Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week I’m excited to welcome Sarah Rusbatch to the podcast. Sarah is an accredited sobriety and grey area drinking coach based in Perth and also the face behind Perth’s alcohol free movement. In this episode, we discussed the finer points of grey area drinking, uncover whether alcohol really is the best tool to distress after a hectic day at the office, and also dive into the less obvious signs that we may be drinking too much. Over to Sarah …
Audio Version
Some questions asked during this episode:
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Is alcohol the best approach when wanting to destress after a hectic day?
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What are the less obvious signs that we may be drinking too much/often?
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What do you say to those who reference ‘everything in moderation’?
Get more of Sarah Rusbatch:
If you enjoyed this, then we think you’ll enjoy this interview:
Dr Glenn Livingston – Learn How to Never Binge Again
Ashleigh Feltham – Tips on Staying Healthy Over The Festive Period
Elise Museles – Healing Your Relationship With Food
The views expressed on this podcast are the personal views of the host and guest speakers and not the views of Bega Cheese Limited or 180 Nutrition Pty Ltd. In addition, the views expressed should not be taken or relied upon as medical advice. Listeners should speak to their doctor to obtain medical advice.
Disclaimer: The transcript below has not been proofread and some words may be mis-transcribed.
Full Transcript
Stu
(00:03)
Brought to you by 180 nutrition.com.au. Welcome to the Health Sessions podcast. Each episode we cut to the chase as we hang out with real people with real results. This week I’m excited to welcome Sarah Rusbatch to the podcast. Sarah is an accredited sobriety and grey area drinking coach based in Perth and also the face behind Perth’s alcohol free movement. In this episode, we discussed the finer points of grey area drinking, uncover whether alcohol really is the best tool to distress after a hectic day at the office, and also dive into the less obvious signs that we may be drinking too much. Over to Sarah. Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 Nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Sarah Rusbatch to the podcast. Sarah, how are you?
Sarah
(01:09)
I’m very well, thanks. How are you?
Stu
(01:10)
Yeah, good. Really, really good. Excited to get into this particular topic today because I know that alcohol in particular is close to many people’s hearts and there are lots of nuances where alcohol is concerned. So I think that you’ll be the perfect person to expand on that. But first up, for all of our listeners that may not be familiar with you or your work, I’d love it if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself please.
Sarah
(01:37)
Thank you for the introduction. So I’m Sarah Rusbatch. I’m from the UK. I live over in Perth in Western Australia, and I’m a Grey Area Drinking Coach, which is probably not a job title that many people have heard of before. When people ask me what I do, I’m always like, should I give the long answer or the short answer? Because it’s not a title that people go, “Oh yeah, I know exactly what that is.” So maybe I can start off by explaining to you what is grey area drinking?
Stu
(02:06)
Yes, please.
Sarah
(02:07)
So the way we’ve historically talked about someone’s alcohol use has been you’re an alcoholic or you’re a social drinker. And if I ask you, “Tell me your stereotypical thoughts of an alcoholic, what immediately comes to mind for you? When I say the term alcoholic?”
Stu
(02:28)
Somebody that gets up and dives for a bottle of gin.
Sarah
(02:31)
Yeah. So therein lies the problem, because if we don’t do that, then we go, “Well, I’m not an alcoholic.”
Stu
(02:40)
That’s it. Yeah.
Sarah
(02:41)
So I didn’t drink every day. I had an extremely dysfunctional relationship with alcohol, but I didn’t drink every day and I didn’t drink in the morning. So because of that, I was lulled into a false sense of security of going, “Well, I’m just a social drinker because there’s no other name for what I am because in our world you’re an alcoholic or you’re not.” And that terminology is what keeps so many people stuck for such a long time. So let’s talk about grey area drinking. The way that we look at alcohol use now is as a scale. It’s not you’re an alcoholic, you wake up one day and suddenly you’ve crossed the line and now you’re an alcoholic.
(03:18)
You have to go through years and years before you get to that point. So if we think about someone’s drinking as being on a scale of one to 10, one is someone who either doesn’t drink or maybe has a glass of champagne at a wedding and that’s it and 10 is what we’ve just described. So it’s someone who wakes up in the morning and reaches for a drink and needs to have medical support to stop drinking because alcohol’s one of the only substances on the planet that you can die from withdrawal. So that’s one and 10. What’s in the middle? And grey area drinking on that scale for me, I put it around a five to an eight.
Stu
(03:54)
Okay. So in terms of that grey area then five to eight, well, what about one to four? Could that be problematic?
Sarah
(04:03)
I tend to think of one to four as being people who don’t drink for any other reason than to just enjoy an odd glass of wine here and there. Maybe might let their hair down once in a little while, but doesn’t even think about alcohol in between. Whereas then I think five to eight, we start crossing that line, and what that looks like is this, we reach for a wine when we’re stressed, we reach for a wine… Or I say wine because wine was my drink of choice, but it could be anything.
Stu
(04:35)
Of course. Sure.
Sarah
(04:36)
We reach for alcohol when we’re angry, when we’re lonely, when we’re bored, when we want to escape ourselves. We reach for alcohol to avoid dealing with something or having to think about something, to take the edge off, all of those terms that we’ve used. And I think that when we’ve got to that point where we’re thinking about alcohol. So I started making rules around my drinking and that in is the first sign of grey area drinking because people that don’t have a problem with alcohol don’t make rules around their drinking. People in that one to four, they kind of might have a drink, might not have a drink, just don’t even really think about it.
(05:14)
Once we’re getting into the five to eight category, we’re starting to go, “All right, so I’m not allowed to drink on a Monday and Tuesday. I’m not allowed to drink before 5:00. I don’t drink unless it’s with friends. I never drink at home. I don’t drink at lunchtime unless it’s on a Saturday and I’m out at the pub and it’s a sporting event.” I had constant rules around my drinking and it’s time consuming. We’re starting to really, really think about what role is alcohol playing for us and we’re looking forward to the next time we’re drinking. I didn’t drink on a Monday and Tuesday because that’s how I told myself I wasn’t an alcoholic, but I was literally white knuckling it to get through Monday, Tuesday so that Wednesday it was my acceptable day that I was allowed to have a drink.
Stu
(05:52)
Fascinating. And you mentioned before that you come from the UK and I’m also British as well, and drinking is very much part of the culture of growing up, and obviously we don’t enjoy the sunshine that we get over in Australia, and so there’s lots of indoor time. Pub culture is huge. I guess that’s something that’s ingrained then in the way that we grow up before we even hit the workforce in terms of, well, this is what we do, this is where we meet, this is where we have the good times. Is there an association there do you think between what we’ve done as a team then just to drive us through into this comfort zone of good times when we move more into adulthood and the workforce?
Sarah
(06:41)
Yeah, great question. And I think there’s two things on that. So number one is, I don’t know about you, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t drink. In the UK, growing up, and I’m 46, growing up in the eighties, nineties, our parents, every social event was done with alcohol. I don’t remember there ever being a time that my parents had a party where there wasn’t lots of adults that were drunk in my house, where we weren’t at the pub, where we weren’t down the cricket club watching my dad play cricket and everyone was drinking pints and the women were drinking gin and tonic and the kids were playing. And that was just my growing up. And so it never occurred to me when I got to 14, 15, it was like the next stage of adolescence was okay, we started experimenting with alcohol. We used to take soda stream bottles and fill them up with whatever we could find in our parents’ drinks cabinet. [inaudible 00:07:33] and Southern Comfort, or-
Stu
(07:37)
Sherry.
Sarah
(07:37)
Sherry, martini and all of these awful drinks and then we would fill them back up with water so that mom and dad didn’t think we’d taken any, and then we’d go down the local park or the local bus stop and sit and get pissed with our mates. And that was like it just didn’t occur to me that that wouldn’t be a part of my life growing up. But also it’s muddled to us from such a young age and it’s so subliminal. Sometimes it’s so discreet. You think about the shows that we watched growing up, East Enders and Coronation Street, everything’s set in the pub.
Stu
(08:09)
It is.
Sarah
(08:10)
Everything is set around that socializing with alcohol. It’s so ingrained in us.
Stu
(08:15)
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. It’s funny as well, because I’ve got three young daughters now. When I say young, the twins at 14 and an eldest is 17, but it’s almost a divide in our family because I come from a family that weren’t big drinkers, but at Christmastime, there was a bottle of Sherry, a bottle of Port and a bottle of [inaudible 00:08:39] in the drinking cabinet. And that was kind of it. There was no drinking during the week. There was no drinking during the weekend. And I subsequently, I don’t have a taste for alcohol. I just don’t. I went through the rite of passage when I was in university and growing up, obviously, you go to the pub and just get drunk and I never really had a taste for it. Whereas my wife on the other hand, she had the complete opposite and it was very much part of their culture and she loves a drink and she unwinds with a drink and at weekends, she has a drink.
(09:12)
And I’m intrigued to see how that plays then on my children in terms of, well, what are they going to do? Because my eldest now is 17 and I’m certainly under no misconception that she’ll be out there experimenting with drinks with her friends. But I wonder, we’ve got both sides of this coin now. They see kind of boring dad with which I get labeled, “Oh, dad’s boring, he doesn’t drink, and wild mom who she loves to have a drink and let down her hair.” I wonder how that’s going to turn out because it’s a little bit different to what I guess most people would go through who were in that very continuous drinking culture from an early age.
Sarah
(09:56)
And evidence now shows that the younger we are when we start drinking, the more likely we are to develop a problem with alcohol. So I was interviewed on a radio show last week where they asked me what age do I think it’s okay to start giving your kids alcohol? Because an Italian radio host, and he was given Grappa since he was like 10 or 11 and that was just normal because their whole philosophy is if you get them to just have the one drink, then they’re not going to binge drink. It’s not something that’s this illicit like rebellious type thing. So it’s an interesting conversation and it’s interesting how you just said to yourself then, “Oh dad’s the boring one.”
Stu
(10:38)
That’s right.
Sarah
(10:39)
But it’s so messed up that society dictates whether you are fun or you are boring depending on whether you have alcohol.
Stu
(10:46)
That’s it. I do all the kind of crazy extreme sports and stuff like that, but “Dad’s the boring one. He doesn’t have a drink.” “But what about, hold on, I did this yesterday?” “No, no, you don’t have a drink,” which is kind of crazy. So just in terms then of lifestyle is way different now to when we were younger. We are connected 24/7, there’s lots going on. Oftentimes we are watching TV whilst texting or we’ve just got this big digital ecosphere continually interrupting us. And it’s quite common then to want to come home and just collapse on the sofa, have a glass of wine and just de-stress, even though the science kind of says, well, you’re not really de-stressing at all.
(11:31)
What are your thoughts on that then for people that are, perhaps they’re in the workforce, maybe in the kind of corporate grind and they think when they’re driving home, I’m going to crack open that bottle of wine and I’m just going to have one, it’s red wine, it’s healthy for me, maybe two, the scientists say it’s good for you. Look at the Mediterraneans, they do it and they live to into their hundreds. Is that the right approach to take or is that potentially not the right train of thought?
Sarah
(12:05)
Yeah. Okay. It’s an interesting question and I’m trying to think about how open do I be with the response to this? But all I can do is share facts. I don’t share opinions, I share facts. There’s new evidence that’s come out about alcohol, lots of new evidence recently. So all of those studies that talk about alcohol, red wine being good for the heart and everything, let’s just dismiss that. There is not enough goodness in that drink compared to what it will do to you negatively to have any kind of positive impact whatsoever. For every 10 grams of alcohol. So 10 grams is less than a bottle of beer, a small glass of wine, for every 10 grams, we increase our chance of cancer by between four and 13%
(12:51)
So one and 10 breast cancer diagnoses in Australia now is directly linked to alcohol. So let’s look at the brain. So the brain wants homeostasis. It wants all of the neurotransmitters in the brain to be exactly the right amount that creates complete equality and balance. If you think about an old fashioned scale where you’ve got the bit going across the top and then the two bits that hang down and you’ve got a banana on each side and it’s equal. And then you take the banana off one side and it suddenly drops down and one side drops up. So imagine that with all of your neurotransmitters are completely balanced and the scale is equal. Alcohol’s a depressant. So the minute we have a drink, just one drink, the depressant side of the scale, so the neurotransmitters that promote relaxation and calmness, they instantly switch onto that side.
(13:48)
So we release GABA, we release other hormones that will make us feel calm and relaxed. And that’s the instant feeling that you get from the alcohol. The brain doesn’t like that lack of balance. So it immediately releases cortisol and adrenaline to counter the impact of the alcohol to try and get the brain to return to homeostasis. What happens is the alcohol wears off, the alcohol high what you get from the alcohol lasts about 20 minutes. And then you are left with excess cortisol and adrenaline firing around the body that leave you feeling stressed and anxious after the alcohol’s worn off, which then leads most people to reach for a second drink to get over the impact that’s been caused by the first drink. What we now know is people that drink regularly, we’re not talking copious amounts, but one or two glasses three or four nights a week, they have an increased base level of stress and anxiety compared to people that don’t at all because they have more cortisol in their body because of the release of cortisol in relation to the alcohol we’re consuming.
Stu
(14:53)
Fascinating. It is fascinating. I’ve listened to a couple of podcasts recently that really do debunk a lot of the myths that we thought around alcohol, specifically in this de-stressing and health given from an antioxidant perspective. It’s kind of old school thinking. So in terms of that de-stressing then, because clearly that’s super habitual, people come home and that’s just what we do. It’s like automatic. Oftentimes you don’t even think about it, you just go straight to the bottle of wine. How would you navigate people away from doing that or slowly retreat from that particular habit if you want to try and move them away from alcohol more into relaxation or things that allow us to relax properly?
Sarah
(15:40)
And I’ve successfully helped thousands of people now to change their relationship with alcohol, and I do that through a number of ways. But yes, we have a go-to list that I give everybody with “Here are a hundred things you can do instead of reaching for wine.” And it includes everything from go for a walk, have a cuddle with your partner, do a meditation, do a yoga class, have an alcohol-free drink, go and have a bath, go and cook some really nice food. There are so many things we can do because as you say, most of the time it’s habitual. Most of the time it’s just ingrained in us that’s what we do. And once we get over that, because alcohol stays in our system for up to 72 hours, so once we get through the withdrawal stage and everyone goes through withdrawal, even after just one drink, we can then start to work on the neural pathways and retraining them to think about doing something else.
(16:35)
But it doesn’t happen overnight. For many of the people I work with, they’ve been drinking habitually for 20 or 30 years. So we call her the wine witch in my group because many of my clients have that voice that comes in going, “Oh, go on, it’s 5:00, you’ve had a hard day, just one won’t hurt.” And all willpower goes out the window and they find themselves pouring that drink. But often it’s not just one because the other thing that we have to remember is number one, alcohol’s highly addictive, one of the most addictive substances on the planet. And number two, we will build up tolerance.
(17:08)
So what starts off as a glass quickly ends up as a bottle. And I’ve got many clients who can easily drink two bottles of wine at a night and high function and get up, go to work, they’re going to the gym, they’re exercising, they’re running a house, they’re raising a family, they’re doing all the things, but they’re drinking two bottles of wine at night. Now there can be up to 10 units of alcohol in a bottle of wine. That is 140 units a week. The recommended amount is 10 to 12 units.
Stu
(17:34)
Oh boy. Oh boy. Yeah, it’s fascinating. And also if we are pouring our own measures, I have friends that won’t purchase or won’t ask for certain drinks at a pub because they just say, “Well, it’s just too small.” For instance, Baileys is one. It’s like, “Oh, you just get this tiny bit of Baileys. I’ll go back and pour a whole glass full of Baileys.” The same probably happens with a glass of wine. I mean we’ve all seen the cartoon where the fishbowl size glass of wine, “I’m only having one.” I would imagine that we probably don’t adhere to the measures as well.
Sarah
(18:11)
No, and that’s where I get most of my clients to start, is let’s get really, really clear on how much they’re drinking. Because when people say to me, “I’m having two glasses a night,” I’m like, “Well, let’s look at what size that glass is because I can bet if it’s at home that that’s probably the equivalent of four glasses a night.” Now, let’s just remember that anything above 12 units a week is classed as alcohol use disorder. So two units is two small glasses. So 12 units over a week would be 12 small glasses. And binge drinking is considered anything above four units in one session. Four units is not even a bottle of wine.
Stu
(18:53)
I think there’ll be a lot of people now just thinking, “Well, hold on a minute. I’ve got a new label now because that’s me in excess. That’s me on a calm night or a calm week.”
Sarah
(19:06)
And this is the thing. And I’m not here to say, “You must never drink again. Alcohol is the devil.” That’s not my mission. But my mission is, I had reached the point myself where alcohol was taking so much more than it was giving, but we’re so conditioned in society, “Oh, you are so boring if you don’t drink or you are this, that and the other.” But it never occurred to me that I might actually enjoy my life without it. And when I finally removed alcohol from my life, I couldn’t believe what opened up for me. And it was like I’d been lied to for 20 years and then suddenly I was like, oh my goodness, this is what it’s like to wake up every day positive, happy, clearheaded, motivated, mental clarity. I lost weight. My skin was glowing, I lost my bloatedness, my hormones balance, my menopause symptoms disappeared. All of this happened and the one thing I did was remove alcohol.
Stu
(19:56)
Yeah, it’s really tricky I think just to try and determine how much is too much? I’m just a social drinker, everything in moderation, all of those phrases that we’ve heard. What might you think would be the less obvious signs then that we may be drinking too much? And obviously you’ve spoken about a whole heap of things there with skin and mindset, brain fog, sleep, etc. How might we know if you know are one of those people that just thinks, “Well, I only have a glass of wine a day?”
Sarah
(20:34)
So there’s a checklist that I run through with people. So do you find yourself getting excited thinking about the next time you’re drinking? Yeah, that was me. I did. Everything I did revolved around alcohol. And if I had to be the driver for the night, I was furious. I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that I’ve got to drive tonight. I’m not going.” There was just no point doing that thing if I can’t go and get pissed. And so if that’s our attitude, then we’ve probably starting to move into that grey area. If we find we’re making rules around our drinking, but we’re often breaking them. If we find that we’re planning on having a certain number of units, “I’m only going to have one tonight,” but we always have more if we find that we’ve even asked ourselves the question because if you’ve ever even asked yourself the question, am I drinking too much? You probably are, because people that don’t have a problem with alcohol, don’t ask themselves that question.
(21:29)
If you’re finding that alcohol’s impacting your sleep and you are waking up because that was one of the clear signs for me was every time I drank, and this was particularly true for the ladies I worked with who were 40 plus and they’re starting to experience perimenopause symptoms, I was waking up at two, three in the morning and could never get back to sleep. I was tired all the time, but I didn’t know that the way I was feeling wasn’t normal because I was drinking probably four or five nights a week. It takes 72 hours for alcohol to leave the system. I didn’t know that me feeling five out of 10 most days was only five out of 10. I kind of thought that’s as good as it gets. And when I removed alcohol, it was like, “Oh, I got the full nine.”
Stu
(22:12)
You got the other five back.
Sarah
(22:13)
Yeah.
Stu
(22:14)
Exactly. Yeah.
Sarah
(22:15)
Exactly.
Stu
(22:16)
It’s profound because I track my sleep, I wear an Oura ring and I just love the metrics. I’m a bit of a tech geek like that, but it’s amazing what happens when you do have a drink to your deep sleep. Forget it. You want deep sleep where all the good stuff happens, forget it. It’s really few and far between to be able to hit those metrics that allow you to wake up feeling like, bang, today’s the day, here we go.
Sarah
(22:43)
And that’s the thing with most of my clients, they’re in that grey area. They’ve built up quite a level of tolerance so they don’t get hangovers really, but they feel tired all the time. And the other thing that alcohol does is it causes anxiety. So for me, it got to the point where my thoughts had just become so negative. I was overthinking everything. I was worrying about things. And I got to the point where I went to my GP and I said, “I’m just a mess.” And I’ve never had anxiety in my life. And she never once asked me, “How much are you drinking?” But she did give me a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, which I now know you should never mix with alcohol.
Stu
(23:25)
Oh no.
Sarah
(23:26)
And the thing for me was I didn’t take the meds because I knew there was something else going on with me. I decided to take a break from alcohol and the anxiety, I would say within two weeks had disappeared.
Stu
(23:41)
So how does that look like for you now then? So you said you took a taken a break from alcohol. Are you just cold Turkey and it’s like, “You know what, I don’t want anymore ever again,” or have you reworked that into your life in terms of perhaps what you drink and the amount that you drink?
Sarah
(23:56)
So 2017 was when I’d gone to the doctor with anxiety, didn’t take the tablets and said, “I’m going to take 21 days off” because everyone says it takes 21 days to reset and to change a habit. And I knew that my drinking had got too much. I knew that I was drinking significantly, but I didn’t do 21 days. I did 100 because I was like, oh my goodness. All of those positives that I’d mentioned to you before, I was literally like I’d never met this version of me that just had this energy and this mental clarity all the time. So I was jumping out of bed, I was feeling amazing. But what I hadn’t been prepared for was the other people’s reactions. That I was super happy with not drinking, but oh my goodness, nobody else was.
(24:38)
And still the immediate response from many people was, “Oh, well let’s catch up when you’re drinking again.” It was like, “We can still catch up. I can still come and have an alcohol free beer or something. I don’t have to sit in my room knitting just because I’m not drinking.” But other people didn’t know how to react to me not drinking because they’ve never met the version of me that didn’t drink. I was staring the party girl. I was the one that was always like, “Yeah, let’s go have wine.” So it took some adjustments. So I got to the hundred days and I was like, “Okay, I’m fixed now. I’ve got a hundred days. I can’t be an alcoholic because I’ve just taken a hundred days off alcohol and I didn’t have to have tablets for that.” So I thought I’m going to moderate now. I’ll just be a normal drinker, but just has a glass of wine every now and then and everything will be fine. And within two weeks I was back to drinking the same amount as before because that’s how it works with our neural pathways.
(25:36)
The brain doesn’t forget addiction. And while I didn’t describe myself as being an alcoholic, I definitely had an addiction to alcohol. I craved it and I struggled to give it up. And so as soon as the alcohol came back into my life, it was straight back where it was. Moderation has never been of something on my radar. I’m quite an all or nothing type person. So for two years I tried to moderate. It was the worst two years of my life, Stu, but it was also, I had to go through that because I finally realized, no, I’m a better, happier, more positive person when I don’t drink. So why do I keep going back to the thing that that’s ruining everything for me? So April 2019, I had my last drink. So three and a half years.
Stu
(26:25)
Oh, wow. I guess the brain, it’s muscle memory. They talk about that in the gym, don’t they? That you haven’t lifted before and you just get straight back on and it’s automatic because it’s in there somewhere. And so tell me about what you do now because you mentioned before that your friend’s perception of you changed in terms of, “Well, come and see me when you’re having a drink.” And oftentimes there is that stigma of, “Well, you’re the boring one. You don’t drink anymore.” But there are things that you can do. You could have a glass of whatever soda water in your hand, and that’s perceived as a drink. You don’t have to explain yourself as much as you would if you’re just standing there like a goose with nothing in your hand. Do you utilize strategies like that in terms of alcohol-free beverages? What do you do out and about to try and reduce that stigma or dogma?
Sarah
(27:23)
So I don’t really care so much now, it doesn’t bother me now, but in the early days it’s hard. I was at a dinner party and there’s a woman there, and I’ve never met her before and she went to fill up a wine glass for me and I said, “Oh, no thanks. I don’t drink.” And she went, “Oh, are you an alcoholic?” I said, “You’ve never met me. You know nothing about me.”
Stu
(27:46)
That’s it.
Sarah
(27:46)
Your immediate thought is because I don’t drink alcohol that therefore I must be an alcoholic. And my mission till the day I die will be to spread the message, “You don’t have to be an alcoholic to decide to quit drinking.” If you’ve reached a point where it’s robbing you of your sleep, it’s impacting your mental health, you’re putting on weight, you’ve got no energy, you’re not showing up as the version of you that you want to be, you have full permission at any time in your life to remove it because for so many of my clients, moderation just isn’t an option.
(28:16)
So then we have to make a decision, do I drink or do I not drink? And go back to your question before. Yeah, I use alcohol-free drinks a lot with myself and with my clients. I give them strategies. This is how messed up our world is. I have one client who’s a lawyer and he’s a very successful senior lawyer. And every week we sit down and we look at all the social events in his diary and we come up with the excuse that he’s going to give that week as to why he’s not drinking because the pressure that he’s put under is so immense.
Stu
(28:52)
Crazy world. Crazy world. One of my defaults oftentimes, because I can’t be bothered with the conversation, it’s like, “Well, I’m the driver. I’m driving tonight.” And it’s just super easy. But it’s so funny to be immediately tarred as “You are the dull one. You are the boring one.” I had a weekend a few months ago where I had a great weekend, went mountain biking, surfing, I went free diving, dived down 15 meters, held my breath, saw three huge sharks, was down there holding onto a rock, taking pictures of these sharks. Come up, meet my friends later on. And it was like, “Yeah, he’s the dull one. He’s not drinking.” It’s like, “Okay.”
Sarah
(29:36)
And that’s the thing, my life now has opened up so much and I do so many more… When I look back at my drinking life, that was the boring life. I just did the same thing, talked to the same rubbish, and there was nothing interesting in my life. New research has come out that shows that when we consistently drink alcohol, the neural pathways in our brain show that we become very habitual and less open to change. So we’ve become very set in our ways. We do what we’ve always done. We don’t try new things. And that was so true for me. If you’d asked me back then, “What are your hobbies?” I’d have gone, “Socializing.”
Stu
(30:12)
That’s it. Yeah.
Sarah
(30:13)
Because I didn’t really do anything else. I went to the gym, I raised my kids, I went to work and I got drunk. And then you got, “Oh, but I’m the boring one now” and I do all of this other stuff now that I had never even entertained before.
Stu
(30:26)
Yeah. Well, just as you mentioned before, it is habitual, it’s part of the program that’s laid out in front of us when we’re growing up. And that’s just kind of how it is. How long does it normally take then for your clients to transition over into sobriety? So it’s a really tricky one because obviously everyone’s so different and their environments are different, and perhaps some are more challenging because their temptations or super social family and friends.
Sarah
(31:04)
It depends. Yeah, it is different for everyone. But I would say it takes around 90 days to really get to that point where it’s not all consuming, you’re not just getting through every day without a drink. And it takes up to about six months to be like, “I just don’t even really think about it at all anymore and I can see myself, this is the life that I live.” And people think, “Oh, that sounds like a really long time,” but I’m like, “If you start drinking at 15 and you drink until you are 85, that’s 70 years of only ever doing your life one way and never ever knowing your full potential of who you could be and what you could do without alcohol. And so six months out of 70 years, it’s really not that much.”
Stu
(31:48)
No, absolutely right. And once you’re in this new way of thinking in terms of, “Well, the early morning, well that’s just the start of the day and I’ve got all of this time. I’ve got 12 hours in a day to do whatever I want to do. And I know that if I get up at 6:30 in the morning, I’m going to be full of energy and ready to go,” it’s a real gift to be able to do that because you just can seize every moment of every day because you know that there’s no headache, there’s no worry about, I can’t get in the car because I might still be drunk and I don’t feel well. And what are we going to do? Yeah, it’s worth a shot, that’s for sure. It really is.
Sarah
(32:35)
Absolutely right. I say to everyone, “See it as an experiment. See it as an experiment and just see how you feel” because most adults in the western world will never take a long enough rate from alcohol to know how they feel without it.
Stu
(32:48)
That’s right. That’s right. Now I noticed then on your website you had a guide to sobriety. And I’m sure there’d be a whole heap of people now thinking, well, maybe that was a sore point in terms of this conversation with them and it struck a chord and they want to take a step to the right direction to try and just, I guess, dive into the guide, understand the rules and regulations, and just make it as super easy as they can to transition over into this new way of living. What might we expect from that guide?
Sarah
(33:24)
So it’s all the resources that really helped me in the early days. So the books, the podcasts, the TED Talks, the blogs that I read because it’s a slow process of starting to change your whole mindset around alcohol because we are so conditioned to believe that we need it to have fun, we need it to have a good time, we need it to socialize and that life will be boring without it. And if we’ve started getting those little nudges of going, “Oh, is it worth it? I don’t, I’m just really not feeling that great. Oh, I’m really worried that I’m just drinking a bit too much.” If we’ve started having any of those thoughts, it’s a sign. And listen to those thoughts. Let us listen to those little nudges that come into your mind. And then start being curious. There’s a brilliant term, sober curious, and it’s about being curious about what life without alcohol might be like. And that starts with listening to other people’s stories, listening to the podcasts, reading the books, and starting to think about what might my life be like without it.
Stu
(34:29)
And for those people that have tried this, or attempted it, or are going through it at the moment in just in terms of abstinence from alcohol, what advice would you give to them if they slip up? It doesn’t need to be a wild night out on the town. It might just be a couple of glasses of wine and “Oh, I’ve got to stop from scratching it.”
Sarah
(34:49)
I don’t see it as any kind of failure whatsoever. I had many, many slipups and almost it’s a learning experience. We have to go through those times because we then learn, well, what triggers us? Well what was it? It’s just learning from it. So what happened that day that I had a drink when I hadn’t had one for 14 days previously? Was it I had an argument with my partner? Was it I’d had a particularly stressful day at work? What could I put in place next time that happens? It’s just about being curious about exploring the events that led up to it.
Stu
(35:22)
Yeah, okay. That makes sense.
Sarah
(35:24)
I’m making it easy for yourself. So I say to everyone, “Just don’t have booze in the house because no one needs to open the fridge and see a cold bottle of rosé wine chilling in the fridge every time they go to make a cup of tea. We just don’t need to do that. So get the alcohol out of the house to start with so that it’s not there.”
Stu
(35:43)
And in terms of timing, obviously we are edging towards the festive season where it’ll be perhaps on most people’s minds who are wanting to do this, they’re thinking, “Well, you know what, I’ll get Christmas out the way and I’ll start.” Do you have any thoughts, tips, tricks or strategies to navigate the festive season to try and mitigate the damage? Or would you say, “Well actually you know what, now would be a great time to just go cold turkey and jump into this new way of thinking?”
Sarah
(36:18)
I think that you’re going to be in one of two camps and one might be, if you know that historically the festive season is an incredibly boozy time for you and your social life, then maybe setting that goal for the new year can be the great time to start. And I’m running a challenge from the 8th of January for anyone that wants to come and do it with others because there is so much success from being accountable in a group with others that are going through it. And that’s why I think my challenges are so successful because in the early days I say to people, “If it’s going to be really hard not to drink at that event, then don’t go because you don’t need to be surrounded by people drinking in the early days.” Now it doesn’t bother me, but at the very beginning, I would’ve found that really hard. And historically, we’ve got every social event under the sun in December where we catch up with people we don’t even like or really want to spend time with because it’s Christmas.
Stu
(37:14)
That’s true.
Sarah
(37:15)
And we can only drink to get through because it’s people who don’t know that well or something like that.
Stu
(37:22)
Yeah, it’s a strategy, isn’t it? You think, “I’m going to start drinking at Christmastime because I don’t want to speak to these people in the first place.”
Sarah
(37:30)
But for others, it’s a good time. If we know that we really want to do it now, then do it now so you’ve got a few weeks under your belt before you’re going into the boozy time because the first four weeks are the hardest because it’s creating new habits, it’s creating new neural path pathways. I call it flexing that sober muscle. And it’s how do I socialize about booze and how do I navigate managing my stress without booze and all of those other new things that we have to do. And then the other thing is, I say “Experiment with the alcohol free drinks” because they really do work for so many of my clients, got them sober, is being able to have an alcohol free champagne instead of the real thing. And my motto is, keep the ritual, change the ingredient. So if you always have a drink at 5:00 on a Friday, have an alcohol free drink.
Stu
(38:24)
Yeah, that’s interesting. I’ve never even thought that the medium could be such an important part of the habit. It’s just the holding the glass full of chilled liquid in your hand. Perhaps that’s 50% of the issue.
Sarah
(38:40)
Absolutely. And so now if I’m going to a barbecue or a party, I’ll take an alcohol-free bubbles with me. Most of the time, no one… All my friends obviously now know it’s been three and a half years that I don’t drink, but if there’s someone there that I haven’t met before and I’ve got a glass of bubbles, it just doesn’t even come up unless they ask me what I do for a job. And sometimes I do lie because sometimes if I can see someone’s getting pissed, I’m just like, they’re going to feel so uncomfortable if I tell them what I do.
Stu
(39:02)
Oh, exactly. Right. “I’m a lion tamer. That’s what I do.”
Sarah
(39:10)
Exactly. I’m just like, “Uh, I’m a health coach” and I don’t go into the details of it because people do feel uncomfortable. And what happens is as soon as I say what I do, someone’s immediate response is to start telling me how much they drink and justifying their drinking. And I’m like, “I don’t care.”
Stu
(39:23)
Well, exactly right. You’re either going to be a traffic warden, a grey area drinking coach or a policeman. That will generally stop the conversation, make people feel a little uncomfortable. So I’m conscious that we’re coming up on time. So just a question really regarding you in terms of the non-negotiables that you now adhere to, the things that you do every day to ensure that you crush that day. And that could be anything from, I get up in the morning and I like to do a bit of yoga or breath work, I have a black coffee or whatever they may be. Just taking in the experience from, I guess it’s almost like a new lease of life because you’ve given up drinking, you’ve got more energy, you get to think more about your health and your body. So what are those things? What might they look like to you?
Sarah
(40:15)
Yeah, so I exercise every day. It’s a non-negotiable. I’m a dopamine addict. I’ve definitely got that addictive personality. So for me, that lights up that dopamine reward center in the brain so I’m not craving in any way because what so many of my clients go through is when they remove alcohol, they swap it for sugar because that makes sense. And I did that for a while as well. And so I’ve got that completely under control. I exercise every day. I do something that suits my nervous system every day.
(40:46)
So whether that’s breath work, whether that’s yoga, whether that’s a meditation. I’ve got an infrared sauna at home and I go in there pretty much most days and do some breathing and even if it’s 15 minutes, but it’s something that just brings my stress levels back down and connection. I’m such a people person. I need connection. And I work from home on my own, so I make sure that every day I have completely undistracted connection time with someone I love. And sometimes that’s the kids and there’s no devices around and we do something, even if it’s 10 or 15 minutes, it’s just having that real meaningful connection.
Stu
(41:23)
Brilliant. Fantastic. No, I love it. I have a sauna too and I like it to my man cave. Kids aren’t allowed out there.
Sarah
(41:30)
I know. I’m lucky the kids and my husband don’t like it, so I like it. My sanctuary.
Stu
(41:34)
Exactly. Fantastic. So for everybody then that would like to find out more about what you do, perhaps sign up to or download the guide to sobriety, sign up to the program, listen to your interviews, etc., where can we send them?
Sarah
(41:51)
So just head to my website, Sarah Rusbatch, and Sarah with an H, Rusbatch, R-U-S-B-A-T-C-H .com
Stu
(42:00)
And stuff in the pipeline this year, next year?
Sarah
(42:05)
So I’m starting to be more in the corporate space. So I just ran a corporate alcohol-free challenge for a big mining company here in Western Australia.
Stu
(42:17)
Oh wow.
Sarah
(42:17)
And did a 30-day challenge. Every day I did a talk on how alcohol impacts sleep, mental health, anxiety, the neurotransmitters, how to manage stress, how to socialize. And the feedback was incredible. Because I’m very conscious of the fact that all these companies are saying, “We want to promote corporate wellbeing and make sure we’re looking after our employees,” but they don’t have a single alcohol free drink at their office party. You are ridiculed and pressured if you’re not down the pub getting pissed on a Friday night. No one’s talking about the fact that alcohol impacts your sleep and your mental health and causes anxiety. And I’m very much on a mission to talk about that.
Stu
(42:57)
That’s awesome because it’s so ironic, and especially in the mining area where obviously you’ve got loss of heavy machinery and a dependence on a clear head to be able to mitigate any potential dangers that might happen. Wow. Good stuff. Fantastic. All right. Really enjoyable conversation. I love it. And I think it’s going to be a very popular one because it’s the acceptable drug and everybody thinks, “Well yeah, it’s just alcohol. Everyone drinks. My grandma drinks. I’ve always done it, it’s healthy and it’s not an issue for me,” but perhaps it is. So thank you.
Sarah
(43:30)
And that’s the thing, right? In 2019 a study was done and it puts alcohol in the same carcinogenic category as tobacco.
Stu
(43:38)
Right.
Sarah
(43:40)
And yet we have to justify not taking it. Like you go down the pub and you say, “I’ve stopped smoking” and people are like, “Oh, good on you.” You say you’ve stopped drinking, “Oh, don’t be so boring.”
Stu
(43:50)
Well, exactly right. And just look at we went through multiple lockdowns and you couldn’t go to the gym, but you could sure as hell go to the bottle shop.
Sarah
(43:58)
I know, right?
Stu
(44:00)
It’s insane. It’s insane. But yep, what do we do? What do we do? But look, I really appreciate your time. What we’ll do is I’ll put everything that we’ve spoken about in terms of links in the show notes so everybody can access that information. But Sarah, much appreciated, very enjoyable conversation. Thank you.
Sarah
(44:18)
Thanks for having me.
Stu
(44:19)
Thank you. Bye-Bye.
