Does the thought of meeting up for a first date without alcohol sound crazy?

How will you start a conversation, have fun or start flirting with another person without it?

If these two questions left you feeling uncomfortable, scared or even intimidated, you're not alone.

Drinking has become a right of passage into adulthood and the way we socialize, celebrate, and relax after a long work day. But have you ever wondered if it's helping you long term, including finding a healthy relationship?

In today's episode I have Alcohol-Free Empowerment Expert, business coach, and author Karolina Rzadkowolska joining me.

She’s been featured in Real Simple, the Huffington Post, Elite Daily, PopSugar, and numerous TV shows to talk about living an alcohol free lifestyle.

We talk about how alcohol impacts our relationship with others and with ourselves. How it can hold us back from our someday goals and dreams in every part of our lives. Plus, you'll hear Karolina's path to living alcohol free and how it changed her relationship with her husband.

If you're curious about changing your relationship with alcohol, connect with Karolina below or buy her book,⁠ ⁠Euphoric: Ditch Alcohol and Gain a Happier, More Confident You.⁠⁠

Website: ⁠https://euphoricaf.com/⁠

Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/euphoric.af⁠

Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/reinventingthearena/⁠

Drink Moment: Use promo code REINVENTINGTHEARENA at checkout to receive 15% OFF your first purchase: ⁠https://drinkmoment.com/collections/shop⁠

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TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE

Molly Connolly (00:00.238)

Hey there, lady. You are listening to the reinventing the arena podcast. If this is your first time joining, welcome. I have a very special guest with me today, alcohol free and empowerment coach, Carolina Shadkowska. She's the bestselling author of your forewreck ditch alcohol and gain a happier, more competent you. Welcome to the show. I've been looking forward to chatting with you for weeks. Molly, it's such a pleasure. I'm so excited.

Well, thank you so much. I just have to say, I know I mentioned this earlier, listening to you on Jenna Kutcher's podcast and reading your book, Euphoric, I feel that the alcohol -free lifestyle is a path that I want to be on. And I was curious if you would share about your path to an alcohol -free lifestyle and actually how that even led to your greater purpose. Yeah, thank you so much.

I really do believe that it's the most intuitive women who decide to reevaluate the role of alcohol in our lives because other than that, it's such a automatic habit. You know what I mean? Like we start drinking often when we're in college or high school or grad school, whatever it is. And then it's just something we repeat kind of without thinking about as just part of our social fabric of our lives. And so, you know, when I was growing up, obviously that's kind of my story. I went to college, I partied way too hard. I learned to drink then and I definitely was overdoing it.

But as I grew up, I also started to kind of settle down and get really into health and mindfulness. And so by the time I'm in my late twenties, early thirties, I do the healthiest things during the week, Monday through Thursday, I'm drinking green juices. I'm going to yoga classes. I'm meditating all that stuff. And every single weekend alcohol still plays a huge role. You know, I go out with my friends, Netflix and wine at home, your wedding, your happy hour, your sushi night, whatever, no matter what, every single weekend alcohol was involved.

And every single Monday I woke up with this crushing shame. I woke up feeling obviously groggy, tired. And just like all that progress I made throughout that healthy week was completely bulldozed by the weekend. And I would look at my calendar and I'd just be like, can we please just take a break? Can I please just have some space away from this? And I would be like, no, but you have that networking event on Friday or whatever it was.

Molly Connolly (02:13.87)

And I just like, wasn't granting myself that permission to explore an alcohol -free lifestyle. I thought I basically assumed I had to drink. And, you know, with the kind of black and white ways of thinking about alcohol in the past, especially, it's kind of like either you have a huge problem and you have to quit or you're normal and you should keep drinking to just, you know, put up that facade for everyone.

And so I was also really stuck with that. I was like, well, I can't just quit. So I need to just drink less, you know? And drinking less was also miserable because I had so many rules around it. I had so much mental gymnastics I went through, like, well, should I, should I not, should I just have the one, but like, it was monkey mind on fire in my brain all the time. And it was actually hearing of dry January for the first time that really gave me this like light bulb moment of like, I am allowed to take a break and I don't have to explain it to everyone.

And that for me like was again that permission I really needed to try this lifestyle on. And I did, and I honestly fell in love. You know, I fell in love with how amazing I felt every morning. I fell in love with how restful my sleep was. I fell in love with how much my sense of gratitude was increasing every day. My sense of like wonder and appreciation was going up. I found myself enjoying more mundane moments. Like a hike was just incredible to me and just really noticing myself in love with nature more.

So January is great, but now February comes around and the dry January part is over. And so, you know, I start drinking again, basically at social events, because again, I still have this really strong belief that a normal adult drinks. And if I want to be a normal adult, I have to drink. And the few times I drink in February were such a stark contrast to January. You know, even a few drinks would completely ruin my sleep, would make me feel kind of.

frustrated even pretty quickly after drinking. I noticed how elevated my mood was in January and like one or two drinks in, I noticed I'm picking fights with my husband. I'm getting impatient. Like my mood is really crashing. So I was like, whoa, wait a minute. Like here I'm drinking cause I think it's supposed to be fun. And yet this is not fun. None of this is really that enjoyable or pleasurable. So that's when I decided to take another break from alcohol and that break basically lasted over five years. And I continued to be alcohol free.

Molly Connolly (04:28.686)

And what ended up happening was that every single week and month that went by, I really had this incredible evolution mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, which I talk a lot about in my book. You know, not only was my physical body healing and just incredible things happening on that level, my wellbeing, my sense of just wellness every day and how I show up for myself and taking care of myself, but also things like my emotional health, my self -love is increasing, my self -esteem is increasing.

And my confidence increases so much that all these things I never thought I could do in life all of a sudden become possibilities. And so from there, I essentially changed my life so much. I went after things I always wanted, but was not having the courage to do. I launched my business. I became a coach. I wrote this book. And what I can really see now in hindsight was that huge reason why I was drinking was out of boredom and a lack of fulfillment in my life. So it was like,

Monday through Friday couldn't go fast enough so I could get to the weekend to unwind with alcohol. And really by redesigning my life in this way, I've now built in fulfillment into my everyday, right? I'm not looking for that drink that high at the end of the weekend. I've really created the life I love. So that's kind of the story in a nutshell. That's a fantastic story. And you know, how you got started even just analyzing like the Monday through Friday, there's so many people that can relate to that, that they're only, they're waiting for the weekend.

And then they have the Sunday scaries before they go into Monday, either to a job they don't want or whatnot. And they, you know, wait till Thursday, Thursday to start drinking again. And I, I really love how you even talked about by taking such a, a break for dry January and then trying it out again in February, just brought this more sense of awareness of what you really wanted in your life, which obviously has led you to where you are right now.

which is fantastic. Five years. I remember reading in the book that you even said that you always wanted to write the great, you know, next American novel and you just kept putting it off and like now look at what you've done. It's fantastic. Yes. And yet I have a line about that where like when I was drinking, it was so much easier to just open that bottle of wine than do that big dream. You know what I mean? And so to me, all my goals and dreams, like

Molly Connolly (06:42.734)

I put off as these someday goals. I didn't really, really believe they're possible for me. Someday I'll do that. Someday maybe if a magic genie grants me a wish, this is what I'd want, but I wasn't actively working on them whatsoever. And in the five years alcohol -free, like what I've achieved and like how I've redesigned my life, I mean, it's not just me, it's so many women I worked with who have this incredible explosion of not only confidence, self -love, courage, ambition that really does help them go after what they want to.

yeah, cause they see you as a role model, you know, that's even better. Like they could work with you one -on -one or in a group setting and then get to also say, well, she's done it. I can do it too. It's fantastic. Absolutely. Can you share more about like how the culture and the personal relationships impact how we view drinking, even if that's how we just engage with others, you know, not wanting to be judged for.

you know, not drinking or those self -imposed interpretations of who we're supposed to be in certain situations like the wedding and the networking. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I just want to preface to say that, you know, as the science gets more and more comprehensive and really updated, we're really learning that there's just no safe amount of alcohol. That's really good for the body, right? But that hasn't really become a mainstream idea yet because essentially us, we are completely socialized and surrounded by alcohol. So you grow up,

I literally believe that drinking is a rite of passage. You go through from being a child or an adolescent into someone who starts drinking alcohol. You saw adults doing it. You saw TV shows, you saw movies, and one day you become the person who does it too. It literally is a rite of passage. And it does, whether you go through in college or whatnot, there's a place and time for everyone's life where it's just the norm. And if you want to belong, you better adopt that norm as well.

So let's like recognize how powerful that is on all of us, right? In addition to that, then it's baked into every social institution for the rest of our lives. You can go to any social event past 5 p alcohol is gonna be included. And if you don't drink at that event, then that raises the red flag or the questions, right? So it's this expectation then that's placed on us to drink at every social occasion. Back in the 90s also, there was this one person who started saying that red wine is good for the heart and you should drink every single day.

Molly Connolly (09:03.086)

This has now been completely debunked in all of the science about how bad alcohol actually is for the heart. But what essentially happens over the last three decades is alcohol is touted as a health average. You should be drinking every day. So not only are we taking alcohol as this thing you always do socially, now doctors are telling us to do at home, drink every night with dinner, right? All of this together makes, you know, alcohol seriously just so prolific in our lives. It's, it's everywhere. And, you know, for the most part, most people don't go to a dinner party.

and everyone gets poured one drink and then they all stop and that's the end of the party, right? No, we drink and we drink and we drink and a Sunday fun day or a party or, you know, it's just so normal to see people continuing to drink. And so I think what happens is that we take in all these messages that, well, drinking like this must not be bad, right? Everyone's doing it. What am I supposed to make of this, you know?

And I think too, that when you then start questioning those health effects that really do hit you when you're very aware and you're very intuitive, nobody feels good after drinking the next day. Nobody, even just one glass, like it changes your body. Your body has to detox this poison. I think we start ignoring that voice because we see this social pressure, this social code of belonging, this just social way of doing things.

And so then when you do start questioning the relationship you have with alcohol, that's a huge frontier to crossover of like, what are people going to think of me? Are people going to judge me? What am I going to say? All these kinds of things. I actually think it's a really incredible personal growth challenge though, because it's like you are putting yourself, your values and your self love over what people think of you over, right? The expectation other people have for your life. And so women often grow even more through this.

And it's just an incredible journey to just affirm what's good for me. It doesn't have to matter to anyone else, you know, like, and what we're really talking about at the end of the day is a beverage. Like, do you have the choice and the power to eat the foods you want to eat without anyone like breathing down your back? Why do we get so intense and so like crazy about what kind of drinks people are drinking? Someone chooses a mocktail at a party. Is it really that big of a deal? You know?

Molly Connolly (11:12.078)

And yet we have made it a big deal because culturally we've assigned so much meaning and value to alcohol. So it's an incredible journey to go on, you know, and it's honestly really made for the brave and for the wise. That's why I always applaud anyone who's reevaluating the role of alcohol in their life, because you could learn to not fit in, in a sense. Right. And make your own like new social circle of other people that are wanting to be daring and challenging at the same time. That's impactful.

What I really love about all of this too is discussing how it's ingrained. And even when you know, you've mentioned in the book too, that it's not like you just decided out of nowhere. You had been thinking about this for months, if not years. Can you discuss even how just that's so normalized with the relationship with alcohol, with, you know, thinking about it, but not taking this step like immediately in doing cold Turkey. Yeah, absolutely.

Again, anytime we wake up after drinking, like the body is offset, our neurochemicals are upset. Every time we drink alcohol, it's a depressant. And so alcohol actually induces our body to release stress hormones to combat that depressant. So we're releasing cortisol, adrenaline, dinorphin. Dinorphin makes us feel really low. So when the next day, if you feel a little, you know, anxious, if you feel a little lower than you did, you know, if you're feeling groggy, cause you didn't sleep well, cause alcohol also really distorts and disrupts our sleep.

it's normal to be like, gosh, I wish I didn't do that, right? We're left with the shame and the regret. And so, you know, this doesn't just happen one time, like it keeps happening over and over and over again. And I think that, you know, it really takes a lot of courage to listen to that voice because that first year, like, well, what are you talking about voice? Everyone drinks, what do you want me to do? Right? You really want me to stop drinking or maybe it's not even a social pressure. Maybe it really just becomes a strong habit. And in the moment, it feels like such a reward.

you know, not the next day, obviously that feels like a punishment, but in the moment it feels such a reward. And we get so attached to how that meets some of our emotional needs in that moment. So it's a really hard thing to swallow to imagine, you know, going cold Turkey. I also think the brain is really not good with the word forever. And so oftentimes we have this proposition in front of us. Well, either a drink or I have to quit forever. You know, what are you going to choose? Obviously, right. Let's just keep drinking, keep with the familiar, keep what we've always been doing.

Molly Connolly (13:31.79)

And that's what I really love about the idea of taking a break. Like you were allowed to experiment. You're allowed to explore just trying on something for a little bit to see how it feels, to see how it compares to the other way, right? It's kind of like apples to oranges. And in my book, you're given a two week or two month plan to follow in order to do so. And really in order to not only, you know, take that break, but also clear the mindset of its attachments to alcohol so that you're not left with any desires towards the end.

And again, at that point, it's everyone's choice. Do you want to go back to alcohol? Great, sure. You tried it. Now you know, do you want to continue in this alcohol -free lifestyle? So many people choose that way because they just feel so on fire, so alive, so empowered in this new road.

Molly Connolly (00:00.398)

So it's actually normal, back to your question, for us to think about it for years without doing anything about it. I think the average is like seven years. wow. And for me, I was like always, like ever since probably 2012 and I stopped drinking in 2018, I was always trying to monitor and moderate it. Like I actually had a spreadsheet on my computer that listed how many drinks I had that week. And I was always trying to get like, you know, seven or under.

And I'd be so proud of myself when I could put like zero or one. And then I was like, I went to a party and I'm like, I'm not even writing that number down. That's just embarrassing. So like I was in a way devoting so much of this like thought and just like, you know, I, the intention was like, I want less and less of this in my life, but I wasn't really brave enough to kind of do very much about it, you know? So it was taking up a lot of space.

And that's again, why I find just women are so intuitive is cause there is that intuitive kind of like, what if my life would be better without this? What if my wellness was like, you know, on fire without this? What if I committed to my dreams, my goals? What if my self care went up? What if my relationships got better? You know, there's those questions, but they also are very scary questions cause it causes us to leave our comfort zone into the unknown. For so long, I can only imagine filling out that spreadsheet that you mentioned.

Go ahead. Sorry. I was saying seriously, I could have written three books in the time I was spending on that spreadsheet. Very true. I used to have a spreadsheet for like how to have, you know, decipher what I wanted in a man and how I found my husband. I can only imagine like doing that with alcohol paired with the dating part. I will have to say that I've been using some of the tips that you have shared in your book as well as you've shared on other podcasts.

And what I find is that when I've been around others and they offer me a drink, I am doing that one positive tip of saying my sleep is so much better, which 100 % it is. It's like, I go to sleep, I wake up and I'm like, did I really sleep? Cause I feel extremely rested, but that was just like a flash. I've been talking about lowering my stress levels and even how my eating habits have changed. I'm eating so much healthier. I'm so much more aware of what I'm eating.

Molly Connolly (02:17.678)

Would you share a tip or two in case anyone else is thinking about testing out the alcohol -free lifestyle? Absolutely. So, you know, finding a time to commit to is beautiful. And honestly, wherever you are to start with, like that's why we have the month long challenges. There's two months that you'll go through, but you know, honestly, if you're so used to having alcohol around a lot, you know, even three days is like working out new muscles that haven't been worked out in a while, just feeling your emotions, getting going through the night with different rituals and stuff like that.

when it comes to some tips, you know, I definitely think that you don't want to deprive yourself because if you equate going alcohol free with deprivation for a long time, the brain registers alcohol as a reward because you have this queue, you know, you have a long week or you got on a date or whatever it is, the queue announces the reward is coming. And so when we remove that reward, we just feel deprived and that's no way to live. Right. That's not going to be sustainable.

So it's really good to relook at your rituals and really recognize how do you reward yourself at the end of a day, at the end of a hard week, on a day at a restaurant and find new ways to do that. So the easiest thing you could possibly do is mocktails. I love alternate alcohol -free drinks. There's so many available now. There's literally thousands of beverages on the market, whether it's alcohol -free wine or beer or spirits or new concoctions, new mocktails, new like health elixirs out there. Like there's a zillion ways.

What's really interesting is that there's study that once proved that basically they took brain nodes and put them on people who just left work. So they were able to measure their brainwaves and everyone's brainwaves are pretty chaotic. They're pretty stressed out. It's the end of a work day, right? And everyone sits down at a bar and restaurant and orders a drink. And all of a sudden the brainwaves start to relax, start to smooth out. Now the kicker is nobody actually drank the drink yet. They just ordered it.

wow. It's almost like our brain anticipates the permission to relax, not the ethanol itself. Right. And we can do that again in other rituals. Like we can sit down with our mocktail at 6 PM and have the same kind of sense of relaxation. Now mocktails are an easy, like just replacement, but I also really recommend exploring other rituals that are going to bring you that relaxation, that decompression you're looking for. For example, I love yin yoga. I love doing breath work.

Molly Connolly (04:35.054)

And for me, even just getting outside to walk, watching the sunset somewhere or seeing a view like that, it just takes out all the petty concerns of my life. And it's just like, wow, there's a beautiful masterpiece that was just painted for me by the universe. You know, like it just reconnects to me to something bigger. So I definitely recommend exploring new rituals and new ways to kind of decompress and relax or new ways to have fun. If you think about it, you know, for so long, we've been conditioned to believe that alcohol is our biggest source of fun.

And I think it actually robs us of really learning and knowing what brings us true fun and true joy. So I just remember trying a ton of new things when I was going alcohol free at first, new meetups, new classes, new adventures, just like really what is fun? And if you think about it as children, we had so much going on. We were climbing trees, we were rollerblading, we were putting on plays. We did so much actively in order to create fun in our lives.

And now as adults, it's like, we just want to sit passively and have a drink, entertain us, right? Like that's not real fun at the end of the day. That's just messing with the neurochemicals of the brain, you know, for a short time. So it really gets to be, you know, this experimentation on all accounts of like, how do I really want to decompress? How do I really want to have fun in my life and bring excitement in my life? How to not feel deprived, right? By having a source of pleasure in your life.

in so many ways and that I'll leave there for some starter tips, definitely some more in the book. Well, that's fantastic. And that kind of leads me into, you know, we have these rituals that we have around dating. It's like we get on the apps, at least my previous dating experience, obviously now I'm married. I don't get on dating apps, but like hypothetically speaking, we would get on dating apps.

We look, we start a connection with someone and then it's instantly like, let's meet for happy hour or let's meet at this bar on Saturday night. Now it's about starting new rituals with then going alcohol free or doing the mocktail. Is there anything that you would say about having a woman learn how to take that first step in being alcohol free in the dating scene? absolutely. And again, that's obviously another scenario where it's just expected that you're going to drink.

Molly Connolly (06:49.006)

One, I think it's beautiful that a woman will stand firm in her values and really like show herself love and what that denotes to then the partner about how much she values herself, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but if there's ever been a date that you've gone on where you drank too much, I mean, what kind of impression does that give the man, right? That you don't care about yourself, that you're just like, you know, all over the place type of thing, right? Not a great impression. And so I think it's completely within our wheelhouse to decide, you know, I'm not gonna drink this night and

I think too, it's an option to get creative, you know, to like even recommend maybe something else, like let's try a hike or maybe let's meet up for bowling or something just a little different to kind of spice it up. One, I think the connection is going to be a lot better if the person's on the same wavelengths. Obviously if the person just wants to drink, like just move on, obviously they're not even really probably looking for a real solid connection at that point point, but.

if they are on the same wavelength, like it actually can breed such a stronger connection. I really do believe that an artificial connection made over alcohol is going to lead to artificial results down the line, right? So like when you really are both present with each other, you can actually talk, you can listen in a different way. It just builds something so much stronger, something a little bit even more vulnerable, because you're both being a little vulnerable to just show up as you are instead of using alcohol to mask anything. So it can really be a stronger connection.

Obviously I know not everyone's going to be on that same wavelength, you know, but do you really want to go out on dates with like a Peter Pan type of person who still hasn't kind of grown up emotionally, spiritually, or someone who's really looking to, you know, honor you and take care of you and really appreciate your growth as well. And when I look at it that way, to me, some of the biggest movers and shakers on this planet don't drink or drink so infrequently that it's just super irrelevant, right? Like Tony Robbins does not drink. Deepak Chopra does not drink.

You know, Brene Brown doesn't drink. And I really noticed too, when you elevate yourself to a crowd of people who are, you know, on their emotional healing journey, on a spiritual journey, on a business journey, alcohol just isn't that relevant in those kinds of spaces, right? So like, what if you were able to attract like such a higher level person because, you know, alcohol is not involved. And again, like when I go to like conferences or...

Molly Connolly (09:02.766)

things around like seven figure entrepreneurs, athletes, those kinds of people, like alcohol just isn't necessarily a big part of the equation. So again, like this idea that everyone drinks and they're going to like feel awkward if you're not drinking, you know, there's definitely a group of people out there who aren't and who might also be more aligned with your growth lifestyle and what you really want out of a partner versus, you know, the Peter Pan syndrome, which we've all been there. We've all had that, but you know, I, I honestly sometimes equate alcohol to like an ex boyfriend.

because like we all had those exes who weren't very caring about us, did not appreciate us, put us down, you know, we're just cared about what they wanted and stuff like that. And there's just so many ways that alcohol doesn't care about your wellbeing, promises it's going to be different every time, only it's not, you know what I mean? It's so similar. So it's like ditch that and attract. Now you've created space in your life for what you really want. And if that's a relationship, you know, you've literally created the space and are honoring

a higher level connection with it too. So it's not easy by any means, obviously, right? And sometimes it might be easier to say it upfront, like maybe even in the app, like, Hey, I don't drink, but blah, blah, blah, blah, or not. I mean, like it doesn't have to be that big of a deal, but if it is a big deal to the other person, that's actually probably a really big red flag that they've got a lot of insecurities around their own relationship with alcohol. They're not comfortable being around someone who isn't drinking, which again, just begets the question, is this really the right, you know, partner for me at this time?

Yeah. And I love even how you brought up that the relationship with alcohol, with a man and woman, like just when you're out together and you're drinking, it just doesn't give you that authentic connection. And authenticity is one of my values. And so what I have noticed, even just with my husband and I, is that when we first started dating was right before the pandemic. And then of course, pandemic hit, and there was a lot of drinking involved. But as we have decreased our drinking,

our own sort of values have shown up individually. And then our contribution to the relationship has changed. And it's been stronger because we've allowed ourselves to have these deeper, authentic and vulnerable conversations that I have never really had in other relationships because alcohol was always there and was always the social activity or the way to feel sexy and romantic and like, Ooh, we're going to have a nice dinner. We might as well get a bottle of wine. And while those things seem great,

Molly Connolly (11:27.342)

That totally keeps the relationship no matter the duration at a surface level. So I really appreciate you bringing that up. That's huge. Now, other than that, there is an awesome little cool thing. Well, it's not cool. It's not small. You did something fantastic with you and your husband. Like you guys used to when you were drinking and then you decided to switch. Can you talk about that amazing sort of dating transition that you guys did together? Yeah. So yeah, I mean, our

whole relationship was built on alcohol. I mean, it was like furry, like Sunday fun days by the pool and going to winery tastings and, you know, dinner with drinks and all that stuff. So, you know, when I decided to take a break, we kind of had to reevaluate, like, how do we spend quality time together? And there's often sometimes no matter what, if you're in a relationship, when it comes to alcohol, someone's going to go first. You know what I mean? Maybe the other person isn't even meant to reevaluate their relationship, but like, usually I find the women goes first. And so often a question I get from

my clients is like, how do I move forward on this lifestyle without creating a rift with my partner? Cause that is how we spend so much quality time together. And my answer back to them is like, you have to be very intentional about that quality time. Like it is changing and it might not be the same that it always was, you know? And so like being intentional, again, more creative about how you spend time together, super important. So for example, my husband and I, we signed up for a half marathon together.

And now date nights were off the couch with the wine onto the trails and to running. And we would just run together and talk while we're running it. I make training so much more enjoyable. We started playing board games a lot more together. We started going on hikes together, just exploring a lot more things together. And I would say that like refocusing on bonding with him outside of alcohol really helped to rebond our relationship a lot stronger.

And then once I was comfortable sharing with him, like this, the whole why behind my decision to, you know, go without alcohol, that also bonded us in a way, you know, because like, no matter who you're talking to, you're not the only one who feels worse for wear after drinking. Like you guys, it's like you're finally calling the elephant in the room sometimes. And that kind of level of vulnerability might even make you grow closer with the people you're having that conversation with. Obviously not all people, you need a very emotionally mature person to have that with, but.

Molly Connolly (13:46.926)

you know, hopefully with a partner that that's solid and that's there. So I would say like, we kind of fell in love with each other. And then as I, you know, really got new ambitions and new goals and new dreams and grew my business and kind of changed our lifestyle. I mean, I quit my job, for example, I retired my husband later than that. Now we go travel the world together while building this company together. Like we have a completely different relationship than we did back then.

And I have inspired him to grow, you know, not only does he barely drink, I mean, he still has it occasionally, which is kind of irrelevant, doesn't matter to me, but also too, I've really inspired him to grow in so many different ways. So it's like, anytime we're holding ourselves back in fear of losing another person, we're actually stunting their growth too, right? We're stunting their opportunity to change and evolve and all these kinds of things. So, you know, relationships are meant to evolve together. And I think again,

with the right framing. It's just another beautiful exploration into how can we bond better and more. And I mean, even having sex, if people are used to only initiating sex when they're drinking after a date night or something, that's a whole new territory to explore, right? And what a beautiful invitation to actually really connect authentically and ask yourselves what brings us pleasure, what intimacy looks like for us, what does connection really look like? What do we want out of our sex lives? So all of it to me is just a beautiful invitation.

Yeah, I really love that encompassing everything and how to really build up the relationship to be even stronger just by removing one thing out of your life. Yeah. another wonderful thing, if you guys go and check out her Instagram, she just, well, depending on when you listen to this, you and your husband just took a trip to, was it Japan and Bali or was it

One of the other, I can't recall. Yeah. No, we went to Japan, Australia, and Bali recently. my goodness. And see, like, this is the stuff. Like she has really figured out her purpose and her passion just by really evaluating your relationship with alcohol and, you know, creating the book and helping other people become alcohol -free coaches, all these wonderful things that then you and your husband get to go and experience a different sort of life together. So that is fabulous.

Molly Connolly (15:58.158)

Such an inspiration. I mean, when I was stuck in my cubicle waiting for that Friday night, like this was the dream. This was the unfathomable lifestyle back then, you know, and to like really show the power of baby steps and intentionality and removing what doesn't serve us. You know, alcohol sometimes does serve us as we're growing up, right? It helps you maybe get out of your shell or make friends or whatever. We don't have to completely villainize it, but today is it serving who you want to become?

You know, is it still that or is it an outdated pattern, outdated habit that we can kind of let go of a little bit so that we can welcome in the next chapter and the next version of our lives? Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I'm just curious, like, where can everyone find you? Tell me all the ways that they can like connect with you and where they can find your book. Awesome. For sure.

do check out euphoricaf .com. I have a really fun guide that's called 50 things to do instead of drinking. It's like a checklist, lots of fun ideas there. You can also learn more about my programs, working with me, going on any retreats. I love hosting retreats around the world. That's why I was in Bali. all there. And then you can also find Euphoric, any bookstore, Google Euphoric in the Amazon, you'll find it there, or you could go directly to www .euphoricbook .com.

And then I'm also pretty active on Instagram. That's at euphoric .af. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today. I cannot wait to hear the feedback from my listeners as well as having my husband listen to this episode, just so he can see what is in front of us. So, well, thank you, Molly. I had a great time.