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Hello. How are you going?

I'm good. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you

for having me.

I'm so interested to dig into addiction and drinking problems with you. I think that we're going to start very, very basic though, because I assume that there are subtle signs and very dramatic signs that someone should consider stopping drinking. So I'll start with the subtle, because I'm assuming that if you can tackle it at that stage, you might avoid the dramatic stage. So what are the early signs that you should consider stopping drinking?

There are quite a few, but maybe I'll do the main ones I see. Often people find that when they drink, more often than not, they find they're drinking more across time. And it's very hard to self-police yourself because no one really thinks about that drinking until maybe someone brings it up or a negative event happens. So often I tell clients that, hmm, how much did you drink from last week to this week? And then they come in and start noticing that I'm drinking it more. I'm now drinking it early in the evenings and almost every day. If that's happening or any everyday drinking, you should be concerned already. But a lot of, there's a lot of defense around that because people think, oh, you know, I drink after work. Everyone does. Not really. A lot of people do, not everyone. So that's one. The other thing I also put in mind is you start noticing that you, I guess it's sort of subtle, not subtle, but people notice they have withdrawal symptoms when they're not drinking. So they start thinking about alcohol. When's my next drink? Especially they're having a day of alcohol. Let's say it's a Monday and you said, oh, Mondays I don't drink because you know, I already drank on Sunday and work day, et cetera. And then they get really starting like, oh, maybe I should just drink or I'm drinking Wednesday. I guess you're thinking about it's preoccupying your thinking. And then the third one as well is it affects your mental health, but it's very subtle because alcohol is quite a bit depressant over time. But initially when you drink it, you have this euphoric, feeling comfortable, relaxed, might sleep better, yada, yada, yada. And then the next day, anxiety. So I often tell people after you drink to ask yourself how your sleep was on that day and how do you feel the next day. Usually anxiety has gone up, inability to cope with stress. You find you're more irritable, you know. And usually what it means is that you cure that by having more drink. So if the answer to everything becomes alcohol or the answer to many things is alcohol, those are the subtle signs. Other things you might notice is when you go to dinner, I often joke that we actually see people with drinking problems. That first person who finishes that glass and tries to top everyone up, hey everyone, who's next? And they're pretending like they're being generous to top everyone up, but really they've finished drinking and you just don't want to be seeing that person who's drinking alone, you know, on your second glass. So those are the things where the escalation happens in those settings, but it's not easy to pick up, to be honest.