I might even, instead of doing it in an intro, just share a full podcast episode. I know I talked about doing that before. The good news is that within two weeks, I'll be finishing with my finals for the very last quarter of my first year of my PhD program. So I'll actually have a little bit more space and capacity to be able to record something extra like a Prolon specific episode.

But for those of you who aren't joining us, I still really encourage you to join the Instagram channel where we're talking about it. I think it could be really fun for you guys just to hear everyone's experience as they're going through it. If it's something you're thinking about doing, it could be fun just to.

Observe everyone's experience first, and that might be the thing that really encourages you to do it for yourself. So again, I'll make sure that the Instagram channel is linked in the show notes below onto today's guest, Sylvia Suby. Rana. She is a clinical psychologist and the head of content development for unconscious moderation.

I think it was actually, I think it's a great conversation to be having in the middle of summer where maybe a lot of us are having more alcohol than usual. I know that's honestly true for me. With the heat and the bead, you tend to, I tend to just. Indulge in alcohol a little bit more. But what I loved about this conversation is this isn't necessarily a conversation about sobriety and how we all need to be cutting alcohol out of our life.

It involves hypnotherapy, it involves education around how alcohol is impacting us in ways we might not realize. Reflection questions, all these different facets that we talk about more in this podcast episode. So I just, what I love about it is I really think that's how I wanna approach everything is with intention.

And how am I using this thing unconsciously, unintentionally? How am I drinking more than I even realize or even really want to just because I'm unconsciously engaging in social norms or whatever it might be. But I also loved that in this conversation, Sylvia explained some things like how alcohol can affect our dopamine and what that looks like the day after consumption in terms of a dopamine drop and how the body has to respond to that.

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm very excited to be here. The, I think we were just chatting off air. We're both in the psychology field in different ways, so I think we'll have a fun conversation getting into some of the potentially deeper threads of the conversation we're gonna have here related to alcohol.

But I do, I always love to start with an origin story and what got you on this path, what got you interested on this path? I did in doing some research for our conversation today, listen to some previous podcasts you've done. So I know a little bit of your origin story, but for the audience who this is their first time getting introduced to you, could you share a little bit of what brought you here today To my dry 30?

Right. And obviously, um, the alcohol consumption is also a little bit of a gray area. And, um, I didn't study anything related to that, but I learned that with, like, I learned that through life because I haven't, um, drunk in around six years. I don't have a set date. It was very organic for me, but I haven't drunk in around six years and I was in my.

Helping people do the shift and understand, uh, why that might work better for them. Because I stopped drinking because I was like, this is not working for me. I'm forcing something that it's, I just feel like my body is, is rejecting, but I just keep forcing it because that's what I'm supposed to do because everybody else is doing right.

And, and that is not the best way to, to live your life. Yeah. I think a lot of our conversation, I know in in one of your past podcasts you were talking about maybe part of the catalyst was some chronic health concerns that then sort of sets you on this path of alcohol being a potential contributor and just wanting to better understand your relationship with alcohol.

And I think so much of what I'm excited to talk to you about is what that looks like to start to shift into a more conscious, intentional relationship. Because for many people, I think this conversation's gonna benefit a whole slew of people, right? Those who are like, I really, I really have felt that poll, that nudge to just not have alcohol be a part of my life.

In one of your episodes you were talking about how, you know, you didn't, you didn't even realize how much you were drinking. It just was a part of the culture and socializing and what an unconscious relationship with alcohol looks like. Yeah, definitely. Like, I, I don't think I've ever been a very, like a huge drinker because, um, again, it, as you said, um, I, it really, really affected my system.

I had a lot of gut issues at one point, and I saw that alcohol was obviously not making it bedside. It was actually infl, like my body was so inflamed and alcohol was just inflaming it more. Um, so I, I never had like a huge, um, intake of alcohol. I, I was always a very social drinker. I would never drink alone.

I was just, yeah, it's, it's default mode. You just go for it. Right. And until I actually had that, um, I had a very, very big, um, bacterial outburst in my, in my, uh, gut when I was like, okay, I need to stop not only drinking, but gluten, lactose, and many, many other things. Um. It was a very, uh, wake up moment for me.

It was, uh, I realized, okay, I cannot keep, keep believing or living the way that I'm living because I, I'm just doing stuff that it's not working for my body. And my body's screaming now. So I, I actually listen to the doctor of everything that she said. She told me like, you need, you cannot do this, this, and this and that.

Um. After the gut issues, I wouldn't tolerate not even one drink. Mm-hmm. My, my stomach would be like, I refuse to, to process this. So it became something painful for me. Mm-hmm. And I was like, okay, my body's talking to me. It used to talk to me when everything like was so big. And now that I've become healthy again, it's telling me what is not working for me.

Right. Because I am probably, uh, well, I'm quite sure that if I had just kept drinking, even though it was not feeling good for me, I, I would've probably gone back to having a bacteria. I was in my, in my gut because it was just so, so, um, like it was so vivid that it was not for me. Mm-hmm. And I understand that that's not what happens to a lot of people.

I well that with, with unconscious moderation, with the team, we try to, um, spread the word to, to make people understand that that is not a drinking is not a healthy coping coping mechanism. If you wanna drink, that's completely fine, but do it because you choose to, not because you're numbing your emotions or because of peer pressure or because of many other reasons why people drink.

Yeah. To that end, I think there's, there's full-blown addiction and I don't know that we're, that's really what we're talking about today. I think it's more those of us who are consuming moderately, but maybe very, very consistently. But again, it's just unconscious. It's, I'm out at this party. They're serving beer, they're serving wine, they're serving cocktails.

Or in, in the unconscious world, I might say like, what is the perceived benefit in this? Like deeper in my unconscious, outside of just, well it tastes good, right? But I think that's the difference is if we are going to drink, really having an intentionality and an understanding of why I would say yes or no in this moment.

And am I just saying yes because it's in front of me and everyone else is drinking, so what the hell? Um, even though it might not really be aligned for me that day or that week, or just in general and starting to understand that a little bit deeper. Yeah, definitely. And that's actually, uh, an exercise that I always do with the people that I work with that.

Again, changing a pattern can take times, takes time and, and patience and work, but acknowledging that, that you're doing something, a habit, a pattern, it's just, it's halfway. You're halfway done. Because a lot of the times we, we don't, we don't take the time to understand why we're doing something. We just do it automatically.

I need to treat it. I need to go to the doctor. The, the mind and the body always has a, has a fine, sorry. Always has a way to tell us things. And if we don't listen, the body will start screaming louder. Mm-hmm. And until it's so, so obvious that we have to actually sit down and address that because, um, if not, it's, it's not, well, it's not healthy for the body to, to keep con, keep living like that, really.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And to that end, I think there's probably many of us who have felt that nudge or that communication from the inner self of. Gosh, I just don't know if alcohol's for me, it really is impacting my mind, body, and spirit so much, and yet it's so difficult for them to shift the relationship they have with it.

Download the app and do the program wanting to fully quit alcohol. However, we've seen that 70% of our users are people that actually pursue moderation. So at one point we were like, okay, our name is, has the word dry in it. But it's not, people cannot really relate to it, or the most of our users cannot really relate to it because they're actually pursuing moderation.

What we want to, to, um, help people and, and the tools that we provide. So, um, we've done this, this change of names and we've changed the image a little bit, and we've also extended our program. It used to be 30 days, and now it's 90 days because. When, when we, when you talk about, or when you research about ab habit formation, there's this myth that is very, very wrong that a habit can be created in 21 days.

Mm-hmm. Because the body has been, has been taught how to live life with that substance in the body. So when you're taking it out of the equation, the body's like. Oh, I need that to survive. Give it to me. Give it to me. So you will feel that urge to, to drink or to take the substance that you were taking.

So it takes time and it takes patience and it takes work to change habits, change patterns. And something that you said before that it was very interesting, is that, uh, willpower can only take you so far. So working with the unconscious mind is very powerful and has proven to be, or to have way more, way better results.

Our brains, they resist change. Brains want to stay the same and say the way that they're, they were brought up that because when we are little, we, we see life and we react to it and our brains learn, uh, how to protect ourselves. And, and the brain says, okay, I need to do this in order to feel safe. However, when we are adults, then we might say, okay, this, that actually kept me safe in the past is not working for me anymore.

So blown away with how, how easy it was, how accessible it was. The unbelievable results that I experienced that I had to share it here on the podcast. For those who aren't aware, ProLon is a five day fast mimicking program. What blew me away was the impact because the magic of ProLon is that even though you're eating, it has been scientifically developed to put your body into a fasting state.

That's not something that I don't think I would even ever do. But I also did the in-body scan at Ascent adaptation before doing the diet and after doing the diet, because I really wanted to measure results and I was blown away. I lost six pounds just in that week. I lost 2% body fat. But the other markers that I was really excited to track were my inflammation went down significantly.

My phase angle went. Up significantly, which I'm gonna talk about a lot more because I decided I'm gonna record a short solo episode going super, super in depth into the ProLon fast mimicking program and more in depth into my results and what some of these measurements mean. But if anyone is interested and wants to learn more, click the link in the show notes below, and that link will also give you 15% off your order.

It's where, you know, it's those unconscious narratives, those repressed emotions, but really those narratives that all our behaviors are stemming from. Mm-hmm. And so to that end, whatever the pattern is, in this case, we're talking about shifting patterns related to alcohol. The intellect alone, the consciousness alone, the willpower alone.

At some point, that old pattern is just gonna come back up because we didn't go clear the root of what's fueling it. So I completely agree, and this is why I was so excited to have you on today, because I just think the unconscious work is a non-negotiable part of the process. Mm-hmm. Definitely. So that's why the, the program has, um, so it's 30 minutes a day during 90 days, and then the first 30 days is no, you're not gonna drink if you one moderation or you want to completely quit, that's the same for everybody.

15 minutes is on your unconscious mind and 15 minutes is on your conscious mind. And when we, we've seen that, when we combine these two, the, the results are like, you see the results way faster and they actually, um, you change that, you change, you rewire your brain. And it's a long term change, as you were saying before, because it's not something that you're doing with your willpower.

You're actually working on it and you're learning tools and you're integrating that in your brain. So little by little you change your lifestyle really. So the, the way that we work with, uh, the unconscious mind is through chemotherapy sessions. So it's, uh, for people that dunno what a chemotherapy session looks like.

So what the, the hypnotherapy audio in this case, um, guides you to is it opens your mind to different options. So you consider different paths, right? So before, for example, a very, very typical one, I'm stressed, I drink wine, right? I'm, every time I, I am stressed from work. I get home and I drink a glass of wine.

So your mind won't only think of the wine, but it will also think of all the possible options, and you will actually feel more empowered to choose other options because our brains are. They, I don't wanna say lazy because the brains need to take care of a lot of things, but the brains, our brains want to optimize energy.

They're efficient for sure. Exactly. Exactly. So they want to optimize energy. So if we do something very often, uh, the of the brain says, okay, I'm gonna reinforce that connection between brain cells, between neurons. So it actually takes me very, very little energy because you're doing it very frequently.

We were saying before, with willpower alone can be very, very difficult to break. That's why a lot of people struggle a lot to completely quit drinking or to reduce their drinking. Because if you make that connection's, something that is stuck in your brain and it's, it's a connection that your brain has.

And, um, with hypnotherapy what we do is breaking those connections or making them less strong so then alternative paths can be created and it's, it doesn't require that much willpower to actually choose something different. Mm-hmm. And that's why it's so powerful and so interesting. Well, exactly, because you're, again, when you're clearing those deeper roots, oftentimes the analogy I'll give my clients when I first start with them is the unconscious influences are like a magnet.

What I see in myself and in clients is the shifts they've been wanting to make for years, all of a sudden they're able to make with so much ease, right? Where maybe someone we're talking about alcohol is like, gosh, I've just tried over and over and over to change my relationship with it, and it's such a struggle.

Uh, yeah. And when we, we've seen that, when we combine all this with the conscious work mm-hmm. That it's basically, uh, what we do is journaling, reading, and a little bit of movement, uh, to get the body a little bit involved. Not a lot because we're not doing a full exercise routine. We're just doing three, four minutes of stretches and, uh, especially focused on the pelvis because the pelvis stores a lot of tension and, and emotions.

Um, but then the reading is also very, very short reading, three minute reading of how alcohol affects different areas of the life. I don't know, sleep, peer pressure, um, grounding techniques. We, we do, we give different knowledge with different, um, information about different aspects. Mm-hmm. But it's, um, just snippets because yeah, it's, you read it in two or three minutes and then the rest of the time you do journaling.

Mm-hmm. And they see the benefits. However, we wanted to make it more aligned with the work that we were doing and make it less general. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So what we, what we did was, um, combine, um, that a little bit of work with the subconscious that we're working with hypnotherapy. Um, so then the journaling basically puts you in different situations and then you choose differently and.

And then the, these stories help you realize of your patterns and how you work. So then we help people realize what their automatic patterns are. So, because what I said before, knowing them is half of the work done. So we actually help people get there so then they can work on these with the unconscious work as well.

Mm-hmm. And we've, it's proven to be very, very powerful and given a lot of results and actually quite fast, people are actually, um, noticing the, the changes in the urge, in the urges that they're feeling in their sleep and everything in a lesson less than two weeks. Yeah, I mean that's what I love about unconscious work is it can shift things so quickly.

And that gets me so excited. I wanna stress that you guys, I love this combination 'cause I do think it's important of unconscious and unconscious. Even though the unconscious is the foundation of everything I do, I do think we'd be remiss or negligent to ignore the fact that we then do also need practical tools.

Yeah. I think I wanna dive into each of these pieces a little bit more, but I think a good place to go that I'm actually really curious too, 'cause I know tidbits, but is spending a little bit of time on what are some of the ways alcohol is affecting us. Alcohol affects so many ways. Totally. And I, I, I, I think this is important because again, of course when there is.

Addictive abusive consumption. That is a whole different story. And I think a lot of us might go, look, I have a glass of wine at night. I have two glasses of wine at night. I don't get drunk, I don't get tipsy, so there's no problem here. And I just think being able to understand maybe those more subtle ways that we're not totally aware of how it's affecting sleep, inflammation, some of these different things would be really powerful to understand.

Mm-hmm. Again, I'm never gonna demonize alcohol because we do so many things in life that are bad for ourselves. Like, for example, I'm, I'm, I love chocolate and I probably, I eat more chocolate than I should. Um, so I'm never gonna demonize, uh, any alcohol or blame anybody for, for drinking alcohol. Um, but that's why we try to help people understand.

It will make you feel like you're less stressed. So that's why a lot of people use it to reduce that stress when they come from work. Mm-hmm. But what actually does wind down exactly. I feel like that's the common thing. Like I just, I just need to wind down from my day a little bit. I'll have a beer.

Exactly. Yeah. But your body is not actually winding down. You feel like you are, but it's actually because it's numbing you, but your body is overworking to get rid of those toxins. So, um, it affects your hormones, it affects your blood pressure. Pressure. You don't see all these things, right. Unless you actually go and get it tested for that exact hormone.

Just your body has created that tolerance so it doesn't react to it as much. So you will need more alcohol to get that reaction that before you used to have with one or two drinks, now you need three or four drinks. But that doesn't mean that one drink is affecting differently to the body. It's still affecting the same way.

It's affecting your sleep, it's affecting your mood. You are way more irritable. You are way less capable to make decisions that feel right for you because it really affects your pre prefrontal cortex in many, many different areas of the brain. It really affects. All, all the body, it inflate it. Like your body, your gut gets so inflamed.

You're gonna feel more tired than you were before. You are gonna feel like you haven't rested because yes, you were asleep, but your body was overworking again, getting rid of all those toxins, regulating and going back to balance because when you drink something like alcohol, it completely breaks with that balance that you have in the body.

Yeah. Can you we like, we like specifics here and maybe more so than most audiences, 'cause we're very much in kind of the integrative, holistic world where we get into the weeds of how things are affecting the mind, body, and spirit. But I, I wanna dive deeper into some of the sleep and also the cortisol was really interesting to me because I think understanding more of how.

Actually the very thing we're using alcohol for many of us, um, even just lightly, moderately, right? Stress, sleep, anxiousness just kind of winding down. It actually is having like a rebound effect that sort of exacerbates all those things later on. But can you talk about that a little bit more? What is alcohol doing with cortisol?

Mm-hmm. So that's why we, there's a spike in cortisol that we don't feel at first, because again, we're numbed, but then we feel it after. That's why a lot of people talk about the. Hang anxiety and the next day, the hangover. A lot of people have, uh, a lot of anxiety and a lot of unpleasant emotions. I don't like talking about negative emotions.

Everything that's positive also has a negative, like, um, magnets for example, as you were saying before. So if you're numbing something, then there's gonna be a contract, and then the next day you're gonna have that counter effect of. Feeling more anxious, feeling more stressed, because that spike of cortisol, right?

And if you keep doing it over and over, it messes with all your system, not only cortisol. Mm-hmm. Uh, cortisol is like very famous because it's a stress hormone, but it affects so many hormones, it affects the thyroid. Uh, so everything just gets messed up. And, um, I see loads of people that actually talk about, for example, the libido.

And I could talk about the effects of alcohol in the body for hours, because every time I keep talking and I'm like, it talks about like, it affects us too. It affects us too. Like I keep. I, I keep remembering, and it's just, we don't realize the, the effect that it has because some of the drugs have a very specific effect and very, uh, strong effect.

So. Mm-hmm. For example, you, I don't know, cocaine. You see it and you see the effects very, very fast, and you get that, um, dependency very, very fast as well. Mm-hmm. However, with alcohol, you don't get that dependency is a very, very slow dependency, and you, the effects are with that over consumption, over a long period of time.

We don't have that comparison of a month ago, I was so much better because it can be years and years until you actually notice what the, what alcohol is, is doing. Yeah. Yeah. The cumulative effects. Mm-hmm. Of all of it. I also know just the systemic inflammation, right. To your point, it can lead to an entire cascade where right now if we're in chronic inflammation all the time, that leads to, um, chronic illness, autoimmune diseases.

And then I would also love your input and one of your other podcasts, you were talking about dopamine and serotonin and the difference between the two of these and how, you know, maybe initially again we feel better, but the next day there can be this sort of equilibrium response response with dopamine.

So can you talk about those a little bit more? Yes. So sleep first. Um, basically when, when people are having trouble sleeping, um, again. Most of, most of the times we don't take the time to actually understand why we're having trouble sleeping. And most of the times it's because there's something worrying us.

To fa uh, to fall asleep faster and faster. And that comes from a person that suffered from such, like, I suffered from insomnia out through all my teenage years. It would take me three hours to fall asleep. Mm-hmm. And I thought, this is, this is just me. This is how I work now, and this is how I need to go to bed very, very early, because if not, I fall asleep at 4:00 AM Right.

And, and I end up sleeping three hours. So I thought that was just how my life was gonna be. And then when I addressed that worry, that anxiety, that I had all those problems and I learned new techniques to do in the bed, uh, before going to sleep, for example. Something as easy as grabbing a notebook and writing down everything that you have in your mind, because what I used to do is lay down and.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, you take a notebook and you write down all the, to-do like a do to-do list, right? Like, I need to do this, I need to do that, that, that, that, because you are, you are living it somewhere, so your mind knows that you're not gonna forget because it's in the notebook. So then your mind actually relaxes a lot.

And then you think of other things that might be very, very random, but that might not activate you as much, so mm-hmm. You are entering into that rest, um, state and you eventually fall asleep. So it can actually be changed without any substance, uh, because again, a lot of people, um, at least in Spain, that's where I'm from.

I am, a lot of people are taking sleeping tablets, Uhhuh, which again, have a very addictive component as well. So using a substance to fall asleep, uh, it's just. Putting a patch instead of repairing what's going on underneath. Mm-hmm. So understanding, again, understanding what's worrying you or why you're not sleeping, understanding the why, uh, will help you then address that and fall asleep faster.

Right. Like three hours. So you can actually work on that again. It takes time and it takes patience. But there are many ways to work on that without going into, uh, substance. Because I. When you work on that, when you work on that anxiety, those worries that you have before going to bed, then you can actually rest because you disconnect and your body is not in fight or flight mode.

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Check the show notes for a discount code to receive 30% off your first order as well as a link to shop. And then can you, I already have some thoughts, but can you talk to the dopamine and their serotonin differences and then I'll jump in? Yeah. So basically, uh, to make it simple, I always say that dopamine is related to pleasure and serotonin to happiness or contentment, because the word happiness, I think brings some confusion.

We can always be in the highs because we need the lows to then appreciate the highs, right? Mm-hmm. And if we keep numbing ourselves, we're not even, we're not gonna feel the, the lows, but we're not gonna feel the highs either, right? So. We need to go to both sides. So that's why I talk about more contentment.

The problem is when we confuse it with happiness, when we think that those things that give us pleasure are actually gonna make us feel happy, make us feel content, make us feel whole. Mm-hmm. Because the, that feeling of contentment, that serotonin, um, you segregate it when you are, uh, when you're surrounded by your loved ones, when you feel connection, when you feel like what you are doing is something that you enjoy doing.

For example, if you are someone that loves drawing when you're drawing, so. Um, the diff the main difference is that dopamine has that addictive effect because you feel dopamine and you're like, you get attached to it. You're like, I want more. I want more. And you're always chasing that. And there's so many people addicted to that dopamine, and they're always looking for more and more.

But in reality, serotonin is what gives them that feeling of content. And serotonin doesn't have that addictive component because when you feel happy or when you feel content, um, the effect that serotonin has is you feel like, okay. I love this. I've had enough, like I'm fulfilled. You don't have that addictive component, so you're not gonna keep seeking that.

It makes you feel content. It makes you feel like you are aligned with yourself and with others, right? Because humans are. We are social, we are, we need to be surrounded by others. We cannot be independent and function our on our own because that has been proven to lead to depression and, and not having a fulfilled life.

Mm-hmm. And so how does alcohol, well, actually two questions. One, yes. How is alcohol affecting dopamine, specifically when we're drinking it, but then maybe the day or two after drinking, what is happening with dopamine levels? And to that end, are, you know, do dopamine and serotonin get released differently?

The up and down, up and down. Whereas the serotonin is more like the, the bottom of the sea. Mm-hmm. That it is very steady and maybe it goes up, but it's like very, very steadily, so very quietly. Or it can also be like how a plane flies, that it takes off and it takes ages to get up. Or a helicopter that just goes up right straight away.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, those, uh, that that's the big difference between dopamine and serotonin. Serotonin doesn't have that spike that creates, that, that effect of, of just like being, um, completely, it's not even like, it's, it's like a drug. You feel like you're drugged by the, by it because you are full of it, um, of dopamine, not serotonin.

So you'll need more of both. You'll need more of alcohol and things that excite you more. So that's why some people just get into these cycles of, they start going out and instead of going out one day, now they start going out two and three and four and more days. And then now they're not only drinking alcohol, they're also having drugs, or they're also having energy drinks, or they're, um, going to, I don't know, more extreme parties or, um, after the party, they're going to a RAF and.

We, we love that, um, spike of, because again, scrolling on social media gives us that dopamine spike as well. Mm-hmm. So we are, um, quite dependent on it. Yeah, I think so. I'm reading Dopamine Nation right now a great, a great, great book on basically dopamine addiction. Mm-hmm. And how we're kind of living in unprecedented times where we have access to so many different sources of dopamine hits.

So I'm gonna give you the spike of dopamine to spur you to consume more of it because it's so scarce. So it's almost, I don't know, it's almost weirdly, I. Um, a hormone that's connected to scarcity. But what's happening is we, we actually are living in a time of very little scarcity for most of us in first world countries where I'm getting a hit of dopamine from social media.

And yet social media is not a finite resource. It's not scarce or, you know, alcohol, it's not scarce anymore. And so it's like keeping us stuck in this constant loop that's telling us more, more, more. There's not gonna be, there's not gonna be enough of this. So keep consuming. And then we just get stuck in this loop.

But I think in a primal sense, understanding that is helpful too. Yeah, definitely. And to that, I would like to add that, uh, in this world, in today's world with phones and TVs and everything, uh, we are so connected that we are not capable of getting bored. Mm-hmm. We don't allow ourselves to get bored and to just connect with ourselves and give time to just reflect about ourselves or just being bored.

Right. And everybody's just looking for entertainment. We are not, um, opening spaces for us to connect with that boredom, with that creativity that comes from it. So. I think that actually makes it even worse because, uh, our path, like our ancestors not only had that dopamine spike once every blue moon, but also got bored a lot.

It's just, uh, there's so many things that are combined that, uh, bring us to where we're at today, really. Yeah. Yeah. Completely. I'm loving this, this book, the Dopamine Nation. It, I think it goes so well with this conversation, but I think a really good place to close is, for me, the takeaway from this conversation is when we understand why we're using alcohol, that helps us, that's the starting point for making the shifts we want, right?

If it's, I, I love a glass of wine with a meal every now and then. I love a mescal cocktail with a meal every now and then because I love the taste. It, it's like part of the ambiance of the experience. But I think that's partly why I can do that once or twice a month, and that's enough for me because I do know many of the downside effects of alcohol.

Like I take charcoal when I drink to help bind it up in the gut. No, that, that's very good. That works very good. The next day I take glutathione and I make sure I get in the sauna to help my body process those toxins a bit. I do some lymphatic support, so I know some of the effects it's having physiologically and, but I'm going into that consciously knowing I'm choosing to drink this wine with my meal and I'm gonna fully receive.

In this loop that keeps, that actually keeps us stuck in whatever the root issue is. And that's where I think something like what you guys are offering with unconscious moderation can be so freeing. Because if I'm drinking alcohol to calm my nervous system, at the end of the day, those unconscious protective mechanisms are not gonna wanna let that go.

If it doesn't feel that it has something, a better option to choose. Mm-hmm. It's gonna wanna keep pulling in that protective mechanism of, no, but I'm so stressed, I need to calm down. And if alcohol's the only option I'm perceiving, it's gonna be very hard to see anything different without engaging with that unconscious.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. So how can I bring in some of these tools like unconscious moderation to help me create the relationship with alcohol that I really want, one that isn't limiting my life or exacerbating these deeper issues. Something that I always suggest people to start doing is when they're, I don't know, at a bar or with friends and they're gonna order a drink or they're gonna, um, get a drink from fridge or something like that just before doing it.

Mm-hmm. Um, and most of the time people realize that it's not because they feel like it, it's because they're stressed or because of peer pressure, or sometimes it's, it's happened to me many times where I just want something refreshing, especially now that we're, um, getting into summer. I just want something refreshing and then I realize, wait, I can have something else that is refreshing as well, and it's gonna, um, cover that urge that I'm having.

Why don't I try a mocktail and see if that, um, is. Like it's what I'm looking for. And all the time when I drink that mocktail, this is exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for that fancy drink, for that feeling refreshed for, um, that fancy glass. And, and I don't know, being part of it, because yeah, you see everyone experience exactly because you see everyone with these fancy glasses and fancy drinks, and I don't wanna just turn up with a glass of water or with a soda.

And I'm not saying that it's easy, uh, it's accessible, but it's not easy to actually, um, work on it and say, okay, I don't want this be for the right reasons. Um, and actually changing that is what takes time. Mm-hmm. That's why, um, supporting this with all the tools, like for example, the unconscious moderation program is, is very, very helpful.

I love it. So where can people find you? Where can they find the program, learn more? I'll make sure it's all linked in the show notes, but just so that we hear it here as well. So the website explains everything. Uh, the team that's behind of everything, the how the app actually works step by step. And you have many different, um, blog injuries as well, ex explaining how alcohol affects in many different aspects of, uh, one's life.

And are you guys on socials? We are on Instagram. We're starting to grow a bit more our Instagram page. Okay. And yeah, it's um, uh, app. So yeah, it's easy to find as well. Okay, perfect. Yes. Like I said, I'll make sure it's all linked in the show notes so people can find it really easily too. Well, Sylvia, thank you so much for coming on.

I feel free to make the choice that's actually aligned for me. Yes, exactly. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Sylvia. Thank you so much for having me. I love this conversation.