Rethinking Sobriety: Breaking the Cycle of Over Drinking without Sacrificing Happiness with Colleen Kachmann

Christine Li  0:00  
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. I'm Dr. Christine Li and this is episode number 155. 

Today we have a truly fascinating guest joining us. Her name is Colleen Kachman. Colleen is an author, podcaster and master life coach, who will be sharing her powerful insights on addiction, sobriety and the pursuit of happiness. In this episode, Colleen helps women learn how to enjoy being sober, so that they can actually choose whether or not to have a drink. She very openly uses her personal journey as an alcoholic, to teach us how she's come to understand the difference between pursuing happiness and strict sobriety. She uses the principles of neuro psychology and polyvagal theory to explain how reprogramming your unconscious mind and regulating your nervous system can lead to truly lasting change, and can help you to be more passionate, more proud, and a more powerful version of yourself. But don't worry, this episode really isn't just about sobriety. It's a deep dive into the power of choice of self empowerment, and the pursuit of real happiness. So whether you're struggling with addiction, seeking a more balanced approach to alcohol, or simply looking to enhance your overall well being, this episode is packed with Colleen's valuable insights and actionable steps that she's developed. Let's go learn from her now.

Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychologist and a procrastination coach. I've helped 1000s of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they can begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn a powerful strategies for getting your mind, body and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important and accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full power, you're going to see how being productive can be easy, and how you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast. 

Hello, my friends. Thank you so much for joining us again on the Make Time for Success podcast today. I have an amazing guest Her name is Colleen Kachmann. She is an author and podcaster. Her podcast is Recovered with Colleen and she's also a master coach. And she's here to discuss the topic of sobriety with us; a topic we have not yet covered on this podcast. And I'm excited to dig deep into this topic with Colleen today. Welcome to the show.

Colleen Kachmann  2:49  
Thank you so much for having me, Christine. I appreciate it. It's good to be here.

Christine Li  2:54  
It's good to have you here. Thank you for the time and your expertise and bringing it here, please let us know whatever we should know about you what you'd like to share, and how you got to be an expert in the topic of sobriety.

Colleen Kachmann  3:08  
All right, well, I got to be an expert in the topic of sobriety by first majoring in alcohol. So I was a professional drinker. And you know, in all seriousness, alcohol, for me was just always part of my culture. I never saw alcohol as a problem I definitely identified as a drinker. But you know, I have seven children, I acquired three of them in a blended family situation, but I never had any trouble with sobriety when I was pregnant or breastfeeding. But what I found was, the more stressful My life became, the more my coping skills kind of collapsed into one specific tool, and that was alcohol. And indeed, the science does definitely show that when you are drinking to relieve your stress, that's where your shoelace gets wrapped around the bike pedal, you know, and your ability to control it because you're associating alcohol with stress relief. And the more you drink, the more stressed you feel because alcohol is a drug. And we're not really taught that alcohol is a drug with side effects. And so what we are taught is that you should be drinking responsibly, but we're not told what that means. And so as a mother, I thought drinking responsibly meant downloading the Uber app and not driving drunk. And that was the end of that. And so slowly over time, because alcohol is an addictive substance, I was relying more and more on it, which then at some point, you realize, oh, I'm drinking more than other people. I better hide that shit. And so then you go into hiding and isolation and I was in denial even from myself. You know, I would just have lots of wine and lots of vodka open in various places. So I didn't even have To count myself, and I just didn't understand what alcohol was doing to me. I thought there was a problem with me. I thought there was a problem with my relationship. I thought my kids were assholes. I thought my business, you know, and clients were just not going well. And life just got darker and darker and darker. And it was early COVID, where I could not control my drinking anymore. Because what had happened was I'm a high functioning high performing perfectionist, I'm teaching hot yoga first thing in the morning, I'm running marathons, I'm driving kids everywhere, I'm doing all the things. But when COVID happened, it took all of my reasons for not drinking away. You know, and for me, when I look back, that was the shift for me with drinking is when I shifted from needing a reason to drink, it's Friday night, it's date night, girls night out into reason, needing a reason to not drink. I needed, okay, I don't have to drive well, then I might as well pour a drink. And all of this happens subconsciously, I was very, very busy. But in early COVID, you know, happy hour, it gets earlier and earlier, I'm no longer needing to present. And so I did what a lot of people do, I tried to drink through COVID. And six weeks later, I woke up and said, I don't care what I need this to stop. And being a drinker and being just a member of our society. It seems like the moment you admit that alcohol is a problem, there's a one one answer, don't collect $200 Do not pass go go directly to AAA. And at the time, that was the only option. And to me it was like I'll say whatever the hell you want. Hi, I'm calling and I'm an alcoholic make this stuff. And what happened was, I did all the things. And I went to the meetings and I worked the steps being a high functioning perfectionist, I tried to do all 12 steps in one day. And I was like, All right, I'm an alcoholic, like let's do this. But what happened was, I began to even further allow my brain to be indoctrinated, that I was powerless, that I was had been drinking because there was something wrong with my brain. And so I will dig deeper into that in terms of how I got to where I now know there's a difference. But I now enjoy a glass of wine or two, as often as I want. And what I help women understand is that pursuing happiness, instead of sobriety is what allows you to self correct because any truly happy person doesn't really need to worry about drinking themselves into a stupor. You know what I mean? And actually, the science shows that this priority that sobriety is the ultimate goal and the ultimate value actually perpetuates the cycle of overdrinking because it people's most vulnerable state in their lives. They're like, I've got an addiction here. And addiction itself is a taboo world. We're all worried we're all addicted to our phones. We all are addicted to social media, to some extent, some of us, we all are addicted to coffee, you know, we understand the word addiction. But suddenly, it's such a stigma and shame when we get addicted to alcohol, when it's really easy to break the physical addiction and what perpetuates the emotional attachment is our identities as a drinker, or a non drinker, you know, and pursuing sobriety is the ultimate goal actually becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because sobriety as it's taught in AAA models is just perfectionism is disguised as a life or death situation. And you know, as a coach, that black or white thinking, is why you say screw it, I'll just start again Monday. And you're literally conditioning people's minds to think that if they don't stay 100%, sober, that they're going to end up living in a van down by the river drinking mouthwash. And I can remember in early sobriety, allowing myself to be indoctrinated in this way, and being told you have to get the vanilla extract out of your kitchen. And I was like, why? Like, because there's alcohol in that and you might have a craving and drink it and I was like, I have never thought about drinking vanilla extract, but they infuse you with panic and fear. And and this thought that you can't control yourself, when the science shows that you can control yourself. Addiction is actually not a disease. It's a habit. Your brain has learned to associate stress relief with alcohol or whatever it is, and you've just repeated that behavior and practiced and your brain has changed. Just about alcohol doesn't change your brain, the behavior changes your brain, your brain changes when you learn to play the piano or when you, you know, learn to run or whatever you do. And so recovery, you can actually change your brain back. And what I found in the science was that the belief that is perpetuated by AAA that once a drinker, or once an addict, or whatever it is, you want to call it, once you're an alcoholic, you're always that way. And lifelong sobriety is the only answer. And that is absolute bullshit, the brain absolutely does recover. And within six to 12 months, your ability to regulate is actually stronger than people who have not learned how to recover. And so what I do is teach women who are either over struggling or struggling with over drinking, or they feel trapped in that lifelong sobriety because they went to a and they did all the things and I think that's the only option. I teach them how to pursue happiness instead of sobriety. And that it is possible to learn how to enjoy yourself sober, or to drink without worrying about losing control, and I am living proof that that is possible.

Christine Li  11:09  
Okay, thank you so much for sharing your story. And also your experience with AAA and your experience with recovery. I'm really curious about what your personal story looked like in greater detail, if you don't mind sharing with us in terms of what were the ways in which pre sobriety, you were not oriented towards happiness? Well,

Colleen Kachmann  11:37  
I had the belief that alcohol is associated with happiness, you know, drinking is a reward, it's a treat, it's a social lubricant, it helps you relax. So I was operating on that information. And I thought I was pursuing happiness and happiness required having a drink in my hand, you know, I identified as a drinker, this is, would have been at one point embarrassing for me to talk about, but I saw, you know, drinkers is kind of a club, you know, like, you can find the drinkers at a party just follow the smokers. Like they're there. And so, I identified as a drinker. And so I thought that my, because I had this idea, I bought into Hollywood, and I bought into all of the marketing messages, you know, what we may not realize is in the early 2000s, the alcohol industry realized that they were missing out on 50% of the market. And that's when Skinnygirl margaritas and everything's got pink labels and all of this. And so, I just, I was like a frog in cold water, I didn't realize that I was caught in a pitcher plant or a man eating trap, or whatever. So I was drinking on a regular basis, because my life was so good. You know, my husband and I could afford good wine. And I remember one of the things I used against myself, as my grandmother used to say, you know, always eat on the good plates. And I took that and somehow thought that meant always drink top shelf vodka on Mondays, like, I just thought, like, life is too good. I'm so privileged, and I am enjoying life. So alcohol was invisible to me, in that it just simply became part of what I did, I didn't really think about it. If somebody stops over, we're opening a bottle of wine. And because it was so normalized through the mid 2000s, it was so normalized that I just didn't understand. So my pursuit of happiness was just I had a bad nap. Yes.

Christine Li  13:55  
Okay. Thank you for sharing that. That's interesting to know. What about secrecy for you in terms of Did you feel like you could discuss any of these feelings or thoughts or questions you might have had about your behavior at the time with anyone else?

Colleen Kachmann  14:12  
Just Google. Google knew, you know, I would I would Google things like what's the difference between dependence and addiction? What's the difference between alcohol use disorder and alcoholism? How do you control your drinking? You know, I for a while, tried now trek zone. My husband's a doctor and I gave him some bullshit story about wanting to try it on behalf of my clients. And so I tried a drug, you know, and there's a place for drugs and I am not minimizing that, but the bottom line was, I had a dysregulated nervous system and had no idea how to manage my own feelings. And

so I forgot the question. What was your question? Did

Christine Li  14:54  
you communicate your distress or your curiosity about what was going on to anyone? Like

Colleen Kachmann  14:58  
I said, I lied to my head. Spin about it, I was so ashamed. I was so ashamed that I couldn't control myself. But because of the A philosophy that permeates our culture, at some point, I made a diagnosis in my mind that I was an alcoholic, and I couldn't control it, which meant I gave up. And my job became managing my alcohol, not actually overcoming it, because again, I believed that alcohol was part of the happiness recipe. So this was just the cost of doing business in this secret club. It's interesting that you say, asked about secrecy, because one of the kindest gifts I gave to myself in early sobriety was I was secret about being sober. So imagine this, I used to walk around with a big Yeti, and pretend I was not drinking. In sobriety, I walked around pretending that I was pretending not to drink while I was actually not drinking, because what happens with alcohol use disorder is it's a thinking problem. And all of your thought cords get tangled up and you, you're not articulating, you're not speaking your truth. You know, you're not, you're not cleaning out your junk drawer, right. And so I had so many fears that if I said, I have a problem with alcohol, that would mean the problems in my marriage, suddenly, I get full credit for the divorce number one, and all the problems in marriage number two, I thought, now I'm going to be blamed for my kids struggles because Mommy has a drinking problem. It took time to untangle all of that. So the kindest thing I did for myself in early sobriety was continue to stay secretive. And just get help, until I felt safe for me to talk about it. Because it was so built up in my mind that it was such a huge problem. And the truth is, it's not it's normal. Anybody who drinks on a regular basis is on some level dependent on it because of the withdrawal effects of alcohol. If you're drinking every day, then yeah, welcome to The Club. That's nothing to be ashamed of. And it's easy to break. But the shame is what keeps the problem going. Okay,

Christine Li  17:22  
thank you so much for these fine level ways of really understanding what a woman would go through under the influence of alcohol and cultural factors, societal factors, I really appreciate the lessons here. Can you explain to us now the culture that you're creating, with your services and with your community, and what you've learned, since that period of time, where you've built a practice now of giving people an option, to understand their habits in a healthy and a very kind way to themselves that they can feel like they're actually not helpless?

Colleen Kachmann  18:07  
Yeah, pursuing happiness,

to me is about healing your relationship with yourself and being safe in your own body. As a drinker, and this is pretty universal. I couldn't be alone, you know, I could keep all my shit together. I wasn't a drunk in public. I, you know, didn't drive my kids drunk. The minute I had a second to myself, I was pouring alcohol down my throat, it addiction blocks your sense of self identity. So what I work with, with women is to set the goal on happiness, and to allow them to ease into sobriety. Some people like to do it like I did. I'm a bandaid off sort of person. I went cold turkey, and went through the withdrawals and did all the things but I have a lot of women who maybe they don't drink as much as I did. Or maybe they're just not ready to give that tool up. And you know what, you don't have to, I teach women that the real goal is to learn how to enjoy yourself sober. So how does that translate? I'll have a client who is wanting to learn to enjoy yourself sober. And so we start with 15 minutes. And so using other coping skills and relaxing and breathing and really enjoying and then of course, reinforcing it with the narrative, I'm enjoying not having alcohol, this is great looking for the benefits. And then you know, what if you'd pour a drink after that, that's okay. Like because now you have a memory that that sobriety, whether that sober experience was pleasant, and your brain is going to want more of it. And what I find is that women who need to ease into sobriety like that, actually can get a lot farther than those of us that are cold turkey jumping into the deep end of the pool, because they've truly connected their behavior, they're thinking up their mind in their body. And when you are thinking, do I want to be happy instead of I gotta get sober, then you're able to just really assess the consequences, like, is this drink making me happy? No, I'm actually feeling tired, or I'm feeling a little loopy, er, I'm feeling disconnected, or I'm not going to do the rest of my day. And so it allows you to take all the thoughts out of it, and just experience in the real moment. So that is what I do. And I honestly think that the foundation of happiness is it requires you to give yourself a choice. Because you know, what, you do have a choice, you always have a choice. And if heavy substance use is something you decide makes you happy, then you have the choice, this idea that I can't drink is ridiculous. You know, how do you ever expect to be happy, if you believe you can't control yourself, because then there's two options, you either have to drink, even though you kind of want to be sober, or you have to stay sober, when you'd rather be drinking. That's why there's such a problem with it. Because the bottom line is you do have a choice. And telling yourself it's not a choice in either direction, keeps you from being able to trust yourself to having that relationship with yourself of like, one's really going to make me happy here. And when you approach it from that, who healing happens, so fast,

Christine Li  21:29  
lovely, lovely. I get it, I get what you're throwing down here. Could you talk about the same issues from the point of the nervous system? And I saw in the materials that you sent to me earlier, that you work with the polyvagal techniques? And could you describe that system to us, for those of us who don't know all that much?

Colleen Kachmann  21:54  
Okay, so,

first of all, if you are a regular drinker, you already know that you're stuck in fight or flight mode, you're living in chronic stress and overwhelm and burnout. That is a physical experience. And just to give you the why that is, it's because alcohol depresses the central nervous system, and your brains like oh, we better not get so relaxed, we forget to breathe, and it shoots in cortisol and adrenaline and norepinephrine, which is why you wake up in the middle of the night with that anxiety or that anxiousness. So chronic regular drinking, your cortisol levels are through the roof, like I had my cortisol levels tested before I didn't ever tell my doctor, I was a drinker. And she was like, I feel like the test, there's something wrong with the test. There's no way your cortisol levels are this high. And I was like, I know Ray, that's crazy. So understanding first of all, that your desire to drink when you are caught in this cycle is not because you love being drunk, or you want to be high, it's because your nervous system is so activated, and in a state of stress you're drinking because it feels bad to not drink. And that's really when you can make the turn in terms of do I have an addiction or not? If it's hard to not drink, then you're dealing with a nervous system issue. So the first step is to decrease the amount of alcohol or if you can do whatever you can to lower that so that the actual physiology of stress is no longer working against you. Then in terms of polyvagal theory, what polyvagal theory does is teaches you how to follow the glimmers. We're all really familiar with triggers, right? We understand what pisses us off what stresses us out, what's what sends us into fight or flight. But what we don't understand is that there are breadcrumbs that take us back to a sense of safety, calm, and connectedness. And when you're not mindful, you're just living in a story. You are believing that the external world is what's pissing you off the husband, the kids the job, all of the to do list. And in reality, once you make that shift, that it's your nervous system that's creating the story in your head. Because when you feel calm and safe and connected, and you get that $500 unexpected bill, your reaction is like oh crap, well, I guess we'll take the money out of savings, or I guess we'll have to pinch over here, but you feel a lot more competent and capable of managing your problem. When that $500 bill comes at the end of a long day and you are blown on your circuit breakers. Your reaction is so over the top. So polyvagal theory is teaching mindfulness. Think about on your car, your RPMs your dashboard. I have an anxiety dial, where are you on a scale of one to 10? Where's your anxiety and understanding that you don't go from 10 to zero or zero to 10, you go from 10 to nine, and nine to eight, you just move the needle. And so learning how to regulate your own nervous system, and have your eye on the anxiety instead of the external world is how you become a woman who lives from the inside out. Because you're constantly adjusting your nervous system, which adjusts the story in your head. You know, when you're in a state of fight or flight, you have a very myopic negative focus bias, you have the now appeal and you have no willpower. And so instead of trying to fix all of that in a state of stress, following the glimmers, which if I could, it's just like, think about something that makes you feel warm or inviting, like for me, when I'm stressed, it might be the thought of turning on my favorite podcast, or just going for a walk, or something that feels inviting. It's that glimmer that you feel in your body, that invitation to pursue that feeling or that behavior. That's the glimmers that you follow back to home to your, your sense of self and then reconnect from there, and then go look at your problems. But refusing to operate on an activated nervous system is really the the foundation of being happy, because you, most of us try to do all this mindset work. Like if I just think about this differently. And what's a different perspective, the brain cannot do efficient mindset work on a dysregulated or an activated nervous system, you just can't think yourself saying it's you know, you can't think your way out of a thinking problem. So moving into the nervous system, to me, it's like driving a stick shift, you got to put yourself in neutral, bring yourself down and stop pushing gas and blowing your RPMs through the roof.

Christine Li  26:57  
Thank you for that great analogy, I I find that sometimes it's hard for people to believe that there's a calm, confident, he's full interior to return to, and that the stress is basically the baseline. And I think that's the work of coaching, therapy, healing groups, whatever is going to help you to learn to take it from nine to eight, eight to seven, gradually and to learn technique by technique, what is going to work best for you there there is that place of calm and safety and clarity within you. And I think I'm hearing that from what Colleen is saying strong and clear.

Colleen Kachmann  27:41  
Well, I

teach what you said is exactly right. In that we think that that person is somewhere over there, you know, so we just have to do the things and fix the problems. And then we will get there. What I teach you is how to be here. And the analogy I use for that is think of your emotions like outfits. And what you know is that the passionate, powerful version of yourself, she already exists. She is the one who signs you up for yoga, she's the one who you know tells you you need to eat more vegetables, she's the one that makes decisions, she shows up at work, she's often on call first thing in the morning, you get up and you're hitting the ground running and your to do list, and you feel amazing, she already exists. What you need to realize is learning how to navigate in and out of your emotional states. That's where you follow the glimmers and realize that you she's already here. She's just not in the driver's seat. And to realize that your emotions are not permanent, which we say that we tell our kids that. But we don't really know that we wake up depressed and anxious. And we think here I am again. And that's the ninja power move that I teach. Because you can make all the promises in the world that you want. You can be sober for months, but you are going to wake up at some point and feel shame and disappointment in yourself and depression. It's learning how to navigate out of that emotional state. That's your ninja power move and being able to decrease the amount of time that you spend in that emotional state. So for me, like in early sobriety, I could spend months in depression and anxiety and then over time monitoring my progress of okay I was only upset three days there. Okay, I was only upset three hours. Now I need about 30 seconds because I stopped dropping regulate like I got this. But it's realizing that there is no there. And that that person of you that you know my my son or my daughter's boyfriend the other day was driving and took his vape and threw it out the car window. He quit right then. And then later of course he's scramble going around trying to find an old date, that guy, he exists all the time. And the tool is to learn how to get back to that guy in the present moment or the woman that we are in the present moment. She's already there, she shows up all the time. But you can learn to take control and put her in the driver's seat and you need, all you need is the tools. And I say all you need with air quotes, but you just need the tools to let her drive the car and to manage your behavior. Okay,

Christine Li  30:27  
thank you. Could you describe for us what it's been like to have a community of women who are learning about these techniques and checking in with themselves and finding the calmer, confident part of themselves again?

Colleen Kachmann  30:44  
Well,

considering that, what I would say two of the biggest symptoms of people who are dealing with alcohol or dealing with anything, it's for alcohol, it's exhaustion. But the other big one is loneliness, loneliness, and being able to speak your truth. And the cool thing is, and this is why AAA actually does help some people because they provide a sense of community. Science shows that the fastest way to change your mind, which what you and I are talking about is I'm going to pursue happiness by regulating my nervous system, instead of worrying about the alcohol. But changing your mind, the fastest way to do that is to speak and be in community with a tribe of people who are using the same words, and working on the same techniques and skills. And sharing the same experiences as you are like that is a ninja power move is to connect with people who share and get your struggle, and also want to talk about it. Part of the problem with online or even in person sober stuff is you get all the sad Sally's who just want to focus on why they miss drinking. And it's like you got to find a community where we're pulling big girl panties up here and taking responsibility and moving forward. And so you do want to be real careful about the community because it can make or break you. Yeah.

Christine Li  32:10  
Okay. Terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Colleen, for sharing your story for sharing the situation that so many women and men are facing in this world and for offering a new perspective on a powerful way to heal from the problems that alcohol can bring in those habits. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Can you please describe to us your community and how people can sign up to work with you find out more about you and follow you?

Colleen Kachmann  32:41  
Well,

I would say the best way to splash in with me is to file on my podcast Recover with Colleen, I do episodes on everything from how to fix your dopamine deficit to perfectionism to shame based motivation. It's not all about alcohol, because recovery has nothing to do with alcohol. So my podcast and then I do have a free masterclass. So if you are struggling with over drinking, or you're feeling stuck in a life long commitment to sobriety, and you're like, I feel like I'm fine now. Like why do I have to stay sober the rest of my life then I have a masterclass which lays out all the science and the tools that you need to either stop drinking or to reintroduce drinking. And we do that all together inside my community. There's women coming in of alcohol and going out and yeah, we talk about all of it together.

Christine Li  33:31  
That sounds fantastic. I'm going to send our listeners the link to find out more about that masterclass with Colleen it is maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/recover. Again, maketimeforsuccess podcast.com/recover. I'm so grateful to Colleen for the hero that you are for the happy woman that you are for the leader that you are and for being such a wonderful guest today. Thank you so much.

Colleen Kachmann  34:00  
Thank you for having me, Christine.

Christine Li  34:02  
All right, everyone. I hope you learned from Colleen as much as I did. I really enjoyed this conversation and we enjoyed having you be here for this conversation with us. Thank you so much for your time and energy be well. Thank you for listening to this episode of The make time for success podcast. If you enjoyed what you've heard, you can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also visit our website make time for success podcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mentioned on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name procrastination coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the episodes you've been listening to. And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success. We'll talk to you soon

Transcribed by https://otter.ai