your savings. Wine isn't the healthiest. It ruins your liver. But I'm gonna do it anyway, I want to have fun. It's a good good philosophy.

sprits every now and again. Okay, we're going to take a short break, but when we come back, I want to talk about how sobriety impacted my social life, what it was like to go out sober, and just like some fast rapid fire tips I have if you want to give it a go, I think a big fear we have around trying dry jam, dry July, whatever it is, going sober for a couple of months is social exclusion? Am I going to be included? Are people gonna think that I'm like a wet blanket, that I'm not fun?

Am I gonna be left out? Is it gonna be less enjoyable to be the only sober one. That was definitely a fear that I had in like just doing thirty days of this, especially like it's summer in Australia, like everyone wants to do a little vo beverages, so like it definitely felt like I was gonna be missing out. But something that I've really noticed is that my friends are very very accepting. Now, if you have a friend group that is pressuring you to drink, I don't think

those people are your friends. They're not your friends because if they only feel like they can enjoy your company with a glass or something, you know, a can of something in their hand, like that's not off. Like I don't know, I just feel like your relationships shouldn't be elevated by drinking. They should be just as good when you're sober as they are when you're tipsy, as they

are when you're drunk. And I went out sober the other night, like it was a friend's birthday, farty, like a really good friend and I went out and I was like, Okay, I'm committing to this. I'm committing to this. I'm gonna drive, I'm gonna drive me and my boyfriend We're gonna meet like thirty of our friends and I'm gonna like just chill on the diet Kochs for a little while. The first hour.

I was able to like, I know this sounds weird, but actually have some foresight to like organize things do things like there was karaoke in the back of this bar, and I was like, okay, like I'll take the initiative and I'll book this because everyone else has kind of like had a few drinks and is probably not thinking about whether that's possible. Also, really really fun was driving

everyone home afterwards. Let me tell you this, I had more fun being the designated driver and getting to drop all of my drunk friends home than I have ever had in a club. And I know that is a huge statement, but it is a correct one. It is an accurate one. I could not tell you the last time I went clubbing and had a good time, Like it's just not something that I think I like to do. Obviously, when I was I actually probably could tell you, Like when I was in my early twenties and like in

my teen years, it was like a great time. It was part of like socializing at UNI. But since I've kind of hit my mid twenties, like it's just not my thing anymore. And I would always try and force myself to really enjoy it and get something out of it and make memories. That's the big reason why I

would go was for the memories. I made more fun memories driving my friends home and going to McDonald's, and they said the funniest stuff and it was like I can remember the in jokes, I can remember what they were saying, like the stories that were told. And then the next morning, I was up by eight am. Like obviously it was still a Sunday, I still had my sleep in, but I was up by eight am. I

was refreshed, I felt amazing. I went for a five k run and I just thought, wow, like I would not have this energy if I had had four Gin and Tonics last night, and I would have missed out so much. And I also didn't get tired, so I was able to stay out longer, which is a big problem I sometimes have when I drink and go out, like I have two red wines and I'm like, I want to go to bed. But I really committed to

it and it was a great time. Some tips I have for staying sober or trying out sobriety, and I really would encourage you to just do thirty days. Have like a non alcoholic drink that you like, soak and Butcher Die Cooke lemonade, non alcoholic beer. A big fan of non alcoholic beer, not so much non alcoholic red wine.

on your choice for the evening. See if someone wants to do it with you honestly, like one of my friends is doing it at the same time. It's like kind of fun to exchange stories and just kind of have a bigger goal attached to why you want to do it. So if you're just like I want to go sober for thirty days, but you don't know why, it's going to be a lot harder to achieve. So mine was really like, this is a personal challenge. I

want to see if I'm capable. For other people, it's like they're training for a marathon and they're training for a big run. Maybe it's that you want to see your skin improve. Whatever it is make sure that the reason you're doing this is really really clear to you, and honestly, good luck. If you have done it before. Please, Oh, if you are someone who is currently sober and husband for a while, what can we expect in a couple of years? What can we expect in like six months,

two years, five years? Like I've heard that it gets better and it changes, and that you feel even more energy and more attuned to yourself after a while. And also send over your best tips and I'll share them on Instagram. But I think that's all we have for today's episode. I know what's been a long one. So if you've made it this far, hello, comment a little wine emoji in the comments on Spotify and I'll go through and see who's gotten here. But thank you so

much for listening. Make sure that, if you haven't already, you listen to Mantra. If you like the psychology of your twenties and you like the kind of positive, calm environment we're creating here, you want some inspiration, Mantra is probably going to.