What I've Learned from Four Years off Alcohol

it's rolling so welcome to today's video today's video is slightly different from the style of videos that we have been shooting for bank house media for the past while um and the reason why i'm making today's video is that today the 18th of october is my fourth year anniversary of being of alcohol so i wanted to mark this year by doing a video just talking about some of my experiences and throughout the past four years and just some of the positive things that has actually happened in my life after i finally knocked like the toughest habit that i've ever had to knock and my greatest achievement i believe to date and given up alcohol over the past four years whenever i look back um there's been so many people have like sent me messages sent me emails got my phone number off a friend and and contacted me and reached out to me confidentially and asked me you know how did you stop drinking do you think i should stop drinking this is what i'm going through right now and i've always answered the phone i've always replied to the people i've always um just done anything that i possibly could because whenever i wanted to ask that question the people that i asked really really helped me so what we've actually done today we have put together me and my closest friends and a few people at the team and work have put together like six questions that we're just going to run through i'm going to answer them as honestly as i possibly can and hopefully that will help somebody else it's maybe sitting right now in the current situation that we're in locked down in the house bottle of wine whatever it may be you don't bars don't have to be open to drink you know i drank in the house i would have drank anywhere i loved drinking alcohol i was very very good at it um my current situation right now i've got a couple of businesses i'm a film producer and i've got a digital media media agency i've got a brilliant team of people working with me and i love my job and i love my life i travel between ireland and america and it's something that i'm very grateful that i have the opportunity to do but i wasn't always here um in the last recession i ended up going bankrupt and i lost everything um and i don't think it's a coincidence that in the last economic downturn in the last recession i really really bottomed out and had absolutely unemployment and broke to nothing we're the we're now eight months into this one and where my businesses are thriving i'm actually opening another business in the healthcare industry so i really want people to see this and to realize that if you do make the change if you do make a couple of different changes in your life and knock any addictions that you have that there is a possibility that you know you can have be much happier like i i just am much much happier so the first question that we went through is at what point did i realize that i wanted to give up alcohol you know i actually finally gave up alcohol at 33 but at 30 from about 30 31 i was sort of thinking i really don't like this anymore i'm not enjoying this anymore and it wasn't just on a sunday and whenever we all get that we're on a sunday and we're thinking i'm never drinking again um but i was starting to get it even whenever i was pouring a drink um and that went on for like a couple of years so it was whenever i was in my just turned 31 i was thinking i don't know if i want to do this anymore at that point i knew that i had an issue i knew that i had a problem actually for years i knew that i i couldn't stop even through my 20s i thought even if i wanted to stop this i didn't want to stop at the time but i knew that i would not be able to or i felt that i would not be able to so even if i did ever make a decision to stop drinking i think that it definitely would have been a struggle you know i had my first drink around 13 14 not something i'm proud of my parents did not know that um so i drank right up for 20 years up until i was 33 and i didn't drink massively in my teens but it did progressively get more and more my friends actually made jokes and said that i had hollow legs and i never really got that hammered i could drink a lot of alcohol um i never get into a fight i got a hangover where i was a bit emotionally all over the place but i never actually got like to the point where i couldn't get up and drink again i was able to get up and drink so around um whenever i was 30 31 i decided i'm just not really i need to stop this this now has a hold on me i i don't like the fact that it has a hold on me and i can't stop um and for those couple of years um i was probably drinking more and i think it was because of the fact that i knew that at this point it finally had a hold of me and i was like oh my god i can't stop so the reason why i stopped whenever i was 33 was the the decision was taken out of my hands um my health was starting to deteriorate um and this was whenever i look back now i can't believe how serious it was and i was not taking it seriously at the time at all and i had an issue with my stomach and my stomach was bloating a lot um i had an issue with just my health you know there's five things that i based why anybody should re look at an area and said do they want to change it and the five things that i had came up with at that time was is it a fact in my health is it a fact in my fitness is it a fact in my finances is it a fact in my business and is it affecting my relationships in my early 30s those five things were being absolutely hammered by alcohol you know and whenever i people reach out to me and they ask me a question you know should i give up alcohol um i sometimes go through those five questions with them and most of the time those five questions are also being hammered by alcohol and even though at that point i could still earn money i still had friends i still you know wasn't completely unable to go to a gym i was not at my peak performance in any area and that was it i had to change it and i think if you look right now there's a lot of people sitting there and check out those five areas and just i don't know jot it down and see see what you think where you're at but the as i said i feel that the decision to give up alcohol got taken away from me so at 33 i was diagnosed with diverticulitis a hiatus hernia three of my liver bloods were off i also had high cholesterol um and at that point i then knew that i was dealing with come with alcoholism and i was like i need i need to now stop people were looking at me and i looked relatively healthy i didn't look really overweight i knew myself that i wasn't healthy my the complexion of my skin and just different things over the next couple of months um my weight i i dropped so thin um to the point where my my doctors and everybody was was very concerned about me at that point but i did have to remind them i've dropped about two and a half thousand calories a day from alcohol and eating rubbish foods into going into like you know at that point i went and met a dietician i was changing everything about my life i was like i smoke i drink all these different things is happening and at that time i think i'd give up too many things too quick but i stopped drinking i stopped eating meat i stopped smoking and i just really was trying to like my only goal at that point was to become healthy um again i didn't really speak to many people about this um this is something that i just had to deal with by myself at that point i didn't tell my parents um i didn't tell my closest some of my drinking buddy friends who i hung around with at that time because none of them would have understood i had one really good friend who'd been through this before um shane she and an eye contacted shane i said i'm giving up alcohol from today i'm not drinking again shane at that point i think was maybe 12 years off alcohol and he just literally clicked into autopilot and was like okay no worries i'm here to support you and that's what i always sort of do if someone reaches out to me so i wanted to give up alcohol by time i was 30 in my 30s it took me two years to get off it and but thank god i get off it because i i honestly believe that if i had not stopped drinking that i would be dead now i'm 30 at night i'm four years off it and i do think that i would have been dead because even though those things were happening and my stomach is swelling up i was not taking any of it seriously i was not taking my lifestyle choices at that point seriously and looking back now i think holy i'm i was absolutely crazy you know to not take this more seriously so thankfully on that day i gave up the booze and hopefully fingers crossed i never go back on it one of the questions was how has my life changed since i stopped drinking um my life has changed dramatically uh as i said the start of this video i started drinking quite young um and even though i was very ambitious all through my teens and and stuff like that and i i worked really really hard and had various different businesses through my twenties i did go bust and bankrupt in the last recession and i end up on unemployment at that point you know can i blame alcohol i'd not totally you know a lot of decisions were mine there were um they were going through if i hadn't been drinking do i think that that would have happened potentially i don't know i was in the property business so that could have happened anyway um but i don't think it's a coincidence that at this time in the next sort of economic downturn i'm thriving so my life has changed dramatically um i'm probably the healthiest that i've ever been and probably the fittest i've ever been and i'm now much more aware of everything that is going on in my life um whenever i talk about alcohol alcohol actually i believe takes control of you know your emotions and that is one thing that i really really did not like so i have full control over my own mind my thoughts my emotions whenever we talk about giving up alcohol and some of the things and giving up our addictions are i read a quote once and it really did stick with me there's a couple of quotes that did stick with me you know there is mourning in growth you know there was mourning and growth so as my life was moving forward you know a lot of the people that i hung around with at that time and a lot of people that i drank with i no longer see anymore and it's not because thereby people i'm bad people we don't get on like we shook hands moved on amicably over years and still see each other and still were able to spend time together and enjoy time together but for me i had to like go out on my own and really figure out who i was without alcohol in my life you know you end up in the wrong relationships you end up in the wrong business deals there's so many things that wasn't knock on effect from me drinking um and it was just something that i had to get control over so at that point in my life i made a really a lot of bad decisions and i'm very grateful that i did make them and i'm very glad that i did every single one of them because i learned from it i learned from every single mistake and i don't think really there's any bad decisions i think there's just like lessons and all of those so i do i'm very grateful for everything that happened but right now what has happened like with thing we've ended up doing like so many movies with bank house productions our agency grows i travel all over the world i live freely like wherever i can do i i do everything that i want the relationships that i have now are just so much better um than what they were before like a lot of people that have said to me in the past how do i give up drinking a lot of people have came to me that their partner's drink and you know there's different things it isn't easy it's not going to be a very easy road that people just jump on and say yes you know this is going to be easy overnight i'm going to i'm going to stop drinking overnight i stopped drinking but that was where the journey started you know and it is four years and i'm still on it and i still get tested like we still get tested as humans all the time like getting putting yourself in a position i've now started putting myself in positions that i maybe wouldn't have two years ago like going on um to clubs or different different things different surroundings that may have led me to drinking alcohol and thank god like i've got through them all and haven't actually been um caved anything and i've been tested so i feel i feel good that that i'm on like i'm on a very solid road now that i won't relapse um because that's something that i really really would not want to do only because i've seen the benefits of the other side if i didn't see the benefits that i have seen would i stop alcohol no absolutely not because i loved it i love drinking with my friends i love going to the pub and having having a glass of red wine having a panty guinness you know i would sometimes kill for like having a margarita but i understand that the value that is brought in my life to not have that and it just outweighs any margarita that i ever had in my entire life any paint of guinness you know it's just what is going on right now in life the the difference in it would i be living where i'm living right now if i drank absolutely not i had a one-bedroom apartment that you couldn't swing a cat in and portobello that i couldn't even afford the rent in whenever i drank i could not even afford the rent now i live between here and america and can travel freely when and wherever i want you know because i've built the businesses and the lifestyle to do that could i do that with alcohol absolutely not so if you're sitting right now and you're thinking you know would my life change if i stopped drinking yes it would change it would change for the better you know your relationships have changed for the better relationships maybe your children or your family or your parents or your cousins or your siblings all of that stuff would change for the better i'm telling you right now that it would because i have done it i have literally done it and changed my life for the better and as as i said it's like definitely a struggle at times but my life is like a world apart from where it was before and you know i just wish i had had of maybe give up sooner one of the questions was what advice would i give to someone who feels that alcohol is negatively affecting their lives if someone feels that alcohol is negatively a fact in their lives you're more than likely correct you're the only one that knows this answer so if you go back to the five things um that i had based mine on i think it's a good place to start you've got your health your fitness your relationships your finances um and your your work life um if i was to look back at mine all of those were being absolutely hammered you know um at that point again i did have money i did have a business i did have a business that was growing but it did not grow at the pace that was growing at night and i i knew that there was something holding the back and the only thing holding them things back is me the only thing holding them back for you is you i've seen this because i've went through it myself and i've witnessed it with other people and i've only seen it because i witnessed the change whenever i stop doing that this is what happened whenever i stopped doing that this is what happened um and i encourage anybody who's sort of having a feeling that it's negatively affecting their lives to maybe look into um making a change drop me a message send a comment under this video and you know there is different ways of doing there is support mechanisms i chose to like just speak directly to my my closest friend um i lived with him for several years i understood him he had trusted him he knew everything about me he knew how much i was drinking at the time and even though he never really said to me at the time i think you have a problem but he always he was well aware that i that i did he didn't push it on to me thankfully and he allowed me to figure that out myself and then to come to him so my advice is to just if you've got somebody that you're sort of if you can talk to about that somebody that you know or maybe if you ring one of the support organizations i never personally went through a um shane did go through and i think that because he did and because he sort of guided me through it as my sponsor very much hands-on all the way through i didn't feel that i needed to if i did feel that i was going to relapse i would have no problems in ringing and speaking to some a professional and explain to them exactly what's going on and just saying look this is something that i need help with right now asking for help is so so important you know if you're in a position right now that you feel that you need some help then you know that you probably do you know and and i would i would advise you to seek help from somebody who could help one of the questions was what advice would i give to my younger self see i have made peace with my past i actually am very grateful for my past all of the things that happened to me that are good and all the things that have happened to me that are bad or negative as i said there's no real bad things or just like lessons so the only thing i would probably have give up alcohol a bit sooner um but i think everything happens with timing so there's a quote that um i heard throughout this process as well and it's really stuck with me it's like you know focus all your energy on not fighting the old but building the new um and that's one thing that whenever i look back i'm very grateful for my past and very grateful for everybody who played their part and i'm very grateful for all the lessons that have taught me that i was able to bring them in and say yes this is exactly where i'm going in life and this is exactly what i want so i do think that giving advice to my younger self it's just like i don't know i think it i definitely think just don't put too much pressure on focusing on the past and just focus all your energy on building the new whatever happened yesterday yesterday is history you know tomorrow's a mystery and and that's it and you just got to say what do i want moving forward it's not like what's the past you you know you get some lessons in the past and you get a few things you get answers and things but it's definitely like the future is where it lies and and focus all around you and not fighting the old but like building the new focus all around you and build in the future um as i said like you you i have lost different people throughout this this process really really close friends that you know through different circumstances but as sad as that is building the future and moving forward with it is something that is really really important you know and i think that that is where all of your energy should focus on it's where all of your energy can only focus on right now because you are building a new life you know i stopped going to bars for a period of time because i didn't know if i could trust myself in them but i now go back to bars and i'm now socialize with my friends and i can stay as long as anybody else can in the park pub so it's great but it took me a while to get there i did avoid it at that time and said i need to change that so your life doesn't have to like dramatically change where every single person is cut out i still have my best friends that i had since i was 14. i've still had all the people who were through all of my um 20s that are really really close to me and you know in the in the middle period there was maybe a few drinking bodies but our relationships weren't really built on solid foundations we've loved the crack having really good nights out together and brilliant memories um but really our relationships were built on foundations that were all all around alcohol so whenever you're moving forward maybe those relationships won't stand the test of time but that's okay because they're memories you know and they're really really good memories people are in your life for reasons and people are in your life for seasons um and they also there's some of them that last all the way through and it's brilliant to have those but you can also like build i've built like really amazing friendships and everything from my stop drinking with people that i have way more things in common with now with work or with business or with life or whatever that may be so don't worry about too much about the past and focus all your energy on building the future and making those relationships long-standing and and building a new a new life for yourself outside the pub and outside addiction you know because addiction comes in many different forms you've got gambling sex you know even now social media you know social media is an addiction people will spend a full sunday scrolling through social media without going for without going outside and going for a walk or going to meet a friend or picking over the phone to ring somebody how do i know this because i've done it because i've done but now i am able to check in very quick and say why am i doing this is this adding to my life or is it taken away if it's taken away from my life i need to address it and i need to say okay i need to stop this and i think that so many people can and should you know what i mean and just look towards it and there is light at the end at the end of the tunnel do you know what i mean um from whatever addiction that anybody's going through so one of the questions was how did alcohol affect my mental health um mental health is a really hot topic at the moment there's so many people um dealing with mental issues um and they're going through various different things at various different stages at all ages um in life and i don't i think it's really under-supported throughout the whole world um i don't think people take it seriously enough um i think that we all have dealt with mental health issues at some point you know if we're being really really really honest with ourselves whether it was coming through as children whether it was dealing with a relationship breakup where there's dealing with a business you know break up whatever it may be we've all dealt with stuff that has maybe triggered us and sat us into maybe being a bit depressed um and what i've said like with alcohol and the link to depression or mental health issues or anything like that i think is is huge i think it's really really big whenever someone is going through a time when they're depressed i always say like well how much alcohol are you consuming right now are you currently smoking are you getting steps in what's your fitness like you know and what where were you at with your food consumption like what's going on in your life that you could actually stop right now that could actually help do this alcoholism is 100 an escapism like it just takes you away from everything that's going on that that in that moment and brings you to another plan to brings you to a place where you feel good you dance you laugh you're you're a partying you're enjoying a cigarette you know you end up going out with somebody whatever ends up happening from that within that period that's an escapism away from what is what you're currently dealing with in reality um unfortunately whenever you sober up your reality becomes a tiny bit worse so you go back on the drink and then it ends up being in the snowball effect now i have to admit that whenever i lost everything in the recession end up on unemployment i i always find money for alcohol and i always find people to drink with um and that was two of the things that really really set me on a different trajectory mentally it really set me on a different path mentally i spent so much time in the pub and so much time with my drinking mates that it took me away from achieving anything that i've set out to achieve since um so my mental health was not in a good place um fortunately i never thought about suicide or anything like that but a lot of people do a lot of people go down that route and a lot of people don't realize that by removing this one thing out of their lives could actually just stop them from doing it anyone who's in that situation you know there is help out there to get off like alcohol or drink or drugs or whatever that may be the direct relation to mental health is it's huge you know and and so many people just like brush over it and just how they deal with it is just by having another pint that's great in the short term and it's great and like just keeping everybody numbed out and not realized and like touch and base with what their true potential could be or finding out exactly what it is that they could achieve whenever they don't have that um i'm glad that i was able to pull myself through it um i was looking back at my instagram um i don't have many um posts on instagram so i was able to scroll back at that time from 2014-1516 and this was before stories was in place so i was putting everybody was posting on their on their on their grid i posted so many um positive quotes that were just trying to pull me out of it i was trying to pull myself out of it at all times and the quotes still stand to me now you know there's a lot of them um that are there that i was reading through just two days ago and i was thinking i can't believe i was posting that now and this is now what i live by you know at that point you know even focusing all your energy on on the future and not the past like all those types of things where were things that i posted and one of the things that i posted up the time was there is there is morning in in growth and that is something that i still feel like but now i've come out the other side of the morning and i know that it's it's so much better on the other side the last question that we went through was has there been anybody else's perception of me changed has other people's perception of me changed and since i give up alcohol um unfortunately the answer is yes i've experienced a few different things over the years uh people that were i was really really close with and what i spent a lot of time with um i've seen probably five times ten times maximum in the past four years and this is people that i would have went out drinking with but we were drinking buddies i thought it was a bit more maybe it isn't that's totally fine um i have been not invited to like nights out or certain parties um and i do think it might have had a direct connection with the fact that i i don't drink i don't do drugs um so unfortunately there is things that are going to happen right like that and what so what i didn't get invited to a party big deal i'm not going to let that affect my life in the long term if it isn't going to matter in five years i'm not going to give it five minutes of time um and the thing is with people sometimes if they're not inviting me or maybe they see me sober there maybe they're saying something in themselves that they would like to change and they're a bit ashamed of the fact that they're it's been overexposed with being around me i don't know people have actually came back and said that and said they couldn't be around me at that time because they hadn't dealt with their own issues and they felt that because if i was identifying as an alcoholic and they drank more than me what that means that they are that's not actually the case um they're only an alcoholic or they've only got an issue with an addiction if they truly believe that they have um so people's misconception of different things has um changed their opinion of me um and where i would have maybe been invited to and what happened does that matter on the big scale absolutely not are you not going to get invited to parties possibly who cares who cares to have your own party you know the way that i look at it now is i always have a party at christmas and my house i always have a big family party i have big family birthday parties and i make my own parties and i make my own time i go in holidays with people i want to go and help away on holidays with and i just everything now is my own choice do you know me like i have got full control of my own mind i've got control of my own body i've got control of like everything going forward is what i actually it's the decisions that i make and i think that everybody has a right to do that i think every single person out there has a right to make the decisions clear-headed based on what they want and not what other people around them want or not what other people want them to go to a pub or not other people want them to go have a drink i think that they need to make decisions based on what they want themselves and then start everything from there you know am i glad that i give up alcohol like if you know at this point if you hadn't already got that yes 100 i i totally have um and do i think that everybody has the opportunity to live the life that they want 100 um i don't think it's possible whenever to your living your full potential unless you just knock anything that's sort of distracting you so there's many different things that like you still are faced with challenges every day day to day but for me the decisions of making the yes and no or should i do this or should i come out of this it's much easier now because i've got a clear head that i've got full control of um so basically the the one thing that i do sort of i have clear goals i have all my goals set where i'm like i know exactly what i want and i know exactly where i'm going to and the decision i'm faced with every day now is like if this opportunity presents itself does this bring me closer to my goal or does it bring me further away if you have your clear goals set and if things are there and you say does having this drink does having this whatever it may be bring me closer to achieve my goals are further away if it brings you further away you need to address it and you need to look and say why does this bring me further away and how does this bring me further away and how what do i need to do to change this so that i'm not constantly moving in the wrong direction you may think that you just aren't achieving everything right now and things aren't working out for you and that never happens to me and why why why me or what and having a bit of a pity party at that point you need to then really address and say okay well am i doing everything that i possibly can to put myself in the right position you know and and go through those five things to start with but the reason why i made this today was because i just wanted to share my positive experiences i want to share some of the things that i've learned along the way and i wanted to show people that there isn't there is life after booze um not only life after boost but an amazing life after booze and i just think if if anybody got anything from this you know like share subscribe share it with somebody who you think may need it um and yeah any questions please just write them below or reach out to me directly and if i can help i will thank you so much for watching you

Channel: Matthew Toman

Views: 39,152

Keywords: alcoholism, alcoholic, AA, alcoholics anonymous, dry november, addiction, get off booze, sober, get sober, get sober vlog, how to stop drinking, mental health, how to know if you are an alcoholic, how to tell someone they are an alcoholic, Health, drinking, drink, alcohol use disorder, aud, alcohol abuse, learn, drunk

Id: Lx0SqB_Hob4

Length: 27min 35sec (1655 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020