Why I Wrote A Book on Breaking Up with Alcohol
My first book, Unbottled Potential: Break Up With Alcohol And Break Through To Your Best Life, releases this week with top-five publisher, Penguin Random House / Avery.
While I’ve wanted to write a book for as long as I can remember, I never would have guessed that I’d be writing a self-help book, let alone a book about living an alcohol-free lifestyle. But, as it turned out, I couldn’t not write this book. For the last 6.5 years, talking about my alcohol-free journey has been somewhat of a universal assignment - a calling, if you will.
You see, I never wanted to break up with alcohol. I was a run-of-the-mill, average, social drinker. There was nothing particularly remarkable about my drinking. I drank like everyone else and never experienced many dark consequences from drinking (aside from a couple brushes with trouble in my teen years). Drinking was my social lubricant and, from time to time, an emotional band-aid.
So, when I started getting intuitive nudges to re-examine my drinking around the time I turned 30, I immediately tried to brush them off. After all, drinking was a socially acceptable, if not expected, vice. And yet, the intuitive nudges didn’t stop. In fact, they got louder. Until, one day, I’d had enough and decided to take a break for Dry January in 2017.
I’ll cut to the chase, I haven’t drank since and my life has never been better.
Sometime during my first year alcohol-free, I started a blog and anonymous Instagram account to share about my alcohol-free journey and my quest to feel truly well and reach my full potential. At the time, not many people were talking about sobriety outside of traditional recovery circles, so what I was sharing seemed novel and edgy.
Before I knew it, there were women reaching out to me sharing they had similar curiosities about alcohol. Over the next couple of years, my influence in the sober curious and alcohol-free space picked up. I began coaching other high-achieving, intuitive women on going alcohol-free and in 2019, I was able to quit my full-time job to pursue my own business.
When the pandemic hit, my business took off because women realized they had a rare window of opportunity where social obligations were non-existent. This created an open runway for them to explore their relationships with alcohol without facing dreaded social repercussions. As the world began to open back up, business stayed steady as even more women realized their drinking had snowballed during the pandemic and they were ready to make a change.
My messages about elective sobriety - or choosing to live alcohol-free void of an addiction or rock bottom - were really resonating with people. In early 2021, I secured a literary agent and, shortly after, a book deal with Penguin Random House division, Avery.
But I didn’t write this book because I felt like it was a hot topic. I wrote this book because I had to. You see, after experiencing the life-changing magic of going alcohol-free - in my life and, later, in my client’s - I knew I had to share the extraordinary possibilities of living an alcohol-free life with others.
Whether you are looking to break up with the bottle or just find a less volatile relationship with alcohol, this book will lay a solid foundation for you to:
Renegotiate how you feel about drinking
Connect to your authentic self
Set new boundaries
Finally achieve your relationship and career goals.
Unbottled Potential is available in stores everywhere this week (get a full list here), and you can order it in paperback, e-reader, and audio (yep, I even narrated the audiobook).
And, if you’re wondering if this book is a fit for you, you can take a peek at what’s inside.
Here’s a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of Unbottled Potential:
Introduction
Don’t skip this part; it’s an essential primer into the book and an intimate look at my story.
I began my journey with an intentional thirty-day break and extended that break to ninety days, then six months, then a full year. As I abstained, I also committed to investing the time and money I used to spend on partying on my own personal, emotional, and spiritual development. Quite unexpectedly, I came to a place where alcohol was no longer good or bad, right or wrong. Alcohol became an option that merely existed. From this perspective, it also became an option that I was no longer interested in. Through my journey, I stopped thinking about drinking entirely. The result was not instantaneous. Nonetheless, it was miraculous. After months of abstaining, praying, meditating, journaling, and studying, I began to understand alcohol, and myself, differently. From this place, alcohol seemed completely insignificant.
Part 1 - Bottled Up Brilliance
Chapter 1: You Don’t Need to Have a Problem
Getting Over the Social Stigma Around Sobriety
All those years ago, my truest desire was to find someone who would say to me what I am saying to you now: you don’t need to have a problem with alcohol for it to be a problem in your life.
It’s true. You can quit drinking void of a problem, a rock bottom, a dire health concern, or moral reasoning. You can quit drinking without the need for rehab, detox, twelve steps, or a sponsor. You can just quit. For any reason. At any time. You can quit because alcohol is no longer serving you. You can quit because you don’t like the way drinking makes you feel or behave. You can quit because, like me, you sense that alcohol is holding you back from being the best, most authentic, successful version of yourself.
Chapter 2: The Myth of Moderation
Debunking the Lore of Having “Just a Few”
There will never be a convenient time to take a break from alcohol.
There will always be a celebration to toast or a sorrow to drown. There will always be a wedding, a vacation, a happy hour, a sunny day. You will never run short of reasons to drink.
The most convenient time to take a break from alcohol is the day your desire to earnestly pursue your potential outweighs your desire for comfort and complacency.
Chapter 3: Alcohol: A Love Story
Understanding Your Subconscious Relationship with Alcohol
Understanding how you’ve subconsciously romanticized alcohol is essential to changing your drinking. Why? Most of your actions are fueled by your thoughts . . . and not your conscious thoughts, but your subconscious thoughts. These are the sneaky, somewhat irrational thoughts that play in a loop in the back of your mind. If we fail to bring these thoughts to the forefront, to acknowledge and debunk them, they will continue to dictate our behaviors. In this chapter, we’ll get to the bottom of the fantasies that have been driving your relationship with alcohol.
Chapter 4: A Life Dulled by Booze
Acknowledging How Alcohol is Keeping You Stuck
Atomic Habits author James Clear said it best: “The ultimate form of optimization is elimination. Nothing is more effective than removing the ineffective.” No matter how much I tried to fight it, the most ineffective aspect of my life was my relationship with alcohol. Despite my biggest fears about pursuing a life of sobriety, I sensed intuitively that removing alcohol from my life was going to be the catalyst for something miraculous . . . and I was right.
Chapter 5: You Weren’t Meant for Ordinary
Embracing Your Birthright for More
There’s a huge misconception that realizing your potential has to do with achieving some sort of professional or intellectual goal. While your career and intellectual pursuits are aspects of your potential, metrics and accolades are not the only ways we realize our potential.
I see potential as an inherent ability to become the most authentic, self-expressed, embodied version of yourself. I look at potential on a holistic scale and believe that it can be expressed through your personal fulfillment, emotional capacity, relationship quality, professional success, and spiritual connection. As you’ll learn through reading this book, I believe alcohol significantly hinders your ability to perform in these vital life areas, thus keeping you from feeling fulfilled.
Ready to dive deeper? Get your copy of the book today. And, if you order during launch week, you’ll get a free ticket to my live launch event.
Part 2 - Claiming Your Unbottled Life
Chapter 6: If It’s Not Fun without Alcohol, Maybe It’s Just Not Fun
Reimagining Your Social Life as a Nondrinker
When I consider what I actually missed out on during that trip—free bottom-shelf booze, emotional numbness, and brutal hangovers—I realize that I wasn’t missing out on much. It’s ironic that we all tend to psych ourselves out over the fun we’ll miss if we’re the only ones not drinking. In reality, the only thing we’re missing out on is being drunk.
Chapter 7: Embracing Your Emotions
Learn to Ride the Highs and Lows of Life with Ease, Grace, and Confidence
Most of us are afraid to feel through and sit with our emotions. Our most intense emotions, from the depths of grief and sorrow to the highs of joy and bliss, can feel overwhelming in a world where it’s unlikely that you were ever given the tools, encouragement, or permission to demonstrate and openly feel into your vast emotional range. Ill-equipped to deal with such emotions, it’s common to turn to a cocktail or a night out on the town to numb, dull, or attempt to forget the enormity of your internal experience.
Chapter 8: Solid, Not Liquid, Bonds
Cultivating Fulfilling Friendships as a Nondrinker
It’s normal to feel intimidated about what your relationships might look like without alcohol in the picture. It’s easy to jump to the worst-case scenario and worry that your relationships won’t survive without drinking involved. If this is the case, the bitter truth is that your relationships were not that strong to begin with. If your friends are going to judge or abandon you for choosing to be alcohol-free, point blank: you deserve better friends. When it comes to relationships, I can promise you one thing with confidence: no sustainable relationship is built upon a liquid bond. If you think alcohol is the glue that holds any relationship together, think again.
Chapter 9: Love without the Hangover
Navigating Sober Dating, Partnerships, and Sex
Romantic relationships are one of life’s greatest containers for personal growth because—like friendships—they serve as a divine mirror for both our shadow and our light. However, a romantic partnership reflects where we might grow and expand in a magnified way that other relationships cannot. Your romantic partnerships are intended to be a container that supports your growth, healing, and self-expression.
Yet if you have been relying on alcohol as a mechanism for romantic connection, there is no doubt that you have yet to access the depth of vulnerability and growth available to you in your current or past romantic relationships. If so, it may feel intimidating to approach your love life without the support of a cocktail or glass of wine. Stick with me; I want to share with you how exploring romantic relationships can wholeheartedly improve your romantic life in ways you never deemed possible.
Chapter 10: Living Your Most Authentic Life
Finding Personal Fulfillment through Being Yourself
The world does not need a watered-down hologram of you. We ache for your authenticity and your brilliance. You were put here and uniquely programmed to be the weird, wonderful unicorn of a person that you are. Please do not, for one more moment, deprive us of that version of you.
Chapter 11: Potential Stumbling Blocks
Getting Past Common Temptations and Self-Sabotage
It’s important that you understand that you are not a failure or bad person for stumbling along the way; you are human. Furthermore, you are a human working to rewire and reimagine a long-term, seductive relationship with a substance that has made you many shallow promises. You are working not only to change a behavior that you’ve most likely been playing out for decades but also to rewire a series of thoughts that have been ingrained in your subconscious for much longer than that. It’s only rational to bet that you might stumble along the way or find it enticing to go back to the old way. You may have days when you are tired and fed up, days when your willpower is weak, days when everything is absolutely glorious, or days when you feel like sobriety is a brutal punishment.
Chapter 12: Unbottled Potential
Breaking Through to Your Best Life
This journey isn’t for everyone. Yet I believe you have found your way to this book for a reason. I believe you know on some instinctual level that you are meant for and capable of unbelievable things in this lifetime. If there is an area in your life where you feel dissatisfied, stuck, or downright unhappy, taking a break from alcohol will bring you clarity and freedom.
Unbottled Potential is in stores now!
I hope this look inside has helped you to determine if the lessons I teach inside will be a good fit for wherever you are on your sober curious or alcohol-free journey (Spoiler: I think they will be!).
I wrote this book to be a powerful resource for anyone on the journey of reconsidering and rewriting their relationship with alcohol.
TLDR: Unbottled Potential is in stores now and if you order before 10/07, you’re invited to attend the official release party for the book, the Unbottle Your Potential LIVE EVENT. It’s happening on 10/07 at 5 PM EST. At this live virtual event, I’ll take you even deeper into the lessons from the book and help to demystify the path to living an extraordinary alcohol-free life!
You’ll get a FREE ticket to the event when you order the book today in the format of your choice (paperback, e-book, or audiobook).