You’re listening to breaking the bottle legacy with Molly watts, Episode Six. Hi, I’m Molly, after a lifetime living under the influence of family alcohol abuse, spending more than 30 years worrying about alcohol and my own drinking, believing I had an unbreakable daily drinking habit, I changed my relationship with alcohol forever. If you want to change your drinking habits than breaking the bottle legacy is for you. My goal is to help you create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, past, present, and future. Each week all focus on real science and using your own brain to change your relationship with alcohol. Nothing has gone wrong, you’re not broken, you’re not sick. It’s not your genes. And creating peace is possible. I’m here to help you do it. Let’s start now. Well, hello, and welcome or welcome back to breaking the bottle legacy with me your host Molly watts, coming to you from Well, folks, it’s an absolutely spectacular day here in Oregon. Thursday, January 14, it is mid month I am midway through dry you weary going really well, quite honestly, it’s really been bizarre. I have not had any days where I’ve just really craved alcohol had one day that I was sad. And I did have those fleeting thoughts of that come because I’ve because I used alcohol for so long to change my feelings or thought I changed my feelings by drinking when I had a negative day, I had that fleeting thought, but I was able to see it for exactly what it was. And I just didn’t drink because that’s not what I’m doing right now. And so it’s going really well. And today on the podcast, I am so excited to be talking to William Porter, he is very well known in Quizlet circles. He has written two books alcohol explained and alcohol explained to and he drinks out at all. So he is completely it’d be sober books or recovery books, I guess. He has the same kind of pragmatic approach to information and really the science of alcohol that I have. And so I was just thrilled when he said he would come on the podcast, we had a great conversation, and I just can’t wait for you to hear it. So here is my discussion with William Porter, and all about alcohol explained. Hey, well, thank you so much for being on the podcast with me. I deeply appreciate I know I reached out to you and told you I’m starting this new podcast. I’m not a newbie recorder. But your books have meant so much to me in my own personal journey and changing my relationship with alcohol that I just appreciate you taking the time to sit down. Talk with me for a little bit about this topic. Fantastic. Thank you for asking me. Yeah. So I just gave a little bit of an overview in the introduction. You are a working lawyer over there in the UK and a former Paratrooper, but you’ve written a couple of books that have become pretty popular amongst the in the Quizlet. Crowd, so to speak, alcohol explained and alcohol explained to so talk to me a little bit about how you know when this project or I don’t even know if it was a project you did you didn’t start off with the idea that you were going to write a book? No, no, not at all I am, I basically went through my entire drinking career from start to finish without ever thinking about reading writing a book. And I think it was about a year after I Finally Quit, that I put pen to paper and actually wrote it. It kind of been something that had been on my mind for a while. Because to give a bit of background I my drinking sort of spiraled out of control. And I did a couple of stints at AAA. So I come into contact with other people with drinking problems. And what I started to realize was a lot of people, the first their first reaction is to question things, why me what’s going on? What do I do about it? And they want practical, pragmatic answers to things. And I had, in my mind, like a fairly good idea of what was going on physiologically, chemically and psychologically. And I kind of began to realize it would probably be helpful to potentially have the potential to be helpful to people. Yeah, so that’s where the book came from. So you you had a couple of stints in AAA, I don’t think I knew that maybe I didn’t from the books. I know that for me in in my writing and for my experience with my mom. AAA was not successful. at all, and it was not successful for because one of the I mean, number one, the first step is admitting you’re powerless over alcohol. And that, and that was something that I don’t think she ever like, bought into. And a lot of people, don’t. I, for one, don’t believe I believe that people have power and alcohol does not. So tell me more about that about your journey with AAA and what, what turns you off? Or you know what, how you didn’t? Did you find results from it? And was there a positives for you? Or? There was a few I mean, I, if you heard of Alan Carr, who wrote you stop smoking, but could you have read quickly? Yeah. So I mean, I started drinking and smoking when I was about 14, because I think it’s, that’s a young age in the US, it’s pretty much par for the course over here in the UK, particularly back in the 80s. And I came across Alan Carr when I was a teenager. So I actually, it took me a few years, I read his book and stopped for a bit and then started again. And then I read a lot of more of his books. And he wrote a more detailed version of easy way, which was the only way to stop smoking permanently. And I kind of became really interested in his approach, because it was very pragmatic, very sensible, very straightforward. And I eventually stopped smoking. And I read his alcohol book. So so this is also the background, but it never quite struck the right chord with me his book on alcohol that his smoking book did, I felt that they were really lacking. Yeah, he I read his biography. Now he, he didn’t want to write the alcohol book. He didn’t feel equipped to do it, because he never considered that he had a problem with alcohol. He asked a lot of other people to write it. And a few of different people try and he didn’t like it. And then I think he then in his biography, he said, he says he then sat and wrote it himself, sort of begrudgingly, because he didn’t really feel equipped to do it, because he hadn’t been heavily addicted to alcohol. So I think it was a very good book. But there were a few things in there that I disagreed with, for example, he categorically says, there’s no physical reaction, there’s no physical withdrawal to alcohol, like in the same way that there is with smoking, which I don’t agree with that I agree with you there. Yep. He also says, for example, when you stop drinking and drinking session, the reason it’s hard to stop is because it dehydrates you and you get thirsty, you want to keep drinking. And again, that didn’t ring true for me. I never drank, I was never reaching for the next drink, because I was thirsty, right. But that’s sorry, that’s a bit of an aside. So I had kind of an interest in the mechanism of addiction, particularly with smoking. And then I continued drinking and my drinking got out of control. And I went to AAA, I suppose, hoping they would have information to fill in the gaps from more an Alan Carr perspective, ie quite practical and pragmatic, explaining what was going on and why. But of course, it’s not. It’s a very spiritual program, which I didn’t particularly get on with. Because if someone says, Do this to help me stop drinking, that’s fine. I’ll do it. But I would like to understand why it’s going to help me what it’s going to do. And those answers seem to be lacking. Having said that, I thought the actual fellowship was amazing. Yeah, it was phenomenal to sit down with people and be able to just talk about what you’ve been doing and what they’ve been doing and to realize you’re not alone. So I found that incredibly powerful. But I found the actual 12 steps, I can kind of see the sense in them. But I didn’t quite understand how that was going to stop me thinking, How can I go to a social occasion and not drink? How am I going to enjoy Christmas or my next holiday without drinking? Because those for me were the challenges? And the answer there is just take one day at a time. But to me that kind of it felt like it was lacking something. Yeah, yeah, I actually when you’ve gone through sort of the Alan Carr thing, where the whole point is not to just give up a drug and sit there being miserable and unhappy because you can’t take it but to actually give it up and then go out and carry on and enjoy your life, which is what I was sort of hoping to achieve. And to understand that there’s what I what I’ve appreciated about Alan Carr and like I said, I read Alan Carr’s the easy way to quit drinking for women so it was geared towards women but and you know my kind of my philosophies and my things that I share I’m going to be sharing with breaking the bottle legacy come from, like you and accumulation of information from different resources you were you know, alcohol explained and alcoholics played to where resources for me and I, I told you before we started recording, one of the things that I appreciate, it’s just I like information I like that I use that it’s a it’s a personality, some people are analytical, some people are more, you know, influenced by the spiritual, right. So, so for them a might be a great idea. But for me, it did not resonate at all that I, first of all, I should say, I wouldn’t have ever considered myself an alcoholic, so I would have never gone to AAA to, to change my relationship with alcohol, because that’s, you know, much like Alan Carr. I never developed a what, quote unquote, serious drinking habit, right? I didn’t, I didn’t, I don’t know. It’s very funny, because it’s like, where’s the border? You know, where’s the line? It’s very, what the the habit that I had was very regular and consistent. And, you know, I spent 30 years I’ve never missed a day of drinking. I mean, that’s, you know, that’s, and even though I didn’t drink to the point of being intoxicated or altered, I certainly wasn’t doing anything healthy for myself certainly wasn’t, you know, was was still it’s still a carcinogen. It’s still, you know, it’s all of it. Right. So, but I think that there’s a big misconception that you have to be someone that is an alcoholic, or, you know, net. Well, we don’t even use that term anymore. Right? have severe use out, yeah, severe alcohol use disorder, you have to hit some sort of rock bottom before you change your relationship with alcohol. And it’s, that’s not even true. I mean, so many people, and I’m sure you hear from a lot of people who are seeking to change their relation, their drinking habits, who aren’t, you know, even even experiencing severe use of the alcohol use disorder yet, you know, that in your in your books, you kind of see alcohol as one of those. It’s, it’s a journey. So someone, so no matter what they’re doing, eventually someone is going to hit the tipping point. Yeah, yeah. Tell me a little bit. Tell me a little bit more about that kind of that kind of thought process in your book. So So for me, this is one of the sort of things I sort of explained to people is the basic physiological side of it, is that alcohol is a sedative, it’s a depressant. So it decreases or inhibits nerve activity. But the brain is reactive. So the brain reacts to that by becoming he does lots of things. But essentially, what it amounts to is it becomes hypersensitive, so it can work well under the sedating effects of the alcohol. So when the alcohol wears off, there’s a corresponding feeling of anxiety. So for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. So whatever relaxation effects you get from alcohol, when it wears off, there’s an anxiety feeling. And that is alcohol withdrawal, it’s an unpleasant feeling you get when the dose of the drug wears off, that can most quickly be remedied by another another dose of that drug. Because if the brain is hypersensitive, because it’s geared up to working under the sedating effects of the alcohol, and the alcohol is gone, the quickest way to repair that is to drink more alcohol, and then you bring your homeostasis, your chemical balance back to a near to normal level. So from that perspective, anyone who has ever drunk alcohol gets the withdrawal would be on a hugely reduced scale. So then the next question people ask is, well, hang on. But why isn’t everyone alcoholic, then because, you know, this person will drink one or two and just stop naturally. But I don’t seem to have an off switch. So for me where the off switch either works or doesn’t work. It’s where we reach instinctively for another drink, because so if you’re just having one glass of wine, the withdrawal from that is going to be almost imperceptible, you’re hardly going to notice it. And also, when you have a drink a lot of the time you have a bad time to to go to bed anyway. So you sleep through it. And a lot of people have this withdrawal. And it’s a slightly unpleasant feeling sort of feeling slightly out of sorts, and slightly anxious. But that’s it. They just exist through the day or through whatever they’re doing with that feeling. And life generally has its ups and downs, and it’s stressful, and we go to work and all the rest of it and it just magnifies things slightly, where the tipping point comes in between the off switch and not having an off switch when it comes to alcohol is when that feeling kicks in, you automatically reach for another drink to relieve it. So that’s learned behavior and can happen to anyone. If you only ever have one drink once a week. You’re never going to learn we probably will never even realize that you have that feeling of alcohol withdrawal, but it would never occur to you to reach for an alcoholic drink too. Get rid of it. But when you drink more regularly and more heavily, you have a drink and finish it, the alcohol, the withdrawal starts to kick in, and you have another one. And your subconscious starts to learn that when you have that unpleasant, anxious feeling, you want another drink to get rid of it. And that’s really where the, I don’t have an off switch comes in, it’s when you’ve learned on a conscious and or subconscious level, that when you finish your drink, an unpleasant feeling starts to kick in, and you want another drink to get rid of that feeling. So that’s essentially how I see it where that sort of tipping point comes in. And it is just learned behavior. So yes, so and so may just only ever have one, and not want another one. But they only need something bad to happen in their life where they start drinking more heavily over a period where that learned behavior starts to kick in. So your I know your view on this, I know that you do not think that moderation is possible. So tell me, tell me a little bit more about your philosophy. I mean, is that just it because it’s going to be a progression for people? My scientific side, or my analytical side says, well, moderation is possible, because I see lots of people doing it, right. So if so, explain to me your stance on that. So my stance on that is fairly straightforward, in that, when you get to the stage, when you know, on a conscious or unconscious level that went out and one drink starts to wear off, you want another one. At that point, moderation, theoretically, is always possible, because nobody ever forces you to drink. So if you want to have two drinks, theoretically, you can have them. But the problem is, when you have those two drinks, they will wear off leaving an unpleasant feeling that needs another drink to get rid of them. So it’s always you’re always fighting a losing battle. And what you normally find with moderation is it’s either impossible, or it’s only possible for short periods, because the person is constantly having to resist and as I say, I think in our call, explain the first book, if you want an alcoholic drink, you want the effect or the taste, or whatever it is, when it’s gone, so has the taste and the effect. So you all things being equal, want the next one and the next and the next, of course, because you’ve got that unpleasant, anxious feeling, that’s always going to be kicking in to make you even more likely to take the next one. So it’s always fraught with difficulties. And I think the other part here of this sort of riddle is, is craving, because a big part of any addiction is craving. Now, people often think that cravings are just things that hit them out of the blue, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But of course, the craving is a conscious thought process. And the thought process is the thought of an alcoholic drink enters your mind. And then you start fantasizing about it. And that’s essentially what a craving is, it’s starting to think how wonderful it would be to have that ice cold beer or glass of wine or whatever it is. And you start fantasizing about it. And what you’re really doing is torturing yourself, because you’re feeling miserable, and you can’t have it and you know, so you get to the end of the day, and you’re supposed to sit down with your partner and have a nice meal or watch TV or whatever it is, you’re not enjoying that meal or that conversation or the TV because you’re totally all your attention is taken up with an unpleasant internal little debate, stroke, tantrum. It’s not a pleasant thing. Now, the point is with cravings. It’s not the thought of the alcoholic drink that causes the craving. It’s the fantasizing about it. And fantasizing is about entertaining the possibility of having it. Now this was key. And something Alan Carr discovered is certainty, knowing you’re not going to have something that makes it a lot easier, you’re less likely to crave. Because if you sit down over an evening, like for example, I sit down and have an evening, and it’s been a particularly unpleasant day, whatever, and I put the TV on or open a book, I sit and relax and read that book. And I think about drinking an awful lot because of what I do. But what I never do is entertain the actual possibility of having a drink and start to torture myself about it. Right. Now the problem with moderation is so the key here I think just to really emphasize is you make things a lot easier for yourself. If you take alcohol off the menu, it’s not an option and you’re never going to have it. Therefore, you don’t sit there thinking about whether to have one and you make the likelihood of craving much less. So if you quit, I’m done with alcohol. I’m never drinking it again. It’s a lot easier than saying I’ll have one or two Who here or there, because where you end up doing, you end up leaving it on the menu. So you’re constantly questioning it. And this is I think one of the main things in moderation for me. For most people, it doesn’t work, or it’s a short term solution that then falls to pieces. But even when it is working, it’s not the perfection they think it is. Because you can never go back to that period where you have one drink and don’t want another one. Because when it’s wears off, it starts to create the hunger for the next one. So for most people, moderation isn’t having a drink and putting it down and thinking that was lovely, and then not wanting another one. It’s having it desperately wanting the other one, but just sitting there and resisting it, which is not a particularly pleasant lifestyle, anyway. Yeah. It’s very interesting. I’m listening with rapt attention, because right now, it’s January, and I’m actually doing dry you weary for the very first time in my life. Okay, so we’re mid January right now. So I’ve gone 14 days, whatever, without drinking. And what’s funny is that, you know, two years ago, you would have, I would have told you, you’re crazy, if you think that I was going to give up alcohol for 30 days. And now this is, you know, just it. And like I said, I am not yet I am not yet exclusively alcohol free. And people that listen to this know that I’m not yet. And I say yet, I wasn’t a binge drinker, I’ve never been I’ve never had a lot of experience with drinking, you know, to excessive amounts in a short amount of time. But it was a very, very consistent drinker, a very regular drinker, and definitely unhealthy to recur. I’m very curious to see now what’s going to happen in terms of my own mental construct of all of this, because I do believe in the whole idea of thoughts, creating our feelings and our cravings, simple thoughts, just simple thoughts of I want it or I need it, or I deserve it permission giving ideas that create desire. And I really feel like I am able, I feel that I have the power to choose different thoughts that you know, and because I have so much information from books, like alcohol explained alcohol explained to from Alan Carr, you name it a whole, you know, the whole plethora of things that come into it the information that you can learn about alcohol, you know, it does become a question of why Why drink at all? Why am I drinking? What is the purpose for it? What is you know, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how my, how that journey continues after January and where I mean, but I definitely like even in the last year, though, I sort of have developed a one and done kind of mentality, you know, you would you would I’m sure say, well, what’s the purpose of even having one? It’s not, you know, what, what is the purpose? It’s, and I don’t really not sure that I can answer that yet other than it’s, it’s, you know, where I’m at. And right now, I feel very at peace with that I don’t have I don’t struggle, I don’t think about it. I don’t think about besides the fact that just like you, I’m in the process of writing and, you know, it’s, it’s a topic of thought, but not I don’t think about it, like, in the terms of figuring out how to, to plan my day to figure out when I’m going to drink, you know, because that used to be sort of, I mean, I think a lot of people go through their day, thinking about getting to the end of their workday or whatever, and having that drink, you know, focusing on that. Yeah. So it’ll be it’ll be an interesting. It’s an interesting journey. always says, Absolutely, yeah. So you. So you get through alcohol one, I mean, through alcohol, explained one. And you I know that you, you went on to write alcohol explain to tell me a little bit about why the process of deciding to write that book and what you’ve added there that you think is important. So when I wrote, alcohol explained, I wrote the book and tried to get it published and couldn’t so gave up on it. And then found out about Kindle Direct Publishing. Yeah, yeah, self publish on Kindle. So I did that. And the thing that was really good about that is it’s as simple as uploading a Word document. So I wrote the book, and I think, set up the website, and so thin sort of started a blog. But I was still there. So there was a few things. One, I didn’t want the book to be too long. And I wanted it to be fairly short chapters because I remembered when I was drinking, and the kind of state I would be enough to drinking. I wanted something that was accessible for people, even though they might be in quite a bad state from drinking. So the chapters are fairly short and I’ve spaced stick out quite a lot. So it’s quite easy to read. So there was a few things I maybe would have put in, but didn’t put in because I didn’t want the book to be too long. But I almost continued learning and thinking around the problem after it was published. And of course, it was very successful. And I sell the Facebook group. And I’ve come into contact with lots and lots of people. And I talk about I’m quite active on the Facebook group. So I delve in and talk to people about stuff. And I do live sessions as well answering questions and sort of talking about things. So it’s been a process for me of continuing to learn, but not just to think about new aspects of things, but also different ways of articulating things so that other people can relate to them. So originally, when I wrote the book, what I was doing was updating it fairly regularly, because I think of something new. And I’d add a chapter in and it was slowly growing as a as a thing, because I would just update it. But then one of the problems there was a lot of people were asking about an audio version. So I got someone to record, the audio version of the problem with the audio version is it’s not easy, then change it. So what I kind of envisaged was, well, that’s fine. What I’ll do though, instead of updating it every few weeks, a few months or whatever, I’ll wait for a year or two, until there’s a lot more information to put in. And then I’ll do a complete rewrite and almost do like a second addition, and have the audio version re recorded. But when I went to do that, it was another book in and of itself. So it that what became alcohol explained to the problem is people often say to me, how do they differ? It’s very hard to articulate it because it’s almost just a continuation of the first book, it’s a few things explained differently. A few things in a bit more detail where I’ve pieced together, you know, managed to join a few more of the dots and then a big bulk of completely new information. So it’s a it’s an odd kind of mix. But like alcohol to alcohol explained to you kind of you lean more towards the practical steps of helping people quit more than in the book. That’s what it sounds like to me. Yeah, it’s probably fair comment. Yeah. Because I think a big because I think I did subhead that tools for stronger sobriety or something. And, yeah, it’s a bit more of the practical details. And again, that was from me, coming into contact with a lot more people and talking directly with people about what they’re experiencing and what the problems are. Yeah, well, you’re you are you have a great Facebook group. You have a you’re very, very gracious, I think with your time in that group. So I really appreciate it. I know it’s so tell me more about your the the next steps for you or what your what you see the the next part of your journey going and what you do you have plans for another book or or what’s in the future? No, I can’t imagine that we’ll find another book. I don’t think I’m although I’m working with someone at the moment to do like a work book, specifically for our colleagues explain because that seems to be the way a lot of people are going is to not just have a book that you read, but have something that you actually interact with. So I’m doing that I can’t really imagine writing another book. So when I finished alcohol explained, I was having new ideas on the subject quite a lot and quite regularly. I’ve had a few thoughts and a few blog posts I’ve put in but not enough to amount to another book. And I always say I won’t write another book and then I end up doing one but I can’t imagine writing another one on alcohol. Yeah, well, we’ve got diet and fitness. Explain to so don’t know. So there’s got to be another topic that you’re going to be you know, figuring out. Yeah, a couple of people have approached me about doing caffeine. That I think that that that would that mean, you’d have to wait, have you given up caffeine? No, I’ll be honest, I stopped drinking coffee. I used to drink a lot of coffee. And I’ve cut out coffee and I drink green tea now, which we’ve got obviously have quite a lot less caffeine, but I haven’t managed to quite cut it out entirely. And that’s that’s not it. Yeah, that would be I don’t worry. You know, I live here in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. We’re kind of a coffee capital of the world and hopefully central there’s the thought of giving up Caf coffee sort of makes me You know, I could probably give up the caffeine part. I feel like I could I know I could if I wanted to but the taste of coffee it would be hard pressed. I have a feeling yeah, I’ve got a feeling that it’s I’ve given up caffeine before and I struggle with it because I do an office job. And I’m sat down all day. And I think it’s not ticularly natural for humans to just be sat down because if I get up and walk around, I wake up but if I’m sat still I start to get sleepy. So it’s just, I have I do have a genuine belief that office work is not conducive to, to caffeine free living. Yeah, giving up caffeine because yeah, I think I’d be getting up from my desk and going for walks every sort of hour or so is probably wouldn’t be a bad thing to be honest. Now moving moving, that’s back to my, my previous podcast, like I said, there’s the mobility moving is number one should be daily habit number one for everybody. In your books you talk about and I, of course, because this podcast is really dedicated to both habit drinkers, and then adult children of alcoholics, you and I agree on this point pretty solidly is that nobody becomes an alcoholic, just because they have a genetic link to it. And talk to me about your your, your view of genetics and or genetics and alcoholism. Yeah, so absolutely. So I mean, I’ve kind of explained the physiological process and or the mental processes involved in drinking and becoming addicted to it, neither of which are conditional on genetics at all. They’re just how human physiology and psychology react to the drug is that simple. A lot of people will say, Well, my parents were alcoholic, and we come from a big long line of problem drink, because none of my family heavy drinkers, for me, that’s just learned behavior. So for, you know, if you grow up in a family, where your adult role models are reaching for alcoholic drinks, whether they’re celebrating or they’ve had a bad day at work, or whatever, that’s what you learn. And if you then are with friends and family all the time that are drinking heavily, that’s what you learn. So for me, it’s not to do with genetics at all. It’s just to do with learn behavior. And I think the other point there is a lot of people will say, Yeah, but you know, I, I used to drink smoke, and I gave up smoking and drinking became a problem. And then I try and give up drinking, and I find them eating loads of sugar and chocolate and all the rest of it. So they think there is some addictive personality, right? Yeah, exactly addictive personality. But for me, that just comes down to is a simple coping point. Everybody’s life has its ups and downs, everybody has stress. And they develop ways of dealing with that stress. Now, I think when you drink or smoke, or whatever it is, you become very conditioned to consuming something to change how you feel. So if you have a bad day, you have a drink, we have a cigarette, but what you’re really doing is consuming something to change how you feel. Now, when you quit drinking, if you just say to yourself, right alcohol, I’m not going to take that you don’t develop some healthier coping mechanisms, something bad happens, and you don’t have alcohol. So you just reach for the next thing to consume to change how you feel. And that might be chocolate, or potato chips, or whatever, you know, whatever it is, yeah. So people just go from one to the other. So this is, for me, it’s not a genetic thing. It’s just a coping mechanism thing. Yeah, this is what I say to people. It’s useful when you’re planning to quit, to think ahead to having a very bad day or an argument with your partner or a bill you can’t pay or whatever it is that would normally trigger you and think to yourself, What will I do, I’m not going to drink you might consume, you know, half a pound of chocolate will be better than drinking, not as good as for example, I’m going to get out and go for a walk or a run, or I’m going to read a book or I’m going to make a nice healthy meal and put the TV on or something like that. So I think it is important. The two points here. No, I don’t think it’s genetics at all. But I do think it’s important when people quit, that they get these coping mechanisms. Think ahead to your next horrible day where it’s going to really trigger you to have a glass of wine and think what will I do to unwind and to cope with that? Yeah, that’s totally I agree with you 100%. All of my everything that I believe about changing your behavior with alcohol stems from just exactly that is not focusing on the action of not drinking or not eating or whatever it is not the action but backing up to whatever it is that happens. And I say that it’s not the circumstances. So you know, your job is your job. It’s your thoughts about your job that create this feeling of being stressed or unhappy or whatever. And then that leads to you taking the action that you take, whether that’s drinking, eating, smoking, whatever, and that gets the result right. And so, focusing backwards, focusing only on just stopping the drinking isn’t going to change back here at the thought that you’re having that’s creating the field Feeling of stress. So it is all about coping, and managing your own mind and managing your thoughts. And I agree with you to that, you know, life is 5050 You’re going to have bad days, you’re going to have good days, you can’t, you can’t expect to, to roll through and just have everything always be great. And then turn to any other kind of coping substance. When things don’t go well, you have to learn to figure out that that’s, you know, it’s a bad it’s just a bad day, you know, this not, you can survive that we do hard things all the time. And really understanding that we have the the power to create the life that we want. And we have the thoughts and the the, you know, the brains, these beautiful human brains that really dictate our experience. And alcohol doesn’t help that alcohol doesn’t solve anything. It does not. All it does is, as you mentioned, just screw up all those neurotransmitters and impacts them all. So it’s not good. Not good for you. Yeah. Well, I really, again, appreciate you taking the time. And sorry to circle back there at the end. But I wanted to make sure that I said that. Miss out. Yeah. Well, tell you here. It’s an early podcast, maybe you’ll do me the honor of coming back here in another year after I’ve been going for a bit and have another conversation and see where I’m at in my journey and see what you do. Yeah, and what you’re doing. And if you’ve decided to write another book on caffeine, we’ll have a cup of tea. So I absolutely appreciate it. I’m going to link to your your the easiest way to find William William Porter folks is at www dot alcohol explained.com which I will link in my show notes and link also to your Facebook group because it is very popular. And again, you can find both books, all books on Amazon. And I just appreciate you taking the time. Pleasure. Thank you for asking me. It’s been fun. Awesome. Great. Have a great night. All right. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to breaking the bottle legacy. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Take something that you learned in today’s episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible. You have the power to change your relationship with alcohol. Now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com