Speaker 1: 0:30

My name is Hadley Sorensen and I am a sobriety advocate and author, and it's been sort of an interesting journey over the last couple years, transitioning from my old business to what I'm doing now.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Yeah, can we get a little bit of a backstory? What was your old business and how did that lead you to where you are today, and did you have any negative experiences with sobriety or drinking that you wouldn't mind sharing?

Speaker 1: 0:58

Yeah, sure, that's what I do right.

Speaker 1: 1:01

Is share all about my experience with that now. So I was in the mortgage industry for a long time, left the corporate world to stay home with my boys when my youngest was born and after doing that for a while I sort of got restless and I ended up starting a business as a health and fitness coach. I loved it, it was successful. I did that for a long time, really enjoyed it. It was just what I needed at the time. But you know, probably four years ago I started feeling sort of restless and out of alignment and I couldn't quite put my finger on what was going on. And ultimately I realized, you know, as a health and fitness coach I talked a big game about self love and self care, but I also, in in certain ways, wasn't taking very good care of myself.

Speaker 1: 1:53

I was a wine lover. My drinking followed standard social conventions, right, I was drinking the same way that everyone around me was drinking. I didn't drink every day or sometimes even every week, but I had never felt good about my relationship with alcohol from the very first time I drank and that had always sort of haunted me. But no one knew that I ever struggled with that and I had made this love of wine sort of a pillar of my personality through my business, because it was all social media based, so I leaned very heavily into that.

Speaker 1: 2:30

You know, you can have balance, you can be really healthy, but also love your wine, and I talked about it a lot and I started to feel this sense of restlessness and I knew that I was sort of building up to something. My hangovers were getting worse and I could really tell the impact that drinking was having on my mental health, and so I woke up one morning in August of 2021 and decided that I was done. I was done. I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired and that was going to be my last hangover and it was. And then it started this just massive change in my life and it's been sort of a wild ride over the last three and a half four years yeah, that incredible.

Speaker 2: 3:15

And I think I had read somewhere that you had first tried it when you were 14.

Speaker 1: 3:19

That's such a young age, such a young age, but it's also such a common age which is really scary because I have 13 year old boy and a 15 year old boy, but it's really common, especially, you know, for people from my generation at least. Yeah, but I never felt. It never felt right to me.

Speaker 2: 3:36

And do you think, like I know, you weren't like constantly drinking like all the time, like oh my gosh on the floor on the streets or stuff like that? But tell me how that kind of we kind of maybe as a society, I want to say we kind of normalize it?

Speaker 1: 3:52

Yes, absolutely, and that's a big part of what I talk about on my platform, and I ultimately ended up writing a book about it because there's so many misconceptions out there about alcohol. Right, you know, it's really we think of. Like you said, there's like that stereotypical rock bottom drinker and that wasn't me and so I'm trying to help spread the message now that's becoming a lot more common that you don't have to hit rock bottom in order to change your drinking. It's a really problematic substance, so it can be a problem for people in lots of ways, even if it doesn't look like that stereotype.

Speaker 2: 4:32

Yeah, absolutely yeah, and I was just like wait, there's a different. I thought this was like a normal thing. I thought that this is just what we do at our age, or this is just what we do. It's like social, this social, that. Is that just an excuse? Maybe we masquerade for it?

Speaker 1: 4:44

Well, it's sort of been shoved down our throat as a society, right, drinking culture shows us. In fact, there was a skit on Saturday Night Live this past weekend that basically sums up our drinking culture. Right, it was a big joke about how you know your mental health is suffering, your marriage is suffering, your job is suffering. What you need is a prescription for a couple of beers. Right, we're sold this idea that alcohol holds the monopoly on connection and fun and celebration and grieving and stress management and all these things. But the reality is it doesn't really help us with any of that. It causes so many more problems than it's worth and people are just starting to kind of wake up to the fact that we've been believing a lot, a lot of a lot of kind of lies and myths about it, absolutely, and I'm sure for some people that can be kind of like a hard realization like what me, no way.

Speaker 2: 5:40

And then when you sit back and look at it or help open your eyes or brighten the horizons for people, they're just like wait a minute. Yeah, that is true, I was doing that because I wanted to find something to veal and disguise my pain. You're not dealing with it, you're just kind of hiding it, but you're miserable inside. Yes, that's some powerful, scary things, though, because you don't think about that.

Speaker 1: 6:03

No, no, it's just so normalized um that we think it has. All you know, alcohol holds all the answers. It can do all of these jobs for us. We outsource all of these things to it and the reality is it's not. It's not really, it's not really helping us.

Speaker 2: 6:19

Yeah, and then your book the Dirty Truth on Social Drinking. Everything in Moderation and Other BS Challenges Common Perceptions About Social Drinking. What inspired you to address this topic and what key message do you hope readers take away from it?

Speaker 1: 6:35

to address this topic, and what key message do you hope readers take away from it? Well, I was inspired to write the book because when I quit drinking even though I was not physically dependent drinking every day, you know, not that stereotype it's still really hard to kind of unplug from that drinking culture. And so I turned to what we refer to as quitlet books right, all of these memoirs about drinking that are out there and people telling their story, and they're amazing and powerful and they were a huge part of my journey. But they were all those stereotypical rock bottom stories and I couldn't really relate to them. And as I kept reading them, I kept thinking there's really nothing out there that talks about this gray area.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Right, alcohol use disorder occurs on a spectrum from mild to severe, and there's all this gray area and we're just starting to kind of tap into that and talk about it. And I thought, well, maybe I can be the person to tell the story from that space. And so I sort of dove in and I wanted the message to be that don't wait for things to get worse. If you feel like something is off in the balance of your life, like I did and alcohol could be the culprit. Don't ignore that intuition I mean my intuition had been whispering at me for years and I was ignoring it.

Speaker 2: 7:57

Poor little whisper Right.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Poor little whisper. So that's really my main takeaway is don't wait for it to get worse. It doesn't matter if you're just a social drinker. If it feels like a problem to you, you can quit anytime, for any reason. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 8:13

Do you have any events or anything like a get together where people could get together and talk about this, like with you, and ask you, I guess, questions or delve more into your mind?

Speaker 1: 8:22

I don't have anything scheduled right now but I have been working on several of those and done a few over the past year, kind of local book conversations and things like that. I speak on a lot of podcasts in the sobriety space that kind of go into my story a lot more and things like that. I speak on a lot of podcasts in the sobriety space, that kind of go into my story a lot more and things like that. But I'm working on some local kind of get togethers because there's not a lot in our area in the sobriety space outside of what we typically think of with like AA and that kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 8:51

I think that would be awesome. It would be fun somewhere where you can open that conversation up, where maybe they can't talk to somebody at home about it and maybe they read your book and they got inspiration from it. I just think that would be fun.

Speaker 1: 9:01

I love that idea and community is such an important part of this for people going through it. I mean, it's kind of one of the pillars, right that, one of the things you really need if you're going to go through this process community is really important, I agree.

Speaker 2: 9:21

I couldn't agree more with that. And then you describe your drinking history as falling into the gray area, not hitting rock bottom but recognizing a problematic relationship with alcohol. Can you elaborate on what that gray area drinking means and how it differs from traditional notions of alcoholism, and how did you sort of come to agreement that you were in that gray area?

Speaker 1: 9:40

Yeah, that's a really good question. So, gray area drinking again, right, we used to think of this. Either you fall into two categories either you're an alcoholic or you're normal, right? And we know now that that's just not true. There's this spectrum and alcohol use disorder is actually the technical diagnosis or medical term. Most people don't even realize that, and alcoholic has this stigma attached to it, right? So I try to encourage the message that you don't have to use any label that doesn't feel right to you. So, within this spectrum, right, gray area drinking is that, you know, I sometimes can.

Speaker 1: 10:23

There's a lot. There's no perfect criteria, right, sometimes I can moderate, but sometimes I don't really seem to. I'm constantly sort of telling myself, oh, I'm not going to drink this week, but then things come up and I do, or you know, kind of making those promises and then finding yourself starting over from scratch. And for me it was a lot of. I felt a lot of shame around my drinking because, even though I might only drink a few times a month or whatever it was, I was a blackout drinker. So I would have a few drinks, blackout, not remember anything. It's really, really scary.

Speaker 1: 11:02

It's also really common, but that's a huge red flag and everybody always just kind of thought it was funny, you know, especially in college and things like that. So there were all these sort of red flags that I ignored, but again they didn't quite meet the criteria, for you know, they didn't check the boxes on those am I an alcoholic checklists? But they were still. They're still problematic Drinking more than you intend, feeling like you can't always moderate, just all of those things kind of add up and when I started reading about it I went wait, this is, this is me. This feels exactly like where I, where I am, and it was sort of comforting to know that that that was a thing, that I wasn't alone, you kind of felt validated, right, like is this a thing?

Speaker 2: 11:46

No, I'm crazy. And then it's like, actually, yes, this is a thing, like I knew it I knew my feeling was right about that Right right.

Speaker 1: 11:52

Because I didn't. I mean, I don't look like somebody with a problem, I didn't look like what you think of. I was highly functioning. I was, you know, successful. I was, you know, my kids were cute and well behaved, like all the, all the things Picture perfect, yeah. And not even my husband knew that I struggled with this. I kept it. So I kept it so, internal, hidden, right, because shame feels yucky, right, we keep it. We want to keep it inside. That is crazy though.

Speaker 2: 12:23

What were the steps once you found this out? I know you just stopped, but is that is? Can that be really hard to do for some people? Like what are the interventions that you need to go through? Or did you go see a doctor or a specialist?

Speaker 1: 12:38

Yeah, so that's a really good question and it's really important and it definitely depends on the person. I didn't just quit out of the blue per se because I had taken lots of breaks over the years. I had sort of tried many times, but I don't think in hindsight I really those breaks. Those times I stopped it was normally a bad hangover and you wake up and say, oh, I'm never drinking again. But I always intended to just kind of reset myself so I could go back to drinking normally. But, like I said, I was not physically dependent. I didn't have to worry about going through withdrawal. Physical withdrawal that is a big deal and you absolutely need to seek medical intervention from a doctor. If that is your situation, alcohol withdrawal can be really dangerous. So I didn't have to worry about that. I did not. You know people will refer to it as white knuckling it. That's not what I did.

Speaker 1: 13:36

Again, my situation was different. I was in a position where I could make that decision and just run with it. Right, I still needed to. I found a community. I took really good, lots of self-care. I took really aggressive care of myself. For a while I talked about it with my family. I finally opened up to my husband. I told people what I was doing. All of those things help, but there's so many different ways for people to get help now, where we used to just think if you have a problem, you go to AA and that's it. That's what's out there, and that's not the case. Aa is amazing. It helps a lot of people, but it's not for everyone.

Speaker 1: 14:16

And it wasn't for me, nothing about it felt right, and that's fine. If that is going to help someone, then that's amazing. There's rehab options, there's therapy options. There's, then that's amazing. There's rehab options, there's therapy options, there's online support groups and communities. There's so many different ways to get help now, which is important because there's so many different ways to have a problem. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 14:39

And I kind of want to ask you a personal question and I hope that it's okay and you don't have to answer, but when you were getting like blackout drunk, I feel like that's really scary and you kind of have to be aware of, like the people who are around you, people who are maybe just like you think maybe they're your friends or maybe they should be your friends, and hopefully they did. Did that stuff ever worry?

Speaker 1: 15:05

you so much and I mean, if I'm being very honest, I put myself in so many dangerous situations over the years, especially. I think back to college and it gives me, you know, it gives me the chills and I joke. Now, you know, looking back in hindsight, I'm so lucky that I survived it all. I mean the things that my friends did when we were drinking heavily. I was not the only one blacking out. So, yeah, sometimes I feel like I am lucky that I made it through all of that, as I, of course, as I got older and I had kids, those blackouts looked different. I wasn't like at clubs downtown or in, you know, acapulco.

Speaker 1: 15:50

on spring break I was at a neighbor's house you know, having at a neighborhood party or that kind of thing, Um, but it's still really scary and dangerous and hence the shame when I would wake up the next morning, next morning, because I always went into those nights saying, oh, that's never going to happen again, I'm not letting that happen.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yeah, no, it's just a habit and a cycle that you've got to get yourself out of and I'm glad that you were able to see that and it didn't go somewhere completely terrible.

Speaker 1: 16:22

So many bad things could have happened.

Speaker 2: 16:23

Absolutely, so many bad things could have happened, absolutely. And what do you think we could be doing better as, like, maybe a country or society, in order for us to realize that this is a problem and like this is the college culture, like we should be talking about it more in schools or in colleges, making it be more known to people that, hey, if you're drinking like this, this is an issue that you could have some really bad stuff going on.

Speaker 1: 16:48

Well, I think we're making a lot of progress in that regard and I think some of it maybe it's wishful thinking because I'm so embedded in the sobriety community, now talking about this stuff so much and surrounded by other people talking about it, but 10 years ago there was not a massive Instagram sobriety community. There weren't hundreds of sobriety influencers out there talking about it the way that I am there weren't all of these quitlet books by different authors talking about it. It's really gaining traction and the demographics show that younger people are drinking less. Graphics show that younger people are drinking less and I think people are also more open to these kinds of conversations. Right Me talking about sobriety as an attack on someone who drinks. It's sharing. There are so many people who fall into this space that have been afraid to speak up and say anything because they're afraid of judgment. So I think we're making progress.

Speaker 1: 17:46

You can go to any restaurant or bar now around here and find a mocktail menu. There are tons of non-alcoholic beer, wine, even spirit options at Total Wine at Wegmans. It's really gaining momentum as a movement and people are starting to understand. In fact, the surgeon general just came out and said they want to put cancer warnings on alcohol like they have for cigarettes, which is huge, because in this space we've known this for a while that alcohol causes seven types of cancer. It's a group one carcinogen, just like cigarettes, but nobody that hasn't been publicly homogen, just like cigarettes, but nobody that hasn't been publicly widely known until recently. So we're, I think we're moving in the right direction. People are starting to get it.

Speaker 2: 18:36

Yeah, and that way we can actually make good decisions. Oh, everyone else is doing it Me too but having that label there will make you stop and think like wait, I did not know that, everyone's just having fun.

Speaker 1: 18:42

Right. And we used to hear the message that red wine is good for your heart and all of this Right. And we used to hear the message that red wine is good for your heart yes, right. And we're still overcoming that because people still believe it, even though all the prevailing science now shows that no amount of alcohol is safe or healthy. Really, I'm not saying that some people can't moderate successfully my husband does but it's not good for our heart.

Speaker 2: 19:05

Yeah no, oh, my gosh, I've heard that growing up too.

Speaker 1: 19:08

Like, oh, my mom would say like oh, I'm just going to have some wine. It's good, it's healthy for your heart.

Speaker 2: 19:14

Antioxidants, yeah Right.

Speaker 1: 19:14

Yes, Anything to have that wine right. Eat some blueberries. It'll do you better.

Speaker 2: 19:19

And then, in your journey to sobriety, what were some of the most significant challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?

Speaker 1: 19:26

Oh, that's a really good question. I think at first it was telling people. It was kind of sharing it and saying, hey, I've struggled with this and I'm making this big change. It was scary to talk about one because I was afraid of failing.

Speaker 1: 19:43

I was afraid of what if I put this out there and then I don't make it and then I've made this big deal and everybody's like sure Hadley quit drinking right, and so it took a while to kind of find my voice and find my confidence as I started sharing. Another big challenge was was learning who I was without alcohol for the first time since I'd been a teenager. You know I'd made it this part of my personality. I was the wine-loving party girl when actually I was doing a lot of things I didn't really enjoy and needing alcohol in order to sort of tolerate them. So I had to kind of learn how to navigate my social life, rebuild my social life, figure out who I was, and that takes some time and some work and some patience. Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:38

And a little bit off topic, but still in the same vein. As far as marketing goes to share about your book, your stories, your experiences, what do you like to do to get yourself out there? We've got social media speaking events. What's working, what's not?

Speaker 1: 20:53

So, honestly, I love spending time on Instagram. Like I said, the sobriety space out there is huge, and so that's where a lot of my marketing is kind of well. I mean, you can call it marketing. It's sort of outreach. It's community. I love being part of that community and being able to share my story, so I spend a lot of time out there. I talk on a lot of sobriety podcasts. There's a lot of sobriety podcasts and it's a big thing that people turn to when they're trying to change their relationship with alcohol. So I like being able to share my story with people, in addition to just through the book. For people who are kind of looking for somebody that they can relate to, yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2: 21:38

And then do you ever feel like you crave it, or are you just like nope?

Speaker 1: 21:43

not anymore. Good, not anymore. I mean it's. You know, people always in the beginning think, oh, I'm always going to miss it. I'm always going to. You get to a point I mean, and I wish I could say, there's this perfect time period where that just flips off, but I have zero desire. I mean you get to a point where, other than me talking about it publicly like this, it's just not a part of my daily life. I have no interest. Once you get through all of those firsts right the first wedding, the first vacation, the first girl's night, whatever it is you start to gain confidence and realize really you don't need it and yeah, no, I love it.

Speaker 2: 22:21

And I just ask I was, in case that sounded maybe like well, girl, I'm here talking about this now just because I'm. I've been trying to cut back on my drinking as well, and sometimes I do like I'll try a sip and I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's really good. Like, oh, I want my own. But I'm like, no, it's okay, I'm good, I live with my husband and it's just. But I know it takes steps to get to where you are. Of course that's so normal, yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:43

And one thing you know everybody has different opinions on the non-alcoholic drink thing and you really have to do what you're comfortable with. I didn't try any non-alcoholic wine for like two years after I quit drinking, because wine was my drink of choice. And then eventually I tried some and I was like, oh, this is actually really good. And it doesn't make me want the real thing and I can. You know when I'm out, or you know, on like Thanksgiving, I got a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne and everyone my whole family was like wait, let me try that, that's really good. And everyone was drinking my non-alcoholic champagne. So things like that can help too. But it does take some time to get to the point where you're like, oh, I really don't, I don't, I don't really miss it, I don't need it. Good, there's hope for me.

Speaker 2: 23:30

Good to know, thank you. And then, as a mother, how did your relationship with alcohol impact your family life and what changes have you observed in your family dynamics since embracing sobriety?

Speaker 1: 23:44

Oh, it's been so powerful. Actually that's been a really fun. That might sound weird to say it was fun, but it was kind of a fun part of the process. You know, my boys never saw me drunk. It's not like, you know, when I was drinking, it was normally. It was kind of like controlled or I mean I wasn't again. It's not like I was getting drunk after work every day, that kind of thing. It's not like I was getting drunk after work every day, that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 24:18

But they were getting older and they were starting to notice and they absolutely pick up on the mommy wine culture stuff, the mommy sippy cup and this might be wine on the coffee mug and all of that stuff that has become so popular and has kind of further like pushed along this idea that it's normal and we need it and all of that. So they were noticing and they were also noticing. They were starting to notice when people were drunk, like our neighbors at parties and events and stuff. They were picking up on that and so when I decided to quit I was really starting to worry about the example that it was setting for them and that was really a big factor for me and so I talked about it. I've always been really open with them and I talked about it when I quit. I told them why I was quitting. They've been a part of the whole process.

Speaker 1: 25:13

My older son I discovered listens to all the podcasts I've been on and has informed me that I say the same thing on all of them. I was like, well, that's my story, what else am I supposed to say? And so they're like a part of it. They're, you know, Supportive. They're so supportive and it's now that they're both teenagers. It's really paved the way for us to have some powerful conversations about alcohol. I'm certainly not naive enough to think that they will never drink, but if when they do, if when you know they will do it. Armed with so much more knowledge than I had when I was 14. I got drunk for the first time.

Speaker 2: 25:52

Yeah, no, that's some powerful stuff and I'm glad that you can have those open conversations with them and I'm sure that's going to influence their thinking in the future with their friends and just themselves and how they will be able to handle it. Yeah, I love it, and is there anything that I have not touched on that maybe you would like to share or get out there? In regards to your book or events, I know you said you've got some coming up and maybe a new book in the works that you're planning.

Speaker 1: 26:16

I am. I'm actually working on my second book right now and I am really excited about it. It's a little bit different. It's still in the drinking space, of course, but it's actually a novel. It's fiction the drinking space, of course, but it's actually a novel. It's fiction and it follows a group of women that are all kind of connected but have very different relationships with alcohol, so it kind of is another way to look at those different spots on that alcohol use disorder spectrum. Yeah, so stay tuned to my Instagram website for updates on that. I'll be really excited to share it soon.

Speaker 2: 26:48

Awesome and people can get your current book right now on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 26:53

Yes.

Speaker 2: 26:53

Perfect, Love it. And then, um, for those who might be questioning their relationship with alcohol but don't identify as alcoholics, what advice would you offer to encourage them to explore sobriety?

Speaker 1: 27:04

Well, I would say one listen to your intuition. Don't ignore it. If your intuition is nudging you and telling you that something is off about your relationship with alcohol, it's on to something. So you owe it to yourself to explore that. But that doesn't mean that you have to do what I did and completely walk away from alcohol. Alcohol, um, you know cold Turkey. The first thing I do is usually recommend that you educate yourself. Read some books about alcohol, read some books about drinking to understand really what it is, what it does. Um, and usually that's pretty eyeopening, yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:40

Love it, Thank you. And then, um, looking ahead, what are your goals as a sobriety advocate and author? Are they? I know I already asked you this, but are there any upcoming projects or initiatives you're excited about?

Speaker 1: 27:52

I am speaking as part of a conference, a sobriety summit that is coming up in April. That is going to be all virtual I'm really excited about and I am working on some other speaking events that will be coming up down the pike and making an appearance at a couple of retreats later this year big sobriety retreats out west so I'll be sharing about all of this on my social media if you want to stay tuned Awesome.

Speaker 2: 28:23

And these events will be available also on your website, which is yes, hadleysorensencom, it's easy, beautiful. Thank you so much, and now my final question is do you have a quote or a saying, maybe mantra or something?

Speaker 1: 28:39

that somebody's told you that resonated with you and would you like to share that? Yeah, sure, absolutely. It's a simple one and it's not mine, but we've all heard the you know, we can do hard things mantra and that was really sort of a guiding principle for me as I went down this path and started and decided that I wanted to do this. From everything from, you know, quitting drinking to getting the book published and everything that fell in between, that we can do hard things really really kind of encompasses it all.

Speaker 2: 29:11

Yeah absolutely, and you've done quite well and being an advocate for getting the word out there, like hey, this is not the norm, despite what you see on TV and read in books and see in your everyday life. You can change and there is hope. Yep, so I love it. Thank you so much for coming on here. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it Absolutely.