Speaker 1: When your old career gives you lemons throwing some ice,
mix in some vodka colored a podcast from the Mac
of All Trade Studio in Fairport and driven by Victor
Chrysler Dots jeep Ram. It's Billified the Bill Moran Podcast. Well,
hello and welcome. Thank you for getting your pot on,
Thanks for telling a friend. That's how we've spread the
word about the Pirate Ship. Tell you be a little different.
You got me, And you know I have talked about
my love of drinking, like the social setting. I like
the people, you know, I enjoyed that even in our
open life gives you lemon some bock in it. No
where we go right? And I will say this, most
people think alcohol causes bad behavior. And I think that's
the most comforting lie that we tell ourselves because in
that instance, alcohol gives us permission to stop managing parts
of ourselves we already struggle with, right, whether be self esteem,
maybe avoidance, you name it, put a name on it,
whatever you're struggling with. And when we use drinking as
an excuse, we miss the opportunity to actually grow. Why
because when we blame alcohol, it deflects painful self awareness,
any shame, that we had. Now I was drunk, responsibility
for negative consequences, right, allowing for continued drinking. Right, And
then you can frame alcohol as a solution or external
force rather than the choice. It was me. It's the alcohol.
It's a great psychological buffer, allowing people to frame aggression,
risky sexual actions as separate from their core self. That's
what alcohol does, shifting responsibility and avoiding the shame of
being seen as inherently bad, maybe a deviant, well, I
don't know, whatever you're doing. Put the sheep down an alcoholic, right,
you don't want to be called that. That's identity deflection.
We deny problems to maintain a positive self image. If
alcohol is the cause, I don't have to look deeper.
I know what the cause is. I'm not so sure
about that. This weekend I had a lot. I had
some fun, Yeah I did. I had a moment where
alcohol was certainly involved. And when I look back, harm happened.
And that's why I really thought a lot about this.
And I thought, I think I got to do this
one on my own, because there were three things that
happened at once for me, and I noticed how quickly
my mind reached for the explanation. I was drinking. That's
why I reacted that way. Someone was very upset with
me over what I thought was kind of trivial a
business matter, but to them it wasn't right. And it
hit me at a moment that I wasn't ready. At
the same time, like almost the exact same moment, I
had a family member do something that deeply concerned me
and they weren't listening, and it was really kind of
frustrating me. And I misread a text and I responded
rather coldly when I didn't when I normally wouldn't because
I wouldn't have misread it. I wouldn't do that. And
these were things that were all again happening at once,
Wow drinking, and I responded in a way that caused harm.
But the explanation didn't actually explain the behavior. It just
kind of closed the case. And that's when I had
to think a lot about this. I had to stop
and actually pay attention, and I realized how often we
all do this right, Because what do we say about alcohol?
It doesn't create. It reveals that's really what it is.
It doesn't create. It reveals how many times did you
drink because you felt looser. Your inhibitions are gone. Of
course you feel looser. How about the person who's so
funny when they're drunk, but is a little more quiet
and reserve because they probably wouldn't say those things. Inhibition
is basically your internal brake system. It's the part of
you that lets you pause, kind of filter and choose
instead of just reacting. And how many times did this
podcast have I said your knee jerk reaction is usually
the wrong reaction at alcohol. Inhibition's gone, there's no break system.
Inhibition is what allows you to think, maybe not that
before you say or do something that you can't take back.
Maybe not that, maybe I shouldn't do that. And when
you think about regulation, it takes work right, It requires attention.
You got to be restrained a little bit. You have
to have some restraint. Not your you're restrained, you know,
but I mean in a way, it's like mental handcuffs
on you. I gotta restrain that and stay there. Your
brain has to override automatic reactions right and stay oriented
towards something bigger than what's happening in that moment. That's
the kind of control. It isn't passive. It cost energy.
That kind of control cost energy because it's not a
passive one. Your mind is always working. You got that,
you know, and so alcohol doesn't change what you care about.
It changes how hard it is to act in line
with it. Come on, man, alcohol doesn't insert thoughts. It
removes the friction. It's a nice lubrican, right, say whatever
you really wanted? Ever have that done to get Someone
comes up drunk and says they really want it. Maybe
you've done it and realized the harm. You calls how
do you get back from that? That's kind of the thing,
you know. It's like the editor leaves the room, not
the author. The author is still there spitting it out.
Your values are still there when you're drunk, but the
effort required to live by them is a little harder
to access. So when you're drinking, I always think the
brain gets mentally nearsighted. Tone gets misread, intent gets guessed right,
your guess that you have no idea meaning gets filled
instead of checked out or checked right. You want to
be able to kind of put it in check there.
At the same time, your brain becomes more defensive. You
ever notice that you become way more defensive when you've
had a certain amount of alcohol, neutral cues can start
to feel loaded, and ambiguity starts to feel like danger
and something isn't clear, it feels like danger. Alcohol narrows
perspective and raises suspicion. Nuance requires complexity. Nuance disappears when
you're drinking. Complexity is one of the first things that
it's gone. When you're drinking, it is gone. You get
fewer shades of gray, and things become, at least in
your reactions, more black and white. Subtly takes regulation. Alcohol
makes regulation actually expensive, you know what I mean, It
really does because you can't really do it, so it
becomes expensive to not have that. Think of it like
a dimmer switch. Got a dimmer switch anywhere in your house.
Alcohol doesn't change the room. It lowers the lighting, right,
it lowers the lighting. You see the same thing. When
you're exhausted or overwhelmed. You have less patience, faster reactions,
shorter fuse. That's not a moral failure. And that's the
thing is that you can't beat yourself up. It's not
a moral failure. That's depleted regulation. Responsibility is not the
same thing as self attack. One leads to growth, the
other shuts people down. That's really kind of a very
important thing to think about. Right, you're thinking about taking responsibility,
it's not self attack. It leads to growth. Self attack
shuts people down. Most people don't avoid responsibility because they're careless.
They avoid it because somewhere along the way, responsibility became painful.
That's why it's so easy to blame alcol I was drunk.
What do you mean gold? You know me? For some people,
responsibility punishment. For others, responsibility meant rejection or humiliation. Avoidance
is often protection, not denial. Absolutely, you're not denying this.
I mean I think about that that in your on life,
all the things that we avoid. Sometimes alcohol can help
us do that, and then we can blame the alcohol
and it's not really us. We get to preserve our
ego and then think about like shame, Right, Shame doesn't teach.
Shame threatens. It turns reflection into survival. And when you're
in survival mode, you're not changing. Growth stops there's nothing there.
Shame does attack who you are as a person, not
what you did. Here's the thing, a lot of adults
still hear the word accountability as you're in trouble, not repair,
not learning, consequences. But real accountability isn't about paying a price.
It's about staying present with what happened long enough to
actually change. That's what you're looking for, is change. You
can keep doing the same thing over and over again,
you're gonna get the same results, different players, same story.
Responsibility held with shame collapses us. Responsibility held with clarity
actually frees us. Let me say that again. Responsibility held
with shame collapses US. Responsibility held with clarity frees us
because you understand what you're doing. Take responsibility right. Taking
responsibility doesn't mean you're bad. It means you're honest. That's
the difference. You're honest. I see what I did. When
there's no alcohol, you can still have the same thing.
You ever see anybody over react? Maybe something you post
it online. Maybe a partner is upset about something you did.
I don't know. It's the emotion, though, is disproportionate to
the act moment. This is the same pattern, just without
the substance. Right, you get an intense, overwhelming surge of emotion.
You ever have that yourself, like an intense sense of
fear instead of saying in the moment or anger, maybe
even anxiety about what's going to come next, and it
triggers your body's fight or flight response, and it shuts
down rational thinking and guess what's gone. Any effective communication,
almost any action is nearly impossible. And a lot of
times when people overreact, what's usually happening isn't a loss
of control. It's a loss of time perspective. Something in
the present moment touches something unfinished from the past, and
suddenly the nervous system isn't responding to now anymore. I
call this old material getting activated. Do you ever have that?
And a lot of times when we drink, old material
is anything we didn't fully process when it happened, You
got hurt, There was shame, fear, rejection, powerlessness. It doesn't disappear,
it just goes quiet. And when something in the present
feels similar enough, it could be a tone, a word,
a look, a perceived slight, the body reacts as if
the old moment is happening again. Right, I know this,
I know how this feels right, and you get defensive
or you get just ugly. That's why the reaction feels
bigger than the situation. It is bigger than the situation.
It's carrying more history than the moment deserves. The reaction
to stuff isn't wrong, it's misplaced. It belongs in an
earlier chapter of who you were. When old material gets activated,
the present becomes a stand in, so the person in
front of us becomes a symbol and the response comes
from an older version of ourselves. That's why when you
say to somebody, calm down, it never fucking works ever. Right,
some people can say, how pissed off do you get
when somebody goes calm down? Especially when you're drunk. You
can't calm something that thinks it's still under a threat.
Understanding this doesn't excuse harm, That's not what I'm saying,
but it does explain why people can feel genuinely confused
after like why did I react like that? Right? Why
did I react like that? I don't understand because the
reaction wasn't about what happened, It was about what got remembered.
Reactions are about history. They're not about moments, especially big ones,
and it doesn't have to be when you're drunk, but
that's what we're talking about, and we externalize responsibility on
things all the time. Most avoidance is not dramatic at all.
It's pretty quiet, right, and it's usually misunderstood. We tend
to think avoidance means running away from something, or more often,
it means redirecting responsibility when something uncomfortable happens, when we
hurt someone, when we overreact, or when we act out
of alignment with who we are responsibility for. That creates
tension inside of us. Not guilty exactly, more like pressure,
and human beings are very good at relieving pressure. Externalizing
responsibility is one of the fastest ways to do that.
When we say I was drunk, or I was angry,
or I was stressed, what we're really saying is I
don't want to sit with what this says about me.
I don't want to sit with what this says about me,
so I can deflect. Those explanations always feel true, right,
but they're incomplete because when you're externalizing responsibility doesn't mean
we're lying. It means we're prioritizing emotional relief over understanding.
We just want to feel better, that's it. I don't
want to understand the situation right. Blame works quickly, insight
works slowly. Avoidance isn't weakness, it's protection. It's a shield.
At some point in many of our lives. Taking responsibility
felt unsafe. Maybe it meant punishment, Right, you did something
to take responsibilit you Sually we're in trouble how many times?
Or a coach you're responsible for this, or a teacher
or whatever. Maybe it meant rejection because now all of
a sudden, you're the bad person because you did that.
Maybe it meant shame. So we learn to move responsibility
outward onto substances alcohol or to emotions, or to certain circumstances.
And we're not doing it to avoid growth. We're trying
to avoid pain. That shit sucks. It's painful. Any kind
of self growth sucks. It just does at times. I
don't think even all the time. You can feel good
at times, but think about that. Why do people stay
in what's called their comfort zone? Right? The problem is
whatever we move outside ourselves, and when we do that,
we also lose the ability to actually change. If alcohol
cost it, I can't work on it. I mean, come on,
what do you want me to do? I love to drink.
Anger caused it. I can't regulate it. I get angry.
I got a hot temper. You ever hear that I
got a hot temper? The Irish temper as I was
always told, if stress caused it, I can't address it.
It's stress, it's just life, it's just what happened. And
so we externalize responsibility. It gives us relief, and I
really think, honestly, it cost us. Agency. Growth begins the
moment we are willing to hold responsibility without attacking ourselves.
My friends, that's not blame. That's adulting, right, it's adulting.
That's why substances, emotions, stress the all workers' shields. We're
hiding from something. Call it takes us to a fun place.
Drugs takets to a more fun place. Right, they all
work the same way. They don't explain behavior, They shield
us from it. They give us something external to point
at when we're looking inward and it feels uncomfortable. Nah,
I was drunk, I was high. If it was alcohol,
I don't have to ask what I was avoiding because
it was the alcohol. If it's anger, who wants to
look underneath the fear? If it was anger, I don't
want to have to look at the fear underneath. If
it was stress, I don't have to face how overwhelmed
I really am in any situation. And here's the thing.
Any of these explanations. They're not wrong, they're just incomplete.
They protect us from shame and they block growth at
the same time. Shield can keep you safe, right Captain America,
But you can't move forward while you're hiding behind it
no matter what it is. And when you say I
didn't mean to and it feels sufficient, you're saying I
didn't mean to because it protects how we see ourselves.
It measures us that we're still a good person. Here's
why saying I didn't mean to feel sufficient, but it
really isn't. Saying I didn't mean to feels sufficient because
it protects how we see ourselves. It reassures us that
we're still a good person. I'm still good, come on,
you know me. But it only explains us to ourselves.
It doesn't undo the impact on someone else. I didn't
mean it, I was drunk, but it doesn't. The impact
is still there. When we stop an intent, we get
emotional relief without real accountability. I didn't intend for that
to be that way, and then we stopped there. Growth
starts when we're willing to care about the impact, even
when our intent was good. Right you ever have that
even in a sober moment you say something that's like,
that's not how I intended it. But when we start
to care about that, that's when growth comes. Excuses truly,
they are emotional painkillers. Man. They work quickly and they
block any healing right. Sometimes it's alcohol. I was drinking.
Sometimes it's emotion. I was angry. Sometimes stress, I've had
a lot going on. Sometimes it's personality. That's just how
I am. It's Boby and Bob. Now just Boby and Bob.
Bob gets away with anything. Sometimes it's intent, I didn't
mean it like that. Different words, same function. They help
us feel better without asking us to change. They move
responsibility away from the self and onto something outside of us.
They lower the emotional pressure of the moment, and they
let us stop asking harder questions. Different excuses, all of them,
same function. They give us relief without resolution. I'm going
to ask these questions slowly and obviously they're rhetorical, but
think about them. What part of me becomes harder to
regulate when I drink? It's gonna be your self esteem.
I don't know what feeling am I trying? What feeling
am I trying not to feel? What pattern does this
moment belong to. What would responsibility look like without punishment.
Alcohol didn't cause the harm, It revealed where attention was needed.
Growth doesn't come from excuses or self attack. It comes
from the courage to look beneath the moment. I Bill
Moran will see you tomorrow.