Using Hypnotherapy During Dry January

Are you looking for new tools to support a break from drinking alcohol?

When you are ready to take a break from drinking, you deserve to explore different tools to see what works for you.

I appreciate innovative approaches to lifestyle changes, which is why I invited today's guest, Silvia Subirana, to share her expertise. As a clinical psychologist and Head of Content Development at MyDry30, Silvia brings a unique perspective to transforming our relationship with alcohol.

During her university years in Spain, unlike many of her peers who were embracing the typical college party culture, Silvia made the conscious decision to quit drinking.

This early experience gave her valuable insights into the personal growth that comes with changing your relationship with alcohol.

Her sobriety has deeply influenced her approach to helping others through MyDry30, where she combines her professional expertise with a firsthand understanding of the challenges and rewards of making significant lifestyle changes.

In this episode, you will hear:

  • What hypnotherapy really is and how it can help you relax deeply

  • Why taking a 30-day break from alcohol can improve your sleep, energy, and mental clarity

  • How to approach change one day at a time instead of getting stuck in "forever" thinking

  • The unexpected benefits people experience beyond just drinking less

  • Simple tools and practices you can use when you feel triggered or stressed

  • Why building new habits slowly leads to lasting change

Resources Mentioned

  • Visit MyDry30's website to learn more about their innovative approach: https://mydry30.com

  • Follow MyDry30 on Instagram for daily inspiration and tips: @mydry30app

  • Special offer for listeners: Get 20% off the MyDry30 program by entering code MyDryJanuary at checkout

  • Hey there, welcome to To 50 and Beyond. I am Lori. I'm your host and I'm excited that you're here today. If you're returning back to the podcast, I'm so grateful to you. Thank you so much for coming back. That's like a second date, a third date. It could be your 300th and something date. I just appreciate you so much.

    And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. This is where we talk about living alcohol free. Later in life, yes, I am here for it. I started drinking at the age of 14 in 1982, and I quit drinking on August 11, 2013, at the age of 45, because I was tired of trying to make alcohol work in my life. The relationship was not working for me anymore, and I decided to go all in on the relationship with myself.

    Well, that's not what I decided that night. I decided to go all in on Trying to feel better. That's what I wanted to do at that stage of my life because I was in perimenopause and I wasn't feeling great. So this podcast exists because I made that choice. And wherever you are on the road to alcohol freedom, I am there with you, and I am rooting for you, and again, I thank you for being here.

    I'm so excited for this episode today. We are headed into dry January, and I know many of my listeners will be participating, so I wanted to have an expert discuss ways that can help you take a month off from drinking, whether it's dry January or any other 30 days in the year, with tools that will help you approach it differently.

    So I am really excited to have this conversation and honored to have my guest here today. Sylvia Subirana is a clinical psychologist and the head of content development at MyDry30, an innovative app designed to help users take control of their relationship with alcohol. But the app does much more than this.

    It allows you to use hypnotherapy to change your drinking habits. And this is the topic of our conversation today. We also are going to discuss the challenges and benefits of taking a month like dry January off from drinking and more. So let's get this conversation started. Here is Sylvia. Welcome, Sylvia.

    Hi, I'm very happy to be here. Yes. Thank you for being here. We're gonna talk about a topic I was just saying to you. I've never had this conversation on the podcast, so I'm gonna be asking you all kinds of questions to learn about hypnotherapy. Yeah, go ahead. I'm happy to answer any questions. What brought you to the work that you're doing at MyDry30?

    Can you share a little bit about your story? Yeah, of course. So, I stopped drinking quite a while ago. I don't have a certain date because it was Organic for me. So it was sort of like I drifted off, but it was around six, seven years ago. So I was finishing uni. So still a quite controversial time to stop drinking.

    Cause obviously everything around uni seems to be like. So I just started to stop drinking because I didn't really feel well, I would go out and then my stomach would feel like not really good and I would, I didn't have much of a headache the next day, but I was just not feeling okay with myself emotionally, especially I had like such a calm down and it was, it was affecting me a lot and I was not really a drinker.

    It was just like, I don't know, on the weekends, right? But I didn't really like the after effect I had on my body. And then after that, I got quite sick, like my gut, I had a big gut infection. So obviously alcohol was completely out of the window, right? And I had to do like special diets and all that. And after the diet and the, like the treatment for the gut issue, I just never considered going back to drinking, right?

    Because before I was having like, I don't know, I used to have one or two drinks once in a while. Now, I just. I don't have any alcohol cause I don't have the need to, to drink. So that's how I arrived to like a project like MyDry30, because obviously not drinking and promoting, like, I don't know, helping people to learn about the good outcome and good effect of not drinking, um, is really important to me.

    Like inside of me, like it's in my values, right? So I just wanted to help people understand the good of it because there's, there's a really good part of not drinking. Yeah. There's another option besides drinking alcohol. Exactly. And I want to congratulate you because being that young, how did that change your socializing?

    And like you said, you know, coming out of uni, I mean, how did that change your life at that time? It's difficult. Yeah, it was difficult. I, I embraced it like very positively, like a game. I was like, okay, everyone around me is drunk. Everyone around me probably won't remember at least half the night. So who cares what I do?

    Right. So I started playing as in, I don't know, I'm just going to try this. I'm just going to try that. Right. So I started being more in touch with myself and I really enjoy it because obviously I, I think you can get like, socially drunk, it's a bit controversial, but like, you can just embrace your drunk personality even when you're sober, right?

    Like, you just, because it's inside of you, so you just get in touch with that, I don't know, silly, goofy person, and you just, I don't know, bring it out, right? So, at first, I was, I struggled a little bit, because, you know. Of course, like when you are the only sober person in the room, everyone looks like very silly, right?

    It's like, everyone's very boring. Like they're laughing at the silliest things and they're not funny. Right. So I had to shift my mindset and it took me a while. I'm really proud of what I did because in the end, obviously I, I, I choose the, the healthiest option for myself. And I actually, like, not spend a lot of money.

    Which really helped in my years after uni, because I really needed that money. So it was a very, very positive. That is so cool. And can you talk a little bit about where you're coming to us from and what is the drinking culture there? So we can understand. Yeah. So I'm from Spain and in Spain, there's not that much of a binge drinking culture, you know, like obviously.

    Uni people or like tea, like older teenagers do it. But there's more of like this culture of drinking wine and drinking beer with your meals. It's very, very, very common to see it pretty much any time of the day. Maybe not in the morning, but at lunch people have a cup, a cup of wine or like, plus a beer.

    Like it's just, it's normal. It's very, very extended. So I dunno, obviously in, in Spain there's a massive production of wine. So the wines that we have here, uh. Good quality. Right. So yeah, it's very, very normalized and people just don't question it. I'm really proud of you. Have you noticed in your friend group and people around you or people taking this approach as well?

    People ask me, like my friends ask me, how do you do it? How, like for tips, right? And I am, I have completely stopped or maybe like I have. One cocktail, one mojito on a very hot summer day, but like, it's literally one a year. So it doesn't really count, right? My friends, some of them have reduced their drinking and they have, they've asked me for tips for that, but not a lot of people around me have completely stopped.

    That's great. It's fantastic. What is happening in Spain for Dry January? So, I think it's the same in all the colder countries, right, where, yeah, the people after the party, like after the party of New Year or like Christmas and all that, where there's a lot of drinking involved, people just want to start healthier and the year healthier, right?

    Like, they want to have healthier habits. They want to change their. Yeah, to start exercising more and these things. And even though there's like, it's quite controversial, the, like the new year's resolutions, because a lot of people say, yeah, I'm going to change all these things about myself and day seven comes by and they have changed, like they're back to their old habits.

    What we are promoting from My Drive 30 is that you can actually try to change your habits in a more sensible way. Like not just changing everything drastically, because that's. That's not going to work, like you have to do it gradually. You have to do it gracefully. You have to, um, listen to your body, listen to your needs.

    For example, you give up on alcohol at like during January, your body's going to crave other things. Your, your body's going to crave sugar. Your body's going to crave like binge watching a Netflix series, right? It's going to create that dopamine beam. So like those little pleasure moments, right? So you need to be graceful and accept that that will happen.

    With the app, we try to promote that these things are okay, but then we also try to promote okay, after seven days, now you can start looking after what you're eating, right? We give you seven days to just like cheat a little bit and eat more chocolate that you, that you, I don't know, should maybe. But then after that, start like watching your sugar intake and other things.

    Obviously we're not going to, we're not promoting anyone to just becoming, I don't know, super healthy and a vegetarian. It's just to stop eating from fast food chains and stop eating sugar all the time, like soft drinks and stuff like that. Because just drinking water, it's, it's amazing what it does for you, right?

    So we try to promote these little changes that don't really, you know, They're not like a massive, massive change in your life, but they have a very, very good outcome some, some weeks after starting them. Yeah. There's two ways to do it. You can take a month off drinking, well, there's more than two ways, but you can take a month off drinking and just not drink, right?

    Or you can take a month off drinking. Really learn more about your drinking habits and maybe make another change as you get to the end of the month, right? It sounds like your app is a wonderful way to guide people through using different tools and let's start with Hypnotherapy. I'm so interested in this.

    What is hypnotherapy? Hypnotherapy, it has a bit of a bad reputation because of movies, because people, when you say hypnosis or hypnotherapy, people just think of someone just swinging a pen, a pen in front of your face and just like doing, and then you're completely gone, right? And they can do, they can tell you to do whatever they want and you're going to do it.

    That's not how it works. That's not at all how it works. Hypnotherapy is like a deep state of relaxation where you're more open to suggestions, more open to listening to what the other person's saying, right? Because sometimes when we're conscious, we're listening, but we're not really registering that, right?

    It's stays on the surface, but we don't, we're not thinking, we're not thinking about it. We're not processing it. But with hypnotherapy, you're more open to processing these suggestions, right? And obviously if someone like, for example, we're in a therapy session and I tell you go rob a bank, you're not going to go rob a bank and you're not going to do anything that's against your values.

    So it's not dangerous. It's very safe. Because it's, it's just like, uh, an extra push to what you already want to do in a conscious level. So what we do with the hypnotherapy sessions is bring people to a very relaxed state and then suggest, like, you're not going to drink today. You're going to make better decisions for yourself, for your health, and obviously in a very calm and soothing way, right, and it actually reduces the urge to drink.

    You're not going to feel it on the first day, you're not going to feel it on the second day, but maybe after a week, you'll realize, Oh, I don't have that urge to drink that, like, I'm not anxious to drink anymore. Like now it's more of like a thought, but it's not that strong. So the strength of those urges go down and down.

    That's what hemotherapy tackles. Wow. I want to ask you, what exactly is hypnosis? Because as you were saying that, like I'm getting, um, when I was making my notes for this episode, I was thinking, you know, you're getting very sleepy, you know, it's like, yes, that somebody is just dangling something in front of your face and it's like, boom, you're out.

    What exactly is hypnosis? Hypnosis is that state of relaxation and it feels like you're floating. It's more in getting in contact with your unconscious mind, with the things that you don't really know about yourself, right? Or that you don't really think. We call it in trance when you've been in like hypnosed or like in the hypnosis, you're in trance.

    So being in trance is very common in our daily lives and we don't really know that we're doing it. And, for example, how many times. Have you driven, like, you were driving home and then you arrived home and you're like, when, well, how did I get here? You don't remember what happened. You were in trans, you were in a state of complete relaxation where your mind was like doing other things and you don't realize what you're doing, um, in a conscious level, right?

    Like you're just, it, it completely goes unconscious. So, hypnotherapy is just getting into that state. It's very natural. We do it every day. I just put an example, but there's many, many, many more consciously. We have our resistances. We have our, I don't know, we, we disagree with some things or we don't want to get emotional sometimes because being in touch with certain emotions is like, I don't know, you wouldn't really want to be sad or we don't want to be angry.

    Right. It's, it's difficult to get in touch with certain emotions that are a bit uncomfortable. So when we're open to doing immunotherapy. We're more open to embracing anything that comes, but at the same time, you have to be open to hypnotherapy. If you're not open to hypnotherapy, you resist to that.

    You're not going to get in because you have the control. And when you're being hypnotized, you still know what's going on. It's just that your conscious mind is not the one that takes the lead. It's the unconscious mind that is taking the lead, right? But it's still you. You still, you still know what's going on.

    Know what's going on, you're still aware of everything that's going on around you. It's just that your mind is, it has a list. Background noise. It's fascinating. And you describing that driving, I think about that all the time. Like, how did I even get here? I get that. Talk about the benefits and the timeline for this.

    What can we expect if somebody signs up, they're open. Cause I love that word open, open and willing to train it out. What, what would they look at as far as inside MyDry30? So, the program is, for now, it's a 30 day program. We're working on doing it longer, 90 days, but for now it's 30 days and, um, it's where every day you're going to find 15 minutes of hypnotherapy, 10 minutes of journaling questions to think about different topics, and five minutes of reading.

    Every day is going to be a different topic related to self care, having good habits, like not drinking alcohol, like having better dietary choices. So it's a bit of everything, like gratitude, self compassion, how sugar affects your body. And it's only 30 minutes a day, so it's very doable. A person will just go into the app and then we'll do the hypnotherapy first.

    They'll listen to this suggestions, this, they'll get into the state of relaxation. And then after that, they're going to start getting more in touch with their inner self and that's when the journaling questions really help as well because they help them. Putting an order in what we're thinking, because sometimes there's like, thoughts are just like flying in our heads, right?

    And we're not really aware of what we're thinking and it looks like a mess. But then you just grab a journal, write a couple of things down, and then you think, Oh, that was actually easier than what I thought, right? So that's why we promote these two things and they're very good together. And obviously, That's like the base, but then there's other things on top of that.

    There's some days that we call action days and connection days. Action days are more like random things that you can do for your health, like measuring your blood pressure or going to the doctors. Um, and then connection days are, for example, saying thank you to someone in your life, just being grateful or getting in touch with someone that you haven't talked in a while with, right?

    So. Because obviously we want to promote a healthier lifestyle in general. We don't want to be like, uh, 30 day break and that's it. After on the 31, you're just going to go back to binge drinking. No, we want to help you reduce the urges from a more inner, way, and also to promote a better environment for yourself, connecting with people that you love, exercising more, moving more your body, making better choices food wise, right?

    So that's why we touch different aspects to make it as broad as possible. I like that. That's it. It's getting in and really, if you're going to take a break, like let's make it count. Let's make it meaningful. Uh, who is hypnotherapy for, or who is MyDry30 for? The app is for any moderate to light drinker.

    It's, it's very adaptable to anybody's situation, I would say. Because if someone just wants to explore what a break would be, but then they want to go back to drinking, but maybe more in moderation, that's fine as well. If you have a problem that's very deep, you need to go to the hospital and you need to get proper.

    Like medication and, and more serious stuff. What we teach is that people have a healthier relationship with alcohol, even if they want to continue drinking in a moderate way, like we help people make decisions on when they want to drink, not out of habit or not out of like, as a response to an emotion or as a coping mechanism, because it's not really a coping mechanism, right?

    It's, it's not really helping you. So We want to help people make better decisions. And if someone is just a light drinker, it can also help with these urges that come from time to time, because they're very common, people still have urges. Even if like, sometimes I have urges and I haven't had a drink in ages, but when I said before that sometimes I have the urge to drink one mojito in a hot summer day, I could not drink that.

    Right. But from time to time, I have that urge and it's, It's good because we always have triggers from time to time. So those triggers that come, they can be treated with hypnotherapy as well and then be a bit more quiet, right? A bit less strong. And obviously with, with practice, they will be even less and less strong with time.

    Yeah. I think it's one of those expectations you have to have, like expect to have the urges and the cravings. And expect them to start to lessen over time, but everybody's timeline is so different. You talked about benefits, like helping with the urgent and the cravings over time. So within that 30 days, what else could they expect benefit wise?

    And are there any negative effects of hypnotherapy? Of hypnotherapy, there are not any negative effects. The only thing that could happen is that they don't feel anything changing because maybe they're not. Like some people are less willing to connect, or it's more difficult for some people. It takes longer to connect, right?

    And pretty much everybody's that can be hypnotized, but some people get hypnotized very easily and some people don't. It's like a muscle, the more you train it, the stronger it will get, but it's the same. Some people get relaxed so they can meditate very easily and some of the people say, I've been trying to meditate for months and I just, I don't seem to be getting it right.

    So it's just, I always say patience, it will come because I was one of the ones that could never meditate and in uni, when I was studying psychology and in uni they promoted a lot mindfulness and meditation. Like to be in touch with like these sort of practices, but I was terrible at it. I was like, that's not working for me.

    And I was, I've had friends that was just, they would, they would be, they would meditate every day because they loved it. And I was like, this is so boring because I, I'm, it's not working for me. But then after a while, I just kept going to the meditation, like workshops that we were doing or. I would listen to audios and one point I was like, Oh, I'm starting to get it now.

    I'm starting to be like, to get into that relaxed state. Right. My mind has dialed down all that noise. It might take a while, but I always encourage people to just keep trying. Yeah. I don't think we give ourselves enough time because we feel like, okay, well, we should be over the hump of this, right? It's took me a long time to get to a place where I just felt better about myself and better about not drinking.

    And so, yeah, it's just a good reminder. The habits that go along with drinking, can they use hypnotherapy to break like a habit of going to the store after work on a stressful night? Say they're doing a dry January, and of course in the morning I wake up, I'm not drinking today, I'm not drinking tonight, but the day goes by, life happens, and at the end of the day they typically have that response.

    Like. I'm driving to the store, I'm not going home. Can they use hypnotherapy to help them change that type of a habit? Yeah, because that is connected to the urge of drinking in the end, right? Like, I'm just going to go to the store and I'm just going to buy alcohol, right? Even if it's, I'm just going to the supermarket to buy chocolate and then I'm just going to, like on the way out, you're like, Oh no, I'm just going to stop by the liquor store as well.

    But with hypnotherapy, those urges just go down. And I, I always tell people that it's a very good moment when you have those urges, it's a very good moment to listen to that hypnotherapy. It's only 15 minutes. Even if you're in the car, you just park somewhere, press on and just listen to it, close your eyes and listen to it.

    And it will relax you and it will, like, it will dial down that urge. And if you still have that urge after, because it can still happen when you sometimes get into that. Stressful situation, I always suggest, keep your mind busy, go for a walk, do something that makes your mind interested, or like cook a new recipe.

    Do something that distracts you because that urge will eventually go. We have, it's like, like a wave, right? And we have to surf it and because it will go up, but then it will go down. If we distract. Our minds, if we breathe through it, it will go, it will pass. The only problem is that we always cave in when it's up high, we, we don't know what's after that, that wave because we never let it sink, right?

    We always do what that wave is telling us when, when it's at this, at this higher point and. We just need to be patient and that is extremely difficult because in today's world, we have everything at the tip of our fingers. We just want something and we can have it. Like we order something from Amazon and we have it on the same day.

    Like, it's just, we, we just have it. We can have everything or we have all the information that we have, that we want to have in the world, just in our phones or in our laptops. Right. So it's very, very difficult to cultivate that patience. But, Normally, the, the more that you cultivate that patient, the more benefits that you will see in your life, like the better outcomes and the better habits are the ones that take time and patience to develop.

    Yeah, really delaying that short term gratification, that is so tough and just like you had said, you know, expecting the challenges, expecting the cravings, maybe expecting some fatigue in the beginning, expecting wanting sugar, expect those urges to pass. So that was good that you brought up pulling over and listening to the session in the car because I was going to ask you, what is the best time of day to listen?

    And can they listen multiple times throughout the day if they needed it? The same session? Mm hmm. Yeah, they can listen to the same session. And regarding the time of the day, I always recommend doing it whenever suits you best, when you feel that you have the time to do it. Not do it in a rush, because you're not going to get the results with that.

    You need to, like, set a time, 30 minutes a day, or even if it's just 15 minutes for the hypnotherapy, to just, like, do it. Okay, these 15 minutes are for me, nobody's gonna disturb me in those 15 minutes, right? If you're gonna have someone disturbing you, then it's better to leave it for late. Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it and a habit that we can all build because we do want everything so fast and so sometimes you look at 30 minutes like that seems like a really long time.

    Right. And so it'd be a great habit to build in January while doing this is a habit of 30 minutes for myself. And you could break it up, like you said, if you just want to listen to the hypnotherapy and come back to the journaling and the reading, um, but be consistent with that throughout the whole month of January and see what changes for you.

    Would you want to share anything else that our listeners need to know about hypnotherapy? Mm, I think I've pretty much said everything, but. Well, yeah, what good thing is that we sometimes think of the body and the mind as two separate entities, two separate things, but they're extremely interconnected, right?

    When I was telling you before about my gut infection, later on, I discovered that it was because I had been stressed for a very long period of time. My gut infection happened right after breaking up with my boyfriend back then and doing my master's degree. So of course I was. Busy and I was dealing with a breakup, right?

    So after a long period of time of me being anxious and stressed, my body reacted to that. So there's, there's this, it's a cycle, right? If your mind is stressed, your body will be stressed. If your mind is tense, your body will be tense. And if your body is tense, if there's something wrong with your body, if something hurts, you will be stressed about it.

    There's this like cause effect relationship. But at the same time, we can use that in our benefit. If we relax the body with hypnotherapy, then the mind will relax because that's the signal that the body will send to the mind. So it really makes the connection between the body and the mind stronger.

    Sounds lovely. I want you to talk a little bit about Dry January, the benefits that our listeners can create for themselves in taking 30 days off from drinking alcohol, and then also, 31, and then also any challenges that you are seeing out in the world when somebody looks at taking a month off from drinking, what are the challenges and again, what are the benefits?

    So regarding the first question about Dry January, I always tell people that obviously anybody can start to have it any day, but dry January is a very good moment in your life to start fresh. And the app, it has a, has a consistency that will help you get through it. And we sent, we send you a reminder every day for you to just go into the app and oh yeah, I'm just going to do it now.

    Right. So it's very easy to follow. It's a very. User friendly experience, I would say. So we always encourage people to just like keep doing it. And obviously at the beginning it's a bit like any, any habit. Like it takes a while to get used to it, but if you force it a little bit at the beginning, eventually you will see the, the benefits.

    Um, obviously you won't see the benefits on the first week, but maybe you'll see the benefits on the second week. Right. A lot of people say that after 10 days they do start seeing the benefits. Actually, I have a funny story. Um. Before we had even started, we were creating the hemotherapy sessions and we hired a professional, um, actress to record the hemotherapy sessions.

    And because she has a lovely voice and she's from Texas and she's explained that later to me. She She doesn't like drink a lot, but she loves going to football games. And obviously there's a lot of drinking and beers, football games. And she goes to football games every single week, at least twice a week.

    So there's always beers around her. And she always has beers in the, in the fridge and stuff like that. And then when she started recording these sessions, after a week, she realized that she had way more beers in. The fridge that she would normally have. And she was like, wait a minute. Why do I have that many fruit and their beers in my fridge?

    My fridge is full. I was going to go to the store to buy some more, but I don't need to because I have, I have them in the fridge. And it's because. Without, without even realizing she, by doing the hypnotherapy, by recording it and saying it over and over, she just got the benefits of it, which was really cool because then we were like, okay, this really works because if it works for you, that you're just saying it, imagine someone that is like willing to, because she was not even willing to, to stop drinking and then she said, it was just like, I don't know, a consequence of it, which was, it's, it's really cool.

    Oh my gosh, she had more beer because she was drinking less. I love that so much. Oh, that's great to know. That's fantastic. Yeah. You can make a lot of changes and I know that this sounds like such a different approach, but I think we got to go back to if you're open and willing to giving it a try. Try it out.

    Definitely. What are the challenges that you see for people taking a break from alcohol? Do we have that? Oh my gosh, this is going to be forever. What if I like it too much and I don't want to, you know, go back to drinking alcohol? I had that fear when I took my first drink, my first January off from drinking.

    Didn't happen, but I went back to it, but yeah, talk about that forever. Forever. I think we're very like. Life is constant change, even if we don't like it, life is constant change, and we just have to adapt to that change. We cannot say for certain that something's going to be forever, because anything can happen at any point in your life.

    Like tomorrow, your life can be just completely different from the one that you're having today, right? So, I never use the word be sober forever, because that's a lot of pressure. Because then, when someone says, I'm going to be sober forever, And then one day they have a drink, then they have a lot of guilt and they shame themselves.

    And that is not the purpose of it at all. It's just, well, you had a drink or you have a couple of drinks. Don't worry. Life like goes on. I always recommend people to take Everything one step at a time and, um, understand that there will be challenges of not drinking. Of course, people are going to ask you, Oh, why are you not drinking?

    I hate that question. It happens every single time. And even with people that know me, they still ask me, are you sure you just don't want, I don't know, like a Coke or a Mocha? And I'm like, I could, but no, I just want water now. Like that's it, you know? And people are very insisting, and it's just something that you have to, like, get used to it, understand that life will come and there will be challenges.

    If you have another moment of your life where you drink again, that's fine as well, but I always encourage people to remember the benefits of not drinking, so they can eventually go back to not drinking and the outcome is, is better in, like, health wise. Because If not, if we think about it, when we start drinking, I don't know, when we're teenagers or older teenagers, and unless we have a health problem or we have, I don't know, a pregnancy, we don't really stop ever.

    We're always exposed to alcohol and that is shocking to think about because now you say, Oh yeah, I'm just going to have a beer or two. And then you say, okay, at the end of the week, maybe it's five, but then in a month, maybe it's 25. But then if you count in a year, The amount of drinks that you've had, where if you count in five years, you're like, Oh my God, that is a lot of alcohol.

    And that is a lot of money spent in something that is not good for me. I like that. That's one of the benefits of not drinking even for 30 days. You've mentioned it a couple of times, saving money, of course, taking care of your wellbeing, both mentally and physically and taking that time for yourself. And this is the thing I always say, you have to have this experience for yourself to understand what the benefits are for you, because we can say, well, you probably, maybe you'll have better sleep.

    Maybe you'll be in a better mood, right? We all have a personal experience for it. And using. A way, using a way to track it and to pay attention to your progress daily, that's you getting really clear on what your experience is, and that will help you at the end of a 30 day break. Make another choice to what you want to do going forward.

    Too many of us are putting the cart before the horse, right? It's like, we're trying to get to the end of the month and what's going to happen then, like stay present in the day. And like you said, just take it day to day, step by step. Exactly. And have patience. Have patience. Gosh, we all have to have more patience with ourselves.

    What can our listeners do to get started? I'm going to link the app. I'm going to give you a special discount for listeners and it will be through a link and they will be able to get a discount because the program is 30. It's 30 days, 30, easy to remember, but then with the link, they have a 20 percent off.

    Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much. I'll share that in the show notes. So great. Go and check it out. I'm excited for everybody who is kicking off the new year. And even if you've done it before, let's talk to the woman out there who's saying, I do this every year and then I go back, you know, or I don't even make it through the end of January.

    Sylvia, give them some encouragement to help them get started. I, I will tell them that this is different. This is a different approach from any other thing that they've tried because willpower will get you not very far, to be fair, and working with your unconscious mind is key. To have lasting change. So I always say, just try it.

    It's a new thing and worst things worse. You just go back to how you were, but we haven't had that outcome yet from people that we've been hearing. So I just encourage people to try it. It cannot go wrong. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you for being here, Sylvia. I really appreciated this conversation. Good luck with everything.

    so much for having me. With My Dry 30. Thank you. Thank you again for listening. Wasn't that a great episode? Go check out MyDry30. com. The link is down below. I will be back next week with a short and sweet episode on Christmas Day. If you are interested in enrolling in my coaching community, Team Alcohol Free, I am going to be doing a last call on 2024 enrollment.

    For a short period of time, so make sure you're part of my email community. You can sign up in the link in the show notes or visit lorimassicot.com. I am with you. I'm proud of you. I'm cheering for you. You can take a break at any time during any month, take 30 days off to better understand your drinking habits and feel better.

    I'm with you. Peace.

Want more? Check out these popular episodes:

Understanding Alcohol Use Disorder with Sarah Rusbatch

5 Essential Ways to Manage Cravings and Urges Without Drinking

5 Practical Tips to Help You Stop Drinking in Midlife and Beyond


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