INTRODUCTION [00:00:00]
Hello. Welcome to this week's episode of Midlife AF. I am going to be talking about the Buzz, the reason people drink. The amazing Buzz. That super guy who comes in and makes everything warm and fluffy, takes us away from ourselves, stops the bloody chatter in our head, gives us an excuse to sit down, gives us that floaty light feeling, enables us to be fun and funny.
[00:00:33]
The life and soul of the party live up to everyone's expectations of what we're supposed to be. Or does he?
[00:00:46]
Or is he a little bit more sinister than that?
MAIN EPISODE [00:01:45]
Hello, you glorious humans. This morning I wanted to talk about the Buzz. So I have a really different perspective on the Buzz than a lot of my alcohol coaching friends. And that's not to say that I don't agree with some of the other methodology. We've all got different things and different things that resonate with us.
[00:02:16]
But for a lot of my clients, the Buzz is what keeps people stuck wanting to drink alcohol, thinking that alcohol has something to offer them even after they've stopped drinking. And it keeps us in a place of deprivation. And as we know, when we're in a place of deprivation, that means we're in a place of willpower. When we're in a place of willpower, willpower is a finite resource. So we don't want to be in a place of willpower.
[00:02:50]
So I wanted to talk about this because I was talking about it with my group 'Be the Lighthous'e, which is for the guys who have decided that they want to live an alcohol free life or six months or a year. And we're working towards that. And it's a brilliant, brilliant group of women, totally awesome. And we get into some really juicy stuff around the reasons why we drink and the things that we can put in place in order to live a life that we don't need to escape from.
[00:03:28]
I wanted to talk about the Buzz today because a lot of conversation around stopping drinking still, I think gives the impression that the Buzz is something that we might want, it might have a benefit to us. Now, everything we do, we do for a reason. And generally things do have a benefit for us and it's always very human, the reasons why we do things. And there's nothing wrong with us for doing things the way that we do. So, first of all, putting that into place and saying no shame or blame if the Buzz is still for you, an allure or an attraction or something you wish you could do or something.
[00:04:18]
It's like, oh, I'm going. To have to put aside the Buzz. And I know that I'm going to live this alcohol free life, and it's going to be so rewarding. And I'm not going to have hangovers in the morning, and I'm going to feel so much better about myself. But the only sad thing, the only thing I have to wave goodbye to is the lovely Buzz.
[00:04:36]
And what I want to question is the idea that the Buzz is lovely. So for me, I see the Buzz as a sinister fellow and I don't mean sinister as in left handed, which I always giggle about because I think originally that was what sinister. I read somewhere that sinister meant left-handed back in the days when lefthanded was something we tried to stop people being, which is crazy, isn't it? Now think about it. But anyhow, so back to the Buzz.
[00:05:10]
So we were talking about the fact that everybody needs to get a little bit high sometimes, as in the beautiful Justin Bieber and not so beautiful Justin Bieber. I don't know what your opinion of Justin Bieber is, he's very young, but I do like that song. I don't know, that's not cruel at all. But anyway, I digress. We are not talking about Justin Bieber, we are talking about the Buzz.
[00:05:40]
So we were talking about this idea of wanting to get high. Now, you know, I've had Katie on this podcast, Katie Underwood, and we talk about how, for me, sound healing gives me a beautiful trippy high. The difference for me in a high from that, or high that I get from swimming in the ocean on a beautiful day or all these different things, is, and I do get a high, a really good high from a lot of those things. And this is what we talked about in our group as well, it's not that switch, it's not like, oh, I'm feeling a bit this, I can switch and feel like this. What we in "this naked mind" talk about as being the switch and seed.
[00:06:23]
So switch being something you can quickly turn on and seed being something you plant for the future, which is a great analogy, but I question the fact that the Buzz is in and of itself something that is helpful to us in the long term, but also in the short term. And when I talk about the Buzz, I ask people not to think about the future. So when we're looking into the Buzz, when we're investigating, when we're inquiring into the Buzz. I say, don't think about the future because people's first thing is always, oh, well, the Buzz is nice, but hangovers, blah, blah, blah. Or the Buzz is nice, but then it gets messy.
[00:07:18]
But I want to actually focus in on the Buzz. And the reason I want to do that is and I was particularly I always find this a fascinating subject, but I was listening to Gabor Mate's book, The Myth of Normal, and I know I've mentioned to many of you that I am starting the one year Compassionate Inquiry training, which is a graduate level training. 240 hours of training with Gabor Mate and his mentors. And in his book, he talks about self sacrifice and everything just kind of collided for me in that amazing what's the word for it? I want to say, like, the stars aligned, synchronicity, synchronicity when I was listening to that.
[00:08:07]
And because it reminded me of I've been training most of last year and I'm still studying for my intuitive eating counseling course because, as you know, I'm a firm advocate for intuitive eating, body positivity, body acceptance and fuck diet culture.
[00:08:30]
And when I was learning from Evelyn I can't remember her name now, Tribole, who is the kind of inventor of the intuitive eating, and she's got all the research and everything about it. One of the things that she said was a big connection with our ability to feel interceptively. And interceptive awareness means, like, being able to understand when we're hungry and when we're full. So satiated. And I really struggle with that.
[00:09:05]
And I think a lot of neurodiverse people struggle with that too, but also a lot of people who drink, a lot of women who drink. We struggle with being able to identify our feelings, how we feel in our bodies. And some of that can be because of trauma, big trauma, but some of it can become because of little trauma. And what Garbage talks about in The Myth of Normal is that little trauma is more often than not something that, as human beings, we are taught from a very young age is the right way to be celebrated. He talks about in his book, he talks about he's reading obituaries and they talk about how one guy would go for two lunches every day because he didn't want to upset his mum or this person had no ego.
[00:10:00]
And these are the things that are celebrated about people in obituaries like this. Selflessness is constant giving out. And this is one of the reasons that for me, not drinking alcohol is radically feminist and is a radical act of self compassion and self love. Because I, for years, when I was drinking, put up with stuff in my life that was unacceptable. And I think the reason why most women drink is nothing to do with alcohol.
[00:10:35]
It's to do with the fact that we are conditioned to put up with unacceptable things as normal. And so we self sacrifice and we self silence. And the way that we can do that without our soul screaming to us is by drinking alcohol. And we drink alcohol because it takes us away from ourselves. It allows us to abandon ourselves.
[00:11:05]
And the reason why I find the Buzz sinister is because you listen to people's reasons why. So when I go through the app process with my group and with the people that I work with in the alcohol experiment and in my five day alcohol reset group, you go through a process of changing a belief. And one of those processes, you go through all the reasons why the belief holds true, and so all the reasons why the Buzz is a benefit. Whether the Buzz is good for us, well, it makes us feel like we're funny. It gets rid of our inhibitions and allows us to be louder than we are.
[00:11:49]
It allows us to have more energy and to participate in something when actually we're really burnt out. It allows us to be funny and we're not funny. It allows us to be interesting because we're not interesting. It allows us to be all of these things which are about us confirming by drinking, by agreeing with those statements we are saying that we are those things. We are not funny.
[00:12:23]
We don't have a good personality. Our awkwardness, we can't sit with our awkwardness.
[00:12:35]
Our brain has too many thoughts and we're too worried and scared and frightened about things and we can't stay with ourselves and comfort ourselves through that. And so all the things that the world told us as we've been growing up that we've built these protective boundaries around ourselves to keep ourselves safe, of which drinking is another adaptation. Like people pleasing, like work, gambling, whatever we do but shopping, going on the internet all the time, whatever it is that we do to take ourselves away from ourselves, to escape ourselves, to tell ourselves our needs don't matter, that we can't be with ourselves, that we are weird, strange. Ugly. Horrible.
[00:13:36]
Not funny. Boring. All of these big fat lies that the world tells our little precious little lessons of self that came into this world to love and be loved. When we drink for the Buzz, we drink and we leave that little person when we say the world's right, you're wrong. I need to escape from you.
[00:14:10]
And nine times out of ten, what we really need is instead of us escaping from ourselves do we need us to turn around and say hey, I can see you are really worried about that. It's really upsetting you, isn't it? Do you want to sit for a minute and we'll just sort of talk it through? Or you're really fucking tired, you've been giving out to everybody all week and you think if you just had that one drink you could be in the mood for sex, for socializing, for being the life and soul of the party when you're not the life and soul of the party, you don't feel like it. You're sad.
[00:14:50]
You're exhausted. You feel unloved. People have been taking and not giving, and you haven't given yourself any time. And we're saying, that's okay, keep going, keep pushing, keep pushing yourself to the edge because your needs don't matter. And this for me, is why the Buzz is sinister, because it takes us away from ourselves.
[00:15:18]
It takes us away from our precious little soul. And to me, this journey isn't about disconnection. It's about connection. It's about integration. It's about integrity, and it's about turning around to our precious little soul and saying, I see you, and I wasn't able to be with you before because I wasn't ready, but now I am, and we are going to take the rest of this life together.
[00:15:49]
And you being awkward, and you not being the funniest person in the room, and you being shy, and you're okay by me, and you're tired. Let's go to bed. And you don't want to have sex. Let's not have sex.
[00:16:09]
We don't have to do all these things for everybody else. But what we do have to do, our one job in this latter part of our life is to be there for ourselves.
[00:16:31]
And I feel this so passionately. And Gabriel Mate says that addiction comes from a disconnection from self, and all our mental health problems come from a disconnection from self.
[00:17:01]
And I just want to leave that with you guys. It's like, if not now, then when? When are we going to start being the soft place for us to land? And we talk about if any of you have read I'm trying to remember the name of her.
[00:17:23]
I'll put it in the script. But basically she's this amazing woman writer, and she has come up with this idea of the MAGA. So Maga now doesn't mean make American great again, not a Trump thing, but what it stands for is the woman in the autumn of her life, the woman between the mother and the crone. And she talks about this figure as being a place where and we talk about this a lot in my work.
[00:18:03]
Our oestrogen is leaving. Our nurturing is not there, so we're no longer programmed biologically to give. We just can't do it anymore. The oestrogen is leaving the building. It's saying, no, thank you very much.
[00:18:16]
There's one person we need to look after now, and that person is us. And the reason why it's so important that we stand by, we start having our own back. We start having difficult conversations with partners, with kids, with family, with friends. We start having our own back and standing in our integrity and saying, enough is enough. This is what I need for me and for the rest of my life, I'm going to keep putting myself first so that my kids can see that they don't have to do the hard yards that we've all done where we end up drinking because women don't drink for no reason.
[00:18:58]
They drink because they're trying to do too much, because the world isn't made for them to thrive.
[00:19:06]
And so by looking after ourselves, by having our own back, by choosing us, by learning to sit in the discomfort of our feelings and be the soft place for us to land, we show our kids how to love themselves, too, and what they should put up with and what is not acceptable for them in relationships. They watch us. They watch us. So if we don't do it for us, do it for them.
[00:19:46]
So this is my mantra. Down with the Buzz. I say for your own sake. He is a sinister fella. All right, my loves, it's been beautiful to chat to you.
[00:19:59]
Have a great day, lots of love, my friends.
