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Embracing Mindful Drinking with Ian Andersen · Wake Up with Marci

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Wake Up with Marcy, a deep dive in
0:03
Speaker 1: the self discovering. I'm your host, Marty Hopkins, and this
0:07
Speaker 1: is the space where we get real about life transformation
0:11
Speaker 1: and finding our true selves. Hello all, and welcome back
0:15
Speaker 1: to Wake Up with Marcy. I'm your host, Marcy Hopkins,
0:18
Speaker 1: and I am so grateful that you are here today.
0:22
Speaker 1: This is where we dive deep into real conversations, radical healing,
0:27
Speaker 1: and waking up to your worth. Today's guest is someone
0:30
Speaker 1: who's changing the way we talk about alcohol. He is
0:34
Speaker 1: the co founder of Sunnyside, an innovative app that helps
0:38
Speaker 1: people build healthier drinking habits through mindful tracking and support.
0:44
Speaker 1: We'll explore his personal journey, how his families, experience and
0:48
Speaker 1: alcohol shaped his mission, and what it means to discover
0:51
Speaker 1: a new path through vulnerability and habit change. Welcome to
0:56
Speaker 1: the show, Ian.
0:57
Speaker 2: Thanks Marcy. I'm so glad we made this connection. I
0:59
Speaker 2: appreci that you having me here and that was a
1:02
Speaker 2: great interest, So I appreciate it.
1:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the work you're doing is fantastic. People
1:08
Speaker 1: a lot of times are questioning their relationship with alcohol,
1:13
Speaker 1: or sometimes they just can get in a rut and
1:15
Speaker 1: they don't even realize that, like they're you know, going
1:19
Speaker 1: from one glass of wine, maybe two glasses of wine,
1:23
Speaker 1: and then it just that perpetuates the problem. So bringing
1:28
Speaker 1: awareness to that is so important. But you, yourself, you
1:33
Speaker 1: had to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol. So what happened
1:39
Speaker 1: when that happened for you?
1:41
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely so. I have a family that's been deeply
1:45
Speaker 2: impacted by alcohol, and I think it's worth starting my
1:48
Speaker 2: story with a little bit of that because it really
1:51
Speaker 2: is sort of the foundation of what led to my
1:55
Speaker 2: journey with alcohol. I would say. So, I'm a twin
1:58
Speaker 2: and identical twin, and shortly after I was born, my
2:02
Speaker 2: parents both took to drinking quite heavily, i'd say, maybe
2:05
Speaker 2: within five to six years or so. And my father
2:11
Speaker 2: was working in construction, and his form of drinking was
2:14
Speaker 2: to come home at night and drink three beers at night,
2:18
Speaker 2: leading to six beers eventually, and eventually the way he
2:21
Speaker 2: explained it was drinking a twelve pack at night, and
2:24
Speaker 2: this led This was happening at a time that him
2:27
Speaker 2: and my mom were starting to kind of separate in
2:30
Speaker 2: their own relationship. And so my mom, who I don't
2:34
Speaker 2: think was ever much of a drinker, became very drawn
2:37
Speaker 2: to alcohol, and she became a much more closeted drinker
2:42
Speaker 2: where she would drink in private in her bedroom. And
2:46
Speaker 2: the long and short of it is that my dad
2:48
Speaker 2: saw that this was becoming a real issue with the family,
2:52
Speaker 2: that if they kept down this path, there would be
2:55
Speaker 2: my brother and I would probably end up in foster
2:58
Speaker 2: care just because they weren't really in a good situation
3:02
Speaker 2: to take care of us. He quit drinking cold Turkey
3:05
Speaker 2: with the support of AA, which is incredible. I have
3:07
Speaker 2: the highest respect for AA and the millions and millions
3:11
Speaker 2: of people that they have helped. So after that, he
3:14
Speaker 2: didn't touch alcohol for the rest of his life until
3:18
Speaker 2: he passed away a few years ago. So incredible influence
3:21
Speaker 2: on me and how I kind of look at alcohol.
3:25
Speaker 2: And then my mom she couldn't, unfortunately, stop drinking, and
3:28
Speaker 2: it got to the point where we had to move
3:30
Speaker 2: out of the house and she was on her own.
3:33
Speaker 2: It was really what she wanted, it was what her
3:35
Speaker 2: addiction led her to do, which was separate from the family,
3:39
Speaker 2: and unfortunately, without you know, sort of clarity of mind,
3:42
Speaker 2: she made that her her priority. She then, after we
3:46
Speaker 2: moved out around the age of nine. She then passed
3:49
Speaker 2: away two years later when I was eleven years old,
3:52
Speaker 2: from liver failure. So it was this rapid decline. And
3:57
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say that I'm positive that there
3:59
Speaker 2: were interventions that would have helped her, but I will
4:02
Speaker 2: say that at the time that they were both going
4:04
Speaker 2: through this experience, the tools that were available for helping
4:08
Speaker 2: people start making a change around their habits with alcohol
4:14
Speaker 2: was the tools were much less known than they are today,
4:19
Speaker 2: Like the options today are more widely available. They touch
4:24
Speaker 2: on every spectrum of sort of alcohol use, whether it's
4:29
Speaker 2: somebody that's fully addicted to alcohol or someone that's just
4:31
Speaker 2: looking to cut back. And that's really where Sunnyside does
4:34
Speaker 2: come into the system that we've built. So this created
4:38
Speaker 2: a complicated relationship for me with alcohol. It's really hard
4:42
Speaker 2: to explain, but I know that millions of other people
4:45
Speaker 2: go through the same experience where when they grow up
4:48
Speaker 2: in families that have been out impacted by alcohol, they
4:52
Speaker 2: have this complicated relationship with like should I drink or
4:55
Speaker 2: should I not drink? I should probably stay away from it,
4:58
Speaker 2: But at the same time, all of my friends starting
5:00
Speaker 2: to dabble in in alcohol, So I decided to test
5:04
Speaker 2: drinking around senior year of high school, and it was
5:08
Speaker 2: very light for me. But then in college I started
5:11
Speaker 2: to really enjoy drinking and I did it socially. I
5:15
Speaker 2: just did the college thing and it was fine. It
5:18
Speaker 2: didn't impact my life. But then when I got into
5:21
Speaker 2: my career many years ago, I was working in marketing
5:27
Speaker 2: tech in the Bay Area. I lived close to the
5:30
Speaker 2: Bay Area now but not exactly in San Francisco, and
5:33
Speaker 2: I was living the life. I was working at a
5:35
Speaker 2: great company. We got acquired by a bigger company and
5:39
Speaker 2: the job kind of got a little bit easier, and
5:41
Speaker 2: happy hours got a lot more prominent, and I found
5:44
Speaker 2: myself going to happy hours multiple times a week. And
5:50
Speaker 2: I got to this point where I had gained twenty pounds.
5:54
Speaker 2: I'm a pretty thin guy. I like being fit and
5:57
Speaker 2: like I had this one moment where I was supposed
6:00
Speaker 2: to be recording a video kind of like this, but
6:03
Speaker 2: actually in person, and the video was shown to me afterwards.
6:08
Speaker 2: It was like this little promotional video and I just
6:10
Speaker 2: told them, you can't use that. Like, I don't recognize
6:13
Speaker 2: that person in that video. That person looks bloated, they
6:16
Speaker 2: don't look happy, They looked twenty pounds overweight, and that
6:19
Speaker 2: was a real moment for me where I was like,
6:22
Speaker 2: I think I probably need to cut back on drinking.
6:24
Speaker 2: And it was pretty simple. It's not like I had
6:26
Speaker 2: to go analyze it much deeper than that. I felt
6:30
Speaker 2: like I was drinking too much because my energy was low,
6:34
Speaker 2: the way that I felt performance wise at work was low,
6:37
Speaker 2: and I was seeking happy hours. I found myself looking
6:42
Speaker 2: forward to happy hours so that I could have a drink.
6:44
Speaker 2: And now that was in twenty eighteen or so, and
6:48
Speaker 2: so now many years later, with the start of Sunnyside,
6:51
Speaker 2: I've studied alcohol and its effects, as I imagine you
6:55
Speaker 2: have a bit with your own journey, and I feel
6:59
Speaker 2: like there was nothing wrong with that person in twenty
7:02
Speaker 2: eighteen necessarily. It's just that I don't feel necessarily like
7:06
Speaker 2: I was doing something wrong. But I'm proud to say
7:09
Speaker 2: that I was able to make a pretty dramatic change
7:11
Speaker 2: in my life, and for me, that was very much
7:13
Speaker 2: well power at the time. And I took three months
7:16
Speaker 2: off of drinking. I just made the decision. I kind
7:19
Speaker 2: of think in extremes like that, and those three months
7:22
Speaker 2: were pretty transformative for me. I lost weight I felt amazing.
7:26
Speaker 2: I got back in my workout routines, and I realized
7:28
Speaker 2: that in the priority of things that I was looking
7:33
Speaker 2: forward to in that period of my life, alcohol was
7:35
Speaker 2: pretty high on the list. And after that three months
7:37
Speaker 2: I had sort of reoriented it. I still I went
7:40
Speaker 2: back to drinking in much more moderation and with much
7:44
Speaker 2: more mindfulness, but it was much lower on the list,
7:46
Speaker 2: and I had just sort of reoriented where that fit.
7:49
Speaker 2: So that's the high level version of my experience with alcohol.
7:52
Speaker 2: I could speak more to where it fits into my
7:54
Speaker 2: life these days now that I'm the co founder of
7:57
Speaker 2: an alcohol health program, happy to dive into a little
8:00
Speaker 2: bit too.
8:01
Speaker 1: Well, we certainly will, certainly will just laying the foundation
8:04
Speaker 1: and for those out there listening, like, for instance, my
8:10
Speaker 1: mother was an alcoholic, and when you are raised in
8:14
Speaker 1: a home where there is alcohol, it has a big
8:18
Speaker 1: impact on you. And when you were talking about that,
8:21
Speaker 1: there were not a lot of options. I mean, I
8:23
Speaker 1: stopped drinking about ten years ago, and there weren't even
8:28
Speaker 1: at that time. It was basically AA or rehab. Thankfully,
8:33
Speaker 1: I didn't need rehab, but a lot of people out there,
8:37
Speaker 1: just if you're listening and you're thinking about quitting drinking,
8:40
Speaker 1: make sure that you do talk with your doctor, because
8:43
Speaker 1: if you are drinking excessively, you could potentially die from
8:49
Speaker 1: just stopping cold turkey, because your body actually believes that
8:55
Speaker 1: you needed so for your mother and my mother, I
9:00
Speaker 1: used to think my mom was choosing the alcohol over me,
9:06
Speaker 1: but now it's I understand it. When you have an addiction,
9:10
Speaker 1: you feel that you can't live without it, And there
9:14
Speaker 1: are a lot of people out there that struggle so
9:18
Speaker 1: getting and changing life without alcohol. And so I believe
9:23
Speaker 1: fully that if we could actually make a choice, we
9:27
Speaker 1: wouldn't choose the alcohol over the love of our family.
9:31
Speaker 1: So it just shows you the power of that alcohol
9:34
Speaker 1: use disorder. And it is a disorder, it is a disease.
9:40
Speaker 1: So but the fact is is that you then had
9:45
Speaker 1: somebody that gave you a positive influence. I don't know
9:49
Speaker 1: about you, but coming from that background, I questioned my
9:55
Speaker 1: drinking all the time. I would watch how other people
9:58
Speaker 1: were drinking. I would, you know, look to see how
10:02
Speaker 1: much I was drinking. Once I got past those teen
10:05
Speaker 1: years and I became more aware of it, but also
10:08
Speaker 1: to see someone my mother, my grandfather drinking every day,
10:13
Speaker 1: that was like the norm. So for me to come
10:15
Speaker 1: home from work and have a couple of glasses of wine,
10:19
Speaker 1: Like I didn't see anything wrong with it because I
10:22
Speaker 1: didn't know any different. But of course I questioned it
10:26
Speaker 1: during my lifetime of drinking, but I looked forward to
10:31
Speaker 1: that happy hour like it was like I got to
10:33
Speaker 1: get through my day just so I can get to
10:35
Speaker 1: my happy hour, right, So absolutely totally relate to that.
10:40
Speaker 2: With alcoholic and with other habits and substances, there's this
10:45
Speaker 2: dopamine rush that we get just with anticipating the happy hour.
10:48
Speaker 2: So if you're listening to this and you're relating to this,
10:51
Speaker 2: and you know around one pm, you get this excitement
10:54
Speaker 2: in your body because you're thinking about the happy hour.
10:57
Speaker 2: I just want people to know that, like that, there's
10:59
Speaker 2: nothing wrong with you. That is your dopamine. That's your
11:02
Speaker 2: brain the way that it's wired, and those things can
11:05
Speaker 2: be unwired and they can be untrained over time. There
11:09
Speaker 2: are programs for this. The stack of those programs looks
11:14
Speaker 2: there's a lot. There's a lot of options. There's behavior
11:16
Speaker 2: change programs like Sunnyside, there's therapy, there's retraining with like
11:22
Speaker 2: non alcoholic beverages, there's so many options out there these days,
11:26
Speaker 2: just to start taking that first step, Marjie, I want
11:28
Speaker 2: to just there's something really interesting that I want to
11:31
Speaker 2: just tap tap into really quick. This is sounds a
11:33
Speaker 2: little well, I was gonna say, kind of dark, But
11:37
Speaker 2: you were talking about growing up in a household and
11:40
Speaker 2: how it really changes how you think about alcohol. I
11:43
Speaker 2: always question my relationship with alcohol. From the time that
11:45
Speaker 2: I took my first drink senior year of high school,
11:48
Speaker 2: I was wondering, is this it, like, well, first of all,
11:51
Speaker 2: like this feels great, how come my parents can't have
11:53
Speaker 2: this anymore? But one thing that really struck me that
11:56
Speaker 2: my twin brother said at one point as we were
11:58
Speaker 2: talking about alcohol. He said, the complicated thing that he
12:02
Speaker 2: had formed in his mind was as long as I
12:04
Speaker 2: don't die from alcohol, I'm doing better than my parents.
12:09
Speaker 2: That's such a dangerous high bar for us to set
12:14
Speaker 2: as children, and I hadn't really thought about it that way,
12:18
Speaker 2: and it's always stuck with me. But something probably deep
12:21
Speaker 2: deep inside of me probably has always told me like,
12:23
Speaker 2: as long as you don't do what your parents did,
12:26
Speaker 2: you're probably okay. And I had to completely reset that.
12:30
Speaker 2: One of the things that really.
12:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, towards the end of my drinking, I'm like, well,
12:35
Speaker 1: I'm not my mom totally, but it wasn't affecting my life.
12:40
Speaker 1: But you know, you just sharing about what's available today.
12:45
Speaker 1: I mean, there are so many ways that you can
12:50
Speaker 1: shift the way that you do think and your relationship
12:54
Speaker 1: with alcohol. So let's talk about Sunnyside. I mean, this
12:58
Speaker 1: is incredible, this app that you have created, co created,
13:03
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what inspired you to build it
13:06
Speaker 1: and what does it offer to its users.
13:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for letting me talk about Sunnyside. It's
13:12
Speaker 2: been an amazing journey and something that I hope if
13:15
Speaker 2: we could help one person listening with our program, then
13:18
Speaker 2: we've won. What inspired Sunnyside? So obviously well okay, actually,
13:23
Speaker 2: coming out of my break from drinking, I actually started.
13:27
Speaker 2: I decided to start tracking some of my habits in
13:29
Speaker 2: a spreadsheet, just as a you know, there's people that
13:33
Speaker 2: we call it a quantified self, Like I have a
13:36
Speaker 2: whoop for tracking my biomarkers on a daily basis, and
13:39
Speaker 2: it's been really helpful for me to make correlations with
13:41
Speaker 2: my health. Health. But back in twenty eighteen, I started
13:45
Speaker 2: in a spreadsheet I would track my I would track
13:47
Speaker 2: my workouts. I did a little bit of calorie tracking
13:50
Speaker 2: just because I wanted to maintain my health. The one
13:52
Speaker 2: new thing that I did is I started tracking the
13:54
Speaker 2: drinks that I had every day that I drank, I
13:57
Speaker 2: wrote how many that I had, and it really helped
13:59
Speaker 2: me start to nderstand these patterns with my drinking. So
14:03
Speaker 2: it's it's really big. We've learned that it's an incredibly
14:06
Speaker 2: powerful and sort of scientifically proven tactic to track your drinks,
14:10
Speaker 2: and that became a fundamental aspect of the sunny Side program.
14:14
Speaker 1: Like the awareness, like you're seeing it right instead of just.
14:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's an awareness. There's an awareness component. So we
14:22
Speaker 2: find that most people that start, we really encourage people like,
14:25
Speaker 2: don't boil the ocean in your first thirty days with Sunnyside.
14:28
Speaker 2: You're here not to quit. Most most people don't come
14:31
Speaker 2: to Sunnyside to quit. They come to make fundamental change
14:34
Speaker 2: with the way that they think about alcohol, to like
14:37
Speaker 2: rethink how it fits into their lives. Tracking your drinks
14:39
Speaker 2: for thirty days and then beyond helps you just gain
14:43
Speaker 2: a realistic perspective of how much you're drinking and for
14:45
Speaker 2: a lot of people. That's really powerful. The other thing
14:48
Speaker 2: that tracking does, though, is it creates what we call
14:50
Speaker 2: a little moment of conscious interference. So if you're tracking
14:53
Speaker 2: your drinks in real time, which you can do in
14:55
Speaker 2: the Sunnyside app, you're giving yourself a little pause. And
14:58
Speaker 2: it's not rocket science. Pause gives you a moment to
15:01
Speaker 2: decide in a smarter way do I want to have
15:05
Speaker 2: a drink? Do I want to have water? Do I
15:06
Speaker 2: want to have a non alcoholic beverage? And that's been
15:08
Speaker 2: really powerful for people. So these are incredibly simple tactics
15:12
Speaker 2: that we employ in the Sunnyside program. There's a lot
15:14
Speaker 2: more to it, but just getting back to sort of
15:16
Speaker 2: the inspiration piece. My co founder came to me a
15:19
Speaker 2: couple of years. He came to me in twenty twenty
15:21
Speaker 2: and said that he wanted to He had this idea
15:23
Speaker 2: for an app that would help the millions of people
15:26
Speaker 2: that are looking to drink less but not necessarily quit,
15:29
Speaker 2: to help them on that journey. Because these I still
15:33
Speaker 2: think these days, if you ask someone on someone that
15:35
Speaker 2: you've just met, like, hey, hypothetically, if you wanted to
15:39
Speaker 2: cut back on your drinking, what would you do? I
15:41
Speaker 2: think most people would generally say, well, I guess i'd
15:44
Speaker 2: go to AA, but I don't want to quit, so
15:47
Speaker 2: I want to go to AA, and AA's for people
15:49
Speaker 2: that need to like that have hit rock bottom, and
15:53
Speaker 2: so it creates this cognitive dissonance. I'm not going to stop.
15:56
Speaker 2: I'm not going to start drinking less because I'm not
15:58
Speaker 2: going to go to AA, and AA not for me.
16:01
Speaker 2: The truth is AA is a great program for a
16:04
Speaker 2: small percentage of people. There are millions and millions of
16:07
Speaker 2: people that drink alcohol, and in studies, fifty percent have
16:10
Speaker 2: said that they want to drink less, but only like
16:12
Speaker 2: ten percent actually do something about it. This is an
16:15
Speaker 2: awareness problem, this is a conversational problem within how we
16:19
Speaker 2: look at alcohol. And so he had this idea for
16:24
Speaker 2: this program. He didn't find anything else online. So we
16:26
Speaker 2: set out to build it. And our approach is whether
16:31
Speaker 2: you can join Sunnyside, whether you want to cut back
16:34
Speaker 2: or quit. Marcia, You're totally right. If somebody is a
16:38
Speaker 2: certain type of drinker, they might want to seek medical
16:42
Speaker 2: attention or talk to a doctor first, and those are
16:44
Speaker 2: people that are most likely going to need a little
16:47
Speaker 2: more help than Sunnyside can offer. But there are tens
16:50
Speaker 2: of millions of people that fit the criteria for Sunnyside,
16:53
Speaker 2: which is, I know I'm drinking too much, it's impacting
16:56
Speaker 2: my life. I'm not having withdrawal symptoms, for example, but
17:01
Speaker 2: I need support to cut back because this is really
17:04
Speaker 2: this is about the brain, it's about behavior change, it's
17:06
Speaker 2: about habit change. And yeah, we set out to build
17:09
Speaker 2: that program. Something that I'm really proud of though, which
17:12
Speaker 2: I just want to make sure people understand, is about
17:15
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of people that join Studieside do end up quitting.
17:18
Speaker 2: So we're not a sobriety program. But as you enter
17:22
Speaker 2: the Sunnyside experience, you're taking a moderation based approach to
17:27
Speaker 2: your alcohol. You're learning about alcohol, you're learning how to
17:29
Speaker 2: cut down, and then just sort of gain clarity around
17:33
Speaker 2: where alcohol sits in your life. And for a lot
17:35
Speaker 2: of people, about fifteen percent of our members, that clarity
17:38
Speaker 2: leads them to make the decision to go sober, which
17:42
Speaker 2: is an amazing outcome. But for about eighty five percent
17:45
Speaker 2: of our members, they keep drinking, but they do so
17:50
Speaker 2: at reduced rates and they're now empowered to maintain those
17:54
Speaker 2: habits over time. So there are details of the program
17:57
Speaker 2: that I can get into, but that's the general gist
17:59
Speaker 2: of it.
17:59
Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna guess that a lot of them do
18:03
Speaker 1: stop drinking completely. Because when you quit drinking and you
18:08
Speaker 1: have the mindfulness, the behavior changes. And were we talk
18:12
Speaker 1: about that more but and the impact of that. But
18:16
Speaker 1: when you take alcohol out of your life or reduce
18:20
Speaker 1: the alcohol, you start to evolve as a person. You
18:23
Speaker 1: reconnect with yourself. And like for me, when I quit drinking,
18:27
Speaker 1: it allowed me to become curious in life, and it
18:31
Speaker 1: allowed me to not prioritize alcohol. It was more about
18:36
Speaker 1: prioritizing myself, prioritizing the things that made me happy and
18:40
Speaker 1: finding those things that actually made me happy. So that's
18:43
Speaker 1: why I'm going to guess that. You know, like you
18:46
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, you've got a clear head,
18:49
Speaker 1: you feel good, you're ready to go, You're shifting your
18:52
Speaker 1: mindset to a gratitude mindset, you're working out, like you said,
18:56
Speaker 1: you're looking better, your self confidence is lifted. Like there's
19:00
Speaker 1: so many benefits to it. But you know, there's nothing
19:04
Speaker 1: wrong with drinking. It's just acknowledging the relationship and maybe
19:08
Speaker 1: cutting back, like you said, So let's talk about some
19:12
Speaker 1: of the practices that you offer through Sunnyside that create
19:16
Speaker 1: the change with the habits, with the mindset.
19:22
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'd be happy to dig into that. I just
19:24
Speaker 2: want to touch on this idea of brighter mornings because
19:27
Speaker 2: it's literally why we named our company Sunnyside. It's we
19:30
Speaker 2: wanted to just feel like a destination, something you could
19:32
Speaker 2: get to, and we tell people Sunnyside is all about
19:36
Speaker 2: brighter mornings, that it's about clearer minds that lead to
19:39
Speaker 2: better decision making, better relationships, and just the way you
19:43
Speaker 2: put it. Yeah, So there are people that have joined.
19:50
Speaker 2: I'll get into the mechanics, but I just want to
19:52
Speaker 2: share there's different types of people that join Sunnyside, and
19:56
Speaker 2: I just want to talk about two common types. One
19:58
Speaker 2: of them is the daily wine drinker. So if somebody's
20:01
Speaker 2: been drinking wine two to three glasses of wine every
20:04
Speaker 2: night for the last couple of years according to the CDC,
20:07
Speaker 2: those are within the guidelines. But as you get older,
20:11
Speaker 2: or your doctor talks to you, or you realize that
20:13
Speaker 2: hangovers are starting to get to you, you make a
20:15
Speaker 2: decision that you want to drink less. But it becomes
20:18
Speaker 2: really hard because the habit that's been ingrained in your
20:20
Speaker 2: mind is very deeply in there and can be hard
20:23
Speaker 2: to break. So a daily wine drinker is a very
20:26
Speaker 2: common persona that comes and joined Sunnyside. And then also
20:29
Speaker 2: like a weekend binge drinker, So somebody that doesn't drink
20:33
Speaker 2: at all during the weekdays, but then as soon as
20:35
Speaker 2: they start having a drink on Fridays, they have a
20:38
Speaker 2: really hard time stopping. The reason I want to highlight
20:41
Speaker 2: this is there are different types of drinkers that can
20:44
Speaker 2: benefit from a program like Sunnyside that builds awareness and
20:48
Speaker 2: behavior change around your habits. So if you're listening to
20:52
Speaker 2: this and you're not sure if you fit the criteria,
20:54
Speaker 2: trust me you do. We've had over four hundred thousand
20:57
Speaker 2: people start Sunnyside. We've seen every pattern, type of drinker,
21:00
Speaker 2: and we've helped every type of persona. So how Sunnyside works,
21:04
Speaker 2: I'll go through this pretty quickly. You start by signing
21:07
Speaker 2: up and giving us some of your personal information privately
21:10
Speaker 2: anonymously so that we can understand your drinking patterns and behaviors.
21:13
Speaker 2: And we start right away by offering you a plan
21:16
Speaker 2: for your week ahead. We recommend drinks for your week ahead,
21:20
Speaker 2: but we never promote drinking. I just want to be
21:23
Speaker 2: clear about that. That should be pretty obvious. We don't
21:25
Speaker 2: promote drinking. But what we do is we promote that
21:28
Speaker 2: you drink less than you did the week before. And
21:30
Speaker 2: for most people, we're going to do just a haircut
21:33
Speaker 2: on their first week, and if they hit those targets,
21:36
Speaker 2: we will continue to haircut a little bit more every week.
21:39
Speaker 2: Our general goal is to try to get you down
21:41
Speaker 2: to the CDC recommended guidelines of fourteen drinks per week
21:44
Speaker 2: for men seven drinks per week for women. I believe
21:47
Speaker 2: I'm getting that right. I might be one or two off.
21:49
Speaker 2: We also want to help you avoid binge drinking behavior,
21:51
Speaker 2: which is four or more drinks in one sitting. So
21:55
Speaker 2: our program where we recommend drinks for you is going
21:58
Speaker 2: to help you gradually, very very gradually get down to
22:01
Speaker 2: the CDC recommended guidelines. If you do hit those goals,
22:03
Speaker 2: we'll continue helping you decrease. If you're not hitting the
22:06
Speaker 2: plan that we give you, we're going to check in
22:08
Speaker 2: with you. Our coaching team will check in with you,
22:10
Speaker 2: and we're going to help help you kind of adjust
22:12
Speaker 2: your plan to be more realistic for you, so you
22:16
Speaker 2: can always adjust your targets. We're trying to get dry
22:20
Speaker 2: days into the week for you, which are incredibly important.
22:23
Speaker 2: A lot of people that join Sunnyside haven't had dry
22:25
Speaker 2: days for a while, and they haven't had a long
22:27
Speaker 2: string of dry days for a while. So we're going
22:29
Speaker 2: to really try to get a couple days of dry
22:31
Speaker 2: days for you within the first couple of months, and
22:35
Speaker 2: you're going to feel how that improves your mental and
22:37
Speaker 2: physical well being so that you can have clarity of
22:40
Speaker 2: mind to start making healthier decisions for yourself. So there's
22:44
Speaker 2: this tracking component. We encourage you to track your drinks.
22:47
Speaker 2: We encourage you to take the planning experience very seriously,
22:51
Speaker 2: and then we have coaching from real humans that are
22:54
Speaker 2: accessible through our text message program that's available for everybody,
22:57
Speaker 2: and we have this really cool mindful drinking coaches. Okay, yeah, yeah,
23:02
Speaker 2: So we can support people on their sober journeys. Absolutely,
23:06
Speaker 2: there are people that use Sunnyside to track their sober streaks.
23:09
Speaker 2: We've actually recently made improved that side of the experience
23:13
Speaker 2: because we know that more and more people are joining
23:15
Speaker 2: Sunnyside to maintain their sobriety. Like I said, about eighty
23:19
Speaker 2: five percent of people that are using Sunnyside are mindful drinkers.
23:22
Speaker 2: They're trying, they're working on moderation and reduction. Yeah, we
23:26
Speaker 2: have a really great progress and analytics tools, we have
23:29
Speaker 2: resources and education, and we also have challenges. So if
23:33
Speaker 2: this whole idea of us making recommendations to you on
23:36
Speaker 2: a weekly basis isn't really working, you can just join
23:38
Speaker 2: these thirty day challenges that are geared around quantified goals
23:42
Speaker 2: like cutting your drinking by fifty percent or not drinking
23:45
Speaker 2: for thirty days.
23:46
Speaker 1: Just want to change how they're looking at it and
23:48
Speaker 1: need the support around changing their drinking habits. So I
23:52
Speaker 1: just want to thank you for sharing your journey and
23:57
Speaker 1: the support again helping to break down the stigma, offer
24:02
Speaker 1: real solutions and just being vulnerable. And like you said,
24:06
Speaker 1: community is so so important. So if you're out there
24:10
Speaker 1: or even just questioning your habit, you're not alone. I
24:13
Speaker 1: mean so many millions and millions of us do. So
24:17
Speaker 1: whether it's tracking your drinks or starting a conversation, every
24:22
Speaker 1: step counts. And don't forget to subscribe and share. Wake
24:27
Speaker 1: up with Marcy for more powerful stories and healing and transformation,
24:30
Speaker 1: so you are not alone on this journey. There is
24:34
Speaker 1: so much support out there, and you are worthy