Journey to the Sunnyside

Mindful Drinking and the Power of Small Changes w_ Susan Keller
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ZOOM P4 Audio-1: [00:00:00] Hey there and welcome back to journey to the sunny side. I'm your host Mike harden broke in today. We're excited to bring you a heartfelt conversation with Susan Keller. She's the author of mostly sober. A love story and a road trip. Susan's journey with mindful drinking as well as the personal experiences that shaped her book, offer a lot of depth in wisdom.

Now, quick note, before we dive in this episode is a little different then our usual actionable style, Susan brings a wealth of life experiences and stories. And while the conversation is more reflective and narrative. There's so much value that she shares with us today.

Hey, and welcome back to Journey to the Sunnyside. I'm your host, Mike Hardenbrook, and today we've got a great guest lined up for you. Susan Keller, author of Mostly Sober, A Love Story, and A Road Trip, and she's here to share and talk about her journey with Mindful Drinking. Her personal experiences really shaped this book, and we'll be getting into that and why she wrote it, and what she hopes readers will take away from it.

So let's jump in with Susan Keller.

[00:01:00]

Susan first, thanks for coming on today. Mike. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much. Well, I'm definitely glad to have you, so let's kick it off by you sharing a bit of your own story and your relationship with alcohol. It goes back a ways. We started to, we, my friends and I started drinking a bit in high school, and not a lot, but we, We were drinkers and I would guess I was the older looking one because they would send me off to the liquor store and say, okay, you go get the beer.

I found, I did, and never got ID'd. I was 16 when they, sure, sell me the beer, fine. I wondered about that, but anyway. And then occasionally, we would borrow a little gin or vodka from one of the parents liquor cabinets. And with them, my friend would put water in to cover up the borrowing, which, [00:02:00] I don't know if that's true.

That ever went over. Anyway, that's what happened. And so, then, in college, honestly, I don't remember much drinking. I was in a difficult double major, and I just remember a lot of time in the library. But, anyway, I was pushing myself really hard in college, and that is one of the striking similarities between myself and my protagonist, Annie.

So after graduation, I met my husband and he introduced me to martinis, which I wasn't familiar with, but I found them very tasty. And then we got married in Palm Springs and the afternoon after our ceremony, we took the tram up to the top of Mount San Jacinto. Which is a beautiful, as long as you're okay with heights, is a beautiful ride.

And we got up to the top and we went to the lounge [00:03:00] and of course he ordered martinis for us. Well, we tasted them and he said to the bartender, very respectfully, this isn't really the way they should be made. And I thought, wow, I married the right guy. But four months later, I got pregnant. And so the.

Martini's went away and actually they went away for quite a while. So a couple of years on, both my husband and I were in very stressful jobs. We were commuting into San Francisco. We were raising our daughter and then taking care of a home and all the stuff that happens with all of that. And, um, we were drinking every night, not a lot, but a couple glasses of wine.

That would be it. I mean, the martinis were gone except for maybe our party nights, but anyway, so we, everybody we knew was doing the same thing. We were in this group of young families and [00:04:00] people were working, commuting, and it was stressful and the wine would come out. Uh, So anyway, it, that happened for a long time and it never occurred to me, this may not be the best idea because in those days, and it was a while ago, red wine was supposed to be good for the heart.

Not so much now that we know a lot more, we have the science and the research. And so I didn't think we were doing anything harmful, but now we know better. And so that pattern has stopped. Now, I love that and I, it's unique because it's different, totally different than my story.

And so you got to this point where you wanted to make a change. What drew you to like this concept of mindful drinking versus maybe some of the other routes? Well, I started hearing about the harmful effects of drinking. It was becoming [00:05:00] very big in the media. I started hearing about that and I was worried about it for myself.

I was worried about it for my husband. He has an occasional episode of AFib and it was better for him not to be drinking every night and not chew glasses every night. So I went into a community of Women attempting to become sober, and never thought this was where I wanted to go. But the interesting thing about this group was that none of these women either wanted to be sober.

We all wanted to be mindful drinkers. We wanted to reduce consumption. But nobody wanted to be a teetotaler. So, my journey down this path really began when one of the women in that group Mentioned Andrew Huberman, and he is a [00:06:00] professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford, and he does a podcast on lots of health related topics.

And this woman said, Oh, listen to this one was from August of two. So it's over two years old. But I listened to it and I was blown away. I thought, yeah. Oh, and my husband listened to it as well. And he had the same response. And I have to say that on this journey of minimizing alcohol in our lives, it's been great to have a partner.

It's been really good because he's, he never had the background that I did with the family alcoholism and all that, which I know we will get into later, but, but he liked his Ripley wine and now he is, I mean, he's maybe four to six glasses a month of wine. That's it. And for our special occasions, and so he really helped me in going [00:07:00] through this and it's, it's been a great experience all over.

It's just been wonderful, physically, psychologically. Some of my friends might not like it too much. Anyway, it's been great. Yeah. So that's how this whole thing started. And then I got introduced to all the podcasts, including yours, apps. And I remember of Sunnyside and I liked the little, I love record keeping.

So, okay. And communities and so I delved into all of that after the Huberman podcast and I discovered that community is really important in this. It's very important that you have other people who are going down this same path and to hear their challenges and to hear their. Success is their triumphs and to share your concerns or [00:08:00] your, what you think of as failures, and it's just thus supportive and it's so helpful.

So that's my story, I guess. I, these communities, these podcasts, et cetera, I have. Reduce my drinking from about 60 glasses a month, which was our two glasses a night, perhaps, to maybe six or eight in the months, maybe it's 10, okay, but it's not 60. And that for me is success. It's really success. And if I may take a diversion here real quickly, we just got back, my husband and I just got back from a vacation in Alaska.

And neither of us had ever been, and it was remarkable, it was amazing. But we drank every night. And again. Maybe one or two glasses. That was it. Because we are very minimal now. [00:09:00] We're moderated. We're mindful. One afternoon on a train ride through the Alaska wilderness, there was a bar right in our car. And they were serving a drink called mooski.

I had to have it. I'm sorry. I had to have a mooski. And I think it was mostly coffee. But in any case, And then we came back from that trip and we got back into our routine, which is just so, so comforting that you can go out and do this thing of drinking every night, a little bit, and then come back to not drinking it.

So, something about that habit has been instilled. And it's really, it's wonderful. I think of all the things that you said there is that basically you got to choose success looked to you. And by that and achieving that, you're finding happiness, you're finding satisfaction. [00:10:00] And not only that, the community side of things, realizing that You're not alone, that your husband's support, your husband also wants to make changes, that even though you were in this group that not necessarily aligned to your goals, there were other people that wanted the same thing, which was whatever aligned to their goals, not what somebody else defined.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a wonderful and remarkable journey and anyway, that's my story about how I got to this place. You wrote this really unique book. So I want to make sure that we've got time for that. So let's fast forward a little bit. You felt like you had to write a book. What inspired you to go ahead and get out the paper, get out the pen, so to speak? And start putting your story into motion. Well, I was a medical writer for a number of years, [00:11:00] and then I retired and I loved to write.

So I kept writing. My first book, I'm not going to belabor this, but it was, uh, Blood Brother, a memoir. And it was about probably fatal cancer that I was diagnosed with. My only hope to survive was to find a bone marrow donor. And my only match would be one of my brothers who had vanished 30 years before.

I wrote that book to, obviously he was found, not by me, but he was found. I wrote that book to give hope to people in dire situations, which is the same reason that I wrote Mostly Sober, to give hope to people who are, who are caught, who are, who have a. Physiological, excuse me, a psychological habit that can be very difficult to break.

I did not write the book for people who have a physiological addiction. [00:12:00] That's not the audience. I can't help those people. They need whatever they need, medical interventions or recovery programs. That's not my audience. But I wanted to write the book to show others that it's a struggle. Gosh, we can do it.

We can do it. And at the end of the book, there's a long list of resources, and it lists all kinds of podcasts and apps and communities, including Sunnyside, that are there to help people. And they do help people. If us talking right now is in testament to it actually works, there is a way that you can find, I don't know what is.

But I want to talk a little bit about your book, so it's unique, because there are a lot of books out there and more coming out as this topic has become to light, people are realizing that this is not reserved for just people that, as you said, need possibly [00:13:00] medical intervention, that these are everyday people,

and some of us have difficulty, you know, after a certain point to change that, so your book blends fiction, autobiography, and self help. Why did you choose to write in this style? Well, like, I don't think it was a choice.

It's something that happened. Now, the road trip out of the book, I'd written some time ago, and I just thought, oh, this is a cool story. But it didn't have the message of, I'm going to minimize my drinking. It was just about family interaction. It didn't have that really strong, it didn't have that engine of, wow, what is really going on beneath the surface.

So when I started my own journey, I started writing about Annie, who never got any support from her family. She was [00:14:00] abandoned by her father and psychologically mistreated by her mother. And she ended up with this giant bully in her brain. Always condescending, negative thinking, what's wrong with you, and, and the book is, it's a strange animal, because as you said, in part autobiographical, it's in part fiction, and it's in part self help.

Who knew there could be such a thing? But it does feel a little strange. It fills a need, and it is not a quitlet book, it is not about this person who just hit bottom, and there's no hope for her unless she's stopped entirely, and there are people like that, but there's a lot of people who need help. The help of community and the help of compassionate, caring professionals like [00:15:00] those in Sunnyside and elsewhere, who can really help people release themselves from this enduring embrace of alcohol and get to a peaceful place that's helpful, not, not ruining their mental and physical health.

So, yes, it's an oddball in terms of, you know, Well, where do you put it under the bookshelf? In the bookstore, I'm not sure. But anyway, I think that it has to, uh, I think it has to have an audience who will resonate with it. And I've had very good response so far. So, yeah, I'll just say that the book takes place in 1980, and that is a time when there was very little help to a person wanting to cut down on their drinking, other than AA.

And I opened the book with a statement by the protagonist saying, not for me, thanks. No, that's not it. But she also didn't know what else to [00:16:00] do, because there just wasn't much help. So she did see a therapist. She begins antidepressants, and she volunteers, according, given her doctor's advice to do so. And she makes the man of her dreams on this volunteer day.

And he proposes after a few months. That she tells him, I need more tannin, and he is not happy. He is not happy at all. And Annie realizes that she's got to, because she's hidden this drinking from him. He doesn't know about this affair with alcohol. And she realizes she's got to cut way back in order to be the woman that he proposed to.

And Immediately after the proposal, she gets the call from her mother. Please come and help us drive us from the Mojave [00:17:00] Desert to the Bay Area, where her second husband is going to receive electroconvulsions. And that's the red trip part of the book. So I may be rambling a bit here.

One of the things that was so unique that I thought was that you can see yourself in the character and then it's a very easy read to put yourself in their place literally through their eyes.

As you wrote this story, what was the ultimate goal that you were hoping that readers would take away from it? I'm hoping that readers will understand that change is possible. In fact, change is, the resources for change are all around. All we have to do is say, maybe I need to look into this, maybe I'm drinking a little too much, and all of the information coming out of the CDC and the NIAAA and all that, no more than one drink a night for women, or no, that's not right, I'm sorry, I'm getting that mixed up.[00:18:00]

They're getting, saying, no amount of alcohol. Is safe. No. So there's so much information now available for us to A, understand the risks, the harms, potential harms of drinking too much, and B, how to change that if war. So I'm hoping that my book will show people this is possible. Good, happy, not sober. I love that.

And in the book, this is the last question I kind of want to leave with before we, uh, go today. And that is, why do you think smaller incremental steps are more effective for long term success? And I think you could probably easily answer this because of your own life experience. Well, I think that because our dependence, perhaps, psychological dependence on [00:19:00] alcohol It's a really slow process.

It can take years. To really get into the habit, daily habit. So for me, those small changes, like you've mentioned, maybe journaling, maybe joining a group of like minded people. I love spreadsheets and I am always marking how many drinks I had last night and how many, and that kind of thing, you can see the change and it's just, I don't know, it's small changes are.

I think the way that so many of us need to approach this, you can't change your life overnight just by going out. No, that, I mean, I can't anyway, I should say that. So for me, it's those small changes that are consistent, consistently applied to a goal. And the goal is important. You [00:20:00] got to be clear on that as well.

So I love that. That worked for me. Yeah. ., You got to have a goal, and , every single day we get a little bit closer. May I mention one more thing?

Absolutely. There it is. And here's this, this is my monthly work calendar. I've used it for decades in my work, but every night that I don't drink, I write dry in red marker. And some of those months are just, they're so red. I love them. You know, that for me is a, it's a statement to success. And if not every night is red, okay, that's fine.

But when I look at that calendar, I go, wow. Look at that. It just gives me motivation to keep going. Small, it's a little thing. But for me, it works, though. Maybe other people would like that as well. A hundred percent. And I mean, when you can see it physically, it [00:21:00] just, as you said, it makes that impact. It sparks motivation and for what you're doing.

Indeed. Yes, it does. Well, Susan, thank you so much for coming on today. Before we go, why don't you tell. Any of the listeners, if they're interested, how they can find out more about the book? Sure. My website is easy. It's susankeller. com. K E L E R. And, uh, there is, uh, a lot more information about the book on my website.

And, uh, Likes where it could be purchased, I learned excerpts from the book, and I'm also a blogger on Psychology Today, so I've got my most recent blogs up there on Psychology Today, and it's about alcohol and reducing, etc. So yeah, SusanKeller. com is the best way. That wraps up today's episode of Journey to the Sunny Side.

A huge thanks to Susan Keller for joining us and sharing [00:22:00] her personal story and insights from Mostly Sober. And hey, make sure to tune in to the next episode where we'll be digging in deeper into the emotional side of drinking, specifically how family trauma and emotional triggers can impact your drinking habits and what you can do to break those cycles.

Before you go, head on over to sunnyside. co and take our three minute quiz for personalized insights into your own drinking habits. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram, at joinsunnyside, for more tips, inspiration, and success stories from people just like you. If you like what you heard today, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on future episodes.

And until next time, let's keep taking small steps towards a healthier, more mindful relationship with alcohol.