Rebranding Sobriety - with Susan Christina

Tribe Sober - inspiring an alcohol-free life! My guest this week is Susan Christina is an Irish lady living in Spain. She’s on a mission to rebrand sobriety and make alcohol free living as attractive and glamorous as we thought drinking was She’s an advocate for the modern recovery movement and wants women to take back their power! In this Episode Susan is using her considerable communication and marketing skills together with her experience in the global drinks industry to rebrand sobriety. She talked about the way that the wine industry has targeted women and how we have bought into the idea that wine is our “me time” – we’ve come to believe that a glass of wine is an act of “self care” when in fact it’s the exact opposite for many of us! Susan’s personal story was a familiar one – successful career woman holding down a responsible job, bringing up a family – and drinking a bottle of wine a day. I think so many of us can identify with her description of getting home, opening a bottle of wine and gradually working our way through it during the evening – it just felt so normal and because we weren’t getting “drunk” we didn’t really think twice about it. But 7 bottles of wine a week is not sustainable – as she says we have to ask ourselves not whether we are an alcoholic but whether we can sustain a happy and healthy life drinking this amount of alcohol every week. Like many of us Susan was able to change course when she found “her people” – she signed up for the Sober School and met other people like herself – people she could relate to – she felt she had found accountability partners and connection. The relief of finding other people on the same path is considerable. She created a WhatsApp group and talked about having “people in her pocket” who she could reach out to when she is travelling – that’s exactly what we provide with our membership program – an international community who support and encourage each other – because connection is the opposite of connection. Go to tribesober.com and hit “join our tribe” if you would like to join a community who are busy supporting each other on this life changing journey. Knowledge is everything and so many of us drink for decades without the slightest idea of the harm it is doing us. Even when I got breast cancer I was still in denial – I simply refused to join the dots and carried on drinking. Susan found that once she had understood the complexity, the toxicity and the way we use alcohol to numb the pain she began to see everything differently and was able to make the changes she needed to. I asked Susan what the biggest benefit of sobriety has been for her and she said “being present” - present for the ups and downs of life – after all our personal growth comes for being present and dealing with difficulties, rather than zoning out. She talked about the “drinking train” that many women board and pointed out that it was only travelling one way – the way of increasing dependence, rehab and for some people it’s unfortunately travelling to disease and death. Susan set up a support group for her class when she graduated from Sober School and sent them daily mails and PDF’s to keep them inspired. She started to collate this content which gave birth to the fabulous monthly magazine she now edits which is called Hola Sober. This magazine is quite simply rebranding sobriety – from a place of struggle to an aspirational lifestyle choice. It is a beautiful publication and relects how to live fully and joyfully in sobriety. It’s absolutely free so sign up and then share it with everybody you know. Susan also has a website called holasober.com as well as an IG account – just this week she’s published a brilliant PDF called “The Giant Feck” which is a must read. Susan and I agreed that AA is not the only gig in town as she puts it – there are so many alternatives. We are both providing alternatives to AA and the people we work with would never dream of going to AA. Woman are b