How Quitting Alcohol Changes Your Life | with Clifford Stephan

Michael: Welcome to the podcast, my friend. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you today about this intersection of life, alcohol change, enjoyment, freedom. You affectionately go by the chief vacation officer in your company, booze vacation, and I'm so excited to get into this conversation today. There's alcohol seems to be a very hot button topic right now. It's something I think about. My friends think about the people in my life. We think about, we talk about, and I just want to welcome you to the show, man. I'm excited to do this with you.

Clifford: Michael, thanks so much for having me on super, super excited to be here.

Michael: But obviously I think the first thing that we have to start with is how does one become the chief vacation officer?

Clifford: Yeah, that's a fair question. Yeah. Booze vacation started out as a COVID passion project. A little bit about my background. Start real, real active with sports, played water polo soccer in high school and went to college and started drinking in high school. Real bro centric kind of lifestyle more about the buddies than, just about anything. And yeah, just super pervasive in our culture and, got the corporate job, I had an HR consulting firm. And wherever we went, work, play, it's real active, really extroverted. And was all about it, and then, later thirties, early forties, I have a degree in nutritional science. I prided myself as being a health nut and real kind of a fitness guru. And yeah, things were slipping. My sleep was pretty bad. There was, things were going sideways. And so I had the time and space to turn over a lot of stones, try a bunch of different diet and supplement protocols, et cetera. And yeah, nothing really worked. And I begrudgingly took a one year break from alcohol. I was inspired by a four hour audible book, alcohol lied to me. That was just pretty, pretty damn convincing. And I was just like, Oh crap, I got to take a one year break. And it was this crazy transformational. I honestly, it sounds exaggerated, but I felt like I found that found of youth and the key to happiness and everything I had done and attempted to do in the past that wasn't really working very well. Work perfectly, it was just out of sequence. So, I realized that alcohol is the master key that you need to do first, and then everything else falls in line and super pumped about my results, having conversations with some of my buddies that have known and loved me for decades. And I just couldn't have that conversation. They were just so closed off. I think, guys have, my peers in particular have such a strong association with alcohol, fun, friends, events, and a reward system. And it's so ingrained in our identity that it can be tricky to untangle. And the realities are that I found is that, yeah, you can only piss up when in your physiology for so long before things kind of start tanking. And I noticed, and again, I think a lot of my peers, they have a lot, they have it all on paper. They have good careers and good jobs and houses and families and all that. But then you look at their lifestyle, you look at their blood work, you look at the belly fat, and there's a lot of things that aren't going well. And, I know you talk about mental health and stuff a lot on the show, but I think it's, there's nothing worse than a guy that has it all on paper, but has that disconnect and isn't looking and feeling good and is discontent. And maybe they got there and they're not really, as grateful as they should be. I decided to be that asshole talking about being, being. Stepping on that sacred cow and talking some shit on alcohol, not to point fingers or push sobriety. We're not targeting alcoholics. We're just, it's more of a health and wellness play. And yeah, I created this project that's gone a bunch of different ways. But ultimately, we're just trying to get the message out that. Taking a break from alcohol is not a dumb idea. There's a lot of good to be done. And, I think there's a lot of just unawareness with it. And I think, all my buddies address it in their own ways, but it's very often ineffective. They love to take. Cut back or take a month off, but the science says that, it's probably three, probably more likely six months to rewire your neural circuitry and get it back to factory settings and really start leveraging that time to make some strides with your health. So you, and in your performance, so you'll be more open to, maybe drinking less. So just started this. Started this kind of movement. That's been a ton of fun and had to come up with a fun terminology. Obviously booze vacation is, people are like, Oh, wow, that sounds really fun and they're like, Oh wait, it's what, so it's just a fun way to now I'm on a, I'm not drinking right now, I'm on a booze vacation. It's got, it's guys to laugh and gets them off your back. So that was…

Michael: Yeah.

Clifford: Of that terminology.

Michael: I love the play on words there because a big part of it is, you look at this journey and like you, I grew up playing sports. When I was eligible anyways, I grew up playing sports and there was a huge party lifestyle that I was a part of. And I got drunk for the first time when I was 13. By the time that I was in my twenties, I worked for a fortune 10 company. I was making 150, 200 grand a year. Every party, every event, every birthday, every, everything was completely built around alcohol. I think that also, and I can't speak to anything different cause I don't know, but growing up in the Midwest, one of the things that I've, I think is so interesting is like, when you grow up in the nomenclature is around alcohol it's normative that everything that you do is about alcohol. You party, you celebrate birthdays, christenings, divorces, like everything. And then suddenly. If you're not paying attention, there's a lot of health ramifications that start to present themselves, but it's so socially accepted. And you talk about specifically speaking to guys, women participate in wine Wednesdays and mommy meetups. And it's there's always the bottle of wine. There's always the gin and tonic. And again, I think we, neither of us are saying or defaming the things that people bring enjoyment from. I think it's more of there's some consequence here. Now, I think it'd be fair to say, Clifford, nobody becomes the chief vacation officer without having their own, I would call existential experience and a mindset shift around this. What happened? What happened for you? Why? Go down this path. Why change your own life? What were some of the signs, symptoms, revelation?

Clifford: Yeah. Again, it had a lot to do with my identity of knowing, degree in nutritional science, being very physically active, always looking, always striving to look and feel like that kid in high school. And then that shit just really going South later thirties, early forties I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, alcohol, dislike, dysregulates all organs, functions and systems in your body. A couple drinks can decrease sleep quality by 40%. It's stressing your autonomic nervous system. So you're over breathing. And so you start getting obstructive sleep disorders. You start compensating with too much caffeine, it just on and on. It's just, it's really negatively affecting all, systems. And, I knew that the CPAP machine wasn't my answer. And like I said, but that was a big one. Just, for decades not sleeping well is, when you're trying to like work and work out and be active, it really drains on you and yeah, you just get poor results. You don't look and feel your best ton of brain fog. So yeah, just precipitating. Again, not technically having a drinking problem was creating all kinds of problems. And again, I think that's par for the course with wear and tear and regular alcohol use it's just regulating pretty much any system you could think of.

Michael: I assume. Was it also impacting like your relationships? Was it impacting business? Cause I asked this question because I think life has bucketed into health, wealth, and relationships. And I think if you don't have one, you lose the others. Were you saying like a downstream impact on this?

Clifford: Oh yeah, no, I had a presentation, I have a compensation consulting firm based in the Silicon Valley. So I designed employee and executive pay plans. I was presenting to a client as some fancy resort in Palm Springs, something, I could, I've done a million times that I could do with my, Brain tied behind my back and, just crappy sleep and I just really screwed up that meeting and that was a pretty big wake up call. And yeah, when it comes to, poor sleep or diet, your stomach hurts, your brain is foggy. Does that, you have less energy, you have less empathy for your partners. Does that affect your relationships? Hell, yes. And does alcohol crush testosterone directly? Yes. Does it affect all of your hormones that when you're not getting restorative sleep, like dopamine and serotonin and testosterone and all these things? Yes, it does. I think the reality was, is that I was probably at 60 percent of my capabilities. And the reality is I see a lot of that with my peer groups as well. I think a lot of guys are, at 60 percent and that's why we get stuck with not really having a choice in the matter. It's Hey, what brand am I going to drink, but I'm not going to stop drinking it because. Yeah. You wind up asking the wrong person because you're always in these diminished states. So it's complex and tricky, especially in our society where, as you mentioned, it's just, it's part of our culture, it's part of everything. And ultimately out this vacation is about a reset. Cause when you don't ever take a purposeful break and figure out what it's like to. So look and feel a hundred percent to learn how to have fun and relax without it. You're pretty stuck and alcohol is going to be everywhere. So it could be a pretty tricky equation to ever solve. And the reality is since everybody's doing it, there's, supposedly there's safety in numbers, you can attribute bad blood work and, and cardiac events and all kinds of stuff to stress and wear and tear. But. alcohol is really bad at eroding your diet and lifestyle as well as negatively affecting a bunch of systole. So it's really predictive and it's really pervasive where it's, pre disease states are becoming more chronic disease states in guys, forties and fifties. So it's a time sensitive, it's a time sensitive issue. So I'm a little bit of chicken little kind of saying the sky's falling because I'm just not cool with losing any of my buddies to big chronic disease events, because then it's a different game that you play with your checkbook and your doctor and your pharmacist. And it's not very fun. It's very expensive and you don't get great results.

Michael: I heard dr. Amen once say that no alcohol is the right amount of alcohol to be consuming. And I thought that was really fascinating because it does impact and affect every single facet of the human body, your brain, your heart, your lungs, your kidney, your liver, especially your liver, right? Your gut health, your microbiome your vision, your hearing, I don't know that people truly appreciate the fact that alcohol is actually poison. And if I gave you a bottle and I sat it in front of you and it had the old cartoony times, it had an X on it. And it was like, this is poison, you wouldn't drink it. But marketing and branding plays such a huge role. And alcohol consumption, I would be willing. And I, there's nothing I can found this on other than conjecture my own at that. I'd be willing to bet if we removed alcohol advertising from television, you would see these alcohol companies damn near go bankrupt overnight. Because I don't remember. I was actually having this conversation, Clifford, with somebody pretty recently, and I was thinking about my twenties. I'm a high performer in terms of business, right? I've got that locked in. Things are going well. My health is garbage, my relationships are garbage. Again, thinking about health, wealth and relationships. And I was talking with my friend about this realization I had that I don't have a single life changing, life affirming, unbelievably happy memory that actually included alcohol because there was always on the backside of it. Maybe a little bit of haze or some brain fog, or, you can't get off the toilet because you had a few too many whiskeys or you got in a fight with your boys or your family or your partner, because like you mentioned, you lose empathy in it. And I think one of the things that happens is we've just become so conditioned to the idea that alcohol should be the thing that we use to catalyze us and galvanize us around everything, especially in Western culture. And so I'm wondering what becomes like the replacement, right? You're hanging out with the boys, you're at the barbecue. It's let's crack one. Or you're celebrating the graduation and you're like, okay, let's get the bottle of wine. Like I think part of the fear is people just actually don't know what to do.

Clifford: Yeah, and there's so many negative feedback loops that you get stuck in with just regular semi responsible alcohol use when it comes to, poor sleep, too much coffee, a lot of, sugar, eating too much sugar, you have sugar cravings, too much stress and low mood. You want to drink to change the channel. Yeah, it's just, it's pretty tricky to decouple. And as you mentioned, yeah, it's not only advertised by the world's most beautiful people. But I swear every damn show I watch in every scene, they got some fancy glass. So yeah, it's really pervasive. And so my point is that it's super easy to just be unconscious and you're just, you're not even, you're asleep at the wheel, so you're just perpetuating all these habits and systems typically when you're these negative States and you're just trying to eek out a little bit of fun and pleasure, which is typically, bad diet and bad habits and sitting around on the couch. And so, by taking a break and again, we're not saying, Hey, take, take six, our basic occasions are three to 12 months, but we're saying, Hey, really get after improving all these different systems like sleep, diet, fitness mindset to really just maximize your gain. So there's really just a ton of transformation that's occurring where you're looking better. You're feeling better, you're screwing better, you have more money, you're less stressed. There's just so much different things going on. So and the other reality is, I think when you're in those negative states, you really lose the chance to find happiness in the present moment because happiness is being okay with whatever happens and being present. And what you're going to find yourself is, when alcohol is fun, you're going to be dysregulated and out of it when, after a couple of drinks and you're going to, frontal cortex is going to be shutting down. And then during the work week, like who wants to be present when you look and feel like crap and you have all this work to do. And, the fun is a million miles away because it's Monday and you have to wait till Friday before the next party. So you're really conditioned to be just in these states of drudgery. And, it sounds whatever but that's what I found. So you're really just creating a lot of transformation, party parties are about the people. It's not about the alcohol, and I think it's so easy to get. Lost in that, and again every guy's using the same playbook. So when you show up and you look and feel better, you're having just as much fun, as far as what you drink, there's fantastic non alcoholic beers, there's great cocktails drink, whatever the hell that tastes good. Don't drink a soda. Cause we're, trying to clean up, clean up our and restore our health, there's kombucha, there's a million different things. And what you'll find is when you get out of these, when you learn how to do it, you're looking and feeling good, and, essentially you're. You're breaking, alcohol works really well when you're regularly drinking it and when you stop drinking it, it stops working, and so you, and you don't have that same need, you don't need to change your state's actually pretty good. And but yeah, it does change, there's always trade offs, it's You can, you're not going to be at the party until four in the morning, chasing your blood alcohol level, just, drunk out of your skull and, finishing off a pizza, go home at 12 and go have some sex and then get after it over the weekend and crush it, and do more than your buddies are going to do all weekend long and in four hours, it's just, it's, there's trade offs. And it's really about re imagining and primarily just really restoring your health while you can. We don't want, we don't want, we want guys to improve their shelf lives by a good 10, 15 years. Improve their performance and ultimately they can do however, whatever they want to do as far as, after their vacation. But yeah, probably about 25 percent of the guys can continue rocking their vacation and the other guys will drink a little bit, but less and for different reasons, and it's just not so habitual.

Michael: Yeah. And I think that's the big part about it. Move away from the habit. Cause if you look at it like anything, drinking is a habit. Like alcohol is a habit. Drugs are a habit. So much of it is when we have our dopamine and our reward centers being hit by this action, what do we want? We want it more, we want it more, we want it more. And then eventually to get the same hit requires an exponential amount of the same product, right? This is why you see people who they start with one Xanax needing five, right? Because that is the nature of the human body and the biological experience that we're having. And I think that when I like trace back and I look at my own journey, it was in these moments where as an entrepreneur and building my first companies, when I was in my mid twenties, dude, I would wake up hung over and be like, I don't want to do this, do anything today, I can't do anything today. Oh, I've got to redo all the things I did. Because of the impact because their life is so much about balance and equilibrium, and there's always a trade off. And unfortunately, part of the trade off of having what we would call fun is waking up the next day and feeling like complete shit. Here's the hard part. When feeling like shit becomes the habit, You're trapped into this vicious cycle. And so I'm curious where do people come into the work with you? Where am I at? Generally speaking in my life where I'm like, actually, I need some support. Maybe I'm not an alcoholic. Maybe I'm not a super party animal. But the habit is negatively impacting my life. I need support. What do those people look like when they're coming to get ready for a vacation?

Clifford: Yeah, I think there's definitely, to use myself as an example, but you just get sick and tired of being sick and tired. And it's funny. I get a little blip ahead of summer, which is funny because that's when I took my 1st 1 year boots vacation with Cinco de Mayo. But, the reality is, you look at the summer and you're like, cool, I'm going to Cabo. I got this wedding, blah, blah, blah. And then you're Oh man, it's going to, the beatings are going to continue. And morale is probably not going to improve when it comes to just, it's just, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, it's like alcohol works, but it's a lot of work and you get worked in the process. And so I think people in, It's funny guys like to play dumb with their alcohol use, but, and they like to play dumb with their health as well. It's Hey, I don't want to go to the doctor and get bad blood work and maybe get a pill that will make me feel like crap. And so I think it's. I think we tend to try to, hit the snooze on that and put her head in the sand while we can, but I'm trying to just have some straight talk conversations around, the importance of doing it and guess what? You might actually like looking and feeling and performing better and still yeah, there's weed, there's nicotine. It's not it's a sobriety club or anything like that's, guys are going to do what they're going to want to do. I think typically it's, I think in particular men of success are, can be really pigeonholed in a way because it's like, Hey, you're doing great. Your stock's worth this or your company's crushing it. You need to go on vacation. We need to go to this party, and it's funny, like the guys that make it to the mountaintop wind up like sliding off the back because, they have to celebrate and, they deserve all these rewards, and oftentimes it's alcohol based. And so that's not a good scene. And it's there's nothing worse than, you having the cat by the tail and then you find out, Hey, I have a cardiac event or I have a cancer scare or I have a blood works looking pretty scary. And so it's really, it ultimately becomes, it's what do you want and how long do you want to keep it? And if you want, if you want something, if you want a lot, then you need good, consistent performance. And if you want to keep it, you better have your health on point, and so that's what we're about. So I think when guys get that memo, you know how, and again we're trying to put out content there to probe and let them know that this isn't a dumb idea. I think part of the, a lot of guys will take a break on their own and they're playing defense or they're going too short. They don't have a community around it. It's their heart's not around it. They don't know how, they don't know how to navigate parties. They don't know what to say. They don't know what to do. They don't know how to like, really maximize their time. And so that's what we've engineered. And so it's awesome because, the reality is we get guaranteed results, when you stop kicking the shit out of yourself and you start, making small improvements that become a lot easier as your discipline and impulse control and, your energy and you get extra time. It's really easy to make really significant gains. Then you have momentum going, then you have, then you have some stories to share and you want to, again, it's not like we're telling people to bang the drum and tell people what to do, but I think the reality is there's a lot of pent up need for our solution. And a lot of guys can really use this and it's a time sensitive need. So when you do show up to parties, people like, Whoa, you're not, you're drinking a non alcoholic beer. We're like, what do you, what's that all about? Type of thing. So, there's a lot of interest. So, you have a lot of interesting conversations and even, like I said, even guys that I wouldn't think in a million years would be interested in it, like I see him six months later, they're drinking a non alcoholic beer. And it's really fun to share. Ultimately booze vacation is a gift, cause it's just, you're giving guys the ability to look and feel better and some tools in their tool belt to navigate this world, that's pretty alcohol obsessed.

Michael: Yeah. And I, the gift is such a great way to phrase it because people will often feel like they're losing something, right? They're like, Oh, I have to give this up. I'm losing my social time. I'm losing my friends groups. I'm losing the game. I'm losing all this. But it's actually, when you feel incredible every day, or as much as one can as a human being, because you're not killing yourself, like literally not killing yourself, it's an amazing feeling. And obviously we're talking through the frame of men because you do work with men, which is my opinion, highly needed, which is a big reason why I want to have you on the show. But this impacts women and everyone alike as well in this journey. And so it's not that women don't have these same problems because assuredly they do. But I just think it's really important to from a mental health perspective, we often find that women are so much more willing to just have the conversation about the thing. And for guys, it's you'll be around each other. Your homies like missing a leg, ‘cause he like cut it off with a band saw. And you're like, are you going to go to the doctor? And he's no, I'm fine. And you're like, and you're like, are you though? So I love that we're having this conversation, especially about men here. What kind of, what I think about a lot is the coping mechanisms that we move towards. When we have these stressful events, right? How we numb, how we remove ourselves from reality, how we try to take the edge off, which is such a big part of the conversation of Drake is Oh man, we had a hard day at the office, take the edge off fight with the girlfriend, take the edge off, lost the pickup basketball game that no one gives a shit about, take the edge off what are some replacement coping mechanisms that people need to be taking into consideration? So maybe they don't go on a vacation, but they want to create some change. What are some things that they can be doing instead of picking up the bottle?

Clifford: Yeah. And to your point, I think what really motivated me and piss me off is just, just the ridiculously crappy return on investment when it comes to alcohol over time, because you're dealing with tolerance, and age and wear and tear. So it's going to take more to get less results. It's going to be harder on your aging body. And the reality is a typical dude that's drinking 10 plus drinks a week. We're talking a rewired neural circuitry. So your baseline normal, even if you didn't drink for three or four months would be higher stress, higher anxiety, and lack of impulse control. So I don't think people realize how deep that rabbit hole goes when it comes to just, so when you're talking about, the stress and in particular, it's funny, like you start having a beer every night. It's funny, your body is a perfect system that, you're continually dysregulating with regular alcohol. So when you are, drinking every day at five o'clock, having a beer or two, your body is getting dysregulated and it's calming you down, but your body is anticipating that you're gonna calm down. So it'll rev up this other area. That's why you get anxious when you're not drinking. So I think people just don't realize how, manipulative and how again, deep that rabbit hole goes. Even if you're only going big on the weekends and you're clean on the, you're clean during the week. It's still enough to dysregulate so many different systems and how much sugar you take and how much caffeine you drink and a lot of diet and lifestyle stuff. So it's, it can be quite tricky to really even understand what the hell's going on, it's, so as far as what I'd recommend, like what I don't recommend is cutting back or taking a month off. It's not enough time. It's very defensive. Take a big boy break, take a minimum of three months, ideally six. And it really is going to depend on your background and how much you've been drinking and how much wear and tear you have and how old you are and all those different things. But if a guy's not ready to take a break yet, totally get it. I think it's just really important to start consuming some information around, really what you're up against and the hundreds of ways that alcohol is completely screwing with you and just, how you're setting yourself up for, a big bag of problems that no self-respecting dude would ever want. It's crushing testosterone. It's resting your cardiovascular system. So, it's going to be pretty, pretty tricky to get, have a nice erection. If your cardiovascular health is poor and your hormones are poor and you're not performing at your best and looking and feeling your best. And it's tanking your drive and libido. So, it's anything, ultimately, it's like booze vacation can deliver the beer commercial that they promised, but can't quite deliver on. ‘Cause we're gonna have you looking and feeling better and more relaxed and better performance and more money in your pocket to go check out different things. So, I think people just need to understand really what they're up against. And, I think the program of alcohol being fun and events, I think it's, it really likes to get you in States of Predicting the future and how it's going to be so drab and you're never going to be have fun again and you're going to lose your identity. But the reality is once if you have chronic disease or, severe health problems or again, it's really eroding your. Your diet and lifestyle and quality of life, it's, you have to make some, you have to make some decisions and you have to think for your, you have to think about yourself and ultimately, what you want and in your performance. And that requires you to make some adjustments. And I think the reality is a lot of my, a lot of my peers, myself included had an operating system that was probably formulated in high school that alcohol is fun and let's go have a wild time. Let's go cause some trouble and see what we can get away with. And I think a lot of guys pride themselves on being that dude in high school. And if you want to be that dude in high school, like I served 10 foot waves in Nicaragua for my 50th birthday. That was pretty awesome, that's exactly what I'd want to do in high school. And that's what I was doing now. Ultimately it's really about, like you said, health is wealth. And if you don't have your health and your performance, like you're going to turn into some old guy cliche and alcohol is really going to accelerate aging and stuff like that. So you just really need to, the more educated you get, the harder it is to unsee, and so the more likely, and again, you don't need to make any lifetime declarations. You don't have to like, make any world changes, but to say, Hey, I'm not sure alcohol is benefiting me. I'm going to try this and see what happens. And then I'm going to take that extra time, money and energy and start. Leveraging that time to restore my systems and my performance as best I can. And then guess what you're going to, you're going to like it.

Michael: We live in a sick care system in this society and you have to understand the role that you're playing in your own health. And I think that we get so dissociated from it that we don't even realize the negative impact and ramification because even something as simple as someone having issues, men specifically here, obviously having issues with erections. It's like you look at that and you. And you don't always piece the puzzle together, right? It's not the sleep loss, not the cardiovascular health we think of. It's not the alcohol consumption. We go, Oh, I'm getting old, right? You hear this so frequently. And then you go to the doc and the doctor's Oh yeah, just take this pill. And I've said this many times on this show, I am not Anti Pharmaceuticals, but I am completely Anti Pharmaceuticals, right? And at the end of the day, it's like there are so many holistic things that you can do that require lifestyle changes. But I think one of the things that people get stuck on is they don't understand that they have to raise their standards. Now, what I mean by that is when you make a decision, cause you've seen this, you've probably done it. I certainly have. We make this declaration to ourselves. I'm going to do X, and then a day goes by and you're like, yeah, I did it. And then the initial dopamine of the doing it wears off. And two weeks later, you're no longer doing the thing you said you were going to do. And I think that discipline and raising your standards is a small part of the Conversation here. I think the other part that's really important is a having community. Even with coaching and what we do here at think unbroken, we put you in a community and then be having someone like yourself or myself, who's simply leading you based off our experience. If you think about the concept of raising your standards, what are some of the internal narratives people need to be having about the beginning of this process?

Clifford: Yeah. A couple of things come to mind. Obviously you have to love yourself and you have to care for yourself and want the best for yourself and know that, Hey, that is going to require some changes to my diet and lifestyle. Completely agree that. We're not Viagra deficient or whatever the pharmaceutical is. It's diet, it's 99 percent is diet and lifestyle. And so I think that's super important and I'm sorry, I lost your question. As far as.

Michael: No worries. I'm asking what are, what's the internal narrative that people need to be thinking about as they're, like, stepping into the potential of this journey?

Clifford: Yeah, I think it's really, it's a juxtaposition of, you think you're missing out on fun and good times and you're not going to be able to have a good time, the body's resilient and you're really just doing other things and you're really trading off one for a hundred, so it's not like we're just going to not drink. You'll get, you'll lose a couple of pounds, but it's really about a land grab and really going after everything. The other thing I think is important, like you said, yeah, it could be a little tricky to coordinate your dance steps the first couple of weeks. That's why I think it's imperative that our vacations are, give you a long enough runway to find your footing, find your sea legs, so their minimum of three months. So yeah, the first two to four weeks might be a little tricky of the physical and chemical dependence. You're still going to be in the sugar loops, that you'll need to start addressing. So we sequence it. We start getting a sleep schedule. We start cutting back the sugar. It doesn't have to be day one, but. Just react to your body and your, your dysregulated systems and how you're doing and then chip away at it slowly. And it's really, you're really turning off one flywheel that's perpetuating all these negative habits in, predictive outcomes when it comes to your sleep and your energy and your performance and your mood and your inflammation levels and your bad habits. And then as you're turning off the master key, which is alcohol, that's going to enable you to start slowing down that one negative flywheel and start speeding up the positive flywheel, getting to bed on time and getting the right nutrients getting movement, getting sunlight, working on yourself. And so you're going to start working, you're gonna start turning this other flywheel on. And yeah, it doesn't have to be turned on all on day one, but Guys need to, feed and care for themselves and be themselves. Cause it can be a little tricky and awkward initially, and then leverage your community and just start chipping away. And by having that long enough runway you'll figure it out. And guys are going to have different goals in mind, but yeah, we're all about improving everything and giving guys the tools that, once their vacation's over, they can fend for themselves and I have a lot of tools in their tool belt, whether they're trying to lose weight or gain muscle or improve their performance or be more mindful or whatever, and just showing them how they can do that. And then again, they can always revisit, take another vacation later. And then it'll be easier. So there's, the more vacations you take, the more you learn, the less you'll drink long term. So it's all just some basic building blocks that we want to equip guys with. And ultimately what it's doing is. It's giving guys a choice, they don't really, that doesn't really seem like they have one, much of one in this current system.

Michael: When you led that off, you mentioned self love. What does that journey look like for you personally?

Clifford: Yeah. I think that's at the core. I think a lot of things need to, and it sounds squishy and it's probably something I wouldn't say in my twenties or thirties, but I'm 50, 50. But yeah, it's really about, you have to love yourself to love others and you have to be good to yourself to be good to others. And so I think it's just yeah, it's important. I don't, it's, that's a tricky question, but that might just sound a little. Off the cuff, but yeah, I think that's some of the core tenants that you hear over and over again. So I think there's obviously some wisdom and I think it's good to have some simple goalposts to tie your bandwagon to. I think that's always a solid one.

Michael: Did you feel like, cause I think that this narrative, I don't want to stay here for a second because I think it's incredibly important. There's not a lot of conversation in the ether of society about men loving themselves. And you hear this with women constantly. Love yourself, girl, do this, do that, blah, blah, blah. But for guys, you don't really hear that. You hear man up. Don't be a bitch. Don't be a pussy, which respectively, sometimes those things do apply. Let's be very clear about that. But generally speaking, the core tenant of all of that is the showing up for yourself. When you think about that in, in terms of your life and the experience that you've had, what were the areas that you weren't I felt like I found the fountain of youth and the key to happiness. showing up for yourself that you have now? That has maybe built up that confidence of self love of like appreciation for who you are.

Clifford: Yeah, when I was drinking regularly and had a hectic schedule, wasn't sleeping well, I was just really foggy. Like I said, I was unconscious to a lot of, I think, just a bunch of bad habits. And so you're oftentimes finding yourself in a negative states, low energy, your stomach hurts, your head hurts, you don't feel at your best. And so it's pretty tricky to just be mindful and be aware of big picture, what the hell's going on. And as give your body and mind and spirit a chance to recover and catch his breath and have a little bit of time to reflect, I think you start getting some pretty powerful insights. I've read quite a bit of, just mindful spiritual stuff like Eckhart Tolle and Miguel Ruiz and stuff like that. I think there's a lot of wisdom and just understanding our kind of caveman brain in this kind of day and age. And it's tricky, but yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that just aren't intuitive and they're not really talked about in our society. It's like financial awareness or something like that. There's just so many things that, you would think would make, would just be common sense, but they're not. And yeah, like I said, I, yeah, you have extra time, money and energy. And I was leveraging some of that to learn more about some stuff like a new earth by Eckhart Tolle is really killer. There's just a bunch of information from, in podcasts like yourself, there's just so much wisdom to take in and process. And I think it's really helpful.

Michael: Before I ask you my last question, can you tell everyone where they can find you and learn more?

Clifford: Yeah. Boozevacation.com. And we have some different challenges guys can take. And if you want to start a free vacation, we can download a free guide, but yeah, check out Boozevacation.com.

Michael: Love that. And guys go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com where you can find that and more in the links for the show. My last question for you, my friend. What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Clifford: Something that jumps out is just freedom of choice, freedom of mind. And the freedom to get away from a powerfully addictive, depressant carcinogen that you find everywhere. And I think there's a lot of freedom and insights and richness to, restoring your health. Relearning socially and at work how to navigate and, have fun and have, still be wild and without the alcohol. And so I think that's just such a powerful gift and it just really, I'm not saying it's going to solve all your problems, but it's really setting the table and the foundation for. Better performance, better mental resilience, better, better moods, better, better hormone levels, better, you're just really setting the table for optimal outcomes versus. Getting stuck in a lot of negative states and feedback loops that are super common in our system where, it's all about. Coffee and the bagel and the happy hour and the pizza and, convenience and Netflix and all that. I think there's some opportunities to zig where others are zagging.

Michael: Yeah. I love that, man. I couldn't agree more like freedom. Freedom comes through the discipline of creating these changes in your life. And maybe you need a little vacation. Maybe you need a long vacation. That's something that you've got to figure out, but what I would say to tell in this is if your life isn't what you want it to be, you need to start asking yourself why. And I think that you may be surprised when the answer becomes it's alcohol. My friend, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you guys for listening. Please share this with someone who needs it because remember every time you do, you're helping others turn their breakdowns to breakthroughs. It's traumas to triumphs and to be the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.