Maureen Benkovich (00:01.134)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Sober Fitlife. I have been thinking about sharing this particular episode for a long time. So I'm really looking forward to sharing this with you. You know, I've had the privilege over these last three years now of working with hundreds of clients through my one-on-one coaching and group coaching. And it's so amazing and interesting to me that there are the similar themes that I hear constantly of shame.
and I'm the only one and what's wrong with me? Why don't I have enough willpower? Why do I have this problem? I know it's not good for me. So I wanna read you some journal entries, some things that maybe you might hear yourself in. And I just want you to see if you can identify or relate to these things that have been shared. So I'm gonna start with this first one. My secret struggle.
Or maybe it's not so secret. I can't seem to drink socially when I'm out with others without getting really drunk. I am so ashamed. Please help me. Why do I continue to do something that I know is so bad for me and it makes me feel bad physically and bad about myself? Why? There's that struggle, the shame, and you can just hear it.
Can you hear yourself in that? Have you ever asked those kind of questions maybe two or three in the morning when you wake up and your heart is racing and you've realized you did it again, you drank more than you said you were going to? Or maybe the next morning when you canceled your workout or you went back to bed or you tried to hide all day just how bad you felt, brain foggy, just getting through the day, just checking off the list till the next night.
Here's another one. Well, I did it again. I binge drank last night. I knew what I was doing, even though I don't want to. I know it's so harmful to me physically, emotionally. I am now feeling so anxious and depressed and I'm beating myself up. Please help me.
Maureen Benkovich (02:16.854)
just want to see if you hear yourself in those excerpts. I know I do.
And then what are the patterns? What are the things I keep doing that are holding me back? These are questions that people are asking me. How come I can't just change this? Now that I know alcohol is a drug, an addictive drug, why do I keep doing it? Here's a list, excuses to rationalize my drinking. No one will ever know. It won't hurt anyone else. You only live once.
Just this one time, he or she drove me to it. I'm so angry. It's just who I am. People I admire are doing it. Everybody else is doing it. Have you ever made those kind of rationales in your brain to yourself?
Maureen Benkovich (03:15.64)
Here's one. So the wine was flowing. I didn't say no, even though my brain was saying to stop. Now I don't feel good. I have a headache. I'm beating myself up. I have zero willpower. And to make everything worse, I drove home.
I hear these over and over and over again.
Maureen Benkovich (03:42.156)
Here's another one. I believe it is alcohol I need to give up. I try to drink in moderation and sometimes I do it, but then I go off the rails and I'm useless and I'm depressed for days.
Maureen Benkovich (03:58.119)
I know that feeling of just feeling like a lump, not wanting to do anything. Or I'd go to my workout, I'd show up there, feel like dirt, dehydrated, probably smelled like alcohol. I actually know for sure, because my trainer told me later when we talked about it. You know, I wasn't fooling anybody, but I thought if I just checked the box, well, at least I went to my workout. At least I did that. Now I can go home and, you know, eat and lay down.
and try to hide the fact from my husband that I was sleeping half the day, trying to sleep off this hangover.
So I'm wondering if any of you can relate to that. Here's another one. I use alcohol in social situations to become the party girl, to avoid feeling my depression and anxiety until the next day when it's only worse. The truth is hiding does not bring healing and my go-to remedy, alcohol, just gives me euphoria in the moment but then leaves me feeling more dead and more empty inside.
Have any of you ever felt that dead and empty feeling, that frustration with why do I keep doing it?
Well, I want to let you know those are all my journal entries. That was the all, all in the month leading up to when I finally on September 14th had my last drinks of alcohol. And on that day, on that day, and I had been continually trying to stop and start and stop and start, I was having lunch with two girlfriends and usually our lunches would turn into, well, into dinners.
Maureen Benkovich (05:43.407)
And we thought that was hilarious. We'd drink all day, end up drinking into dinner. So I knew at this point, this is September 14th in 2021, all those other journal entries that I just read to you were from my personal journal for the month leading up to this moment. I was really sick of myself. I was really sick of my drinking, sick of the back and forth, all the beating myself up, all the shame, all the anxiety, all the hiding.
So I knew I was going to lunch with these friends and I wrote this in my journal to God and I said, please give me the strength to change. Please be with me today as I have lunch with these friends. My plan is to have just two white wine spritzers. Please let me stick to this. So I was saying, please let me drink moderately without the consequences. And even though, and you heard some, and those are just some of my journal entries.
I was really struggling with this. I was still trying to figure out how could I drink moderately. And this is how almost every conversation starts with anybody who calls me and who wants to consider coaching. They're like, help me to moderate. And I get it. That's what we want to be able to do because we're taught that those are quote unquote normal drinkers. But the truth is true moderators, and I know this is hard to hear,
The true moderators don't think about their drinking. They are not putting all this time and effort and mental real estate and shame and beating themselves up and negotiating and rules, setting all the rules. True moderators don't do that. They can take it or leave it.
I was just talking with someone today and he's like, yeah, I only drink like at a wedding or something, maybe like a sip of champagne for the toast. I'm like, you're what we call a moderation unicorn. And he had never heard that and he started laughing and he's like, I just don't really even like it, how it makes me feel. I'm like, wow, in my mind, that's a blessing knowing everything I know now about alcohol. So.
Maureen Benkovich (07:56.169)
I was asking on that day, September 14th, 2021, and I had been writing in my journal about my drinking since 2014. And that's an important point because a lot of people, again, my clients are beating themselves up because they've been on this journey for so long. And it always looks like this up and down and up and down, but we all have to get to that point where we decide enough is enough. And so on September 14th,
What happened that day was I went to lunch with my friends and I told them, said, listen, I really don't want to drink. I'm trying to change. So I'm just going to have a white wine spritzer. And they're like, well, good for you. Two martinis, please. Two Cosmos. That's all I needed to hear. I did not have the tools or the endurance or the understanding of alcohol. And that's all I needed to hear.
And I said, well, me too, forget it. I'm being too hard on myself. You know, they were definitely saying that to me. Maureen, come on, you just like to have fun. They had no idea the inner struggle because I was keeping it all to myself. The shame, the anxiety, the hiding, the pretending. So needless to say that dinner, that lunch, the turn into dinner on September 14th, 2021, I came home very drunk, very disappointed with myself.
And I got down on my knees the next day in the morning, not because I was getting sick, but because I was sick of myself. And I said, God, I can't do this without you. I've got to change. I know I want to change. No more negotiating. No more asking to just be able to moderate. I want to stop. I know that's what I'm being called to do. I know that's why this is so painful for me. It's holding me back.
It's, I'm wasting my life. It's keeping me mentally ill, depression, anxiety. I was really stuck in my thinking and I couldn't imagine a life without drinking, which is what, you know, 99 % of my clients when they come to me say, how am I going to do this? How am I going to be with friends? How am I going to go to dinners? How am I going to travel? How will I have fun? How will I relax? What if I'm bored? What if I'm boring?
Maureen Benkovich (10:24.974)
I had all of those fears and concerns. And the reason I really wanted to read all this to you is because a lot of times when people work with me now, because this September will be five years for me that I haven't had any alcohol. And I'm so grateful for all of that and the whole journey and everything I've learned and everything I'm doing now. But when they work with me, sometimes they forget that I know exactly where they are. I know the pain.
I know the struggle, I know the fears, I know the future tripping about the what ifs, and how am going to do this and how am I going to do that? This is a big, big change. But I will say it is also one of the biggest personal growth journeys you will ever go on. This is the biggest life hack that you can do. You know, I wanted to do all the other things without changing.
this big thing, this big domino. I always say to my clients, if you know, it's one of the big serpentines of dominoes, well, there's always the first domino that has to go down to start the chain reaction of all the other things to happen in this kinetic chain. But if that first domino of alcohol doesn't stay down, all the other wonderful things that happen when you realize that alcohol is holding you back,
It's keeping you small. It's keeping you less than. Less than in your potential, less than in what your mental health can be. And what I mean by that is you may not have had depression to the degree that I did, but you might notice you're irritable. You're anxious. You have a short fuse with your kids, with your spouse at work. Doesn't take much to send you through the roof. That is also a result of drinking.
even on the days you're not drinking because of the chemical cascade that I talk about all the time that happens when we ingest ethanol. And I'll say it again, I say it every time, doesn't matter if it's Dom Perignon or red stripe beer, once you drink it, your body interprets it the same way. It's a neurotoxin, it's ethanol, your body needs to get rid of it. So,
Maureen Benkovich (12:50.282)
Your body knows that, but we are inundated with constant messages. We need it. You need it to have fun. You need it to relax. It's sophisticated. And yet we have this inner struggle. And I just shared with you some of mine that at some point in your life and all the people I work with, they've gotten to this point where they're recognizing that alcohol is no longer serving me, but I don't know what to do with that information. I'm afraid.
to act on what I'm feeling. So that's that constant cognitive dissonance. I want to change my drinking behavior, but I'm afraid to change my drinking behavior. I don't want to drink, but I want to drink. And not understanding that cognitive dissonance is what keeps us stuck. And that's what I love helping people do. I mean, when I see them have the aha moments that I remember having, it's so fulfilling and people really feeling empowered.
and taking the baby steps, the consistency steps to see, can change, I can make a different choice, I can decide which thoughts I'm going to listen to, I can replace with healthy, supportive behaviors of lifestyle, movement, nutrition, alcohol-free options, trying to find activities that do not focus or center around alcohol. I didn't know there was a whole other world out there. I just thought everything revolved around alcohol because we are messaged.
that way. And we've all kind of become lazy too, like, hey, let's go get drinks. Let me give people, you know, alcohol for a gift. If you don't know what to do, somebody just said, well, I've got nothing else to do, right? I used to think that all the time. Got nothing else to do when really I had a million things to do. But the rationalization for alcohol is strong, but it's the neural pathways. It's not about willpower. I keep saying this. It's
chemistry. It's your brain. And I was drinking for decades, automated patterns. Maureen is stressed, drink. Maureen feels socially anxious, drink. Maureen feels depressed, drink. In my specific case, I'm out to dinner. Everyone is talking about their children. It was a very hard, difficult thing for me. It's Mother's Day is coming up now. It's still a hard thing for me. But now I don't numb it. I don't...
Maureen Benkovich (15:17.966)
try to run away from it, I process it. I think about it, I pray about it. You know, and I work through it and I come out on the other side stronger, my emotional muscle, my stress tolerance, which alcohol only weakens. My stress tolerance has gotten so much stronger in these last almost five years. It's amazing. But I did use alcohol in social situations to hide my sadness, my anxiety, my uncomfortableness.
And so I didn't know how I was going to change. So this journal, this is just one month of journaling that I shared with you. And I just want to know if you heard any of yourself in that. But I want to share with you a happy excerpt too. So that was September 14th was the last day at alcohol. September 15th of 2021 was the first day that I didn't have any alcohol, that I started this journey. So on September 26th, 2021,
It was a Sunday morning and I had just gone to my first wedding the night before. Alcohol Free is my best friend from high school's daughter's wedding at the Jersey Shore, beautiful, beautiful venue. And there was no way I was not gonna go to this. These people were too important to me. So I was gonna go through the discomfort, which is what we have to do, of going to this wedding.
putting all of my tools and resources in place that I had just learned in those short amount of time. I had a plan. How was I going to go to the wedding? I ate protein beforehand. I didn't go hungry. I made sure I was rested. My husband and I had a nice hotel on the beach. We talked about a plan. I said to him, this is going to be really hard for me. I need your support. And you know what? I ate everything there, like everything.
What I'm saying is I wasn't focused on drinking. I ate all the appetizers and the really good entree and the desserts. And meanwhile, everybody's drinking more and more and more, the volume's getting louder. And my plan with my husband was once I got to a point where I felt like it was time to leave, then we agreed we would go. I'd give him the look or say, let's go. I even knew how I was gonna say goodbye to my friends.
Maureen Benkovich (17:43.297)
and thank them. I had the plan from the time I walked in there to how I was going to leave, what I was going to order, what I was going to say. And believe me, I got asked by many, many of my high school friends, like, really? You're not going to drink? And all kinds of discussions. This is the first time I ever did this. So it was uncomfortable. But that is how your brain learns you can do hard things. I went through the uncomfortable situation
And I left and we went back to the hotel room and I'll read to you what I wrote the next day. The day after the wedding, I made it through the wedding without drinking. And I almost did because of course they handed me champagne and I was fine in the beginning. I definitely ate too much in lieu of drinking at cocktail hour. But that's okay.
I felt very tempted, even to the point where after discussing with John that I was going to have just one martini, I didn't. I ate some more of my dinner and then I looked at that martini and I sipped it. I did, that's right, I sipped it. had one sip and it immediately went to my head and I didn't like the feeling and it tasted horrible like rubbing alcohol. And I even added ice to it. So I was sort of like trying, but also
praying that I wouldn't want it. And it just wasn't palatable. Even just those, what, that was 25 days, my taste buds had started to change and I was recognizing what alcohol really tasted like. But here's the best thing. We got back to the hotel room. I washed my face, PJ's on, sat out on our balcony for a bit. We were right on the ocean. We splurged. This was part of the plan.
I drank my bone broth while John finished his drink. He had a drink. I wasn't trying to change my husband. I just asked him for his support, which he was wonderful. I slept through the whole night until John woke me up at 630 in the morning to see the sunrise. Had I been drinking, I never would have gotten up. We witnessed the most beautiful sunrise coming up over the ocean.
Maureen Benkovich (20:00.674)
This weekend was a real win and confidence builder as far as not drinking. So that was how I started putting it together, step by step by step. And I had coaches and I was in a community and I took this so seriously because I knew I wanted to change and I needed to understand how to do it. So continuing to take one situation at a time, one dinner out with friends at a time.
one lunch with girls and go through the uncomfortable situations and have the wins was how I built my confidence. Win by win by win. So I just want to share this with you because I think sometimes people think I don't remember what it was like, but I do. And that's why I love doing this. I just finished my last six week group. We had 10 women and they were all about the same age from 60.
to 78, right, in that age range. And the things they said made me wanna do this episode. One of my clients in this six week group was 78 years old. She said, this is the first time ever in my whole adult life. And this was at the point where she went 12 days without alcohol. She's like, I didn't think I could do it. And she was so excited.
And all of a sudden she was saying, you know, people were telling me my skin looks great and I'm noticing energy and my daughter is so happy because she was concerned about me and I just didn't think I could do it. And those are the kind of things as a coach when I hear I'm like, yes, because I remember that. And it's those little steps that turn into big steps that turn into longer periods of time that build your stress tolerance, that teach your brain you can do hard things and you can
Imagine a life where alcohol is not running the show, where alcohol doesn't have to show up at everything. And if it does, you get to choose, right? It's not an automated mindless habit. So again, we just finished our six week today was our last call. And I'm excited because I've also started a community. So now everybody has the opportunity to now go.
Maureen Benkovich (22:20.652)
longer than 30 days, they can do 60 days and inside of the community, support is so important to be able to share with each other. Here's what's challenging for me. Here's what's working. Hey, here's an alcohol-free mocktail I found that I like. Here's an exercise class that really regulates my central nervous system because now everybody's learning these terms and they're sharing. So I just felt it was important to go back and share some of
of my journey with you in the beginning and what it looked like. And I love to look back on my journals because I am so grateful for how far I've come. And because I had the courage and I prayed about it for me, that was very important to make this change. A whole new world has opened up for me. And I want you to know I coach people with all different kinds of goals. Some of the women in my group,
We're saying, I don't want to drink at home alone anymore. I'm like, that's great. So that's going to be your goal. And now that we're done with this six week, you can decide, you can try to go back to moderating. We talked about, what are the lines in the sand? What are the red flags? What will you do if you continue to go back and start breaking promises to yourself? Come back and do 60 days, right? So this is a continuation of a journey. And as long as you stay aware and curious,
and ask the questions, you will continue to learn. Those are growth points or data points. It's when you don't take the information that you've learned from your break from alcohol or from your journaling and all these ups and downs. It's when you choose to ignore it, stick your head back in the sand or in the bottle and keep drinking, even though it's making you unhappy, stressed, anxious, it's eroding your self-image.
you know, then you're ignoring what intuitively you know something has to change. You know, we all didn't start out, we started out drinking, we thought it was harmless, we didn't know a lot about it. I started in high school. It was a very long time ago. I had no idea I would at some point get to this place where alcohol was actually harming me. But to make the pivot, to make the change, when you do that, it will open up a whole other world for you. And I would love to help
Maureen Benkovich (24:44.296)
anybody who wants to be curious about changing their relationship with alcohol because that's where it starts. So I just ask that you're curious and you're willing to try and you're willing to take a coach led break with me. And there's nothing that I love better than hearing your aha moments and your wins and also your struggles because I relate. And that's why I wanted to share these journal entries today because I want you to know
You're not alone. This is very common. These thoughts, the shame, keeping it to yourself, the struggle, the inner monologue, the mental real estate, very common. So you're not alone. And if you're hearing this and it speaks to you, please reach out to me. And I'm going to tell you one of the best ways that you can take the next step. I developed a quiz that I wish was available.
when I was really going through these struggles and I would wake up at two or three in the morning and I would Google, I an alcoholic? Because that's the only thing I knew how to ask. You know, we've been conditioned over the years that either you're a normal drinker or you're an alcoholic, right? A label. Well, that's not true. There's gray area drinking, alcohol use disorder spectrum. These are the much more accurate terms. So, instead of asking that question, am I a label?
You can take my quiz, am I drinking too much? Simple question, right? So you can go to www.soberfitchick.com forward slash am I quiz, right? Am I as in am I drinking too much? www.soberfitchick.com forward slash am I quiz. You will get the answers. And these are real world questions and real world answers without shame or judgment or labels.
And also, you will then receive a guide to, what is gray area drinking? And you can see if you relate to that, if that makes sense to you, if the questions you're asking yourself or the things you're keeping to yourself sound familiar. So the guide is very thorough and also it has three science-backed strategies for how to stop cravings in the moment. And so you can be really curious and try these science-backed strategies. They're very easy to do.
Maureen Benkovich (27:07.872)
It's just that you have to be willing to be curious. You hear me say that a lot? And pause and say, well, let me try one of those things that Maureen recommended in her guide about gray area drinking. So take the quiz, just be curious, get the guide. And then if you'd like to reach out, I am here. I'm already taking names for my next six week alcohol reset, which will start at the end of September. We'll cover sober October, but we'll start with a kickoff call at the end of September.
and then you can join the six week reset and see what happens when you are curious about changing your relationship with alcohol. And I would highly encourage all of you right now, no matter where you are, to write, write, write your thoughts out, write it down, and then you look back on it and you get to see, and you get to see the changes and the progress, and that is confidence building. So thank you so much for listening today.
I would love it if you would reach out to me and say, let me know if any of this made sense to you, if you heard yourself in any of those journal entries, and please follow Sober Fit Life. I would really appreciate it. So the more people that follow Sober Fit Life, and you could even give a review, the more people out there who are struggling with their drinking, but they're not sure what to do, they will hear this message and be able to change their relationship with alcohol. So thank you very much. Have a great day.
