-
So I still remember the exact spot
-
on the highway where I was driving.
-
I think I remember it so vividly because
-
I was having one of the most important
-
conversations that I’ve ever had with
-
myself.
-
In that moment in my car,
-
I knew in my bones,
-
I wouldn’t drink alcohol again.
-
So you might be thinking
-
what was the rock
-
bottom that brought me to that point?
-
And the answer is … there wasn’t one!
-
You see, I was a gray area drinker and
-
I drank between two extremes.
-
I wasn’t an end stage,
-
lose everything kind of drinker,
-
not by a long shot.
-
If you would have asked my friends
and family
-
if they thought I had a drinking problem
-
they would have said, “of course not”.
-
But I also wasn’t an every now
and again drinker
-
who would have a glass of champagne
-
for example at the wedding and then not
-
drink again for weeks.
-
I didn’t fall into either one of those
drinking categories
-
or drinking extremes. And ...
-
maybe you can identify?
-
As a nutritionist who has worked in
-
corporate wellness since 2004,
-
I functioned really well. I knew how
-
to eat well, I worked out on a regular
-
basis and I loved to read and study
-
everything health and wellness.
-
But what people didn’t know
-
was how much I loved the “off” switch
-
that wine provided to my “on”
and often anxious brain.
-
I loved the immediate effect that red
wine delivered.
-
And people also didn’t see how
-
easy and frequent it was for one glass
of wine
-
to turn into one bottle of wine.
-
There is a commune characteristic
and pattern
-
in gray area drinking that I
-
experience and I’ve watched many others
-
experience as well and that’s a stopping
-
and restarting drinking.
-
One time I stopped for 7 months,
another time
-
I stopped for 30 days,
and other short periods
-
in between, and then I would think
to myself:
-
“Why am I being so restrictive?
-
I can be a social drinker”.
-
So I’d return to drinking
-
only to return to a level of drinking
-
where I regret it.
-
This back and forth drinking
marry-go-around
-
was the exact thing that I knew I wanted
to exit off for good
-
that day in my car on the highway.
-
And maybe you actually don’t identify with
-
gray area drinking because not
everyone will.
-
But here is what I know with
absolute certainty:
-
there are people in your life
-
right now, it could be family
-
members, close friends, colleagues, and
-
they are worrying and wondering
-
as they’re rethinking their drinking
-
because they are in the gray area,
-
but more than likely they are not
talking to you about it
-
and they are not talking to others
about it
-
because they think they are the only ones
-
and they think they are alone.
-
So how do I know this? I’ve lived this
-
for many years.
-
the more I've been speaking out
professionally about my
-
gray area drinking experience the more
my email inbox
-
gets flooded with emails from
-
attorneys and therapists,
-
senior level managers and nurses,
stay in home moms,
-
yoga instructors, and many many others.
-
And the words are different, but
-
the jest of what they write me is all
-
the same and they say, “I identify with
-
your drinking story.
-
I don’t have a rock bottom either,
-
I want to be able to drink socially,
but I end up regretting
-
how much I drink on a frequent basis."
-
This gray area drinking spectrum is real
-
and it’s large.
And a lot of high achieving,
-
high functioning people who
-
silently live here every day.
-
But beyond gray area drinking is
even something
-
bigger and that’s a collective story
of anxiety.
-
And this I believe is where we are
-
collectively missing the mark.
-
We don’t need anymore cognitive hoops to
-
jump through and we don’t need anymore
-
ways to focus our will power and contort
-
our will power in an attempt
to “fix” ourselves,
-
what we need is practical training
-
in how to nourish our nervous system
-
in a revolutionary and new way.
-
So there is many components and
pieces to this,
-
but one component and one
-
interesting place to start can be
-
understanding your neurotransmitters.
-
So let’s start with GABA.
-
So GABA is the natural anti-anxiety
neurotransmitter.
-
When GABA is low we can feel anxious
-
and our mind can get stuck in
a loop of worry,
-
rumination or obsession about anything.
-
Serotonin is the natural anti-depressant
neurotransmitter.
-
When serotonin is low we can feel
-
more depressed, unhappy, and crave
things like
-
carbs and alcohol and have trouble
sleeping.
-
Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that’s
in charge
-
of our focus and motivation.
-
When dopamine’s low it can be hard
to stay at a coarse
-
and stay on track with your goals
-
and your routines.
-
So people with low GABA people will often
-
say that they drink as a way to relax.
-
That was me. People with low serotonin
-
will say they drink as a way to have fun,
-
and people with low dopamine will say they
-
drink as a way to connect
-
and engage with others.
-
But here’s the problem and here is what I
want to you know and take from this talk —
-
It can be relatively easy for most people
-
on the gray area drinking spectrum
-
to stop drinking,
-
but it can be hard to stay stopped,
-
especially if we are not
-
replenishing our neurotransmitters and
-
nourishing our nervous system
-
in a comprehensive and consistent way.
-
So here’s the good news, it turns out that
-
there is actually specific foods,
movements and lifestyle practices that
-
while they are great wellness tips for
-
everyone, they have very direct and
-
immediate roles in boosting all of our
-
neurotransmitters.
-
So as a way to give you some practical
-
ways that you can begin to boost your
-
neurotransmitters now I’d like to start by
-
doing that by using the acronym “NOURISH”.
-
So N - notice nature.
-
Research shows that when our pleasure,
-
which is dopamine,
-
and our happiness, which is serotonin,
-
both begin to rise when we go into areas
-
with a large density of trees or a large
-
body of water like an ocean.
-
All it takes is 20 minutes
-
of being around nature with
-
a lot of trees, a lot of water for your
-
GABA, serotonin, and dopamine
-
to begin to rise.
-
O - observe your breath.
-
There are many medications that can stunt,
-
blunt, and block
-
the fight-flight-freeze response
-
in your body, there are no medications
-
that can boost the calm response.
-
But there is one mechanism in your body
-
that can do that naturally.
-
And that mechanism is your breath.
-
When our breath is regulated our
-
neurotransmitters become regulated.
-
Take a breath!
-
How does that feel?
-
You all just gave a little boost
-
to your GABA, serotonin, and dopamine.
-
U - uniting with others.
-
The research is solid: close social bonds,
-
community, and social connections have
-
a direct impact on our nervous system.
-
In our technology driven world
-
we have become very deficient
-
of human touch.
-
Hug the people who support you,
-
hug your pets, get body work,
-
massage or Reiki, it doesn't matter,
-
whatever resonates with you.
-
Physical touch has an immediate impact
-
on boosting GABA, serotonin and dopamine.
-
R - replenish with food.
-
When you eat protein,
-
whether it’s animal protein or
-
vegetable protein, it doesn’t matter,
-
it breaks down into amino acids and amino
-
acids are what replenish GABA, serotonin,
-
and dopamine.
-
When you eat healthy fats,
-
particularly in the form of Omega 3 fats
-
like fish oil, flax seeds, or walnuts,
-
those Omega 3 fats are the raw materials
-
that make your neurotransmitters.
-
When you eat carbohydrates, specifically
-
in the ideal form of vegetables,
-
and even more specific,
-
leafy green vegetables,
-
they break down into B vitamins and
-
B vitamins are the pre-cursors that make
-
serotonin. When you replenish with food
-
you replenish your neurotransmitters.
-
I - initiate movement. Any exercise will
-
boost the neurotransmitters.
-
The Boston University did a study with
-
yoga participants and they had them do
-
a 60-minute yoga class.
-
And then when they measured
-
they're GABA after that class
-
they found everyone’s GABA went up
at least 27%.
-
Some participants had
-
arising GABA up to 80%.
-
Compared to a control group
-
that read a book for 60 minutes,
-
there was no change in their GABA.
-
One 60-minute yoga class
-
can initiate a boost in all
-
your neurotransmitters.
-
But after we active, we need to be still.
-
S - sitting in stillness allows
-
the nervous system the opportunity
-
to respond and adopt in a complex world
-
that we live and work in
-
in a very nurusing way.
-
And particularly sitting in stillness and silence,
-
invoking a sacred
prayer, meditation, or scripture
-
can really feed and replenish your GABA,
-
serotonin, and dopamine.
-
H - harness your creativity.
-
Dopamine loves the creative flow.
-
And the way you get into a creative flow
is to pick a single focused activity
-
that ends en “ing”.
-
Some examples are gardening,
-
fishing, painting.
-
But be careful because there are some
-
other activities that end en “ing”
-
that make us feel like we get
-
a dopamine hit: drinking, smoking,
overeating.
-
Fishing, painting, the positive hobbies
-
boost your dopamine.
-
The other: drinking, smoking, overeating
-
depletes dopamine. Harnish your
-
creativity, but be very conscientious
-
how you doing that.
-
As of today, It has been 1054 days
-
since I’ve had a drink of alcohol.
-
But I didn’t have a rock bottom moment
-
that brought me to this point
-
and you don’t need to have one either.
-
From the outside looking in my drinking
-
didn’t look problematic,
-
but from the inside looking out
-
at the road I was traveling down
-
I knew the way I was drinking
-
was a problem for me.
-
And I’m not the only one
-
making this decision.
-
There are thousands of people in
this country,
-
in the U.K., Australia, and Canada
-
who are rethinking their drinking
-
and stopping drinking because
-
they choose to, not because they have to.
-
A whole paradigm is shifting
-
and we up on a whole new wellness movement
-
starting to go alcohol free.
-
But I’ll be honest there were two things
-
I worried about when I stopped drinking.
-
And the first was: what would happen with
-
my relationships? This one surprised me.
-
The important relationships in my life,
-
family stuck by me, but they deepened.
-
And I look back at all the new wonderful
-
people who who had entered my life in
-
the last 3 years, some of them drink,
-
some of them don’t, but our relationship
-
is not built on my personal decision
to not drink.
-
We’ve been able to connect and
-
relate and we’re aligned in a way
-
that is new for me.
-
And it’s been really really
-
nourishing to add these relationships
to my life.
-
The second thing I worried about was what
-
if something awful happened and it would
-
be so painful that I’ll want to numb it
-
with a glass or a bottle of wine?
-
That worry came true. Eighteen months into
-
not drinking I hit my worse personal
-
financial crisis in my life.
-
If there was ever a time when I wanted
-
to numb the experience
-
and anesthetize the intense
-
anxiety and fear that I felt that was
the time.
-
But I didn’t do it.
-
And I believe the reason I got through
-
that time without drinking wasn’t because
-
I had an intellectual understanding of
-
the nervous system, which I do, but
-
intellectualizing something is what gets
-
me through something. And it wasn’t
-
because I had a strong will power, which
-
I don’t, my will power fatigue is as much
-
as the next person. But what I had was
-
a very targeted and specific nourishment
-
that I had given my nervous system
-
leading up to that point in a very new and
-
different way. And that had given me
-
a zone of resilience and internal zone
-
of resilience that I’ve never had before.
-
So whatever road you’re on, wherever
-
you are on that road with your own
-
internal conversation, whether you’re
-
a healthcare professional like myself,
-
a business professional in any industry,
-
a stay at home parent or anyone else,
-
if you know in your bones that you’re in
-
the gray area with drinking or anything
-
else as an attempt to regulate the anxiety
-
in your body or the discomfort in your
life, don’t forget:
-
your GABA, your serotonin,
-
and your dopamine are waiting for you
-
to activate them with
-
certain foods, movements and lifestyle
-
practices, and when you do that
-
you’re giving your nervous system the
-
nourishment it’s been craving all along.
-
Thank you!