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Book recommendation: Recovery Rising: A Retrospective of Addiction Treatment and Recovery Advocacy, by William L White https://amzn.to/3xxE974
Favorite Quote: “It takes everything it takes”
What I wish I knew: “That at 28 when I first got sober, I was still really young.”
Hello Loves,
Thank you for downloading the podcast, my name is Arlina, and I’ll be your host.
Today, my guest is Mike Collins and he has been sober for over 35 years ! Mike is the founder of both SugarAddiction.com and His book “The Last Resort Sugar Detox” has been read by hundreds of thousands of people and his online 30-Day Challenge “The Sugar Freedom Challenge” has been successfully completed by thousands of people as well.
I’m actually doing the challenge myself for the month of July, because I have been eating too many darn cookies! And let’s be real, who doesn’t want to lose a few extra pounds, am I right??.
You can register for the July challenge at sugaraddiction.com/Arlina.
And if you register through my link, I will send you a special gift!
Before we jump in, I’d like to offer the One Day at A Time Podcast newsletter. It’s a collection of the latest episode, a book recommendation, a meditation, something fun and other awesome podcasts I’m listening to. You can sign up for free at odaatchat.com. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it!
Don’t forget to follow me on YouTube, Instagram,LinkedIn and Facebook where I’m sharing practical solutions through video clips and links to more resources to help you get sober, stay sober and go deeper. All of the links will be in the show notes at odaatchat.com
So there ya have it, please enjoy this conversation with Mike!
Transcript:
Well, Mike, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So the three things they’re going to learn today is how sugar affects the brain, what they should eat instead and how to quit sugar. I’m gonna ask you all those questions pretty soon. Okay. right out the gate. This is gonna get a lightning round, right? Yeah, yeah. And they want to hear lightning round. But Welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. Everybody’s addicted to sugar. Thanks for having me. I don’t know about everybody. But it is close to everybody. I guess. Yeah, you’re right. I guess you’re not anymore. Right?
This, but there’s that that we’re pretty rare. There’s a, you know, 74% of the food products on the shelves have sugar in them. So people are a little 5%.
Yeah, people are a little. They don’t quite realize that. Even though they think they don’t eat sweets or whatever. They’re still getting a lot of sugar.
Wow, sugar and the food. I think they do it because it’s so addictive. Right?
Absolutely. They they put they slide people into MRIs and watch their brain light up sit while they test their products. Through stone.
Right? Yeah. So the brain the MRIs are that they attach the probes to your brain. And then the exam that they feed you sugar while you’re doing the MRI. And they’re on the screen.
Yeah, they do it. And they you know, this is the cigarette companies took over the food companies in the 80s. they’ve adapted the addictive model, the addiction model.
It’s a conspiracy. Well, I mean, it works that sells product people keep coming back. So sure. Yeah, no, I get that. Before we jump into all this stuff about sugar addiction. I wanted to start off with the lightning round I i subject all my guests to the lightning round. So the lightning round is when you do you have a favorite recovery book?
You know, I’m a big fan of a guy a lot of people have never heard of his name is William white bill wage, actually kind of my mentor. And I can’t remember the main book. But you can look him up at the William white papers online. But he’s a recovery advocate. He studied recovery for He’s like, the mentor to a lot of people and his mentor was a guy named Ernie. Ernie case no, Ernie. Anyway, Ernie something he was a Harvard School guy. And he wrote a book about the history of AIA. Not God, I think the name of it is, but that group of folks are, it’s a little different than a lot of people have read, but it’s really, Bill and I wrote an article together about the future of recovery. But bill has been working in the trenches for 30 or 40 years for recovery, advocacy, and really about the new recovery advocacy movement, which is, you know, if you say you’re in recovery, you’re in recovery, no dog went around it. No, you know, worried about harm reduction, or, you know, that kind of stuff. It’s really, it’s a little philosophical for folks, but it’s just, you know, just amazing stuff. I it’s kind of, it’s a little anthropological in the history of the of recovery movements, actually, one of the books is about the history or recovery movements, go predating aa by hundreds of years, you know, carry nation and the handsome society and, and there’s an Indian society, like really a lot of recovery that predates even a and then he brings it all the way to literally to the present. And in the future. It’s just yeah, William white Bill White, amazing guy and his mentor is earning his last name. I can’t remember. But
anyway, just when you think of it, let me know. And we’ll put all this in the show notes. For sure. Very cool. A lot of people like the history of, you know, 12 step and, and so be cool to get an outside perspective, too. Yeah. Um, do you have a favorite quote or mantra that you live by? Wow, that’s maybe one that’s kind of right. In your world right now. Yeah. Uh huh. It takes everything it takes. takes everything it takes
and that really applies a lot to the sugar stuff. You know, it’s all right to it and you know, 12 are in alcohol and drug it’s it takes every drink it takes or whatever it takes. Yeah. And you know, we say it takes every sugar take takes every sweet treat it took you know, as people feel guilty, right? They feel like, well, I’ve wait. Once they find this, they lose weight, they feel better, you know, whatever. And then they feel like I wasted like you do when you get into any kind of recovery, like I wasted all this time. And if you get bogged down with that, then it’s just gonna bog you down more. So it takes anything it takes,
it takes everything. It’s a that’s a lovely sentiment of compassion and empathy. Oh, yeah. It’s the antidote to shame. Do you have a regular self care or recovery practice? Like, I know you’ve been in recovery for a long time? Do you? Do you go to meetings? Or do you just practice a morning self care routine?
I do. I do yoga every morning. And I think the meetings that I have seven days a week, have healed me. And oh, really, in the last, since we started these, about three or four years ago, have healed me more than the previous 30 plus years of recovery. Because I was focused much more on other people trying to, you know, get that information out. And, you know, answer the same questions over and over and over and over again. And I you know, the firt At first I was like, God, I started to realize it’s almost like a practice in and of itself, you know, yeah. And it was like, consistency. And, yeah, I mean, now, I realized that I need those meetings as much as the folks need are, you know, that meet the people that come to them need them. So, yeah. And, you know, I it’s gotten a little bigger, and now I got internet guys and all that kind of other stuff. And I still just do meetings, you know? Yeah. And so yeah,
seven days a week, huh? Yeah, that’s commitment. Or insanity. It’s just both it’s it’s a commitment to treat the insanity. I don’t know. Yeah. No, I deal with something every day myself. So no judgments here. What’s the one thing you wish you knew when you first got sober? That I was really young. How old were you when you got sober? 28 Yeah, I thought I like lost my room though. My whole life. worried for years about took me decades to realize it that I was and now now that we’re a little further down the line. I didn’t appreciate it when I had it. Right. That’s funny. What do you do for fun these days? What do I do for fun while these bottles behind me are not gin
to ask you about that? What is going on with the bottles
that gin vodka their waters from all over the world? I collect water from all over the world and it’s a little bit obsessive.
That’s, that’s fun for you. Okay. You have to travel to these places to get the well that’s
part of the deal. And I’m trying to get a blog together that you know, I go there travel blog. Yeah, but I still show the waters off while I’m there. Kind of.
Did you see that Netflix episode series with Zac Efron and Darrin I
did that guy is one of my mentors. Darren is no the guy the guy. Yeah. Darrin Ross. Oh, no, no. What’s his name?
Not Zac Efron. No, the
guy that the water so Darren? Yeah, water. So yay. Martin Reese, the guy who is doing the the water. He did a water summer education. They’re sitting in a pool, actually, that you’re the guy you’re talking about was not with him. At that time. A woman was with him. She was another movie star. But the Guy Martin Rees, he’s a sommelier here in Los Angeles. Yeah, water sommelier. And he was doing the demonstration for Zach. Yeah, so yeah, it was pretty cool.
Now Darren is I can’t remember his last name, but he is a an author that talks about using food. You know how to heal your body through food. I can’t remember his last name. War and the two of them go around the world kind of like an Anthony Bourdain did. Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah, I’ll have to find links to those. But yeah, that was really interesting. I did not know that. There were such differences in the kinds of water that are available, like the filtered water, the pure water. I didn’t really even think about how important it is to get vitamins and minerals. Or maybe it’s just minerals from your water. Well, it’s
so like, Look, I’m getting really into this thing about the bioavailability of minerals in water exactly what they talk about. filtered water isanti or de Santi and Aquafina and these crappy waters are just basically coming from a factory. If you don’t get a water that’s in a bottle. In a glass bottle, that’s filter that’s coming strictly from the spring, you’re ripping out the magnesium and the calcium and all these things. And there’s a new book out called the mineral fix. And in the mineral fix, he’s got two chapters on the bioavailability of the water and why the water is so much better than supplements or even food, like 20 times better for the bioavailability of them. The most important thing when you’re recovering from any substance use disorder especially sugar is magnesium and calcium and magnesium calcium don’t play together well when you’re doing supplementation and so it’s better to ingest it like basically a slow drip all day drinking the waters right behind me that you know, you can get actual minerals, calcium silica, which is good for your skin, all these kinds of good things comes from the from the good mineral waters, and people the main crap, I shouldn’t say it this way the main bitch people have is that well, you know, it’s like why if you can just get it out of a tap or whatever. Well, here’s the thing in Europe they have 100% recyclability of glass. Okay. And we’re close to that in the United States. We’re high with you know, the the fees he required on the bottles and deposits and stuff. The bottles, glass bottles get recycled. at a level it’s so much higher than plastic, not quite 100% in the United States, but it’s getting there. So there’s no reason why you can’t drink mineral water, good quality mineral water autoglass
glass could be for you.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s, you know, one of the things that people are going to learn is what to eat instead, maybe, you know, including mineral water in the diet is also very important. But yeah, the mineral folks, I’ll make a note of that as well. Okay, well, that’s kind of it for the lightning round. And somebody so curious as to people’s recovery journey. Do you want to share a little bit about your family of origin and like maybe how old you were when you started using and how you got off of it?
Ya know, I’d be happy to um, you know, I grew up in a, in an alcoholic family, basically, my father was a, you know, a binge drinker. He didn’t drink every day, when he drank, he was gone for a day or two, you know, that kind of thing. And, you know, I think he had PTSD from the Korean War. And he grew up kind of rough with the, you know, his mother there. His parents were way ahead of those. So cells in the 1950s 40s, they got divorce. So he was left to live with his father at nine years old or whatever. scandalous. Where was mom? He didn’t go with mom. Well, no. And mom’s family owned a bar. So it was a, you know, it was a quite a quite a, quite a colorful history. But, you know, my father was a he was a drinker. I mean, he’s just he never really got over it. And he controlled it at the end of his life. But, you know, he, he was always, when he drank, he got drunk kind of thing. And I grew up with that.
Yeah, watching that can be very difficult. And I found that people either go to extremes, either they follow in the footsteps, or they go polar opposite and maintain total abstinence. But how old were you first started drinking?
I’m probably 1314. You know? 1414. regularly. We were 16. We were in bars twice a week. You know, you could
be in a bar at 16. Well, we would go to these out in the country bars. They didn’t care. Where did you grow up? Central New York near Syracuse. Okay, country bars. Wow, I am so glad I didn’t have access to that. Yeah, they didn’t even ask they care. Wow. Did you have a sense of why you were drinking?
No, not at all. One of the things I tell about the story about why sugar is such a problem is that there’s a great video on on YouTube, Eric Clapton talking to Ed Bradley 60 minutes. And they’re sitting in a $7 million Antigua shirt antigo treatment center. And he said, Ed Bradley says So Eric, this addiction thing. It started with heroin it. Eric Clapton says no, it started with sugar. Five years old, I was eating bread and butter and sugar sandwiches to change my state. And I didn’t realize I was changing my state with the sugar. My mother was the sugar junkie. Okay, so I had that, you know, double whammy, if you will. But when I got to be 13 or 14 and ran into beer, I knew that change my state, I knew that I was more creative. So talking to girls was kind of shy, and I could go talk with the you know, go to the dance drink behind the high school and go to the dance. And that I knew I understood that. But when I quit drinking and gotten recovery, as did most of my fellows, as do most people, in recovery, I went right back to sugar, not knowing that it was making me feel just a little bit better every time I ingested. And that’s the key to getting off sugar. And I’ll call it two, I think but, you know, it’s the reason I started, I didn’t know the answer. Your question is no, I didn’t know why I thought it was a party. Right. And I thought that I was, you know, I did know about that one benefit, we call it liquid courage. I’m sure you’ve heard that term. Yes, you know, where I could talk to, but I felt better about myself. That was really that I knew. And again, how conscious it was. I just thought I was hanging with the boys. Right. Right. Right. Any many years? And that’s, and I never thought anything more about what all these any answer I would give you would be hindsight at this point, you know, back then I didn’t know.
Right? Yeah. And that’s pretty common, right? I didn’t I didn’t learn until I got sober that drinking was just a symptom of a deeper problem, you know, anything that we use to distract from ourselves, from our feelings, really, anything that we use, whether it’s addiction and in my mind obsession works the same way it’s a distraction from what you’re not okay with, you know, some kind of feeling and I don’t know about you, I didn’t exactly grow up with any kind of coping skills. So that became that became rage and anger. Well, for boys, that’s acceptable. Anger is acceptable for boys sadness, and feeling your feelings. It’s my understanding that boys are not alone. That is correct. I that is not cool. I
tell a story that you know, when I got sober, and then I finally had my what I call my dark night of soul. I figured it out. I had not cried and in 20 subplot 21 years. I want to do I tried in therapy, I was trying and I couldn’t make it happen. I was like, how do you do this? How does it work? Because I had stuffed it down so hard, I’d figured out how to stop it so hard. Yeah, with substances without you. What
were you trying to stop the feelings? Oh, well,
I realized, like I said, in hindsight, I realized that, but I didn’t know that then I didn’t know what when I was doing it. It was an unconscious as both the sugar and the alcohol have this, this unconscious ability to because it’s pretty much available, especially sugar, even to children.
You know,
we don’t realize that it, you know, that it does tamp down your feelings. I always talk about the proverbial person who is in food addiction recovery person lost 100 200 pounds. You know, that person does not talk about the weight, or what they don’t know, they don’t talk about the weight, the food or the exercise. What they talk about is what you and I are talking about the emotional, rejiggering how they had to literally reframe their whole life and handle their emotions in a different way through yoga, or exercise or, you know, a hug or a meeting or a phone call or something. And that’s what most people don’t get both in substance use disorder, recovery, and definitely in sugar.
Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to something you said you mentioned, the dark night of the soul is that is that what you would consider to be like your bottom or maybe like a moment of clarity.
My dark night of the soul happened at five years sober when I got divorced. And it also happened after I quit flour. And it was what I believe the all of the pain, all the hurt all the anger that I had stuffed, was coming out with no filters. I also threw a television against the fireplace when I moved out. And so I didn’t have a television. Oh, here I was naked. And basically not I used the relationship. I use flour and sugar and caffeine and television and all the things that people in recovery you is. And when all those were taken away, I you know, went into a 12 or 18 month period. Luckily, I had built up men’s groups, a therapy group, a therapist, and so I knew what kind of what was happening, but that didn’t stop it from happening. And a lot of people turn back at that point, what happens is the ubiquitous nature of sugar, even if you’re in recovery, you know what we have when I first went public with my substance use disorder. My parents were alive. I didn’t. I was an anonymous guy for all of my recovery. About five or six years ago when they passed away. I went public and I was doing the sugar work. And I had this huge flood of people from recovery people. So For 510 15, one of my coaches is 20 years sober, but they could not put down the sugar, they had gained incredible amounts of weight. They had cut diabetes diagnosis, their quote unquote, sober, but they couldn’t put down the sugar. And so when they, as I did quit the sugar and started to get into this recovery, those folks had their dark night of the soul, they started to have to reckon with the feelings that the sugar had covered up for them. So I mean, it’s a, like I said, I like the arc of a podcast, especially recovery podcast, because the people in recovery, and I love them dearly, owe my life to them. But if they’re not examining their flour, sugar, caffeine and nicotine addictions, there’s still there’s a lot covered up and I have hundreds of people to prove it, that we’d love to talk with them that had been in quote, unquote, substance use disorder recovery, but now are going to the next level and handling and finally, managing those emotions. So that’s my dark night of the soul.
I mean, so I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. And I think my new tagline is going to be get sober, stay sober, go deeper, right, and I’m not gonna steal that one. I sometimes my ultimate goal is to lead people out of suffering. So if that’s useful to you, I couldn’t care less. I care so much I just want people to, to alleviate their suffering. And I agree with you. It’s like I remember being first sober and hearing, be careful not to switch addictions. Right. But they’re really you know, the message was be aware of that, but stay focused on your program. Right. For me, it was a digit. You said you stayed anonymous for a long time until about five years ago? Yeah, I just want to kind of close the loop on the recovery piece. So you recognize that the drugs and alcohol were a problem? And then did you go to a 12 step group?
Oh, yeah, my whole, you know, for the most of my recovery, I mean, near the last 10 or 15 years, I didn’t go very much. I had other things come up, like,
listen to money, your debt.
Like, you know, relationships, go to bed, you know, I wasn’t using drugs, but I had more as you I was going deeper, as you say.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I heard somebody say that. something to the effect that it doesn’t matter what the problem is, the solution is the same. The solution is spiritual. It’s simple. And it has nothing to do with the problem, right? Like, very little to do very little to do the actual problem. It’s all people always
want a food plan and an exercise plan from me. I’m like, that’s got nothing to do with it.
Can’t wait to find out. Yeah, so we’re going to talk I want to switch gears to start to answer those three, three questions that we sort of talked about in the very beginning, you know, but let’s talk a little bit about thank you for sharing, you know, how you got sober and all I think it’s important for people to sort of get the context of where you’re coming from your years of experience and, and that addiction recovery space.
Do want to answer a quick question with the, you know, in regards to the anonymity as I started to study, Bill White and William white, and the new recovery advocacy movement, which, you know, K Street, Washington, DC, huge nonprofits believe that the reduction of stigma comes from the average person says, telling their story of Congressman, and a movie star is great, but it’s, you know, the average people telling their story, and I said, Amen, that makes sense. That’s partly to how it happened.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m not anonymous, either. I The funny thing is, is I was an anonymous about my using. Like, when I drank everybody knew, right, that was not our I was not subtle. So that’s why I’m not anonymous about my recovery either. Plus, I you know, there is a lot of stigma still, regards to drugs and alcohol. So I think it’s important that whenever at a job in my life, I didn’t have to worry about how it’s been an entrepreneur. Keep up well, and asked, and that’s why the anonymity was so important in the beginning, because of that, it was actually that’s not even true. The very beginning if you in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, there was so many inquiries, so many people asking for help, and so few people equipped to respond that those people had to be anonymous because they were just overwhelmed by the requests for help. And then it became more like, a job prospect thing, like if you admitted that you were in raincover, that you were an alcoholic, that you couldn’t get a job. So I think some of that stigma, that stigma still exists, for sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah. CLE it’s the only drug that you have to explain why Not doing it even people even get the sugar thing, right. Like everybody wants to lose weight. So I couldn’t agree with you more. But okay, so let’s talk a little bit about how sugar affects the brain. I’ve heard you talk before in other podcasts about the dopamine reward system. And yeah, I’ve I’ve talked to other neuroscientists who talk about dopamine being like the Save button, you take an action, and then you have a feeling. And then dopamine is released. And it’s like, oh, hey, remember, remember this. That pleasure? Yeah, remember this? So how it talked to me a little bit how you think of it in terms of sugar and neuro chemistry?
Yeah, I mean, one of the things that’s really exciting about my work in the last five years is the explosion of the science around all this. It’s really just, I mean, I always keep this book handy or what, you know, hooked, guy wrote, it’s like he won a Pulitzer Prize now for this book, but it’s Michael loss. He also wrote sugar, fat and salt. The tagline is food freewill and how the food giants exploit our addictions. Right. And, you know, we have these summits every year quit sugar summit. And during the summit, we have everybody. I mean, all of the most brilliant literally, he’s a neuroscientist, and people that have been studying fructose. And, you know, the food system, the food companies have weaponized science against us to keep us addicted, keep us coming back. They’re, you know, getting children addicted earlier and earlier. And the simple answer is that the dopamine receptors are downregulated you have less of them, they’re thinned out when you use massive amounts of sugar. And you know, the dose makes the poison. Like we take a little heroin, we take a little alcohol, we take a little cocaine, but we are lucky. Okay? We are Yeah, no, not me, but a lot of people do. And But no, seriously, yeah.
I’ve never heard of anybody taking a little bit of heroin or a little bit
of what I’m saying is if you even if you take a lot of it, it’s still tiny compared to the average of 21 teaspoons of sugar a day. And if you don’t have a you know, if you got a bad habit, you know, 30 4050 teaspoons of sugar a day. I mean, a Coke is 12 so think about anybody’s got a coke, Coca Cola habit, you know, they’re, they’re pounding you know, 50 right before they get stopped before they eat anything. And so it’s the dose makes the poison and probably since the womb, no one and very few people in this society have gone 24 hours without sugar. And 400 years ago, 500 years ago, we ate very little fructose was for your listeners half of the sugar molecule is glucose and half of its fructose. And it’s the fructose is the offending molecule. IVs many of these neuroscientists is fructose, a psychoactive drug. And this is the core of my, my work and a core of the future. It’s about the want to study sugar study fructose, okay. I’ve got two guys coming on the summit this year that did a paper that they’ve they already started to get some patents on from the discoveries of blocking fructose, and fructose. Four or 500 years ago, 7 million years of evolution we had, there’s no we had about, you know, one little bit of fructose when things were ripe once a year. And as the effect that the fructose has on the frontal lobe, and the brain and the nucleus accumbens is so huge. It’s identical to heroin, it’s identical to alcohol, it’s identical to drugs. And it’s only the dose that makes the poison, the volume of the amount of stuff and the consistency 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there’s no time to even relax or get off the stuff. And we are just destroying literally our decision making processes. I always say that, look, somebody comes into me 100 pounds overweight, they are not they do not have the mental capacity. People think this is too strong, but I don’t think it anymore. People that they do not have the mental capacity to understand what this habit is doing to them. And they don’t understand. When somebody gets 90 days, they slept their head and they say, I can’t believe the things I used to do. My brain fog is cleared up. I’m thinking clear, I’m sleeping better. And this is not someone who’s ever done alcohol or alcohol or drugs or whatever. This is just sugar, flour and caffeine. And when you see it like Pat genius is only pattern recognition, right? It’s like when you when you’ve seen 1000 people go through this process and you see the you know, X amount come out the other end not quite 1000 I would be lying to say 1000 came out the other end but 1000s of people one on one, have gone through this process. And when they get to the other side, their life has transformed. Weight wise, skin wise, brain wise, motivation wise. I’ve got bunches of people that got off SSRIs bunches of people that put type two diabetes into remission. And it’s all to do look, we know what the glucose molecule is doing to the body metabolic disease, probably to Alzheimer’s, which they’re calling diabetes three is, you know, Alzheimer’s now. You know, diabetes in general. We know what that’s doing. But what is less known and what now is the reason why people are starting to understand they can’t stay stopped, is the fructose is effect on the nucleus accumbens and the dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, GABA, adrenal glands, even your endorphins, the running, you know, the ones that make you feel better, all of this stuff is affected by sugar and, you know, destroyed basically by sugar, manipulated by sugar. And when you take that manipulation away, when you go abstinent, you go into withdrawals. That should be the biggest clue. Anybody and adult who quits who has any habit at all quits flour, sugar and caffeine. At the same time, they are going to be incapacitated in days two, three and four, they’re not going to be able to go to work, they’re not going to be able to parent they’re going to have to have some time off, they’re going to be starving, they’re going to be depressed, you know, they’re gonna have headaches, probably. This is 90% of people when they quit all these quote unquote, legal drugs. And it’s, uh, okay, I’ll get off my soapbox. But say
meeting um, you know, it’s so funny because in the recovery, I’m in a lot of recovery groups. And there’s always this debate, you know, when people start bringing up things like harm reduction, you know, or what’s what’s sobriety and what isn’t when we’re talking about you know, should we be legal as we are? Do you district always people are addicted to nicotine, caffeine sugar. What am I missing one? Oh, flour. Right. So and they have that argument holds water, right? Like it really is a mind altering. These are mind altering substances that you know, and I don’t know, it’s, it’s tough to cut everything all at once and I go at your own pace. But you know, me sitting at 27 years of sobriety, I have never addressed my sugar issues. I’m a little chubby right now, but that’s fine. But I also have family members who I am recognizing have, you know, a sugar addiction as well. So this is so fascinating to me that I’m so glad to be taught.
Well, there’s still call it the good girls drug. I told you this Domino, my mother, my father drank milk, my mother did sugar. And you know, if I had to gauge which one was worse for their mind, in their body in their brain, my mom got the Alzheimer’s earlier, aged, worse. had every malady known to man. And it was all the sugar, she just couldn’t quit her grandma, my grandmother, her mother died when she was just eight years old. And they made a pact, my grandfather and her aunt, where they had to move into they own the country store across the way. And my mom would go in there, and they said, just give her whatever candy she want. That was a great gesture, right? I swear to the day she died, she believes sugar was love. And they didn’t know back then nobody knew nobody knew till like really the last 510 15 years, you know, well, actually, people did know, but they got they got suppressed by governments and big sugar. You know, and now that the movement, if you will, is just too strong. too strong.
Yeah, people really haven’t,
you know, 50% of the people that addiction podcasters who get get with me had a sugar thing going on? And it’s like, yeah, you know, it’s like, it’s, it’s so subtle, it’s like, and so socially acceptable, you get this product to a one year old and no moral legal or ethical worries or obligations. And it’s a tectonic shift in, in understanding, now that the sciences here like seat belts in cars are drinking and driving. It’s now the sciences, when you drink and drive you’re not capable. And when you crash, and you don’t have a seatbelt on, you’re gonna die more. That’s when society changes and this science is going to change this society.
Absolutely. I love this work that you’re doing. Okay. So the other question that always comes up is, you know what to eat instead? And I know, we only have like nine minutes, and I have two questions for you, I want to know what to eat instead. And then how to how to quit sugar.
So I’m going to reframe this a little and twist it a little Anya because yes, you eat whole food. Yes. You drink water. Yes, you sleep. And yes, you exercise, mostly just walking. But at the end of the day, this recovery is the same as the recovery and any other substance use disorder. It’s not about, you know, putting the plug in the jug. Yeah, you got to do that. And yeah, you got to eat whole food. But this is about understanding what sugar did for your mental. You know, what’s it emotionally and physically, mentally, you had depended on sugar to manage your emotional life. And when you realize when you journal it out and realize it, you know, most of my clients know more about nutrition and food than I do my job. And you mentioned harm reduction. And what’s the other one peer recovery two things I’ve adopted from the recovery movement, which is harm reduction every day, though, without sugar is a good day. And if it happened to be every day, you went with Suboxone and not met. heroin. That was a good day, right? I came up as an abstinence based guy in my early days, Narcotics Anonymous. If you use Suboxone, you were not clean, right? That’s crap in my world. And that took me 20 years almost understand that. And I use the same concept and the same awakening in the sugar world. If you just made it six days, no sugar, that’s six days, that’s a start, you know, you know, okay, you had a bad weekend or birthday, whatever, start again, Monday morning, eventually, that harm reduction process, get you in that pure recovery group, helps you get to the other side, and don’t give up. And so it’s really honest to God, and I hate to say this, but when people are 90 days, down the line, what they ate, and what foods they ate are, like really low on the list of what they talk about is the benefits their diet. It’s about brain fog. It’s about it’s about feeling better, it’s about their skin being better. It’s all these better things. And it’s really not their diet or the recipes. You know, I know that’s harsh, but it’s true.
So harsh at all. I mean, I’m all about you know, let’s talk about the truth. Right? Yes, that’s the truth. Yeah. Man, this is when you talk about brain fog. I’m 52. I was like, Oh, it’s because I’m older. You know, my everything’s changing right? Now, just let’s, let’s just not pay attention to the cookies that I’m baking and oh my gosh, so it’s like giving up sugar is gonna help my brain frog. Frog fog. All those? Yeah. Let’s see.
Number one benefit people mentioned past 20 days Yes, they remember better, they sleep better. They’re processing better. They literally things they can do their job better a lot of things mentally, and their motivation returns I truly believe and you can write it or you’re writing everything down but you can swing down. Okay, sugar is an a motivational drug, a motivational got a lot of his history and kind of pushed to the side about the cannabinoid. I always say wrong, Cannabis, because cannabis, cannabis receptors in the body. But from marijuana, everybody says you’re a stoner, you’re, you know, you have a motivational syndrome, telling you, you can’t get up the couch off the couch to go to the exercise because you’re drinking, you’re drinking or eating, and type of a motivational syndrome draw the story. That’s a real fact. And most people, most people will cop to the ideas like my energy came back, my motivation came back, you know, I kind of was writing it off to brain fog and stuff. But then I realized that when I get an accidental in gestation, which is a cake about five times in the last 10 years, where somebody swore a salad dressing didn’t have any sugar in it, they made it themselves, but they didn’t look at this greeting in that interview. So I just kind of enjoy the buzz. But the next morning, I can’t get out of bed. I mean, it’s crazy.
So oh my gosh, I missed. Okay, so we’re going to talk about that, how to quit this stuff. And I want to talk about your 30 Day Challenge, though. It’s currently the beginning of June. And I think I’m going to do this challenge with myself and with my women’s group and with my podcast, you know, newsletter people and all the ways that people are connected with me, I want to do this for July. So we’re going to send people to sugar addiction. COMM forward slash Arlina Arlina is spelled AR l i m a. I’ll leave links to everything. thing in the show notes so that people can do this challenge with me, I desperately need to do this challenge. Cool. So we can do it as a group and I was going to offer that people that sign up through for your challenge, it’s $97 Holy moly, that is the cheapest thing I’ve ever seen ever, because we are going to save so much money. Never mind. Never mind a heart ache and brain fog and motivation. In just coffee and sugar alone. money saving activity, actually. But I will also include, you know, I have two programs that I offer, which is sobriety reset and the reinvent class, which is I advocate for sobriety through self esteem, as well as 12 step and whole thing. But I will, you know, you buy through my link, do the sugar challenge with me, I’ll give you half off of one of my classes. So that is my offer to you. But okay, so the challenge is 30 days,
it is 30 days, I come into your inbox every single day with a video with PowerPoints and everything. So it’s a lot of information. But it’s also, like I said, over 1000s of detoxes, we’ve kind of figured out what happens on day one, day two all the way through to day 30. And a lot of information people. I’ll give me an example we’ve never had a refund, it’s a craziest thing I’ve been in, you know, my career before I got into this was internet stuff. And you know, obviously refunds were part of life. So we’ve never had a refund this because people are really they’re enjoying it, they get into the group. So the first seven days, what happens is they we don’t you don’t even have to quit sugar. The first seven days, I’m prepping prepping your house, prepping your family prepping you psychically, mentally, emotionally, physically cleaning out the house, all that kind of good stuff. And then on the eighth day, we start with no sugar. And more importantly, we have zoom meeting seven days a week that you’re able to plug into, we have a forum with over 11,000 people in it on on Facebook, and another forum on Facebook, if you’re not a Facebook person. That’s not quite as traffic, but it’s still pretty big. And what else we got, we got? Oh, during that we do I tell you mentioned a couple times we do this quit sugar summit. So we’ve got 75 videos from all the best educators and researchers in the world that come with the challenge. And we’ve got a core video that used to be 20 $500, my personal coaching stuff when I used to do that. Those are four videos that cover the food. As you know, we’ve mentioned the emotions, the social, which is huge people, the food pushers and most people that come to us are usually the only person in their family willing and wanting to do this. They’ve got a spouse, they got kids, they got whatever they’re not, you know, they’re kind of alone, even their nuclear family to do this. So that that’s a whole hour. Those are all hour and a half courses. So really tall total. There’s over 100 plus videos to kind of peruse. But the more important ones are the ones that come in every day, and the you know, the week or the daily zoom meetings that they can just plug right into.
I’m super excited about that. Yeah. Listen, I know you got to go. But I just want to thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. I’m super excited to invite my audience to your world and do this challenge as of this recording. It’s June but we’re going to do the challenge in July. Yeah, so I am really excited Michael, thank you so much for joining me today and I can’t
enjoy it. I love talking to addiction podcasts. This is my favorite thing so I really believe that I’m gonna say this one last time. But I believe that addiction, podcast addiction, recovering people in addiction, once they get the sugar thing can change this world in a big way above and beyond what they’re already doing for sure for you know, regular drugs. I don’t want to say regular dogs, but you know, alcohol to me.
Yeah. So thank you and have a great day. We’ll talk soon. Thanks for having me. Bye bye.
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