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One Day Sober: My Battle with Buttery Chardonnay

• Ryan Weeden • Episode 79

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What happens when the very habits you rely on to cope become the chains that hold you back? Join me on a raw and personal journey as I confront my alcohol dependency, a battle that doesn't fit the stereotypes but affects my life nonetheless. I open up about using alcohol as an escape from stressors like COVID-19 and life's unpredictable challenges, sharing how these nightly rituals have left me feeling sluggish and unmotivated. It's a candid reflection on the roles we play in life and how they shape our identities, for better or worse.

The path to personal growth is rarely straightforward, and mine is no exception. I discuss the influence of my two father figures and how their passing has driven me to break free from old habits. This episode is about making a pivotal decision to pursue a healthier, more fulfilling life, inspired by the transformative power of a single choice, as championed by Tony Robbins. Listen as I commit to overcoming the internal struggle with alcohol, acknowledging the fears and rationalizations that come with it, and ultimately, the resolve to never give up on the journey to happiness and self-discovery.

Be Bold, be Brave, be You.

Thanks for you listening.
-Ryan


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Speaker 1:

This is going to be one of those off-the-cuff podcast, unplanned interview things with myself. I don't know what that means. I'm going to be doing a solo act here, like I've done recently A lot of times. I'll do that because I haven't set up a guest and life has gotten too busy, but I also haven't really not that I haven't been honest with who I am recently and not with you. We all have many faces. We all have many faces. We all have many sides. We all have many personalities within ourselves and it depends on you know, we do different things, we wear different hats and, depending on the role that we're playing in that particular moment, we might take on different qualities.

Speaker 1:

But one thing I've realized recently and I've been realizing this for a while. It's one of those things that I've been living in a state of denial for a very long time. I think I'm addicted to alcohol. Do I call myself an alcoholic? Not by standard definition. I haven't even actually looked up the definition of alcoholic, but when I think alcoholic and you may be with me here I think of somebody that wakes up in the morning and craves a beer and shoots it down and chases it with a shot of vodka and is pretty much drunk all day long. And I know that it's a disease, right, it's a terrible disease that people get addicted to, and it's more. People become a functioning alcoholic or just straight up alcoholic where they need it. Their body goes into shock if they don't have alcohol.

Speaker 1:

So I never thought I was an alcoholic because I didn't wake up in the morning and crave a beer. I mean, there, you know, if it was Sunday and when I was younger and it was, you know, sunday fun day and everybody else is drinking mimosas and I'm like sure, let's partake, but it's not like hey, it's Monday, I got to go to work, but before I go to work let me pound some alcohol. It's not that, it's not that serious at all. In fact, I hate hangovers and I have about a three drink limit now as I'm nearing a few years shy of 50. I have a three drink limit before I know that I'm going to wake up with a headache and a hangover and I do not like hangovers. So, because I would never drink more than, say, three drinks, and three drinks is pushing it, especially if I do a little bit of an extra. You know, pour where it's a, you know a little bit more than a glass of wine, and wine is usually what I would go to.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking I'm not an alcoholic, I just. It's just kind of like a it's just the end of the day kind of relaxation, wind into night kind of a thing. You know you had a hard day and you justify it. You get home and you're like man, it could have been a great day and you want to celebrate. There's always a reason. And as far back as I can look now, it's scary because it's been almost a nightly ritual probably since before COVID. It's been almost a nightly ritual probably since before COVID and COVID hit and gosh.

Speaker 1:

We're all drinking more to cope with the madness of what's happening and the shutdowns and where's the money going to come from? And my business is going into some kind of a down spiral as our lives. We're in this complete unknown. So we write it off, and when I say we, I mean me, because I can't speak for anybody else. I'm writing it off as it's a season, you know, it's a season of life, and once the season is over, it's sure it's a crutch and it'll pass and then I'll move on from that. But then life happens again. You get some bad news, somebody passes unexpectedly, somebody comes after you in your business, whatever the reason, the season continues. Or we say, hey, this is another season, and we find that excuse to go back to it.

Speaker 1:

And again, I keep using the word we, but it's really me. I keep looking for an excuse. I keep coming up with an excuse. Oh, I had a great day today, let's celebrate. I'll get some champagne, I'll get a nice bottle of wine, we'll go back. Well, we'll have that. Or man, I had a real crap day. I had to do a lot of hard things and I'm tired and just today beat me up. So I want to just wind down. I don't want to talk to anybody, I just want a glass of wine. Let me go get a bottle of wine and just, kind of like, get through the night.

Speaker 1:

Or my kids are young and I just get home and I'm excited, and then it's just, I don't have a lot of energy and the kids start yelling and screaming and doing their you know kid things, which is to be expected. But then it's just too much for me and I'm like I got to escape and it became this nightly escape for, honestly, for as long as I can remember now. And I'm not overweight, I don't have any major health challenges. My cholesterol is higher than it should be. But when you look at me, when I look at myself, you know I can. I'm slim enough. I'm not as muscular as I want to be. I think every guy can probably say that, even the muscle bound guys. They still want to have more muscles popping out of places where muscles shouldn't be or you couldn't imagine a muscle being. But it gets to a point where you look at yourself and it's more about the way you feel.

Speaker 1:

Now, when I look at myself and I haven't been feeling very good. I've been feeling more sluggish, more tired, less excited to go to the gym, go to work out, go take care of myself, and what happens is it becomes such a routine that when I get home it's just the first thing I do is usually I'm on an empty stomach because I haven't eaten anything since lunch or I've had a snack here and there. I'll come home and I'll crack open a bottle of wine and chips and salsa, chips and guac and gosh. Chips and salsa and guac are the best, and then wine on top of that the best, even though I know that I'm going to hate myself at the end of the night, because not only did I take care of myself all day, because I had been going to the gym in the morning and I have been eating pretty well during the day now but I get home and it all goes out the window and then it's like I'm having to press the reset button every single night, where, every single night, before I go to bed, I look in the mirror and I'm not happy with who I am, and I know this is not the ideal version of myself, to the person I want to become, to the person that I know I need to become, to achieve what I want to achieve, to be the role model I want to be. It's not that person, but I'm afraid to change. I'm afraid that, well, what am I going to do? I love wine, I love just being able to go in beer and I love going out and just getting a nice beer and sitting down and just kind of relaxing and escaping into my phone. But there it is again. I said escape. What am I trying to escape from? What am I trying to escape from? I love my kids, I love my family, I love my life.

Speaker 1:

Yes, there are stresses on all sides personally, financially, in business, I mean but that's always going to be the case, especially if you are someone that wants to grow, grow your business, grow yourself, develop yourself, achieve incredible things and extraordinary things in your life. There are going to be challenges and as you become more and more successful, those challenges, well, they're not going to go away. They might get more expensive and the quality of the problem or the challenge becomes better, but they're not going to go away. They might get more expensive and the quality of the problem or the challenge becomes better, but they're still going to be there. So any of us that think like, well, once I make some more money and once my business grows a little bit more, once I launch that product, my life is going to be better, I'll have more time that's bullshit. It's fucking bullshit. I didn't, I'm afraid, to curse, I don't know why, I just it's fucking bullshit, it really is. We need to stop thinking about tomorrow and the month after and the year after and thinking about starting then, because now is our time.

Speaker 1:

I'm on the back nine and if anybody's feeling that, if you're getting older and you're getting a little slower, and those pounds, the food that you ate. The crap food and the vanilla lattes that you've been stuffing down your face for the last however many years are actually starting to catch up with you Fill out your midsection, make you a little more tired at night, make you get that broken sleep screwing up with your digestion. In my 40s I've noticed a big change where, if I eat the wrong thing, it's a very sensitive ecosystem. Now my wife jokes about it because that's what I say when I say like, oh, I can't eat white rice anymore because I have a very sensitive ecosystem.

Speaker 1:

But then when I drink alcohol and I know my liver is just screaming at me like saying stop it, stop it, stop it. I have to take like Tums or whatever it is and acids at night because it wants to come back up it. I have to take, like Tums or whatever it is, antacids at night because it wants to come back up. And again, I've been denying this for so long because I don't drink a lot. But over the course of days, months, years, I drink a lot and I have to admit that.

Speaker 1:

I'm admitting that now on this fucking podcast because I need to take accountability for myself and I want you also to know that, to be successful, which people look at me as a person that is successful, as a role model, and I know that I'm successful and I appreciate my success. I'm grateful for my success and everything that the success and the impact of what we do has helped me, my family and the people that we touch. It's incredible. But I also want you to know that I'm not fucking perfect. I'm constantly working on myself and I want to get better and I want to be a role model through and through. I don't want to have to escape from anything. I want my escape to be a fucking cup of tea and 10 minutes of silence where I can meditate or do yoga or something like that, something that's actually beneficial for me, not something that's going to subtract all the progress that I've made all of these years. I just think about how much farther I could be now if I wasn't drinking, wasn't smoking pot occasionally, if I wasn't doing those things.

Speaker 1:

I'm not again. I'm not doing hard drugs. I'm not doing meth. I'm not doing ecstasy. I did that in college and that almost killed me. I'm not going to do that again. I'm not going to do coke. I'm not going to do those things. I did that a while ago too, and I didn't like the way I felt.

Speaker 1:

And for somebody that's a very anxious creative like me, the challenge comes where, okay, I can get through most of the night before I'm like I need a drink or I need to smoke to calm down, but then when I lay down in bed, my thoughts race. I can't stop them down. I can't focus on going to sleep. I'm like looking at my to-do list how can I make my videos better? What courses can I create? And if you're an anxious creative like me, you're constantly thinking too. Your mind is always racing, and I can only quiet that with alcohol. I can only quiet that with smoking, a little pot, and again, I don't take this to the extreme. I don't wake up and grab a gravity bong. I don't wake up and mix a coffee, vodka. I reach for my coffee, but I don't need it in the morning. I don't look for it in the morning. It's the end of the day, it's a ritual, and that's what's so hard. I need to find a way to replace this ritual with something positive that's also going to work with my lifestyle, which my lifestyle is.

Speaker 1:

I go back and I hang out with my kids and I need energy for my kids. So it's easy for me to hang out with my kids and have a glass of wine because I can't escape, and go meditate for half an hour because I just I can't, I gotta go and I gotta help with dinner for my kids. I get to hang out with them. It's a privilege and it's so easy just to kind of escape. At the same time I have a glass of wine hang out with them. Ease those thoughts racing through my head, ease all the stresses in my life. I don't drink until I can't focus anymore. I drink until I get a little bit of a buzz, but I like to keep that buzz for at least a couple of hours until it's time to go to bed. I fall asleep pretty quick but then I wake up in the middle of the night and it's a constant battle every single fucking day and I am not sure what to do. And it's okay, I know it's okay to not be sure what to do.

Speaker 1:

And one thing I always say, one thing my dad taught me I had actually the pleasure of having two dads. My first dad passed when I was 13. If First Dad passed when I was 13. If you know my story. He died suddenly from a diabetic heart attack. But he taught me that you know, never give up. Never give up. Straighten your gaze, charge forward. He would always not only just say that, but he would show me through his actions. He never gave up. Diabetes took one of his eyes from him. Diabetes was something that he grew up with his entire life. It affected everything that he did, but he never gave up. They never let diabetes stop him.

Speaker 1:

And then my second dad, who jumped in after that to be my stepfather, which I don't like calling him a stepfather, because, yes, he was quote unquote a stepfather, but he was actually my dad for longer than I was with my dad. I lost my dad at 13. He was my stepfather, I think about 15. And he just recently passed, a few weeks ago. And it's weird because I have this new relationship with death now, as I was there and I was grateful and lucky enough to be holding his hand as he passed, I was able to say all the things that I didn't get a chance to say to my first dad and because my second dad was there for me so much. That's why I call him a dad, but it's confusing if I say like, hey, my dad just passed, and somebody might be thinking in their head well, I thought he already had a dad. But I don't want to say my stepdad passed, because a lot of us stepdads kind of just step in. But he did the best he could to be a father figure and a role model and I learned a lot from him. So that's why I call him my second dad. I was lucky enough to have two dads.

Speaker 1:

So then I started drinking again, and maybe even a little bit more just a few weeks ago, to the point, now that I'm having this talk with you and with myself, that I'm like what the fuck am I doing? I'm drinking a little bit more. I'm really teetering on the edge of like I might be hung over tomorrow, but I'm okay with it and I'm writing it off as another season. It's a season, but how fucking long is the season going to go? I am done with the season. I am done with being a lesser version of who I know I can be.

Speaker 1:

And if you've been facing anything like this, if you've been in a state of denial or I think deep down in our guts and our souls our souls know what's right Our heads will be like that's a season, we'll get through it, and then we'll figure our shit out. Our heads will tell us like, oh, don't worry You'll, you'll be fine, you're not really drinking that much. But what does your gut say? What does your soul say? What does that ring of truth tell you? To me, it says you got to stop. To me, it says you don't know what a life is without alcohol. And it's scary to think, like it's almost like this toxic relationship, that it's like I'm afraid to give it up. Because, like, what am I going to do when I'm around my friends? And this is that? But I don't really hang out with my friends that much. Normally I just drink by myself with the kids with. That sounds terrible Drink, you know, over dinner with my wife, and you know just that kind of routine.

Speaker 1:

When I get home it's like pour myself a glass of wine, then you have one glass of wine. You say I'm gonna have just one, but then you lower your inhibitions after that one glass of wine and then you're like, wow, what's one more? And then I'll hate myself at the end of the night. I'll come back the next day, get home from work, convinced I'm not gonna have any, even though I want one. But then I open the fridge and I see a half a bottle of wine in there and I'm like, well, it's already open, I don't want it to go to waste because I spent money on it. And there it goes again Just one glass. I have one glass and then it turns into two Depending on the day I had it might be three and then I spend the rest of the night chugging water, hoping that it's going to erase all the damage that I just did, and I start this cycle over and over again.

Speaker 1:

But I refuse to give up. I will not give up. I know that my time is winding down and if I really want to have this exceptional life that I know I can have in my very near future, to accomplish the things that I want to have accomplished, to have the energy for things that I want to do, I know I got to make a certain change, and Tony Robbins always says your life can change in an instant and that becomes down to a decision. It can change in one decision that you make, for good or for bad. Well, I want to make this decision to stop drinking. And even if I fail which I might. I'm never going to fucking give up.

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Ryan Weeden

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