Letting go of what no longer serves you - How I quit drinking - Dawndra Budd

As I stood in the midst of this breathtaking landscape in Iceland back in October of 2017, I was at the beginning of a whole new exciting chapter in my life. It had been six months since I had a drop of alcohol, making this the longest break from booze for me since the age of 16. GULP. That was a staggering fact, very hard to swallow. At age 42, I rarely went more than 5 days without a drink. If I made it that far I was most likely because I was sick with a cold, even then a hot toddy never killed anyone right? I would go through many periods of “drinking less.” This entailed having ONLY(?) two huge glasses of wine and saying to myself and to others that I wasn’t drinking much.

The drinking was a part of everything. I drank when I had a shitty day, at every celebration or party, it was mimosas for brunch at West 5 on a Sunday, lunch with a friend, dinner, birthdays, going to concerts, after a long day…. “whewww I’m stressed, I need a drink”! And on and on (yawn) A TOTAL SLAVE.

And every time something bad happened in my life, I kicked the drinking level up a notch. It was like a free pass to drink more. My mom had passed away which was devastating and heartbreaking. My dog Moose died. My favorite sweetest cousin Daylon passed away suddenly and at a young age, which completely broke me. My boyfriend of 7 years cheated on me, my dear friend was hit by a car. Glug glug. Sniff sniff. I drank my way through it. But …it made me feel better, right? RIGHT? It’s just what you do when your sad, right? That’s the lie we tell ourselves.

Booze made me sleep like shit, and gave me massive anxiety along side a stupid ass hang over. I would feel like a bad ass for getting through the day with a hangover, not thinking it really is way more bad ass not to drink in the first place. There were times when I would have no control over my own emotions because alcohol creates anxiety. Why was I making shitty things shittier? It’s wild that people with social anxiety or any anxiety drink to loose the anxiety. I’ve heard people tell me and themselves over and over they drink because of social anxiety, yet they talk to people all day long at work. I don’t think they are liars, I think we lie to justify without knowing it. Not to mention the world hammers this into our brain everywhere from movies to commercials, to our friends. Its wild that alcohol is a depressant- and even though we all know that- we drink when we’re sad.

I’ll admit I had a lot of good times drinking. It was fun, until it wasn’t. Even in the good times, did the good outweigh the bad? When I write the pro’s and con’s - the answer is simple. But how the f*** do I stop? It was an unconscious program running the show. Only I didn’t know about that stuff back then. What you see and hear as a child from ages 1-7 gets downloaded into your subconscious. For real. As kids we are in the state of theta - Bruce Lipton explains it best HERE in this video.

I was functioning- and even having fun some of the time. I just didn’t know I could still be having that same fun and even without it. I hated being a slave to anything, so I would lie to myself about it.

I grew tired of always needing to loose 10 or more pounds, my jeans were always tight. I was puffy and tired. What a boring conversation, just work out already! I would excersise a month, then fall out of it. Go plant based for a month, then get drunk and eat nachos. “Fuck it” was my motto.

It seemed like for every one good thing, there were a shit ton of bad things that came along for the ride. So why do we keep doing it? I had to find out the reason.

Six months deep into quitting, I still wasn’t sure I was REALLY quitting, like I was scared to say I was quitting and then fail. I wanted to quit forever.

This whole thing started when I had embarked on a 30 no drinking challenge with my best friend, and I had not at all felt like starting up again after the 30 days were up. I lost 14 pounds, I had massive energy, people were shitting themselves saying how good I looked. I was coming to terms that deep down inside I thought life without booze was boring, and I was so very wrong. I wasn’t bored at all, I was in fucking ICELAND for fuck sakes. And I could drive -AT NIGHT! I dare you to pull me over.

AA. I went to a bunch of AA meetings as a kid, and that all looked pretty damn sad to me. Now I knew they were better off not drinking and that sharing their stories was super important, but back as a kid - all the smoking cigarettes and the stinky coffee and sad stories, it sent my child brain a message that I wasn’t even aware of. (whisper…. not drinking sucks)

As much as I don’t love the word, my mom was an alcoholic. She was a single mom on welfare raising my brother and I. I remember trying to wake her up in the morning in first grade, and she would say, “I want to crawl in a hole and die.” She would leave us to go party, with her brothers and sisters, who threw parties. It was chaos. I remember my uncle rolling a van and breaking his neck (he lived) I had another uncle commit suicide. My aunt was hiding from her X husband who was beating her. My mom found a partner and he beat her all the time in front of us. We ran through the woods to get away from him in the night in the rain. I knew the woods well, I was in second grade.

This terrible situation led to her finding AA when I was in 3rd grade, quitting for good, and doing an AMAZIING job at raising us from there on out. Cheers to my mamma.

Now I want to say I love my mom and I am not angry at her for this. The hand she was dealt growing up was pretty tough. Like really fucking dark.

Six months deep with no booze and I was really happy as a clam and I felt soooooo good! That was a high in itself. I was sleeping like a baby -and holy shit that alone can positively effect your whole life. Truth be told - I was terrified to go back to drinking. I knew it would creep back up to a daily dose. A constant battle in my head “I won’t drink today. okay maybe just one, okay fuck it I’ll have another I’m watching Game of Thrones”

Now that I don’t drink, I see so it clearly- it’s no WONDER that we think this way. I constantly hear comments like “Oh I’m just having soda water tonight, I’m SOOO boring.” Or last week I was at a party, “Why are you drinking WATER are you doing sober January?” When you quit, it becomes a thing for a while. People you drank with don’t want to hear it, but all you can do is lead by example. Show them how much fun you can have.

Was drinking a huge part of my personality, or was it holding back my true personality? One thing that really bothered me was the lost or stolen time that I could never ever get back. And life is short already.

How would I ever go to a metal show without a rainier or pbr in my hand? How would I meet a guy who drinks- and not break the ice with some cocktails? I mean I needed the booze to lighten up right? How would I go camping, snowboarding, go on vacation, edit photos without wine, bartend without a shot, or meet a girlfriend and spill our guts for hours over drinks? What a bout food and wine together. OMG, THE HORROR! We can go on and all with excuses all day when in reality, just ditch it if it isn’t serving you. Tell alcohol to go fuck itself. As I passed through each of these “triggers” I found that loved every single thing I did much more and with passion and conviction, instead of really just being half way there.

I told myself that there was no way in hell that I would make it the full 30 days without drinking. This came from years of conditioning myself, coupled with what I saw as a child. I wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t stumble upon a magic book.

Time to take off the mask. The book that changed my life.

Just before my booze cleanse, I saw a book on my friends table. “This Naked Mind” (link) by Annie Grace. I asked “Oh I saw this book worked for Tyler, he posted in on Facebook, have you read it?” “No I put it down because I could feel it working and I don’t want to quit” We laughed, and I took the book home. Two words on the cover stood out to me, “CONTROL DRINKING” This was GREAT!! I wouldn’t have to quit, I could just mind trick myself to have like two drinks on Friday night, wooo hoooo!

“Cognitive dissonance, defined as the mental stress or discomfort that is experienced by someone who holds two contradictory values, ideas, or beliefs at the same time.”
- This Naked Mind

That month before I accidentally quit drinking, I had two “shit show”nights with the booze to remind me why I should ditch the load. One night, I had (only! ha ha) FOUR tall tequila sodas at a bar with some friends. Well, with a generous bartender was pouring my drinks, so it was more like EIGHT tequila sodas. I had to have my friends new boyfriend (whom I just met that night) pull over so I could vomit on the way home. How sexy is that? I felt AWFUL the next day. But hey, I pulled off this photo shoot so, I win right? I could make anything a win when I wanted to. A week later I went to a metal show on Capital Hill and the friends I went with ordered all kinds of shots. I barely made it home, and when I did my roommate found me passed out in the backyard, in the rain. He had done so many worse things, we laughed. Ha ha! Just hilarious. I felt like death warmed over the next day. Moaning in pain, I could'n’t even turn the light on in my room without it making me even more sick. At first you never want to drink again, and that quickly becomes, I’m fine I just overdid it is all, I’ll never do that again!

Until you do.

As I dove into the book, tequila in hand for the first few chapters, something clicked. “Anything unconscious dissolves when you shine the light of consciousness on it.” —Eckhart Tolle a quote used in the book.

This idea of my subconscious mind running the show made sense to me. Why do I think, “no thanks, I’m not drinking this week, and then say “I’ll have a coors light” to the waitress?

In fact, everything in the book made sense to me. The parts about what alcohol does to your health were terrifying. I had to wonder, how could people (myself included) know this stuff, but NOT know this at the same time, in fact NOT WANT TO KNOW.

Also, I thought that I had TOTALLY ditched the alcoholic patterns I witnessed as a child. The beatings my mother took in front of me, the hang overs, the fighting. An uncle broke his neck, someone was in jail. My uncle hung himself, the house was on fire. The babysitter is watching Exorcist and so am I, age 5 woooo hooo! Someone crashed their car. Bu.. I wasn’t like that. I thought had learned how not to be, I didn’t do that stuff, so I was okay right? I drank for fun! I got out!

However, the belief that daily drinking and getting drunk all the time is just normal , that was one of the stowaways in my subconscious mind.

My parents quitting drinking likely saved me, and when they quit the drama sort of stopped. But the damage had been done.

THE BOOK.

Not only did reading what this shit did to my body, mind, and spirit turn me off, this book said that alcohol KILLS CREATIVITY. FUCK THAT NOISE! Now that’s a big one, considering that would kill the very thing that made me happiest, photography. Truth be told- deep down, I knew that the booze was holding me back . Big time.

Reading the words that alcohol is a carcinogen scared the shit out of me. Even though I was a booze hound, I cared about my health. At the time, I ate a mostly vegan diet, I took long walks most days, drank kombucha, ate organic vegatables and blah blah… I cared, and I tried. And I was productive, damn it. Except well…at nighttime… and on Sundays you know, and on mornings could be slow too…okay a major portion of my one and only precious life I was spending feeling like shit, what the actual fuck?

When I made a list of the pros and cons of drinking, the positives of not drinking greatly outweighed the negatives and by a landslide. It turned out that having something in my hand was half of the battle, so I just subbed the booze for N/A beer or soda water.

The benefits of not drinking, just to name a few….

Sex is definitely better, feeling it and your feelings sort of important for some things. The money thing is real, I cannot believe how much I spent on booze. I’m way more in tune with my own emotions unscathed by a chemical imbalance, I sleep WAY better, I lost 14 pounds immediately (and without trying)

The most exciting change of all -I became much more creative! Hello photography. I was done half assing it. I felt creative all of the time, not sometimes.

I have way more energy, and I wasn’t lying to myself or anyone else. I never cried one more time about my X cheating on me after a quit, a normal occurrence when I drank and stayed in that victim mentality. VICTIM MENTALITY. Those words!

So- no more tears or feeling sorry for myself, no more dark sided nights going down some dark rabbit hole about my childhood, or dwelling on all of the shitty things. In fact, I was less negative in general, less interested in bitching about my life or other people, and more interested living life to the fullest. My skin looked better, eyes brighter, house cleaner, snowboarding was better. I’m much more present with people. I love mornings now. It’s a much nicer place in my brain without any voices asking for the next drink or fighting urges to have one. I started practicing yoga. In the past I couldn’t stick to anything exercise wise outside walking the dog. I‘m in the best shape of my life, all because I ditched the load. I found a healthy lifestyle and I am addicted to that.

SLEEP. It truly freaked me the F out that your body heals when in the REM sleep stage, and alcohol can stop the REM from happening. This got me thinking of getting sick and even cancer. Deep sleep is also the time of peak growth hormone release in the body, which is important for cell reproduction and repair. As I get older, I want my body to fight off the cancer or whatever comes my way as best it can.

It’s true, ditching alcohol gets you looking inward sorts of ways, and gets you closer to the real you. I say this only to those of you who booze is no longer serving in a positive way, of course.

WHERE I’m AT NOW

Today, I’m full of gratitude. I have better conversations, I ‘m more discerning about who I give my energy too (very picky) Quitting drinking brought me to a gratitude and being present that I had not experienced ever before. I also feel very lucky that something clicked inside me, and that I picked up that book when I did. Thank you intuition. My life would be so different now if I had kept drinking. Everything has changed for the better.

Now I look at drinking as literally giving yourself temporary brain damage. You know what I mean- when you witness the slurring and how funny everyone thinks they are after a few drinks. You sort of fall apart when your hammered, and it is not sexy.

When I feel the pains of regret for not quitting sooner and wondering where I would be now, I remind myself that we are all on our own path. This is mine. The lessons were there for me to learn and I am also grateful for that.

“The unconscious mind often works without the knowledge or control of the conscious mind. Studies from as far back as 1970 prove our brains actually prepare for action 1/3 of a second before we consciously decide to act. This means that even when we think we are making conscious decisions, our unconscious mind actually makes the decision for us”

If we picked up all kinds of information as a kid, and are flooded with advertising and movies and friends who think alcohol is so totally great…. that information gets stuck in there! REROGRAM that noise. How can we train the two sides of our brain to get on the same page? “This Naked Mind” somehow did that for me. Thank you.

BEHOLD here I am. A true free spirit.

Advice:

Try to be careful with your words, stop saying “I can’t” and try to think positive thoughts. It sounds cheesy, but seriously you are the maker of your reality. When you say things like that you are just blocking yourself. Use the words “I AM” only in a positive way instead of “I am fat, I am an alcoholic” - try saying “I AM clean and sober, I am healthy, I am happier without booze. I manifest whatever I want when I love myself.”

Picture yourself with a happy full life without the booze every morning when you wake up and before bed. Get excited about it. Write about it. Emotions provoke action. Once you ditch the booze, you may loose a few people (and a few pounds) and, that’s okay. Lighten the load. Life ebbs and flows, you can always love from a distance. The potential of the human mind is endless, a lot of this shit it your mindset. You are a badass.

Lastly, here is a book that helped a few friends change their mindset completely and quit drinking as well Adam Carr Quit Drinking Without Willpower

And a few other great reads on quitting!

This Naked Mind written by Annie Grace …. As mentioned above, saved me!

Quit like a Woman: The Radical Choice to not drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Glenn Whitaker

The way I see it, you can party harder without drinking. Wait what?… I can go to Iron Maiden and wake up and go to yoga??? It’s like a fucking super power!

Thank you for listening to my story. I only hope that in some way it can inspire you or someone in your life. Believe in yourself…. you can become the bad ass you know you can be. Be careful what you wish for.

Just when you think the party’s over, you find out it’s actually just begun.

Here’s a podcast about drinking and your health on Huberman Lab. If you care about your health, this might just scare you strait.