Six Years of Alcohol-Freedom—And How You Can Do It Better

It’s been six years since I took my last sip of alcohol—and not only do I not miss it, I truly don’t want it. In this soul-deep episode, I’m reflecting on what made lasting change possible for me (spoiler: it wasn’t willpower) and sharing the feminine path that helped me create a life so rich and connected, alcohol couldn’t compete.

Whether you’re just starting or somewhere in the middle, I want to show you how to stop drinking in a way that actually feels nourishing, powerful, and aligned with who you really are. If you’re ready to do it better—not harder—this one’s for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Honor the feminine journey—rooted in rhythm, intuition, and wholeness
• You don’t need to start over—awareness is always progress
• Real change happens when you build a life that’s better than the buzz
• There is no “one way”—but the feminine way is often the missing link 
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Are you ready to do what alcohol promises—but better? My private coaching experience, From Burnout to Bliss Out, is open for enrollment. Let this be the summer you stop drinking and start living, fully and freely. Schedule a private consultation now. 

You’ve tried to cut back on drinking but nothing sticks, you're stuck in the cycle of confusion and convincing. One day you're motivated, the next you're telling yourself it's not that bad. What makes the difference isn’t more information—it’s having a new way to apply it. Click HERE to schedule your free consult to uncover the one thought that will change everything.

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.

Transcript

Mary Wagstaff: 1:14

Music. 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. Welcome back to the show. My beautiful listeners, I hope you're having an amazing day in real time, here we are in the season of summer. Officially, some of you may not know this, and I've talked a little bit about the Wheel of the Year. You know, part of my practice of finding a new relationship to alcohol has been connecting with the cycles and rhythms of the moon and of the earth, and finding just more meaning and connection in my life and filling up what I what I truly believe that so much of us, so many of us have in our life, is a spiritual deficit. So many of the women that come to work with me are really seeking a deeper connection to their life outside of kind of the external achievement or or wanting their external achievement to be fueled by purpose, by meaning. And I really believe that so many of us are looking for that. And you know, kind of gets played on. Our emotions get played on with that, with if you look at media and marketing and you know what's going to create that meaning and connection psychologically, we know how to do that. And so it's, it's, there's never been a more important time to really learn how to be in control of aware of what that is for you. So I digress. The Wheel of the Year is a kind of a Celtic, Celtic way of understanding the cycles and the seasons of how things change, the rhythms that we're in. So it's broken up into eight quarters, the big high holy days or the Sabbaths, are all astrological, right? I mean, it's really when the sun is at certain places in the sky. So we have the equinoxes and the solstices. But what is even, I believe a more potent tradition are the cross quarter days, where we just celebrated Beltane, which is May 1, and Beltane is the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. But summer solstice is that it is the high point of the sun. So we're not really depending on where you are on the earth, but here in the northern hemisphere, we're that is not the first day of summer, that is actually the peak of summer. So Beltane, or May Day, is the very beginning of summer, and it is a time of passion. It is a time when the we dance around the maypole and intertwine the ribbons of what is represented as the masculine and the feminine. And the reason that I even bring any of this up is because we have to understand, as women, that inside of us, we are multifaceted, and when we don't give an honor, that part of our lives the multifaceted perspective that happens that we're really going through, like an entire year's worth of the Wheel of the Year in 30 days, especially when you're in your bleeding years, right? We go through this waxing and this waning phase with the moon, but that waxing and that waning is also happening with the sun, throughout the wheel, throughout the year as well. So we kind of go through this mini four season cycle every single month. And it's so important to know that, and to know that we have this really intricate web of emotions, this really intricate web of needs and desires that we get to give ourselves permission to meet, and it could be complicated, or it could be profound, or it could be deep, or it could be you know, this the reason why we are so good at holding so much in our sphere, the reason that we have intuition, the reason. And that we can project out and hold space and hold the the needs of so many people, and the reason that we're good caretakers and lovers and compassionate, and we can see the big picture, right? And that's what I've decided to really see as my my gifts of the feminine, the gifts of the woman that I want to be. And I share this with you today because I am celebrating myself. I am celebrating this month of May, and I don't know the exact day, but it is six years of my alcohol freedom, six years since I have had one drop of alcohol. Now, even though I don't you know, really think counting days is always useful. It is true that it has been six years since I've had a drop of alcohol, and I think even if I would have had like, a drop of alcohol or a day that I had had a drink, I still don't believe in starting over. And the reason that I don't believe in starting over is because you're generating awareness. You're generating awareness, especially when you're doing work in a program, like a coaching program, or the work that I was doing on my own before I developed the five shifts. And sometimes I've told people, you know, it took me about 18 months to quit drinking altogether. But what I really mean by that was it was like 18 months when I really got serious. I really got serious about, like, I'm going to figure this out. And other things were changing in my life. And the reason it doesn't have to take you 18 months, and in that time, I was like, stopping and starting, and it was the time I had been taking the most breaks, and I was really putting in the effort to figure out something new. But I discovered the five shifts. I created the five shifts in that time, which is what really flipped the script for me. But I did start diving more into my divine feminine essence. I decided I started exploring what the embodiment of the feminine meant in my life, and that's why this podcast is stop drinking and start living the feminine way, because I didn't do it like a man, because I knew that there was a deeper expression of myself that needed to come through, that I was seeking all of those years through alcohol. Though I always joke that I really wanted to quit drinking for about 20 years, or since I started, because there were many times where I was like, That's it. It's over. And then, of course, you feel better, and you're in that place of just convincing yourself and that nothing's gone wrong, because there's this crazy phenomenon that the euphoria that you experience right after alcohol is what sticks in your learned memory, and not the consequence of the negative effects, right? But what also happened when I started to bring more awareness to my relationship with alcohol, when I say more awareness, I was taking a step back. I was becoming a witness of my experience. I was becoming a witness of my thoughts. I was being curious. I was being curious about the sensations I was doing all of the things that I teach my clients, that are the five shifts process. And what I recognized was I wasn't really experiencing the euphoria anymore, that every time I was drinking, it was falling flat, and because I was experiencing other things in my life, I had been putting myself in new rooms and new situations, in women's circles, in women's networking communities, in putting myself out there as a leader and more of a professional. I was starting my coaching business even before I became an alcohol coach, those things were really filling me up, and I wasn't walking my talk right like so I it was simultaneously that I was moving towards what I wanted, and at the same time I was eliminating and deconstructing the beliefs, right? So I was kind of building this new, what I call a belief ladder, where I was building up the beliefs around to get generate evidence for an alcohol free life of why that was better. And at the same time, I was deconstructing the beliefs that had been holding alcohol up as important in my life and to and I had to, like, be a little uncomfortable. I had to put myself in new situations. I had to go to social settings where I wasn't drinking. I had to go to concerts where I wasn't drinking. I had to go meet new people. I had to host, you know, I hosted some mother's circles with my new baby, and I was doing all of these things that were new, that we're creating a new self concept. And the reason I'm sharing this today is because Matthew always tells me that I don't celebrate myself enough, that I don't stop and look at my wins enough and my achievements. And I am pretty hard on myself sometimes, and I just you. I do sometimes go from one thing to the next because I have so much passion about so many things in my life, and just because I don't think about alcohol anymore, and alcohol hasn't been a struggle for me for many, many years, since I discovered the five shifts, and even if I've had a thought here or there, or even a craving, which doesn't happen at all anymore. I knew what it was. I just knew that it was essentially what I say, what I would tell you. It's just an old memory. It's an old imprint. And so I created for myself a whole new self concept. And sometimes I think that alcohol isn't my story anymore, but it really is like the greatest love story. It's the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Because on the other side of that, and this is what I wanted to share also with you, not only just celebrating myself and how putting myself out there has helped so many women and I'm happy to take like is, is humbling, and as as an honor as that is, I'm also happy to be proud of that, because we have to be proud of our achievements, and I have to be proud of putting myself out there. And so I don't just convince myself that, you know, somehow, because I don't struggle with alcohol anymore, that it's not enough, right? Like that. It's still not having the impact. And it is easy to forget when things become a normal part of your life, it is easy to forget what that struggle was like. It was such a struggle, right? I was I was functioning. I was doing all the things I've always been a high achiever, but I was exhausted, and I wanted nothing more in my life than to just not think about alcohol. And I thought that I would always want alcohol, and I've shared that so many times on the podcast. The reason it was so felt so hard to quit was because I just didn't think that I there would could ever be a day where I wouldn't want it, where I wouldn't think about that. And I have proven to myself the A that I could do that. And all of the women, not only that, have just come through the podcast, but but the countless women that have come through my coaching program that are on the other side of alcohol and just don't want alcohol. You've heard the conversations. You've heard the stories and again. It doesn't mean you don't have a thought about alcohol ever again. It doesn't mean that you don't have a craving up ever again. But the more you learn how to work with those thoughts and with those those sensations in your body, they go away, and then you become an alcohol free person, and you're fully authentic. And so you identify more with your authentic expression, more with your uniqueness, more with the unaltered experience. I would never want to alter my the truth of who I am. And sometimes it looks crazy, right? Like, sometimes there's a couple of days a month where, like, I can get kind of crazy, but I know what it is. I'm so much more in tune with with my cycles, with my rhythms, I can express that to my family. And we've had some kind of hard not only did we move and decide to, like, buy a farm which has literally having a farm is a project for the like, you never will be bored ever again. And so it's kind of perfect for Matthew and I, because we do love projects, but it can be very overwhelming. So I've had to coach myself a lot on, like, I'm in this for the long haul. Like, this is just, this is fun. There's like, experiences the falling down fences and the barbed wire, like it's just gonna be there, right? Like, just like the laundry is always gonna be there. So I've been able to step into this new venture, but from such a different, calm place, although I did have a moment where I was like, what if none of the flowers grow? What if none of them bloom? Because I literally have a 90 foot hoop house high tunnel with every flowers planted. And I'm so excited, but there's no blooms yet. We did have some bulbs, so I've been able to move through that. I have. We've had some other like, pretty big things happen in our family that were affected me on a very personal level, but I was really able, and I will probably talk about this more, but it's, it's too raw right now to talk about it, but, like, with all the details, but like, I was really able to hold space for myself and not make it about the other person, right? Like, I could express myself, I could express where I was, but I could give myself permission to feel without saying hurtful things, without being mean, without making the situation worth worse, without saying things that weren't useful, right? So when you have interpersonal relationships, it's so easy to. Just like blame and be mad and be hurt and like all of those things are, are, are totally legitimate. But the way in the past that I would have gone, gone about it was like bringing it up, making it worse, yelling, fighting, saying hurtful things, like doing all this stuff. And instead, what I did was like, I've got me, I've got my back right, and really uncovered, what are my resources? What do I have, knowing that I'm safe, really establishing that sense of safety within, because we look outside for external safety. And the truth is, the only place we can ever find like safety is an inside job. Safety is your personal responsibility as a grown human. It is no one else's job to make you feel safe. Right now, can people compromise your safety absolutely but it is still your job to find safety for yourself. And fortunately, I am in a very privileged situation where that has never been an issue for me, like even if I needed to. You know, move in with my parents at 44 years old. I also just celebrated my 44th birthday, it is going to be I feel like it's such a special year for me. I've just been so much closer to the Divine, to my relationship with all of my guides. And really, it feels so good. I feel very content. I feel very content in my life, and I want to talk more about contentment. So alcohol is still my story. It's still my story because of the way that I show up for my mothering and holding compassion for the little girl inside of me helps me hold compassion for the little boy who sometimes bugs me, sometimes that I'm frustrated with right my son and continuing to see myself in the reflection of the women that I work with right still be able to creating a deeper sense of sisterhood, not just because of alcohol, but because alcohol is really a symptom of something bigger, like I started this episode with of a spiritual deficit, of a desire to find meaning and connection through achievement, to find safety through achievement, through validation, right? And it's okay to want those things, but we, and this is where the contentment piece comes in, is like, if we can't find contentment without any of that we will always be seeking. And what my desire and invitation is for you, is to be in a place where you can do what you think alcohol does for you, but better, right? And that has what six years of sobriety has given me. That is what I have been able to prove that alcohol has nothing on what I'm capable of, I can have the most pleasure, ecstasy, euphoria, all of those things to 100 times more than what alcohol doesn't even scratch the surface, right? And so is there a challenge in there? Is there a dare? Maybe, right? But I know that that's possible for you, and I know it's possible in the work that I offer my clients, because I've seen them do it when they tap into their feminine essence, when they tap into their desires and really, really hold space for the woman that they decide they want to Be and for the woman that they are, in all of her glory and all of her multifaceted expressions and all of her wild craziness, that is when she can honestly say alcohol's got nothing on me. I am wishing you the most beautiful beginning of summer, the most beautiful Beltane, and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for being here. The days of white knuckling your way through an urge are over. No more distracting yourself, no more avoiding alcohol, no more resisting. And I am not exaggerating when I say that doing this one thing for five minutes will change not only how successful you are in drinking less, but how much you will love your alcohol free life. You are going to feel so good. So come on over to my website or follow the link right here in the show. Notes to grab the free urge guide that gives you the exact cheat codes to use to find relief without a drink. And the best part is no deprivation, no missing out, required. I'll see you over. Mary Wagstaff, coach.com, you.