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10: The Sober Bartender w/ Brandi Kelly · Harder Than Life

• 0:00
  I'm Kelly Siegel and this is harder than life a podcast about self-love self-awareness business and health We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple practical advice. You can start using today. Let's get living
• 0:15
  Today's guest is an expert bartender that has overcome more obstacles than anyone I've ever even heard of. Her story is bananas and yet has a happy ending, but her journey's continuing. When I say bananas, I mean she dated a Hell's Angel for 11 years, started drinking tequila at nine, and is now married and sober. She is a host of a successful and informative aptly called The Sober Bartender Podcast. I'm honored to have you on the Heart of the Life Podcast, Brandy.
• 0:43
  Brandi Kelly, I like you. I feel like you should be hosting this show. Well, thank you. Thank you. And I am very happy to be here. That's a lot of praise for what seems like the blink of an eye. So I'm going to get right into it. I'm going to fire away. What does 12, 10, 20 mean to you? Absolutely everything. Yeah.
• 1:13
  My whole entire life changed the day that I surrendered and gave over everything that I thought made me. I thought the alcohol made me. I thought, you know, that that was my, that was my everything. And the day that I just said no more was the day that my life really started. That was the day that everything changed.
• 1:40
  walked into an AA hall and just let my guard down and let my ideas of what I thought I knew about myself and the world and I let it all go and I let something new take over. I love that. That just sent chills up and through my body because I wrote this down. Alcohol was my everything.
• 2:05
  I been there, done that. I feel you. I love you. And we're going to get deep. Um, what's your story and why does your story matter? So my story, I, um, I started drinking at nine years old. Uh, there was, you know, the turmoil of being a normal teenager. There was quite a bit of, um, there was some chaos around like 12 years old. So I didn't keep drinking from nine.
• 2:34
  But parents divorced, there's all this unsurety, drinking to fit in. And I just had a lot of big feelings. And as a preteen and as a teenager, I didn't really know what to do with those feelings. So alcohol was an easy outlet. It helps you fit in, it helps you change the way you think and feel, you think you're taking a load off. And I didn't realize I was actually piling something on that was gonna alter the course of my life.
• 3:04
  Um, so I, um, you know, experimented with drugs and alcohol at a really young age. Um, started bartending at, at 19 years old. And so that just opened the door to me, you know, becoming best friends with alcohol, then it's work and it's play. And, um, yeah. So at 19, this, uh, Hells Angel walks into my bar and I don't like bikers and I don't like ponytails, but.
• 3:34
  This guy looked exciting and dangerous and I was all about it. Like that was exactly what I needed to do in my mind. So I'm sorry. I'm laughing with you. Not at you, man. I've been there done that. This sounds like a great idea. Yes. And I really, I left my whole entire life. I was living in Bullhead city, Arizona, a little town on the Colorado river. I left my whole life.
• 4:04
  And not my alcohol, but I jumped on the back of this motorcycle and I rode off into the sunset down to Scottsdale, Arizona. And, um, and I lived with this guy, it was 11 years. So I really grew up from 19 to 30, uh, with this guy and in the, in this, uh, in this different lifestyle. And it really, um, it made alcohol really easy, but I found that I wanted to drink more than.
• 4:32
  was conducive to being an quote unquote old lady. You know, people would drink and they would party, but they also had normal lives. And I didn't have that off switch. I realized like in my twenties bartending, we moved to Vegas in 2006 from Scottsdale.
• 4:51
  And I would drink at work and it wasn't frowned upon. And then I would drink when I got off work. And then when we had club, you know, parties at the clubhouse or when we traveled to, you know, anniversary parties or funerals, like I just, I wanted to go hard. I used to say, I always, I only drink alone by my, when I'm by myself and I only drink days and then and why?
• 5:13
  Exactly, exactly. I saw nothing wrong with drinking by myself. You know, it started off, I just felt like it was such a casual thing. I felt like everybody was doing it, you know, now I'm a bartender, now I'm surrounded by all these people who drink hard, but I don't know that they're maybe turning it off when they go home. I don't know that, you know, they're able to get up and go to the bank and go to the gym and do all these things in the morning. And my drinking said, you need to do this in the morning.
• 5:43
  So it was a progression over 10 years, but it took over. And it matters because here's the thing, in my 20s, I was doing Fitness America. I competed in the Jay Cutler Desert Classic in 2012. Yeah. So I was this, I had these aspirations of being this fitness competitor and this athlete. I trained under Kevin Barry, who fought Evander Holyfield in the 84 Olympics. I had a boxing coach.
• 6:13
  You do this while drinking? Yes, sir, yes. Oh, imagine how frickin' great you would've looked had you not been drinking. And that's the thing, is I did all of these things, but I felt like I was missing out. Like I was, it sucked that I couldn't drink while I was training for these things. Or I deserved a drink as a reward for, you know, six weeks of hard dieting, 12 weeks of hard dieting. So, you know, the first time I got on stage and I competed in,
• 6:42
  In Fitness America, all the other bartenders and my customers are out in the crowd and they're holding up these ping pong paddles with my face on them and they got shots of vodka ready for me. As I've just done like...
• 6:56
  So you actually, during the training, you didn't drink. So I did a bodybuilding show in college for charity, and I tried to not drink, but trying to not drink in a fraternity at Western Michigan University proved to be impossible. So what I did, and it's funny because it's foreshadow, 30 years later, and that's what I do now. So I did this thing where I would just drink Miller Lite's
• 7:24
  96 calories and I would have six of them and then I would do extra cardio the next day. That was the rationalization and justification for my BS that I used to do. And I won, of course, but, oh man, fast forward to what we know to be unhealthy relationship with alcohol. And that happens on a bigger scale everywhere. So what I'm hearing your story, why it matters is you're here, you're sober, you're living your best life.
• 7:51
  Yes. And that's why I do give that foreshadowing that I had all these aspirations and all these goals. And I really limited myself because the goal was, you know, to get through it and to celebrate with that drink. And now fast forward, yes. I'm, you know, 10 years ago, I guess somewhere around there. And, you know, I didn't realize how unhealthy that was. I just thought you worked hard, you deserve to celebrate. Now that I'm sober, I see,
• 8:21
  like working hard so that you can get that drink. How do you celebrate now, Brandy, with how to drink? I mean, come on. I celebrate every day of my life. You pick it up by sarcasm? Because I'm sober too. I sure do, yes. I speak sarcasm well.
• 8:36
  There was a great, I just got sent. It's so ironic that we're having our podcast today. I got sent. No, no, no. I didn't get sent. I was flipping over to YouTube to send my YouTube channel to somebody. And the first thing that popped up, and the algorithm must have known that you and I were speaking.
• 8:55
  was Huberman and Jordan Peterson talking about never drinking alcohol again. And they, I thought usually it's, people talk about it like you and I do, don't do it, and we're going to switch gears and talk a lot about why we drank, but this one broke it down to the simplest, easiest thing. If you follow Jordan Peterson at all, he boils things down so simple, so easy, and he basically said you do it for two reasons.
• 9:19
  And it was to reduce anxiety and to be more social. And then he said, here's the problem with alcohol, is it has diminishing laws of returns so that after you drink so much, it diminishes, but it also, when you're not drinking, it has an adverse reaction. And I was like, oh, that's good, because it's true. You get more anxiety, and it makes you more reliant on alcohol.
• 9:47
  Uh, so I want to kind of switch gears and really talk about my, about why, why'd you drink? Um, initially, I mean, I say I drink to change the way I think and feel. So I had an excuse to drink over this and this and that, but it was like, if I felt good, I wanted to feel better. And if I felt lonely, you know, I w I wanted to, you know, lighten that to where I didn't care about being lonely. And if I felt like
• 10:16
  somebody made me mad in traffic, then I wanted to take a load off of that. So it boiled down for me to change the way I think and feel. So as a numbing agent. Sure.
• 10:27
  Or it made everything better, I thought. Yeah, that was my thing. I was an idiot that loved the taste of alcohol. I literally loved the taste of beer. I loved the taste of scotch. And then I just did it to fit in with all my friends. But turns out, I fit in without alcohol. So that's really, there is a deep down...
• 10:52
  childhood trauma wound that we are trying to mask with alcohol and drugs and that's what i want to hammer home for the youth who are just coming in and everybody's doing it because listen to what brandy just said alcohol was her everything it was an easy outlet everything was piling on she was best friends with alcohol and started off as a casual thing those are all quotes that you just said
• 11:18
  So the main reason I want to have you on was to create even more awareness that alcohol isn't your friend. So what would you say to your 18-year-old self about alcohol right now? I would say just put it down like it's not the answer. I would say...
• 11:44
  I would say to just go the other way, really, that you don't need it. Like the connections that I thought I needed alcohol to connect. I thought I needed alcohol to, you know, to have a conversation, to, you know, to enjoy a campfire, to enjoy a sunset, a sunrise. I mean.
• 12:04
  I have such a better connection with myself. I didn't like sitting with myself. And that's one of the major things that, you know, in the beginning, I didn't recognize and that I try to help people see is like,
• 12:18
  Taking that out of there makes it laugh. I didn't like myself. Oh, my God. I just want to hug that little brandy. That's literally what I want to do. So I'm going to make it real personal here. I have a 14-year-old daughter, and it's well documented. I choose not to drink. I haven't had a drink in four years. What advice would you give her if she chose to experiment with alcohol and drugs?
• 12:41
  From a girl's perspective, because it's tough being a teenage girl in this world, in this social media world right now. I couldn't imagine what she's going through. But she doesn't listen to dad. She listened to Brandy. I mean, at 14 years old, I would say, I mean, I understand experimenting. But I would say wait until you know yourself better. I would say wait until.
• 13:06
  you know, all the kids are doing, it's unbelievable. She tells, we have a very close relationship. She tells me that people are already drinking. People are already using cannabis. It's just how you fit in. And I'm like, wow. I can say as the sober bartender who can be around the friends that are doing those things and choosing not to, that you can totally fit in and that actually where you fit in.
• 13:31
  is where you can feel comfortable being yourself and not having to change who you are and what you do to fit in. Blamo, I love that. Say that again. Where you belong is where you can be yourself and not change who you are and what you're doing to fit in. God, it's so good, Brandy. I love that. Yeah. It is so true. I'm at a loss for words because I'm tingling all through my body and it sounds so weird.
• 14:02
  If somebody would have said that to me, because at the, my 18 year old self, I, dude, I went to a therapist for nine years and he'd say, Kelly, Kelly,
• 14:10
  stop drinking. He's like, I was a functioning drinker, man. I built a multimillion dollar IT company. I built an amazing body. I was loved by everybody. I was quote unquote successful. But that was the persona I built and to fit in. And man, if somebody would have said something to me that those aren't, that's not, you don't want to, you don't want to fall off the floor.
• 14:41
  I don't know. I try not to judge because I'm not. Everybody has their own journey. And as a matter of fact, I go on a lot of places where a lot of people drink and they're like, you're judging us. I'm like, no, I'm just imagining your hangover tomorrow because I've been there. And that's literally what it was for me. I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired. And...
• 14:59
  the cost of the drinking became way, way higher than the benefit. The fitting in and the fun was this big, small compared to the hangover, the headache, the apologizing, the finding my car, the finding my money, just all of the chaos that came with it.
• 15:20
  And I'll throw you one, Brandy. I haven't heard you say because you and I, we're going to get into some deep stuff here next because you think a lot like me with your four agreements. Everything happens to you. You're very mindful. So we're going to dig into the mindfulness. But, man, I lost my train of thought what I was going to say.
• 15:37
  Anyways, I know what I was going to say. I've never heard you say this. It's the contrast. Most people don't have the contrast of being sober. Or if they do, it was, oh, I did it for a month. Or I did it for dry January. I did it for 90 days. But I tell you, it wasn't until six months. It was day 181 where I went, I'm never, ever going to drink again.
• 16:06
  And up until then, I wasn't, I was just going day by day by day by day, which is what they tell you. But at day 181, I was like, I just, I have zero desire. And it was the contrast of living a life sober versus living a life just not even present. So...
• 16:27
  What would you say? So I've heard you talk about the four agreements and everything that happens for you and not to you. It's incredibly mindful. Where and when did you find this and how does it fit in your life now? So I don't know when I first came across the four agreements, but I know that it was when...
• 16:46
  I was in my drinking. So things didn't really sink. So like you said, I mean, I had all of these spiritual things. I still was drawn to them, but I couldn't access them. Like I couldn't connect to them because I was just blurry. And so like you said, the contrast. So once I'm out of this just fog and this haze, all of these things that I already had the desire to dig into,
• 17:12
  My world just opened up. So it was about two months sober this last time around where I really surrendered. It was about two months sober to where I just, I read books and I got on YouTube and I watched, you know, different spiritual teachers and figured out what aligns with me and what doesn't. And the four agreements.
• 17:35
  It's a game changer for me because gosh, to eliminate your own anxiety, to not make assumptions about what you're thinking about me and just take things as they come and not make them all about me, not take them personally. Because my mind is telling me this whole story that he's probably judging that I didn't say that. And you know what I mean? Like this rabbit hole that it's totally my own mind.
• 17:59
  So the four agreements are now like one of my best friends, right? Because I show up and I do my best and I'm impeccable with my word. That means I don't speak bad about myself. That means I don't beat myself up anymore. I don't go, well, you know how I never show up or you know how undependable I can be or you know what a mess I used to be. It's like, no, today I show up and I show up with integrity and the words that I say mean something. And if I say something to you, you can count on that.
• 18:28
  Well, I say that all the time. I keep the promises to myself. And that's part of being impeccable with your word. And I, too, am a big four agreements. I get every bookstore I walk into. Yes, there still are bookstores. Every bookstore I walk into, if they have, I buy every copy of the four agreements. And I hand it out to everybody. And I haven't been in a book. Me, too. Oh, I love it. Look at that. I do the same thing. So I'm going to blow your mind.
• 18:53
  Uh, what was I four or five days into my sobriety and I walk into my office and my COO quits, uh, resigns. And he left the four agreements book on my desk and he opened it to heaven on earth. It's one of the last chapters. It says creating heaven on earth by making your choice, the right choices. Um,
• 19:14
  And I read the chapter because he asked me to. And I felt like he was abandoning me. And, of course, I was feeling emotions for the first time in my life because I was three or four or five days sober. So I was four or five days sober and all kinds of emotions. And I threw the book up on my bookshelf. A year and a half later, I'm reading a different book by Don Miguel Ruiz. I'm like, why does this look so familiar? And I go up on my bookshelf and I pull out the book for agreements. I go, oh.
• 19:41
  And there's still the sticky note from my COO that quit. And I said, I got to read this. And it's so funny how everything happens for you. Because I wouldn't have understood the message four days into sobriety. But a year and a half later...
• 19:59
  It was the pandemic and I was sitting on my porch and there was nothing to do. And I read that for agreements and it literally changed my world. And I give it to everyone anything. And it's it's so ironic. I have a dear friend that I'm trying to coach through without for not drinking. And her only issue is alcohol. And she and she says, you know, it's all about me. It's all about me. It's all about me. And I'm like, it's not about you.
• 20:23
  And she's getting there. She's at least aware. That's the number one thing is becoming aware. It's in my book, the heart of the life book. It's self-awareness. It's looking at yourself and saying, you know,
• 20:34
  There's a better life. I want something better. And then explore it. Because all too often you've been sober long enough that you realize that most people don't have a problem. I don't have an alcohol. If you're even saying that you have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol more than likely. I hate to say it. If you're even comparing yourself to me or to you and you know it's unhealthy. So talk about that version of people.
• 21:00
  The 15 year old that's watching everybody else drink. The 25 year old that is drinking because work is hard or difficult and it's what everybody's doing. And then the 35 year old who's married with children and deserves that drink. So at any point, the drinking at any point that you're at in your drinking, the casual drinking.
• 21:27
  it's not actually making your life better. That's the thing. Yeah. That's the thing that we don't realize is that it's not improving your life when you have to go back and go, Hey, what did I say last night? Or, Oh, did I offend anyone last night? Or, you know, all of these, like the benefit isn't there. Like you're not actually changing anything. What actually,
• 21:52
  Like actual change, nothing changes if nothing changes. So if there's a situation you don't like, alcohol is not going to change that, but being clear headed and present and, you know, connected to yourself and your surroundings, that's where you can make a change.
• 22:09
  You are like my sister from another mister, man. You say all the same things I do. I don't know if it's a sobriety thing, but if nothing's changed, nothing changes. I say that every day. If you've read my book, which you probably haven't, I'll send you one. I took my first drink at eight or nine with my stepfather. It was how I kept, how I bond with him to keep him from beating me. And then I realized, holy smokes, if I just drink, it's camaraderie and it's safe.
• 22:37
  So I just kept going for years and years and years. So a lot of, a lot of similarities. Um, and I love it. I love it a lot. Um, how did you get, how did you ultimately get sober? I initially went into recovery in 2020 or in a, not in 2020 in 2019. Um,
• 23:04
  I was advanced alcoholism by that point. So not something that a lot of people can identify with. I was no longer just a binge drinker or a casual drinker. Alcohol was running my life. I drank in the morning. I shook when I didn't drink. I had to drink pretty much every hour so that I didn't go into DTs. It took a while to get there, but I didn't intentionally get there, but it went there for me.
• 23:30
  But basically, I want to stop right. I want to stop right there. I just do it because that's so that's fire. So people that think we go back to the 15, the 25 and the 35 year old that are quote unquote casual drinkers or I'm not like brandy or I'm not like Kelly. I am OK. Yeah. Talk about how quickly it spirals or snowballs into a problem. It really snowballed by it already being my go to change the way I think and feel it.
• 24:00
  I want to feel better. I want to, you know, I want to relax. I want to, you know, just escape. I want to take a load off at the end of the day. Well, then when life hit, when things got hard and there was a breakup or there was something big that I couldn't control and life just felt out of control, that's when things got a lot worse. Like that's when I really went to the alcohol.
• 24:21
  So Jordan Peterson talked about that. That was his number one complaint. It isn't all of the ancillary things about alcohol that it does to you. He said, forget all that. He goes, your ability to deal with tough things, you lose it. Because immediately when things get tough, you start drinking and you numb it. So that's not the way life is. You can't go through life drinking at every sign of discomfort.
• 24:51
  So I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is so, I want, since I quit drinking, my life has got so good. I just want everybody to feel this way. And this is why I had to have you on so fast because you're doing it. You've gone through it. You've doing it the hard way. You're actually around a bunch of drinkers all the time by serving them. Wait, how the heck does that feel, by the way? When you know that you're giving somebody something that's not good for them.
• 25:20
  So that is that it is a bit of a struggle. Didn't think of that till just now. So I always say it takes what it takes. Um, it took what it took for me to want to get help. But I mean, I always tell people I can get you drunk or I can get you sober because I'm loud and proud behind the bar about my sobriety. So that is an open door to people who do want help. Uh, but it is.
• 25:46
  It is hard. It's tugging at your heart. I see it. I see it. I see a career change in your future, even though you're amazing at what you do. So let me ask you another question. I drink non-alcoholic beer, which makes me pee 75,000 times, so I'm not really doing it. I find a lot of whiskeys, non-alcoholic whiskeys that are great, and if we water them down, I can do the same thing. But now I've recently just done soda water with cranberry. But...
• 26:11
  Have you got your bar to adopt some of the NA stuff that they have? What I'm looking for is a bar that has the whiskeys and the vackas that are non-alcoholic. That doesn't exist. Have they adopted? So they are starting, they're starting to emerge. It's definitely not in Corpus Christi, Texas, where, you know, we're a fisherman community. This is not, it's not happening here yet. But I've been finding like these communities
• 26:39
  through Instagram, through YouTube, there are these bartenders that are making non-alcoholic bars. This is in like New York and in Miami where they're doing like the craft cocktails and they're doing like all of the, you know, mixology things with the non-alcoholic to where who says you can't go out and just enjoy.
• 26:59
  Yeah, you know, I got to correct myself. It's funny because I'm just, I'm going through another phase of healing in my life. And, you know, I just said to myself last week, I don't need to be in bars anymore. And I'm not judging anybody, but I don't have anything in common with someone that's going to numb themselves.
• 27:19
  So I really, I want to go to, I'd go to a sober bar because then I'd have something in common. But going to a bar where people are absolutely there to drink heavily is something I need to avoid. And not because it's a trigger. I'm never drinking again. I mean, it's that simple. I don't need one day at a time. I have zero, and I mean zero time.
• 27:41
  desire to ever have a drink. There's not a point in the day where I'm like, oh my God, I gotta go, I gotta call my sponsor. I don't have, I never went to AA. I just quit cold turkey because it was just better for me. So, but, but,
• 27:54
  I've spent a lot of times in bars and I still do because sometimes I want to see my dear friends and that's where they want to be. I met my best friend at a bar last week and it was like, I went there for an hour. I'm like, okay, I got to get out of here. It's just, this isn't where I want to be. And I got to remember, you know, you go where you're celebrated, not tolerated and go where, you know, you're elevated. So, um, well.
• 28:15
  We were all over the board and I apologize because this is just fantastic. Cause I would just want to make sure that people understand that there's, there, there are, there's life after drinking. What gets you out of bed in the morning? Oh, I am excited for life. Like I was not one of the, I mean, I've always been pretty positive, like a, you know, a silver linings kind of person, but I'm excited for my day. Even though I know I have to work until three in the morning, like I woke up at 8 a.m.,
• 28:46
  excited for my day. You know, I get up and I do my prayer, I do meditation, I do journaling, I do have a sponsor and I am a sponsor. So I have a network of women that, you know, it was passed on to me, I pass it on.
• 29:04
  Run that back again, because I love talking. I think somewhere in the question about your daily rituals and habits, because that is so important because I have rituals and habits. Probably why I don't have the cravings. Run that back slower so everybody can hear it. So I don't go. I don't have cravings either. Thank goodness. But mine is to keep my spiritual connection. This is a spiritual program that I work. But my morning ritual is I wake up. I make my coffee. I say my prayers.
• 29:34
  I meditate and sometimes it's a guided meditation. Sometimes it's just a silent. How long? Or sometimes it's five. Sometimes it's five minutes. Sometimes it's, it's 20, but typically it's just a short, um, because I'm easily distracted still. So, uh, I do that meditation and then I go straight to a journaling. And, uh, I got that from Gabby Bernstein. I don't know if you're familiar with who she is, but she's, you know, she's in recovery and she's a, you know, a spiritual.
• 30:04
  Guider of sorts, but I go right to that. I didn't know she was, I didn't know she was there. If you want to blow your mind, people, listeners, seagulls, listen to me, Google sober celebrities. It's amazing how many people are on this sober train. It's really cool.
• 30:22
  It's so incredible just to see that those people are also surrounded by it. And it's also normalized in, you know, celebrity culture and in, you know, whatever business you're in, if you're a real estate agent, or if you're at this or that people are going to drink, you don't have to, and you'll feel better if you don't. But back to the daily routine. Yes, I do. I do with the journaling. I send that to my sponsor. She sends me hers.
• 30:49
  I send that to my sponsee, she sends me hers. And then if there's anything in there that we need to go over, then we touch base later in the day. So I work with a network of like-minded people that are doing the same thing that I'm doing that have similar goals and similar interests. And we lift each other up and celebrate the wins. And if one of us is down, we're there to support. Like attracts like, and you're holding each other accountable. That's what friends do.
• 31:18
  So I do the same thing. You're my sister. Like I said, sister from another mister. I do the same thing. I wake up in the morning. I add, I have a little, a little mirror, a high five. Mel Robbins taught me that. Love it. I wake up with a set of prayers. I do gratitude. Similar. Um,
• 31:35
  do a 10 minute guided meditation, do a quick journal entry and off to the gym. I go, I just, I got to go to the gym. And then I listened to a podcast. I go about my day and feed my mind all day and every day. And I, I never have time to be distracted. So I love it. I love it. Yeah. I feel like it's very important just to have some structure to your day, something that's, that's pushing you towards your goals. Yeah.
• 32:04
  What keeps you sober? Is that what keeps you sober? My connection with the higher power that I understand. So my connection with my inner self and my inner guidance system, my intuition. Now that I can hear myself, not my fearful thoughts, but what I truly desire, that's what keeps me sober. Hear yourself, otherwise known as the ego. Yeah.
• 32:31
  What was the ego trying to keep you? Because the ego is meant to keep us safe. So what was it trying to keep you safe from when you were drinking all those years? Everything that I was afraid of. I mean, it still tries to keep me safe, but now I can recognize it. So I feel like, you know, the ego tries to keep me from being in uncomfortable situations. But now I know that that's where I grow. Like getting uncomfortable is where I grow. And that's how I get to where I'm going instead of where I've been.
• 33:03
  What were you put on this earth to do? Definitely inspire and support and spread joy. I want people. I was like, I feel like I am here to inspire people to actually live. Did you feel like you were here for a good time when you were drinking? I felt like I was here for a good time. Not a long time. Yeah. Oh my goodness. My dear. I want to hug you. I've.
• 33:32
  That I feel it. I felt that way too. It was, I used to say that I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'm not here for a long time. I'm here for a good time. And I got a newsflash and you're going to resonate with this too is that wasn't a good time. I hated myself. My face was always red and blotchy and, and swolled up. I hated pictures of myself. Now I'm, it's in, I'm in this hot studio and I'm still greasy and I still look handsome as ever.
• 34:01
  I'm modest if you can't tell. Sure. So you are married and happily married and all is well. Talk about that evolution, how it came from, because that's what everybody wants. You're living the American dream, so everybody wants it. So tell me how you got there. Be proud. Be loud and proud for this, please. I am so proud of my marriage. I'm so happy for you.
• 34:31
  Thank you. I'm proud of the wife that I get to show up to be, but that wasn't possible where I was at. So I feel like I attracted my husband because I was in this space of healing and growth because I got to know myself. And then once I knew myself, then I knew what I actually wanted and needed in a partner. So I knew what was important to me. Like I didn't have values. I just had the desire to be liked and I had the desire to be wanted.
• 35:00
  And I was a people pleaser. So I just wanted someone to tell me which way to jump. And today I know myself, so I get to show up as a whole person and I got to attract this other whole person that doesn't need to be fixed or, you know, babied or mothered and we get to just do life together. And it's a whole different ball game from anywhere I've ever been. And he drinks too, right? He does. Yeah. Very casually. He doesn't.
• 35:30
  think about it through the day. He doesn't plan it. There's not like a mental obsession around it. And it does, I'm just asking this for the listeners. It doesn't trigger you. It doesn't, like I've had people come up to my, show up at my house like, is this gonna trigger you? No, I told you, it's my job to deal with my triggers anyways, not yours. So what do you say to that? I say that I'm responsible for
• 35:58
  what I do and for my thoughts and feelings. So there was a time where I was jealous that other people were drinking without their life falling apart. Um, but I'm not today because I'm just comfortable with where I'm at. If somebody's harmed, if he was harming himself, I would be concerned. But the fact that other people have a fluid in their cup, um, not so much.
• 36:19
  I always say to people, nobody quits drinking too soon. So there are times that I felt jealous when early on, but boy, does that fade quickly because then you just can watch and see that the denigration of their lives happens.
• 36:37
  And it's sad. It really is. Alcohol, my father died from alcohol, and yet I continue, I drink. So it's just not, it's not good for you. Which leads to my next question is, why is alcohol the hardest thing to give up, but yet so socially acceptable?
• 36:59
  I think it's the hardest thing to give up because it is so socially acceptable. It's accessible everywhere. And it's been normalized that you can just, you can do this. Everybody does it. And people wonder why you don't do it. If you say you don't drink. And I feel like not only is it hard to give up because chemically it's addictive.
• 37:21
  But also because if we've been used to doing it, then we haven't developed those coping skills that you were talking about earlier. Like Jordan Peterson says, we don't have the coping skills to deal with a tough day or to deal with traffic. And, you know, we don't have another way to unwind because we haven't given ourselves the opportunity to learn it. You know, that's one of the weirdest things. It's it's the only.
• 37:45
  drug or alternogen that you have to explain why you don't use it. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't, I don't drink. Oh, I'm sorry. Did you get a DUI or, you know, no, I just chose not to drink. It's, it's like you're, you're, what is the word? Stigmatized. I'm good, man. Is there, is there something I haven't asked you today that you feel compelled to share?
• 38:18
  I just, I would like to share that if you're a quote unquote, sober curious, if you're curious whether or not life is boring on the other side, if there is life on the other side, you cannot even imagine what it feels like to just be away from the alcohol for a period of time. It is so much better than I could have ever imagined. Just feeling and thinking. Yeah. Yeah.
• 38:45
  Cheers to that. Sober curious. Where'd you learn that one? That's a new one for me. I hear it a lot. I hear, you know, people go, well, I'm sober curious, so I'm not quitting, but I'm just dabbling in it. And I'm like, I'll be here when you're serious, but I'm here, you know, I'm here no matter what, but you know, it's a decision and only you can make it. How long did you...
• 39:10
  How long were you thinking about quitting or when, when would, how many years went by when you're like, this is an issue until you actually took hold? Like I told you mine was nine years. I knew it was an, a big issue in about 2014 and 2015.
• 39:33
  Uh, I didn't get desperate enough. I let it get worse and worse and worse. So, you know, I didn't try to make a change until 2019 was the first time I checked into a detox. So let's think about that. You're about 32 years old at the time. Um, I was, I was 31 when I really noticed it taking over.
• 39:55
  So I like to, I'm sorry to call your age out. You look beautiful. I'm going to ask about that tattoo next. But the thing is, I want people to understand how it progresses. And it progresses. You never stay the same because you need more. You develop a tolerance. I was drinking at the very end. I could polish off a bottle of scotch and not even know. You wouldn't even know it. Just I would be talking to you like this and here and...
• 40:23
  It just, I'm a 220 pound beast and it's, it took a lot of liquor to get through to me. And my tolerance was huge. And so talk about 31 year old Brandy going to, and then when did you finally go to, no, I don't see finally, man. I don't want to diminish that. When did you go to recovery? It was 38? Let's see. It was, I'm 38 now and it was 2019.
• 40:52
  So it took about four years. It took four years of it going through this, these spurts where alcohol really. Just owned me. And then I would get my life back a little and go, okay, I can control this. It's not so bad. And, uh, and then something else, somebody would break up with me probably because of my drinking, but that's.
• 41:12
  but you know, a relationship would end or I would get fired or, you know, something would happen. And then I wouldn't look at my drinking and go, I need to change this. I would drink about it. And then, you know, I would get things back. So even though drinking, even though drinking, now we can look back, hindsight's 20-20, even though drinking probably was the root of all the problems that you were having, you would turn to your best friend for it. Just so I have that right.
• 41:40
  You have that right. And that's the casual drinker because you've earned that drink. And I'm being sarcastic, so the audience knows. Yeah, and I really lacked a lot of self-awareness. I did not have that. And it took tragedy. It took a lot of discomfort. It took really losing my ability to function normally in life.
• 42:06
  And I, like I said, I didn't just wake up that way. Like it was, you know, a casual progression of like you said, drinking more and drinking more. And then it just became so normal that then I couldn't not drink. And so, you know, another bartender had mentioned she was checking into a detox and I went, wait, we can do that. Like people like me can do that. I thought we just went on to the bitter end. We're not quitters. Nobody likes a quitter. Well, actually they do.
• 42:36
  Oh, I used to, so another one is, I'd say, I'm a drunk. I'm not an alcoholic because alcoholic are quitters. Oh, the stupid things I used to say and do. Yeah. Oh, Brandy. It's so, so refreshing to meet you. And you have a podcast. What's the name of the podcast? The Sober Bartender Podcast. And new episodes come out every Wednesday at 12 noon central. Yeah.
• 43:01
  And we talk about not just alcoholism and addiction. We talk about recovery from life. We talk about those coping skills. We talk about the things in our lives that come up that we can grow through instead of go through. Say that again, go through, grow through instead of go through. Wow. So we talk about the things that we can grow through instead of just go through. That's the whole thing of life happening for you, not to you.
• 43:32
  That shift in perspective. You're fabulous. You have so much. And we skipped over a lot because we only had an hour. There's her story. If you haven't heard it, go to her. It's her second episode. It's mind blowing. The stories. Like I said, in the intro, she lived with a Hell's Angel for 11 years. How long were you a bartender in Vegas? Bartended in Vegas for 14 years. I've been bartending for 20, yeah.
• 44:00
  14 years in Vegas is like eternity. I'd go to Vegas for a weekend when I was drinking. I'd be dead. So one more thing. I'm going to ask a couple more questions. One is I want to just hammer home. And I'm going to have the dates wrong or the years wrong. 31 to 35, we'll call it. Brandy's 31 years old. She says, I got a problem here.
• 44:23
  Four more years goes by. Talk about those four years and the progression of alcohol because that's who reaches out to me is the person that thinks that they have that 31-year-old brandy reaches out to me all the time. Every day, I get multiple messages on social media thinking I might have a problem. And you know as well as I do, you can discern really quickly if they're ready to make changes. I ask them to do one thing and if they can't do that, I just, I say, call me when you're ready.
• 44:51
  And it's usually nothing more than what do we have to do to not drink today? And or will you go to the gym for me today? And then they'll start the excuses. And I usually just say, I don't know what to do. Just walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes and then ride the bike for 10 minutes. Send me a picture. And then if you make it through today, when you make it through today, we'll start tomorrow.
• 45:12
  And they never do. And it's sad. But I'm here. And if you read my book, Harder Than Life, I say everybody reaches out to me. I put my email address. I'm a very, you can Google me and get my cell phone number. I am available when you're ready. When you're ready, nothing in the world will stop you. But again, 31-year-old Brandy reaches out to Brandy now. Yeah.
• 45:37
  How quickly did things spiral from 31 to 35 until you, until you got to the systems? So I feel like at 31, I could have quit and I didn't want to. So I feel like that was a point where I, I could have, you know, I wasn't past the point of no return. I hadn't flipped that switch. I could have just, I feel like if I could talk to myself back then,
• 46:07
  I would just, I couldn't, I couldn't see. I mean, I'm trying to find the words. I couldn't see. I was living on my mom's couch at 31 because that 11 year relationship ended, which ended because of my drinking and lying about it. Wait a minute. Hold on. You're living with a hell's angel for 11 years and he throws you out because you're drinking.
• 46:30
  And a lying, you're not lying. Oh yeah, that comes with it. Oh man. There's so much more I have to ask you in another podcast. I'm going to have you back. You're just fantastic. So again, keep going though with, you're really on your appearance. I'm so intrigued by the, I'm going through, you can see my face. I'm going through, I think there were multiple times if I met myself,
• 46:59
  or I met Brandy, that somebody could have talked me out of it too because there were many times I'm like, this is not for me. And it's just you're on this freaking hamster wheel and someone calls you, like, I'm not drinking today. And all of a sudden your friend's calling you, hey, we're all out here. And boom, there you are. And there was no one in my view. There was no one within earshot that was saying, there's another way.
• 47:29
  Like every bartender doesn't have to drink and every feeling doesn't need a reaction and doesn't need a response. And, um, you know, maybe just take what, you know, take a day off or take a week off. I just, I couldn't, I couldn't see myself because I was in the frame and I needed, I, you know, I,
• 47:49
  I try to prevent people from going past that point of no return because it was, it was just a progression of life events and a lack of coping skills and a lack of accountability because I was in a victimhood where I felt like all these things were happening to me, but I was, I was doing all these things that were making them worse. So I couldn't show up to life. I couldn't life. I couldn't life. That's a great one. When you talk about how not, how,
• 48:20
  The proportion, you know, the crazy hot matrix, but we're going to do the alcohol to happiness matrix. It's amazing how much happier you get the less amount of alcohol you drink. Yes. There was a time where I thought I couldn't really be happy without alcohol.
• 48:39
  Alcohol, and now, I mean, without alcohol, I didn't know that I could feel the way that I feel. Like I completely, I could feel a whole range of emotions and identify them and celebrate every little thing. It's indescribable. We could talk for hours, this is so good.
• 49:00
  How can, besides the podcast, how can people find you if, you know, this is where I can ask you, I want to know how they find you. And then what's next for you, super lady? Are you going to walk on water anytime soon? You're going to write a book about it. What's next for you? So people can find me on Instagram at the Sober Bartender Podcast. And then I am on Facebook at Brandy Kelly.
• 49:23
  And I do have a Facebook group called the sober bartender. And then, uh, my email is brandy, Kelly, two, three, four at gmail.com. So anybody that needs any help guidance, please reach out. And so there's a lot next. So the podcast was just born. So this is just the beginning for me. Um, I'm in the process of a coaching certification. I would like to help people that are not just in recovery. I right now I'm an AA sponsor.
• 49:50
  but I'm getting some street cred elsewhere, you know, so I can help people that haven't reached the depths of despair. And yes, I do plan to write a book and I just, I wanna help any way I can, so.
• 50:05
  I want to support you in any way, shape or form I can. You have a friend for life in me. Anything I can do to help. I love your story. I love you. I'm so grateful for you coming on today. And I want to end it with, remember, each and every episode is sponsored by National Technology Management. It's the easiest and best IT company to do business with.
• 50:27
  We deliver peace of mind with technology every day. Visit trustntm.com for more info. And until next week, be harder than life. Thank you for listening. Please rate and subscribe to Harder Than Life. And let's take this to the next level. Get connected at the links below.