TUYT 5.16

Amy Hoyt22min

Amy Hoyt

00:00

We believe in functional mental wellness, a holistic approach to mental health. We know that there's hope for those of us who have experienced trauma, even profound trauma and that's why we created the universe is your therapist podcast, we believe whether you call it God, the universe, source, unity or love that there is something much greater than us that conspires for our good, we envision a world of healing and connection, and we teach you simple but powerful practices that integrate your mind, body and spirit so that you can come home to your highest self and your truest identity. You are not broken, you are loved, and you can heal. My name is Amy Hoyt, and together with my sister, Lena, we will take you on a journey of healing and self discovery. So it could be something like a sober January or it can be I'm not gonna drink for a week. Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we are excited to talk about being sober curious, and we had such a great response from our episode on overdrinking that we want to dive into what sober curious is and how you can use this as a tool of awareness. So Lena, do you want to start us off with telling us a little bit about the sober curious movement? Sure.

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

01:27

The term was coined by Ruby Warrington in her book sober curious, as published in 2018. And in it, she talks about the benefits of being curious about your patterns of alcohol use. And that you can determine how you use alcohol socially, and see if it's benefiting you or if it's not being benefiting you. But the thing I love about it is the curiosity part. And the idea that when we are engaged in certain behaviors, we can be curious about their impact on us without having to shame ourselves or engage in all or nothing or black and white thinking.

Amy Hoyt

02:15

Great. I agree. I think there's, you know, obviously I am in recovery. And I've been really open about that. And so we have people who have never had alcohol, we have people who have full blown addiction, and may or may not be in recovery. And then there's this whole gap in between. And we address that with overdrinking in our episode. But this is even a little bit different than than over drinking, because there's no, we don't know, if we're over drinking, when we're getting sober, curious, we're just checking it out. We're just tracking and seeing if there's anything we want to adjust. And one thing I'm really aware of is that over the last two years, a lot of the people in my social circle, have been drinking a little more than they're comfortable with. And I wouldn't necessarily classify them as alcoholic. But in private conversations, there's a theme that I've been seeing of you know, I'm drinking a little bit more than I used to. And so we kind of want to break down the difference between alcohol addiction, alcohol dependence, and this kind of sober curious,

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

03:38

right? We are looking at the idea that our alcohol use can be on a spectrum or continuum. And so we can have days times months years when our alcohol use is less frequent. We can have days times months, years where it's more frequent. And the curiosity about how you're using alcohol gives you an opportunity to use information, accurate information and make a decision from there and the decision is yours. Nobody's requiring you to reduce your alcohol, you're just being curious about how you're using it.

Amy Hoyt

04:23

So what is the definition of someone who's addicted to alcohol?

Leina Hoyt, MFT, MA

04:29

The addiction is along the lines of the alcohol dependence and it comes with a lot of side effects and symptoms. When we're looking at the DSM five there's a list of symptoms for any kind of substance use addiction. The other thing that really is problematic with alcohol addiction is that the withdrawals are actually life threatening. And so if you Have an alcohol addiction. If you're drinking copious amounts every day, if you're using it when you get up, if you are never going without alcohol for eight to 10 hours, then that's a more serious issue that needs to be discussed with a primary care physician or an alcohol or drug addiction counselor to make sure that anything you decide to do as far as ceasing the use of alcohol, does that bring about any kind of those horrible withdrawal symptoms that could kill you?

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