We’re having a heart-to-heart on The Hormone Hub that you won’t want to miss. We’re speaking with Lauren Howman about embracing a sober life, and why it might just be the best decision you make for your health, especially during perimenopause and menopause.
🍷 The Sobering Truth
Alcohol Use Disorder in women in their 40s and 50s has skyrocketed by over 80% in the past 30 years. These aren’t necessarily women pouring vodka on their Cornflakes. Often these are high functioning women, who are self medicating as a coping strategy.
🚺 Age, Alcohol, and Menopause
As we age, our body’s ability to metabolise alcohol changes, impacting our menopause journey more than we realise. Women in their 40s and 50s are hitting the bottle more than ever, and it’s time we talk about the real effects this has on our health.
🥂 The Culture of Cheers
Regular drinking has become a norm, but at what cost? We’re discussing the specific health risks women face from significant alcohol consumption and why it’s time for a cultural shift.
💡 Creating a Life You Adore, Sans Alcohol
Imagine a life where you wake up every day feeling clear, focused, and energised. We’re demolishing the myth that life without alcohol is dull and shining a light on the vibrant reality that awaits.
👯 Navigating Social Waters
The pressure to partake in a drink can be overwhelming. We’re arming you with strategies to stand your ground and stay true to your sober journey, without losing connections.
🎉 The Sober Glow
Hear Lauren’s experience of saying goodbye to alcohol. The benefits are boundless, from enhanced energy to deeper sleep and beyond.
This episode is more than just a podcast; it’s a lifeline for anyone feeling alone in their struggle with alcohol, a celebration of the sober curious, and encouragement for those thinking of an alcohol-free future.
Tune in to “Loving a Sober Life” on The Hormone Hub Podcast and discover the steps to reclaiming your health, your joy, and your life. Just imagine the possibilities that await.
P.S. Remember, you’re not alone on this journey. Join us in the community afterwards to share your thoughts, questions, or simply to find support among friends who get it. 💕
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Transcript
#108 Loving a Sober Life
Kylie: [00:00:00] Welcome back to episode of the Hormone Hub Podcast, where we talk all things perimenopause, menopause, and have the conversations no one else is having. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this episode.
Kylie: Hello, hello, ladies, and welcome back to the Hormone Hub. And, today is going to be a great conversation. I don’t know if we’ll have our conversations great, but, I’ve just before we hit record, we were having a really good conversation, and I think you’re really going to enjoy today.
So we have Lauren Howman as our guest and Lauren is a mom of four. She’s a nurse practitioner, an army veteran, an entrepreneur, and a life and sober coach, which yeah, is quite the skillset there. So yeah, Lauren, welcome to the show.
Lauren: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And yes, we were having a fabulous conversation before you ever hit record.
So I imagine it’ll be fun.
Kylie: Absolutely. It’s always one of those things. We start chatting and then I’m like, Oh gosh, [00:01:00] you we better hit record. Otherwise, yeah, we would have talked about all the things that we’re talking about. Right. Lauren and I connected. She was looking to be a speaker on podcasts and, mentioned what caught my eye was the fact that she was a sober coach.
And we’ve talked about the impacts previously on the show of alcohol and how it can sort of impact us during perimenopause and menopause. But it’d be, yeah, it’s great to have the conversation of someone who’s walked that walk and has come out the other side and now helps other women as a sober coach.
So should, maybe we’ll start with your story, Lauren, and how the good, bad and the ugly and how you sort of came out the other side and where you are today.
Lauren: Sure. So one thing that I do know is that anyone listening and again, thank you for having me. We have this like gray area of problem drinkers.
And so it’s like, am I a problem? Is this a problem? Is this not a problem? I’ll first off just say that [00:02:00] it’s always just based on, is it a problem for you? And if you’re starting to listen to my story and you’re like, Oh yeah, that sounds really familiar. It’s okay. We always that we can’t talk about it because there’s so much stigma against anyone who’s having a problem with alcohol, , any other drug.
It’s like, oh, my gosh, let’s get Lauren and rehab. She somehow got addicted to heroin. I don’t know how it got started, but poor Lauren. But if I come across as someone with an alcohol problem. It’s not poor Lauren. It’s like you’re weak. You’re broken. And so there’s all this stigma about talking about, , to even raise your hand and say to a girlfriend, like, Hey, do you think maybe we’re drinking too much?
Yeah. So, because there’s just so much negative juju around it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
Kylie: Sorry. Just to interrupt that. I always think too, like if you’re questioning. yourself on how much you’re drinking or you are waking up with regret the next morning or, oh, I’m never going to do that again. It’s likely that there’s a, there’s a problem there.
Lauren: Right. [00:03:00] Absolutely. It’s, it’s, if you’re, if you’re having any of those questions, any of those regrets, if you’re telling yourself that you’re not going to drink today, but then you end up at the store a couple hours later, cause you’ve talked yourself into it. So there’s so many different things, but really if you’re questioning it and you’re searching on Google.
People that don’t have a problem, they’re not searching because they’re not thinking about this.
Kylie: Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Lauren: So, well, anyway, what I was gonna say is that so listening to me tell my story briefly before we can have this conversation as well you may hear parts of my story that you’re like, oh, man, I do that as drinkers, because we’re not talking about it publicly.
We think we do all these unique. things like you’re the only person that may be hiding airport bottles in your dresser, or you’re the only person that goes to the kitchen and pours a glass of wine, chugs it and then refills it. So everybody thinks you’re having one, but you just had two in that space of time.
So you think that you’ve invented all these new things and that what you’ve done is just so shameful and so different. And what you come to find out, if you actually speak to people who are willing [00:04:00] to talk about it, is that. Everybody’s doing like, right? Like everybody’s doing something like that. So it’s just an interesting thing.
I, I grew up in a normal house. My parents actually weren’t drinkers which is different from a lot of people who find themselves with a problem with alcohol, but my parents were not. My dad might have a beer once a year. My mom was nothing. She didn’t like it. So Moving out on my own, of course, we started to dabble with alcohol and it was never a really big issue or anything in my life, but as we started to go along through college through early twenties, late twenties, I just started to pick up the habit of, during the college years, it was that the binge drinking on the weekends.
We’d all go out. Get hammered and then sleep into the next day till like two o’clock, eat some pizza, go back out again, do the same. And through my later twenties and thirties, I just started kind of increasing that weekend. So now it included Thursday and then suddenly it was Wednesday too. And we’re getting older [00:05:00] and we’re married and we’re not going out all the time.
So then you can just have a glass every night. There’s always a bottle on the counter open. And Eventually it just turned into a daily or almost daily thing. I will say daily, unless I was trying to make a point of saying, Oh, look, I can go a day without, so, but that didn’t really come until I was maybe 37 or 38.
And so I had this long history from like probably 18 to then and pregnancies and nursing babies. I didn’t drink during any of that. But it just started to be a thing. And I started to recognize. After I had my second child, I was almost 38 when I delivered him and I started to kind of recognize like, wow, this actually, I thought I liked it.
I thought it was just who I was. It was part of my personality. I’m starting to see like, this is actually kind of got a hold on you, girl. Like you’re saying you’re not going to drink and then you are drinking and it’s causing problems in your marriage because my husband was also a very casual drinker and it’s causing problems because he’s like, what are you [00:06:00] doing over there?
Like. You’ve had a bottle already. What’s happening? So then I started hiding alcohol so I could have my one bottle and that would be it. Yeah, according to his eyes, but This is actually my bedroom. It’s where my office is because it’s this wonky long crazy bedroom with a lot of space Yeah, my dressers over here.
Yeah, and you can hide bottles. He’s not going in my sock drawer so I could be in here Working at my computer and I’ve got my glass of wine from the kitchen But then I’ve also got what I can pour in here. And so just all these different ways to get more Because as you drink more and more and become addicted or dependent upon it, however, you want to say it It takes more and more Yeah, and you’re not feeling the feel good feelings.
And even for a lot of people, you’re not even having a good time anymore, , when I was drinking as a casual drinker as a college drinker, we were having a great time, like, even with the hangovers, we were willing to do it again. Yeah, but I wasn’t even having a good [00:07:00] time. Yeah. So very functional. I went to work every day as a nurse practitioner, nine to five.
Every day. And I didn’t drink during the day. , people think, oh, well, you must have not been that bad. You weren’t drinking while you were working or you weren’t drinking in the morning. I was doing all of the functional things that I needed to do.
Kylie: And that’s it. And I think alcoholism, it, there’s so many different ways it can look.
, it’s not the wino in the park with a brown paper bottle. It’s not the, the mum who’s putting vodka on a cereal in the morning. , it can be, , and I think what, who are the women that I speak to, , are essentially functioning alcoholics. So, , they’re very capable and, yeah, and, and get, get what they need done in their day.
Lauren: Right, I would even gander that the functional alcoholics are those people that are naturally just really talented in what they do and they are really successful, bright, capable people. And might we have [00:08:00] gotten in this little pickle that we’re in because of. How much we are able to do and we’re numbing against the toll that that takes on us.
The hustle culture. The workaholic life. Yeah. So I feel a lot of the numbing and drinking comes with that personality type
Kylie: sometimes. Yeah. That, that driven type, a high achiever. And then yeah, there, there needs to be an off switch and alcohol becomes the off switch, right?
Lauren: Yeah. Right.
Kylie: So sorry, back to your story.
Lauren: Oh, no problem. So at some point I just knew, and then, , it was always, at least I didn’t drink in the morning or at least I’m, I’m never going to drink and drive. I did when I was younger, I’m not going to lie, but like as a grown 40 year old that was drinking or 35 year old I was being safe, but , I had kids at home and if daddy was supposed to be home in 30 minutes, I would definitely start drinking.
And so in that 30 minutes where I’m thinking we’ll be good. Something could have happened, so I’m not going to say that I was a [00:09:00] problem. But it just became pretty apparent to me that I was really out of control and it was impacting my parenting, my relationship with my husband. It was impacting my work in the way that I was not giving my best and That is not who I signed up to be as a nurse practitioner, as a mom, as a wife.
Right. So I tried to quit a million times, million and two. And I know we hear this story a lot, but when I really got sick and tired of myself, I just, I knew it was time. And I knew if I didn’t, that I was going to slide into that. picturesque Hollywood movie scene of the person on the bench with their paper bag and their bottle, no family, no kids.
And I was also growing a business at the time and my goal was to eventually be able to come home and work from home. And that was the other piece of the equation was that if I wanted to grow my business, I had to do that during my drinking time. Yes. Yeah. And so I was trying to play both as a health coach.
This is really fun. As a health [00:10:00] coach, I would time out, I would time out like when I, if I was on a phone call with like a 10 or 15 minute client and I was doing a couple of those, I could know if I was doing like, say five of those in the night after like the third one, I could go ahead and crack something open and start drinking.
And by the time we were done, I would be buzzed, but nobody would be able to tell. It was this ridiculous gymnastics of the mind trying to figure all this out. And a couple times it didn’t work well and I had to cancel calls because I was like, there’s no way I’m getting on the phone with somebody slurring or talking too loud or not catching the conversation.
Kylie: Yeah. And that’s the thing. We think we’re okay, but are we? Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. And then you get into the middle of a conversation and you’re like, I am not okay. And you’re like, shoot, I gotta end this. We gotta find a way to cut it. And then having that knowledge makes it even worse. I don’t know if anybody’s been in that situation where you’re trying to not act drunk or buzzed, and you are, and you’re like, [00:11:00] ooh, I think I’m probably making it worse by trying not to look that way.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I quit in the middle of June three and a half years ago. And What my message to people and the reason I became a sober coach was because the way I quit didn’t leave me in a state of deprivation, FOMO feeling like I was broken, feeling like I’m the only one that can’t handle it.
, I can’t have that cheeky glass of wine because one to me, I’m really going to do it up guys. Like I am going to take it all the way until we are dry or I’m passed out or blacked out somewhere. So it’s, it’s either the one. Or it’s none. I only get to make that choice for the first one.
Kylie: Yep. Yeah, that’s right.
And, so talk us through what that looked like for you when you stopped drinking.
Lauren: Sure. So I had had I’d had a couple of incidents where I just, like, , we all have the Regrets, not all of us but some of us who drink have those regrets the next day. Like you said something you shouldn’t have [00:12:00] said, or you hurt somebody’s feelings.
Maybe you smacked somebody or something. I don’t know. As a man, maybe you got in a fist fight. I don’t know. But we all had those things we regret. And something like that had happened to me, like, very recently. And then another one happened right on top of that. And that’s when I was like, we’re done.
But in the meantime, I had known for like two years that I was a problem. I knew I was a problem. I was trying to figure it out. I knew I needed to quit, but I wasn’t ready. So I started really listening to a lot of anti alcohol messaging. And one of the big people that used to have a lot on YouTube, and I’m sorry to tell everybody that most of his content is now paid you have to pay for it, but back in the day, free content from Craig Beck and his he’s the stop drinking expert.
And he also wrote the book alcohol lied to me. Are you familiar with it? No, not that one. Okay. He does a lot of other stuff too with manifestation and law of attraction, but he started with the the quit drinking expert thing and his message was that [00:13:00] you’re not broken. You don’t need to give your power away.
You actually just need to learn the truth about alcohol. And when you do that, you will naturally start to want to take part in it less and less. So when you can no longer pull the wool over the sheep’s eyes. So for somebody who’s a problem drinker, we make up all sorts of reasons that we need to drink, have to drink, should drink, have, , all of that.
And when we get down to it, why can’t you give up your wine? Well, I just like the taste of it. Or it makes me be able to be social. Without it, I can’t go out because people will either ask me why I’m not drinking or I’ll be too shy because I’m an introvert. And if you can take Social
Kylie: anxiety is, is big for a lot, a lot of people use alcohol as that crutch to get over that social anxiety too.
Lauren: Oh, absolutely. And we can touch on that in just a second, but, Yeah, so let’s do it. Yeah. Social anxiety. What I always tell people with my clients is that, , before we decided to start using alcohol all the time to kind of [00:14:00] grease the way and, like, really lubricate the social situation, we used to go into social situations.
Completely sober and we figured it out. So even back to when you were five and your mom would take you to a birthday party and you didn’t know the kids, you would kind of hang on to mom for five minutes and then you’d start to venture over, find one person and an hour later, mom couldn’t get you to leave if she wanted to.
Yeah. Yeah. So you learn that when we were five. Yeah. Wish you get that. And we intended to learn it. Yeah. Every year in grade school, every year in high school, we have learned. You walk into a new classroom, you don’t know everybody. And so you have to, it’s, it’s doing it. You just didn’t know that because back then it wasn’t available to you.
So you didn’t know there was another option. And thank goodness for that, I guess. Yeah,
Kylie: really.
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Kylie: Yeah, so the, the point of Craig Beck is that he His philosophy is that, , if we can break down all those lies, then You won’t be so blinded by it. I had wine up on a pedestal, many women. We’ve got this mommy wine culture.
We’ve got the, just the, , it’s five o’clock. It’s time for that wine. But he just kind of breaks everything down and shows you why it’s all a [00:16:00] lie. So, for instance, like, I like the taste of alcohol. If you think back, yes, alcohol can taste good if we do a whole lot of doctoring to it. Yeah. , you take vodka, I don’t think vodka would ever taste good to me.
The first time I ever tasted liquor, What did you do? You, you did a shiver, a shake, and you might have even dry heaved and had a struggle to keep it down. That’s not something that tastes good. Yeah. , wine is an acquired taste because it tastes terrible and the first time you have red wine, it about knocks you out.
Yes. Yeah. It’s not nothing, but we, yeah, it’s not. But we’ve decided that we will condition ourselves to tolerate the taste so that we can get the benefit that we think we’re getting from it, which is the buzz. But the truth is, it doesn’t taste very good. Once you get used to it, sure, you can drink it.
But it’s not like, think of something that’s really yummy. Like pineapple juice. Yeah. Or, anything else in the world. But [00:17:00] that’s not what you’re getting when you have that, like, deep red glass of wine, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we’ve been taught to put it on this pedestal. Oh, it’s amazing. And, and we spend all this money and time trying to be wine connoisseurs.
And, oh, I know so much about wine. And it’s got woody notes and fruity notes. And it doesn’t. Stop it.
After the second glass, it really doesn’t. It doesn’t at all. Yeah. Apart from the second mouthful, to be honest. Yeah.
So, after the first mouthful, it gets better. But even if you take, if you’re an occasional drinker, Probably every time you have a glass of wine, you’re like, Whoa, and then you just get used to it after a couple of minutes.
But even being away for, from it for about two weeks, you would have that initial shock again. So it’s just kind of deprogramming yourself, I would say, because I had made it my whole personality. It was my entire it was, I was in love with her. Okay. She was my bestie. And yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. So, but once I could see that my bestie was actually kind of backstabbing me the entire time.
I just didn’t know it was easier to walk away from it and then you end up in a situation where you’re not, you’re not sad. I can go to bars. I can pour you a glass of wine. I don’t care if you have three glasses while we hang out together. If you start to get really intoxicated, the only problem is that it kind of just brings down the vibe and it brings down the level of intelligence in the room.
I was going to say the quality of conversation. Yeah. Right,
right. Absolutely. So then I might, I might be like ready to get my keys and go, but also because I’m a non drinker, I’m going to want to go to bed at a normal time. And I’m not staying up to continue this, , pattern of just more, more, more.
So people who don’t abuse drugs every night go to bed. They don’t stay up till two, three in the morning at the age of 40, right?
Yeah, exactly. And how good do you feel the next day?
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Crazy. Amazing. Actually, one of my clients just texted me a picture. He had to host an event. He’s [00:19:00] brand new to sobriety to guys.
He texted me a picture of the bill. He hosted a like a happy hour for employees and some like guests that they had to wine and dine. And it was 10, 000. The tip was like 2, 300 if I’m doing my math right.
Yeah, wow, just on booze.
Well, and a little food.
And a little food, yeah. Token food.
Right. Just to show we’ve got something in our tummy.
Right. But yeah, and so he texted me this morning to first tell me he was proud of himself for not drinking and he did a great job, even being around everybody just getting sloshed. And he also got to go to work today and some of them called out, probably, and some of them came to work dragging, I’m sure.
Yeah, yeah. How miserable. I remember being that miserable, but showing up because. I had to, I needed to go to work. Right. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think, going back to what you [00:20:00] just said earlier, I think that’s a really important point is so the actual addiction to alcohol is, , as a drug is one thing.
But if you are. , you’ve decided that you want to change your relationship with alcohol. , I agree that willpower is, Oh, I’m not going to drink today. , and I’m, I’m strong. I can do this. I can, , Oh, look, there’s bottle shop. I’m just going to pick up a bottle of wine on the way home.
So relying on willpower. And I think willpower is not your friend. , so it’s, it’s willpower’s up there with alcohol as, you think it’s your bestie, but it’s really not. So it’s tapping into how you feel, , do I want to, hurt the people around me? Do I want to wake up with, , feeling terrible?
Do I want to, make an idiot of myself again? Do I want to, , and it’s then going, okay, well, alcohol makes me do that. And I don’t want that anymore. So it’s. And I think it’s, it’s probably against the traditional ways we’ve sort of looked at, , breaking addictions and alcohol [00:21:00] is, , because we’ve sort of gone, Oh, you must be really bad if you need to break up with it.
And, therefore you have a problem. You’re right. Whereas if you sort of look at it and go, I’m not the problem, alcohol is the problem. And I need to break up with, with that problem. Not me. So. I think it’s just, just flipping that narrative about it.
And not really wanting it because you don’t see it anymore.
No, no, that’s right. It becomes a friend who isn’t really a friend. Like you said, let him go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You later. It doesn’t serve me anymore. So off you go.
Yeah. Yeah. And so you, you hit a very good point because there’s the physical addiction and then there’s the mental addiction or, , that aspect that you need to deal with.
So I’m not saying that quitting alcohol was like, Oh, easy peasy, lemon squeezy, because I believe there was no benefit. It was still hard. Yeah. Yeah. The first couple days were not fun.
No, no, because there’s a physical [00:22:00] addiction. Like, there’s a physical component. So your body, your body hates you. , in those first few days.
Because, you’re not giving it what it’s used to. And, , our brain , likes to keep us safe. So our brain likes to keep us in that pattern that we’re used to. So if your pattern is to, , drink to unwind every night, and then all of a sudden you’re not doing that, your brain kind of goes, Oh, hang on a second.
Right. Yeah. And then uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s, I think, yeah, working through that. So someone in that sort of situation where they kind of go, there’s little bells going off going, Oh, what? I just want to change my relationship with alcohol. Where, where would you recommend people start?
It really depends on the person. So the. Most common thing is always going to be A. A. It’s 100 years old. It’s all you think about when you think about, Oh, I need to change my relationship with alcohol, which is really scary for people, by the way, because there’s a certain [00:23:00] population that doesn’t believe in God.
And this is a highly yeah, I will. God. A. A. Is very religious in its own right. foundation. But also it can be scary because you for me, I didn’t want to go the AA route only because as a nurse practitioner in a small town, if I showed up there, I would be sitting with some of my patients. And I felt that that would number one, it’s not anonymous, but number two It also, to me, felt like it would impact my credibility with my patients in my other setting, and so I didn’t really think it was an option for me, and a lot of people who who are in that situation are not going to want to do that, and maybe they don’t want to, , and there’s ways around it, of course, but AA is a great place, if it doesn’t resonate, I’m sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was just going to say, , because for a lot of people who, , recognize the fact that they’ve got problematic drinking may not identify as an alcoholic where, , that sort of mindset to get yourself to a point where you need to go to AA, , like [00:24:00] that, , like even my brain went immediately, oh, full blown alcoholic.
Oh, I’ve got a problem and I want to change my relationship with alcohol versus full blown. So it’s, I
gotcha. Yeah. Is that? Yeah.
Oh, I’m not that bad. So alcohol, this isn’t for me.
Oh, that’s interesting. There’s two ways to look at that too, and it happens in real life. So one is I’m not an alcoholic, so I’m not going there, or I don’t want to be labeled as an alcoholic, so I’m not going to go there.
Or, you don’t know where else to go, you show up there and you leave feeling like you don’t have a problem because honestly a lot of the people in AA were doing a lot more than what I was doing. Yeah. And so and I’ve heard this from every client that’s gone that it, that they felt like they, a lot of them got value too.
So let’s say that. But they would say that when they left, they felt like, gosh, maybe I’m just making this up. Maybe I can just continue on with my drinking patterns because I’m not, I’m not that bad. Yeah. Comparison. [00:25:00] Yeah. And a lot of people have co drugs that they’re doing at the same time. So they’re in AA and they’re also talking about the other stuff they’re doing.
And so as, as that wine mom, right, I’m thinking, Oh gosh, I’d never touch heroin or cocaine or meth. And these people are crazy. And so I don’t resonate with them. And now I feel like I don’t belong to. Yeah. And I’m not going to be able to even stand up because they’re all going to be like, Oh, go sit down somewhere.
You’ve got no problem. Yeah, go back to the
playground. Yeah,
no, it’s great for a subset of people though. And but if it doesn’t resonate with you, like it didn’t with me, I didn’t know about sober coaching. I’m sure it was available. But I didn’t know about it. Tick tock wasn’t around. And so, cool. I did it on my own with the knowledge that I had just two years of pounding this information into my brain.
Just every time I felt like really guilty about a night of drinking or something, I would just turn on Craig Beck on YouTube and just listen to the messages and listen to him talk about his life. And I could really relate to all of it because we all do the same [00:26:00] stuff. And so that’s what we bring this over coaching.
So as a coach that’s what I bring to the table. I talk to people like this on a zoom back and forth. And it’s a special relationship because we can be really honest, I understand you and even if we weren’t doing exactly the same thing, we were doing the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If I’m going to do it for you as a coach, right?
Yeah,
and you can call it behavior for what it is. Yes. I think it’s, it’s human nature to justify what we do. Whereas, yeah, you can see it, because you’ve been there, and you can call it for what it is. So, yeah. Yes,
and I can spot when they’re still lying to themselves, and I can spot when they still have a misconception about alcohol, or or feeling, like, a little bit of FOMO, like, oh, , woe is me, and I can spot that, and we can start to work on that, and all of the root causes, , and that’s a lot of what you talk with your listeners about is getting to the root of it.
Not wanting it anymore and then building a life [00:27:00] back. So sober coaching is a really great option for someone who does not feel like they need to go sit on a metal fold out chair and have their cup of coffee and their styrofoam cup. Or if you would just like to be anonymous. A lot of my clients don’t want to.
And don’t want to have this title follow them around. And it just made me think of something with titles because you had said earlier something about kind of levels and how we blame the person with the alcohol problem. Whereas, what I said in my example of poor Lauren with the heroin, let’s get her some help.
We’re gonna, we’re gonna rally around her. But it’s poor Lauren instead of Lauren is weak. It’s so interesting that. Once you go through this whole process, we start to get to all these different levels of like, All of these emotional things and kind of where you’ve been where we’re going and we’re just like building this entire thing around I don’t know, I just completely lost my space.
One thing about Lauren is I have ADHD. I absolutely have ADHD. Maybe you can just burn that one part of the tape. [00:28:00]
But what though, it’s I was going somewhere. Oh yeah, we’re going, okay, now we’re going off on a totally different tangent. Sorry. I went to an adult ADHD seminar last year because I haven’t been diagnosed, but highly suspect I have ADHD.
And yeah, I ticked a lot of boxes when I was sitting at that seminar. But one of the things was, , with that executive functioning part of the brain is, , we, And because ADHD in women shows up very differently, so we be the good girl, we go to work, we go to school, we go to college, we do what we need to do, we conform all day, and that executive functioning part of our brain, , struggles so hard to hold it together.
So then when we go home, we need a release. And for a lot of women. And, , I would put perimenopause in this as well because, , there’s a lot of hormonal changes as well going on at that same time is we need that release. So it can show up as, , we drink alcohol to numb things down.
We do online [00:29:00] shopping just to, , get that little dopamine hit. When we, when we hit by it can show up as, , promiscuity, it can show up as gambling. It can show up as like, it can show up in so many different ways. And , for some women it’s not alcohol, but it’s sugar, ? So it’s, we switch in something, somewhere which is so interesting.
Yeah. So
sorry, totally. The ADHD thing. Oh, no, don’t worry about it. ADHD. This is actually part of my story. I didn’t know it was and you just reminded me because I didn’t know that I had ADHD until after I quit drinking because my symptoms were so masked with alcohol that I was just kind of like on this flat all the time because alcohol is a depressant.
You’re just kind of like down here. I got diagnosed after the fact and there’s actually a huge link between ADHD and alcohol. Massive.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, huge. And it was just sort of like a big revelation for me when I was sitting in this seminar. I was like, okay, because I could see it in my clients, , [00:30:00] can really see it in me.
I could see it in my friends. I could see it, , I was like, ah, there’s, yeah, there’s links there. A hundred percent. And
being dopamine deficient and then bringing in alcohol, which gives you a huge synthetic. Like, bam, all this dopamine at once, and it’s very unnaturally high amount of dopamine. Yeah.
Yeah. And so you can see that that would be a great way to medicate. Yeah. ADHD. Yeah. But what’s interesting is that, , a year after I quit drinking, maybe a year and a half, I did start ADHD medication. Whenever it was, I’m a poor historian, but I started the ADHD medication and it did the exact same thing that alcohol did and I thought, whoa.
Yeah. Because it just quieted everything down. Yeah. But without making me drunk, without making me not be able to get out of bed in the morning, without making me completely dehydrated, all of those things. So it was a pretty cool thing, just as an aside, since we got kind of [00:31:00] off on the ADHD thing. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was on a monologue and completely lost my place and that is not the first time that’s happened. It happens
once a week. Yeah, oh yeah, but we, we will put that also down to perimenopause because regular listeners of the podcast know that I lose my words on a regular basis. They will just go from my head.
Well, , maybe that’s part of mine too, because this is relatively new and I just started having hot flashes. Ah, this may be going with it and it may be exacerbating my ADHD as
well. Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah, and we’re totally off track here now. But yeah, the time like puberty and teenage years, pregnancy, postpartum and perimenopause, menopause are the The big times where symptoms for ADHD symptoms like hormonal symptoms and , there’s so much crossover as well.
, impact us as women and we do, we tend to just mask it and keep going. , we soldier on, we push through, we do what we need to do. , we just hold it [00:32:00] together. But yeah, but sometimes, , we definitely go down that path of, of self medicating. Right. Great. Hey, so Lauren, this has been such a great, , great conversation.
I love these, these chats where it’s real. We’re talking about real women, , and I, I, and I think that’s where our audience can identify, , really well and, , hopefully people listening and just going, Oh yeah, that’s me, , and certainly you’re welcome to reach out. So Lauren, where can people find you?
My last name is Howman, H O W M A N. And my website is www. HaumanHealth. com. I’m on Facebook as Lauren Hauman. I’m on TikTok as Lauren Hauman. Yep. And Instagram. Oh gosh, don’t, don’t reach out to me on Instagram. You’ll get me, but it’ll be three weeks because I’m terrible on chatting.
I’m in the age group where Instagram just, it never clicked for me and I don’t [00:33:00] really get it. I don’t like the format. I want my Facebook, right? You’re on TikTok, so go you. I think because Facebook and Instagram were running parallel for so long that I was like, well, I don’t need both and I just can’t get into it.
Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I’m very menopausal. So I belong in the Facebook group, right?
And which is why our community has grown to, , over 10, 000 women on Facebook. , there’s a few that double in Instagram, but yeah, most of us are on Facebook too.
So you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok is the place if you want to hear some sober content , reach out to me on my website.
There’s. There’s plenty of ways to find me through DM or contact me, all of that good stuff. But I do free consults because, , Hey, I may be a good fit. I may not. Something else might work better and but there’s no risk in reaching out. So I really appreciate you. I feel like we need to have so many more conversations.
Yeah, we do indeed. [00:34:00] So I will put your contact details in the show notes. So if you would like to reach out to Lauren you can find her. On the website in the show notes. All right, Lauren. Well, thank you so much for being such a fabulous guest. And thank you so much. Yeah. I have really enjoyed our conversation and yeah, looking forward to, I’m sure there will be more.
Awesome. Thank you. Thanks Lauren. Bye everyone. And thanks for listening.
Thank you for taking the time to listen today. You can head on over to the show notes at kyliepinwill.com/podcast where you’ll find all the links. Now, before we go, it would mean the world to me if you’d head on over to your favorite podcast channel, subscribe and leave a review. Don’t forget to share it with your friends.
Then stay tuned for next week’s episode and I can’t wait to see you then.