There is a commonly accepted idea that alcohol and creativity come hand in hand. When we look at many creatives who have been in the spotlight over the decades, it isn't uncommon to see problematic drinking habits linked to prolific creative output. In this conversation, creatives share how they changed their drinking, and the things they learned along the way. They all share their fears, and the sense of freedom to create that sobriety brought. We also discussed this recently with Kyle Ambition, a musician who took a break from alcohol and now moderates his consumption. 

Liz Horsman is a songwriter, producer, blogger and sometimes videographer.  Her songwriting and production work feature on albums by artists such as Gabrielle Aplin, Rudimental, Emeli Sande, Rizzle Kicks, JP Cooper and Tom Walker. She hosts this discussion on alcohol and creativity.

Sharon Walters is a London-based artist who creates hand-assembled collages celebrating Black women. The series, entitled 'Seeing Ourselves', explores under-representation in many arenas in particular, the arts and heritage sector and mainstream western media. So often blackness is represented as 'other'.  Sharon provokes an alternative narrative of empowerment.  Each piece is a reaffirmation of the right to ‘take up space’ even when you don’t see yourself in certain settings. Since graduating with a degree in Fine Art from Central St Martins (University of the Arts) in 2011, Sharon has developed her practice and continued her work with community arts organisations and museums, using them as platforms to explore and collaborate with the voices of those who are often unheard. The work encourages us to 'take up space', be seen and create our own spaces.

You may know Chris Hamilton better as Ill Tone, a hip hop artist from Vancouver Island, Canada, where he's also a prominent member of the recovery community. Known for high-energy performances, he's toured in nine countries, appearing on bills with such acts as Tech N9ne, Xzibit, Talib Kweli, Rakim, Maestro Fresh Wes, Snak the Ripper, Merkules and Pete Rock & CL Smooth, among others.  

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Wes Geer has had a star studded music career, touring all over the world performing to huge crowds. We see the lifestyle of a touring musician depicted in films and shows, and alcohol and drug abuse often have a starring role in those stories. In this weeks podcast, Lauren Burnison interviews Wes Geer about his experiences, how he found sobriety, and what it's like to wear this new identity in an industry that often centres itself around partying.


Who is Wes Geer?

Wes Geer (Wesley) has been a professional musician for over 20 years. He first found success as the founding member of Jive Records artist Hed P.E. as guitarist, songwriter and producer. After touring the world for eight years, Wes left the band for a lifestyle change and ultimately landed in rehab. In 2010, at almost three years sober, he was approached to play with the legendary band Korn. He joined Korn and worked with them as their touring guitarist for the next several years, traveling to 42 countries, headlining shows, playing to crowds of 80,000 people, and appearing on a number of recordings and cable and TV shows. His music has been featured in many feature films, video games, radio, and television shows. Wes founded Rock To Recovery, a service that helps people to find recovery from substance abuse, with music as a key part of that journey.


Who is Lauren Burnison?


Lauren Burnison stopped drinking in 2016. Visiting an Andalusian town called Ronda inspired her to create alcohol-free travel experiences. Her mission is to show people that there is a fulfilling life outside of alcohol and that there are others just like them. Adventure, spending time in nature and connecting with culture play a key role in the experiences she creates. If you're interested in joining one of her sober trips, check out We Love Lucid. She is currently focussing on things here in the UK due to Covid-19, but is hoping to get back to sober travel abroad next year.

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This week we have a fantastic conversation between Geoff Jein and Adrian Chiles about cutting down our alcohol intake.

In Club Soda, when it comes to changing your drinking, three things are important to us:

• First, we don’t tell people how to change - if you want to cut down, take a break or stop drinking, we’ll support you all the way
• Second, we think how much you drink is relatively unimportant - what matters to us is how drinking makes you feel and the impact it has on your life
• And third, we encourage you to measure success on your own terms - we know that change isn’t straightforward and it can take time, and all your steps forward, however small, are worth celebrating

We say all of that because in this week’s podcast, radio and TV presenter Adrian Chiles talks frankly about the challenges and pitfalls of moderating his drinking. We got to know Adrian while he was making his 2018 documentary Drinkers Like Me. By his own admission, Adrian used to be a big drinker, and since then he’s cut down a lot - but some people listening to his story might think he’s still drinking too much. But we’re not holding him or anyone else up as a role model. The only change that matters is the change that works for him. Just like the only change that matters is the change that works for you.

Who is Adrian Chiles?

Adrian Chiles is a writer and television and radio presenter. He has co-presented both The One Show and Daybreak. We first met Adrian while he was filming his documentary Drinkers Like Me, in which he explored his relationship with alcohol, and decided to cut down. Adrian looked into why he and many others don't feel they are dependent on alcohol, but find it almost impossible to enjoy life with it.

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Here at Club Soda, we support all drinking goals. Whether you want to wait, take a break, or find ways to enjoy drinking in moderation, we're here to help. In this episode, Chase Lee, Caitlin Padgett, and Sam Thonis share their experiences of moderating.


Who are Chase, Caitlin, and Sam?

Chase Lee is the founder of podcast Stone Cold Moderation, which offers practical advice to help you foster a healthier relationship with alcohol. Caitlin Padgett is a transformational coach and the author of Drink Less Be More. And Sam Thonis is the founder of The Get Away Bar.

Our guests talking about how they found their feet with drinking in moderation. They share tips and ideas for finding your own framework. Of course, moderation isn't for everyone, but it does work well for some. The main thing is to make sure that you create your own set of rules, and figure out what's right for you.


Top tips for drinking in moderation

Caitlin suggests starting with a break, but going deeper and really considering your relationship with alcohol. This is something our courses can guide you through. When you put in the work to explore your behaviour, you can really get stuck in and create lasting change for yourself.

Chase sets himself a rule of three. If he is enjoying a drink at a social occasion, he sets a maximum of three drinks within that 24 hour window. 

Sam likes to start the night with a non-alcoholic drink, which gives him chance to settle into the social situation. This gives him time to decide whether he actually wants to have an alcoholic drink, or whether he's happy to continue with a delicious alcohol-free option.

And our very own Dru reminds us that change takes time. Learning to drink in moderation is a journey. You need to be prepared to explore and find the things that work for you. Sometimes things may not go to plan, so remember to be kind and patient with yourself.

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The way we think and respond to things has a huge impact on how we create change in our lives, and Jean-Francois Benoist is an expert on shifting thought patterns to overcome addiction. In this episode, we talk about mindset, and the four keys to thinking well about yourself. Benoist tells us how we can move away from using shame to motivate, and move toward a positive and empowered mindset.

Jean-Francois (J.F.) Benoist is an author and councillor specialising in addiction and relationship issues. We get stuck into some of the theories behind his book Addicted To The Monkey Mind, and find out how he helps people to rewire their behaviours and overcome addition.

He and his wife co-founded a Rehab Centre, a holistic approach skill-based programme in Hawaii, called The Exclusive Hawaii. He has also written a book called Addicted To The  Monkey Mind, change the programming that sabotages your life. It's based on real life experiences of severe addiction, and takes learnings from everything from eating disorders to drug and alcohol addiction. Benoist and his wife noted that most people suffer from dual diagnosis, having issues with depression with anxiety for example, some of them are diagnosed with bipolar. So they've developed something unique and trademarked their methodology, Experiencial Engagement Therapy. The foundation is that you can't learn how to change mental health by just doing Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, we believe it has to go further than that. You have to go through experiences in order to create change.

Most of our thinking is conditioned and programmed. In Benoist's book Addicted To The Monkey Mind, the reader follows two characters, Kevin and Elisabet. As you read you start to notice that 90% of the time, they are reacting in certain ways because of their conditioned thinking. This means that people develop a certain way of thinking that had to be adaptive to their environment. So whatever stress they were introduced to, they had to adapt to it, creating a particular way of thinking to help them with the situation. So we don't always realise that when something happens in our lives, we're triggered back to that thinking, and we're not really in the present moment.

In this  episode, Benoist helps us to understand why our brains respond the way that they do, and how we can harness this knowledge to create change. He explores themes of shame, anxiety, and the importance of connection and belonging. How can we rewire our brain by altering our focus away from the negative? Instead of thinking 'I'm giving up drinking', a more positive framework would be 'I'm exploring a new world of drinks that happen to be alcohol-free'. That's a far more positive and exciting mindset to be in.

Benoist shares with us four essentials pillars for healthy thoughts. The first is a sense of belonging. The second, a sense that your life matters, that you make an impact somehow. The third one is feeling connected with other people in a way that relates to the things you are passionate about. And the fourth one is connection with nature. We tend to motivate ourselves with shame, which is the opposite of those four, core ideas that we need in order to think well. 

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This week our podcast centres on our connection with self, our friend Harriet Waley-Cohen interviews Ian Young and Drew Lawson. We'd like to thank Harriet for guest-hosting the podcast, we're always grateful for her contributions toward Club Soda. 

Ian Young runs a recovery centre on the island of Koh Phanang, and Drew is a Holistic Therapist. In this interview, they get stuck into how they've found a deeper connection to self, as well as to those around them through sobriety. They discuss the physical expectations we place on ourselves to appear and appeal in certain ways, and delve into spiritual practices that they have found helpful in their journey through sobriety. 

Ian has a sober community around him and they enjoy dancing at the various parties on the island. At the peak of his pre-sobriety partying, Ian was using drink and drugs. He wasn't nourishing his body with food, and was hooked on sweet drinks like Malibu and Baileys. When he got sober, he worked in chocolate, and in this interview he talks about how he switched out those sweet drinks for a chocolate habit. He's trying to reduce this at the moment. Since becoming sober he says he feels he has found a connection with self that was always meant to be. He has become the person he was destined to be, and has let go of the need for external validation.

Drew uses spiritual practice to find that connection with self. He meditates, and focusses on finding energy from yourself, rather than from external sources such as drugs and alcohol. Drew believes that being in service to others and dissolving selfish intent is the key to rebuilding a sense of self worth and connection with our true selves. 

The discussion also delves into relationships coming to an end, and how to find comfort in being single. Sex and self-pleasure are also part of the conversation, as well as finding the things in life that truly make you feel happy and fulfilled. 

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Losing a parent at a young age can leave us with challenging emotions, and anger is a common one. If we aren't given the space to process, we can form dangerous habits that grow over time. How can we start to break away from this and reconnect with buried emotions? In this weeks podcast, Luke shares with us his own experience of loss, the anger and emotional shutdown that followed, and how he used therapy and mindfulness to overcome addiction and become the architect of the future he knew he deserved.

Luke is a therapist - or as he calls it, an Emotional Bank Manager. He runs a company called Lisa Inside Addiction, which helps people affected by addiction to discover healthier ways to manage their emotions. He do this through a podcast where I interviews world renowned experts on addiction and people directly affected by it. He also provides therapy in London and Southend, as well as a number of programs to help his clients break through the glass ceilings of their mental health.

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The hospitality industry can be a tough place to work. Hours are often long, breaks between shifts often short, and pay is often less than it should be. These are also high pressure environments, the pressure to deliver a great experience for your customers on a busy shift can cause a great deal of stress. When you work in this industry, you are usually in close proximity to alcohol, and it is often offered at a discounted price or for free, as a perk of the job. But what happens when you lose your balance with that? When stress and other mental health issues come into play, it can be all to easy to lean on alcohol and other substances to bring you down, help you sleep, or to put an intense shift behind you. In this weeks podcast, we speak to Kris Hall, founder of The Burnt Chef Project, who is doing some fantastic work to tackle poor mental health in the hospitality industry.

Kris is the founder of nonprofit social enterprise The Burnt Chef Project, which is a clothing and merchandise brand challenging the stigma around mental health within hospitality worldwide. The funds that are raised from the sales of Burnt Chef Projects clothing, coffee cups, and journals, go toward training and support for hospitality workers. It started in May 2019 through Kris' own personal experience of mental illness and seeking Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the personal identity crisis he was experiencing at the time. 

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When it comes to enjoying life without the booze, Millie Gooch and Jill Stark have got it locked down. In this weeks podcast, they share how they changed their drinking, from tricky conversations with friends, to sitting with difficult emotions, and finding new ways to unwind. Our podcasts this month are sponsored by the wonderful folk over at Lindeman’s Wine.

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We get loads of questions about alcohol-free wine. Why you can’t find an alcohol-free wine you like, what does it taste like, where should you buy it, are there alternatives to it? In this week’s podcast we put all of your questions to four experts in the field. We speak to:

• Tom Ward from online drink shop Wise Bartender
• Guy Roughly, from TWE Wines, who look after Lindeman’s alcohol-free wines that you can find in many UK supermarkets
• Christine Parkinson from Brimful Drinks
• Sarah Connolly from Sober Sommelier in Australia.

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The Club Soda Tasting Room is at 39 Drury Lane, London, WC2B 5RR

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