Shows
Sobertown PodcastEP 216: How Do You Help Someone Stop Drinking Before it’s Too Late? What if It’s You?Boom Rethink the Drink,
Yesterday I had a chance to talk with my friend Drifter for his Sober Town Podcast. It was International Women's Day so we had planned to talk about the toxicity of alcohol marketing directed at women, but after a couple of days of multiple postings in our communities on the deadly result of alcohol addiction, we decided instead to focus on the questions of "how do you stop drinking before it goes too far?" - "how do you help someone you love who seems lost to the bottle?" Drifter and I have both...
2022-03-1048 minSobertown PodcastEP 206: Neuroplasticity Discovery in Recovery: Boom Rethink the Drink
Join Wingy and Drifter as they talk: Neuroplasticity and the Discovery in Recovery - Open Your Mind to the Possibilities
Neuroplasticity has fascinated me since I read Marc Lewis’ book The Biology of Desire when I was 8 months sober. It was the last of many books that I read that year on the topic of addiction and recovery. One of the interesting things about Marc’s book was that unlike the other books I had been reading it did not help me stop drinking, or inspire me to stay sober, but rather explained the awesome, unexpected growth that...
2022-02-2257 minSobertown PodcastEP 199: They’re Marketing Us - Boom Rethink the DrinkWingy from "Boom Rethink the Drink" and Drifter sit down to chat about the marketing of alcohol before Super Bowl Sunday.
Super Bowl Sunday is one of the biggest challenges of the year for people who have recently stopped drinking. Alcohol will likely be a big feature of any Super Bowl party and if your friends don’t know you’ve gone sober you may find yourself in an uncomfortable spot, deciding how much information to give or not about why you’re partying alcohol-free. It’s also a challenge that alcohol is a big feature of the Super Bowl itself in...
2022-02-0848 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!A Tuned in February Sober Inspiration Song Contest - My Best AF (alcohol-free) ThingsFresh vacuumed carpetand pedicured toenailsPine-scented candlesand “no unread emails”The utter confidencewhen a child singsThese are a few of my best AF thingsAlmond-milk lattesand butterscotch puddingTouchdowns and field goalsand he does the cookingPlaying a poker gamehand filled with KingsThese are a few of my best AF thingsNotes from my daughterwith her unique spellingKids getting readyfor school without yellingA tiny hummingbirdwhizzing its...
2022-02-0702 minSobertown PodcastEP 194: Boom Rethink The Drink Ft. Winged Victory
Are you Sober Curious? Do you want to stop drinking or are you trying to drink more moderately? In a world where you may be questioned for not drinking with the crowd, we’ll help you to find your own path. I am Winged Victory, the founder of the Boom Rethink the Drink community and Boozemusings blog. I retired from a long and illustrious drinking career on March 6, 2015, by reading and writing in a creative, supportive, and inspiring online community called Hello Sunday Morning. I've been gratefully reaching back with words, ideas, and love ever since. Community is the cure. Op...
2022-02-011h 24
Rethink the Drink BOOM!The Magic of the Sober Toolbox to Power Your WillWhat kind of helpful, positive things CAN we do or reach for in those low-cycle times when we’re feeling depleted and vulnerable? These are the tools in your sober toolbox. Will you meditate for a few minutes? Hit the yoga mat? Do some breathing exercises? Pick up a fascinating book you can’t put down? Play a GREAT recovery or comedic podcast while you do some dinner prepping? Take a short walk and connect with nature? Jump on a trampoline, hit a punching bag, or throw some darts? The possibilities are endless and it’s going to be differ...
2021-11-0912 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!How to Stop Drinking – How I Became and Remain a Motivated and Sober ParentWhen I would tell myself that I needed to do something about my drinking I thought that I was aware of my problem, but I was only looking at the surface. It is easy to say “I drink too much” but quite another thing to fix that problem. To drop that dialogue of denial- “maybe I’m not that bad … one more drink can’t hurt…I’ll stop tomorrow” – I had to dig deep.Make This the Week That Your Sobriety Takes OffThe way that I finally stopped drinking was based on developing self-awareness of my...
2021-11-0823 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Letting go of Denial – Stop Drinking and Stay Sober on Your TermsIt is hard to stop drinking from a place of high functioning, or what is now commonly called Gray Area Drinking, for different reasons than it is hard to stop from a place of end – stage – alcoholism. No matter how dark and hopeless your secret drinking may feel to you, unless you hit a recognizable rock bottom, the world around you will encourage you to stay in that place of denial. Everywhere we look our culture encourages us to drink. To celebrate, to mourn, to relieve stress, to socialize, to achieve intimacy, to relax and enjoy everything that life has t...
2021-11-0516 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Singing the Siren to Sleep - Community Support to Stop DrinkingThe Siren song is a voice that I heard in my last few months of drinking. It was kind of magical and very seductive and beautiful, but it was dark and terrifying as well. That voice came near the end of the second bottle of wine drunk alone on an empty stomach and that voice said, “you are mine” “we are a team” “we are beautiful together” “we are powerful together” “everything is us” “nothing else matters” And that Siren Song will still be there if I drink again… I can quite literally feel her there on the tip of my tongue, waiti...
2021-11-0418 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!5 Gifts of Sobriety – Celebrating Sober With Thoughts on How to Stop DrinkingDoes this desperate internal dialogue sound familiar?I have to stop drinking –Why do I keep doing this to myself?Why can’t I be like everyone else?I am so stupid, I am worried, I need help!I am not that bad am I? I know lots of people worse than me.I want these thoughts to stop. I can’t sleep, it’s so hot, I am so thirsty, I have to be up in another 4 hours.I wonder if I am still over the...
2021-11-0218 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Hearing the Distress Call - How I Finally Quit DrinkingThis process when we finally quit drinking can be excruciating, but my body was relieved right away. If I just focused on my body and the rewards were immediate. Working through my emotions was hard, and some of the early physical symptoms with sleep and headaches were tough. But even still my body was cautiously happy.After a month my anxiety went way down and continues to. My skin and eyes look much brighter; I look younger. My gut issues have disappeared. My sleep is downright glorious. I’m always well-hydrated now and I can’t wait to s...
2021-05-2808 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Gray Area Drinking- The Truth About How Alcohol Damages Your BrainWhat exactly is the gray in gray area drinking? It’s that place between obviously bad, and not that bad, that keeps us hanging on to a slow, spiraling addiction. But now that they are saying this ‘No safe amount’: All alcohol consumption ‘harmful to the brain’ any amount of alcohol would seem to be a bad idea. I don’t think it really matters how many headlines are thrown around proclaiming that any amount of alcohol is bad for you. People will still drink, holding onto hope that they aren’t – that bad.I was in that gray area n...
2021-05-2308 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Un-Drowning – Rising Up From a Legacy of Alcohol AddictionAddiction and alcohol – Alcohol addiction. No one wants those words strung together to describe their family routine. But it did describe mine. I’ve come to recognize that yes, there is life outside of the bottle. Once you say to yourself, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired”, the freedom of sobriety is right around the corner. To think about drinking all of the time – the “Decision Fatigue”- it’s exhausting. I think this may be the obsessiveness that just tires you out, and to feel better, you need it removed from your life. I think that A...
2021-05-1913 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Demystifying Sober – Survival Guide From My First 10 Days Alcohol-Free - Part 1Today is my one-year sober anniversary and I am thrilled. It has been the longest and shortest year of my life! Stopping drinking and then staying sober hasn’t been easy, but it has been worth it. I started with a firm goal of 10 days alcohol-free and hoped to reach 100 days sober. I never thought I could do the first 10 days, let alone the 100 much less a whole year, and now I’ve “made it”. But what does that mean?With the alcohol out of my mind and body, my anxiety is way down and I sleep so much...
2021-05-1715 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Part 2 ... Demystifying Sober – Survival Guide From My First 10 Days Alcohol-FreeYou can listen to the first part of this recording at this link - Part 1 https://anchor.fm/boozemusings-community/episodes/Demystifying-Sober--Survival-Guide-From-My-First-10-Days-Alcohol-Free---Part-1-e112ddlThis is the second of two recordings from the post at this link https://boozemusings.com/demystifying-sober-survival-guide-from-my-first-10-days-alcohol-free/Looking back from my first-year sober anniversary to my first 10 days alcohol-free Day 5 through 10 Day 5- Stay Home – HIDE!Day 6 – Mrs P. and 100 new things in the next 100 days!!Day 7 – Understanding Wolfie and the Wine Witch or Beating the Mythical Booze Brain BeastsDay 8 –...
2021-05-1728 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Sobriety is a Dirty Word“Sobriety” in and of itself sounds and feels so sparklingly pure. Free. Liberated. An enlightening achievement.SobrietyI’m keeping my body “clean” and “free” from the poisons of alcohol. But saying you’re sober feels like announcing you are pregnant and going to have a baby. It sounds so fresh, wholesome, pure, and wonderful! Everyone celebrates and cheers the good news. But the flip side is it’s suddenly incontrovertible evidence that you’ve been doing the dirty…You can’t say ‘sobriety’ without the glaring evidence now that, yeah, you were drinking too much and all tha...
2021-05-1608 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Struggling With the Idea of Sobriety? Thoughts from 500 Days SoberLooking back from 500 days sober, I still remember that when I was struggling with the mere idea of sobriety. Even for a shortened stint like my first 30-day alcohol-free challenge, the questions flooded my mind.How will I stop drinking?When will I stop drinking?Sobriety? Seriously? Is that really necessary?What in the heck do I need to do/understand/think/be so that I can tell my monkey brain that:I can do this, I can live without alcoholMy drinking is making my life...
2021-05-1411 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Learn it through the DoingLately, while working through my own illegible life script, I’ve been identifying some unsettling, troublesome bits. Instead of gently flagging them and continuing onward, allowing the questions of“why am I troubled by that? What does it mean?”to just be there in the background, I’ve stopped in place, gnashing my teeth and wailing“Why is this in my script?!? I don’t understand it!!! I don’t want it here! Give me something prettier to say! to work with!”I can’t afford to give the writers a raise so this is the script...
2021-05-1403 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!How Do You Stop Drinking When You Love to Drink ?If you're trying to stop drinking, how do you break the cycle of getting to day three, or five, or seven alcohol-free, and finding yourself drinking again because you talk yourself into thinking that you can handle just one or two? How do you get to the point where you don't retreat to old habits when you're feeling lost or bored or empty. Breaking up with alcohol can feel like losing a friend or leaving a toxic lover. I loved to drink. Drinking was a much-anticipated part of my daily routine and had been for decades! Giving it up...
2021-05-1307 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Are You Maybe Sober Curious? An Invitation to Imagine The Life that Sobriety Cultivates2 years ago, while searching around the internet for help to stop drinking, I stumbled over some words that were not at all what I expected to be reading. The title of the article was pretty straightforward, Guide to your First Month Sober: Why and How to Quit Drinking, but there was little in it about the dull, controlled and somewhat depressing world that I assumed was addiction recovery. I had no idea how much those words would change my life. I joined the online community, BOOM Rethink the Drink, that was recommended in that article, and 100 alcohol-free days later...
2021-05-1209 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!For Those Struggling to Stop Drinking : Overriding Your Survival instincts or Walking Through the Ring of FireMost of us are addicted to alcohol on some level when we decide to stop drinking. We may not be physically dependent but we are most likely neurologically addicted. If you drink routinely at a similar time under similar circumstances, your brain will learn that it needs alcohol in those situations. That could be every day at 5 pm or every Friday and Saturday night. Even with weekend binge drinking, it is possible to become neurologically addicted if you repeat the behavior routinely.Addiction works on your survival instinct or“Lizard Brain”Many people are...
2021-05-1108 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Guide to your First Month Sober: Why and How to Quit DrinkingIf you had told me, only 6 weeks ago, that the first month sober would be anything other than a miserable, white-knuckled exercise in deprivation, I would have written you off as delusional or brainwashed by self-help books. I would have assumed that you didn’t know me, didn’t understand my life, or had simply forgotten how wonderful drinking really was. I would have been wrong. This is a recording of a blog post published on the Boozemusings log at this link Demystifying Sober for the Sober Curious - find more here on our Boozemusings Blog and here in our...
2021-05-1129 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!I Choose Freedom - Escaping the Alcohol TrapStopping myself from drinking alcohol was so very difficult for me to do at first because it was masking the real problems. It didn’t take me long to realise that for me it wasn’t that I was simply addicted to alcohol – it was much deeper than that.Alcohol was not the only thing I was dealing with.The real issue was that I wanted and thought I needed alcohol’s effect because it helped to cover up the root of my problems.Alcohol was the drug I had chosen to help me deal w...
2021-05-1106 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Breaking the Spell of Wine o’ClockI think that it was the author Lucy Rocca who coined the term Wine Witch. Belle, who writes the blog Tired of Thinking about Drinking, came up with a malevolent wine o’clock voice named Wolfie. In the rational recovery program, the smiling assassin’s Drink Now voice is called The Feast Beast. And indeed, what I felt for years as I slipped further and further into alcohol addiction was an almost supernatural pull to keep repeating the same self-destructive behavior. It didn’t matter how much I understood of the health consequences of my dangerous drinking routine. It didn’t...
2021-05-1009 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Sober Freedom - Feeling the Highs and LowsFeelings are hard. Freely feeling is not something I'm used to. Once I got solidly sober, when I started thinking more about why I drank, it was always with the intention of changing how I felt — making the highs higher, running away from the lows, or simply trying to fill the empty space of boredom. When I started drinking, I’m pretty confident I had “enhancing” the highs as my goal the vast majority of the time. But as the years went on, there were fewer highs to enhance, and more and more lows to try and hide from. This is...
2021-05-0910 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Blogging Away from “Wine o’Clock” – A Sober Mom’s Tribute to “Redefining Me Time”Blogging and community outreach on the internet has become a passion for me. I went from a total incomprehension of anything “tech” to building a website and starting a private, anonymous blogging community like the one that helped me stop drinking 6 years ago. There is so much creative possibility with the internet. I have found that reaching out with ideas and compassion in a non-commercial, creative way has filled the void I felt when I first stopped drinking away my evenings. And that void has long since filled with me. If you’re drinking too much too often come talk t...
2021-05-0921 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Maybe KnotsWe all know there are people who do not have a problem with addiction and there are some of us who do. And most of us have been touched directly or indirectly by this. I took that recent Sunday morning and my hangover as a gentle warning, a sign from God or Universe, or the One or whatever you want to call Her or Him or It. As if to say,There is this thing you are ignoring, I invite you to listen. This time I will tell you softly, with only a hangover and lost Sunday...
2021-05-0808 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!My Beautiful Mind at 1,000 days SoberThis is a recording by the author of a blog post that you can find at this link https://boozemusings.com/my-beautiful-mind-at-1000-days-sober/
2021-05-0708 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Looking Back from 5 Months SoberThis is a recording of the following Blog Post https://boozemusings.com/looking-back-from-5-months-sober/
2021-05-0704 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Nothing tastes better than sober…This episode is also available as a blog post: https://boozemusings.com/nothing-tastes-better-than-sober-2/
2021-05-0608 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Selling the Possibility of Loving Life SoberThis episode is also available as a blog post: https://boozemusings.com/selling-the-possibility-of-loving-life-sober-rethink-the-drink/
2021-05-0605 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!The Beauty of Life Alcohol-FreeThis episode is also available as a blog post: https://boozemusings.com/the-beauty-of-life-alcohol-free/
2021-05-0604 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!Don't Label Me Alcoholic Because I Choose Not to DrinkThis episode is also available as a blog post: https://boozemusings.com/dont-label-me-alcoholic-because-i-choose-not-to-drink/
2021-05-0609 min
Rethink the Drink BOOM!How I Stopped Drinking Without AAThis episode is also available as a blog post: https://boozemusings.com/how-i-stopped-drinking-without-aa/I’ve never been very good at following the rules. I don’t actually intend to be rebellious I just always seem to go my own way. When I knew that I needed to stop drinking and found that I could not do it on my own, the biggest reason I didn’t go to AA wasn’t my rebellious nature but simple practicalities. I don’t have options where I live. There is one English-speaking AA group in my city that meets once a week at...
2021-05-0605 min