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!