The Truth About Why I Quit Alcohol | 4 YEARS SOBER

so I quit alcohol four years ago today let us have a big alcohol-free GMT cheers to that so in this video I'm going to share more about the main reason why I quit alcohol which I didn't do in this video because it was still all very raw back then I really was not ready to talk about it six months after it happened I guess I also want to share a kind of brief overview of my relationship with alcohol from when I start drinking to become sober and some of the best biggest benefits that I've experienced from quitting but just a bit of a disclaimer my goal I guess with sharing this kind of stuff is not to shame anybody who chooses to drink alcohol it's to reach people who know they have a problem or think they might have a problem with drinking there's not just two types of drinkers it's not like you are an on the floor alcoholic you know rock bottom or you're one of those people who can just drink socially and always have an amazing time like almost everything in life it is a spectrum and with all that said I'm just gonna start talking and see where see where we land you probably know but in case you don't because some people don't I'm Irish and I live in Ireland and my school friends started drinking when they were around 13 14. we would be getting ready to go to Junior discos and they would be drinking Noggins naggins of vodka and Nagin here in Ireland is I think it means like 200 mil of a spirit but yeah they'd be hiding in the wardrobe you know squeaking out these bottles and I was absolutely terrified of my mom's smelling alcohol off me so I was just too scared to to even chance it even at that young age I knew that there were all kinds of problem drinkers on either side of my family from binge drinkers to alcoholics like with most families in Ireland it's not unique or rare and I just didn't want to go down that road I didn't want to disappoint my parents um but as I went through my teen years the peer pressure really mounted on me and by the time I got to like 16 I was yeah just getting smashed in fields on sleepovers at parties um got myself a boyfriend his whole crowd friends would heavily drink you know um everything from like gold slagger which is this liquor with cinnamon and bits of gold flakes in it and they'd drink absent they'd even get their hands on poutine which is illegal I'm pretty sure and I just really wanted to fit in so I would either drink flavored ciders or alco pops Alco pops really did get me on to drink and I feel like they're the equivalent of you know those strawberry flavored Vapes if that's like an algo pop whiskey is like a cigar you know they learn so many people in and yeah so that's around the age when I would start drinking at concerts with my friends I started going to a nightclub with a fake ID when I was 17. um my mum and I stopped seeing eye to eye around the time I started drinking and yeah I was 16 and I moved out because we were fighting so much and literally now as a mother myself like I have two kids and I can see that she was just trying to protect me but obviously me being a teenager I just saw her as the biggest buzz kill and I wanted her to leave me alone to have fun so I moved in with my dad and dads and teenage daughters have a different relationship like he just wanted to give me my space so I was able to get away with a lot more um and hide a lot more from him he would go out to the pub with his friends and I would bring friends over um by midnight all like in the bath so so drunk destroying his apartment after drinking multiple bottles of rum yeah between 16 and 21 those were my Prime binge drinking years and there were so many nights where I would wake up and not remember how I'd gotten to where I was what I'd said what I'd done or I'd have these like flashbacks of things like I remember being very In and Out Of Consciousness and a friend of our friend group like I was in between his legs and he was assaulting me basically like he was groping the inside of my toys he was sucking on my earlobe and I remember I didn't want to tell anyone because I was so paranoid that my then boyfriend would think that I had cheated on him and yeah stuff like that just happened all the time I don't want to say that all this awful drunken Behavior was normalized necessarily but it was normal it was common girls passed out at parties and guys just pulling down their underwear in front of everyone and laughing while the girls were like incapable of reacting so they were literally unconscious people around me would just get so drunk and get into these massive fights or drive really dangerously I remember being in a car with someone who was really really far gone and um just completely panicked the car swerved and I hopped out and hid in a bush overnight and I was so drunk I had no idea where my phone was like this kind of stuff all the time I broke my wrist while I was drunk I was assaulted a second time in a laneway by two men one of them ripped my tights with a set of keys and I spent the rest of that night in a police car with my dad trying to find them outside one of the pubs and I got into so many fights with people I loved Partners family when I was drunk and I spent God only knows how much money I probably could have bought my first car but no spent thousands probably on drinking fast forward to me turning 21 and I became really interested in health so like I learned how to cook lost a bunch of weight got fit and I'd keep binge drinking as like a treat for special occasions I gave myself this new rule to just drink two glasses of wine on nights out I'd trained myself to like wine and that's the funny thing you know when we're like really young we just think alcohol tastes like poison makes sense it's literally a toxic substance but I had trained myself to loved it and I still this is I love the taste of drink I still do like I know I don't taste it anymore but the flavor is like a big Goblet of wine in an Italian restaurant or like a Mojito on the beach then yeah for most of my 20s my drinking habits were relatively normal if you compare them to most of my friends I would drink and get quite Tipsy not so messy that I couldn't look after myself but I had so much fun work events holidays you know I I had an all-right relationship with alcohol and then I moved to Spain which some of you probably remember my now husband was training to be a pilot and I moved over there to like support him and stuff and our whole lives were like he was studying I was writing my first novel the one with alcoholic granny um and yeah we'd go to the gym and that was like our whole life so on the weekends we really liked to let loose and the thing is in Spain they love to free pour their spirits say if you order Spirits with a mixer like with Coke in Ireland it'd be like say that much and in Spain and be like that much and it was all like a load of guys in his class and we would go out with for these dinners and stuff and I just wanted to keep up with them I guess I think that's where it started I was trying to drink like a man with my smaller much less capable female body I could not deal with the same amount of alcohol that they could but I was drinking the same amount and just blackened out a lot um embarrassing myself so bad we would go out for dinner and they'd have a few drinks and I would leave completely off my tits I'd be falling out of taxis into ditches vomiting on all fours uh just like Thomas told me I used to I'd lock myself in the bathroom and I'd be on the floor screaming into the floor just incoherent gobbledygook coming out of my mouth um so many things that I I just wouldn't remember you know because the thing is with me if there's any icky feelings there like jealousy insecurity worry at the time I'd repress it um but mix in some alcohol and I'd let it all out it would like explode out of me and I think that's why I started to like want to get so drunk often because I could be vulnerable and I could blame the drink you know what me deeply insecure about your friendship with this beautiful girl because I feel threatened because right now I have some self-image issues and because every time I've been in love in the past the person has cheated on me or has betrayed me in some extreme way no no no no it was just the gym it was just the Gin so yeah I'd get really drunk and I'd lose my mind over the course of a few months my drinking habits basically changed maybe I just felt like I suddenly had a lot to lose and I wasn't sure how to deal with that fast forward to us moving back to Ireland this continued and it was really impacting my progress with weightlifting at the time and it was massively impacting my job because I'd have all these days where I'd be so unproductive after a mad drinking session and I'd be postponing or canceling on sponsorships one night back in Dublin like Thomas and I were drinking with someone and I ended up drinking almost an entire bottle of whiskey the beginning of this is in a vlog from the time and this will just show you how much people hide from their their online content like same thing that might like me vomiting everywhere screaming into the floor blacking out and this happened a few times before we get into the actual incident that led to me quit and drink a cold turkey let me quickly tell you about today's video sponsor if you're watching this and you're having problems with drinking and you're not doing therapy hand on heart you will benefit so much from speaking to a professional better help that's better h-e-l-p the world's largest therapy service it's 100 online with better help you have access to 30 000 odd therapists who are licensed and experienced and they can help you with not only alcohol issues but a wide range of struggles that you might be experiencing and to start you just have to answer a few questions about your needs and what you're looking for with therapy and it'll help them to match you to the right person and then you can just talk to them whenever it's comfortable for you you can ring them you can text them you can have a weekly video call at your own convenience which I really appreciate as a mother of two very young children if for whatever reason you're not vibing with the person they've matched you with you can switch therapists for free and as someone who has her fair share of experience with in-office therapy and with better help I'm using them now for postpartum issues like you can probably tell by my eyes I look very tired and I was crying a lot yesterday I'm I'm dealing with a lot behind the scenes and better help really helped me they were there for me during the pandemic and if you're interested you can get 10 off using my link it's down in the description box um I couldn't speak more highly of better help right let's go there the incident so one night we were in a hotel lobby my husband and I was before we were married and it was his first time meeting my mom my mum and I had a very strained relationship for many years which I've shared I've not gone into it much like obviously to protect her privacy and my privacy the certain certain things I'll never share online but um yeah I was mixing drinks for about seven hours eight hours straight not drinking any water and basically what happened is a conversation came up that really triggered me I was in such a deep state of drunkenness when this triggering conversation happened and suddenly I was like a dog with rabies I lost my mind I was not just drunk I was dizzy I was having delusions I turned violent I broke stuff I cannot remember a lot of it I I had to be physically removed from the hotel by the staff in mind I have a public Presence at this point and it was just so mortifying some of the things that I apparently said and did and the little slivers that I do remember it was the worst moment night day of my entire life by a mile absolutely awful for days afterwards I was shaking I couldn't eat I couldn't sleep and you know I think that was my Moment of clarity this isn't who I want to be I don't want to hurt people that I love I don't want to be awful to be around alcohol on me we ain't vibing I quit cold turkey quit drinking just immediately found a therapist and she thought it was a alcohol induced psychosis and she not only walked me through how she thought I was self-sabotaging and pushing my husband away because I didn't feel that I deserved a loving safe relationship she introduced me to Shadow work which just makes it impossible for you to run away from your true self your repressed self like your hidden self even hidden hidden from yourself it's just fascinating she also taught me about this thing called transactional analysis completely life-changing and I still use it to this day I could do entire videos on those subjects let me know if you want that but in the meantime I'm gonna link a little bit about them in the description box below and yeah so on to like right where am I at now with sobriety you might remember I first committed to one year sober then after that year was up I committed to five more years sober and the reason for not just being like I'm done forever is because I struggle with black and white thinking like that and I like I just I don't know it's easier for me to commit if I know it's not like locked in for life um it just makes it less scary I quit I'm committed to the year off drink firstly mainly to prove to Thomas that I was really serious about sorting my [ __ ] I knew in my bones that it everything I wanted was Within Reach and I could have ruined it all I could have ruined it I could I could so easily not be in the position I'm in now with my family and my home if I had enough quit because it was that night was a nail in the coffin you know and I had to sort out all of my fears wrapped up in relationships like I had found something that was more important than fun that's what you have to do something has to matter more than fun if I wanted this healthy happy family that I'd always dreamed of and to be a great mother I couldn't keep going the way I was going no way Quentin it wasn't just for Thomas it was for me and my future self that's what's kept me off the drink that's what stops me from having it when I want it because I do sometimes want it but I don't want it enough I don't want it more done the stability and happiness of my family to the benefits so I made it real about this their um discovering real confidence and realizing that so much of why I would drink a lot socially was the fear of just not being interesting to people and not being able to have deep and interesting conversations without that kind of social lubricant it feels so good to know that I can kind of just sit with anyone now and just talk about anything and not rely on a literal poison no more hangovers not being hungover surprisingly feels better than being drunk I am way more productive way more productive I get so much done now even though I have two kids and I'm like a stay-at-home mom like I maximize every spare hour that I have back when I had no kids and I was drinking like I would just so procrastinate so much so easily way less regretful Behavior less shame less remorse less being a little [ __ ] I've saved a small fortune I remember hearing someone say that in the course of your lifetime you can spend up to like 200 000 quid on alcohol terrifying it's like a house I remember being 19 and I would be able to drink easily like 20 alcohol pops just add that up this like insane no more puffy drinking face I used to just have this constant bloated face from drink way less conflict with people I love obviously they're still you know bickering and arguments but it's just a different level it's like I argue like an adult now you know um transactional analysis reminding you about that it's linked down below please read about it change my life read into the health benefits of not drinking alcohol my cancer risk is reduced as I get older this stuff is way more of a big deal to me because I know so many people my age who've developed cancer who are cancer survivors couldn't say that when I was 20. you know you blink and you're like 15 years older so stuff like cancer risk like that [ __ ] matters to me now whereas when I was 20 it just seemed so far in the future and it was just like I was like don't need to worry about that and I can remember things like I don't have any more of these awful experiences where I go to an event and I just can't really remember it I just try and imagine like my wedding if I'd been drinking the most expensive day of my life like imagine spending all that money and just having like these little crappy little flashes of memory the biggest benefit by far is just I've been able to address all crap that alcohol was masking for me like it was it was masking so many problems that I thought I dealt with like I had been to therapy multiple times already and I I just didn't think these things were were things turns out actually oh my God like up until even my mid-20s I was just lying to myself I was crippled by fear and just feelings of inadequacy and fear of Abandonment and so many yucky things and yeah just getting sober therapy will be worth it if you're if you're thinking about it and it is it is going to be hard it's brutal Journal like Christmas and ah like times where you have to be around you know people and you want to just feel loosey-goosey and it's not just Christmas it's baby showers I've learned it's uh weddings parties funerals christenings christenings barbecues there have been days postpartum that have really tested me and I've so desperately wanted to just have one massive glass of wine at the end of a hard mothering day there have been times where I've sniffed the top of bottles it's not like it's just easy um all the time it's it's mostly easy now as time has gone on it's gotten easier but there are days that are hard but it is still worth it and like like will I ever be drunk again no I couldn't say that now 100 I'm never getting drunk again will I ever drink again Maybe I've been able to say that keeps me going um but yeah I'm I'm stupid proud of myself I am and I'll give myself that I'm so proud of myself for this four years as someone who with that background that I've just shared um but yeah that's that's that's me I'm gonna stop talking now it's my video please share with me your experiences with drink down below in the comments and like did you come to this channel because of my quit and Alcohol video like my pros and cons video I still get amazing messages every week from people about that video and how it's helped them and it's an amazing feeling to know that like I've positively impacted anyone I'm gonna go thanks again very much to better help for sponsoring me and I hope that this has been a kick up the ass for someone watching even if it is for five year two year one year I'll be delighted that I posted it I just can't believe I'm gonna post this on the internet right I'm gonna go a little hello [Music]

Channel: Melanie Murphy

Views: 49,317

Keywords: Melanie Murphy alcohol, why I quit alcohol, quitting alcohol, getting sober, sober, dry July, alcohol journey, alcohol quit motivation, motivation, inspiration, alcohol problem, alcohol free, AF, Melanie Murphy

Id: QGhzbdpTZlM

Length: 22min 1sec (1321 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023