Stop Drinking and Start Living

Are N/A Beverages Right For Your Awakened Sober Life?

• Mary Wagstaff

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Today I share my personal journey and insights into the world of non-alcoholic beverages, and learn how to forge a path to intentional living that transcends the need for alcohol or pretending. 

Take aways:

  •  The potential impact of drinks that mimic the taste of alcohol
  • Understanding the pivotal role embodiment  and conscious movement play in fostering comfort and trust in our bodies and how they help navigate the challenges of sobriety.
  • Finding new rituals and rather than substitutes for traditional alcoholic drinks, we uncover the brain's powerful response to visualization and its influence on our habits and cravings. 
  • Redefine your sensory experiences with elixirs that celebrate our commitment to sobriety, differentiating them from mere mocktails. 
  • The significance of ceremonies, like cacao and tea rituals, is illuminated, providing a communal and intentional backdrop to our alcohol-free existence. 

Share our own stories and insights, with the opportunity to engage directly through Buzzsprout's text feature or on social media, fostering a supportive community for those on this transformative journey.

This time of year can be full of joy, but it can also come with extra stress and temptations around alcohol. So, I thought, why not offer something to help bring in a bit more ease and peace?
I'd love to spend this time together with you. I miss you! 
Pre Registration is required. For more information and to register, Click Here

You have everything you need right now to find alcohol freedom with The Stop Drinking & Start Living Course. Join 100's of Women who have successfully eliminated alcohol from their lives using The Five Shifts Processes. Click here to learn more and join.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever feel like you're outgrowing alcohol, that you are longing for a deeper connection to life? If alcohol is keeping you playing small and feels like the one area you just can't figure out, you are in the right place. Hi, my name is Mary Wagstaff. I'm a holistic alcohol coach who ended a 20-year relationship to alcohol without labels, counting days or ever making excuses. Now I help powerful women just like you eliminate their desire to drink on their own terms. In this podcast, we will explore the revolutionary approach of my proven five shifts process that gets alcohol out of your way by breaking all of the rules, and the profound experience that it is to rediscover who you are on the other side of alcohol. I am so thrilled to be your guide. Welcome to your journey of awakening. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1:

I am still in awe of the last three episodes, the interviews, the success just so much to take away. And if you haven't listened to the last three episodes, there is so much in there that's inspiring. My biggest takeaway, I really think, was just how necessary it is to share similar intentions in community. Right, it doesn't have to be done in the same way, but finding people in your life, even if you only see them once in a great while, just knowing that there are people out there that are doing the same thing that you are. And this, again, isn't just through the lens of sobriety, because we're not just getting sober so that we can hang out with other sober people and talk about drinking right. You're getting sober because you want to live a more fulfilling, satisfied, connected life. And, like Terry said in the episode, how much bigger can I get right? How much more of myself can I meet on the other side of alcohol? And that is really my invitation to you. And this is a little bit of a kind of nuanced practicality of what happens in the sober world, with promotions and, of course, people are going to capitalize on any trend, right. So I would say, sober curiosity is a trend, sobriety is becoming a trend which will eventually become a normal way of life, but one will still continue to struggle with it because of the nature of alcohol. It will become easier, though, I believe, to quit drinking when the narrative changes, because half of the battle, more than half of the battle, is your beliefs and your thoughts around alcohol and what other people's reactions are going to mean about you and really just the unknown.

Speaker 1:

And so both Janet and the sisters from the sisters retreat, the women's retreat, really exemplified the importance of finding and establishing safety in yourself, and this can be done in so many ways, but it's really done in the body and something that you all know. If ways, but it's really done in the body and something that you all know, if you've been listening to for a while that I am pursuing is becoming an embodiment facilitator. And that was a big part of what I hosted on the retreat was kind of conscious movement, right when it's not choreographed dance, we're not standing on a mat doing yoga poses but it was inviting your body into these entry points for exploration, and then also with the use of music, so it might be follow your feet around the room and connect with the soles of your feet. Something very little, something very simple Dance from the front of your heart, move from the front of your heart, take a walk around the room, soften your shoulders and see what changes. All of these little nuanced moves help create safety in your body, because when we're dancing we're moving in the power of ecstatic dance, and I'm going to have a surprise episode all about this for you soon is that we can actually move through emotions that are seemingly unpleasurable and create pleasure. Right, we know the power of a big cry, we know the power of how cathartic that is in our body, and so releasing and processing emotions is how we become safe. Or, in the body, how we establish trust again in the body.

Speaker 1:

And then, when you do it in a container, um, there is a resonance, right, when other people are showing up with the same intention not because you have to look like them, but with the intention to explore, with the intention to hold space and to not judge then there is this group coherence that happens where it also then helps regulate your nervous system. So one of the ways that we've done that in the past is through alcohol, and what I wanted to talk about today is NA beverages what you need to know about them, what my beliefs are about them and really what they represent. And this came to as to me as an important conversation, because I've been seeing a lot of stuff on Instagram with a lot of sober influencers promoting not just like alternative beverages, but specifically NA beverages, specifically beverages like wine and champagne and beer that are made to taste like alcohol, and a lot of these things are actually alcohol removed. So it means the alcohol was in there, they were fermented, it was created and then there's a process of extracting the alcohol. For me, that is an automatic.

Speaker 1:

No, personally, I want absolutely nothing to do with anything that was intended to be alcohol in my body. I'm very sensitive. I believe there is an energetic imprint that is still existing inside of that drink. I've actually had a firsthand experience of having an extreme panic attack, which doesn't happen to me often of drinking some alcohol-removed rosé. Not only that, but the experience in which it happened in had recreated a past memory that tied me to the self-concept of who I was when I was relating to alcohol. So I think it's very important to first and this is it's all neutral. This is all a neutral explanation for what you want to do, but I do think that there's some value in the insights of why you're interested in sober curiosity and what the value might be of not trying to recreate a moment where alcohol was once involved. I think that's really important. I think it's really important to engage in a whole new way of life, and you will still reap the benefits of an alcohol-free life, but the mind is still searching for what it once was.

Speaker 1:

In so many ways it's like I've heard people talk about AA meetings and that people are talking about alcohol like it's the good old days, and what we do around here is we don't have to shame the times that may have been fun, right, regardless of even the alcohol. But the best is yet to come. That's the vibe here. The best is yet to come. That hadn't even that wasn't, you weren't even scratching the surface with alcohol. So so much of these things create these opportunities that are very similar to just like hanging out and shooting the ship and not that you don't do that anyway. But my invitation to you is to go beyond right. My invitation to you is to really see how much more you can be and how much more pleasure you can experience on the other side of alcohol.

Speaker 1:

So you really first have to understand your why, right? Why are you interested in this beverage? Just because it's a tasty beverage? Because there's so many other things to drink, and it seems to me just as much as you want to make alcohol irrelevant. Do you really want any beverages to be that important in your life, where you're tasting them, you're buying them, you're sharing them and, because of the taste, which you know connects to our sense of scent, is also connecting to our olfactory, you know it's connecting to the deepest, most reptilian part of our brain. That is where those imprints are established and where they lie dormant.

Speaker 1:

And so if we keep reinforcing, it's like we know that the brain doesn't know something that's imagined or something that is happening in real life, the way that it processes. If you close your eyes and you see a picture of your child, who you love and adore, your body reacts. This is why visualization is so powerful. Your body reacts in the same way as though it was already, as though it was actually happening, and this isn't 100%, but it's really close. So we know visualization is really powerful because we've all created hypothetical scenarios in our head and had a complete emotional response to them, right? We've like oh my God, you think, you know you haven't heard from someone and you, all you can think of is the worst case scenario that they've died, that they're in an accident. So this is the power of your brain, right? So is the is the why? Because this is a substitute, because you're having cravings and you know you don't want to go back to alcohol, but like this is something that you're doing to curb a craving. Now I'm not saying that's bad, like work with what you've got right, but we want to get you to the point where you're not having cravings Like that's what we do over here. We get you to the point where you eliminate your desire for alcohol altogether. And so these pseudo-alcoholic beverages are, I believe, in so many ways reinforcing the importance of that kind of lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

Now, yes, I drink. I love like bubbly water, I drink soda waters. Sometimes I've made um, like I think about the difference between mocktails and elixirs. Like a mocktail is if you go buy, you know, an L, an, n, a tequila and you try to recreate a margarita, and elixir might be bringing in some botanical herbs, um, some adaptogens, some alcohol free bitters, maybe a little fresh juice, some herbs from the garden. You guys have heard me talk about my pomegranate, my mulled pomegranate. That I really love, that I put mulling spices in and to me people drink mulled wine but it's more like apple cider. So I really love using pomegranate juice with like a little spritzer, because it's beautiful, it's really sensual and it's sexy. So I'm really interested in turning on my senses in ways that have nothing to do with alcohol and really creating new pathways.

Speaker 1:

You know, there's this taste that for some people may be triggering and just holding on to like, oh, what it once was right, I wish I could have. That can create cravings for people. I know Matthew's actually had that experience. For me it does the opposite. It actually makes me really. It's very ungrounding for me. I don't like the taste, I don't want to have anything to do with it. It creates anxiety in my body. It just brings up for me a really big pain point in my life that I really just don't want to have anything to do with. Right, like I love my life and I don't need to be reminded of that, except for the fact that I talk about it all day, every day. So it just doesn't take you beyond the lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

Now, as far as a ritual is concerned, there are things that are very ceremonial and if you were to sit down and pour a very small tasting of an NA wine and, you know, drink the blood of Christ, it's like the only thing I could think of as a sacrament. It's like alcohol is not a sacrament. People who serves wine why do they serve wine at church Like this is absolutely insane. Two children, two people, they don't even know what their relationship with wine is and then they have to say no, it was like, use the grape juice. People come up. So if you're going to drink a grape that doesn't have anything to do with alcohol, drink some grape juice, like. To me, that would be the alternative, right, not trying to create, recreate an experience. Um, because I think that you get, you reinforce the beliefs that alcohol somewhere in your mind was like the good old days and um, and does it really take you beyond the lifestyle?

Speaker 1:

Now, if you're, if you are, if you're having a lovely picnic, what we, what I've really been turned on to in the last few years, is cacao. Cacao is the raw, most raw, pure form, roasted, of the cacao plant, which is what chocolate is made from. It has these really beautiful heart-opening qualities, so you can drink them as a ceremony. Maybe you have a little bit at night after dinner, kind of as an intention to wind down your night, like a very small amount. Kind of as an intention to wind down your night like a very small amount. Typically, I will have them when I'm gathering in a sacred circle. We had cacao, a beautiful cacao ceremony on a sister's retreat with a local medicine woman who did a drum journey with us because of the properties of cacao, which is one of the highest dense micronutrient foods on the planet. So it just does wonders to so many parts of your system and it helps oxygenate the blood and so the heart can feel a little stimulated. But it actually kind of works as a nootropic too, where if you're a little tired it has a ton of magnesium, so it can actually help aid in sleep as well.

Speaker 1:

So tea is an ancient ceremony, right. If you've never been to a tea ceremony, I highly recommend it. Many of cities, urban cities and their Chinese or Japanese gardens will have a traditional tea ceremony. Or if you have a tea shop and you can go pick out your tea and there's just this real slowing down of intentionality. There's a production company locally in Portland that hosts a lot of really cool events, musical events, but they'll oftentimes have kind of a tea lounge where everyone sits on the floor and then there's a server. It just serves you these little teeny, tiny cups, like just enough for like a sip or two, and then she pours more and it's this continuation of really enjoying that one sip, really enjoying the medicine of the herbs, because plants are medicine, they are allies and, if you know, if it really feels like I just like the taste of this thing, I do like these hoppy waters.

Speaker 1:

There are these sparkling waters made by Lagunitas that have hops in them, but they've never had alcohol. They weren't like a created a beer right. It's just a sparkling water that is infused with the flavor of hops that's used to create beer as well, as I think it has like a little citrus undertone. They are very good, and now this is emphasizing the hop right, which also has been used for centuries for like sleep aids and all sorts of other things. But it's not trying to make a beer, something that tastes like a beer, and then take away the alcohol. It's like a completely different experience. I find this to be very true also with meat products. I have practiced not meat eating for many, many years in my life. I go through weird phases where I can't eat any meat. That's been the majority of my life. Right now, I have been experimenting with a ketogenic diet, which I would love to talk about more and get an expert on here and how I believe a keto diet can actually expedite the deeper cellular implications of alcohol, which is really why I do not advocate for NA beverages.

Speaker 1:

People ask me this all the time what do you think about it Now? Yeah, sure, if it helps you kind of get through those initial like detox moments. But if you're white, knuckling your way through it and there's so much resistance, what we need to work on is your ability to experience that resistance and find some pleasure on the other side of that. Now, another drink might help you do that, more than reinforcing the taste and kind of the vibe of the lifestyle right of the alcohol. And if you wanted to create a ritual, and then you I can't even imagine. I can't even imagine sitting down lighting the candle at my altar, lighting some incense, pulling a card and then like pouring some NA wine and saying that's me creating a ritual. I mean, think about even that perspective, right, sounds really strange to me. But I would set up maybe a tea ceremony or I would maybe make myself a small cup of cacao. So I just want you to understand the implications of what that could mean. Is it still tying you to that lifestyle? Or are you interested in making alcohol and everything that goes along with it irrelevant, so I digress.

Speaker 1:

But when I was getting to the meat I would eat. I don't like fake meat products. I like products that are vegetarian products, that are sold and taste like vegetarian products. I don't like things that are supposed to look like meat and they're red and they kind of look like bloody. That, to me, is a moot point. I would not recommend a alternative protein substitute or whatever because it tasted like meat. I would just like eat the meat, right? A lot of the reasons I don't eat meat is because I don't like the taste often, or the energetics of how it makes me feel. So if I want a good black bean, spicy black bean burger, that's because it tastes like spicy black beans, not because it's supposed to taste like ground beef, right? So, and then I think that really like says a lot about what we believe, right, we believe that a quinoa burger isn't going to taste as good as something that's, you know, those meat alternative or whatever.

Speaker 1:

There's so many reasons why people do things and I am here to not judge someone else's process, but I want you to consider the implications of how NA drinks that are made to taste like alcohol may be keeping you stuck for longer? And is there just a whole other vibe that you want to create, right, versus popping a bottle of bubbly for a toast right? What about the experience of just being proud of yourself? What about the experience of taking yourself on a hike right Like let's repattern and reprogram the lifestyle and the self-concept? And the reason that this came up to me is because I read this post. That was really like talking up this NA beer and it was so trying to recreate this like summertime campfire experience. And what I want you to have is a summertime campfire experience that has nothing to do with beer, whether it's NA or not NA. I want it to have to do with gazing into the fire, laughing, drumming, looking at the stars, being present.

Speaker 1:

Not to say you can't have that, but it's too much of a tie. It's a tie that I think is slowing your results down, slowing you down from never having a desire or never having an attachment to alcohol again, because when you're looking for alcohol, when you're looking for any alcohol that tastes like alcohol, I believe you still have an attachment to alcohol and that's okay. That's a really hard thing to get rid of, but I believe that's going to keep your attachment around for a lot longer and kind of hoping secretly in the back of your head that maybe someday I'll be able to drink again, and what I want you to know about that answer is that you can someday drink right now, but alcohol will never change, no matter how much you change. So you can get just as addicted in 10 years from now as you were today, not because you're an alcoholic, but because alcohol is addictive by nature. So if you continue to drink it long enough and with enough duration, the body will start to call for that again. It's just the way that it is. So I hope this helps.

Speaker 1:

I hope you had some insight. I would absolutely love if you would share this on your social media and tag me at Mary Wagstaff Coaching and let me know what you think, let me know what your experience is with NA stuff, and there's this cool feature that we have now on the platform, on Buzzsprout, which is where I host my podcast, where you can send me a text message. So go to the show notes, send me a message. I would absolutely love to hear and I'm so grateful for your support, your reviews, your sharing, your liking, your subscriptions, and I will absolutely talk to you next week, have an amazing day. None of this would be possible without you.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to say thank you so much for being here and, as a special gift, I want to give you access to a masterclass that I created called Fearless Sobriety. It is going to walk you step by step through my five shifts process that is going to help you really gain a new perspective on an old habit. And once you sign up and you're registered, it'll take you only about 15 seconds and you'll be rated. It's on demand. You will receive a bonus guided meditation that's going to help you learn how to experience sensations in your body essentially from urges, from emotions without freaking out. It's going to help you learn to regulate your nervous system so that you can be in any situation, anywhere and feel grounded and feel safe. So head on over to my website, marywagstaffcoachcom. It'll prompt you to click the link for the free training and I will see you on the inside.