Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
“Stress is just part of the alcohol con trick. And the truth is that every benefit we have ever imagined alcohol giving us it doesn’t. It is a drug, and it works the same way as all other drugs.
Many of my clients are doctors and nurses, and some are in the role of advisor for alcohol issues, and yet are themselves caught in the alcohol trap. This shows how endemic the problems are and how little is understood.
The great news here is that when you start waking up to the truth, you are beginning to get wise, and that gives you the power to get wiser still.”
Michaela Weaver is an alcohol coach.
She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, “Stress: Is it time to expose the alcohol con?”
Reflect and earn 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 CME for this episode.
Did you enjoy today’s episode?
Please click here to leave a review for The Podcast by KevinMD. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get notified when a new episode comes out!
Do you know someone who might enjoy this episode? Share this episode to anyone who wants to hear health care stories filled with information, insight, and inspiration.
Hosted by Kevin Pho, MD, The Podcast by KevinMD shares the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from.
Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, welcome to the show, where we share the stories of the many who intersect with our health care system but are rarely heard from. My name is Kevin Pho, founder and editor of KevinMD. Today on the show, we have Michaela Weaver. She is an alcohol coach, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Stress: Is it time to expose the alcohol con?” Michaela, welcome to the show.
Michaela Weaver: Thank you very much, Kevin.
Kevin Pho: So we’ll get into your article in a little bit, but first off, can you share your story and journey to where you are today?
Michaela Weaver: Yes, certainly. I think the big thing about my journey is that I was one of those high-achieving professionals who spent a long time hiding in the alcohol trap, thinking that there was something wrong with me, feeling ashamed, full of guilt, not being able to find any answers. I was the woman in the boardroom with the big hangover and the monstrous cup of coffee, or maybe the other way around. And I was there for quite a long time.
It affected my self-esteem and my confidence. I was able to function pretty well at work, and many people didn’t know there was a problem, but I knew, and it was making me very unhappy. It was also affecting my relationships. And now, when I look back, almost seven years the other side of that trap, I know it was affecting all areas of my life in some way or another.
There was a moment, a pivotal moment, where my partner said he’d had enough as it was, in that situation, that, you know, coming home from work every night with me halfway down a bottle of wine just wasn’t sustainable. And so that was my moment. It will be different for other people. That was when I started on a journey which led me down many paths, all of which, for me, were a dead end.
I tried AA. It wasn’t for me. I know it works well for millions. I didn’t like the idea of giving over my power. I didn’t like the idea of being in lifelong recovery. I tried the medical route; that led me nowhere. I tried counseling, and all that did was try to root around for some trauma in my past that wasn’t there. I had fallen into the trap of becoming addicted to a highly addictive psychoactive drug that we are positively encouraged to consume in our society, and that’s where I was.
So as a scientist, as a master NLP coach, I just turned it all round on myself, started asking myself a different set of questions. I did so much research, everything in the Lancet, everywhere, everything I could get my hands on. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I really unraveled it and realized that, as you pointed out in the article, it is all a massive con that society suggests and encourages us to take this drug, and actually, it causes silent misery for many millions that live in inauthenticity, because our values are in conflict. That’s exactly where I was.
And so I broke free, and that was years ago now. I’ve learned to cope with emotions without alcohol and to live life much more in the present, happily. So that really is my journey. It was when my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer that I quit my day job and decided that I wanted to actually help others to break free as well. So that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing now. That brings us here to talk.
Real physician voices, twice a week
Free, and one click to unsubscribe.
Kevin Pho: Among your clients, approximately how many, or what percentage, work in the health care field?
Michaela Weaver: I would say somewhere between 25 and 30 percent.
Kevin Pho: And tell me some of the stories that they have when they come to you.
Michaela Weaver: OK, so first of all, shame, having tried and failed. I think it really brings it home to me when I have a doctor on the phone who says they’ve tried the avenues that are available to their patients, and they haven’t worked for them, and they’re looking for something different. They need confidentiality. They’re scared. Some talk to colleagues who are also feeling the same way. I have senior nurses who work with alcohol addiction coming to me because it hasn’t worked for them, and they’re guiding others. I have senior chief executives of health care organizations coming to me and breaking free. That’s the good thing.
The stories are similar: huge amounts of stress, drinking for stress, because we all believe, right, that alcohol helps to relieve stress. It’s the first thing in any disaster. People say, “Have a drink. It’ll calm your nerves.” And so that illusion is alive and, you know, kicking, that it actually does help to alleviate stress. And if that belief is there, then who wouldn’t act upon it?
Kevin Pho: And you talked more about that in your KevinMD article that’s titled “Stress: Is it time to expose the alcohol con?” Now, for those who didn’t get a chance to read your article, can you just walk my audience through it and share the story of why you decided to write it?
Michaela Weaver: Yeah. I surveyed the people who’ve come through and got in contact with me, some 15,000, and I asked them the question directly: “Do you drink to alleviate stress?” And a very small handful. 99 percent said yes. And so, because I know, and I will explain, that alcohol actually causes stress, it doesn’t alleviate it at all, apart from partially and temporarily, I had to write the article.
Because alcohol is the law of ever-diminishing returns. In the evening, when that feeling of relief comes, it is certainly not happiness; it is relief, but it is a partial relief of stress. And I liken it to a car alarm that’s going off, and it’s going off all day long, and it’s irritating, and by the end of the day, you just want that car alarm to go off. And that’s what having that drink is.
The problem is that not only does the car alarm get turned off, but by having that drink, you’re simultaneously turning it on in five hours’ time, only louder. That’s why we wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning feeling horrendous, heart palpitating, feeling anxious. It’s for that very reason: It’s the last drink that caused that. And then that stress and that low level of agitation sits there all day long, like the car alarm is back on again, until it’s turned off again the next day. And so the last drink causes the stress.
There is then the additional stress, and the conversations that I have day in, day out with high achievers bear this out: The drinker is then walking around wondering what’s wrong with them, self-esteem lowered, sometimes on the ground, not able to function as well at work. The inner critic is raging. They’re feeling guilty and anxious about the whole thing. That in itself is stressful. When stressed, we drink, so it often causes us to drink more.
Then there’s the amount of time it occupies, trying to think about how to moderate it, the concern about “What do I do come six o’clock, because I don’t want to drink?” and all of that. It occupies. I just got off the phone just half an hour ago with a medical professional who was saying exactly this to me: It just takes up so much time. And then there’s the time in the evenings where, you know, wine has been consumed, or whatever the drink of choice, and things are not getting done. People are running out of energy. All of that causes stress.
And when it all comes down to the real cause of that stress, it is alcohol itself. So it is all, hence, the con, because we’re doing something thinking that it’s helping, and actually, it’s the main cause of the problem. Because without it, we are feeling so much better. We’re confident, our self-esteem is higher, there’s no inner critic, the inner critic is gone, and so we’re functioning better. Then we learn to actually manage our emotions effectively, without numbing them, making them worse. We can actually face up to our emotions, which means that they are managed, and then we are calmer, more peaceful. Everything works so much more effectively without alcohol. That is the other side, seeing through this illusion and this con, as I call it.
Kevin Pho: Yes. So you have health care clients who come to you, and they say they drink alcohol to alleviate the stress. Now, once they come to you, how do you approach these clients and this problem?
Michaela Weaver: OK, so there are a series of processes. The first thing that we do is to remove fear and doubt, because fear keeps us in an addiction, and we’re talking about addiction if we’re doing something that we don’t want to do. And so, that fear of success and fear of failure. You know, the feeling of failure because it’s happened before: “I can’t do it. What’s wrong with me?” And then fearing success: “How will my life ever be livable without this in my life?” So the first thing we do is we address fear and we address doubt, and we give confidence back, give people their power back over this.
The second thing is we work to completely shift mindset, so it’s a psychological shift. We break down all the illusions. We break down the belief structure caused by society and self and the drug itself. We look at the way memories function in terms of pattern matching, so that we’re building in new memories; we’re realizing that old memories don’t function anymore. We’re changing the language around how we deal with all of this, and we manage it so that it’s really effective. We’re understanding how addiction hijacks our motivation, and as highly motivated people, then we really need to know that, so that all of that illusion falls away, so that the trap literally disintegrates.
And then it’s about building in new mechanisms to manage emotion, so that if something happens in life that is a big emotional trigger, the latent memories don’t pop back up again with the same old solution that used to work in the past as a recommendation to deal with that emotion. And so it’s new emotional regulation, emotional management. Things like mindfulness and things like that do come into play to a certain extent. And then, with all of those things, what we’ve got is really solid foundations to take life forward, as opposed to just a raft on an ocean trying to stay afloat.
Kevin Pho: We’re talking to Michaela Weaver. She is an alcohol coach, and she wrote the KevinMD article “Stress: Is it time to expose the alcohol con?” Michaela, what kind of symptoms should health care professionals look out for to make them realize that there’s potentially an alcohol problem?
Michaela Weaver: So, people who are presenting with anxiety, which is rife at the moment, if asking questions. People who are working from home, where they might not have used to be, in certain instances, because that means the opportunity is there more. Overwhelm. Anything around anxiety, stress, and overwhelm; I don’t have a single client who isn’t presenting with those factors.
I think there are ways of asking the questions that don’t put the blame on the individual, and I’m going now into how to manage it. But anyone who takes an addictive drug often enough is going to become addicted, and it’s so important to take the blame off that person. They’re normal. They’re human. It’s what happens. And to not suggest cutting down, because they would have already done that. So I think those are the big things: finding out how relationships are affected, is self-esteem an issue, and then just fronting it up and asking the question, “Are you concerned about the amount of alcohol you’re drinking?”
So often, it’s normalized in society, so answers may come back from somebody who actually thinks it’s normal and it’s OK. That is so, so common. Just pointing out the fact, “Do you know that if you’re drinking, stress levels are going to be higher? Do you know that if you’re drinking, anxiety is going to be affected, and alcohol actually causes this?” That in itself is often enough to just shift it into a point of questioning what’s going on. And that opens up an opportunity then for somebody to walk through a door, to start asking themselves questions, to realize they’re normal and that it is possible to find a solution to this. There’s nothing wrong with that person who is in that situation.
Kevin Pho: And my final question: What are some of your take-home messages that you want to leave with the KevinMD audience?
Michaela Weaver: I think if it’s you, as a person who is dealing with the problem for yourself, then the most important thing I can say is that you are not to blame. There is nothing wrong with you, and the problem is hugely solvable. It is about seeing through the illusion, seeing through the con, changing mindset. Alcohol addiction is 95 percent psychological. It sits in the unconscious mind, which is why nobody can pinpoint the moment they made the decision for the problem to arise. So if it is you, know that you’re not to blame. If it is for your clients, then know that they’re not to blame, and approach the situation from that starting point.
Kevin Pho: Michaela, thank you so much for sharing your time and insight, and thanks again for being on the show.
Michaela Weaver: Very well.
Listen and followApple PodcastsSpotifyYouTubeMore apps · Browse all episodes
