Are alcohol-free drinks for me? w/ Heather Lowe

DeAnn Knighton and Heather Lowe discuss their experiences with sobriety and the benefits and potential challenges of navigating non-alcoholic social scenes. Heather shares her journey from a high-functioning drinker to a sober coach, emphasizing the importance of self-discovery and the role of non-alcoholic drinks in maintaining sobriety. They highlight the need for awareness and understanding of individual triggers and the benefits of normalizing sobriety for the broad range of individuals choosing sobriety, no matter the reason. 

Action Items: 

• Explore non-alcoholic beverage options that feel right for you, without pressure to replicate alcoholic drinks.
• Be mindful of your own responses and triggers when trying new non-alcoholic experiences, and don't hesitate to opt o-t if it doesn't feel comfortable.
• Consider different entry points to exploring your relationship with alcohol, whether it's moderation, abstinence, or something in between.

https://www.ditchedthedrink.com/blog/are-alcohol-free-drinks-good-for-me

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https://www.ditchedthedrink.com/

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Music Created and Produced by Katie Hare.
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Transcript

DeAnn Knighton: 0:00

Heather, it is so good to see you again and talk to you again.

Heather Lowe: 0:03

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I absolutely love what you're doing, so I'm thrilled to be here.

DeAnn Knighton: 0:08

Oh, they will same. I follow you. I have to say, the thing that pops into my head right now is the picture I saw of you with Elizabeth Gilbert earlier this year on LinkedIn. And I Yeah, there was some definite social media envy happening with that one,

Heather Lowe: 0:24

no doubt. I mean, it was literally a dream come true to me. I mean, I look back at that picture and IP, young girl all over again, over her and me just for being there in the same picture together with her arm actually touching my shoulder, right?

DeAnn Knighton: 0:37

It's amazing. Okay, so here's my thing about thinking about those meetings is my awkwardness comes up. I'm like, what will I even say? How will I not be weird? So I have to, like, What did you say?

Heather Lowe: 0:48

Oh my gosh. I can't believe we're starting with this. So I was terrible and awkward, and I have a history of doing this, so I had this big, huge story. I actually met Melissa Gilbert, who's Laura Ingalls Wilder. So if you're a girl my age, and you grew up like loving little hope on the prairie, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Melissa Gilbert is actually a person in recovery also, and he was in a play in Chicago called when Harry meets rehab. Still theater and after the show, the actors just like, walk out into the lobby with their hat and gloves and scarf like, ready to go. They're just like, right there in front of you. So I freaked out that I was standing right next to Melissa Gilbert, my like, idol. So I talked to her, and what I should have said was, I read your book. She has a biography, like a memoir called the prairie tale. I should have said I read the prairie tale and I loved it because it would have told her I knew everything about her life. Instead, I I told her about how her stepson used to be roommates with my husband's college roommate, and they had dinner Thanksgiving with her one time in the 90s or something. Like, do you remember that? Come on, this doesn't even, you know, I couldn't even remember her stepson's name. Like, this was the dumbest thing I could possibly do. And she was like, okay, and left. I was like, Okay. Ruined that. So I figured I knew Liz Gilbert, because I knew she was going to be at this conference, and I was hopeful that I have a need her. So I was standing in a booth, and she just casually walked by. Maybe everybody doesn't know who she is, but she's my own personal Jesus, so I knew exactly who she was. So I, like, my whole face lit up, and I was like, Hi. And I was like, drawn to her like you moth to a flame. I started telling her, she's like, Would you like to walk with me? And I said, Oh, absolutely, I'd like to walk with you. So we linked arms, and we started walking. And I started telling her about her was how nervous I was to meet her, and how I didn't want to repeat what I did with Melissa Gilbert. Of course he did to tell her the whole Melissa Gilbert story, and she said the cutest thing. She goes, You know what? I've been introduced as Melissa Gilbert, oh sure, thinking that they were the same last name. So anyway, she was really cool about it. I did all the stupid things, and then I walked away and got a hold of myself, and then I came back and had an actual conversation with her. So amazing. Yeah, I hope to not meet any other of my idols again, because I can't be cool. I have no chill.

DeAnn Knighton: 3:20

I don't either. Okay, this is good. You're kind of helping me out, just in case I happen to find myself in a situation. Think that's good with Liz Gilbert, you just went right in with like, this is me and my awkwardness. So, right. Okay, so thanks for hopping on today. You and I have been in touch for a while, around some like, a lot of aligned and shared interests. But today in particular, I wanted to talk because I recently had an episode that just outlined my own personal experience with being a human in recovery and engaging in some non alcoholic drinks and being a little bit surprised by the experience. As a result, I saw your blog post that spoke exactly to what I was thinking about. I have a huge place in my heart for normalizing sobriety and inclusion, helping build places where people feel excited to be sober. I have been kind of a matzo the flame on this non alcoholic movement, because I love the fact that it it is about that however, I found myself a little surprised, as a person in recovery being triggered by that experience. And so it's not for me to say that I don't want us to have these experiences, because I do. It's more about, how do we be aware, either as a person recovering, or maybe as somebody who's hosting these events, what we maybe need to be thoughtful of? That's what we're going to get into. But before we go there, I just this is a podcast about being a human so I want to talk about you for a minute.

Heather Lowe: 4:59

I. Love it. Thank you. Thank you for opening conversation about all these issues. I of course, our missions are aligned, and I love it, so I My story starts. It's kind of funny. I say my parents met in a beer tent, which is true story. I'm from Wisconsin, so who was I not to like? I feel like beer, beer was part of my destiny, right? Like it was part of everything, and the I didn't know any happy, sober people growing up, maybe there was a very few that I that didn't drink, and that's because they were bad at drinking, so their hand was slapped, and they had to sit in the corner. They had to live a sad life. They had to not join in on the party, is what I thought as a young girl. And when people drink, they got funnier and louder and seem to be having more fun. And who doesn't want to have more fun? You know, I do so anyways, there was no question about drinking. It was just part of a rite of passage for me. It was my coming of age story. Beer was everywhere. It was accepted. Everybody drank. I mean, Wisconsin is the always labeled that has like, the top 10 of 13 Drunkest cities, and is the drunkest America. I mean, our major league baseball team is named after the people that make beer, the brewers. So it's, like, very cultural there, I mean, and maybe everywhere, but especially in Wisconsin, they say drink Wisconsin, and I drink Wisconsin for 30 years, right? I drank. It was part of everything. I knew I liked it more than most, and I secretly thought I would probably quit someday, but I never wanted the party to end, so I drank through high school. I drink through college. I drank as a young urban professional. We moved to Chicago, and drinking even felt like part of the job, you know, happy hours and events and networking and things like that. And so my degree was actually in social work, and I quickly moved to human resources, and then I sold HR solutions for most of my career. I had two children, and I quit drinking during my pregnancies, but very quickly switched and kind of from beer to wine, and sipped wine and it felt European, and again, trying to really normalize my drinking. And this was at the rise of mommy wine culture. So all the dish towels that say, you know, a coffee mug that says might be wine, or a dish towel that says they wine, I wine, or follow me bring wine. Was sort of hilarious. There's purses where you can hold your wine. There's wine holders for your glass in the shower. You know, this was all marketed as being normal, and I liked that because it made me feel normal about my drinking. And my husband was traveling for work, and he was going to Vegas, and he was having these, like, getting promoted and having private concerts, and he was like drinking for work in the best way, and I was at home, working part time and taking care of kids, and feeling really lonely that my social life had come to a scratching halt after becoming a mom to young kids. So even this looked normal, it wasn't until I was hit with three deaths in a row. Over three years, I had two friends that were my age and my dad passed away, and I was asked to do all three eulogies, and I really wanted to perform those eulogies. I really wanted to do a good job for the people that I loved and the people that they loved, and so I wanted to be able to stand in front of groups of people. These people were ripped for me without warning. I don't know if that makes a difference, but it was a shot. Every situation was a tragedy and attack, and I wanted to do a really good job, and I did. I did great eulogies. I got great feedback, and when the services were done, I told myself to get over it. I had no understanding of grief because I thought the services are done, like stop your crying, just move on. But I had never processed it, because I was worried about giving a good eulogy, instead of feeling my feelings are allowing myself to feel that grief and pain. So alcohol is a wonderful numbing agent, and that's where things kind of took a turn, where I started to drink more. My anxiety was increasing, and I was sending the family upstairs to go to bed, and then I was staying on the couch alone to drink and feeling really disconnected. I went to see in a panic. I went to see a therapist who put me on anxiety meds and said I could keep drinking. I was thrilled. I told her I had a drinking problem, and she said, No, you don't. She said, you just have anxiety. So I was thrilled. Like, okay, this is a substance use professional. She says, I don't have to have a problem. I'm going to keep drinking, and now I'm drinking on meds. This turned me into a walking blackout on a few occasions. So it was starting to show. You know, even after 30 years of drinking, I was able to keep it in check. It was starting to show, and it was starting to worry the people that were closest to me, and so I started to address it. By doing some alcohol free experiments. And my first experiment, I wanted to go 100 days without alcohol. I went 70 days. Thought that was amazing. I thought I was cured. So of course, I went back to drinking. So I did this on off drinking for three years, always to keep alcohol in my life, never to let it go completely, always to be able to manage it and keep it in my life and prove that it was no problem. Well, you know, every time I went back to drinking, it sort of like escalated even faster. I picked up right where I left off, and I could start to see that it really had a hold on me, and it wasn't making anything better. So I was pretty miserable by my final day one, I was in between jobs. I was disconnected from my husband. I didn't recognize myself in the mirror. I had become so bloated, I was depressed, I was anxious, I was very, very confused, and I was sad, and I just thought, this isn't working for me, and I don't know if quitting is going to work for me either, but I have to give it a try, and I have to give it a real try, and I have to throw the kitchen sink at it. I have to be willing to do all those things I don't want to do, like, what if I need rehab, what if I need AA, all these things I had tried to avoid. I decided, like, I have to give it an actual try. And so I did for you know, I surrendered to my husband, and I said, I need help. I need to quit, and I need some help with this. And he was thrilled to hear me say that, because he hadn't heard that before, and he was worried about me, but I was so high functioning, it was pretty confusing for him too. Like, of course, I was miserable and drinking too much, but I was the first person awake in the morning, making lunches and sweeping the floor. You know, I was getting promoted at work. I was a top salesperson. In many occasions, I had access to decision makers at a happy hour or a bar that I didn't in the office. So I was, you know, in some ways, really succeeding. So it was really confusing. Did I have a problem or not? It wasn't a typical rock bottom story, and there wasn't a lawyer involved, or a policeman involved, or a doctor involved, that told me to quit. But anyways, that was in February of 2018, and I just kept walking away from alcohol, right, and building my skills as I went. And turns out, when you start drinking at 12, like you don't have any coping skills besides alcohol, I was like a toddler who had never learned how to manage my emotions or go through discomfort. I'd never done anything without pouring alcohol on it. So in the last six years, I've learned exactly how to do that.

DeAnn Knighton: 12:32

Where you sit now, six years into this when that birthday, quote, unquote, rolls around and you think about, oh my gosh, like another year has gone by and who I am now versus who I was then. Like, what is that experience like for you?

Heather Lowe: 12:47

Yeah, thanks for asking. So last year felt like a big one because it was five years. So five years felt like a milestone. Like for at first, I just wanted to get to one year, and actually, it wasn't until I got to one year that I told anyone. I mean, I really kept it private at first, and I made a face, a very, very casual Facebook announcement on my one year anniversary, to share with my bigger circle what I had been doing and what I had been working on. And then five felt like a really big year. And they say when you're five years free from alcohol, you're in remission, like, they call it remission, like as if it was cancer, that you would be no more likely to have an alcohol problem than anybody else. So that felt like a big achievement and a big milestone to reach. So five was awesome. I actually had I celebrated a lot. I went out with people and had dinners and mocktails and all that stuff. But I also had my friends got me a box of alcohol free drinks, which I'm sure we'll talk about, and this like beautiful sunshine confetti box that my kids marched into me singing, and so to have my daughter as part of that celebration and my family's pride felt really, really great this year six. Feels like, I don't know it feels like it now. It feels like it's just the way that it is. I mean, at first I was counting days, and now, even as a sober coach, I really don't think about drinking. I don't think about alcohol. I'm not counting days. It's just part of who I am now, is it's part of my pillars of like, I live a life of sobriety. I don't tap out, you know, I go to my edge, and I don't ever tap out. I stay with myself, and then, you know, I try to do that with all behaviors, and I don't use any substances, unless you want to count my morning coffee that take me out of myself, because it's just my value system. In a way, I've chosen to live my life like raw Doggett, as I say. And so it's just who I am. It's become part of the tapestry of who I am now. So six doesn't feel like, I don't know, five probably the big deal, and six is just like, onward, two things

DeAnn Knighton: 14:49

that you said that I love. The first one is like, it's just that integration of it, right? And how, how you build it into your identity. It's not your whole identity, but it is helpful. I. Think to be able to embrace it that way, it helps me immensely. And I didn't do that for a few years, and it was like I was two different people, and it was really challenging,

Heather Lowe: 15:09

and I tried to hide it. I mean, I pretended to drink. I would have drinks in front of me so nobody knew that's what. You wouldn't do that with any other drug. You wouldn't put heroin in front of a heroin addict and expect them to not do it. And, you know, but I did because I didn't want to call attention to the fact I wasn't drinking.

DeAnn Knighton: 15:26

Yeah, it shows like The enormousness of the problem. I think that that was where both of us went. The other piece too, that I love hearing you say is about your kids celebrating that with you. And I think that goes back to the beginning of the conversation about making sobriety not a death sentence. That makes it feel like something for them, that wherever they go in life, they're going to have these memories of celebrating this with mom. And I don't it just feels very beautiful to me in terms of passing it on to the next generation. It's the

Heather Lowe: 15:57

most important work I do, I would say, because it does. It heals generations forward and backwards. And my dad was bartender, right? My dad had a problem. He ended up quitting. But my mom also loved beer, and she's been my biggest support through this whole thing, and she's joining me at a sober in the city event in Tampa, and it's beautiful, yeah, and my kids see it's beautiful, and it's a superpower. Sobriety is a superpower, and your kids. Sometimes my clients want to show their kids normal drinking. Let's say, I'll say that in quotes, but I'm like, the amount that children want their parents to drink is none, because it doesn't help in any way. And to each their own, choose what you want, right? I'm not, I'm not here to tell anybody what to do. But kids don't need their parents to drink the right amount. Kids are not harmed at all by parents that drink none. And I was really excited my My oldest is in college now, but when I got like any parent of teenagers will get a 2am phone call, and she was incredibly apologetic for waking me up and having me come get her from a situation, and I was thrilled to say at that time, Lily, I've been training five years for this call. Oh,

DeAnn Knighton: 17:12

that's beautiful.

Unknown: 17:13

I love it.

DeAnn Knighton: 17:15

All right. Well, let's jump into work a little bit. What was work like when you were a drinking person, what did it look like right after and then, sort of the way that you've evolved yourself and what you're doing now.

Heather Lowe: 17:28

Happy hours is a great way to make friends at work. So I loved it. And the first place I worked after college, when I moved to Chicago, it was sort of like the college after college, they hired a bunch of new grads, so it was an easy way in, and I got to make friends. I don't know how I would have done it as a non drinker, to be honest. And then in sales, yeah, drinking often feels like part of the job. I was typically the only female and all male sales teams. So it's also like the old boys club, and a way to fit in there. And so and I probably chose companies and positions that that drinking was a focal point, because I loved it. I loved to drink. I fit, or so I thought so I I fit right in. I worked for places that had a beer keg right in the office, you know, with a beer cart that would go around on Fridays with all, all sorts of things. And I think I probably attracted that to myself. So although I was doing those jobs, and I was sometimes good at it, but when you're in sales, you go from zero to hero so fast. So I was everywhere on the spectrum, often the leading department, the leading director, the Leading the Leading sales, that top salesperson, and then in the next moment, you know, perhaps struggling as well. But it never sung my soul. I always wanted, like, my husband say, like, well, a job is never going to, like, be as fun as vacation. It is just a job. But I had always felt like there was something more for me, and I worked for people, and I thought this is not what I would do if I were to run this business like I had a different ethics system and I had a different value system, and I just thought this isn't how I would do it. So okay, I'll smile and not I'll be the talking head, I'll take directions, I'll do as I'm told. But none of this feels aligned with me. So I was probably, in some ways, drinking at that too. And we drink at I drink at people, I drink at feelings, I drink at situations. So I was probably drinking at my job, because it wasn't really alive. When I quit drinking, it was I was working remotely, so that was fine, but I was then between jobs, and I had had a job that I loved and raised my kids for for a decade, and then when my youngest went to kindergarten, I got recruited for a bigger job. It was never right for me. It was at the same time I was interviewing when my dad died. I broke my leg the first week on the job, slipped on the ice in Chicago like it was a whole comedy of errors, and it was never right. But I couldn't say that. I had to give it the two year try, because I'm a you know, perfectionist like you. Know, whatever I held myself to that standard. Well, then I got another job, and that wasn't right, but I gave it the two year try, and then I got another one. So I was sort of, my drinking was escalating, my mental health was going down, and I was job hopping, trying to figure this out, always being promoted on my resume like it looks like I was moving up, but I was really trying to figure it out. Ultimately, when I quit drinking, I was after a year of being sober, I was between jobs, and I was about to get offers for the same jobs that I had had and had done and had done well, and I was like, I can't do this anymore, after the work and self discovery of sobriety, I knew I had to do work that sung my soul. I knew my offering looked different, and I could no longer ignore that. So I started ditch the drink. I started with a digital class to help people, high achievers like me, with a whole lot more holistic view on sobriety than I had seen at that time. And from there, I got in contact and got certified as a professional life coach, professional recovery coach. I got a certificate of well being from Yale University. I became a certified coach of law of attraction. So then I started to educate myself, and, you know, became the kind of person that could work one on one with people. And it actually felt like a return, a return to my social work roots for me. So now I wake up pretty excited about what I get to do every day, and I run my company the way I want, and I run it by my intuition, mostly staying very aligned and very in flow. And I don't think I could work for anybody else now that I've done it for myself, right?

DeAnn Knighton: 21:37

It is such a part of recovery too, is figuring that piece out. You know, once you strip that, like you said, the escape away. If you don't have that, that place to go anymore, I don't know, things feel heavier. It kind of makes you have to look, I think, at some of these things, which can be hard, but it's also, it's the invitation too. At the same time, I feel

Heather Lowe: 21:57

like it's an elevated life because you're not willing to go through the motions. I mean, sobriety, for me, has been an awakening, a true awakening, and I'm really grateful for it, and I'm even grateful that alcohol was a problem for me because it led to an awakened life. And it took me a long time to say that, because I didn't want alcohol to be my problem, I didn't want to have an alcohol problem, right? And it was part of my identity. I love being a party girl. I still love being a party girl. So, I mean, I love my Wisconsin roots. And you know what I just wrote a blog about, I love beer. I have an alcohol free brewery here next to me that I just, you know, listen to live music, and pretty much got a buzz being alcohol free, just from atmosphere and music and company and the taste of an IPA. So, yeah,

DeAnn Knighton: 22:41

I love it. Okay, well, let's jump over to that. I think that's so important. This has been these last few years in particular, as it relates to the movement of incorporation of non alcoholic experiences into our social scenes. It's amazing. I love it. It's, I think, a positive thing for the majority. The one kind of tricky thing is something that you've spoke on you and I both are people who are abstinent from alcohol. Obviously, there's all kinds of paths to recovery, different ways people go about that, different levels of relationship to the substance, all of those things that come into play. I'm curious you know, from your perspective, just as a coach, how this has looked for you in terms of helping people navigate these spaces, especially maybe early on, you had some great things in your post, just about things to keep in mind. So maybe if you could just talk us through that,

Heather Lowe: 23:33

even the word recovery was uncomfortable to me until that conference where I met Liz Gilbert, because I thought recovery meant going back to who you were before you had a substance. So for me, that would be like 12 years old, and I'm in, you know, upper 40, so going back to 12 years old didn't feel right to me. So I don't even identify in certain recovery communities, because it never felt like the right place for me. But when I I do use the word recovery now because I use a definition that says healing, that I'm healing, and I think we're all healing from things. And kind of at middle age, I feel like the first half of my life has been survival, and the second half of my life is kind of looking at the ways that I survived and undoing those right, figuring out what's what's best for me now, knowing what I know so whether or not you identify with recovery, it's okay to be curious about your relationship with alcohol, and there's lots of ways to explore that. And you're right. We have so many options, and I'm all for options. Options for everybody. We have alcohol free alternatives. There's low or no alcohol. There's things that mimic alcohol, like there's alcohol free spirits, there's alcohol free wine, there's alcohol free beer, and then there's also all these other drinks, like kombucha or CBD drinks, or there's fresh juices and mocktails, and there's a whole lot of there's liquid death, which. Which looks like beer, and it's actually just sparkling water, right? So, and now I see that, like, white claw seltzer has a no alcohol white cloth, but I'm like, okay, see, hard, hard. Saw, like, isn't that just Seltzer, don't we also just call that Seltzer, but a toy claw, so it's something else. Okay, um, so it can be a confusing world to navigate there, but there's a lot of options. And I think options are great. I think it's great to have options. So it can be very inclusive. Like you said, for some people and my clients, they just, they can keep the ritual and change the drink. So for some if you're used to coming home and starting dinner and having a glass of wine, or sitting in your chair in your corner and watching your show. For some, it's just having a drink. And you know what a lemon Lacroix can serve the same purpose. For some they want to put it in a pretty glass and maybe with a garnish. So some clients might want to have their lemon Lacroix in their wine glass with a slice of lemon, and they can sit, and it allows them permission to sit down, or to finish their drink, or to take a moment through the day, and keeping that ritual can be a healthy thing for them. For others, it's not right for others, it's a trigger. And so it kind of depends what it is to you, where your head space is and how it feels to you, and there's no right or wrong answer. It's really customized to the person. So my experience was I didn't have any of that in my first year because I was afraid that it would trigger me after my and want red wine ultimately ended up being my drink of choice. So I started with beers, and that brought me back to, like, way back. And beer never really seemed like a real obvious problem for me. So it was kind of fun to order a drink when I was out and fit it that sense of belonging. Lot of people drink to belong. So just having a drink, it doesn't matter if there's alcohol or not alcohol, having something that resembles what everyone else is doing gives a sense of belonging and that can be comfortable, right? I thought I was on a quest to find a good, alcohol free red wine, because that was what I thought I love. Well, most taste terrible because beer is a much easier process to replicate. And to be honest, the beers taste pretty much the same. I've done taste tests in my neighborhoods, and you can't tell the difference. So so there's that you can tell when alcohol hits your brain, so you can tell that difference, but as far as taste goes, they're very spot on. And wine is different because there's different processes that it goes through, and often you'll hear it's bad and it tastes like grape juice or vinegar or something. And that's usually right, a white wine or something with bubbles or carbonation is easier to replicate to get that taste on your tongue, but a red wine is is pretty hard. So I was searching for this, not liking anything. When I finally found something, I did find something, and it did taste like red wine, and I thought this is exactly what I was searching for. And when I tasted it, it scared me, because and it didn't taste like what I wanted. It tasted like sadness to me. It tasted like who I was drinking wine by the gallon on the couch alone, and it was not a taste I wanted anymore. It was not something I wanted to replicate, but I didn't know that until I had tried it, right? And so now I have a few, a handful of drinks that I love, and I drink and I bring to car club, I bring my own bottle of wine or whatever, and it's great, and it works for me. Sometimes when I'm cooking dinner, I'll have a glass of something, but it really depends where you're at and what's going to work for you. I had a client who was really early in her journey, and Valentine's Day was coming, and she was thinking about getting some alcohol free champagne. She had this whole special event planned for her husband, and she was just a few weeks in, but she was thinking about this champagne alcohol free so much that it was compulsive thinking about drinking, right? So I pointed out to her, like you're thinking as much about this alcohol free champagne as you would be real champagne. Let's talk about some other options. What she ultimately decided was pink lemonade, pink lemonade and pretty glasses. And that totally worked for her, and it relieved her so much to take this champagne off the table, even alcohol free. So I would say, pay attention to your thinking about it and what, what what you're trying to do with it, if you're trying to replace something, what benefit is it bringing to you? Is it a sense of belonging, you know? Is it a celebration? Is it a ritual, you know, what is it doing to you? How do you feel about it? If you feel afraid of it or scared of it, it, it might not be for you. And that can also change over time. And you don't have to like it. You never have to like it, you never have to try it. It can just be for you. I know there's somebody who I absolutely. Leah door, who basically grew up in a bar, and she had her first sip of alcohol free beer with me, and she was like, Absolutely not. I will I take one sip of this? And absolutely not, this is not for me. I'll never do that again, you know. And that's amazing. Enjoy some pineapple juice and sparkling water, whatever you want, right? Yeah,

DeAnn Knighton: 30:21

absolutely. You know, I hadn't really thought of it in terms of determining your own journey within that until the recent experience I had. I had done a lot of mocktails, and that always felt really safe to me, because I knew that they were mixed separately, and I drank some cocktails, but my drink of choice was white wine. And the experience that I had that was triggering was definitely a white wine flight experience, where it was with other people at the table who were all consuming alcohol. I was the only non alcoholic flight it was brought to the table the server acted hesitant about knowing which one was non alcoholic or not. She smelled it and said, Oh yeah, this is the non alcoholic hands it to me. Talk about triggers, right? Like my whole body went, I don't like this. This feels awful. This is like everything I didn't want this experience to be. Now I'm weirded out, you know? Now I'm uncomfortable. Now I'm making other people uncomfortable, because they know me and they can sense that I'm uncomfortable. The pleaser in me was, what do I do with this? And long and short, it turns out that I held my ground. I didn't drink it. It was alcoholic. My nephew had the non alcoholic drink in front of him. It was so interesting, because I had been talking about all of this so much, and then that experience happened, and it was like, ah, yeah, but there is something, as we are increasing the distribution of this in all kinds of different environments. I think there are some some places to be mindful, even as you know restaurant owners or how we train our staff, in understanding that for some people, this is a big deal. You know, they're not ordering a non alcoholic drink, just for the heck of it. There may be a good reason for it. Totally

Heather Lowe: 32:03

yeah, I've had experiences too, where I've had alcohol in my drinks, and I've had, like, even in Mexico, I got a Diet Coke, just a plain Diet Coke, and when it came I sipped it, it was a rum and coke, and that taste tasted like my husband in college. I was like, this is like, Captain Morgan. I was like, Oh my gosh, this brings me back. And then we started to go, Well, no one would know. I could just have this I could just have this one, and no one would know. And, haha, I'm out of the country and I'm on vacation, and I'm a silver coach, this would be my secret. And I'm like, that's why you don't do it. That's exactly why you don't do it, because it's already messing with your mind. So definitely be prepared. Also, I've been, I've been drinking Heineken 0.0 all night, and then somebody buys me a beer, and they don't know that I'm sober, they don't know what I've been drinking, and they just want to pay me back with a drink or something, or get around for the table, and it's head out. My husband's like, just so, you know, this has alcohol, right? Take it. They're strangers, basically. So I throw it away. I don't have to even talk about this with people I don't really know. The other thing is, I've been on a boat and I've had alcohol free beer, and the the only thing they had, I think, in the store, was a alcohol free like Coors, which is just a cheap beer. So I thought I had one left, and we were going to be headed to a restaurant, and I know that I've been to the restaurant, they don't have any alcohol free options. I would just be drinking club soda. So I wanted to have, like, my one last beer before we went to this restaurant. And I dug in the cooler, and it was they were gone. I had misconducted, or I didn't know, or I couldn't find it, and I was confused and I was annoyed, because I had it in my mind that I was going to have one more beer. And so I my friends were drinking really good beer, like craft beers, and I thought, well, I could just have one of theirs. I guess mine are out. I've been drinking beer all day. Mine are out. I'll just have one of theirs, not for alcohol, not to get dark, nothing like that, just because I just want one more beer and I don't even drink. So having one of theirs will be no big deal. It's just like I've been drinking all day. I don't want the alcohol. What's one beer? Who cares? And it was like, Oh my gosh, that's way too close. No, no, no, no. And so I didn't I just sucked it up and had my clothes soda, and life went on. And it was fine. But I think because I had been drinking beer, alcohol free, it just it felt like an easy thing to slip into. And again, I don't want to drink alcohol, but I can see the slippery slope that it could be. I think that's

DeAnn Knighton: 34:27

important. I also really like what you said about sadness, because for me, you know, had I taken a sip of that glass of wine, I don't think that it would have sent me on some crazy road that I wouldn't have been able to recover from, but it's that, it's, it's a, almost like a traumatic response right in my body and going back, yeah, a lot of fear just around some really difficult times, and that whole experience, like I it washed over me with like, a level of a traumatic response. Yes, I think that's interesting that you said it that way, especially for those who maybe don't fully understand the nature of substance use disorder, there's different levels to why something might be triggering, right?

Heather Lowe: 35:12

And I think you you want to recreate the thing you're not doing or find a substitute for that. But the truth is, what I love about your story is you come to a place where you don't dilute, you don't pour alcohol, you don't ignore and you don't numb yourself. You stay very in tune to your body and its responses. You pay attention drinking alcohol is not paying attention, and you pay a lot of attention to yourself. So you knew when that came that that wouldn't be for you. And although you previously thought you wanted this experience or to try something, and you were with people that were maybe excited for you to join in and get to do something too, you knew it wouldn't be right, and you stuck with yourself. You didn't abandon yourself and you didn't do something just because, and as a drinker, I bet you did right? You did in yourself, and you did just pour alcohol on every feeling, and you didn't listen to that internal calling. And the work of sobriety is really beautiful, because it's the work of life, it's the work of self discovery, and it continues. You don't reach a mountain where you're five years sober and now it's done, you have another summit to climb for further personal development, and you have all these opportunities to do that. So the answer to is an alcohol free alternative, right? For me or not, is up to you, right? It's up to each person, individually. And again, it can change by beverage. It can change by time and sobriety. It can change by environment. It really depends. It really depends. But for some people, if they have that alcohol free beer when they get to a party, that's all they need, and they're set, and they don't feel left out. And it it worked, and it's a real tool for them, because they're not they're not at danger for having a beer, because they just scratch the itch with this alcohol free drink, and now they're good to go. They don't want alcohol. They just wanted to be included. You know,

DeAnn Knighton: 37:04

I consider you someone just from following your work over the last while that really is a bridge between a lot of different worlds that kind of surround non drinking for different reasons. And so I wanted to ask you about this area that comes up for me a lot, in the sense of, I'm training right now to be an addiction counselor, learning abstinence model, I'm learning don't trigger yourself yet, all the things I'll be teaching people yet, I have this piece of myself too. I really started to get better when I integrated this into my life in a much more positive way. And I feel like choosing not to drink can be something that can bring people together for whatever reasons they are choosing not to drink, whatever that might be, and that that can reach across all those different spaces. But I feel sometimes that there is this push and pull and some energy around you know, someone who might be considered sober, curious, looking to moderate versus somebody who maybe went through a traditional treatment at some point in time. So I just want to hear your experience with this. I'm sure you run into it. What does that look like now, and how do we navigate it, to use the advantage of this non alcoholic movement as a form of advocacy instead of something that pulls people apart? Yeah,

Heather Lowe: 38:21

absolutely. I mean, I've experienced some polarization with that myself. In fact, I went on a call and shared my story, and then there was feedback, like it like I wasn't bad enough, like it wasn't drunk enough, like this wasn't a real story, like it should have been worse, or there should be a rock bottom. And I would say I woke up miserable. I was waking up miserable. It doesn't have to get worse than that, so, but somebody who's had a different experience and a different treatment for their own protection, you know, might have to think something else. So, and even dry January. Some people say dry January is terrible because it keeps people drinking or acting like they don't have a problem. You don't eat dry January. You need recovery or whatever. My thought is always to each their own, and there's the path to like recovery or discovery, however you want to get is as varied as we are people. But I don't do clinical work. I'm a coach. I love coaching. I'm a huge fan of coaching support, and it's not clinical. So certainly, I work with certain people, but I don't work with everyone, and I'm not the right solution for everyone, and I try to help people find the solutions that are right for them. I'm not a rehab facility. I'm not a medication assisted withdrawal or detox. You know, there's a lot of things that I don't offer as a coach, but my I would have died from alcohol if I kept drinking, and I know that 100% there would be a diagnosis or a tragedy that was around the corner for me the way it was escalating at the end, again, after 30 years of drinking, which looked normal, most people said. Me, oh, I've never even seen you drunk. And I'm like, that was the goal. Of course, I hit it. I have a lot of shame. I was private. I was having one drink at the block party and coming home to finish bottles by myself. I was embarrassed. I didn't want anyone to know so, so even though I was high functioning and high leveling, I was it was taking me, it was definitely starting to take me and hijack my brain. And I know what the ending would look like if I kept drinking. It would have been death by alcohol, and it would have been it was coming for me. It was around the corner, and thank God I quit, and I'll never know the end of that story. I want to pull people out further up the stream. We don't have to wait. We don't have to wait. And my tagline even is like, I help people before it gets worse, and my own drinking that was not that bad kept me from being amazing for most of my life. You know, it was taking my confidence, it was taking my clarity, it was taking it was fogging up my spiritual alignment. And so I'm all for any entry point to exploring your relationship with alcohol, and I'm for people would say, like drink less. Most of my clients start with a discovery call and they want to have a glass of wine at dinner. Every once in a while, that would be their goal. And I say, I hear you, and then what they do is they take a complete break from alcohol for 90 days. Because I say to evaluate your relationship with alcohol, you have to remove the alcohol the minute. If you're even anticipating alcohol, it changes your brain chemistry, even the anticipation of it, and then when you sip it, it changes your judgment, decision making, intuition, like it affects all these things. So you can't take a good look at your relationship with alcohol while you're drinking alcohol. So they take a break, and they see it for what it is, and they start they lose the desire to drink. They don't want it anymore. Now they want to start building their sober muscle, flexing that a little bit more, where they don't need it, where they do vacations and parties and celebrations and birthdays and holidays and nights out with friends, and they don't want it anymore. And so that was me too. I had to have the experience that I had. I had to have this on, off drinking until I figured out what it what I wanted for my life, and that it's not for me. If, if I had to say I was going to quit drinking for the rest of my life, I'd probably still be drinking, right? Because it terrified me, so I'm just about lowering the entry point, making it a really easy barrier, and let's normalize not drinking. Let's normalize alcohol free drinks. Let's normalize taking breaks. Let's normalize being sober. Let's normalize everyone having their own experience. But I think to start getting curious is a great thing to do, and pre contemplation, contemplation in the stages of change that comes before change, that's the natural process. So make it safe for people to start exploring that, I would say, and for others, it's a life and death situation, right? And when it's a life and death situation, you need medical support. So that looks different for you. But that doesn't mean this shouldn't be available for the people that need it here in this middle lane drinking or gray area drinking. It's sometimes called or for me, just high achievers, that it looks like you have it together on the outside and inside, you're dying a slow death.

DeAnn Knighton: 43:18

Yeah. Well, thank you for that perspective, that was really well said. Let's just talk about any projects that you're excited about this year. You're all over the place. You're a busy person. So oh my gosh, I feel

Heather Lowe: 43:37

like like Roy Kent from Ted lasso, like he's here, he's there, he's everywhere. I'm trying to focus this year, so, yeah, I have it everywhere. So I have a digital course that my original ditch the drink. It's so cute, because it's me one year sober. So I feel really close to the students. And I think about updating it, but I can't, because I'm like, There's something really special about being right there with them, being in my own journey. So there's that I have one on one coaching, of course, 12 week program, but I also have what I'm excited about as an insider membership and community was one of the last things I added in my own journey. And now I'm like, why did you wait so long? Because it's so much easier when you have people like minded people to support. So my insider membership, there's an app so people can connect. 24/7, we have meetings twice a week, Monday evenings and Thursday afternoons. It's small groups. There's master classes and all this prizes and giveaways and challenges, and it's a really fun group to be part of. So I'm excited about that insider membership, and that's also included with all my other offerings. And then the new thing I have is I partner with the International Association of Professional recovery coaches. So I also recruit coaches, I mentor coaches, people that want to be coaches. And now I've just launched a business course for coaches once they're trained or certified or they have an idea. In the alcohol free space, and they want to get that offering into the world. I teach them to do that because most people are like me, helpers. Want to be a helper, but don't know how to get clients or get the word out about what they're doing. So if anyone's interested in learning about becoming a coach, it's an unregulated industry, so it's very confusing. I love to just educate people on the world of coaching in general, and then, of course, share a little bit about the program that I work with, which is, I think the gold standard. And other people think the gold standard. It actually just won an award for being the best overall program, and I recently won an award for being a top silver coach. So yeah, I can say that. I can say that with pride, like it with confidence, it is the gold standard. Love to talk to people about coaching. Love to talk to people about launching their own business and coaching practice, helping practice. Oh,

DeAnn Knighton: 45:50

amazing Heather, thank you so much for doing this. Yes.

Heather Lowe: 45:53

Thank you for your time, and thank you for having me on I'm glad we were finally able to get it done, and it's great to talk to you, and I love all the work you're doing, so I want to continue to support you and everything you're doing. I mean, like I said, Put me on the team. I mean, I'm all for it. Yeah.