Stop Drinking and Start Living- The Feminine Way

Why "Self-Help" Wasn’t Enough: The Missing Piece in Alcohol Freedom Marianne's Story (2 of 3)

• Mary Wagstaff

Share episode

This is not just about quitting drinking. It’s about claiming your sovereignty.

We are back with Part 2 of this powerful three-part series featuring my incredible client, Marianne, who shares her raw and transformational journey of stepping fully into her power.

This isn’t just another conversation about sobriety. This is about self-mastery, peace, and reclaiming your mind from the chaos of addiction.

 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  •  How alcohol blocks access to self-trust, intuition, and peace
  •  Why even years of self-help books weren’t enough until this shift happened
  •  The truth about alcohol’s role in emotional dysregulation and overwhelm
  •  How to break free from the exhausting mental preoccupation of “Should I drink or not?”
  • The game-changing realization that helped Marianne finally feel SAFE with herself

Why This Episode is Different
Marianne’s story is a masterclass in what’s possible when you stop seeing alcohol as a solution and start seeing it as the thing keeping you from peace, clarity, and the life you want.

This is about women stepping into their power—not just by quitting drinking, but by reclaiming the ability to be present, at peace, and fully embodied in their lives.

Listen and Apply
This episode isn’t just for inspiration—it’s here for your transformation.

What’s keeping you from true peace?
Where are you looking for relief outside of yourself instead of within?
What happens when you trust yourself completely?

This is the feminine way. This is change in action.

Tune in now and prepare for the final episode next week, where we dive into the last piece of the puzzle—what finally made everything click.

If you're ready to release alcohol and step into your feminine power, book a free call here

Quitting Drinking Doesn’t Have To Be Disappointing, Boring & Exhausting, It Should Make You Feel ALIVE Again. You came here to play full out. Learn more about this private deep dive session that will awaken your life force and connect you to the vitality you need to hold space for your big vision!

Follow the link Here!

It's time to GLOW-UP and just in time for the warm weather. Shake off the stagnant, stuck energy and activate your aliveness. Book a Sober Glow-Up Activation Session HERE. You can turn your story around with ONE decision.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast and its contents are not a substitute for rehabilitation, medical treatment or advice. It is for educational and inspirational purposes. I am not a therapist or doctor. The views here are expressed a personal opinion and based on first hand experience. Please consult a doctor if your mental or physical health is at risk.

Unknown:

It was enough reason to to look at what is alcohol doing to me that is making them not able to feel calm and not able to have that. I mean, I'd read enough books. I'd read Michael singer, I've read all the great ones, Neil, Donald, Walsh, everybody, and I still couldn't access that inner sense of knowing that I was in control of I think,

Mary Wagstaff:

welcome to stop drinking and start living the feminine way. I'm your hostess. Mary Wagstaff, holistic alcohol coach and feminine embodiment guide here to help you effortlessly release alcohol by reclaiming your feminine essence. Sobriety isn't just about quitting drinking. It's about removing the distortions that keep you disconnected, overwhelmed and stuck in cycles of numbing. Each week, I'll share powerful tools, new perspectives that transform and deeply relatable stories to help you step into the power pleasure and purpose that it is to be a woman. This is your next evolution of awakened empowerment. Welcome to the feminine way. We are back with our second installment of our three part series to really explore the journey of the feminine way, with a first hand account of someone that I have worked with for over two years, and this journey that really exemplifies Mary Ann's journey of the before, during and after, process of what it means to Release alcohol to become a non drinker, not for any reason other than you know it's the truth for you. And in today's episode, she talks about the impact of finding Self Mastery, finally, after years and years, decades of studying self help. So I hope that you took something from last week to apply to your life. So use this, this you know case, as an opportunity for you to study yourself. Find something in here you can see for yourself and apply it to your life this week, and make sure that you come back for our final episode, where she really talks about the impact of setting herself up for success in a container that really provided her the opportunity to explore from in safety, to explore all of her thinking in a non judgmental way. Enjoy the show

Unknown:

like the Mary Ann before the House project would be known for that, but the Mary Ann during the House Project was not known, would not be known for that, and so, but that's the Mary Ann that exists now. Yeah, you know, and it was hard to, you know, just but you know when, when I was standing in front of that fire, I said, find the good in this and I know that that's what my mastermind group, and we would always say that find the good in this thing. And that was before you and I met, and I stood there, it was horrible, and I said, I'm the good in it. And six months later, my sister announced that she had cancer, and I ultimately coached her to find the good in it. And I didn't just find the good in it, I found, I found a wellspring of self, you know, of self mastery by working with you. You know, I now have so much to draw on that I had a fraction of that to draw on before. And I, you know, lived a long life. I'm in my 60s and and, you know, I was always edgy and always a little bit nutty and, but, you know, hopefully I'm just nutty in a good way now,

Mary Wagstaff:

oh, there's so much in there. And I just want to reflect a couple of things back. And, well, a congratulations, because, wow. Now, like we were trying to figure out I should have looked it up before we got on the call, but it's been about two years that Mary Ann and I have been working together. And if you've been listening to the show, you'll know that I have a process called the Five shifts. And this is something, some of the stuff that Mary Ann's talking about with the curiosity. And you know, this is the thing about the emotions. It's like our emotions are generated by our thoughts. So if our if we let our thoughts run wild and our thoughts are out of control and and it's okay that we have raw we have raw emotion when when life happens, but if it's really based on our thinking, and our thoughts are just out of control and they're just running wild, and then we're letting other people's thoughts also, like, that's what you were talking about, that about that wall of, you know, this kind of shield, this Golden Shield, it's like, if we're enmeshed, and this is why I was thinking about social media, I'm like, social media is just an enmeshment, and other people's wild thoughts, like, I don't want to be in there, like, you got to put your Golden Shield up, right? And so much of what we interact with, because there's so much information. Information isn't really always education. Most of the time, it's just someone's opinion. So when you're out in the world and your opinions are like going crazy, and everyone else's opinions are going crazy, it's like whoa. And then there's these, there's these big life circumstances that happen that you have never experienced before, right? A fire happens like, that's a big deal. You've been working on it. So it's like, and you had used the term, you know, my emote, this emotional fire and, and I think probably what you had been conditioned to use alcohol for without really knowing it was that was like the water in the past. But all that created from what I'm hearing and what I've experienced with you, is really just kind of numbness. You go from this emotional fire to numbness to then back to a dysregulated system. So you know, and many people say this is like alcohol on the fire of emotions is like adding more alcohol or like adding more fire to the fuel to the fire, right? So by learning how to find that bomb, becoming the water, finding that inner bomb, because, like you said, you would have still been maybe alive, but you would have lost a sense of yourself. And that is what that is, what I've seen in the last six months especially, and what you knew always the whole time, because Mary Ann committed to seeing her relationship, to seeing herself on the other side of this, because she knew there was another side. But what you did, Mary Ann, and this is part of the feminine way that is kind of a new awareness, really, to the five shifts into my work is creating a sense of safety. And Mary and I were talking about this before the show, that the container that we had here and that regular that that accountability, I think really in essence, was safety right, a place to explore it right, and then giving yourself the time in the space, the luxurious space, to not. It's not one and done right? It's not like you just say I'm never drinking again, and that's it. There's a process before, during and after. And Mary Ann and I are kind of in this after building phase of what's here now, what's here now underneath, like the ashes, literally, right? We've talked about this. I mean, there's such a metaphor, a real life metaphor. So I just wanted to reflect that in kind of terms of how I see it through the through a coaching lens too, and I know that that you do as well, but I mean, even before the fire, you know, and even though you're functioning normally in the world, like you said, and So many people are using alcohol. How do you see that? Now you know, even regardless of a of a kind of traumatic event

Unknown:

in using alcohol,

Mary Wagstaff:

like on a day to day, and that addition to people's lives, or even how you were using it even before that,

Unknown:

well, it's interesting because I really didn't have a long or a big drinking habit until I moved out to California with my then husband, and he was losing his business, and then we just started drinking all the time. And I I had not been drinking, so I was probably in my late 40s. And so as things became more. More of a struggle. I I watched him drink to forget, and I thought, you know, and I unwittingly drank alongside of him and and I think it's I didn't have that much to forget in those days, but I certainly was in the sugar, you know, time of the day, kind of, you know, drinking thing, like, you know, raise your blood sugar, you know, sit down and eat. Kind of, like it it all started to mean, pour a glass of wine or another glass of wine, and I really stupidly never even thought about it. And so and then, when I was single, after that marriage ended and I was alone, I thought, you know, there was so much chemical dependency that I would just get a bottle of wine and and it would be gone in three days. And to me, you know, that was a lot of wine to drink because I, I didn't have that habit before. And I kept thinking, I'm drinking, I'm drinking alone. And and then it just always seemed to then become my, my go to when I was nervous about something or disappointed about something or angry about something, I started to find the quieting of my thinking by having a glass of wine and and I watched it. I mean, I literally watched myself increase my drinking, and then, and I had periods of time in there that I didn't drink, but not, not years, you know, month here, a week there, but, you know, didn't drink during the week. Did drink on the weekends, but I could never after watching my husband completely fall apart from alcohol, because then I didn't know I married an alcoholic, but I was raised with alcoholics, and so I watched him and what his habits were, and I was so afraid that I was going to become that, like it was always in my mind, don't drink to the point where you could become an alcoholic. And so, and then I started doing reading about, how can you become an alcoholic? And there's a lot of device division and thinking, Yes, you can, and no, you can't. And so I would quell myself with the No, you can't. But when I poured the glass of wine, I'd worry myself with the yes you can, you know. And so that's where the thought, you know. Well, because, because my boyfriend and I, my partner, we would drink every night while we were doing the house. We every single night in first part of our relationship, we drank on the weekends, and then all of a sudden we're moving and we're selling the house, and we're packing and we're doing this project, and now we're drinking every night. And I'm thinking to myself, Oh no, here it is again. And so watching the house be on fire, I just said, I this is this can't be what I do. Because that thought that could I become an alcoholic was so scary to me that I decided I wasn't going to drink. I just had to become a non drinker, and and then I just filled myself with all the reasons why not to drink. You know, why you shouldn't drink? You know, I don't want to age, I don't want to blue in my body. I don't want to poison myself. I i buy organic vegetables and grass fed meat, and then I have a toxic bottle of wine with it, right? It just didn't, it wasn't congruent. Yeah,

Mary Wagstaff:

so you got clear on your values too. Tell me a little bit, because I've got my opinions. But tell me, what do you what do you think about that idea about becoming an alcohol because it is such, and this is one of the things Mary Ann, right? Like this is one of the conditioning beliefs that we all have. We all know. Everyone knows that term alcoholic, and so our choices around alcohol and our decisions to quit and our decisions to drink and all of it, there's so much weight with that word, because the gold standard for so long has been the 12 step model, which says, which creates an us versus them type of scenario, right? And so if we quit, are we the them, you know? And it's like, are we claiming are. Selves of that. But what are your I mean, I'm just curious. What are your thoughts about Ken, like someone that is an alcoholic? What? How do you see it, someone as an alcoholic? And well, you

Unknown:

know, as much as I didn't drink, I think I was drinking alcoholically, because even though it was two, two or three glasses of wine, I I think that the fact that I I had alcohol on my mind by three o'clock the next afternoon, can't wait to get home and have that glass of mine. I think that's alcoholism, okay? I don't think you have to, you know, start losing your where you parked your car and driving home drunk to become to classify yourself as an alcohol, right? Yeah, it's an addiction. Yeah, it absolutely and, but so is, you know, having bagels. And there are lots of addictive substances in the world and, and even when I was a little kid, and this, I never told you this, but I had, I had all these weird things, like, if I ate too much of one food I would just stop because I thought, Oh, I don't want to become addicted to graham crackers, or I don't want to become addicted to, you know, red licorice, like I would just say, Oh, I'm doing that too much. I'm going to stop. Yeah, I was a weird kid. Um, but self awareness. You are self aware, I guess so. But I definitely think that some people can tolerate more drinking and still not not question it, but I don't know that. I think alcohol changes the brain, yeah, and there's no way you can drink and alcohol doesn't change your brain. Yeah, no, and, and, so if you want to live fully with your full spirit, face forward into into the heavens. And I want to invite God, the Most of God I can grab onto into my heart and soul and and think about, think spiritual thoughts and, and I always have and, and, but when you're drinking, you're, you're in a different phase of thought, yeah, and so you're, you're departed from that. You can't connect to that. So, and I was looking for the meaning of the fire in some ways, you know, I was looking for, why did this happen in my life. What? What did I draw to me, you know? And I even had a premonition about the fire months before, and I knew exactly where the fire was going to start, and I told my partner where the fire was going to start, and that's exactly where the fire started. So something was in there. And so, like, what? What can I do? But it was actually to the reason to reach out to you is, what can I not do? What's going to take, what's what's going to be in the way? Yeah, you know, and am I going to let this be in the way? I don't want this to be in the way of my life, yeah, you know, well, and that's really

Mary Wagstaff:

what coaching is, too. I mean, it's, you know, like you were saying, it's not controlling, like this, you know, like controlled, like emotionless experience, it's okay. Most of our life is uncertain, is out of our control. Like we we create our reality by creating the perspective that we want to believe, like you said, like you didn't create the fire, but you created the you chose to have that perspective when you were standing there watching it. Of there's what's the blessing in this of looking for it? We are in a co creative reality. So it's like we take control where we can, which is, how do we manage our emotions? What do we want to believe about our emotions? How do we manage our mind? How do we can, you know, I mean, where, where, where you are now. Mary Ann is like you are in a place of a regulated nervous system. You know how to regulate your nervous system, and if it gets dysregulated, you're also not making it a problem. You're saying like, Oh, that happened, right? And now I can investigate maybe. How do I do that different? What needs do I have? Right? You're, you're able to look at it from a new perspective. And then we, I mean, talking about AA, there's like, that's the Serenity Prayer, which I think is a beautiful prayer, except what we can't what we can't change, you know, and and the wisdom to know the difference. But the only thing that I believe is different is that, you know, often what they talk about is like, I can't change that. I'm an alcoholic. But what? But what we know the truth is, is that we can change that. We can change the way that we we perceive the world. We can change the way that we manage our our emotions and how we deal with the unforeseen circumstances, right? And so how I see you describing like an alcoholic really is someone that's addicted to alcohol that has lost themselves, right? Because something I had said to Mary Ann right before we got on the call was, you know, the present like God. Is the present moment, and God is love. And if you're not in the present moment, because you're always thinking about alcohol, you're cleaning up from it or worrying about it, or worrying about what has isn't working, or what did happen, and you're never in the present moment, you have lost access to aligning with your with your higher self, to having access to divinity. And that is really what I see as an alcoholic, like they're the scales have tipped so far away from accessing that part of themselves. Now I believe anyone can come back to balance. I really, really do believe that. I really believe that now people are maybe start that way, depending on adversity, or they're, you know, even being in the womb or whatever it is, who knows. And like Mary Ann was saying, like you, some people are born with a different set of awarenesses and connection to spirit, I think, earlier on in their life. But yes, anyone can become addicted to alcohol. And we're, you know, and that is how much of it is taking up your brain. How much of it is it taking up your brain? Well,

Unknown:

you know, it's funny, because I almost as I was as I've been talking, I've been thinking, like, what was the jump? Why did the Why did alcohol come up? Like, hearing it from the audience's perspective, on the listener's perspective, I felt like I the stress of the house even the first 18 months I was pretty occupied with I can get through this, because I know I'm going to go have a drink, you know, and I know at the end of the day I can have that glass of wine, I'm going to be okay, and so that's what I wanted to give up. Yeah, I wanted the preoccupation of alcohol to leave my existence. Because I I wasn't thinking I can go have a steak and a and an Aruba salad. I was thinking. I was thinking, I can go have a glass of wine. Yeah, right. And, like, we ate out a lot in those days, because we didn't have kitchen, and, you know, not, not like the whole kitchen like we had in our other house. And so we would go to restaurants and so, and it was just like, you know, before you even sat down, the wine was boring, so you didn't even have to ask for it. So I just knew, the minute we get to the restaurant, I'm going to be able to start, you know, taking that sip and changing my nervous system. And it was important to me, and so, because it was the only way I knew how to do it and and yet, every single time I did it, I thought, This is trouble. This isn't good. This is unhealthy. This is blocking something else. I'm not I'm not living my life authentically, doing this. So it was bothering me, and the bothering was so preoccupying that that's why I had to reach out to someone. And I found you through your through your podcast. I don't even know how honestly I sometimes I wish I could look back and figure that out again, but, but I started listening to your I probably listened to two of your podcasts. And I filled out the form because I said, I this is how I want to do it. I want to do it from my feminine spirit, from my womanhood, from from not blaming myself and not having to do the 12 steps and the whole rigmarole. I want to do it. And in the beginning I thought, maybe I can have a glass of wine now and then, but now it's completely unimportant to me. Now it's, you know, now it's I, I can't say that. There aren't times, you know. The funny thing I probably miss more is the cordial, you know, with dessert, but I hardly ever have dessert anyway. So what's to miss? But, but not, but that's the that's the taste and the celebration of filling out dinner. But now i i just have another glass of lemon water or whatever, and I don't even, doesn't even, I did it to find myself. I did it to reconnect to myself and and to drop that, that that other voice in the back that was saying, Don't worry, at the end of the day, you're gonna have a glass of wine. You know, I would come home from a phenomenal walk with my dogs, go to the store, get a beautiful salad, tuna and the whole thing, get home and open up a bottle of wine. And like all those, you know, five or 10 miles would just walk. When I look back, like, why do I need a glass of wine after that? You know, because I didn't know how to be alone with. Self because I didn't because I was suffering, not not being attuned I was suffering. I didn't know how to look at my thoughts and say, You don't have to think this thought, that thought doesn't serve you. You can change your thought to a new thought, and your all of your thoughts can serve and that's what we did. We made it so that I can, I can access thoughts to serve me at any given and

Mary Wagstaff:

that's a strength. That's a superpower. It's a superpower because it has impacted everything, changed everything. Well, when you said this, I didn't know how to be alone with myself. And this is something I want to talk a lot about on the this. You know, version of the show is solitude, the importance of solitude and being inside and being in silence. That's not this deafening rumble in your head, but that's like you started the show saying, this is peace, right? Like that that you can find this peace within, and that preoccupation between this is bothering me, but this is also the solution that is just it's exhausting,

Unknown:

but you know what the end of it? The end result is, is intense, knowing that I'm safe, always safe with myself. I'm safe with myself. I can count on myself, and no matter what, and no matter what. And you know, I know I started out with the story of my neighbor, but I used to just those kinds of things could rumble through me for four or five days, you know. And now, you know, now I can actually access a place to be helpful to some other person instead of, you know, have have her emotion running around in me, or have my partner's emotion running around, and that's, that's what I really gained, because I live with someone who's who went through this fire situation highly emotional, and it just I, I had no I, I didn't have the skills to keep that from drawing me in. And I went through the whole thing in a much higher emotional level than I, than I'm proud of and but I don't know, Mary, we'd have to look back at the calendar. But, you know, we've, we've been here 10 months, and I, I don't, I think the emotion has, you know, gone from like 1,000% to, you know, occasionally I can hit a 10 or or 75 at worst, you know, And, you know, I, I, it was enough reason to to look at what is alcohol doing to me that is making me not able to feel calm and not able to have that? I mean, I read enough books. I read Michael singer, I've read all the great ones, Neil, Donald, Walsh, everybody, and I still couldn't access that inner sense of knowing that I was in control of the thinking.

Mary Wagstaff:

Come back next week to find out the final piece of what did work, what did make the difference for Mary Ann from, you know, diving, it's not like she didn't have this awareness, right? She did have this awareness from a very young age, actually. But what created that shift for her that actually finally made it stick where she is able to be responsible for the peace in her life, if you didn't go to listen to part one, you'll be able to listen to all of them together. But I wanted to break it up into some bite size pieces for you, so that you could really ingest all of it. Because I think that not only is this firsthand account such a well rounded story and impact. But I believe Mary, too just has so much wisdom to share, and there's so much guidance here to learn from her. So have a beautiful day and tune in next week and make sure you go ahead and apply. Apply some of these principles to your life. If you are ready to embrace the feminine way in your life and release alcohol effortlessly, I want to teach you how to talk to yourself when you are alone. This is the hardest yet most impactful piece of the process. Download my free guide, the six cheap phrases to calm the urge to drink and end the inner battle, you'll discover how to find relief for any urge or emotion without deprivation. Visit Mary Wagstaff coach.com/urge tracking to get your free guide today, or Follow the link right here in the Show notes You