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The Mommy Wine Trap: Why So Many Mothers Reach for the Wine with Casey Davidson · Motherhood Uncut

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Motherhood Uncut podcast, where we talk honestly about the reality of motherhood.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Kate Kripke.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is a space for mothers to feel seen, heard, and understood, especially those navigating the intersection of raising young kids while also maintaining passions, purpose, and work outside of motherhood.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's called Uncut because we do not hold back here.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Through expert conversations, personal stories, practical tools, and honest reflection, we explore what it means to care for ourselves, stay connected to our kids, and remember that we can feel hard things and still be okay.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking about something that is deeply woven into the culture of motherhood, and yet we don't talk nearly enough about what may actually be happening underneath it.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that is drinking.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: My guest is Casey Davidson, host of the Hello Someday podcast for sober, curious women and creator of the sobriety starter kit.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Casey spent years as a high-achieving, successful working mother who also relied on wine to quiet anxiety, take the edge off overwhelm, let go of control, and make the relentless demands of work and motherhood feel just a little bit easier.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think this conversation gets really interesting because this isn't simply a conversation about alcohol or sobriety.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's about what happens when capable, driven women have learned how to achieve and perform and take care of everyone else and hold it all together, but haven't necessarily learned how to stay present with all the emotional discomfort that simply comes with motherhood.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Casey is incredibly open about her own experience, including what drinking gave her and what it took away, how it affected her relationship with her children in ways she didn't always recognize at the time, and what changed when she stopped.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you drink regularly, barely drink at all, or have quietly wondered about your own relationship with alcohol, I think there is something much bigger here for all of us.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so if you're listening to this podcast and finding yourself thinking, yes, this is exactly how I feel, I want you to know that you do not have to navigate the season alone.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: The women I work with are deeply thoughtful, capable, ambitious mothers who care tremendously about their children and also about the work, passions, relationships, and purpose they hold outside of motherhood.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: But motherhood has a way of asking things of us that many of us were never prepared for.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: The uncertainty, the lack of control, the intensity of loving someone this much.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere along the way, anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, and the constant need to figure things out can start pulling us away from the life that's actually happening right in front of us.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: The COM Connection Experience is my 12-week program designed to help you change that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Together we work on building your capacity to stay present and connected, even when things feel uncertain, uncomfortable, or different from what you expected.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you can respond to your kids, to your life and to yourself in ways that actually reflect the woman and mother you want to be.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're hearing this and thinking, I want that, then I'd love to talk with you.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can book a call with me using the link in the show notes.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: We will talk about what's feeling hard for you right now, what you want to be different, and whether the calm connection experience might be the right next step for you.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Casey Davidson, welcome to the Motherhood Uncut Podcast.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So glad you're here.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited to be here.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I would love for us to start if we could with you.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, look, I was like, yeah, we're using video, and then I'm like putting on my lip stuff as we get going.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if anyone's watching, that's just what we do here.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um because I asked if I'm allowed to drink my coffee.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Please drink your coffee.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would love for you to start by just telling us your story because in many ways you are the women who will listen to this podcast.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, people have all kinds of differences, but in general, I think your story is very common.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So can you start by just letting my listeners know uh who you are and how you end up ended up doing what you're doing today?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like you said, I feel like, well, especially after talking to so many women, my story is not unusual, regardless of how much people who don't drink a ton would sort of like to think it is or don't realize it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So um I was like a straight A gold star girl, people pleaser, overachiever my entire life, like the peacekeeper, the person keeping the temperature of the room and trying to make everything okay.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, very attuned to how other people were feeling.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my God, we could talk for hours about why that is.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I moved a lot growing up.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: My parents were foreign service officers, so US diplomats, um, primarily in Africa and South America.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, what that means is just I moved every two or three years, my entire childhood.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt very much when I moved somewhere that I needed to assimilate and make friends as quickly as possible, or I would have zero friends.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so that pressure just made me very good at sort of becoming whoever people wanted me to be.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I did that as a child.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I went to boarding school like a month after I turned 14.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: I never lived with my parents again.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just is what it is.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't bad.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I loved boarding school.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also a boarding school girl, by the way.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, where did you go?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a boarding school in New England called Taft in Watertown.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, I went to Chote Rosemary Hall.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stop.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, you did not.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, look at that.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I played field hockey and lacrosse would you and ice hockey, but I wasn't good.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small boarding school world, let's just say that.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: I played played each other constantly.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like you guys were in the circle that we played all the time.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: What year did you graduate?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: 93.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm 50.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: 91.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know so we were we were we probably have met each other or past each other.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: How funny for sure.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Chote and Taft are very close to each other.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I toured Taft when I was looking at boarding schools, yada yada.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's so funny.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I played ice hockey my freshman year, thirds.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was horrible.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was horrible.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: I only played freshman and sophomore year.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was terrible.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Also played field hockey, but I'm like almost six feet tall, and it was very uncomfortable for me because the you're at like so anyway, there you go.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, you should have played lacrosse, man.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: You would have killed it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was a tennis player.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: Tennis.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is not the point.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, I'm glad I mentioned it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um basically, I went to college and I didn't want to play field hockey because A, I wasn't that good, but also I didn't want to get up and do all the practices and all that stuff.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided to play women's rugby.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I love being a part of the team.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: I loved games, I loved all that stuff.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my God, that was like a masterclass in how to drink problematically.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like they initiated and taught you how to, you know, drink out of funnels and do kegstands and blackout and you name it.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I loved it.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: I literally loved it.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: I felt like being able to turn off my brain and the idea that when I was drunk enough, anything could happen was like a feature, not a bug.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, yes, because I was so uncomfortable if I wasn't the good girl.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, dude, I can be the bad girl and this rocks.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I still got straight A's, I still still did all the things, but I also got very used to drinking as something that was exciting.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to my first job out of college.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And again, sort of, you know, like you have that like straight A who also has imposter syndrome and is convinced you're constantly going to be fired.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's just me.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that's just you.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I uh had a consulting job, big consulting job, 22, trying to present to execs at like telecom companies and American Express and you know, ridiculous.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would drink.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I, you know, thought that adults drank wine every night.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was a red wine girl.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I went out and dancing with friends in DC.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I also like could not cook.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'd gone eight years to dining hall.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I would like have lucky charms and open a bottle of wine in my crappy basement apartment.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was so sophisticated.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was like out of control.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: But that just started me, A, daily drinking, B, drinking when I was nervous.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, like before a big meeting at Amex, I would drink sometime alone in my apartment, sometimes the point of throwing up, but like the next day I could not be nervous because I was trying so desperately hard to pretend I wasn't hungover.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it just continued, right?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so for a long time, I thought this is just what people did.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I probably knew that not everyone threw up, but like I drinkers hang out with drinkers.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just what happens.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: So all my friends drank a lot.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: None of my friends thought it was unusual.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I moved, I met my boyfriend, now husband of 24 years, insane.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like congratulations.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, first year at the job, which just tells you how long we've been together.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um we moved out to Seattle.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: We lived on a floating home like a mile up the lake from my very best friend from Chote.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it was awesome, like truly awesome.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: We used to kayak to their house, so we never drank and drive.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: We used to drink on the lake at happy hour.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: We did all the things, we were dual-income, no kids, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And everything that that entailed.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so my drinking just kind of changed based on my life stage, right?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like cocktails out, and then it was on, you know, outdoors trips in Seattle, and then it was dinner parties with all my young married friends, with all the bottles of wine, and then it was the mommy wine culture.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And sort of through it all, I was very anxious and yet overachieving at work, like the youngest director promoted at this global company, you know, and so, so uh nervous that I was going to be found out that I didn't know what I was doing, that like drinking, you know, drinking just became the thing.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And once I had kids, I couldn't do all the other things that kind of kept me healthy and grounded.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to go to yoga, go to Pilates, take guitar lessons, go hiking, and suddenly it was like work, work, work, you know, run out of the office in time to pick up your kid from daycare, your six month old, your one-year-old, and then come home, do all the things.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And after my son went to bed, I would jump back on the computer to finish work and you could do all of that with a glass of wine in your hand.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And in my mind, it was like my reward, um, kind of a fuck you to adulting.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm still fun, you know.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so it just continued.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, I was completely oblivious to all the things that alcohol did to you.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I legitimately believed that me waking up at 3 a.m.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: in a panic every night was not due to alcohol withdrawal, which by the way, if you wake up at 3 a.m.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: with anxiety every night, it is 100% related to how much you were drinking.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't know that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I like my nervous system was shot again.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, no kidding, related to alcohol, but I didn't know that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to my therapist and, you know, they ask you how much you drink, and nobody's gonna say a bottle of wine tonight.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like they'll all they're gonna tell you is to stop drinking, which is like the last thing I wanted.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Which you didn't want to do, yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: They'll look at you all judgy like WTF.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I would go in there and say, Oh, I have a couple drinks a couple nights a week on the little form.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would go in there and be like, guess what?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: I am um anxious.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm having, you know, such a hard time at work.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have no boundaries, which was not unusual for me.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I have insomnia.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I wake up every night and they prescribe me antidepressants or anti-anxiety pills, depending on the year, and um ambient.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: So then I was drinking a bottle of white and wine a night and taking ambient, which I cannot tell you how dangerous that is.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You literally cannot wake up from that shit sometimes.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't know.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was worried about my drinking, and yet I was protecting my drinking and I was just making all these rules like I won't drink when I'm out, so I won't drink a drive, or I won't drink when I'm home.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that I won't drink as often.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: I won't drink red wine, I'll drink white wine or beer because I like it less.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to to one point, like I decided not to drink bottles of wine because I thought the issue was like, oh, well, then there's only a quarter left, then like you might as well finish.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Might as well finish it.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like the issue is obviously the amount left.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: So then, and by the way, do not recommend this.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not a good moderation strategy.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: I literally bought boxed wine because I was like, oh, then I'll just have two glasses.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do not, do not buy boxed wine.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I actually went through a stage where instead of the bottles, I bought the little canned wines.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: But then you just open the next one.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because in my mind, I was like, well, if it's not a bottle and it's just a can, I'll stop at one.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: All these, these are just tactics, aren't they?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's moderation strategies that don't work.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like I joined a running club at night, so I wouldn't drink.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I just got home at 8:30 and drank.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: I did boot camps at 5:30 in the morning for years with the idea that if I had to get up and work out, I wouldn't drink.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't work.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was just doing burpees hungover with a bottle of wine, you know, like brutal.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I was worried about my drinking, but I also could not imagine my life without alcohol.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: All of my friends drank.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: This was my son just turned 18.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd been worried since he was six months old.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: I finally read a book called Drinking a Love Story by Carolyn Knapp.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it was my first, what we call quitlet, which is stories about women drinking and stopping drinking and all that.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, oh God, like it hit way too close to home.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh shit, this might be a problem.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I doubled down on like, I'm gonna control my drinking.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I spent years walking into the office being like, do I just abuse alcohol or am I a quote unquote alcoholic?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I just abuse it, I can abuse it less.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, then I slowly became like more podcasts, more quit lip books, more moderation strategies, going to a therapist that specialized in anxiety and addiction and was like, my boss, my husband, my son, my boss, and my job.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, and I drank a bottle of wine a night.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the dude, because he specialized in addiction, was like, let's talk about your drinking.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, no, let's talk about my boss, you know, whatever it was.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So stopped, you know, got sort of this was 13 years, ooh, I mean, you know, I've been sober for a decade now.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it was 13 years ago.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And AA was the only game in town then.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thank God, not thank God.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: AA helps so many people.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: The people were nice.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have a ton of friends who go to it, and it was not for me.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I went for four months.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't drink, so yes, it worked.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then I didn't want to subscribe to that approach for the rest of my life.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that was why I went back to drinking, is what I told myself.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: The truth is, I just wanted to drink.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I loved the way it made me feel.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: But um, my daughter was born, so I took a year off drinking, but really it was only four months till I got pregnant.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I decided I was better, right?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was more emotionally stable, my job was easier, my marriage was better.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Can I ask you a quick question?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just a clarifying question.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Were you able to stop drinking during those pregnancies?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I never drank in my pregnancies.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And like nothing bad ever happened to me.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, amazingly, nobody told me to stop drinking, including my husband.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, he gave me some yeah, he gave me some side eye when I like would open bottle number two on a Tuesday and be like, what the freak are you doing?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, What babe?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I just, you know, want one more.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I um wouldn't look at him in the morning.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'd sort of wake up and be like, ooh, is he mad at me?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is he irritated with me?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is he judging me?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: I hated looking in my eyes and putting on my eyeliner in the morning.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: They were watery and bloodshot.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I felt so much guilt.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would like come downstairs, and if I had opened another bottle of wine, um, I would hold it up and see if there was like a quarter left or three quarters left just to judge how awful my day was going to be.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh boy.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and no one knew about this.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like they all knew I loved drinking.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: They all knew I drank all the time.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So did a lot of my friends, but they didn't know the internal struggle, including my husband, how worried about it I was, how many times I had tried to stop, how many times I was racing to get my son from daycare and debating in my head whether I had enough wine at home, enough for what, who knows?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And also whether I had time to stop to pick up a bottle for that night before daycare closed, which, you know, you're like, I'm the worst mother that ever existed.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, I, you know, I had been immersed in this world.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: And after a year of not drinking, every time you're hungover, every time you're anxious, every time you wake up at 3 a.m., you suddenly are like, oh, it's the alcohol.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was under zero illusions that it was my marriage, my boss, whatever.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of was like, I'm gonna have to stop drinking.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I was like, this is going nowhere good.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And for a long time I was like, yes, and I can probably play this off for a couple more years.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I finally woke up one morning and I was involved in these like Facebook groups of people who were, we were called like the booze free brigade, like amazing people, lots of women like me.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And someone who was way braver than me said, Oh my God, another day one.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in all the comments, people were like suggesting things, and the name of a coach came up who I'd heard of many, many times.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the only thought in my head was, I cannot do this to myself anymore.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can't live this way.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went into the office, my big fancy office, and went on her website and signed up for this 100-day no alcohol challenge.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I liked her approach.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: She didn't use the word alcoholic, she just called us like boozers and was like, you don't need to drink, and this is a positive thing for you.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and um, that was the last time I drank, and that was over a decade ago.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Casey.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've been writing fast.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: I've been writing down so many things because there are like actually a lot of little pieces to this that I want to dig into.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to start by saying I can't see our listeners, but I can almost guarantee that there are a lot of heads nodding.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much that you've talked about that I can relate to.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much that you talk about that I think many, many, many women, and especially those of us who are overperforming, type A-driven people pleasers can relate to.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also you talked about culture, the culture of drinking, the social culture of drinking, whether it's college or it's that early adulthood cocktails, or it's, you know, the mommy drinking culture, which we can talk about.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's all these places where drinking itself and your identity get very co-defined.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: You you said at one point, you certainly say this on your website.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You also have said this just now, that this idea of like, who would I be if I wasn't drinking red wine?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm a red wine girl.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: You it's even how you would introduce yourself.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was always a red wine girl.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like people would ask me about myself, and I'd be like, Oh, I live in Seattle, I work in digital marketing, I'm married, I have two kids, I'm a red wine girl, I like, you know, XYZ.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, I didn't understand how I would navigate my life without drinking.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was just so entwined in everything.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and and I think the identity piece is really, really interesting.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's also like uh, you know, you're talking about coming, going back to work after your baby had gone to bed with a glass of wine.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's something very it, you said it's sort of a fuck you to adulting, but to me, there's something very adult about that.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like I feel like on the nights that I do that still, I feel very grown up.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: It feels sort of like luxurious, right?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's um, you know, there there is something sort of special about that.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess it's worth saying, I am not sober.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am, I would say I've been sober curious for much of my life.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I do not drink every day, uh, and it does not occupy space in my brain the way it sounds like it really did for you.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, that's what we're talking about, right?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: When drinking becomes so good.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if you drink two glasses of wine four times a week.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if you drink two bottles of wine every night.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the question, like the question I love about being sober curious, it's like I spent so many years going, is this bad enough that I have to stop?
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the question that you should ask yourself is, is this good enough to keep going?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what a great shift.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I to this point, like I only started with 100 days, which sounded impossible.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I could not get it, get more than four days or two weeks.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I was just like, I deserve to know how I feel and who I might be without having alcohol dominate my life, my mind, the way I physically feel, the way I emotionally feel.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can you let's actually dive?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a great shift in perspective.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'd actually like for you to dive into that for a moment.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious to know how what you have learned from your own journey uh and possibly from the clients you work with, about how being an overachiever-driven type A temperament personality type, how that has played a part in this overuse of alcohol.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: How would you explain that from what you've learned about yourself?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important to know that if you are doing this, or if you're looking at me and being like, oh my God, she clearly had an alcohol problem.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: What I did was not unusual.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of women I talked to are like, oh my God, I just want to be able to drink like a normal person.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: My friends drink and they don't do this.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you have no idea how they drink.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like nobody knew how much I was drinking necessarily.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would have two to three glasses out at a happy hour and then come home and open another bottle because again, in my mind, I was like, I don't have enough.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there are so many stories that are out there.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much news on this and and research, but alcohol has been sold to women as part of a luxury lifestyle, as a way to have a good time, as a way to reduce stress.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember back in the day when I was dating, Cosmo had these stories, like very sex in the city, very Bridget Jones diary, if you're my age.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: But like what a woman's drink says about who she is, is presumably to men.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: So a woman who drinks straight whiskey is X, a woman who drinks Cosmos is Y.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: A woman who drinks beer is Z.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but here's what is interesting.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at who is binge drinking the most, it is women at midlife.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: They have the greatest escalations.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the women who are growing the most in binge drinking are those with the highest socioeconomic status, with the highest incomes, the most education, and the highest status occupations.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: And during COVID, women binge drinking increased 41% in 2000.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: Women with children under the age of five increased binge drinking by 323%.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and here's the thing that many people don't want to know about alcohol.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's addictive.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: It just is.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So when you drink, it does, you know, people are like, oh, it's a family inherited thing.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody in my family struggles with drinking, like they just don't.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I did.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And 50% of your tendency to slide into the path of addiction um is, you know, family genetic, whatever.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know what that means?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: 50% is not.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: It is anyone who drinks enough, which might be social, might be uh women with ADHD struggle significantly more, women with anxiety that I I fall into struggle more, women with mood disorders, women with overwhelming lives, right?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is someone described it as the modern woman's steroid, enabling her to do all the things.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then the benefit is the women do all the things and then they come home to drink to forget about all the things.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if you know Gen Z is drinking significantly less, they know that it causes anxiety, they know that it causes depression, they may be switching to marijuana, but regardless, I don't think that that percent is not the same.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: It is, they know it causes seven kinds of cancer.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like they know we Gen X and baby boomers were never told that before we started drinking heavily.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we also don't want to know it now because dear God, if we if we focused on that, we would realize that we really shouldn't drink.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, there yeah, there are a couple things in here that I just want to highlight.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um so many of us, you said we will drink to forget.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and really what I think many of us do is to drink to not feel.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this is really a part of where my work focuses most, you know, knowing that my work is in maternal anxiety, right?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Which of course is gonna have a major overlap with unhealthy coping strategies like drinking.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us, especially many of us who are high-achieving type A-driven women, have never been taught how to feel, how to really feel the gamut of human emotion and still trust that we're okay.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when we start to feel, at least, you know, I think a good percentage of us, when we start to feel we will grab the glass of wine because we want to feel the feeling that wine gives us and not the feeling that these other parts of our life give us, not the sadness or the despair or the confusion or the frustration or the anger.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: We want to feel that giddiness that the glass of wine or two or three or four will give us.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing that I think is really interesting here.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there is an overlap between the overachieving, people-pleasing driven woman and people who do not know how to feel and still trust that they're okay at the same time.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: You said something very interesting in the very beginning.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: You said um one of the reasons that you were drinking is because you had that feeling that you liked that said anything can happen.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that many of us fear and learn to fear when we're young is unpredictability and uncertainty.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And us micromanning, managing, quote-unquote control freak, which is what many of us have called ourselves type A, we will control the environment so that things are not unpredictable.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: But you said something interesting, which is that you enjoyed the feeling of unpredictability when you were drinking.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: How do you make sense of that incongruence there?
• 30:55
  unknown: Yeah.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: I well, you said so many things that are amazing and love it.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I definitely think you need to come on my show to talk about maternal anxiety because that is something that so many women suffer from, drink too much, and feel immense guilt about, right?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: After because um they want to be great mothers.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um in terms of feelings, yes.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know about you, but as a uh descendant from a long line of wasps.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, girl, you I gotcha, I gotcha.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we don't talk about bad things.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know, we keep it inside, even in our own families.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so feeling anything except in control, grateful, and fine is not acceptable.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of women, myself included, you know, feel legitimate resentment, legitimate overwhelm, legitimate loneliness, legitimate like anxiety, whatever it is, anger.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're not allowed to show anger.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants someone who's angry.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and we don't want to feel that.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we drink, and then you know what's interesting, we turn all those emotions on ourselves, right?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was gonna say yeah, yeah.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: We may not, you may not feel those things in the moment because you've got the glass of wine in your hand, but the next day, guess what you're gonna feel?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: All that shit that you were trying so hard to not feel, right?
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you said, you also said, you know, that you spent a lot of time trying to control your drinking.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's very similar to what I hear.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not everyone that comes to work with me is is actively aware of or actively challenged with uh drinking, um uh quote-unquote problems, whatever you want to call it.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I hear this thing all the time.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to control my anxiety.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's worth just saying right now that everything's neutral until we give it meaning.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Anxiety is not a problem until we give it meaning and try to control it.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Drinking isn't a problem in and of itself until we give it meaning and try to control it.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anything out of an excess is going to be problematic, but there's this sense of control.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Am I trying to control my anxiety?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Am I trying to control my drinking?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very tight, rigid, all-consuming way of moving through life, isn't it?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it again, I blame myself for feeling anxiety.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like I often like I would go to my therapist and be like, what is wrong with me?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why can everybody else handle life?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, and what I learned is like no one freaking else is handling life.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're all just pretending.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, well, everyone else is feeling the normal feelings you would expect with life.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we feel like something is wrong with us if we have the normal range of human emotions.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one thing that I didn't answer that you asked me about why, you know, control is so important, and yet I liked the feeling of being out of control.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: It stopped me from being hyper-vigilant.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: And being hyper-vigilant is exhausting.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I also thought that it was stopping me from having genuine fun and stopping me from having adventures that I should be having at the age of 18, 19, 20, 21.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that it helped me have the you know quintessential college experience.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and I also was like, you know, I always had this huge group of girlfriends.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I did not have as many male friends.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I mean, drinking helped me hook up, hook up.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: It helped me, you know, talk to boys, it helped me deal with, you know, be cool about whatever I was feeling.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was a big blackout drinker.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just was.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: And blackouts are pretty common.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: But what and I was a blackout drinker until I was like, till I quit, right?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Which not not a great thing for a mom of a two-year-old and eight-year-old.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: That said, um, I didn't remember a lot of the bad things, right?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Your mind literally just stops recording while you are walking and talking.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And because I didn't remember it, I only remembered the beginning of the nights and the hangovers.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, the hangovers were just something I had to deal with.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was very, very lucky in that I got together with my husband.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: I had a boyfriend, you know, junior, senior year of college, but I got together with my now husband like six months, a year after I graduated college, we worked together.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: So he stopped me from getting in any really bad situations.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was always unquestioned that he would drive me home.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, I was, I was in a committed relationship always, and I I valued that.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I didn't get into a lot of dangerous situations or trouble.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really struck by how your inner wisdom knew what you wanted and needed.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: You wanted to be more flexible, you wanted to um, you know, quote unquote, have more fun or let go of micromanaging or rigidity, right?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: There are all these things that you knew that you wanted a relationship, right?
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: But because you didn't know how to do that or to trust your capacity to do it on its own, a part of you believed that you needed the alcohol.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what's so interesting, just as a mental health professional, is that I really do believe that we all know what's best for us, deep, deep, deep down inside.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: But that conditioning that tells us that we're not good enough for something, or we can't have that thing because our job is to make sure everyone else is okay all the time.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I really let go, then you know, I'm the one that's always holding it together.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if I really let go, something bad is gonna happen, right?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have all of this kind of inner inner dialogue that we're conditioned to believe.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it really is so fascinating that we can deeply know what we need most and not believe that we can access that thing without something else, like the booze.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I that's one of the things that I have to work with women the most on when they stop drinking, because we talk about triggers, like what are triggers to drink?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which basically is what you talked about, like wanting to shut off the emotions.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: So once women stop drinking, the big work is you want to drink because that's your go-to coping mechanism.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And instead, I asked them, like, why do you want to drink?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: What emotion are you trying to feel or not feel?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other thing is if you have issues, if in anything, like the big question is when you want to drink.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I asked them, what do you not have to think about when you drink?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be, I really don't like my job.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm lonely in my marriage, um, I feel like I have no friends and I used to, I feel socially rejected, I'm worried about X, Y, Z.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like my kids are super challenging and I feel guilty that I feel this way.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so when women identify the emotion they are feeling because they want to drink, I'm angry, I'm resentful, I'm lonely, I'm bored, I want to let loose, I need more fun in my life.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: There are actually a million ways to solve for each of those.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: We've gotten really lazy because drinking is like the easy button.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would be like bored, drink, anxious drink, um, resentful drink, irritated drink.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was the solution.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: That is so beautifully articulated.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's right.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it is an easy button.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is harder to learn how to feel the feeling all the way through than it is in the moment, than to pick up that glass of one.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to I want to focus on mothering for a moment because um I think it is not uncommon.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you are throughout your work, not just on this podcast, but on your own podcast and other people's podcasts and the work you do, so willing to be honest and vulnerable and real about this, because a lot of people will not put words to what is happening for them.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're doing that for a lot of people today.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I do want to talk about the overlap between being a mother of young kids and drinking to excess, the way you're describing.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're describing um hangovers, you're describing blackouts, you're describing uh preoccupation in your mind with drinking when you're also taking care of little humans.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I want to ask this question two different ways.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: The first kind of conversation I'd love to have is how did your drinking impact your mothering when you were still drinking?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I told myself is that it didn't, right?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like I quit when my son was, well, my daughter was two, my son was eight.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: I quit for the first time for a year when my son was five.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was, you know, a a very, I mean, I worked full time.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I loved my kids.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: They of course it was a lot.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was a lot, but like, like I said, I was very lucky in that I was careful.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm sure I drove when I shouldn't have, right?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I was okay.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there were definitely moments where my eight-year-old was jumping on the couch or and I was like, oh, mommy doesn't feel very good.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: Can you not?
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I didn't drink before events.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't drink too much typically before they went to bed because they went to bed super early.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was definitely hungover, but you know, I'm I know I did put them in bad situations occasionally, but there was always someone there who was more responsible than I was.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I told myself that it didn't impact my kids.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: I used to go to my therapist and be like, I'm only hurting myself, um, which is a ridiculous statement, but I was like, see, nothing, no problem here.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yet um I I what's cool is I have both experiences, right?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like I drank through my son's childhood to some extent, and I quit drinking when my daughter was 22 months old.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I've seen both sides of the young years.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I have to tell you, parenting without a brutal hangover and with sleep is so much easier.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I wanna I want to talk about that, but before we jump there, because I really do want to talk about how things changed after you stopped drinking, but I want to stay here for a moment because it's so painful and uncomfortable.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're saying something that almost all of us will say.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, my focus polization, defensiveness, justification.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and and it my focus is not drinking, my focus is anxiety, but I can't tell you how many conversations I'll have with women who will say, Well, my anxiety is not impacting my kids.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's they're fine, right?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not because I'm not whatever, but like we can believe that we are protecting our kids from the thing inside of us that's causing so much stress and pain and distress.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: But we cannot protect our children from our own stress and pain and distress.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: They are they borrow a nervous system from us.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're communicating all the time.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh something I know about drinking and drinking when my kids were little is that it actually made it more fun.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: It made the hell hour of the day more fun, but it also created a distance.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: It created a separation.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there isn't connection.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's not real connection when we're drinking.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that I can tell you a few things that I noticed when I stopped.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: When I was drinking, I really Rush through bedtime.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was annoyed if my kids wouldn't fall asleep quickly because I wanted to get back down to my mind.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, drinking made it more fun for me to play Legos, to play Candyland.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like that stuff is brain numbing and repetitive.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't enjoy, I mean, yes, playing Legos is fun once a week for 30 minutes, not, you know, not much time after.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, kid tantrums are tough.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: They are the parent is humbling and frustrating.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a lot of resentment against my husband because I think when you have a kid, your life changes 80% and their life changes 20%.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I would be able to like drink down my anger and be like, I'm still having fun while he was doing all the things he always did.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I wasn't, right?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: We went from two independent human beings that we had been together for 10 years before we had kids, and to I had to ask permission from him essentially to go to the gym on a Saturday morning.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it it did make life a lot more fun.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I do have moments, probably more than I want to admit to myself, where I have a lot of regret, right?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like sure.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember, you know, we had girls' weekends, Memorial Day weekend.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: We, you know, we were going out for drinks on the Friday at someone's house because we all had young kids, all my girlfriends, and got super drunk and slept over, right?
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Again, my friend's husband was there.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like there was always something that like made it okay, um, that made it safe.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I drove home, which I was just brutally hung over, but I had to pull over in a parking lot and throw up with my two-year-old strapped in his car seat in the backseat.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is not something one is proud of.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not something one is proud of.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually think you're bringing up something really interesting and important.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: We can have, we can assume that no harm is happening because no obvious capital T trauma harm is happening, right?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing quote unquote bad is happening, right?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've got safe adults in case a child really needs something when you're drinking with your girlfriends, right?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: You are driving hungover, but your body has processed alcohol, so it's not like you're swerving across the yellow line in the road, right?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: That we we have our kids, where kids are strapped in the backseat, right?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have all the main things that we need.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's all these subtleties.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think those of us who are overachievers also tend to think in the all or nothing mindset.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: All or nothing, right?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so these little nuances in between, right?
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: The rushing through bedtime because we want our glass of wine.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have been there.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know that feeling, right?
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: Being frustrated that our children won't do what we want them to do.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, most parents are going to feel those things, but when there's something else that's contributing to that, the desire for the glass of the wine or the feeling hungover, it makes us even more disconnected from those moments that actually matter the most, right?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I know what interest, I'll tell you, go ahead.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know what's interesting?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I interviewed my kids for my 10-year sober versory.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was super, super nervous too.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now my daughter is a ham.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: She um how old are your kids now?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: They are 18 and 12.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: So what what was super interesting is my son was a big catalyst for me stopping drinking.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was because he was eight and I sort of projected my life out a decade.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so this was a big moment.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, when he is 18, if I keep drinking this way, knowing what I know about how progressive it is, when he is 18, is he going to want to bring his friends home at night?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is he going to be embarrassed by me?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is he going to respect me?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a huge thing.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was a big motivation.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was so cool on my 50th birthday, which normally, and it was a Friday night for some reason, and which would have been a huge drinking event had I been drinking.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my son texted me and my husband two days before.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Hey, um, is it cool if uh some of my friends come over on Friday night to play poker?
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: And my husband texted him back because I was like, dude, he totally doesn't remember it's my birthday and was like, Hey, yeah, it's cool, but like, remember it's mom's birthday.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we're going out to sushi, so it has to be after 10 p.m.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Yeah, cool, no problem after 10 p.m.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that he was completely cool and had zero worries about bringing his friends to our house on my 50th birthday on a Friday night at 10 p.m.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: was like, I was like so amazing.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I had him on my podcast and he um all the I asked my my membership group, I said, what do you want to know?
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want me to ask my kids?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so many of them said, What does he remember about your drinking?
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: My kid is seven, my daughter's eight, my son is nine.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like this was their biggest fear.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I asked him, I wouldn't have asked him otherwise because I would have been terrified.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, So, what do you remember?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, I honestly don't remember much.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, I have so many memories of you not drinking, I can't imagine it.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I I my daughter was like, I know it was he, she was like, I think of you as a great mom.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I asked them, and I did it for them too.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, give me three words that you think of me to describe myself.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrote them down because it was so amazing, and it was just like this.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: And my daughter said, outgoing, um dependable and um loving.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my son said, um, oh my God, how can I not remember the first word?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was something with an oh, I'll think of it.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: But he said, um something, I said I wrote it down now.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember it, uh, driven and loving.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that, oh, he said optimistic, driven and loving.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, oh my God, that's amazing.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked my son, I said, what do you feel like you can always talk to me and dad about all these kinds of things?
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, where do you go when you're stressed?
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, I come home.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know I can hang with you guys, I know I can retreat from all the stuff.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then he also said, I expected him to say something else about what he could talk to us about.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, honestly, drinking.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I feel like I can talk to you about it.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're not gonna go over the top.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know that you're going to be measured about it.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: And my husband drinks and I don't.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: He knows all of my stories.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're not like demonizing alcohol.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, hey, it's addictive, it does XYZ in moderation.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, it is what it is, right?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think we err on moderation as like thinking that anyway, that's a whole nother subject.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm with you.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: But he's like, I have no illusions he's not gonna drink.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that he has so much more information than I do.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he knows that if it starts going to a point where he's ever worried about it, he can talk to me with zero judgment.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he does feel that way.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that was pretty amazing.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much amazing about that.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what I'm taking off out of that really beautiful story, too, is that the making mistakes is not the problem.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have the opportunity to repair, and it's the repair, it's the taking ownership, coming back, and repairing that from an attachment perspective between us and our children is what builds healthy relationships.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, again, we've sort of used this story of yours about drinking heavily throughout some of the earliest years of being a mother and a working mother and a corporate mother and a perfectionist, high achieving, driven type A mother.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then we have this moment where you are actually brave enough to say, which is a question I ask my clients to answer all the time.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: I ask myself this all the time, what part might I be playing in the things that aren't working for me?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you essentially recognized that the choices you were making to reach for the glass or two or four of wine were cont that choice was contributing to these larger problems.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you were willing to pause and to sit with the discomfort of that and then to repair those mistakes.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: So isn't that beautiful that what your children remember, and this is actually going to happen almost every time, what your children remember is the repair, not maybe the moment, but what came after that.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's so powerful, isn't it?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: What's cool is they are super proud of me.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I asked them, like, how do you feel about having a mom who stopped drinking?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, you know, is out there about it and tells stories.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: And my son was like, I'm super proud of you.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: I tell my friends all the time that you're a sober coach, that you have a podcast, like their parents work at Microsoft.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're like, Yeah, my dad's an engineer.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Redmond, Washington.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's dad or mom is an engineer and works in tech.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, I think it's super cool.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was a thousand days sober, um, you know, I always told them, like, I hit 30 days, I hit a hundred days, which sounds weird because he was eight, but it wasn't any like, it was just something like, you scored a goal in soccer.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is, you know, I love it.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: But when I hit a thousand days, he and my husband went to um craft store and got me a huge vase, still have it in in my office.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at AF, you'll see something behind it with these blue marbles.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: They counted out a thousand like glass stones essentially and put them in this huge vase.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it was on my kitchen table.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they were just like, we are so like they bake me cakes for my like one-year, five-year, seven-year sober versary.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and one thing that that I that I think about, because obviously you just I did a ton of therapy, I did a ton of personal development work long before I became a coach.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: And like I was like taking pills in the morning, and my nine-year-old's like, oh, what's that?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to be like, oh, it's vitamins.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then I stopped myself and I said, I have anxiety and I take this medication and it makes me feel so much better.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also why I exercise, and that's also why XYZ.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so since then, we've always talked about like mental health shit a lot.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you are the human you hope your children will be.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think that to me, you know, we have there's so much language around what is a good mom and what do good moms do and what do they don't do.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't talk enough about the being part, the authenticity, the taking responsibility for things, the showing up even when it's hard, the continuing to move through despite obstacles, not the kind of grit and perseverance that many of us overachievers do, where we're not paying attention to what's really happening on the inside, but the paying attention to what's happening on the inside and continuing to move through and reaching out for support and modeling behavior, like you are that for your kids.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would believe in my own world that successful mothering for me, being a being a quote unquote good mom or successful mom is living the life, being the human that I hope my children will have access to becoming.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna be their own version of that human, but it starts with us, right?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: We have to do that.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know what was cool?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Kids know that more now.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: But so one thing I want to say is when I stopped drinking, my daughter was 22 months, and her putting her to bed amazingly was my safe space.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I would rock her to bed for like two hours.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_01: She was asleep, and I'd sit in her room with the sound machine on in the dark with an earbud in, listening to like sober podcasts, sober audiobooks.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: And like I took so much comfort from that.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: We became so close, and not in a codependent way, is what I would say.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: But for years, we would go, I would put her to bed and I would scratch her back and we'd lay there.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I would fall asleep.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: My dad, my husband called it my pre-sleep, but we talked so much, and that was when she told me all this stuff.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I also would be like, I just feel really anxious.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: We have this big thing going on at work, and she literally like hooked, picked up her iPad, and she was like eight years old at this point, and um looked up box breathing on YouTube, and she taught me box breathing.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started doing it together whenever she was anxious or I was anxious, and like then she told me about ASMR, which I think's super weird.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: She's over it now, but like for I was like, okay, that's really freaking weird.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, but like all these things.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: So she is very tuned into mental health stuff and like has no qualms about like she was like, Mom, you can do this, you can do that.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: And now when I'm upset, I'm always like, look, I'm having a really bad day, I'm super stressed, I'm grumpy, it has nothing to do with you, yes, but I need to be alone.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Okay, you know, yes, I love it.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: So as we wrap up here, um, you may have already answered this question, but if there is someone listening to this podcast and they are feeling that feeling in their body that we all know so well, where they're a little scared about what they're hearing because it's hidden real close to home.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know if they really quote unquote have a drinking problem, but they're aware enough that some of what you're saying is really resonating.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: What would you want them to know?
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, so many things, but I'll keep it short.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, number one, there's nothing wrong with you, and you are not alone.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: Even if nobody else in your world is talking about this, I guarantee you if you drink with people who drink like you do, or even less, they know that they are they are trying to moderate, right?
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: No one who drinks a certain amount does not wake up at 3 a.m.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: and be like, oh my God, why did I do it again?
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are thousands of women, and I'm talking CEOs and doctors and high-achieving women, lawyers who struggle with this.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know this because they're in my group.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so one, you are not alone.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: Two, don't think about, do I need to stop drinking forever?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Don't think about, but I really like drinking.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, we all nobody wants to stop drinking if he if it works for you, even if it doesn't work for you anymore.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, don't think about if you're bad enough.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Think make it a health and wellness choice.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Make it like you are choosing to be a vegetarian or something else.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: Make it something you try on to see if it suits you.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Just be like, I have a sober summer thing going on right now.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or it can be sober October, it can be dry January.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like try a season without drinking.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I it's super important to stop drinking completely.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: Stop trying to moderate.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you are in moderation, even if it's once a week, once a month, maybe not once, you know, whatever, once a week, once every two weeks, um, you are in the drinking and withdrawal cycle.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: You will be more irritated, more annoyed, more anxious when you're not drinking.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's a substance.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's not, I hate sobriety.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a I hate withdrawal.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: And get support, but don't give it too much meaning.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: Take a period of time and be like, what might I do with my free time?
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: What new habits might I pick up?
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: Will I have more energy?
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Will I have less anxiety?
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: If I will I sleep better, by the way, you will, if I don't drink.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, give yourself that chance and during that time period, do some work.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're like, great, Casey, where can I learn more about you if I want to join this community or like tell us where people can find you?
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the easiest place to learn more is my podcast.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's called the Hello Someday Podcast for sober, curious women.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um we, you know, you're gonna be on it.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: We have episodes on perfectionism and imposter syndrome and ADHD and raising kids and all that stuff, in addition to what to do in your first week, your first month, all that stuff.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so podcast is the easiest.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: I do have a program.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's called the Sobriety Starter Kit.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is just for women.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is a habit change approach to taking 100 days off of drinking or more and without shame and with really practical strategies.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that is a lot about self-care and creating a life you don't want to tune out of.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so those are the two places my website is HelloSome Daycoaching.com.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: We will make sure all of that is in the show notes.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: And um I'm so grateful you're here today.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you about talking so honestly about something that not enough of us talk about.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think it's really what's what I love most about this podcast is bringing these conversations to the table that people are often afraid of to have or not even know how to have the conversation.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for thank you for being here today.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: All right, listeners, if you found this episode helpful in any way, or if there's someone in your life who you think might benefit from hearing it, I would be so grateful if you take just a moment to subscribe, rate, review, or share this episode with a friend.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it does feel good to know this podcast is resonating with you, but honestly, the bigger reason I ask is because the more subscriptions and ratings and reviews that the podcast receives, the more accessible it becomes to mothers who may really need this kind of support and conversation.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: And as we all know, motherhood was never meant to be done alone, but it really does take a villager to raise a mom or two.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to thank you for helping us grow this community one conversation at a time.