6 Things I Learned From Not Drinking For 1 Year

All right, 11 years ago, I gave up alcohol, and in today's episode, I want to share some of the things that I've learned since then. So the reason I'm doing this is my, at my 1-year anniversary of giving up I wrote this blog post, you can Google it. It's called 6 Things I Learned from Not Drinking for a Year. And today I thought I'll recap that blog post, but also share some of the things that I didn't add to that blog post that have kind of come true in the last 10 years. And I'm sharing here on My First Million because I think a lot of people would enjoy this, but also because this isn't just about giving up alcohol. So it doesn't matter if you're giving up drinking or you want to give up drinking, or you want to just create a new habit, I have found that these things that I've learned, they can apply to anyone trying to make a major life change. And so lesson number 1, figure out your why and go all in on that. And so let me explain. So I started drinking in my late teens with just my friends, just like most people when they start doing it. But what I noticed was that it dulled my anxiety a ton. And I am a pretty anxious person. I don't know if you could tell if you listen to this podcast, I bet you can. But I have a fairly high anxiety and I noticed that when I started drinking, my anxiety, it just like kind of went away. And so as I got more and more into drinking, I was just like, this feels awesome. I don't feel anxious. I'm going to keep doing it. So it was very much self-medication. And by the time I was like 21, I was super into alcohol to the point where probably ages 22 to 23, I was intoxicated basically 24 hours a day. I was drunk 24 hours a day. First thing in the morning, you start, you go all day, and then you wake up a little drunk or a little hungover and you just keep going. And so I realized one night I was blowing it. I always felt I was kind of special. I felt like I had this fire in me that I could do something interesting, but I was completely blowing it. And I felt I wanted to feel life because I didn't really feel like a lot of emotions during that period because they were hidden.. And so my reason was I wanted to feel life and I wanted to not ruin my potential. And so like funerals, wedding celebrations, meeting someone you like, breaking up with that person. I think I and many other people, we would drink because for some reason we didn't want to face reality, whether it's trauma you had, or I'm not sure why other people experience it, but you want to like cover it up. And I'm not against alcohol and drugs for other people, but for me, it basically just like masked how I felt, and I hated that. And then I realized that when I got sober, facing challenging situations, it felt like this massive adrenaline rush. I felt like so good about facing things that I previously was nervous about. So it took about 6 months after getting sober, but on month 6, month 7, month 8, I noticed that I would face these challenging situations. Like, for example, I was 20 23, 24 when I quit. And like, like every single 23, 24-year-old guy, meeting girls is like the number one focus in my life. And I noticed that when I was like 6, 7 months in, I, at first I was super nervous to go up and talk to a girl sober, but then I did it one time and I felt, oh my God, that was a rush. I gotta feel that again. I gotta feel that again. I gotta feel it again. And I noticed that it happened with business. It happened with so many other facets of my life that I got to feel this extreme emotion that for a lot of sober people, it's probably just, that's just how they feel, but it felt awesome. And so I felt like I was alive again. And so I actually loved like confrontation. I loved like nervous feelings because it felt like a rush to experience some of those things. And so it was important to lean into that. And I had to sit down for a minute and figure out why am I doing this? And I just always try to remind myself that. And I think that that's the case for any goal that you try to do when you change your life is you got to constantly remind yourself, why are you actually doing this? Lesson number 2, tell your friends. So I originally tried giving up booze because I was in college and I was like, like, this is a problem. This is just a huge issue that I have. I was basically living by myself my senior year of college and starting my sophomore year of school, it was like full-blown an issue. And so I went 2 years like that and I lived by myself basically, so like no one would know that I was screwed up. And I also had a hot dog stand and that was like my business. I've talked about here a lot of times. The reason I had that business was you could own a hot dog stand and sell hot dogs from 11 to 3 and be intoxicated. And most people won't know because they just think that you're acting goofy. And so that's one of the reasons why I did it. And so I basically didn't tell anyone. And then the first time I got sober, I just went cold turkey and I got super sick. A lot of people don't talk about this, but with alcohol, but I'm pretty sure there's only two drugs you can die from if you try to do it on your own and you could have withdrawals and die, and that's alcohol and opioids. And so I got really sick like 5 days into giving up booze and I went to my college doctor and they like measured my blood pressure and they're like, man, your blood pressure is like through the roof. What the hell is going on? And I had to explain to them what the issue was. And that was the first time that I ever vocalized it. And so we had to go to the hospital that day and I had to tell the hospital that was an issue and it was like really embarrassing and I felt horrible about even like vocalizing that. I remember I was like in tears practically. I was like, oh man, I can't believe I just said that out loud. But it definitely felt better. But I didn't tell anyone once I got out of the hospital. I still didn't mention it to anyone. And then eventually after a few months, I was going to graduate college and I moved to San Francisco to try to make it in the internet world. And I relapsed because when I got out to San Francisco, I wanted to meet new friends. I wanted to impress these guys who I moved in with, even though I doubt they were impressed by drinking. I somehow felt I needed to impress them and I was like, yeah, let's go party. Let's go do this. And then we went out and I got pressured and I caved in and I ended up drinking again. And then it took about another year of kind of going crazy. And I eventually went to a homeless clinic in San Francisco. It was called the San Francisco South of Market Mental Clinic, I think is what it was called. It was for homeless people pretty much. Like at the time I had just left my job to start the hustle and I didn't have any income. And so I technically qualified to like go to this homeless clinic, but in a weird way I was like, I'm basically a bum. Like I deserve to be here. Like I'm ruining everything. I deserve to be with these other addicts.. And I met this doctor, her name's Jocelyn Porquez. I saw her up until recently, actually. She gave me this advice. She was like, you should tell your friends, tell your roommates that you're having an issue. I was so freaking afraid to do that. And so I kind of worked up the courage with her encouragement and I eventually told my roommates and I was like, hey guys, I've got a drinking issue. And so you can live your life the way you want to live your life. And I'm not going to judge you. I'm totally fine with you guys doing what you want to do., but from this point on, I'm sober and I'm not going to drink alcohol, and I would love it if you could encourage me. And I felt like the biggest weight lifted off my shoulders. And I noticed that when I felt that weight go away, it became so much easier. And so I had no problem after that telling a bunch of other friends. And a few of my friends at the time, they kind of bailed on me. And I was kind of bummed for a minute. And then I was like, you know what, if they're willing to bail on me over this, then fuck them. I don't want to be friends with those guys anyway. And it felt amazing. It felt so good to be able to talk about this with people. And I've talked to a bunch of other people who have struggled with this, and a common feature that people have when they're trying to break any type of addiction or a habit is they don't talk about it with people because they're embarrassed. And I have found that talking about it, it makes me not embarrassed because a lot of other people struggle with this stuff, and it humanizes someone because I know that a lot of people listen to me and might look up to me. It's cool to help them, but I mostly do it for me. It's a selfish reason why I talk about it, because it makes me feel better and it makes me feel like it's no big deal, or it kind of normalizes it. And so in my opinion, if you're trying to change a habit, whether it's addiction, whether trying to start a business, I think that you should tell people. And the reason you should tell people is because of lesson number 3, which is I think it's important to recreate your identity. So Robert Greene is one of my favorite authors. He's got this awesome book called The 48 Laws of Power, and I remember reading it when I was trying to get sober. And I think it's like chapter 25, and he's got this chapter about recreating your identity. And he wrote the book in terms of like how to gain power, which you could argue is or is not good, but doesn't matter. The lesson though was awesome for me. And he gave examples of like celebrities, for example, Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga was this like fairly like normal woman when she was like 18 years old, and then she's like, You know, I'm kind of quirky. I'm going to lean into like this weird thing with my identity. I'm going to make my whole brand about it. And she became that person. And that is like the Lady Gaga character. And I found that to be very empowering. And so I started changing my language to not, I'm going to get sober, or I'm going to try and be sober, or I'm going to try not to drink too. I am sober. I am an alcoholic. And I found that labeling to be powerful. I think a lot of people don't like to label themselves. Labels can be really bad for you if you do like, I am depressed or I am weak or whatever it is. And so I just changed the label that I gave myself and I found that that kind of was like the seed for recreating an identity. So my identity before getting sober was like, I've got a strong tolerance or I can be the life of the party or I just don't give a shit. I'm down for whatever. Like these stupid labels that I gave myself, I was still labeling myself. So instead I decided I'm going to recreate my identity and I'm going to give myself the label of I am sober. And I have other examples of doing this. So for example, I'm going to talk about this in a second, but after giving up drinking, I totally got addicted to sugar and I got pretty like fat. And like 2 or 3 years ago, I told Sean, I go, Sean, I'm now a fitness influencer. And if you go to my Instagram, you'll see all these old posts where I, it was silly. I was kind of being silly about it, but I was serious. I'm like, I am a fit person now. I am an athlete. And so I got super fit because I started working at it, but I labeled myself and labeling myself as an athlete or as someone who works out every day. I didn't want to ruin that label. And so I exercised every single day. And I think labeling yourself as a good person, a loyal person, as a business builder, as a force of nature, as a fitness freak. I think those labels are incredibly important because it makes sure that you recreate your identity. And I liked to tell people that. And to this day, I still do that with a bunch of things. So for example, if I meet someone new, I'm not going to be like, yeah, I'm an alcoholic. I've got issues. But if they offer me a beverage or something, a beer, I just say, no, I don't drink because I like it too much. And they usually get the message, but I do like little subtle things like that. Where it's kind of puts my foot down of I do not drink alcohol. And I felt this load lighten from my shoulders to like put it out there, but it put pressure on me to never break that because I didn't want to disappoint others and I didn't want to disappoint myself. And so I like recreating my identity and I like using labels. And I think it's really important. So whether you want to start a business, this is a business channel, we'll talk about business, whether you want to start a business and you're working somewhere, it's like, Oh, I'm only working here temporarily, but I'm actually, uh, building a company right now because I'm an entrepreneur. I like labels. I think labels are incredibly effective. Lesson number 4: I'm not trying to be perfect, I'm just trying to be mostly good. And I think that that is true for many things. And let me give you an example. So I read so many books when I was trying to get sober. Uh, I talked about The 48 Laws of Power. That was a great one. Mastery by Robert Greene. That was another good one. And then the third one was The Power of Habit. The takeaway for that book for me was that a habit doesn't go away. It just gets transferred. And so what that means is that when you want to change a habit, it's important to look at your loop. So usually it's a, there's some type of stimulus that makes you want to do something and then you react to it and you typically do that over and over and over again. And that's how a habit is created. And so what I had to do when I was giving up booze was I had to look at what my behavior was and I had to like break the pattern. And the pattern wasn't necessarily going to go away, it was just going to get transferred to something new. And so when I transferred my habit to something new, I was under doctor supervision under the, for this, and I told the doctor, I'm like, man, I'm trying to not drink and I'm on day 3. I am craving sugar so much because when you drink like I drink, like 30 beers a day, you're like craving carbs constantly because that's a big part of alcohol. And the doctor was like, just go and eat M&M's. Just eat M&M's all day. Just go like, who cares? Just— you can figure that out at a later date. But right now the goal is not to be perfect and live a perfect life. It's just to be better than you were. And I thought that that was so relieving because I thought I had to be perfect. It's like, no, I'm making this massive life change. I can't screw anything up. And I was like, no, just improve this one thing and give into the sugar. And then at a later date, when you're confident that the alcohol thing is away and you're not craving it as much, we'll address the sugar thing another time. And so I did. I drink, or I ate tons of M&Ms. That was my candy for a long time, was peanut M&Ms. And I loved non-alcoholic beer. I drink so much O'Doul's. I would drink like 15 to 20 O'Doul's a day. Because I noticed when I craved beer, I just went and got No Duels. And that's a non-alcoholic beer if you don't live in America. It doesn't taste very good, but it was an awesome replacement. And I got pretty fat because of that, but I was okay. It was better to be fat and not on alcohol than whatever I was before, but drinking as much as I did. And then I transferred that habit from non-alcoholic beer and sugar. I've mostly have successfully transferred it to diet soda and carbonated drinks. So I drank a ton of like carbonated water, like all day. And I love diet soda and diet soda. You could say that's not good for you, but that's okay. I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm just trying to be mostly good. Now, lesson number 5, being sober attracts more people. Like I said before, I was 23, 24, 25 when I went through this journey. I was single at the time. And what does every single guy care about? Meeting girls or meeting whatever you're into, but basically meeting someone. And my number one fear, I remember this when I was trying to get sober, was what girls think about me. I didn't want them to think I was like a freak at the time. I was like, oh, what do they think? I'm a freak? What do they think? Like, are they gonna think that I'm like religious? What have they— which is not wrong with being religious, but I ain't. And I was like, are they gonna be turned off? Are they like not gonna be into me because I'm gonna be boring? And I remember My first sober date, I was scared shitless. I was so afraid. And I decided to just tell her when we, uh, something, it came up. I don't remember how. Uh, I think because I didn't order like a drink, which she ordered a drink. She's like, oh, you don't drink? And I was like, no, like I'm basically an alcoholic and it's been like 6 months since I drank. And I remember she leaned in, like she like put her elbow on the table and like leaned in. And I was like, bingo, she's interested. What the hell? That— and I don't think you should do something like this for other people. But at the time I was like, I'll take any advantage that I can get. And the fact that I was afraid to meet women and girls because I was an alcoholic and that there— it made her maybe like more interested in me. I was like, I'll take a leg up anywhere I can get it. So I leaned into that and I noticed that women liked me more, at least the right type of woman, the type of woman I wanted to attract. They liked me more because of that. And, uh, I've been married now for a long time. So meeting girls is not in that way, isn't actually something I care about anymore, but men were attracted to me more too. Like, because I had this newfound confidence, it felt as if I was walking around all day and I remember I used to think. I've got a string attached to my back and I would try to pull it up. And so I would try to walk up like perfectly straight because I was like, wow, this whole drinking thing, it's changing my confidence. I'm going to lean into other things that create a real sense of confidence. So I started changing my posture and it was awesome. And what happened was that created this cycle of confidence where I was like, oh, I could do this without beer. I could do, uh, I can meet a girl, I can go and start a business, I could do all these things. And it created this like crazy cycle of confidence that kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it was the best feeling on earth. Lesson number 6: Finding inspiration is 100% worth it and helpful, and it's okay to be corny. So I remember when I was 24, I met this guy named Joe Garvey. Joe Garvey actually had a kind of an interesting business. It was called Clash. It stood for like the California League of Scavenger Hunts or something like that. And when I was trying to start my business, I didn't have any income coming in. And so I met Joe somehow through a friend of a friend, and he was like, man, I host these scavenger hunts for companies. They like pay me $10,000 and I do a scavenger hunt all over the city where you gotta like go all over the city and find like certain things. And it was, a blast. And he would let me work some of the scavenger hunts, and he would pay me like $200 or something. It was a big deal. And at the end of a scavenger hunt, you end at a bar and you drink. And he would like be there being the life of the party. He was this big, uh, he was a big tall guy, and he was in the center like getting everyone to rile up and do all these like team building stuff. But it was like cool, and but it always involved alcohol. And I remember after working with him, he told me— I don't remember how, but I was like, Joe, you don't drink? He's like, oh no, like, you know, I had a problem. I don't drink anymore. I'm sober. And I was like, you can do that while being the life of the party? That's insane to me. How do you do that? And like, he had a ton of friends and women loved him. And I was like, you're the man. You're my hero. I can't believe you just admitted that you had a drinking problem and yet you're still like the man. People still like you and stuff. And I got so much inspiration from that and it made me feel so good. So I started reading all these inspirational books, like the Tony Robbins of the world, all that stuff. I read it like crazy. I even had this jar. I had this jar where every day that I didn't drink, I would put a penny in. And then it was like every day that I exercised, I put a penny in. And then it turned into where I put 3 pennies in if I didn't drink, if I exercised, and I ate well, I would put a penny in. And I, my goal was to fill this jar all the way up. And I look back at that and I'm like, yeah, that was like maybe a little corny, but it helped so much. And like leaning into some of these like cheesy things, it's really powerful. And I know a bunch of, because of this podcast and because of my work, I know a bunch of like quote powerful people. I know a bunch of billionaires, people who like sometimes many other people will look up to. A lot of them do this corny shit because, and I still do it, by the way, we do it because it— inspiration is awesome. I was already a motivated person. I don't think you can make someone who's unmotivated motivated, but I think you can inspire them. And inspiration is just having something to reach towards, or it's reading something or being, or consuming some type of content where it helps point your, your car in the right direction. I always viewed myself, I viewed myself as this like fast car whose back tires were lifted in the air, and I was like, had my foot on the gas and I was just flooring it, but I wasn't going anywhere. And that, and that was like my motivation. I was already a motivated person, my wheels were moving quickly, but I had to like let the tires on the ground and I had to be pointed in the right direction. And that's what I use inspiration, inspirational stuff for. So I like a lot of these cheesy movies where it's like, uh, uh, a guy doing something that's totally unrealistic, but it makes me feel good. Or reading the Tony Robbins books, reading a lot of these books that I will definitely make fun of now, which I, by the way, I still read. It made me feel so much better and gave me inspiration. And I think it's important to like lean into that, whether you're starting a business or whatever you're doing, because Dude, it's scary. Like giving up alcohol, starting a business, meeting a girl, trying to approach a woman who you like, moving to a new place. It's scary. And you need every advantage that you can get in order to like get over that hump and to actually make these things become a reality. And so like lean into some of that stuff. There's a lot of like really good inspirational stuff. Out there. Sometimes it's My First Million, this podcast. But I think it's cool to like consume a lot of that information because that rubs off on you and you need any advantage you can get in order to get ahead and to accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish. It's still like a little uncomfortable for me to talk about some of this stuff, but I do it because it definitely makes me feel better. And I acknowledge that I think it will make a lot of you guys feel better if you're trying to achieve anything, whether it's giving up booze or start a business. Do whatever. Um, at the end of the day, this is all about like getting over your fear. I think it's, it's about how to, uh, kind of jump off a cliff. And, um, there's a reason I have this horrible tattoo. I'm not going to show it right now, but on my feet, on my left and right feet, I've got the word ACT, and on the right foot I have NOW. It's a homemade tattoo. When I was getting sober, I like used a needle and I like tattooed my feet because like I said, I like inspirational stuff. But I think that this podcast hopefully is a little bit of inspiration, but also practical ways that I can get you guys to act now and to change whatever it is you want to change. I'll be in the comments on YouTube, whether you're listening to this on YouTube or a podcast app, but go to our YouTube page, My First Million, and comment on this video and I'll try to reply to a bunch of them. But if you are struggling with something, say what it is you're struggling with and what you're going to do to approach it and get over it, because I think it feels good to put that stuff on paper. Like I said, it feels good to label yourself about what you, what you are now versus what you were. But let me know in the YouTube comments what you think about this. And that's the pod.