The Daily Battle of Moderating Alcohol - with Jason Lewis Williams
Episode 141
This week’s podcast guest is Jason Lewis Williams who popped up on Tribe Sober's Facebook Group last May and has been inspiring us ever since.
At the time of recording we are approaching the festive season and the global marketing machine is on steroids – encouraging us to shop until we drop and of course to swim through the whole period in a sea of booze.
We are encouraged to drink and to celebrate and then to drink a bit more – until January of course when we are all supposed to be plunged into despair as we white knuckle our way through a miserable Dry January without our constant companion alcohol.
The manipulation is endless – until we decide to see it for the BS that it is…
Jason has certainly got to that stage and a recent post from him says:-
Who else is positively looking forward to waking up sober on Christmas morning? There's one thing I'll say for having had a drinking problem, when you get rid of it normality feels so good, particularly on occasions where you would have been so messed up
In this Episode
- Jason adored his father – who was an alcoholic. Looking back on his childhood he now wonders if he was subconsciously picking up that alcohol is how you deal with stress – how you deal with life!
- He’s definitely got a point there and I think it’s easy to forget how perceptive our kids are – they see us role modelling drinking as a coping mechanism and will begin to see that as normal behaviour
- Jason had a difficult time as a teenager – seeing his mom battling with years of ill health before she died. By then he was drinking to deal with his pain.
- He failed his exams at school and went to work in a clothes shop where he found it easy to indulge his all day drinking habit.
- His mom left him some money so he was able to take his A levels and go to University – where his drinking ramped up another notch
- As an 18 year old Jason was drinking a lot and feeling quite grown up – but now that he is the father of an 18 year old he realises that he was not grown up at all – and would hate to see his son in the same situation
- Through his 20’s and 30’s he drank consistently – keeping himself “topped up” as he put it – I know what he means and certainly had many holidays where my goals was to keep the vibe going as I called it!
- Jason’s dad was what he calls a “proper alcoholic” who even resorted to drinking after shave when there was no booze available
- As he says this is “a dangerous benchmark”
- We agreed that comparing ourselves to severe alcoholics is counter productive and that we should be comparing ourselves with the best version of ourselves that we could be
- So if you’ve heard the massive amounts of booze that Jason was getting through please don’t think that you are fine – because you don’t drink like that. The fact that you are listening to this podcast implies that you are sober curious so you should explore that and take a Sober Year
- Make 2023 your sober year – use our “christmas2022” coupon to get your 20% reduction on Annual Membership – after all if you don’t like the alcohol free lifestyle you can always go back to drinking!
- Jason was often at the doctors with various ailments which he knew in his heart were related to his drinking – one of his ailments was gout which used to put him in bed for a couple of days a month
- He used to blame his gout attacks on eating cakes – in his denial he wasn’t going to link it to alcohol even though there is a definite link between beer drinking and gout.
- Of course he lied about the amount he was drinking to the doc but even so was told he was damaging his heath
- I think as drinkers we get used to feeling “under par” – as I got older I felt more tired, more anxious and generally inspired – but I put that down to ageing. Now that I am 7 years sober and 7 years older I feel amazing – just
Published on 3 years ago