In conversation: Geoff Jeinn & Adrian Chiles

welcome to club soda's mindful drinking festival we're online global and as always absolutely free hi i'm drew and i'm one of the co-founders of club soda and i'm laura the other co-founder of club soda we help you change your drinking in ways that help you live well so whether you're looking to cut down stop for a bit or quit you can find what you need from podcasts and books and courses on joinclubsoda.com this festival we've brought you an amazing lineup from over 100 people from across the world and our program this time really is global every day starts down under with me sarah as well as organizing the festival in australia i spend my time looking for alcohol-free alternatives and tips for people who choose not to drink but who still want to live a social fun and adventurous life and i'll be wrapping up each day here in the states i'm amanda your u.s festival host and coordinator and i'm also a mindset coach who helps women change their relationship with alcohol so that they can start living their most authentic life each day with a rolling program of inspirational panels conversations social events and opportunities to discover new low and low alcohol drinks so whether you want inspiration to change your drinking or to connect with other people or you want to discover and enjoy a new low and no alcohol drink the mindful drinking festival is for you cheers cheers cheers hello and welcome to club soda's mindful drinking festival my name is jeff jean i'm a radio producer and when i turned 40 in january i decided to take a year off drinking to help i've made a podcast called wet and dry where i speak to anyone who can help me decide what sort of a drinker i want to be when my when my 41st birthday rolls around so far i've spoken to one of the country's leading hepatologists a psychiatrist a head brewer and those who've been to the very worst places that alcohol can take you i'm really excited about my guest today as a finance student i don't think i missed an episode of working lunch uh he was also the original presenter of the one show he's fronted football on both the bbc and itv and you can currently hear him on his five live show on friday mornings and question time extra time all of which is fabulous but crucially for this discussion uh adrian became the poster boy for middle class moderation uh after his personal revelations that he regularly drank between 80 and 100 units a week in the 2018 documentary drinkers like me um hello adrian hello hello you are uh i'm very good thank you very much we were just saying before we started this chat that um to me you are the ghost of christmas future um i've only just started down this journey of working out what sort of drink i want to be you're a bit further down the line so what kind of drinker are you at the moment um what sort of ebbs and flows if you want i'm very keen on getting into specifics of units because you know as we all know everyone's got a different definition of the word moderation um and my dad thinks he's a moderate drinker and you know what when he was drinking a lot i mean a mud drinking then to him was like a bottle of wine a day which isn't you know he didn't moderate in anybody's book so i mean for me i am um occasionally go below 14 units a week generally i'm about 20 25 units a week i'd say um is what i tend to drink often it gets often it gets lower than that it rarely gets it rarely gets higher so i probably have two or three days off so look it's not you know it's it's not perfect but one of the challenges of laura one of the founders of uh one of the founders of club soda said that you know the trouble is it's always it's not like sobriety which is clear when you've achieved it even if for only one day you've achieved it you know you are not drinking with moderation it's always a work in progress you know there is no there there is no particular end points there's no no at no time can the teacher come up to you and then put a and put a badge on you said well done you've won the moderation patch it's that you know that that is kind of that is kind of a bad thing but it's also a good thing in that i suppose you know who's to say when you failed as well you can't say when you succeeded you can't say when you failed so it's in this kind of muddy gray area which is i think why a lot of people find it so difficult but um you're you know you're obviously a a clever guy uh you i guess knew something was wrong in 2018 um you you're obviously fronting a documentary about the amount that you drink you you must have had a sense that something probably had to change even going into that oh yeah absolutely absolutely i just i i realized i was drinking too much and i realized i was probably dependent on it and also i looking back i suddenly realized i dropped more in my 20s than my teens more in my 30s than my 20s you know here i was looking more in my 50s than than my 40s and you know the only day off i had from drinking was one on a thursday was when i was was when i was working late my show didn't start 10 p.m on 5 live but i uh what i kept telling myself and everyone's got a butt i haven't got a problem everyone said i drink loads but dot dot dot here's why here's why it shouldn't count against me with me it was i did a lot of exercise um i ate quite healthily um also never got hangovers uh it never had any apparent adverse effect on me you know that i could see um at that time that was a bit myopic to be fair to be fair and also you know i had blood tests so you know the you know you get to a certain age you know something's wrong with something isn't wrong you can go for a blood test and that never showed anything up either so i was sort of quietly confident there wasn't there wasn't really that much of a problem yes i should cut down but look i'm fine and uh i guess one of the things is when you are quite a big drinker you're quite popular i tend to find was yours a very social uh drinking habit you you would you seem to be all drinking with other people it was it's very social um i mean i really drank to excess you know at one go it was most nights i'd meet my mates early evening and we'd have a couple of pints and maybe a glass of wine at a base level you know that so that's 25 units a week you know something like that you know sort of straight away so you you add in say one of those nights goes on a bit plus i don't know a sunday lunch plus a proper night out then very quickly you're north of you're north of 50 units but i think i think i'm more of a social drink because when the pubs closed during lockdown i definitely drank a great deal less and it's not that i don't have the odd drink on my own with my girlfriend but it's never you know it's it's it's never as much but you know i would go you know i'd go when i was away somewhere i'm on my own working away you know i'd go i'd go to a pub and sit and have a pint or two and just do whatever work i had to do whatever reason i had to do it would you know then somebody would always come and talk to me because somebody would recognize me but probably gonna talk about football or more recently drinking actually and you know so it was yeah it was part of that sort of it was part of what i did i think we've both got two things that work against us when we're we're trying to drink less and that's that we both like the atmosphere of a pub yeah and we're both sports fans how much do you think sport and drinking are uh interlinked uh what i think the the watching of sport is although i i mean if he turns up watching on the telly i never really enjoyed going to a problem watching it i never really did that much because it's it's kind of too serious for me i need to sit and sit at home and really focus or you know if i'm at the game but i found myself going through all sorts of you know all sorts of contortions you know i mean this was pre 2018 to avoid driving to the game and i was only avoiding driving so you know i could get in the pub actually early and earlier you know sort of 12 half 12 for the three o'clock kick off and i think you know what and actually it was at the one time he came there's a bit of a name drop here but um at one game eric clapton's a big fan of uh it's a big fan of west brom and he he he knew one of our players our defender we had a swedish player called jonas olsen and um and jonah says i'll come over come over to my box after the game we were playing man united i remember and because you know eric would like to meet because i've done a program about race in football which uh he was interested in and i know i was i was talking to i was talking he i didn't even talk to him about drink but i know his views on i know his views on alcohol you know he's committed to uh alcoholics anonymous and even then i was thinking well i haven't got a problem well i've got a problem i'm just every drink here you know but and i was just thinking hang on what what on that particular day i was thinking what contortions have i gone to to organize myself not to drive so i could have a drink you know and it was massive you know i'd i'd organized to stay at my parents what i should have done is drive up to birmingham from london where i live gone to the game and driven back no but in the in my in my keynesis to have a drink i'd actually arranged to stay with my parents that night driven the car to where they lived 15 miles from birmingham got the train into near west brom got in the pub at 12 or 1 o'clock then sat there for two hours eating and drinking and carrying on then went um then went to the game then went to then went out this conversation with eric then went and had a couple more pints then got a train back and it was just none of this was necessary and i thought i got it it wasn't leading to this moment i thought hang on you know just because i'm not waking up in a shop doorway doesn't mean i don't have some degree of dependence here you know so it was it was just the thought that eric when he not that he'd ever do this that he might quiz me about my drinking i suppose i was preparing my answers for him and i thought actually i better not i better not go there because they'll win the argument so what does a similar home game look for look like for you now well i'm nearly i'll nearly always drive and even if i'm not um you know i won't be quite as desperate to get there so early so i might have a couple of pints i have half and half i'll have half a so half a normal lager and half a soda in the same glass so it's like a shandy but made with soda so that's half the unit straight away um and so and and that will be that then i'll i'll drive back after and and this is key because i think this is what people fear when they start off on a a journey towards from from where they are to some sort of you know mindful future uh and i'm aware there's a certain tautology in this question but do you enjoy the match any less because you've not had the drink and and i'm aware that it's a it's a west brom game so you don't always enjoy it match the match itself no it didn't make any difference really i think the the crack before adapter and i'll wrestle with this or make a difference to how much you're enjoying yourself or does it make a difference to how much you're looking forward to it i think when you're there when you're in it i don't think it matters whether you're drinking or not however once you kid yourself because you know the alcohol is sort of poisoned your mind enough for you to be telling yourself that but i think it's just the prospect of going all great i'll get the pub early i have a few drinks when you're actually there yeah as everyone's drinking once you've had the first one i think all the rest is sort of habit really and what do you what are the the guys that you go and watch the football with what have they made of your journey because i'm i'm as conscious i think of what people think of me as as what i'm choosing to drink i was always um slightly afraid that perhaps you just don't get invited out as much um what have they made of your drinking changes um thank you so i get a bit of stick from some of them for my my stupid chandes or what or whatever they call them but then a couple of them have started you know have started drinking the same things too just a little mantra that i got into my head one of the producers of the of the documentary said that um it stucks in my mind that she said alcohol is the only drug you have to is the only drug you have to apologize for not taking and i and that was something i really promised myself after making that film and that was and that was don't don't ever um don't ever bully somebody into drinking when they don't necessarily want to and don't ever be bullied by anybody else into drinking so it really doesn't bother me anymore if i you know if if anyone says a girl i say look i just sit and have a confidence then it's all sort of forgotten and i think the popular pints of something that looks like beer draft beer in a glass is so important to have that available in pubs just just because it just means you don't have to have the conversation you can just get you just get you just get you just get on with it now there's an alpine lager which um they're doing sam smith's pops in london which is 2.7 or something and i just think well that's the answer when i go if i'm meeting somebody in a pub i'll sort of always go in those because that will do me for the evening just pints of cold flu actually when i go to croatia and i'm going next week you know in many ways not the most progressive country possibly but i was stunned when i when after i started cutting down i went there for summer and i was there for two weeks actually for the first week i didn't even bother asking for alcohol free lag because i won't have it but then not until they have it they actually have it not on draft but they have it in ice cold 500 ml bottles all the big breweries there all do an alcohol-free version there's a consequence i barely drank anything any alcohol all week because you know got back from the beach sitting by the beach in the hotel or whatever one of those absolutely absolutely does it for me i was quite lucky that i started this journey my birthday's uh sort of start of january which is normally a rubbish time to have a birthday yeah but um to start my year of not drinking obviously it falls within dry january and uh so i i really noticed that my local had a an adnam's ghost chip 0.5 on tap i could i could get a pint of non-alcoholic beer and slept with my friends and no one knew anything different um and then as soon as february first rolled around that came off tap the number of non-alcoholic beers in the fridge i i presume they were just put back in the back shelf of a cellar somewhere to get out next january um i i absolutely noticed that completely shift i i agree with you i went to um spain just before the lockdown and again i think you're heightened to noticing all these things i don't think i went in a bar or restaurant where there wasn't a really good selection of alcohol-free beers i found it really interesting actually the alcohol-free section in the supermarket was with the soft drinks um yeah and if you think about the layout of a british supermarket the alcohol-free is a kind of apologetic section at the end of the alcohol aisle whereas here they were just offering them as a non-alcoholic soft drink it's just something that people drink um which i found really interesting what what do you do oh god well i just it's interesting i had some i had amazon deliver some erdenger i was away somewhere and just instead of you know taking a crate with me yeah um i'll get it delivered where i was staying i couldn't provide any id that i was over 18. to buy alcohol free beer i mean the poor lady had you know he said look i know it's ridiculous but you know they'll come down on us like a ton of bricks if we don't you know if we don't get you know if we don't actually physically see proof and take pictures of it but i mean that's not amazon's voice the stupid rule they've got like you buy alcohol free being in the supermarket at the automated checkout you've got to call somebody over to authorize that you look over 25 yeah in order to buy something without alcohol in i don't know you know i don't know why that you know i don't know why that is but in terms of in terms of being in pubs like you said i think the critical question is is why does that ghost ship go off what does that the draft go [ __ ] what does that disappear excuse me at the end of dry january why don't they do draft beer now is it because they don't do the volume generally so they can't sell it or is there something more nefarious going on that they're frightened if they don't offer him if people drink too much of that they will see through almost the lie of of alcohol a beer with alcohol in that it actually doesn't make any difference whether you drink it or not i'm just going to take this quick opportunity to invite people to send us in their their questions uh if you're watching this on youtube or facebook there should be an opportunity to leave a comment next to the screen uh we're especially keen to hear from you if you've got a strategy that you've used uh to drink less both adrian and i would love to know what it is uh mainly so we can uh steal them and incorporate them into our lives um so yeah send us send us those in um sorry in terms of what you wanted to change sorry too sorry to interrupt i think the i think labeling is really important and you know i think we're possibly moving in that direction from what the prime minister's been banging on about in terms of calories and stuff but people still don't really know what a unit is a lot of people still don't really know what it is and it just seems to me that on a on the on the the the you know with the we've got a draft beer on the tap or whatever you want to call it there's absolutely no reason that on there it can't say how many calories in that and a pint of that fluid and how many units there are in a part of that that would seem that would seem to me to be you know absolutely essential now you're gonna start forcing restaurants to put calorie counts on the menus then surely that that's got to start start going on the drinks as well i came across a really uh confusing drink which is one of my uh biggest finds of the first six months of this um it's a product done by a a distillery in south london called hayman's they do something called a small gin and it is exactly the same um abv as their regular gin it's 42 yeah so on the surface value it's not a non-drinkers product but what they've done is they've massively over flavored it so instead of having you know a 25 or 50 ml serve you have a thimble full you have a five mil serving in a gin and tonic so your units that you're drinking in a tall glass of gin and tonic is actually 0.2 now to me that's a brilliant product that nobody understands because what they see on the front of the bottle is 40 abv that looks like any other gym they don't i i completely agree with you there is a disconnect between abv which you see in pubs quite a lot you'll see a long list of our guest ales this month and 5.6 but what that actually relates to as a unit is um is completely baffling um we are starting to get in uh some questions so i'm just going to take this opportunity to ask a few of these um there's one here um i can see your names just for the sake of anonymity i'm just going to ask the questions um so interesting so far says this was there any activating event that led to adrian going forward and making the program and examining his own drinking well i mean there were there were there were several there were several little ones and it's not i mean you got to understand what it takes to make a television program i can i can want to make as many tv programs as as i like is getting them commissioned it's another matter so a so was it any event that led me to want to make the program and then persuade the bbc to give us the funds to make the program um i would say there were a couple of things that i that happened or little things that were sent to me that i then used in the commissioning process so that's what persuaded them that there was something in what i was i was saying so sorry it's a very long-winded gobbled answer the short answer is yes there were several things the slightly longer answer is i'll give you two of them one a really good friend of mine about the same age as me big drink i've known her for years and when i stopped drinking once for lent remember her saying to me said oh you know without drinking you know the world's a very beige place for me and i just it was a lovely day i was looking at the sky and i was looking at the the trees i thought nine nights i'm not having that that's mad that's mad if the drink if you if if the drink is telling you that if you're telling yourself that the world is beige without drink then you are in the grip of some kind of of some kind of addiction or dependence you know the drink has poisoned your brain to that point and i have felt exactly that i felt you know i have i realized subconsciously that is what i was i was thinking and the other the other thing that happened was i was um i was with frank skinner and we'd met for uh uh who's a very close friend of mine and we and he's a recovering alcoholic he hasn't touched a drop for nearly 30 years and we'd met we were talking about this kind of issue when we met we met for dinner somewhere and i s and i said my worry is that i said let's say right the my hundred of my closest friends were gathered in a in a you know in a restaurant a bar across the road to celebrate something you know with me i said if the fact is i would be looking forward to that a lot less if i was told that i couldn't drink that and he was which i seem to me just perfect common sense but he was absolutely aghast he said i just did you really feel like that said yeah yeah he said i just can't believe you're talking about that you're one of those social people i know why would it make any difference and then i thought yeah blimey that's um yeah that's you know that's interesting and it was all these little things to say you know i'm probably more dependent on alcohol than than i thought i was one of the uh questions we asked in a in our recent uh drinking survey was would you look forward to an evening less if you found out one of your friends was not going to be drinking so this is this isn't less about you as the non-drinker but more about the people around you more than half of the people who replied said yes they would look forward to an evening less if one of their friends announced they weren't going to drink um and i think that that speaks to those fears that you know if you don't drink actually everybody's going to enjoy the evening less not just you um and that's a terrible thing i think we're quite lucky i think you know uh you and i are both reasonably confident people and i don't think but i would still feel like that though i would still if i was honest despite myself and even knowing it was absurd i i probably couldn't help but feel that same way it's terrible isn't it you know um some strategies starting to come in here one says my strategy was daily walks meditation and yoga without giving too much away i can see that that's come from a woman do you think there's a difference between men and women when it comes to sobriety and moderation um probably probably not um [Music] i think i don't get into these generalizations of men and women but i think maybe there's differences in what you drink i think and i think wine is kind of hard to cut down in the sense that i'm all about measuring quantities so with beer you normally know where you're at with why if you keep pouring it you know there's no one standard size of glass and so on also you know you've got a bottle of wine at home there's this thing you've got to finish it well you don't get that if you're drinking say cans of beer at home yeah so i i think that will probably yeah i think i think i think there's that difference but i don't i don't think no i don't think that is uh i don't think that's um i don't that's necessarily i don't know necessarily true but i think white is harder to deal with then um than a lot of beer i would have thought well on that point there's another comment here that says my strategy is alcohol-free beer through and through um no need for booze with such top quality alcohol-free beers now i've read a piece that you wrote in the guardian last year about some of your favorite alcohol-free beers um yeah how did you incorporate those into your habits um well at home it's more or less it's more or less all a drink the alcohol-free beer and i thought it was i was talking to lee mack who's given up drinking completely a comedian feels very strongly about it but he was saying when he was cutting down he said one of the key things he did he made his first two drinks alcohol free when he went out even if he meant making put him two bottles of bex blue in a pint glass or whatever so the first two pints would be alcohol-free but he said by the time he got to the end of those two he just thought well oh wait i'm having a perfectly normal time why would i start drinking beer now you know so so the i mean if i just somebody said something the other day and i really appreciate your thoughts on this and it kind of stopped me in my tracks because i think that the my key strategy and i think what works with most people is this idea which i first heard the words come from laura's math actually was about mindful drinking about working out which drinks it is you want or need or enjoy now i know suppose you're not not supposed to need a drink right but anyway if you can just isolate it to those then i think you'll be fine because let me give you an example a blog came to me at west brom not long enough not long after i've done the program and he goes go talk to you and i went yeah yeah you know i drink 40 pounds a larger no i took 50 pounds of lager a week do you think that's too much and ludicrously i started adopting the kind of the kindly gp's tone well i mean you might consider cutting down and all that and in the end i went actually let me put it like this to you right if you drink all those 50 pints and you love the bones of every single one of them right do you really enjoy every single one and and i said well do you anywhere you know fair point purple so if you can just isolate the ones that you really want need or enjoy and stick to them somehow i think that's the key but there's a big bot which i'll come to in a second so i mean the when i worked out on the back of an envelope during making that program that if you put all the drinks i've drunk in my life since i was 15 in a line it'd be about four miles long right and i thought well that's obviously bad you think of all that flushing through your system i thought what if how many of those um how many of those how many of those um drinks do i really how many of those do i really did i really want need or enjoy and and the uh i don't think it was a third yeah you know so i need to get to my god just going to get to the key point and i was saying this to somebody the other day and was a psychologist and i was saying that i think the issue is is that the first drink we have in a change it achieves some change of state that first drink of the evening and i came to thinking all subsequent drinks really are some kind of subconscious attempt to recreate the change of state that that first one afforded you but in fact that's fruitless because the you know the change of state achieved by drinking a fourth drink compared to a third drink is is negligible but then this this psychologist i was talking to you said yeah that works but what if the change of state you wish to achieve is oblivion what if you're drinking for oblivion then i don't know what you do then because plainly moderation is then pointless because if you if you are held set up achieving oblivion then you know moderate drinking's going to do it moderate drinking's not going to do it for me you know i don't i never want to achieve oblivion but what i do want to achieve is that slight change of state in which a lot less alcohol can achieve that um yes i mean to your point about the um those occasion drinks matt who i present my podcast with um in the first few episodes i think he was adamant on changing my mind and getting me back in the pub yeah and he was describing all those special beers that i was going to deprive myself of you know and he he sort of ran through a full list that that first beer when you arrive at your holiday destination uh you know all of those um you know the pub garden on a sunny day you're gonna deprive yourself all of those and he kept listing them off i get but that's about 12 beers a year those aren't the problem ones yeah it's all of the others that's the problem that first drink when you get to on holiday and you sat around the pool i agree that's a fantastic drink and i look forward to having it again the six that i had after it though their sort of surplus requirements yeah a friend of mine has a serious dependence issue of cameraman at the bbc and he told me he was frightened to death about going to aaa but went and he said something he heard in that first meeting i thought was really interesting the woman said you know it's getting it was it was summer time he said like it's really hot now and you're just thinking of going to the you know the image you've got in your mind is going to that pop guard and seeing the part a lager seeing it with you know the condensation on the side and ice cold that's the image you've got well forget about that image have the image in your head of the half drunk fourth or fifth pint of lager or glass of wine which is all a bit smudged there's wasps buzzing around it there's the odd crisp packet they have that image in your mind i thought god that's so right you know you know just sort of reframing a bit you don't get those images on the advertising you know what i mean you don't well in fact you don't get any well you don't get any negative images on the advertising that's another that's another story um so obviously in your documentary um you know there was some talk of you know future psoriasis and and all of these things are some way down the line and i think they're hard to imagine have you had any material benefits from drinking less anything you can actually point people to and go my life is better in this way because i drink less um yeah i am more focused i'm less tired you know the melodies you know the middle-aged maladies i suffer from anywhere like um you know anxiety depression uh hypertension oh reflux all those things those are all much easier those are all those have all been eased by by drinking by drinking less also i do genuinely enjoy the drinks i enjoy the drinks i do have that much more you know i tend to value them a bit more but this can only come from slavishly to my mind slavishly counting the units it's tedious you know it's it's it's it's just boring people think you're stupid doing it you know but you i for me i have to do it to keep myself honest you know so i can look back but on wednesday night i had a bit of a hiccup i went you know but i saw some friends i'd seen since before lockdown there four of us went out you know a lot was home for eleven o'clock but i you know i drank i drank an awful lot and and the and you know when i the reckoning came in the morning i thought okay well i put that down and just seeing it was i thought well did i enjoy all of those and i thought i identified the the drinks that i could have done without i think well i'll try and learn from that next time but also i'm not gonna give the whole thing up now and so go mad again tonight in the following night you know and i didn't drink anything the following night and next to nothing the night after that and i probably won't drink again i probably won't drink again tonight so you know always assessing where you are you can only do that if you feel that flipping thing so well that that's really interesting when we should move on to those strategies and um operating systems is the term that i've been uh using over the last couple of months um i saw the app that you were using when you you made the documentary and you're sort of going through the next morning and all right well actually i started using drink less think less is the one i use in that scene i did i haven't come across trigger so you drink away and i much prefer the drink less slot but anyway it's the same same difference well uh tell people about because perhaps there are people who haven't used it i certainly haven't used an app like that um mainly because i'm at zero at the moment but next year i might do what's good about it if i was a zero i'd still use it just for the sheer pleasure you know you know every day well just did the following day you get a reminder at 11 o'clock and it says fill in your diary at which point you go you go back and say well you work out this many beers i had about this much wine and whatever else and then you get a little and then you get and then a little graph bar chart comes up of how much you've drunk on a certain day and how much you've drunk over a certain week and it's and you just it just reminds you of you know of how you're doing and where you're at well i always advise people i think this is critical if you're a big drinker i'd give yourself at least two weeks carrying on as you are drinking a lot and filling the thing in so you've got two whacking great big um things on your chart at the top at the beginning of it so then you can be working your way down from it after that it's a good incentive it's there's almost a a personality that would enjoy that kind of um daily reminder um for want of a better phrase i guess it depends whether you're half glass full or half glass empty but um do you ever you know have on a day where you're perhaps on a on a week where you're over 20 units for the week do you look at that and feel down that you've let yourself down at all or reminded of where you used to be i reminded where i used to be i think okay did i need to do that why was that all right lesson learned it's still a lot less than i was before um let's not you know let's not panic but let's sort of i'll enjoy getting it down next week so i can see that the bar charts come down so i've come across other strategies uh recently quite often i see people having a set block of some kind in the week where they don't drink at all i've seen variations on that where you know uh someone said they have to have a 72 hour period without drinking it doesn't matter where in the week it comes but i'll know that the starter will wreak roughly where that's going to be um i've seen people who regularly you know they don't drink monday tuesday wednesday the other days of the week they can do as much as they like um or there's people who don't drink any two days in a row have you come across any of these strategies that you've maybe thought about adopting or or that you liked the sound of um well i think i've tried them all at some stage one that does appeal to me actually because it's flexible is have one day on and one day off so say i started today say i didn't drink today i could drink tomorrow or say i drunk today i couldn't drink tomorrow but then let's say i've drank today and tomorrow then i'd have to give myself two days off or if i drank today tomorrow and the day after i then had to give myself three days off so you'd either always you're always in debt or in credit with that when when i last started doing that actually that was a couple of years ago what i found myself doing slightly was on the on the days that were drinking days i thought well i'm not just having one here i might since it's a drinking day i might as well uh you know i might as well crack on which was sort of sub-optimal to say to say the least so i just think the proof of the pudding is in what you're drinking over the whole week well also there's little things that people have said to me that thing about the beigeness that sticks in my mind and also i tell i'll remind myself of that another one there's a sociologist professor at bath who i happen to know through he's a west brom supporter and he said you know i found a way to take drink off its undeserved pedestal in my life and that's that sticks in my mind that helps me those kind of thoughts help me i've got it on this pedestal no you know the other things are more important than that you know it's not the be-all and end-all come on get real but the the 13-year-old you that's uh skulking off to the local pub to try and get served yeah um absolutely did already have it on a pedestal absolutely i mean i think that's a i'm trying to write a book on this subject now that's what i've been doing during all of lockdown and it's been i've been going through for drinking at different stages of my life and that's what you just said is exactly the conclusion i've sort of reached about myself you know i think it's a kind of societal thing you know it's probably what sort of in your family this and this i don't think the licensing laws help or i wouldn't change them you know the lower drinking age rules but you know i remember my dad saying to me i was 14 15. he's a difficult age now isn't it you kind of you're too young to stay at home but you're not old enough to go to the pub it was like when you can get served in pubs and go to pubs that is you know it you know it solves the central question in life which is what am i going to do well i'm going to the pot yeah so already it was set off as a on a kind of a pedestal and similarly you know with you know i'm sure advertising had invaded its way through you know into our minds by that age and i was thinking of what adverts influenced me i remember the heineken reaching the parts that other beers cannot reach you know i just think that's such a powerful message that i mean i was from from a very young age i was running around in a in my spurs shirt with holston pills written on the front of it yeah yeah yeah yeah so that that can't have helped um if you i i'm conscious of perhaps spoiling the conclusion of your book here but if you could go back and give that 13 year old any sort of message what might it be um i thought long and hard about that and i just i don't know what it i you know i don't know what it i don't know what it would have been for me at the time i think everyone would be slightly different if i've made a real idiot of myself at some reason or somebody or somebody who i really respected had been really cool and said it's just not cool what are you doing it for but all the cool people seem to drink but that was my that was my twisted perception of it what's interested me actually i've spoken to i mean i know a fair few recovering alcoholics and i i've asked them the question you effectively asked me and you could ask me of any sort of heavy drinker whether they've stopped drinking or still doing it is what intervention could have happened at some point in your life to have to have made a difference to you and in all cases i've done pretty strong recovering alcoholics who in the sense that you are you know go to a and stuff where they are told it's a disease you are powerless etc and to some extent they believe that most of them do say well if i'd been told this at an early age if a doctor said this to me you know that might have set me on a difference that might have set me on a different path now i was surprised because there's a couple of people in particular i thought well there's nothing that could have been done because i've got this disease and that's the end of it he was going to get me in the end but no one has yet said that to me and you know i'm really sort of exploring that i mean i thought a lot about what i wish doctors had said to me in the past and um i mean one woman who a woman called susan laurie who's written a brilliant book called um which i can't remember from uh i don't know i could but if you look up susan laurie um l-a-w-r-i-e i think it is um something to sober forever it's got she'll kill me for forgetting she's been really helpful and she had to stop completely but she said you know i honestly think if you'd if i'd if you're pro if i'd seen your program when i was 25 or 30 then i think that would have really made a difference a lot i'm not claiming that certainly claim that level of influence but you know it was incredibly flattering and incredibly encouraging i think you know it'd be good by the way somebody i've just seen somebody has um asked a question here would you consider doing another program on alcohol i absolutely would have been desperate to do it and and you know they just i can't get anybody interested there's feeling no we've done drinking now you know we've covered that issue blind me but i mean my email has been coming along the bottom of the screen or was um hopefully we can stick it back up there just before we go you know i'm very keen to hear from anybody i really really appreciate it any any kind of um advice you've got i mean my two questions would be you know how have you managed to moderate however silly whatever little tricks you've got also what interventions you wish you had whether you've stopped drinking completely or you moderate i suppose or you're still drinking heavily whatever you know what you wish you'd been told or wish you'd understood earlier that might have changed things i i'd be so grateful if you could get in touch with me i'd really like to uh i'd really like to i'm not getting you to write my book for me but the book is worthless unless i've got the experiences of other people in as well as my own because everybody is slightly different um we've got a couple of minutes before uh we have to make way i'll just mention actually at four o'clock um alcohol and creativity is the next session can you untangle the two which actually i think you and i could probably carry on talking for another hour yeah yeah yeah um uh i've found in my year i absolutely had to reset to zero and i knew that i don't think i could go from where i was drinking to a moderate level without going all the way down first yeah um and that's absolutely been my methodology i've actually done it in the past i gave up sugar free yeah and and thought i'd adopt the same methodology i lost about four stone in a year giving up sugar um and knew that i wouldn't be able to go from you know ten chocolate bars a week to six i had to go to zero um and that's that's worked for me i've actually found it easier to get to zero than i think i will next year i think next year is the difficult year yeah yeah you know absolutely right because it's a grey area you just you involve so much decision making who do i drink with what do i drink how much do i drink when do i drink when do i stop drinking when do i start it's exhausting you know there's a hundred decisions to make a week there have been plenty of times this year where i thought the easiest thing to do would be to stick at zero um and depending on who you speak to and obviously i'm speaking to a lot of people for this podcast i i'm continually confused everybody has a different perspective everybody has a different opinion i'm very easily swayed um i remember when i spoke to laura from club soda yeah completely changed my mind as to where i'd been the previous week yeah in fact one of the people i've i've had one drink so far this year it was easter sunday and a glass of red wine and it's because i've recorded an interview the previous day and the person i'd spoken to had completely shifted my mentality back to do you know what those special drinks i shouldn't deprive myself how did you feel after you had that do you know what the [ __ ] about no i felt like what would you uh i do you know i really enjoyed it um it's a it's a it's a bottle of wine i've had for about six years and wanted to really drink it was a special occasion bottle and i had one medium glass of it um it tasted delicious i was quite happy that i had it i had a lovely easter sunday meal with my family i didn't beat myself up about it it won't make this year a failure um and i look forward to doing that on occasions in the future what i didn't have was the whole bottle um and i didn't really want the whole bottle i wanted to have a nice glass of red wine with my meal and celebrate easter um so uh yeah it's it's really fascinating i think we are unfortunately gonna have to wrap up this um and uh well thank you very much uh adrian for chatting to us i also want to thank laura and the the club soda team for inviting us both along um i've got six months left to come up with a plan uh for the second half of my uh drinking years i guess i'm halfway on that um on wet and dry podcast and this festival carries on uh through the rest of the weekend um i've had a look at some of the sessions so far they are fascinating so if you do get a chance uh have a look at those um and i guess adrian will all um be looking out for your book okay well thanks very much and uh you could help me out with it i'd be very grateful so just like do get in touch please i'd love i'd love to hear from you and honestly i'm not being lazy i just wanna you know channel the experiences of as many people as i possibly can yours is fascinating jeff and i can just see by the you know the list of names coming up on the side of the screen here making some interesting observations and stuff i'd love to i'd love to hear from them too so if anyone can get in touch it is uh adrian.childs at btoneworld.com thank you very much thank you very much cheers have a good day thank you

Channel: Club Soda

Views: 2,933

Keywords:

Id: MINbUqFowoo

Length: 51min 6sec (3066 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 02 2020