228. Quit Drinking Alcohol For Good with Marci Rossi

Whether you’re looking to quit drinking permanently or are just taking a break, this episode is to help you quick alcohol.

We are not talking about alcoholics who need rehab today, we are talking about high achieving women who are regularly getting promoted at work or already running a profitable business, your relationships might be fine too, and you are not getting into any legal trouble, but you simply find yourself drinking more than you want to.

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Marci Rossi is a Certified Alcohol-Free Coach, Success Coach, Mindset Coach, and NLP Practitioner.

In this episode we talked about:

• Why willpower doesn’t work when quiting alcohol
• What are some of your best tips before someone ever even starts trying to quit
• What not to do when quiting alcohol
• and so much more …

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Whether you’re looking to quit drinking permanently or just taking a break, this episode is for you to help you quit alcohol. And we are not talking about alcoholics who need rehabs. We are talking about high-achieving women who are regularly getting promoted at work or already are running a profitable business.

Your relationships might be fine too. And you’re not getting into any legal trouble. We’re not talking about any of those, but you are simply finding yourself drinking more than you want to.

And for that reason, I have my special guest, Marci Rossi here today. She is a certified alcohol-free coach, success coach, mindset coach, and NLP practitioner. Welcome to the show, Marci.

Thanks so much for having me, Lucy.

Excited for our chat. Let’s start from the beginning. How often did you use to drink yourself?

It’s kind of varied depending on what was going on in my life. When I was really depressed and really stressed, it would, of course, skyrocket. It would be almost every day.

There were times in my life that it was every day. Other than that, it was, you know, normal quote-unquote drinking, right? So on the weekends would be when I would drink or maybe a particularly hard day and have a glass of wine at night.

But really, when I was struggling most, either in my career or personally, that’s when alcohol just became my default to turn to in order to relieve some of that stress and pressure that I was putting on myself.

So what was your breaking point? What was that point that you decided that you needed to quit?

My breaking point was kind of an extended point, right? So there was a big, huge gap between when I decided I needed to quit and when I was ready to quit. So it started with a dry January for me about four years ago.

Maybe I think four or five years ago was the first one. I’ve always been someone really into health. I love to read about the latest antioxidants and superfoods and all this kind of thing.

So I approached it from kind of a health benefit of just what would happen to my body if I took a break. And I went to the library and got a bunch of books about alcohol, hoping I could read about how terrible it was and I wouldn’t want it anymore. And I took this break and I ended up drinking maybe three times that month.

But one of those days, it was just a really hard day at work. And one of those days was somebody’s birthday. And so those things didn’t count, right?

But I was kind of arguing with myself too, because I knew it was just supposed to be 30 days. So I thought, okay, whatever, I did my best. And I tried it again the next couple of years.

And only one time was I able to make it the entire 31 days without drinking. And I was miserable. I had a countdown on my phone of when it would be February 1st.

I was thinking about what that first drink was gonna be. I was obsessing about the fact that I couldn’t drink. And that to me signified that there was a problem.

If I couldn’t go 30 days without being miserable, there was too much of a dependence there for me. But even at that point, I knew, okay, I have a problem, but I wasn’t ready to do anything about it. I think something that a very dangerous conception that we have in our world is that you have to kind of hit that rock bottom moment to decide to change.

And this was not a rock bottom for me. Like it was disappointing to realize that I was so dependent on alcohol, but I wasn’t getting into trouble. Kind of, you know, like you said earlier, I wasn’t getting arrested.

My relationships were fine. I was getting promoted every single year, year after year for five years in a row. Everything was going well, but there was this dependence there that just didn’t feel comfortable in my skin.

You know, I’m a control freak. I like to be in control of things. And this had control over me, which was really upsetting.

But it just took so much time for me to kind of accept it. Like I recognized it, but I didn’t wanna accept it. So it wasn’t until maybe 10 months later that I decided, okay, like something has to change at this point and I can’t do it on my own.

I’ve already tried. I couldn’t go 30 days. I’m not gonna be able to go the rest of my life.

And that wasn’t really the decision at that point anyway. I wasn’t trying to quit forever. I was trying to get it back under control because I had lost control.

And that’s an incredibly uncomfortable feeling for me, so.

And a lot of people I know try to quit and doesn’t work because they’re solely depending on their willpower. Yes. Would you agree with me that depending on your willpower alone does not work?

Absolutely. I mean, for any behavior change, right? Like if we’re trying to focus on willpower, people know generally that willpower is limited.

And so if you can start early in the morning, it’s easy to say no. I think it’s generally easy for most of us to say no to a drink at nine or 10 in the morning. But then when you’ve had to kind of say no to things all day long, by the time five o’clock rolls around, you don’t have that power left.

I think that’s a problem with a lot of coaching programs these days is they focus just on behavior, which is what willpower does. Willpower says you don’t drink or don’t drink today. And that’s just on the behavior.

But if you can remove the desire to drink, you don’t have to worry about the behavior, right? So I don’t have to convince myself, no, you don’t want to drink right now because no, I don’t want to drink. Like there’s nothing beneficial to me.

I don’t see any reason why it would add to my life without subtracting at least as much. So I think that’s the key there is when we focus on the behavior, we still have those subconscious desires, which means that we are fighting and we will have to continue fighting for the rest of our lives. I don’t want to do that.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to do that. I would rather just not want the substance to begin with. And then it’s just kind of a one-time decision and I’m free forever at that point.

I love that. So let’s go back and talk about desire then. What are some of the most common types of desires that you’ve seen working with your clients?

The number one, I think is relaxing, right? So that was definitely key for me. It’s definitely key for these really driven women who want to achieve or achievement is very key.

And to relax at the end of the day, to shut off our brains. Like if we are constantly thinking of the next thing, thinking of how we can succeed, how we can achieve that next goal, our brain is constantly going and that’s exhausting. And alcohol does kind of slow down your brain.

That is the physiological response to it. So that could be kind of tempting to shut it down, but really it’s just kind of pressing pause on things. And so instead of allowing you to go after things that will remove some of the stress, like you’re not gonna solve your problems when you’re drinking.

I know I never did, but you’re gonna be just pressing pause on those struggles that you’re having. So stress is a big one. I think we, especially in alcohol, we tend to focus on kind of the immediate reaction instead of the long-term reaction.

So yes, when you drink, then immediately you’re gonna feel that kind of relief, that little slowing down of the mind, which can be interpreted as relaxation. But then you don’t realize that several hours later, in order to compensate for bringing you down, your body brings you back up, right? So there’s the homeostasis effect there where your body’s releasing cortisol and adrenaline to kind of counteract that lowering effect that it has had.

And those are stimulating hormones, right? Cortisol is the stress hormone. Adrenaline is what you get when you go skydiving or go jumping off a plane or doing these crazy activities, riding a roller coaster.

So that’s coursing through your body. And for me, I never put two and two together. Like I recognized I was waking up around three, four in the morning when I had had a heavy night drinking and my heart would be racing and I’d be thinking of all the stupid things I’m sure I said that night, but I didn’t tie that to the alcohol because there was that delay there.

And I think that’s such a big problem with alcohol as we think about what it’s gonna do in this exact moment and forget what it’s gonna continue to do over time, over time to our skin, to our body, to our weight, to our mind, to our mental health. We think, okay, this is just gonna solve this one issue and it creates more. So stress, relaxation is definitely one of the biggest.

I think another big problem is that alcohol is everywhere. It is everywhere, right? So you wanna do something healthy and you wanna go to the gym and it’s yoga and wine night.

Or if you wanna go to book club, the book is kind of secondary. It’s really just an excuse to drink wine. And it’s a lot of people, there’s some judgment around alcohol and there’s still this notion that if you quit, it’s because you had a problem, not because you’re prioritizing your own health and your future.

And so it can be scary to make these changes because you’re opening yourself up to that judgment, right? That you’re allowing people to form these opinions of you and thinking that you’re an alcoholic and thinking that you have these issues when really you’re just trying to do what’s best for you instead of just following the herd. So I think those are the two big ones, especially that I see with my clients is wanting to relax and also still wanting to fit in.

Belonging is such a key human need and it can be scary to think that we’re gonna do something that can kind of separate us from the herd, that can maybe isolate us from our friends or our family members or our loved ones, that sort of thing. So those are two, I think, that keep us really stuck in this cycle of continuing to drink, even if we’re realizing it’s not necessarily doing us any favors.

Such great insight. And obviously, if you try to find alternatives to relaxation, there are plenty, yes, right? There are tons of activities that you can do that fulfills your moments of joy.

But in terms of being left out, like you talked about, right? Wanting to be in a certain herd, how do you tackle that problem with your client?

So I think part of it is realizing that how we expect people to behave is not necessarily how things are gonna happen, right? So we may assume that if we quit drinking, our friends, families, partners, loved ones are going to shut us out. We forget that there’s the possibility that they may follow in our footsteps, right?

By changing our behavior, we’re gonna be changing the relationships, but there’s a possibility that we’re changing those relationships for the better, right? So a lot of times we hang out with friends and we’re drinking, but we’re not really connecting on a deeper level. I’m sure, actually, I’m not gonna speak for you, but I can speak for myself that I have had moments where I’m drinking and I make these quote unquote friends for the night, and then it does relationships just end because it’s just completely superficial.

It’s just based on who we turn into when we drink, right? Those conversations that we have that we don’t remember the next day, that’s not a true authentic connection with another human being. So we kind of sacrifice that depth and authenticity when we choose to drink.

And there’s the possibility that other people will see our behavior and decide to model it. They’ll see the changes in our physical health, in our appearance, in our mental health, and realize that this is something that they may want to pursue as well. There’s also a possibility that it doesn’t really necessarily have to change anything.

Like I still go to trivia nights. I still go to bars. I still go out.

You can still have fun with your friends without having a drink, especially these days, it’s continuing to grow with different options, both at the grocery stores and in the bars and restaurants where you have options to try different mocktails. You can still go out without necessarily having to have alcohol there, still be out and socialize that way.

So- I resonate a lot with everything you just said. I mean, there’s no right or wrong answer. I think it’s really about your decision and you having control over your life instead of letting it control you.

Yes, for sure.

So what are some other best tips you have for someone who maybe have tried at times and have failed before? Words of encouragement there.

Sure. So I can tell you it did not work for me. Reading about the dangers of alcohol did not work.

I know a ton and I can scare you up and down of all the different things that alcohol can do, but that wasn’t enough for me to change my behavior because something inside me said I need it. And it wasn’t until I took a deeper look at what that voice was saying and what I thought it was giving me that I was able to change that behavior. So things that didn’t work, just focusing on behavior.

I’m not going to drink today. Okay, I’m not going to drink after, you know, after Friday or I’m not going to drink after Monday. I’m not going to do this, that, and the other rules didn’t work for me.

I just found excuses to break them. Scaring myself into it didn’t work for me. Telling myself about, you know, the cancer risks didn’t help me.

It just scared me. And then I wanted to drink more to relieve that fear, right? So what did work for me was looking at those behaviors.

And that was something that I couldn’t have done alone. I did it in a coaching program. So I didn’t realize that coaching was an option.

I knew of it in terms of athletes, but didn’t understand that that was a profession or a course of treatment, essentially. And I knew also that rehab wasn’t for me. I was not drinking every day.

I was not getting in trouble. I didn’t need to take 30 days away from my life or longer to change my behavior. So that wasn’t an option.

And AA didn’t resonate with me. I think it can be very helpful for a lot of people, but I did not want to surrender to a higher power. I told you, I’m a control freak.

I wanted to take this in my own hands. I wanted to do this. And so surrendering to a higher power didn’t resonate with me.

And I’ve also met a few people in AA that still want to drink 5, 10, 20 years later. And I don’t want to be that, I told you. I don’t want to fight for the rest of my life.

I want to be one and done. I got stuff to do. I can’t be wasting mental energy on trying not to drink.

So I fortunately found a group coaching program, and we went through all the thoughts and beliefs that I had about alcohol. And changing those just completely removed the desire. There’s nothing in there, I believe, that’s going to add to my life.

So there’s no temptation there. And when there’s no temptation, you don’t have to struggle. You don’t have to fight.

Your behavior just changes naturally. So that was really important. That’s my tip, is to understand what it is that you think you like about drinking.

So some of the common ones I went through already was relaxation and socialization. But people, there’s status, right? So people that collect fancy wines and want to know, that was me when we went to dinner.

I wanted to have the wine list because I felt important knowing what it was that I was choosing. To celebrate. Imagine celebrating without champagne.

These are two things that we hold very closely together, but they don’t have to equal each other. Sometimes we drink actually to feel sad, to feel some emotions when we’re kind of numb. You know, it turns on those tears, those artificial, that artificial sadness that creates to socialize, to have fun, to relax, to fit in, you know, if you’re going to go for networking, to give us confidence.

Oh, I hated networking without a drink in hand because I just felt so, I mean, I felt insecure. I felt like I didn’t have anything important to say. I judged myself a lot.

And eventually I realized that it’s just a skill and it’s a skill I haven’t had to develop because I let alcohol do that for me. I let alcohol tell me that I’m not brave enough, that I’m not smart enough, that I’m not funny enough without it. And I internalized that belief that I am just not enough, period.

So it wasn’t until I took the chance and opportunities to network, to go try different events without a drink in hand that I can start to build that skill, right? I’m still not the most extroverted person in the entire world, but it’s coming. And with that comes the confidence to continue to do it going forward.

So it’s really taking a moment to think about what it is that you think alcohol is providing and analyzing whether or not that’s true. Now, some of those you can refute with science. Like I said, like the stress, you can look at the science and see what alcohol actually does to your body or you can decide whether or not that belief is serving you.

Like when I thought that alcohol made me funnier and wittier and more confident, it was really telling me that I’m less funny, less confident without it. And that’s just not something that I wanted to accept. So I got to challenge those beliefs and put them into practice to see is this actually something that’s true for me and does it empower me to make the kinds of decisions that I want in my life.

Woo, so good. Wow, Marci, touched upon a lot of good points there. And I think that gives our audience, if you are in this season of your life, definitely get help so that you can transform your mindset, right?

You can shift those perspectives and that’s gonna make a world of difference because what we hold onto as our belief, those limiting beliefs, that’s what’s limiting you.

For sure, I think people just don’t realize how many limiting beliefs they have around alcohol. It’s all the reasons you’re saying you need it is all the reasons you’re telling yourself you’re not enough without it, so.

Beautiful, and it’s a perfect time for a reminder that enough is a decision.

Yes, yes, love that.

Awesome, so what is your favorite quote that you go by in life?

I don’t know who this particularly is attributed to, but I can do hard things. That is the statement that I live by. It is something that I never believed until I did something I thought I would never do.

I had no intention of quitting drinking. I thought drinking was what made life livable and fun. And I did something that I never expected would happen and I’m better off for it.

I thought if I ever quit, I would be miserable and I can’t imagine the level of happiness that I have now. So being able to do hard things, I think we don’t give ourselves enough credit for the number of things that we can do. Everything that we’ve gone through in life has gotten us to where we are.

We’ve survived it all to get here, right? So we are so much stronger than we stop and give ourselves credit for. So that is definitely a quote that I live by.

So good. Thank you so much for being with us. Where can we find you?

I am at Coach Marci Rossi everywhere.

Perfect, thank you.

Thanks so much, Lucy.