Episode 75 - How To Drink Like a Woman Who Loves Herself with Colleen Kachmann

I am so grateful for my conversation with this week’s guest, Colleen Kachmann, where we tackle an important and often tricky topic: drinking. Tune in as we explore how drinking is tied to perfectionism and people pleasing and how, thanks to her own journey, Colleen is helping women rise above it.

Colleen is a Certified Master Life & Recovery Coach who uses cutting-edge strategies in nervous system regulation, growth mindset, positive psychology, and self-directed neuroplasticity to help women reconnect with a higher sense of purpose so they can feel passionate and powerful again. She holds a Bachelor of Science in education, a Master of Science in coaching, and a professional certificate in Women’s Functional and Integrative Medicine.

Through her own experience with alcoholism, Colleen founded Recover with Colleen after realizing that being “sober” is not a good goal.  Pursuing happiness instead of sobriety is the ONLY way to reclaim your power.  Once you realize that you can actually trust yourself, the only rule you need to follow is your intuition – you just need to learn how to listen.

Colleen helps women bypass the stigma and drama that society associates with sobriety by focusing on what’s really important – our relationship with ourselves.  Her passion is to help women liberate themselves from the oppressive belief that there is something fundamentally broken or flawed about them so that they can unlock a higher level of purpose, passion, and power.

I can’t wait for you to listen.

PLEASE NOTE that while Colleen's approach is empowering, it might not be suitable for individuals with alcohol use disorder or active alcohol addiction. If you or someone you know is struggling with severe alcohol issues, please seek professional help tailored to those needs.

Find Colleen here:
Website: https://recoverwithcolleen.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thehangoverwhisperer/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RecoverwithColleen?mibextid=LQQJ4d 

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Transcript

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You are listening to the ex good girl podcast, episode 75. Undoubtedly the very best part of my job are the people that I get to know clients, other coaches, therapists, and people who are working in this space of like, how do we become more embodied? How do we have a better human experience? Today, I'm speaking with Colleen Cashman, who teaches women how to drink as if they loved themselves. I think it's a fascinating conversation. It's also important to note that this approach might not be suitable for individuals with alcohol use disorder, or if you are struggling with active alcohol addiction, if you or someone you know is facing serious issues with alcohol, please seek professional help tailored to those needs. Enjoy the episode. I was introduced to Colleen Cashman. One of the, one of the amazing things about being in this space, you know me, I start three sentences, I choose which one I want to finish. Uh, one of the amazing things about being in this space is being introduced to other people who are doing great work in helping women. reconnect to their bodies, understand what it is that they want, get rid of what they don't want. And that's the context in which I met Colleen. And I'm just so grateful that you would be here to have a conversation. How, what do you want to tell people about you? Well, I think I might be the first. And I could be wrong about that, but I think I might be the first drinking coach on the planet. Um, I came by, you know, I had an alcohol use disorder problem and like millions of women tried to drink my way through COVID and that didn't go well. And I made my way into what, you know, I use air quotes around sobriety because sobriety is a concept. It's, it's like sleep the more, the better. Right. But there's a whole. Thought process and culture out there that if you over drink, then the solution to that is that you have to stop drinking forever, which keeps most of us high functioning, perfectionistic women who have just gotten a little in the weeds normal because it's normal to get addicted to a substance that It has addictive qualities, just like coffee or anything else. And so we hide it and we push it away and we try to pretend that we don't have problems and it just gets worse and worse. And millions of women like me went into COVID and tried to drink the way our way through it. The rules changed. We went from social drinking to home drinking, to zoom drinking, to day drinking. And, you know, I, what I found in my own journey was that. The sobriety that I found the help air quotes around that really was just the nothing in the all or nothing cycle, and that that is why so many people go on and off the wagon, because instead of correcting the beliefs that are keeping them out of balance and feeling like they can't control themselves, they double down on those beliefs. Beliefs and end up signing up for a lifetime of struggling with alcohol because now they've got an identity as somebody who struggles with alcohol and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So I went into, you know, solve my own problem. The. only way I knew how, which was to quit drinking and admit, hi, you know, just make it stop. I'll say whatever you want. And then because I was already a coach and then went back and did more research in addiction and recovery, I got certified in professional coaching there. I learned so much about how the brain works and that basically everything that we're being told is wrong. Um, you know, that once you have a high tolerance, you can't, you know, You can't drink or you will always have a high tolerance when in fact you can reset all of that. You know, the brain is a miraculous neuroplastic organ. It's extremely smart. You can program it to get what you want if you know what you want. And the problem with alcohol use disorders, we come into it, we, Think we just don't want to hurt anymore. We don't want to overdrink. So what, what the solution became and is, is you have to focus on what it is that you do want, why are you using alcohol and what is underneath those needs that your brain's just telling you, I need a drink. I need a drink when in fact, what you need is just. True forms of relaxation, true forms of fun, true forms of self care, and you just have to stop and give yourself time to figure all of that out. So I now help women reduce their drinking by 80 percent so they don't have to quit because as the name of my podcast is, it's not about the alcohol. The one sentence, like when you and I were communicating about, you know, possibly doing this episode, the one sentence That you said that sealed the deal for me was this, and I'm just going to read it from your email. My passion is to help women liberate themselves from the oppressive belief that there is something fundamentally broken or flawed about them. Yes. I, even though I am a coach in the same space and have been doing it for a long time and believe deeply in my own worth and value, I get a little emotional even when I read that because it is such, it's the starting place For so many women, because of the way we are programmed to believe that we have to be constantly finding and fixing the things that are quote, unquote, wrong, broken, bad, incompatible. And, of course, alcohol is just such. An incredible tool for making that all go away for a little while, but tell me more about your thoughts about where does this idea come from, that there is something fundamentally broken or flawed about a woman. I think it comes down to one word and that is perfectionism. I no longer identify as a woman who used to have a drinking problem. I had a perfectionism problem. I had a people pleasing problem and I was using alcohol as a substitute for acknowledging my own needs. And I was just go, go, go. And alcohol became how I coped with all of those beliefs that I had to check all the boxes and do all the things and prove my worth. And It disconnected me from myself. And what I love to tell women is there's nothing broken. There's nothing wrong with you. This is honestly, it's a skilled deficit. It's women are programmed to manage our behavior, not manage our emotions. And so we go through life, proving and pleasing and performing and perfecting all of the things. Meanwhile, any emotion that Is scary is, you know, we, we, we don't know how to process feeling lazy or fat or, you know, just not up to it today. And so we suppress all of that and that, that creates an emotional disconnect. So the solution is to Learn how to think differently, learn how to manage your mind instead of managing your behavior. And I know if I would have heard that years ago, I would have been like, so does that mean I'm just going to run around screaming at everybody all the time? And the truth is no, it's learning how to exist in a state of ease and power. Regardless of what's going on around you. And I think as women, we give our way our power. We are taught that we can't be okay if everybody around us is not okay. And so the only place for all these feelings to go is we suppress them. And then often we blame our inner bad girl for coming and getting us drunk because she's indeed serving a purpose and reminding us that it's okay to shut down. It's okay to give yourself a break. But the good girl in us. doesn't want to allow that. So we have to use alcohol to calm down our mind and to slow down because we, we don't know how to do that on our own. She just said so many things I'm typing as quickly as I can. Cause I want to remember and come back to so many of them, um, managing behavior and not emotions. Yeah. Such a big. Deal, especially in people pleaser land, because it's your outward behavior that gets you either the reward or the punishment. So, so many of the clients that I end up talking to and working with, they are so. Exhausted from that management and so resentful and so angry and so guilty and so scared that alcohol makes it go away. It allows them to relax and calm themselves down. It allows them to just turn off that behavior manager part of them and And some of them also use it to enable other behavior right to get brave to say things that they wouldn't normally be able to say if they were quote unquote sober. And so I just really love the, how you said that. And also it shows us where this, the skills need to be built, because no one ever teaches us how to deal with those big emotions, and instead we're just rewarded for the type of behavior that people want to see. It's not just reward. You also mentioned punishment and what happens with alcohol use disorder is it does become a reward. And then when we overdo it, we punish ourselves. That inner narrator starts beating us up. We call ourselves weak. We say we can't trust ourselves and it erodes the foundation of our relationship with ourself. And. Where I want to talk to anybody who does identify as a perfectionist or thinks that punishing yourself or beating yourself up is the solution. Think of it this way. There are two forms of motivation. One, we're motivated to, uh, avoid pain. And the other is we're motivated to pursue pleasure. Well, with alcohol, when you are motivating yourself with pain, because you think that the meaner you are, or I'm not going to drink because I was bad last night. So my future self can't make a decision for how much I'm going to have because I'm hung over today. And we want to tell ourselves a story that makes us feel better. feel better in the moment and so we decide to restrict and we decide to punish ourselves because we can't trust ourself and we just get caught in the cycle of pain. Here's the problem with that. When you're motivating yourself with pain to change because it's gotten so bad. Like when do most women think they want to quit drinking? When they have a hangover, when they feel bad, when they feel good, they think they deserve a reward. So this whole idea that alcohol is part of reward and punishment is, is not helpful because if you feel bad and change your drinking habits, Well, that's going to feel good, right? And when you feel good, the motivation to continue doing the behavior goes away, which creates this all or nothing on and off the wagon, black or white cycle. Because the better you feel, the more confident you feel, the less likely you are to choose the behaviors that actually continue making you feel good. And then you just fall asleep. fall back into drinking habits. So that is the all or nothing reward cycle that has to change the secret to changing your relationship with alcohol is to pursue pleasure. What makes you feel good in your body? You know, I often say that what I do is I help women find a pleasurable relationship again so that alcohol is no longer a soul sucking problem. And it's not all or nothing. You don't have to quit. You just have to get radically honest with yourself and quite frankly, look at the upstream needs. That you're using alcohol to ignore alcohol is a compensation prize. It's you putting a bandaid on the changes that need to be made or the words that need to be said, or the rules you've agreed to that you don't agree with, that you're still going along and you're just pushing down that resentment and you're exchanging your voice for drink tickets. And then you just get caught in the cycle of self silencing, because then you feel guilty and then you feel bad. And we get all of these cycles with guilt and resentment and shame. And the solution is actually to get out of all of it and start taking care of yourself and finding your pleasure in life. I think that's one of the things that actually even makes it a little more difficult is that there is this industrialized idea of self care, right? That It certainly it might be pleasurable, you know, a pedicure or a bath might be pleasurable, but I find that so many of the women that I talked to and even me myself, we don't, we are so disconnected from our bodies, we don't actually know what it really means to take care of ourselves. And so I take a bath and sure it felt nice, but I don't like you're talking about. Radical honesty and pleasure. And do you see kind of where I'm going with this? It's like, we have this faux self care, uh, ideas that were decided in some boardroom somewhere by a bunch of men who have products to sell us, but I don't think that's what you're talking about. Tell me what I used to think that self care was Prosecco's and pedicure. I used to think that self care was me having my ass in a size two jeans and my hair, there were no roots. My makeup would be done. That was me practicing self care so that everybody thinks I'm pretty and small and pleasant and also fun, but not too fun. Cause that gets obnoxious. So I think self care, there's a difference between self care and indulging. Self care genuinely is the equivalent of you taking care of a two year old. It's very simple and also just kind of exhausting. Like you either need more stimulation or less stimulation. It's saying no. Because you're tired and need to go to bed early and worrying about your own needs versus the expectations that you've agreed to or that other people have decided for you. Self care is like caring for a two year old. You need more sleep. You need more vegetables. You need more water. You need less. You know, commitments on your plate, and I know as women, we just think that our needs matter last. I had four children of my own, I have a husband, and I have two ex husbands now, but my needs came last, you know? And so this radical concept of self care is that my needs matter, wait for it. Just as much as everybody else's. So this I'm going to travel all weekend for all my kids on all their travel soccer teams, and I'm going to work all week. And then I'm going to make all the dinners and do all the shopping. Guess what? That's not sustainable. And that's how you end up with a wee bit of a drinking problem in the middle of COVID when you're almost 50. As the mother of five, I can totally relate to. And I think that's a incredibly easy way to think about what real self care is going to feel like, because. Sometimes it is saying no to things and yes to things, but they're simple, basic things that produce a feeling of calm, cared for, rest, space. That's the thing that I crave the most is just space. I feel like I have so many things crowding other people's wants, what they want for me and from me. Um, even some of the things that I've scheduled for myself. And so, how do you know when you have truly taken care of yourself? Well, this is the skill that I'm talking about. I wouldn't have understood this when I was running in survival mode, you know, running from 6 a. m. all the way till eight o'clock and then wondering why I had no willpower to not pour the drink. What, what has to heal or the skill you have to develop both words apply is, is that you have to have an emotional connection with yourself. And one of the tools that I teach that is so simple and basic, how do you heal your relationship with a spouse or a partner or a child? You have to talk to that person, right? And one of the tools that I teach that I got from Ethan Krause's course, Chatter is that you can use third person language so that when you have an inner narrator and you know, you're beating yourself up and you know, you, you're nastier to yourself than you would be to a person that is a stranger in a store that was rude to you. You wouldn't speak to that person in the same way that is just your normal, natural background music in your mind, trying to change that. Is like swimming against a riptide, right? What you have to start doing is introducing positive self-talk, and one of the ways you can do that is with third person language. So for me, you don't have to feel like doing it, you just have to do it. I will make my bed in the morning and I will say, Hmm, I'm gonna make Colleen's bed because she loves walking in later for a made bed. And then when I walk in later, I'm like. Oh my gosh. Thank you, Colleen, for making my bed sounds insane. But most of the stuff we think sounds insane. The more you speak to yourself, like you are a person putting your hand to your heart and saying, you got this. I'm so proud of you, or it is safe for you to feel lazy and fat right now. Like that's okay. It is safe for you to feel good about yourself, even though Yeah, you done messed that one up, like not abandoning yourself, feeling your own emotions and speaking to yourself. Like you are a person is how you form in an, an emotional connection with yourself. So to answer your question, if you don't have that emotional connection. That emotional connection with yourself. It's kind of a blind spot, right? So that's where you are working out so that you have a nice butt or, you know, skin care so that your wrinkles are less like you're performing or, or you want to look pretty for the outside world, the self care I'm talking about is where you don't need a mirror to feel good about yourself. You don't need other people validating you. And it's. We get addicted to getting our emotional needs met from all of the imbalanced people pleasing X high expectations. You know, that's where we're getting our needs met. So you have to understand that you have to begin to meet your own needs and it's going to feel hollow and shallow at first, which is why using third person language can help you correct that. You just have to talk to yourself like you're a person. Which is also something that we're never taught to do, right? We're never taught to be with our big, hard, scary emotions. We're never taught to talk to ourselves like, like a person. So here's what I've heard you say. And I, I want to review it just because, um, the next question I want to ask you is just going to be about like, how do you start to unwind this relationship with alcohol? So, you know, what you want your relationship to be. So I've heard you say you have to know what feels good in your body. You have to be able to be really radically honest about what you are using alcohol to avoid. And then you have to introduce talking to yourself, like you're a person. What else would you add to that for someone who really resonates with what you're saying? And they want to unwind this relationship to see what they want alcohol, what role they want alcohol to play in their life. Okay. So I would divide this really into two things. Changing your relationship with yourself is going to be the primary goal. If you felt good about yourself, you would drink like a woman who feels good about herself. The drinking sitch will naturally correct. Okay. So that you don't have to try that hard. However, as a drinking coach, I do teach mindful drinking. And the number one thing that you're going to need is a bullseye on a specific target. And I teach this like If you were writing a character into a movie, what does it look like? How does she drink? When does she drink? What are her opinions? What are her preferences? Get creative here. You're designing the 2. 0 version of yourself. You have to know what it looks like and then you reverse engineer it. Okay. So if I was the type of woman who said, no, thank you. After I've had two glasses of wine, what would I need to be thinking in my head? Um, and that's pretty simple. No, thank you. I'm done. Like that would need to be the thought in my head. What would I need to be feeling in order to be thinking that? So you kind of just reverse engineer. And then if I felt content and happy and present and confident, then what would I have to believe? So you reverse engineer based on kind of the character in the movie that you want to play in the role of yourself. What the thoughts. And the feelings and the beliefs. And at the bottom of the, what I use as a pyramid is your identity. I do identity based change, not behavior based change. You have to know with a bullseye precision who you want to be. And then you become that version of yourself. Not all at once, not on Monday when you wake up and just dial in all your willpower, you become the version of you five minutes. An hour, half of a day, half of a week, a little bit at a time, the back and the fourth, you have to know who you want to be and you have to practice being her. And then when you fail, you have to look at the big picture. What do I need to support myself to do better next time so that I can exist as her longer? Because I think what most people don't realize is that your, Thoughts and beliefs are tied to specific emotional states. When you are in a panic or a shame spiral, you think you can't trust yourself. You think you're going to screw it up. You think nobody likes you and everybody knows that you are fake. When you feel good and confident about yourself, when your nervous system is regulated, you feel and think like, I think I got this. I can do this. So you have to understand that the way you think changes with the weather of your emotions. And you have to learn how to identify the emotional state you're in and allow and accept her. If she, if she is a crazy drunk one, Hey girl, it's okay. But then you navigate back to a place of power. Power is a feeling. And so if you can cultivate that connection, why are the neural pathways for how to get back to that emotional state of power, then you can begin to expand the comfort zone of what that powerful woman can tolerate in different contexts, and you just build her out. So what I'm telling you is that. In addition to healing and, and building that relationship with yourself, you have to build a healthy alcohol mindset of the, the vision for yourself of who you want to embody in the context of alcohol, very specifically. And that's why I don't work with women in complete sobriety because you can't train for this. When you're sober, you can think about it all you want, but until you've got alcohol on board, I also teach that alcohol is a biphasic drug. Okay. So there's therapeutic benefits up to the 0. 055 blood alcohol level. That's when you feel warm and fuzzy and talkative and stimulated yet relaxed. But anytime, once you cross the 0. 055 blood alcohol level, you move from that buzz into intoxication. And that's when you hit the law of diminishing returns. The negative side effects just start to compound. I love to say 0. 055 is the cruising alcohol altitude. Cruising altitude of your plane flight of your buzz. You can't get any higher. The buzz you're looking for is in a glass of water. You can maintain the buzz and enjoy it. And then slowly come back down where most women, I know me from the Midwest, I learned to drink in a frat house drink, drink, drink, shot, shot, shots. And so I just never learned. That alcohol is pleasurable in those therapeutic, the first phase and how to maintain that and drink in a way that you can, you know, expand your buzz and enjoy it and then come back down and go back up for another ride. If you want, we don't have, like, I think there's also just this default misinformation that more alcohol equals more fun. Alcohol is a drug, not a food and if you learn how to use it properly, you can extract Pleasure from the experience and not cause yourself a bunch of problems that you regret tomorrow. So many good things. I want to go back to what you, it was just a question you asked, but like, how would a woman who loves herself drink? I think that's such an incredible question because If you're listening to this episode and you're like, well, I, I don't drink, you can just take out drinking and substitute any other skill or state of mind that you want to cultivate. I use this a lot when I teach about how to create security, earned security in a relationship. What would a woman who is secure do here? How would a secure person react to this? And then you can borrow what you know about security or anything else. To try out in that situation and it's so helpful because until you develop the skill to try new things, you're not going to have access to a different skill than the one that's driving the behavior that you don't want. So I love that. Um, a question. Is there ever a reason for sobriety? Oh, well, of course, but sobriety is. There, again, sobriety can be a lifestyle, a belief system, the nothing and the all or nothing cycle. To me, sobriety is a form of self care like sleep. The more, the better. Okay. So where sobriety, an extended period of sobriety can be helpful is if, you know, you've been drinking like a fish and you need to dry your brain out. You know, I do a 10 day detox inside of my program. Some women do it for 30 days. Science shows that usually within 30 days, you can reset your dopamine, reset your tolerance. But if you have a lot of beliefs, let's say you've spent years in AA, you know, or, or you come from a family of alcoholics where you have a, a very Big belief system that you might not be capable, you know, until you believe that change is possible, you really shouldn't pour alcohol on those beliefs. And so, you know, the other thing that I would say to all the people, including, you know, piss off, you know, sober land, but no matter how hard you promise, No, you can change your mind at any time. So the idea that I'm going to be sober for 10 days, 30 days, one year, like goals are great, do them, but this idea that you can't drink. Is, is, is suppressing your inner bad girl because she's going to be in there going, uh, I got a driver's license and 20 bucks. We for sure could drink. And that's that radical honesty where if you acknowledge you always have a choice and you learn how to trust yourself, then there is not a time in this moment that you need to make decisions about how much your future self can drink. I teach my clients who come in to start with the mantra. I completely trust myself. To handle myself, not to be perfect. You know, when you're correcting bad drinking habits, you're going to mess that up. And so setting this idea that per perfect drinking is two drinks twice a week. And that's going to, like, you're just setting yourself up for failure. I teach women to drink from the experience of that buzz that they get. Like, you know, you don't have to count or measure to know if you've got a buzz, you're good and you can stop now and ride the wave back down. So I teach experiential drinking, but I also encourage people to not make decisions for their future self about how much she will or won't drink, but to completely trust herself in this present moment and to learn how to operate in each situation by staying present and adjusting, because sometimes you're Two drinks is too much. You're tired. You're stressed. You're pissed off. Sometimes it's, it's a good night on the patio and a third drink would be fine because you're going to stay up for an extra few hours. So deciding in advance, the right amount of alcohol is just you thinking instead of feeling and, and letting that perfectionism drive the bus. Does that answer your question? Totally, because what it what it outlines is the same change. I call it a compass change like a compass that is driven by people outside of you, or outside limits and rules and. To an inner feeling of no matter what I can handle what happens and you put it beautifully I completely trust myself to handle myself to not beat myself up, no matter what happens to be kind and good and gracious and generous, and I find. That a lot of women are not able to take quote unquote risks to trust themselves because they know that if they mess it up again, quote unquote, they're going to be so hard on themselves. They're going to just be merciless in the way they treat themselves, the way they talk to themselves. So that switch from trusting everyone outside of you to tell you what to do and how to be to inside that's just. That's everything. Yeah. What we're really afraid of when you boil it all down, and this is going to sound a little condescending, but I, we're all here. We're all, what we're afraid of most is our own feelings, how we're going to feel if we wake up with another hangover, how we're going to feel if somebody makes, uh, asks us a question about why we're not drinking or when we started drinking again, we're afraid of our own internal narrative. And that's where, when you can, Connect with that place of security as you call it place of power as I often call it. Like what would a powerful woman think if she woke up with a hangover? Like, you know, if you're drinking, there's a good chance in your life, you're going to experience another hangover. Like it's a, alcohol's a drug. It's messy. We've got hormones. We've got all sorts of things that can, you know, affect how alcohol impacts us. If you're going to drink, there's a good chance. You're going to wake up at some point and think. I could have stopped after that other, that second one. And how are you going to treat yourself in that moment? That's why, again, I call myself the hangover whisperer because that's when the change and the trust is built with yourself. When you allow yourself to make a mistake and you allow it to be safe because you're not afraid to feel, or you're not afraid of your own mind anymore. You've kind of answered this question throughout, but I just want to get it into some concise. Sentences here. What does life look like when you are drinking mindfully or drinking from a place of power? Like what is available to you when you're a powerful woman who's enjoying alcohol? Okay. So I would say I enjoy alcohol as one of many pleasures. That's one of the skills I teach. You have to build out 15 minutes at a time. Remember that you love to read or remember that you do like to take a bath, you know, those neuropathways atrophy when you're a daily drinker. So you got to build those out. But the biggest thing I could say is that that morning you wake up, And you realize it never occurred to you to pour a drink last night because you are focused on what's giving you pleasure and alcohol is just one of many things on the list and you're passionate. You're no longer using alcohol as a crutch so I can go a week and it never occurs to me. I'm not. Using willpower. I'm not counting. I'm not pacing myself. I'm not worried. If I go out Wednesday night. Well, what does that mean about Friday night? Because I did say I wasn't going to have more like you don't have to think about it anymore because you completely trust yourself in any given moment. Right? So it's not having to think about it. And then it is literally, genuinely having the words appear in your head and you can get there and it's a process and no, it doesn't happen overnight. When you get to that biphasic 0. 055, you have no desire. To drink any more than that because you love your body and you love yourself. You're educated that you can't get any higher and that this, and you've got it, the experience and the practice to know that easing back into a glass of water and easing into a good night's sleep. Is pleasurable. And so you're no longer having to try to control yourself. You only need willpower to do things you think you don't really want to do. And that's where learning how to language your goals and the positive of what brings you pleasure instead of just avoiding that pain. Cause I don't want to feel bad and I don't want to beat myself up. Like all of that gets left behind as you practice, become a woman who loves herself. Is there anyone that this. This path doesn't work. Yes. People who don't think it can work for them. I, I mean, if you think LAA works for people, right? It works for about 10 percent of the people who go in because they go ahead and buy the bumper sticker in the key chain. And you know, I'm an alcoholic and if I ever drink again, I'm going to be living in a van down by the river. They believe that then when they relapse, that happens. Some of them don't, some of them do. And that belief system works for them. Uh, it's just a belief system. You know, addiction is a belief system, not a disease. It's a belief system. Wellness is a belief system. So that's where you, you get to judge from your own experience what works for you. And some people just because of their culture and their environment might find it easier to quit drinking completely. You know, if I had to get back in the all or nothing cycle. I for sure would go with nothing. Being sober was fun. I had the t shirt that said sober as fuck and sober sexy. You know, I took a lot of pride in that. You know, I was vegan too for a while. I liked extreme identities there for a long time. So whatever you want to believe and you're willing to work at will work for you. So. It can work if you and and life is long, it can work for a while and then you come into another set of beliefs and then it doesn't, you know, yesterday's truth is tomorrow's bullshit. So you have to be willing to constantly evolve and update what it is you think, you know, I just know this right now hit me back in five years, you know, I don't make decisions for my future self. I trust myself in this moment. I love that. I just feel like an internal relaxing when you talk about like I not making a bunch of future decisions because I think that's the other part of this Western capitalist go go go do more do more better, bigger, faster is that. We always imagine that our future has to look a certain way and that there's just so much, so much pressure there. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you really wanted to make sure that you, you say in this episode? I would just tag on to what you said that, that moving from what our future has to look like, And moving into what we want our future to feel like and judging our experiences based on how they feel. And, you know, to anybody that's struggling with their behavior with alcohol, to understand the solution is identity based change. To become a woman who loves herself would mean the side effect is you would drink like a woman who loves herself and to stop focusing on the problem. That is the problem. The solution is love for yourself. Self care, you know, following your passion and purpose in life and. And becoming someone whose habits just naturally fall in line. So I think identity based change for people who are struggling to curtail their behavior by counting and pacing and measuring and restricting. You know, if you become somebody who loves yourself, then. It's all going to be okay. No matter how much you drank last night, no matter how much you weigh, no matter what your debt level is. Like if you live in a place where you feel okay, where you're at, you will begin to cause your happiness in the future and you won't have to be cleaning up Like we only have so much energy in the day and for so long I spent most of my day cleaning up yesterday's mess and then rewarding myself for all the hard work where the flip begins is when you're willing to put in some work today to cause your happiness tomorrow. And then that's an investment that just builds over time. So, so fantastic. Colleen, if people want to find out more about you, if they want to work with you, where can they find you? Go ahead and tell them here. And then we're also going to put links and contact information in the show notes. It's pretty simple. I have a podcast called it's not about the alcohol on all your major platforms. And then I'm on social media, tick tock at hangover whisperer and on Instagram, the hangover whisperer. So either one of those, you can find me. Well, thank you so much. I feel like I've had a conversation with the kindred spirit. I appreciate that so much in your time. Thank you. Thank you. It was great talking to you, Sarah.