How are you doing? I’m Kevin O’Hara for alcoholmastery.com.
Today I want to talk about 5 different ways that quitting drinking alcohol can help you find the love of your life.
The first one is so obvious.
Quitting drinking is going to get rid of the beer goggles.
It’s going to get rid of the influence of the alcohol.
The alcohol decisions about your choices, and alcohol whether you’re drinking it or afterwards, when your mind is just fogged up with the consequences of the drinking…not just the hangover but how alcohol affects your brain for days, maybe weeks after you’ve stopped drinking or after you’ve gone through a session.
That is a form of beer goggles.
It’s a form of looking through your particular Rose coloured lens at the world that is out of focus, because of your drinking; that is fogged up because of your drinking, that is persistently and perpetually the same because of your drinking.
When you stop drinking, you take away all that and you start seeing things clearly.
How many mistakes have people made in relationships because of their drinking?
How many times has somebody gone out and met somebody while they were out drinking and thought they’d fallen in love with somebody who wasn’t really the person they thought they were, and vice versa.
So, that’s the first thing, is that you’ll get rid of the beer goggles.
Number 2 is that when you stop drinking and poisoning yourself, it shows that you care about yourself.
It shows that you’re serious about the person that you are, about your life, about living your life, especially when you explain to someone why you’re doing it and the reason you’re doing it.
I’m talking about all the deep reasons why you’ve stopped, because when you were drinking, so many other aspects of your life were being interfered with because of that alcohol behaviour.
Now I’m not talking about explaining yourself on a first date.
You go out on a first date and you’re like ‘I quit drinking because bloody blah’.
I’m talking about getting into a serious relationship with someone, then you can start explaining yourself.
I think it just adds a different level of meaning to you as a person.
You know yourself.
When you’re not escaping from reality by going into this instant gratification mode and disappearing down into the wine glass, you get time to be on your own, to think on your own, and this is an uncomfortable place to be at first.
I admit that.
I’m very comfortable with myself now, but it’s hard for me to think back to how uncomfortable it was at the beginning, but I do remember how uncomfortable it was to just be with myself and to sort of be there at the end of the day, and to think ‘is this really relaxing? I know that normally at this stage I’ll be getting obliterated but I can’t do that now. What do I do?’
Eventually you start to get comfortable being in your own skin.
It always shows.
It comes out of you and it starts to become a part of your personality.
Part of my personality before I sopped drinking was I was a drinker, I believed that about myself.
I said it to other people.
I had my favourite place in the bar to sit, my favourite way of drinking.
Someone says to me ‘You drank that pint first’ and I always say ‘That’s who I am’.
I always do that with the first pint.
I nearly always ordered 2 and got the first one down as quick as I could.
You make excuses and believe those excuses.
It becomes a part of who you are.
After you stop drinking, that discomfort turns into comfort, and it starts to become a part of who you are.
It shows to other people.
I think that’s really going to shine out in you.
That brings me to the third thing, when you stop drinking alcohol, you all of a sudden start to become the person who is you.
You might not know who that person is at the beginning.
I didn’t.
You’re uncomfortable in your own skin, being the person that you are, because you’re so used to being this other person.
Then you find yourself all of a sudden adapting to a different way of living.
That’s really what you’re being asked to do.
Stop drinking now and then tomorrow you are a different person altogether.
That’s not easy to do, but eventually over time, that comes about.
The real person who you are, once you get rid of all this extraneous behaviour, once you get rid of all the bullshit stopping you from being the person that you are, you become yourself.
You get confident.
It’s a step by step process like everything else.
But you get confidence and self-belief.
That is something that comes out and shines in your personality.
And people are attracted to that.
Number 4 of this is that when you start being yourself, when you start dating, you’re going out and looking for a date, you’re more likely to find someone and look for someone who is like yourself, who is a non-drinker.
If I had to date again, if I was single now, that’s one of the first things I’d be looking for, someone who shared a lot of passions that I share now about my life.
You don’t have to share everything, but just weigh everything else.
You’re attracted to like-minded people.
I think once you’re on that wavelength, you’re being yourself, you’re more likely to find someone who is themselves because they don’t drink because they don’t have that kind of need in their lives.
It might be a bit harder to find that type of person.
It’s easy to go to a pub and get drunk and find someone else who is drunk to go out with.
It’s a bit more difficult when you don’t drink and haven’t got that crutch to fall back on, or that thing which is going to reduce our uptightness.
So all you have is yourself.
It takes a bit more hard work but it’s worth it at the end of the day.
Finally, I think one of the most important parts of this for me anyway, is I think it opens your eyes up to people around you more than ever before.
Drinking alcohol is just such a selfish behaviour to do because the more you drink, the more into yourself you get, and the more selfish you become, and you become introverted.
People say it’s a social way of doing things, but I don’t believe that.
For me, I started finding the person I wanted to spending the rest of my life with with the person I was already with.
Before I stopped drinking, I was questioning my relationship.
She was definitely questioning it too.
I think me quitting drinking just opened my eyes to a lot of other things that were already there in front of me.
I’m not just talking about people in your life at this stage.
You can fall in love with so many different aspects of life that you thought were just drab and boring, like walking.
This is something I’m completely in love with.
Although I did it before, it was something I did to freshen myself up sometimes, it wasn’t with the same passion I do it with now.
I found so many different things in my life that I look at through different eyes.
That’s a bit of a rambling one.
I’ll leave it there.
Till next time, take care of yourself and the people in your life.
Stay safe.
DECIDE. COMMIT. SUCCEED.
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
This is an excellent video. Just as I’ve a challenging day at work, I come home to this uplift of a vid. I really worry about finding someone with my AF life. I’m 35, and have not much interest in pubs or clubs. Guess I’ll just have to start being creative. Interestingly, I dated to girls recently, but I wasn’t feeling it so I ended it on both occasions. If I was back in my drinking days, I probably would’ve kept dating them half arsed. Now I tend to own my decisions that are made with a fully sober mind.
You are the PERFECT age to get your life back on track. You’ve been there. done that, worn the T-shirt and are now moving on. I am struggling a bit, but will keep going onwards and upwards. I just find it difficult to log onto the site as a member because even my email address isn’t recognised even though I gat daily videos? Keep posting because talking about it, even to strangers, as long as you know some-one is listening it will help x
Thanks for this. I have been drinking for 10 years since my parents died one after the other and recently I separated from my wife. Then something incredible happened. I have fallen in love with someone new who is also madly in love with me and I stopped drinking overnight as she filled the emptiness within me and before I didn’t care. Now I want to be everything good for her and so I just switched off the drinking without even a second thought. Her love is enormous and I can’t believe how lucky I am. I know that without her I would have sat in this empty house drinking every evening until it would have killed me in the end. I just hope that I have saved myself in time for me and for her.