224. How I Experienced Freedom from Alcohol

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 224 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today how I experienced freedom from alcohol.

So 17 years ago, I finally made the decision to give up drinking alcohol. This was not a decision that came quickly or easily for me because I’ve been drinking daily for many, many years. And I got to a point where my life was just not what I wanted it to be. I wanted more for myself and alcohol was standing between me and the person that I ultimately wanted to be.

So today, how I experienced freedom from alcohol, how I got my life back and how I became more than I ever thought possible. But first, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, it means that your health is important to you, you want to feel better, you want to look better, you want to get stronger, you want to run faster.

And I’m here to tell you that all of that is possible for you. And I also want you to know that I’m here to help you get there. I’m talking to you on the podcast here. And if you’re listening to the podcast, you’re going to learn a lot.

I listen to all sorts of podcasts. I listen to audiobooks, I know a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. But when it comes to the practical application of all this knowledge, nothing has helped me more than having a coach there every step of the way, to guide me to mentor me to help me stay on track.

I’ve had several amazing coaches in my life who have helped me to become who I am today, I’m in the best shape of my life, I have a thriving business. And my mindset has never been better. My amazing coaches helped me with all of that I had a coach in each of these different areas of my life.

In fact, they had such a powerful impact on me that they inspired me to want to be a coach. So that’s why I do what I do today. So for you, the person who’s listening to all these podcasts, keep listening, keep learning, keep expanding your knowledge. But when you’re ready to get to work, consider working with a coach, it doesn’t even have to be me.

But find someone that can show you the way they can help you to apply all of this knowledge to hold you accountable to help you stay on track, so that you can get the results that you want, and maybe a little bit faster than you ever could on your own.

Okay, and if you’re interested in working with me, you can always go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on Work With Me. And we’ll work together to help you to become the most badass version of yourself. Yeah, cool. Awesome. Okay.

So today, what I’m talking about here is how I experienced freedom from alcohol. And I’m just gonna give you guys a little bit of a disclaimer, this is gonna be a little bit of a different episode, I typically write out quite a lot of notes for my podcast, and I have a lot of references to things that I want to talk about. Today, I’m just kind of winging it.

And the reason I want to just kind of wing it is because I just want to share my experience with you. I want to share with you my story of how I used to be someone who couldn’t live without alcohol, and how I became someone who can imagine drinking again, it’s a very huge shift. It’s a cataclysmic shift in my life, I am a vastly different person today than I was when I was in my drinking days. So that’s why I didn’t really write notes, because it’s just my story.

And I’m just going to tell you my story the way that I remember it. So if I jump around a little bit, just know that I’ll try to pull it back. And I’ll try to keep you on track as much as possible here. But this is going to be just a little bit of a different episode. I just want to share how I experienced true freedom from alcohol. And I’m hoping to inspire you to experience true freedom from alcohol as well if that’s something that you’re interested in.

And if you listen to the end of this episode, I’m going to share with you a program that I’m putting together that may help with experiencing freedom from alcohol. Okay, so be sure to listen to the end and you’ll see how you can find out more about this program that I’m putting together here. Okay.

So let’s start from the beginning. So 17 years ago, this week, so April 9 is what I call my sobriety date. That’s the date that I quit drinking, and the day that I made the decision to change my life because I was about 40 years old or so at the time.

And for the previous, oh my gosh, 25 years or so 20-25 years, I drank pretty much every day. I’m really and I’m not exaggerating that. I think I drank most days for those 20 or 25 years. And there was some point in there, you know, well into my 30s, at least, where I knew that I had some issues with drinking.

And I knew that I probably needed to stop drinking, but I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to stop because I was like, I don’t see how I can possibly live without this. I had used alcohol as a coping mechanism. I used alcohol as an escape mechanism, I had used alcohol to numb myself from having to deal with life.

You know, without having to, I didn’t want to deal with my emotions, I didn’t want to deal with stress, I didn’t want to deal with, you know, relationships with work, with kids, with everything that was in my life, everything was just better if I could just numb myself to all of that.

So I used alcohol to not feel. I used alcohol to escape, I used alcohol to feel better. And you know what? It does work. When you drink alcohol, it feels pretty good. It’s a pretty short-lived experience. It’s very temporary, it doesn’t last very long. But it does feel pretty good when you’re doing it, you know, you get that buzz going, your body starts to get all tingly and warm, and stuff.

The problem with it, there’s so many problems with it. But one of the problems with it is that it’s very short-lived. And that feeling goes away pretty quickly. And then you need more to get it back. And then the more you keep doing that, the more you need to feel good. And now you’re just trying to get back to baseline, like you just want to feel normal.

That’s not a good place to be. So for most of my life, I had been drinking daily from the time I was, you know, 15, 16, 17 years old, something like that, and made it a just a daily habit of drinking pretty much all the time until I, you know, made that decision to finally quit.

And in between there, all kinds of stuff happened in my life, you know, that were consequences of my drinking, you know, there were car accidents, there was my first wife left me because of my drinking. There was, you know, people that were friends of mine that didn’t want to be around me anymore because of my drinking.

You know, I had alienated people. I had embarrassed people. I was just I was not in a good place at all. And of course, on top of all of this, I was you know, smoking cigarettes and not exercising and I was eating crappy diet.

I was in a really, you know, bad place for most of those years. And it all sort of caught up to me, when I had just been like I just woke up on a Monday morning. It happened to be the Monday after Easter in 2007. And I had just woken up and I was hungover and had a big fight with this girlfriend that I was dating at the time the day before, and I really embarrassed myself.

And you know, I just felt like it was just one of one more day where I just woke up feeling like crap, and I felt out of control. That’s the thing with alcohol. When you use alcohol or drugs to kind of escape, at some point, it just kind of stops working. And it just feels terrible because you get into this place where you really want to quit, but you can’t quit because you can’t live without it.

So you can’t live with it and you can’t live without it. You’re like stuck between a rock and a hard place. And this is a terrible place to be. And I was in that place for a long time for many, many years. Until that one morning when I finally woke up, I was hungover, you know, had to go to work.

And I may have called in sick to work that day. I can’t remember. But I just remember waking up and laying in bed and telling myself or actually saying out loud. Like for the first time ever I said out loud like, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live like this anymore. I need some help.” And that was a thought that I had never had before that I needed some help.

Up to that point. I thought you know I can do this on my own. You know if I ever wanted to quit I could just you know give it up. And I had kind of tried a few times but I couldn’t last more than a day or two. You know what I mean?

Because I was like so you know, I can say addicted you know because it is an addictive substance. I could say that I was kind of addicted to alcohol. And I was like, you know, I just, it was too hard to live without it.

But as soon as I made that statement out loud, I was like, I can get some help. It sort of shifted something for me, it felt like this weight fell off on my shoulders like that I could actually do this. But I would need somebody to help me.

And that was a very different thought for me and a very different feeling. Because it was like, the first time I ever felt like maybe I could live without alcohol. Maybe I could experience freedom from drinking, you know.

So my first thought was to go get some like counseling. And so I went and saw like a therapist and did some counseling. And that was the first time I ever talked to anybody about this, the first time I ever talked to anybody about the fact that I had a problem with drinking and that I wanted to quit and that I couldn’t do it on my own.

And so like, what do I do? Like, I just was very open and honest, and just said, like, you know, what do I do, of course, there was a lot of guilt and shame around all of this. And, but this person that I was working with made me feel like I was very normal.

In fact, he shared with me that he had a drinking problem. And that, you know, he found a lot of relief in like a 12-step program. So he kind of turned me on to AA, you know, and so I started doing that. And, and that was really helpful at the beginning as well, because then I started to hang around other people that were just like me, that had gone through similar stuff, you know, we’re all different.

You look around a room of, of Alcoholics Anonymous, and you can see that there’s a lot of different people in that room. But we all share this same thing where we all want freedom, you know, we all want to experience that freedom from drinking, we don’t want to have to drink anymore.

And so, with that particular program, this is where I’m gonna get into just a little bit of a, you know, criticisms about a program like that. That program, I would say, it kind of saved my life, it really helped me at the beginning. I kind of grew out of it at some point, though, you know, and it’s great.

And there’s no, I’m not going to, you know, talk any smack about a program like AA or any other 12-Step program, but I’m just gonna say that they’re not for everybody. And they don’t work for everybody that you know, so there’s no, like, one size fits all, when it comes to this kind of stuff, okay.

But one thing that was helpful for me was, was being around other people and seeing that this was a pretty normal thing. And that all we all wanted together was to quit drinking and to support each other through that process. Now, listen, AA was started back in 1939, by a bunch of old white Christian guys, you know, and if, you know, so some of these tenents of the program are really based in Christianity and a belief in God and things like that, you know, they tried to kind of soften some of that stuff.

But you know, I’m not a really religious person. And so a lot of that didn’t really jive with me, you know, but there’s some good parts that program. So if you’re somebody that’s like, you know, maybe I’ll try it and give it, give it a try. You know, give it a shot. You know, there’s nothing wrong with it.

And I’m not going to like I said, I’m not going to talk more smack about it. I’m just saying it’s not for everybody, okay. But it did show me that there’s a whole world out there of people that are living their life, and they don’t have to, they don’t have to drink every day. And I was like, wow, that’s a crazy concept. Because the only people I knew were people that drank every day, or pretty much every day. And that’s how I live my life for so long.

Those were the only people that I had surrounded myself with. I didn’t see how it was possible to live your life without it. And one of the things that scared me when I first quit drinking because I felt some relief at the beginning. I was like, oh good. Finally getting on. I’m getting some help. I think I can do this. I’m gonna quit.

But then I started thinking like, how can I ever have fun again, in my life, how can anything ever be fun again, because I used alcohol to make every experience more fun. At least I thought I was you know, I thought I was having more fun but it was really just my brain tricking me into thinking I was having fun when in reality, you can have tons of fun without alcohol trust me.

But that scared me at first because I was like, How can I you know, go through a Saturday without alcohol because I would you know, you know get up and you know, do some work you know, cut the grass or something like that and then start drinking, you know, however many, whatever and drink the rest of the day and hang out with my friends and we would drink and watch football or whatever.

And I just thought this. I don’t see how life can can be fun at all, without alcohol. Well, I’m glad I was wrong, because I will tell you that my life has been infinitely more fun. Because I’m not drinking because I’m a sober person, and have been for the last 17 years.

You know, since 2007, I have had all kinds of amazing experiences in my life, you know, I got remarried and, and, you know, went on amazing trips all over the place. And, you know, my kids have grown up, and, you know, one of my kids has gotten married and had a grandchild.

And, you know, I started this amazing coaching practice that I love so much, you know, I’ve done so many amazing things physically, I’ve completely changed my physical body, you know, my physical health, you know, become super fit.

I’ve accomplished a lot, you know, from running, you know, 50 miles, 100 miles, doing an Ironman, you know, running countless marathons, like all these things that I would never consider when I was drinking, like, none of this was even on my radar, you know.

But when I quit drinking, it opened up a whole world to me of things that I never thought would be possible. You know, like staying up past nine o’clock, I guess I would drink myself until I passed out every night at you know, 9, 9:30 or something like that. Now I go to bed at like 9:30 or 10. And I love it. And I feel so amazing, because I get up pretty early.

But that’s a whole different deal. You know, going to bed early is like the new, cool thing to do. You know, I’m convinced of that. I know so many people that love going to bed early, and getting up early, and they just are more healthy. They’re more productive. They get more done. And they just feel better.

So there’s, you know, used to be this, like, you know, a badge of honor. Do they always stay up till three o’clock in the morning every day? Like, no, no, thank you. I’m in bed by 10. I love it. I love it.

But really the one thing I wanted to share with you guys that that is really the kind of the key learning with all of this is the freedom from alcohol part. So you know, a lot of people can quit drinking, or moderate their drinking, but they don’t experience the freedom that I’ve experienced.

The freedom comes from this place of the alcohol is going to be there. Okay, everywhere you look, everybody, pretty much drinks, there’s alcohol everywhere you go, you know, you can’t go to a restaurant, you can’t walk down the street, even the movie theaters they have like they’re selling alcohol at the movie theaters.

So alcohol is going to be there. And if you think that you can somehow, you know, white knuckle, your way through the rest of your life, you decide you’re going to quit drinking, but you know, you just you’re craving alcohol all the time. That is not freedom. That is not what I’m talking about.

Freedom is where you just don’t want it anymore. Freedom looks like this. Like today, I can go to any number of restaurants that I love that are around where I live here. There’s this great barbecue joint I go to all the time. And I love sitting at the bar, because I can talk to the bartender, maybe watch the sports game that’s on or whatever.

So I will sit at the bar. They are pouring drinks for everybody around me. There’s alcohol flying everywhere I can see it, I can smell it. And I don’t want it. I have no desire to drink that alcohol. That’s what freedom looks like. That’s a big difference between somebody who’s like, you know, I can’t go into that place. Because you know, there’s alcohol in there.

You know, you should be able to go anywhere, whether they’re serving alcohol or not, and it shouldn’t be a problem for you. That’s what freedom looks like. You know, freedom looks like the desire for alcohol is gone. That’s what freedom looks like.

Because when you don’t have the desire for alcohol, you just don’t want it anymore. Not drinking is not a problem. And I use this analogy all the time with people because a lot of people can relate.

I don’t know if you guys ever smoke cigarettes but I used to smoke cigarettes and smoking was one of those things that I did all day every day right as soon as I wake up in the morning and have coffee have a cigarette you know and then all day long and I would smoke.

I was somebody who smoked a pack or so a day so what does that like 20 cigarettes a day that’s a that’s a lot in my opinion. So 20 cigarettes a day and then you know I quit a bunch of times I quit for like a year or more at once at one point and then like took it back up again like so stupid.

But then at some point, it finally clicked and I quit and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I quit smoking. And then it was hard, you know, white knuckling it try not to smoke and I was just counting the days, eventually it got easier.

I finally got to some point in my life where I just didn’t want it anymore. Like cigarettes just do not appeal to me anymore. And now, you know, I think about smoking, you could put cartons of cigarettes and lighters in front of me. And I have no desire, no desire, the desire, the desire is gone, the desire has been removed. Like, I don’t have that anymore. That’s what freedom looks like.

Here’s another analogy for you. Have you ever been in love with someone? Yes, we all have. Okay. So think about like one of your first loves, like your first boyfriend or your first girlfriend? Oh, I know, what was it like middle school, high school, something like that. And you couldn’t imagine living without that person? Right?

You just couldn’t imagine life without this person that was there every day that you could talk to every day, there were your world, you know? And then at some point, you guys broke up. Or maybe you didn’t, maybe you married that person and good for you.

But you know, for most of us, for me anyway. You know, I broke up with that person. And I can look back on that and go like, oh yeah, I have no desire to be with that person anymore. The desire is gone. That’s where freedom is. Okay?

So you don’t think about that person anymore. It’s not a big deal. Or you can see that person, you’ll be like, oh, yeah, like, I’m friends with my first girlfriends on Facebook. And I can, you know, they’re married, and they have these amazing lives and everything. And I can see them and look at pictures and just be like, oh, that’s awesome. Good for her, you know.

So that’s what freedom looks like, like, you know, that person is going to be there, you’re gonna see them, it’s not a big deal. You know, alcohol is gonna be around, but you don’t need it anymore. You don’t want it anymore, the desire is gone. That desire is gone. That’s what freedom looks like. That’s what I want you to experience.

And and a lot of times, it doesn’t come from, you know, reading a book or a 12-step program or something like that. It comes from doing the inner work, you know, it comes from doing the work of changing how you think and feel about alcohol. That’s what it really comes down to.

Now, this work that I’m talking about here, is very similar to the work that I do with my clients around food. Because food, especially sugar, has the same effect on us. It lights up our pleasure centers, just like alcohol.

Sugar is very hard to give up just like alcohol. Sugar has you experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you give up sugar, just like alcohol. You probably can’t imagine life without sugar, just like alcohol. Like there’s so many similarities.

Sugar is not necessarily good for you like alcohol, there’s a lot of negative side effects that come along with eating sugar, just like alcohol, right? These things are so similar. So here’s where I want to tell you guys about something that I’m putting together.

So if you’re interested, I’m creating a program called alcohol freedom. It’s my Alcohol Freedom Program. And if you want to learn more about it, it’s just not live yet. It’s not something that I’m offering just yet. But I will be very soon.

And what I want to encourage you to do is just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and then put in /alcoholfreedom, it’s all one word, alcoholfreedom. Also, I’m going to put a link in the show notes for this episode.

So if you’re listening to this on, you know, Spotify, or you know, Apple podcasts or something, you can just scroll down and click the link, but click the link and get on the list. So there’s, there’s like a waitlist right now.

So I’m opening this up to a select few people for this like pilot program, where we’re basically going to take you through how to experience this true freedom from alcohol. And you know, we’re going to do it together. And it’s going to be guided, I’m going to I’m gonna do a lot of teaching, you’re gonna have some work to do, there’s going to be some accountability, but it’s one of those things where I feel really passionately about this, I feel very called to do this.

So I wanted to share this with you now just to plant the seed, you know, and maybe you’re fine with whatever your relationship with alcohol is today, but just know that this will be there for you later, you know. So just, you can always just put your name on this list and then you don’t have to do anything here, I’m not going to hold you to this, you’re not obligated to do anything here.

But just put your name on the list. So you can get more information as I, you know, develop this program and have it ready here, it should be, you know, soon, okay, so just go to runningleancoaching.com/alcoholfreedom, get your name on the on the waitlist for the program.

Okay, so just wanted to throw that out there. But listen, the work requires you to change your thoughts and feelings, we have all these, you know, thought-feeling-action patterns that we’ve developed over decades of drinking alcohol, and we use alcohol to feel better.

You know, we use alcohol to numb ourselves, we use alcohol to deal with stress, we use alcohol, for lots and lots and lots of reasons. And a lot of these reasons are fine. You know, if you’re somebody that drinks you know, once in a while, good, that’s awesome. And you don’t have that pull, like alcohol doesn’t have that pull on you like it doesn’t, like you don’t feel the need to drink. Like, that’s an amazing place to be honestly, I never was like that, I always had to have more like, I always had to have it, it wasn’t something I could live without, until I quit.

So, if you’re somebody that drinks occasionally, and this isn’t a problem for you, then you don’t need to worry about it, you’re in good shape. But if you feel like your drinking is out of control, if you feel like you can’t control your drinking, when you start, if you feel like you can’t keep promises to yourself, like you say, Oh, I’m not gonna drink tomorrow night. But you do.

If you want to drink less, or you want to stop drinking altogether, you don’t have to stop drinking altogether, you can moderate your drinking, and lots of people live their lives drinking moderately, and it is okay, you can do that, that is an option for you.

The whole idea here is that you take back control, you want to live a healthy happy life, you got to be in control of your eating, and you got to be in control of things like drinking, if this is something that feels maybe out of control for you, or something that you want more control over or more management over, then you know, consider putting your name on the list, you know, so that we can, you know, have that discussion and we can help you.

You know, my goal with all this is that I have experienced freedom from drinking, and the last 17 years of my life have been amazing. And I’m such a different person today than I was 17 years ago. And I want that for you too. It doesn’t mean you have to quit, it doesn’t mean you have to do it the way that I did it. But I want you to know that it is possible for you.

Because if a dummy like me can do it, you can do it too. Okay, there’s nothing special about me. I was just a normal person, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t have any super like, they call this like your bottom, like you hit rock bottom, like I didn’t, I wasn’t in jail. I didn’t you know, I wasn’t living in the street. I wasn’t in the gutter. You know, I never got a DUI or anything like that, but my life was just sucky, you know, and I didn’t want to live that way any longer.

That’s all and that’s all it takes like, it doesn’t even have to be my story doesn’t even have to be your story, like you are allowed to make your own decisions about food, about your weight, about how you want to change your relationship with alcohol. It’s up to you, okay, but just know that help is out there. And you don’t have to do it alone.

Doing it on your own is hard. I’m just going to tell you like it’s very, very hard. And getting help is easy. It’s like hitting the easy button, all that stuff. You know, because you have somebody there that’s going to hold you accountable, that’s going to help you get through the rough spots, that has the experience to help you and guide you and mentor you and all that. Okay.

So, like I said, I’m here to help you with all this stuff. If you’re interested, go to runningleancoaching.com/alcoholfreedom, or click the link on the show notes for this episode. I’d love to see you in the program. I think it’s gonna be fun.

We do have fun doing this kind of stuff. Like we’re not gonna, you know, suffer our way through this, you know, you want to, you know, take back control of your drinking. We don’t have to, you know, be all mopey about it like this can be something where we actually have fun and a really positive experience and a positive environment where we can do this work together and help you to become the most badass version of yourself yet.

If that’s what you want for yourself, it is available to you and I can help you get there. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. All right, love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.