Shahroo Izadi is a psychologist, speaker, coach and author of The Kindness Method. Her latest book, The Last Diet, builds on her work specialising in addiction to help people change their habits for good. “What you want is the next choice you make to be a kind one,” she says. In this episode, Shahroo talks about the power of kindness with Club Soda’s Laura and Dru.
Is changing your drinking so wildly different from any other type of change?
I think one thing which is definitely worth saying is that alcohol does lower your resolve. When I help people to change their habits, invariably you’ll be following some sort of plan. And alcohol, as a drug, is very good at making you not care about plans, compared to helping someone to reduce their sugar intake. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not underestimating the impact that sugar can have on you physiologically. But in terms of the impact it has on how much you care about following through the plan…
Even if you don’t find yourself with a problematic relationship with alcohol, now more than ever, people are noticing that it’s on a heavier rotation. If it’s a coping strategy for stress. And if you want to drink for the rest of your life, the likelihood is at some point you’re going to need to think about how you drink, why you drink and under what circumstances you want to be drinking.
I do see it as the same as any other habit. That’s where I’ve been able to draw parallels between my relationship with food. I’m not saying by any means that anyone has to drink, of course. And I see people thriving when they don’t. But I don’t want them to think that that’s the only option, and to feel disempowered.
People sometimes don’t want to change because they can’t imagine some occasions without alcohol. And alcohol is efficient at doing some things. We do feel less inhibited. So there isn’t any point in demonising it and saying that it doesn’t do those things. What I would say, though, is that it robs us of the opportunity to demonstrate our capacity to have interesting conversations. There may have been a time when alcohol was a solution to something, it was a social lubricant, it gave you confidence. But, it’s most likely that at this stage in adulthood, you know how to have a really nice time and to enjoy company. You just haven’t given yourself a chance to experiment doing it without alcohol.
A lot of the time people think change is such a daunting prospect. They think they’ll never socialise with alcohol again. So they might want to regulate booze. It’s about treating a lot of these [underlying] things first and foremost. Say to yourself, “I’m doing this just to show myself that I can, and then I’ll reassess after I’ve done it a few times in a row”. I think that’s a lot less daunting. We give alcohol a bit too much credit. Ask yourself, “Am I giving alcohol this credit? Would my body just self-regulate if I give gave it a chance?
Alcohol’s not the problem. It’s a solution. So think about the problem it is solving, or once solved. What else could solve that problem?
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