I Quit Drinking A Year Ago And Here’s How.

Sep 10, 2018
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(That’s my eldest in the feature pic.  He’s the king and starts Uni today. Stud)

What a difference a year makes.

This time a year ago I was three weeks into a commitment that would change my life, and it sucked ass.

Radio is a crazy world.  Every event and gathering includes booze (usually free).  Every luncheon or business meeting people want you to drink, and Radio people are ego driven self-conscious folk.

Drinking was part of my life and a terrific solution to the issue of the day and a way to get away from performance stress, anxiety, and reality.  It’s was the best short-term solution for any psychopathy I was experiencing.  Nothing extreme.  Just too much.

I’ve blogged about this a few times because it’s important for me to share the stuff that’s hard to share.  Generally, I’m not open to hard conversations.  It’s come from years of living a public life and the resulting shit housing online, and it sucks.  I started to look at myself through the lens that social media and others with uneducated preformed opinions had of me.  Getting fired is something that comes for almost everyone.  Getting fired in front of a country makes the pain of any conflict feel like a never-ending failure.

(so hot)

Radio/Media is an intensely personal career. You give the best of yourself every day and a daily personal referendum with instant feedback that we live for in Radio.

After 16 years of it, I had enough and wanted to crawl into my asshole and never come out.

My solution was drinking.  You can’t be hurt if you’re sleeping right?  And if you’re awake, you’re usually having a cocktail and mentally separating yourself from the issue at hand.    Until it stops working.

That’s why I had to stop.  I wasn’t a bum.  I didn’t have horror stories of waking up with my pants off sleeping in the mud room next to the dog.   I wasn’t moving forward because I was scared to move out of where ever the fuck I was, but I knew I had to remove all the negative distractions from my life and booze was the most common.

So I quit.  Regular counseling and educating myself about the why’s and what’s were super important to me.  I’ve never been able to do anything unless I fully understood it.  So here’s what I did.

  1. Drink a shit pile of soda water – Sounds stupid but it works.  It’s a good placebo, and if you’ve pounded your body with booze, your liver will thank you for washing it out with nature’s cure-all.   The bubbles make you feel like you’re still drinking too.  Add it to a rock glass with lime when you’re out, and no one bugs you about your Diet Coke.  Genius.
  2. Stay away from booze cans, and you’re neighbors beer fridge – Breaking a habit also sucks ass.  They say it takes 21 days, but it’s different with alcohol.  If you really wanna stop drinking, don’t go to a pub or bar to have coffee and soda water for three months.  You’ll be amazed at how many people start to either rally around you or eff off.  It’s similar to a friendship cleanse, and it’s good for you.  Like smoking, drinking is a social situational thing
  3. See a Dr – If you’re an addictive personality, it’s addictive to live through the experience of getting healthy.  Hearing your Doc say you’re liver functions are normal, and your blood pressure is excellent makes you feel a sense of accomplishment.  Personal accomplishments give you a foundation to build on.  In my case, my Doc prescribed a CBD spray that helps me deal with stress, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love the whole idea of Cannabis being a solution.  Which BTW it is.
  4. Get a killer therapist/Talk to someone – This is a no-brainer. When we’ve got mashed potatoes in our head’s, you need someone to help you understand it all and provide you with the help you need no matter what you’re doing.  Stress and what it gives birth to can turn into unbridled fear and anxiety which lead to depression.  You take care of your body, and you get your hair cut because you want to look, feel, be your best right? Taking care of your brain is more important than ever, and a third party perspective from someone who’s only interest is your mental health is invaluable.  If you can’t afford it, talk to your family Dr about support groups or talk to someone who’s figured it out.  There’s a reason people use Sherpa’s to climb Everest.
  5. Stop Caring about shit you will never change – Seriously.  You will never teach anyone a lesson they don’t want to learn.  You can never make anyone do anything unless they want to, so try to force some dick who cut you off in traffic to apologize is pointless.  You need positive energy, not a negative focus.  Pretty sure the phrase “drive me to drink” was invented on the DVP in Toronto during rush hour btw.
  6. Just Accept it – You blindly accept Drano and bleech are bad for you right?  Booze is poison too.  Especially for you if it negatively impacts your life, mood, health, family life, work, etc.  If you drank Windex for one night, blacked out and woke up in a hospital with a medical professional telling you not to drink Windex again or the same thing would happen, you probably wouldn’t drink Windex again.  Accepting that drinking is the one thing you can’t do today is easy once you get it.

After a year of no booze, I’ve:

lost all the booze weight (60-70).

Never have a hangover.

Never feel like I need a drink.

Never think about needing it

I’m only a thousand times happier and more productive

I know if something goes wrong it’s never the end of the world

I give a shit about people around me

I’m in control of me

 

Be the author of your story, not the victim. This is my last blog about this. Hope it helps.

 

D

 

Dean Blundell

Dean Blundell is a Canadian radio personality. Best known as a longtime morning host on CFNY-FM (The Edge) in Toronto, Ontario. In 2015 he was named the new morning host on sports radio station CJCL (Sportsnet 590 The Fan). Dean started his career in radio in 2001 and for nearly 20 years been entertaining the radio audience. Dean’s newest venture is the launch of his site and podcast which is gaining tremendous momentum across North America.

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