Kristen Carder

Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast, where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with ADHD. I’m your host, Kristen Carter and I have ADHD. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B.

What’s up, this is Kristen Carter and you’re listening to the I have ADHD podcast, I am medicated, I am caffeinated. I am regulated. And I’m ready to roll. I hope you’re great. Thanks for tuning in. I say I am regulated with a little bit of caution, because I just opened up my phone. And I just listened to a voicemail from my orthodontist who said I missed an appointment this morning. And I had no idea I had an appointment. And that just doesn’t feel good. It just like the shame. I’m immediately sweating. Like how did I miss it? When I say I didn’t know that I had an appointment like I had confirmed it, it is on my calendar. But for some reason, like your girl just struggles to look at the calendar to see all of the important things on the calendar, I’m still adjusting to summer life with the kids home and running them around everywhere and just trying to get everyone where they need to be. I thought summer would simplify life. But it doesn’t. It does not simplify life in a lot of ways.

Because instead of just going to school and having the routine, the mornings are just kind of wild. So anyway, yeah, I had an orthodontist appointment. I hate that feeling, you know of like, I was supposed to be somewhere I agreed to be there, I even wanted to be there and missed it. 100% no show. And that just is what it is. It’s fine. I’m just gonna take some deep breaths, and I’m just gonna be here with you. Also, I just can imagine you listening along being like, been there. Like, I know, I know you. I know, I know you. I know you’ve been there, I know that you’ve done that.

I know that you know what it feels like to miss an appointment, an appointment that you were totally happy to go to. But just got it wrong. And that just doesn’t feel good. So solidarity. And I’m glad that we have each other just the way it is I’m so glad we have each other. Today’s gonna be an interesting episode, I’m going to tell you my story of being sober for the last six months of being alcohol free, pretty much alcohol free. And talk to you about why I made that decision, how it’s affecting my life. And we are going to get into the nitty gritty of alcohol and its effect on our body. And also like ADHD and alcohol, things. It’s an interesting conversation to navigate. Because six months to a year ago, I was getting annoyed at these types of conversations, like a lot of people are talking about alcohol and it’s affecting the body and Huberman is doing all kinds of podcasts and research and and if you haven’t listened to Huberman lab, I struggle I really struggle.

But I know that he has a lot of good, factual, you know, research based content out there. And I have been confronted with that in like, especially social media, and I just haven’t liked it. And literally my thought has been, why can’t you just let me have this one thing that I enjoy? And I wonder if you relate to that, when like alcohol free content, or people are talking about sobriety, when you’re confronted with that, if you have that reaction as well was just like, why can’t you just let me have this one thing? Why do we have to turn everything into being like unhealthy, and I was just really struggling with that. And yet, here I am here, I am actually now hosting a podcast talking about it. And so I just want to let you know that if you are kind of annoyed and uncomfortable, I get it. And let’s just keep chatting about it. So don’t leave. Let’s just Let’s just hang out here and let me tell you my story, because I think that you might relate to my story and my experience of why I’ve chosen to be alcohol free. And just, I don’t know, you might relate to it. And you might find it interesting and I promise to be funny too.

So we’ll throw that in there. All right. If you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you’ve definitely heard Let me talk about the fact that I don’t have a morning routine. I have what’s called a please don’t die list christen it could you please not die. And on that list are things like eating, taking my medication, making sure I’m clothed, you know, the very, very basics. morning routines are so hard for adults with ADHD and I have just thrown in the towel and dropped all of the drama around it. But I want to tell you something fascinating. I have been able to be so consistent with the routine of drinking ag one every day, I kid you not. I drink it every day, I wake up, I come down the stairs.

And the first thing I do is get my little shaker out, fill it with water, add a scoop of ag one and I’m telling you that it makes me feel so ready to take on the day like I’m doing something so good for my body and my body is like Oh, actual nutrition. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Speaking of that nutrition, ag one is a foundational nutrition supplement that delivers daily nutrients and gut health support. Now this is so important because we’ve talked about this before diet and nutrition are very difficult for those of us with ADHD we are prone to lean toward the sweets, we want the chips, we want the dopamine, but if we can make sure that we’re doing something good for our bodies every day, it will make a difference. What’s so cool about ag one is that it’s backed by multiple research studies. That is not nothing. You can really trust what you’re putting in your body when you take ag one because unlike so many other products, their entire formula is backed by research, not just the ingredients, but the whole formula. over 14 years ag one has been focused on innovation with a trusted nutrient dense blend.

That’s the perfect complement to any diet. Whether your diet is healthy, or you struggle with nutrition. Ag one is the perfect compliment no matter what. Now you know, I’m a Research girlie. That is so much of what I do for this podcast. So I do care about the details. And with ag one I can trust their research and how they’re validating the product working in the body. If you’ve heard me talk about ag one before, you may have heard me say that I’ve actually noticed that I need less coffee in the morning, which is wild because coffee is literally the reason I get out of bed in the morning. What’s cool is that their research backs this, after 60 days of taking ag 190 1% of people in a research study, notice that they need less coffee as well.

So I’m not the only one. Listen, if there’s one product I trust to support my whole body health, it’s a big one. And that’s why I partner with them and them alone for so long. It’s easy. If it wasn’t easy, I wouldn’t do it. I promise you that and it’s satisfying to start your day with ag one knowing that at least you’ve got the foundation of a little bit of nutrition right there. So you can try ag one and get a free one year supply of vitamin d3 k two and five free ag one travel packs, which are going to be amazing for summer travel. By the way, you can get all of that with your first purchase at drinkAgone.com/ihaveADHD. That’s drinkagone.com/ihaveADHD. Go check it out.

First, the reason why I have been alcohol free for the last six months is because I did dry January, this past January. So 2024. And I was shocked at how hard it was for me. It was actually embarrassing to myself. Like I didn’t really share it with anyone except for like, my husband and my my besties. But I was kind of embarrassed at how hard it was to go without alcohol for the month of January. And that was kind of a wake up call to me. I don’t know how else to say it. I gave it up for a month. And in that month I had really intense cravings. I had to kind of like breathe through and like really process these cravings several times a day, especially in the evenings when that would be like the typical time that I would have a beverage and I just wasn’t comfortable like as a personal stance, just like in my body. I just wasn’t really comfortable with how much I craved it.

So I thought okay, well let’s do February as well. And I just expected the cravings to go away but They stuck around. They weren’t quite as intense. But it literally took, I just kind of extended it and extended it and extended it. It took me three months before I wasn’t having cravings every single day. That’s wild. And so for me personally, that was information that I didn’t have before. Like, I didn’t have the understanding of how intense my cravings were. And it was just really important. To me, it was like really important information. And so I just decided, You know what, I’m gonna give this up for a while, like, maybe indefinitely, maybe forever, I don’t know. But like, I do not want to identify as someone who was a daily drinker, which is so interesting, because I was never a problem drinker, I was never what I would consider a super heavy drinker, I never blacked out. I never embarrassed myself while drinking like, people have, like amazing stories, I don’t have any of those amazing stories. I never exemplified like risky behavior while drinking. It was always like in my house or out with friends, but like safe friends, you know, I never did anything crazy.

There wasn’t any, like super risky, like, oh, like we really dodged a bullet that time. You know, like, I don’t have all these fun drinking stories to tell. I didn’t start early, I didn’t even start drinking until in my 30s. So I just never identified myself as an excessive drinker or as having a problem. But according to the experts, I was an excessive drinker. So the way that they classify it is moderate drinking is less than seven drinks a week for women. For women, less than seven drinks a week for women and fewer than 14 drinks a week for men. And then excessive drinking is more than seven drinks a week for women, and more than 14 drinks a week for men. And if I’m being honest, like I pretty much never drank fewer than seven drinks a week, it had become a habit of in the evenings, having a beverage or two or on special occasions three, and by special occasions. I mean, like the weekend, friends coming over watching a movie together like night, it didn’t have to be super special. I started drinking like right around age 30 It was when I had my second baby and I realized how how much it really helps me calm down. People drink because it’s beneficial in some way. And for me, it was absolutely beneficial. It helps me to calm down. And it put me to sleep now as someone who had severe ADHD and was highly traumatized. So like constantly in fight or flight, sleep was always something that I struggled with. And honestly, the reason why I started drinking daily is because it helps me go to sleep.

And it did it 100% did help me go to sleep. And for a couple years, I didn’t really see any negative effects of it. So I felt like I just found this hack. Like, finally, I have something to help me. I was the type of person who would prior to this, like stay up super late. Maybe like 2am Three, I’m just like really struggling to sleep, then having a lot of anxiety about sleep, like I’m not gonna be bro sleep, I’m not gonna be able to sleep just really, really, really struggled in this area. And so I felt like, this was the wonderful magical thing that I’d always been searching for. I could have a glass of wine, and melatonin. And I would go right to sleep. And it was it was a gift. Honestly, at the time. It was a gift. But here’s, here’s the thing. Alcohol is highly addictive. Like, if you don’t know that alcohol is highly addictive. So yes, it did help to put me to sleep but then I like it’s highly addictive substance. So obviously I became dependent on it. And every day I’m having a glass of wine or two and once in a while three, and that that’s just really interesting. It’s just not how I want to live my life personally. Another thing that’s really interesting about alcohol and like how it helped me because again, we drink we use drugs we we we do the things whatever it is because it’s helpful to us to a certain extent. especially as a neurodivergent person myself struggling with overwhelmed struggling with loneliness, struggling with the feeling of powerlessness as a mom of neurodivergent children, like my goodness, it did help me to escape that difficult emotion, those difficult emotions, those difficult experiences.

It was like my nervous system, my body was so overwhelmed at the end of the day, and the kids would finally be in bed. And it was like, I needed a tool to help myself calm down to reregulate. And I didn’t have many tools in my toolbox. And so alcohol was something that I used as a tool to help me de stress, calm down, sleep, and like reregulate my emotions. Now, of course, it didn’t actually help me to regulate my emotions, like it’s a, it’s a bandaid, not a solution. But in the moment, in that 30 minutes after having your first glass of wine, you there is relief. There’s that feeling of like, oh, okay, like the the relief from the loneliness, the powerlessness, the overwhelm, that is a thing that that does happen. It also helped me to escape, strained, toxic, unhealthy family relationships. So, you know, struggling with extended family relationships and being able to kind of escape into a glass of wine. And again, it wasn’t crazy. It didn’t seem excessive. It was never embarrassing. There was never a blackout or a funny story or like, wow, Kristen really, like let loose like it was always just like very, in the privacy of my own home, usually. And just like the safe. You know, it was like how to handle the normal everyday stress and the overwhelm of being a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world and the overwhelm of being a parent of neurodiversity kiddos that are like really struggling, and now I understand one of them was autistic, is autistic, but like, was autistic, and I didn’t know it.

And like, dang, it’s hard. And so I really want to communicate that like if alcohol is one of the tools that you were using right now, I do not judge you for that. We all need tools. And sometimes alcohol is going to be a tool. And for many years for me, it seemed fine. I didn’t really notice any negative effects. They were probably there. They could have been there, but I didn’t really notice them. And I really got into the habit, as I said of having like a usually a glass of red wine, Cabernet. Oh my gosh, I still love it. I still miss it. I still like I can smell it. I can taste it. It’s so delicious. A glass of wine or maybe like an IPA like a beer at the end of the night in Pennsylvania. We are like it was so into our craft beers. I know that’s not true of everywhere in the world. But like in PA, we are into our craft beers. And I was am like I love it. But when I did dry January, and I realized how much of a hold this alcohol had on me. When I realized how strong my cravings were when I realized how much I missed it. I really became uncomfortable with that. And it became it became like this, this values based change for me where like I was no longer values aligned with how much I needed slash wanted it in my life. Like there was an incongruence there for me, it was I don’t know if it was moral, a moral choice, but it was more of like a values choice. Like I did not want to want it so much.

But let me tell you why I decided to even do dry January, like what led me to that point. I’m 43. And so the last couple years of like being in my late 30s And my early 40s, I really began to notice that alcohol was having negative effects for me. So it was helping me to fall asleep easily. That was still part of my story. And so part of the reason why I use it, but I was starting to wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep for hours for hours for an hour or two or three, I would just wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to go back to sleep. And that started to really take a toll on me because your ground needs like eight or nine hours of sleep at night. And so I was really not getting enough sleep. And so I would use alcohol to go to sleep. It would help I would go to sleep but then I would start to wake up in the middle of the night and really not be able to go back to sleep and that was horrible. I was waking up groggy every single morning no matter how early or late I slept in I never felt rested. I never felt good getting up. And it was beyond like, just like the ADHD. You know, a lot of us have delayed sleep phase syndrome. So we do stay up later and wake up later. That’s not what it was beyond that. It was just like this perpetual grogginess like a fog, that would take until about lunchtime to lift, which sucks. I was getting headaches all the time, so many headaches. And I was noticing, like, if I drank two glasses of wine, I would 100% have a headache the next morning. I don’t know that, like, I could go so far as to say I was hung over. But like, if you’re drinking and then getting a headache, like it was pretty clear. So that wasn’t great. And I was noticing a huge increase in my anxiety, I was having anxiety spikes, I was really, really dealing with a ton of anxiety.

And for like, a couple years, I wanted to drink less, I wanted to be the person who was only drinking on the weekends, or I wanted to be the person who was only drinking when we went out for dinner. And I told myself like, Okay, I’m only going to drink if we’re going out to dinner. And inevitably, I would just drink at night. Like I just, I, I don’t want to make it sound like super extreme. Like, I just couldn’t stop myself. But the cravings were so intense. And I also had this like mind drum of like, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like you have a problem. It’s not like you’re drinking excessively, like what is one glass of wine really going to hurt? What like what’s the big deal. And so I would just inevitably end up drinking every single night, I wanted to drink less, that’s a key point here. So a little bit later in the episode, I’m going to read the symptoms of alcohol use disorder. And I was shocked that one of the symptoms is you want to drink last, but you don’t. And I didn’t like that. I didn’t like it. So I wanted to be the person who could just have one drink a week, I wanted to be the person who could just drink when we were like out to dinner or like, just on the weekend. But I just I wasn’t that person like I couldn’t get myself to drink in moderation.

And by moderation. I mean, like once a week or twice a week. It was always like I it was like an every night situation. That made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like it. And so all of these factors, then the not being able to sleep well, the waking up groggy, and feeling gross, the headaches, the increase in anxiety, and the wanting to drink last, but realizing that like, wasn’t like really a thing that I could do. All of that led me to go cold turkey and do dry January as an experiment. Like, I wonder what it would be like, I wonder, I wonder what it would be like to just go a full 30 days, and not drink at all. And then like I said, that experience was eye opening. And that is why I’ve continued to not drink. One of the things that we need to talk about is that if you have ADHD, you are at a higher risk for alcohol use disorder and addiction. There are there’s a lot of information out there. But I’m just going to quote a study from the National Library of Medicine. By the way, I’m going to start coding a lot of articles and studies and just so you know, they’re all going to be linked in the show notes for you. Okay, so this is from a study in the National Library of Medicine. And here’s what it says it says another related issue of importance in ADHD across the lifespan is the liability to develop addictions. The earlier onset and increased use of tobacco, alcohol and illicit substances and adolescents with ADHD compared to controls has been demonstrated in various studies and a high prevalence of drug abuse or dependency is reported in adulthood. A meta analysis of cohort studies confirmed that childhood ADHD significantly increases the risk for nicotine use in middle adolescence.

And the risk for alcohol use disorder during young adulthood. looked at from the other side in adult patients suffering from alcohol abuse 30 to 70% suffered from childhood ADHD. They’re doing so like, Here, here’s how we can interpret that. If you have ADHD you have a much higher risk of suffering from an addiction, substance use disorder and alcohol use disorder. Those of us with ADHD we struggle because we have a hard time regulating our emotions. We are chasing dopamine we have fewer dopamine receptor drugs in our brain, which means that the dopamine that we received when we drink alcohol or use drugs is super intense and super calming and super like, it’s so regulating it feels so good. This is why it’s important to treat our ADHD and have those dopamine receptors regulated with medication, rather than with substances that we can become addicted to and will negatively impact our bodies long term. Another thing about ADHD is is that we’re really impulsive. We’re really distractible. We’re, we’re always chasing the good time and the good feels. And so the impulsivity that we experience can really be displayed in our in our choices to drink, to smoke to use drugs, to not really think through how this is going to affect me long term, we are wanting the short term pleasure in exchange for the long term reward. We don’t really care so much about the long term reward. We want to feel better now. And I can totally go on record saying that like there was a lot of impulsivity with me and drinking again. I wasn’t it wasn’t crazy, but it was impulsive sometimes.

And it was just like, oh, what’s another one who cares? And there was just like a lot of impulsive decision making. At the end of the day when I’m like, No, I’m not going to drink. No, I’m not going to drink. Okay, fine. And so the impulsivity factor of ADHD can really impact our choices to drink or to not drink. It’s really interesting. All of the information that’s coming out about how alcohol impacts our brains and our bodies. And that like I said, at the beginning of this episode was really annoying to me. Annoying I was like, Can I not just enjoy this in peace, like please do not take this one thing away from me. But I think it is important for us to talk about like the real facts of how alcohol impacts us. Long term alcohol use can have severe effects on mental and physical health. It can increase anxiety, depression, cancer, sleep disturbances, hypertension, heart disease, obesity and it and it can weaken your immune system. It can make it harder for your body to resist disease and increase your risk for illnesses like colds and COVID-19 and pneumonia. Excessive alcohol use which remember for women is more than seven drinks a week and for men is more than 14 drinks a week has been linked to higher risk for many cancers including mouth, throat, liver, esophagus, colon and breast cancers, even moderate drinking so remember fewer than seven drinks a week can increase the risk of breast cancer in women.

This is huge. I’m reading from an article from Mayo Clinic and again I will link it in the show notes and it says short term moderate use can help you feel relaxed and less inhibited. Totally agree been there used it for that reason enjoyed every second of that. But Alcohol is a depressant. Heavy drinking more than seven or more than 14 drinks a week for men increases your risk for depression, anxiety, irritability and rapid mood changes. And friend as a person with ADHD we do not need increased risk for depression, anxiety, irritability and rapid mood changes. We’ve got enough of that on our own. And what it seems like is that alcohol can really increase your ADHD symptoms, it can increase the side effects the comorbidities that go along with ADHD. It makes ADHD worse, not better. And this article confirms that reading more from the Mayo Clinic article here says alcohol is a neurotoxin that can disrupt communications in the brain. It also affects the function of brain cells. It can lead to intellectual impairment, headaches, memory loss, slowed thinking, slurred speech, and trouble with balance and coordination. It can affect your nervous system, as if our nervous system needs anything negative to make it or worse. Yeah, no.

And there’s a much higher increase of dementia. This isn’t this is the kind of thing like I said, If you had told me this a year ago, I would have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don’t like I know that. It’s not great for me, but I don’t really want to hear it. But for me, understanding and seeing the effects in my own life and then reading the facts. I’m just like, Ah, it’s undeniable. It’s on deniable. It’s so interesting because alcohol is so socially accepted. And it’s it’s really an interesting thing to me because, for most in most communities, smoking is no longer like widely accepted. There are people that smoke if you smoke, I do not judge you, but for the most part like the social acceptance Smoking has gone way, way down. But alcohol is still very, very widely accepted, even though it is highly addictive and has only negative effects on us. alcohol addiction far outweighs addiction to illicit drugs. Isn’t that wild? It’s extremely addictive. Some studies show that one in 12 Americans have alcohol use disorder. That’s not nothing. That’s really, really, really a high number one in 12. But again, why do us ADHD ears, like really enjoy it and go for it? It’s because alcohol stimulates the release of endorphins, the brains feel good chemicals, which create a sense of relaxation and well being, the instant gratification can be particularly seductive to individuals dealing with high stress, anxiety, or depression. And I’m going to add in ADHD, it’s super seductive, because it calms you for a little while, it does have a positive effect in the short term. But it is a band aid solution to deeper issues. And I will raise my hand and say for sure, for me there, there were deeper things going on. There still are, those deeper things are still there. And alcohol is a really nice relief from that it’s a really nice break from that it’s a really nice cover up from that. So what factors can contribute to the development of alcohol use disorder? I think for most of us, like it is so socially acceptable. And so it’s promoted in so much advertising. And just like in every situation, we’re always celebrating with alcohol, and we’re just kind of planning our lives around it. But also, there’s genetically, we might have a family history of alcoholism or addiction, that certainly can increase our risk.

There’s social pressure, obviously, which we talked about, and there’s a major, major emotional escape. And of course, when we add in neuro divergences and trauma, that can increase our risk as well. So my friend, I want to read for you the symptoms of alcohol use disorder. Healthcare professionals use criteria from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders, fifth edition. So that’s the DSM five, which in many ways is problematic, but nonetheless, it’s it is what it is. So you can assess whether or not a person has alcohol use disorder and determine the severity as well. So severity is based on the number of criteria a person meets based on their symptoms. Mild alcohol use disorder is two to three symptoms or criteria being met. Moderate is four to five criteria, and severe is six or more. So I’m going to read these out loud to you. And I just want you to count on your fingers. How many you relate to how many you identify with? How many relate to how many? How many? You, you feel like oh, yeah, that’s me, and we’ll kind of assess it. So in the past year, not the past week, not the past month in the past year. Have you had times when you’ve ended up drinking more or longer than you intended? More than once? Have you wanted to cut down or stop drinking or tried to, but couldn’t? Have you spent a lot of time drinking, being sick from drinking, or getting over other After Effects? Have you had urges or intense cravings for drinking? Have you found that drinking or being sick from drinking often interfered with taking care of your home and your family? Or caused job troubles or school problems? Have you continued to drink even though it was causing trouble with your family or friends? Have you given up or cut back on activities that you found important, interesting or pleasurable, so that you could drink more than once? Have you gotten into situations while or after drinking that increased your chances of getting hurt, such as driving swimming, using machinery etc. Have you continued to drink even though it was making you feel depressed or anxious or adding to other health problems?

Or after having an alcohol related memory blackout? Have you had to drink much more than you once did to get the effect that you want? Or found that your usual number of drinks had much less effect on you than before? And this is the last one. Have you found that when the effects of alcohol were wearing off you had withdrawal symptoms such as trouble sleeping shakiness, restlessness, nausea, sweating, racing, heart, dysphoria, etc. Alright, so that’s it. So I’m wondering dear, dear Liz sooner if you related to two or three of those criteria in the last year, if so, you may have mild alcohol use disorder. If you relate it to four or five of the criteria, you may have moderate alcohol use disorder. And if you relate it to six or more of the criteria, you may have severe alcohol use disorder. For me, I was in the moderate level, I was at like the four to five range. And I’m uncomfortable with that. That’s not values aligned. For me, I didn’t actually realize what the symptoms of alcohol use disorder are, or were, and I just kept leaning on my own, like, I’m not drinking that much. I’m not drinking as much as so and so I’m not putting myself in harm’s way. I’m, I’m always just in my house. And what I realize now is that in my house is where I need to regulate my emotions where I need to really lean on my other tools, and not use alcohol as the tool. So for me personally, and this is just my personal choices right now. I’ve been six months, pretty much alcohol free. I’m calling myself sober, curious, or I heard on Instagram, somebody use the term local, sober, and I love that term, local sober, which means I’m not going to drink in my house. I’m not really going to drink in Pennsylvania.

But like if I go on a trip or if something is like really special, I It’s totally fine with me. I you know, can have a glass of wine. We were in Florida over spring break, I had a glass of wine at dinner with my husband. It was wonderful. It wasn’t used for me as an emotional regulation tool. It wasn’t a to damp in what I was feeling. It wasn’t to escape anything. It was just like a wonderful dinner out. I had the best steak I’ve ever had in my life, and a glass of red wine to accompany it and it was the perfect meal. But that was in April, that was two months ago. That’s not something I’m doing every day anymore. So local sobriety. You might want to try it out. You might you might want to test it out. In July. I’m going to the Atlantis Morissette concert in Camden, New Jersey. I cannot wait. I think if I needed a different job. If I like if coaching and podcasting and ADHD expert were not in the cards for me anymore. I would want to be an Atlantis Morissette impersonator. I think I could do it. I think that I could do it. But anyway, Hail the Queen of 90s grunge music, Atlantis Morissette, I love you, I love you. So anyway, I’m going to the concert, it’s in New Jersey, we’re going to sit outside on a lawn chair, and we’re going to just like, enjoy it, it’s going to be the best and I plan to have a beer, I’m making a plan for July, it’s going to be great. But again, it’s going to be a part of an experience. It’s not going to be to regulate my emotions or to dampen something that I’m feeling. So I don’t want to take away the word sober from the sober community, like people who have gone through hell and back to gain their sobriety I have so much respect, if that is you like oh my gosh, I have so much respect for you. I know that this is not the same, like I understand that.

And I don’t want to take anything away from you. But I am sober, curious, and I am interested in living a life without alcohol. And I am a local sober meaning, I want to just make sure that I’m not drinking around here, and I’m not using it in my daily life. And if I thought that I could drink once or twice a week at my house, I would. But I’ve tried that 100 times and it don’t work for me, it don’t work for me. So we’re going local sober, No more drinking in Pennsylvania. A couple points that I really want to make. First of all, you need to consult your doctor, I really, really encourage you to especially if you’re like more on the severe side of alcohol use disorder like in the criteria here. Obviously, I’m not diagnosing you. I’m just letting you know of the criteria. And if you had six or more of those, you really I just would love for you to consult your doctor. I used to lie about how much I drink to my doctor, like they would be like about three drinks a week and I’d be like, Yeah, that sounds about right. Don’t do that to your doctor.

If you are a heavy drinker, it could be really, really dangerous for you to stop cold turkey so do not do that. Make sure that you are talking to your doctor first. Find a group find find a supportive group find Alcoholics Anonymous or some sort of support group. I have been listening to this amazing podcast called sober, awkward. A friend and colleague turned me on into it. It’s, it’s great. And they have a group, I have no idea if it’s good, but they have one, I really, really enjoy the podcast, highly recommend it. It’s called sober, awkward. And make sure you talk to a friend, shame about whether it’s addiction or alcohol use disorder or whatever you want to call it, and maybe over drinking or excessive drinking or whatever label you want to smack on it. Shame wants us to hide and not tell the truth and, and not be honest about what we’re going through. And shame is just going to perpetuate more addictive tendencies and more addictive behaviors.

And so if we can come out into the light, and if we can say the truth about what we have experienced and what we’re going through, and like, what our values are and how we want to live, aligned with our values, if we can just say that out loud. Everything changes, absolutely. Everything changes. I invite you to talk to someone that you love, talk to somebody that cares about you. All right, and the very last thing and this is silly, it’s it’s actually not silly. It’s really important. I found an amazing non alcoholic IPA. Beer. That is so good that even my husband said it tastes like beer. It’s so good. It’s from athletic Brewing Company. It’s called run wild IPA. It’s an a blue can. It’s cute. It even looks like like real beer. Actually, I brought it to a friend’s house. We were having a barbecue, and I brought a cooler and I had like, you know, real beer in there. And then I had some of my non alcoholic IPAs, and my friend grabbed it and I was like, Do you know that’s a non alcoholic? And he was like, what? So the Canada’s even cute.

So again, it’s athletic Brewing Company run wild IPA. This podcast is not sponsored by athletic Brewing Company, but maybe it should be because that IPA is dang good. I test it. Try it. It looks here like you can get it at Target, which is awesome. I will place an order for that today. So athletic Brewing Company, run wild IPA. If you love the taste of beer like I do, you won’t be disappointed with that. Alright, well, this has been extremely vulnerable. I hope that it’s been helpful and insightful. And wherever you are on your journey, there’s absolutely no judgment from me, I adore you. And I’ll talk to you next week. But a few years ago, I went looking for help. I wanted to find someone to teach me how to feel better about myself and to help me improve my organization productivity, time management, emotional regulation. You know, all the things that we adults with ADHD struggle with, I couldn’t find anything. So I researched and I studied and I hired coaches and I figured it out. And then I created focused for you.

FOCUSED is my monthly coaching membership where I teach educated professional adults how to accept their ADHD brain and hijack their ability to get stuff done. Hundreds of people from all over the world are already benefiting from this program and I’m confident that you will to go to Ihaveadhd.com/focused for all details