Brad Pitt Is Back On The Booze - My Views!

Now, it would be really easy for me to jump on the shame wagon, as it were, or the recovery, often 12-step denial wagon.

He's deluding himself, you know, once an addict, always an addict.

But as you know, that's not my story and actually I don't believe that's anyone's real story.

Of course, lots of people identify with that, and it's really important to them that they are an alcoholic and they claim that persona, or they are in recovery, 12-step, and actually that's really helpful to them.

And again, the point I'm going to make throughout this conversation today is that we're all so wonderfully, beautifully nuanced and unique.

What might work brilliantly for me might not work at all for someone else, and vice versa, and I think we have to have total love and respect for that.

What I see at times, especially around the recovery community, of which all the work that I do is not aimed, as much as I love that space, because for me, we're all on the same team, just playing in different positions.

I'm just a bit further up the pitch, really speaking to the middle lane, the average drinker, the heavy drinker, the sometimes moderate drinker, the sometimes not at all style of drinker, trying to inspire as many people as possible to come and join me on the fun side of the island because actually, life is 10 times better without alcohol, so why drink in the first place? The type of messaging, rather than, you know, those that have really whacked off some rock bottom and need specialist help to change their relationship with alcohol.

That's not what I do.

However, within that community, at times, and not everyone clearly, because I know some incredible people within that space, can be a bit militant in their views.

An assumption that because that worked for them, it must work for everyone else, and to attempt to do anything else is just denial or it's deluded, and it's always doomed to failure because what worked for them must work for everyone else.

And as someone that's gone away and studied degrees and master's degrees in positive psychology and coaching science, I understand how our brains work, and what I realize is we are all completely unique.

Everyone has a distinct map of the world, and the number one mistake most people make, and we see this all the time in coaching, is to assume that everyone has your map.

That's why it's a great example of this.

If you've ever had this, and I guarantee it you probably have, at some point in your life when you were thinking or contemplating changing your relationship with alcohol, and maybe you played around and experimented, and you drunk bottles instead of pints or, you know, shorts instead of wine or whatever it might be, right? And you're sort of playing around with some of these ideas.

And then a loved one or a friend comes up with that well-intended but absolutely useless advice and it goes something like this: "Why don't you just drink less?" No shit, Sherlock.

Why didn't I think of that? I mean, it is the most ridiculous advice, but it's well-intended from a loved one.

And what's going on there is through their map of the world, it makes perfect sense to just drink less.

But through the receiver of that absolutely useless advice and their map of the world, that is the most stupid thing they've ever heard, right? Because of course, we would just do that rather than, you know, have to change everything very often.

However, as you know with me, I went on this lovely adventure of change and there was no rock bottom, there was no addiction or, uh, recovery in my story.

I was in the average middle lane and by taking a break, I just wanted to really see what it was like to remove alcohol.

Would it be the thing that unlocked the keys to optimal performance in business, in life, in health and vibrancy? And it was for me, right? So that's through my lived map of the world, my experience, and it was so powerful I reached that place of, well, actually, why the hell would I drink? I don't care if the society is awash with it and everyone else I know is drinking, I'm not doing it because why would I? Because for me, again, through my map and my lived experience, it was taking away my time, my energy, my zest for life, my spark.

It was causing me panic attacks and anxiety.

It was causing me to put on weight and being consistent in everything I did, underperforming in the workplace, underperforming in the way that I wanted to be a parent and a partner to my wife and show up for my girls.

Like for me, it was taking away so much more than it ever pretended to offer.