Intoxicated Masculinity with Mishka Shubaly

Mishka is 10 years sober, and while he identifies as an alcoholic he is resolutely anti-program, anti-spirituality, and anti-self-help. His approach to quitting drinking is as boiled down as it gets: you decide you want to quit, and … you quit … while making lifestyle changes to support this choice. In his case, this also meant relearning how to be a man without the excessive drinking that had come to define his masculinity—a subject I have been wanting to address on this podcast for ages. In this episode we discuss: 

-Using excessive alcohol consumption to define himself as a man

-Men performing an exaggerated hardness to cover up their vulnerability

-Getting drunk to give himself permission to cry—and learning to cry sober

-Discovering running as a way to access and process his emotions

-Defining his own “sobriety”—and why he still uses psychedelics

-Becoming agnostic after smoking DMT

-How he finally found a definition of spirituality that works for him

-The concept of “head nutrition”—and being careful about the information we consume

-Making stuff as a way of making sense of the world

-Moving to New York just so he could carry on drinking the way he did

-The thought of quitting drinking being much scarier than quitting itself

-Constantly feeling like shit becoming part of his identity

-Figuring out he could still have fun, flirt, tell dirty jokes, and have sex as a sober person

Learn more about Mishka and his work HERE and get your copy of Cold Turkey HERE.

This episode is supported by Lyres non-alcoholic spirits. Visit lyres.co/sobercurious and subscribe for 15% off.

Thanks also to Athletic Brewing non-alcoholic craft beers. Free delivery on two 6-packs or more.