Jane McFadden:

Hello and welcome to the next ADHD Mums episode. Today we have a very much anticipated addiction and ADHD. Now, I’ve got many deficits, addiction hasn’t been a huge one for me, and I have brought in an expert on addiction and ADHD to really unpack this for us.

So welcome to Fiona McIntyre from Face Your Flaws Coaching. Welcome so much Fiona.

Fiona McIntyre:

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s really exciting to be here.

Jane McFadden:

Awesome. I am going to give you a little bit of an overview on Fiona. Don’t stress about writing down your information. I’ll put it all in the episode notes on how to contact Fiona if any of this speaks to you.

So Fiona McIntyre is a life coach with over 20 years of experience helping people overcome their challenges, change their behaviours and achieve their goals. Fiona was diagnosed with ADHD at 47 and has faced her own addiction challenges. She’s lost 35 kilos, which she’s kept off for 20 years and has started her sober journey in January 2023 after being a binge drinker for 30 years.

Fiona is a mother of two neurodivergent children and is passionate about showing them that a diagnosis is not an identity. Small segue for a second, Fiona. I love that.

Your diagnosis is not an identity. That is so powerful. Anyway, moving forward, with qualifications in communication psychology and Fiona is about to finish her diploma in alcohol and drug practice, Fiona is now specialising in coaching and counselling for people who want to overcome their alcohol, weight loss and ADHD management challenges.

Fiona helps people to find their motivation to change behaviours, embrace their strengths and create the life that they deserve. What a powerful bio, Fiona.

Fiona McIntyre:

Thank you, Dee. I have never heard it read back to me before. It’s hard to sum up, but it’s a bit of a unique combo, I guess.

Jane McFadden:

I love this because I think when you’re in the niche, you are in a place where you can really, really be an expert.

What I love about this episode too is, yes, this is going to be an addiction and ADHD episode, but I love the fact that Fiona is going to isolate this more into food and alcohol. My personal opinion is that I reckon ADHD mums, food and alcohol will be the number one addiction. I reckon it would be.

I don’t think we’ll have any hardcore drug addicts. We’ve done drugs. There’s no issues with drugs, but I don’t think we will have any hardcore drug addicts.

I think food and alcohol as a drug and as a challenge is by far what I see the most. This has been particularly pertinent. I have been seeking someone to speak on this episode for a while and I went out to the Facebook community on it.

It’s not my group. There’s two main groups that I love. If you search ADHD Australian women, there’s two massive groups that I think are great and I find super supportive.

If you haven’t been on them, jump on them. They’re nothing to do with me. I just think they’re good.

I put out a guest request a couple of months ago and Fiona was one of the lucky ladies that PMed me, or maybe I was one of the lucky ladies that she offered her time so graciously. It’s certainly going to be a topic that I think is going to speak to a lot of people.

What I wanted to start with Fiona was a brief overview of you and your journey with ADHD and who you are. We’ll try and move on to the content on the addiction. We try not to make the whole episode about you because I tend to go down a rabbit wound because I love hearing the diagnosis stories. We’ll try and get a brief overview of you and what your background is and then we’ll move into more the theory and the practical help, if that’s okay.

Fiona McIntyre:

Sure. As you said at the beginning, I was diagnosed with ADHD at 47. That was from purely my psychologist who I’d been seeing for five or six years saying, there’s something not right.

We’re not making any great points in some of these areas. He said, have you ever thought about ADHD? No, not really. That started the whole process and then once I had got my diagnosis and really started thinking about my entire life up until that point, it made so much sense.

Especially, I guess I’m one of those few people who had actually kept all my report cards from primary school and when I went back and read them, where they all said, Fiona easily distracts others. Fiona is easily distracted. Fiona has so much potential if only she’d apply herself and all these other things.

It certainly made a lot of sense. I guess I probably am reflective of a lot of people with their ADHD experience if they weren’t diagnosed as children, where I never felt like I fit in. I never really felt like I had any close friends.

I tried so hard to be the kind of person everybody thought I should be and as a result, suffered a lot of trauma as a result of that. I started numbing my feelings with food when I was about eight years old and stopped weighing myself in my early 20s when I weighed… I knew I was over 100 kilos. I did the very common thing.

I’ve lost 20 kilos, put it all back on. At 18, I discovered alcohol and now I reflect upon that alcohol was fantastic because it not only gave me the false sense of confidence that I didn’t have, but it also shut up my brain. I think that’s why a lot of, especially women with ADHD, alcohol is great because it makes our brain stop for a bit.

I had lost 35 kilos 20 years ago and have kept that off, but had not addressed the emotional issues that made me engage in that behavior, which was still numbing, unprocessed trauma, self-esteem issues, self-worth issues, which was just a effect of growing up in that way.

Last year, pretty much about this time last year, my daughter said to me she was worried that I was going to die from my drinking. I just thought, wow, this is just the cycle I went through repeating itself.

I made a promise to her that I would stop drinking for a whole year. Then as I started really focusing on the work, really focusing on that emotional work, unpacking all that trauma, going through everything, I realized that this is something I need to do. This is a lifestyle commitment I need to make.

I stopped the binge eating. Now I stopped the binge drinking. Just over 10 months sober. Very close to that one year. It’s been really interesting to see the difference that has made, especially to my ADHD symptoms, but really decreased the anxiety I had because I’ve also got generalized anxiety disorder. It just has made such a huge change to my overall life, quality of life.

With both my children being diagnosed this year, it really means that I am much more able to be there for them and to be able to support them. If I’d been drinking and waking up feeling horrible, feeling fuzzy, having increased anxiety, I just wouldn’t have been able to support them through what they needed. Definitely have that lived experience in terms of understanding.

It also prompted me to go back to uni this year to study alcohol and other drugs practice because I’ve got a background in psychology, but really didn’t know where I wanted to focus that on. Through this process, I realized, well, there must be other people out there like me who have suffered that trauma, have looked to food and alcohol to numb that and have reached a stage where it’s like, I don’t actually know how to move on from this and be able to deal with everything I’ve got to deal with. I thought, well, that’s something I definitely know about and can help other people achieve as well.

 

Feel free to tell me that I’m asking too many questions. With your food and alcohol, do you mind me asking what exactly it looked like? Because when we’re talking binge eating and binge drinking, I’m not sure exactly to what level you’re talking. Do you know what I mean?

Fiona McIntyre:

Yes. I guess with my food, I could very easily sit down and eat a whole pizza and then half a kilo of ice cream. That’d be quite easy. I could sit down and eat an entire lemon meringue pie.

The interesting thing about binge eating and emotional eating is it’s eating to numb. You’re not binge eating on carrots. You’re not binge eating on celery sticks.

It’s the sugary fatty. It’s the stuff that gives us the dopamine hit. The food and alcohol both do that.

For ADHD brains, because we are deficient in dopamine, that’s what we’re looking for. From an alcohol perspective, back in my drinking days, in my late teens, early 20s, I used to drink alcohol in buckets. 20-cent drink days, I’d easily have 20 rum and Cokes.

To my later drinking years over the last few years when after I had my kids, it would ease not every night. I wasn’t drinking every night, but certainly I was drinking maybe what started only drinking two nights a week, started becoming five nights a week. It could be anything from two glasses of wine to two bottles of wine.

It really can be everything in between. What that looked like, whether it was food or alcohol, and for two or three-year period, it was both, which alcohol and food goes perfectly hand-in-hand because once you have a few drinks, then you want the chips and the crackers. You just get the hungries.

You’re munching on everything. It really would depend on what the triggers were that give us stress or low self-esteem or something had happened to work. Those triggers changed after I had children and just managing kids and managing a home and managing a very busy life and not knowing at the time that my children had higher needs, just feeling with enormous pressure, really.

Then the alcohol also significantly increased my anxiety and panic attacks. They were becoming really uncontrollable. Then my children actually witnessed me having a panic attack while I was driving.

That was a really scary experience for them. It was really realizing that my behavior was having an impact on them. It’s very much seeing your parents engaging those negative behaviors like binge eating or alcohol is the same kind of psychological impact for children that secondhand smoking is.

They are innocent bystanders, really, but they suffer as a result. It imprints on their brain, especially around alcohol, which is why we see so much of that family cycle that alcoholics, children become alcoholics, that kind of behavior sort of goes from generation to generation.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, wow. With your diagnosis journey, did your getting diagnosed, how did that work in the timeline of the food and alcohol giving it up, getting on top of it? Did that come after your diagnosis or was that all a part of it with medication or how did it work?

Fiona McIntyre:

Well, I really had got my weight under control, as I said, about 20 years ago. I’d really had done a lifestyle overhaul in terms of my weight. So, I wasn’t really using food for that kind of crux anymore.

It had pretty much just shifted to alcohol, really. So, the food issue had been sorted out for a long time. My weight still fluctuated here and there and I put on weight having my children, but I was able to sort of get that off quite quickly.

But I was 42 when I had my second child and so having to lose 11 kilos from that pregnancy was the hardest and it really reinforced, okay, my food and my intake is something I really need to be careful about. So, the food was okay.

The ADHD diagnosis, so that sort of as a process, it didn’t really make me drink anymore, but just sort of gave me another reason to drink.

And I guess the result of that was being diagnosed created a roller coaster of emotions for me. There was a lot of anger in terms of how did nobody pick this up? There was a lot of grief for all of those past versions of myself that had struggled so deeply, but didn’t know what was going on, but other people had these realistic expectations of what I should be and what I should do and how I should behave that I could just never do. I just was not able to do that.

And so, but also enormous relief because all these things that we tend to take on as there’s something wrong with us. It must be me. I’m the reason I can’t have friendships.

I’m the reason that people don’t want to hang out with me. It must be me to then suddenly going, actually it’s not me. It’s just, that’s how my brain is.

And so, but I found it really swung back and forth. And I did struggle with that for a really long time, but it was just another thing on top of it. So it took a while before I was put on medication and I’ve been given dexamphetamine and have probably this year really had been on that medication and still struggling to find the right dosage for me.

So that’s an ongoing process. So in hindsight, I’m really glad that I stopped drinking because I was also on anxiety medication. So if you’re having anxiety medication, but you’re drinking, you’re not giving the medication a chance to work.

And so I realized that. And that was a good thing that I didn’t, I know that whatever is happening, we’re trying to figure out if dexamphetamine is right for me, alcohol is not playing a part. So my body is totally clear of anything else that would be influencing the outcome of that.

So I’m really giving myself the best opportunity possible to be able to figure out if this drug is right for me, or if I need to try something else.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, perfect. So do you think the medication plays a part in reducing alcohol intake? Because I would assume if you’re getting that dopamine through your brain from dexamphetamine, you probably wouldn’t be looking as much for alcohol. Is that true? Or what are your, what is your thought on that?

Fiona McIntyre:

Yeah, look, I think it’s, it’s not that black and white because when like, I’ll speak from my personal experience, but also in terms of the study and research I do, we’re not conscious of the fact that we’re getting dopamine. We don’t actually understand, oh, I’m going to drink alcohol to get that dopamine.

It’s more about drinking alcohol for the response that it gives you. Now, some people will drink to just numb, right? That’s it. I just want to numb.

I don’t want to think about things. Some people will drink because they like the sort of initial buzz. And some people can drink two or three glasses.

It gives them that sort of initial buzz, initial farm level, and that’s okay. They don’t need anything else, but they might be doing that every day. And I think for a lot of people too, the drinking helps to numb the trauma.

So 80% of people who do have, especially in alcohol problems, have suffered childhood trauma. So if you think 80% is such a high amount that there’s so much there that people are numbing or trying to avoid feeling that the alcohol is used for that. So there’s so much at play that until you actually start sitting down and really thinking about, well, what triggers this behavior? Why am I doing this? And what do I hope to achieve by doing it? You’re not actually conscious of the reason you are doing it.

And as I said, it sort of leads back to what your different triggers are. And I think for a lot of mums, a lot of people sort of, there’s that mummy wine drinking culture. We’ve all seen the memes on all the different Facebook groups and things that we’re on.

And we know we’ll go to birthday parties and there’ll be alcohol there and it’s a culturally acceptable drug. But for a lot of us, we’ll get home and that pressure starts to build around 5 p.m. when we’re trying to get dinner ready. There’s homework to be done, baths, there’s littler kids, there’s babies or toddlers who need extra support on top of the six-year-old who needs to do prep homework.

So a glass of wine while you’re managing all of that just sort of helps. But then that leads into, I’ll have a glass of wine while I’m cooking dinner. I’ll have a glass of wine while I’m eating dinner.

The kids have all gone to bed now, I’ll have a glass of wine. And it becomes such an easy habit and a pattern. And then you start telling yourself the stories that that’s how you relax.

That’s how you cope with stress. That’s how you deal with whatever it is. So one of the things I really focus on with my clients is what’s called narrative therapy.

And that’s exactly what it’s telling yourself those stories. What are the stories that you actually tell yourself? And what are the reasons you say, I can drink or I can eat or whatever it is? And so it’s really sort of about pulling those out and starting to identify, well, where did that story first come from? How long have I been telling myself that story? And whose voice is it? Because a lot of times those stories come from that childhood trauma that we suffered of, you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy enough, but that’s not our voice. Maybe it was our mother’s voice or friend’s voices or partner’s voices or whatever that we just ingrained as our own and taken on as, well, they said it, so it must be true.

So that’s sort of the first process in terms of, well, let’s sort of see what stories we’re telling ourselves. Can we actually challenge if those stories are true? Because a lot of people, we’ve spent so much time believing it, but we’ve never questioned it about whether it’s true or not.

And so that sort of starts to restructure your brain to go just because you’ve always believed something doesn’t mean it’s true.

And when you think back a couple hundred years ago, everybody believed that the world was flat, but it wasn’t true. And so it’s about going, well, okay, maybe this isn’t true. Maybe when these things start coming into my brain, I can stop that initial thought and really go through this process of looking at that and start in the process of retraining those automatic thoughts.

Because especially for a lot of women who do tend to get diagnosed sort of later in their 30s or 40s or 50s, those stories have been there for a really long time and they just become the automated response. And as soon as they come in, we jump on that train and we ride that thought and we push it as far as we’ve always pushed it. And we’ll keep pushing it further and further and further.

And then we become hyper-focused because that’s one of the fun parts about ADHD, where we then look for more and more examples of why that story must be true. And we will interpret things to make that story true. And so there’s a real process involved in unpacking that, but also identifying what our self-beliefs are.

Because a lot of people will say there’s a trigger and therefore I eat or drink. Some things happen, oh, I had this terrible experience at work, I just need a drink. What they don’t understand is there’s a step in between.

So there’s the trigger and the response. What’s actually being triggered is the self-belief that says I need to eat or drink to cope with this. And it’s about identifying what that self-belief is that generates the eating or the drinking to be the response.

So it’s about taking time to realize that there’s not the trigger and the response, it’s the trigger plus the self-belief equals the response. And so that’s what so many people have never thought about. Until I learned that as a therapeutic approach and really understanding that, I’d never thought about that either.

I was always going, this thing happened and that’s how I deal with that. I was never conscious that it was the self-belief. And that’s the word I’ve really been focusing on myself this year to really identify what those self-beliefs are.

And so I’ve got that through giving up alcohol, there were so many triggers and it was so hard. And there were times where I was just, oh, just clutching on to straws. It’s really hard to be able to do that and got to be really focused on, well, why? And my why to give up drinking, and I used to say to myself over and over again was, I love myself enough to stay sober.

And if that didn’t work, I’d say, I love my kids enough to stay sober. And sometimes that was really, really hard, but I kept focusing and kept doing the work. I kept turning up to see my psychologist and my psychiatrist and doing that work as well as doing my own personal work.

And then the interesting thing is as soon as I realized that I had really unpacked all that trauma and all those issues I’ve been carrying around my whole life, I have no motivation to drink and I have no motivation to eat or binge eat. I have no motivation to engage in either eating or drinking as a result of stresses or triggers or situations that happen. Because what often happens is somebody might give up alcohol, but they’ll revert to food, vice versa.

I will say my online shopping has perhaps increased a little bit this year as a minor coping mechanism, but I’m certainly very conscious of that. But I guess for me, it’s just really that, wow, between food and alcohol being my go-to for 40 years, I have no desire to do either, but for that self-soothing process. And so it’s made me feel so much lighter, just presenting myself to the world with confidence and that self-belief that actually, well, I’m pretty hardcore to do what I have done, to be brave enough to do the emotional work, to be brave enough to really sit down and be vulnerable with myself and vulnerable to others as well.

And really let go of all this baggage I’ve been carrying around for so long. That’s a really hard thing to do. It’s a really tough thing to do as well.

So for people who’d say, oh, but you’re giving up alcohol. Oh, you must be weak. It’s just like, no, I am amazingly strong because it’s very easy to drink, very easy to sit there and drink.

It’s much harder to sit in your feelings and process your feelings and deal with your feelings than what it is to drink them away. And I think that’s something really important that people can take on in terms of understanding what your personal strengths are and using them to help you is an enormously empowering part of being able to manage whatever sort of addiction you have.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s incredible what you’ve done. To get a hold on it at that point when it will be so easy to continue and the habits are just so ingrained. I think it’s a real credit to you that you’ve managed to get on top of that.

What would be some of the alternatives to AA? Because I think some people will be like, I don’t want to go to AA. A lot of people with ADHD, they don’t like the small talk. We’re all a bit socialed out as mums at times.

What would be some kind of alternatives if someone had a strong belief that they just didn’t want to attend that?

Fiona McIntyre:

Yeah, well, look, AA certainly serves a purpose. And I guess the difference with AA is being more formed in America. It does have a very strong religious aspect to it as well.

So seeing somebody like myself, who is a specific alcohol coach and being able to work through those processes in a more personalised and individualised way, I guess that’s what the difference is. There’s security in a AA group setting, but if you’re really wanting personalised, individualised and focused attention, seeing an alcohol coach is one option.

There are a lot of Facebook groups. So if you think that you want to give it a crack yourself, there’s a lot of different groups with people who can provide support. And the same thing for if you’ve got a problem with food as well.

I mean, when I lost my weight, I sort of lost the last 10 kilos through Weight Watchers, and then I became a Weight Watchers leader for two years. And so being able to, I certainly understand helping people in that group setting, being able to share and learn from each other. And I guess now that’s just shifted to Facebook groups. Being able to do it from home is great.

So I think there’s definitely support out there. But I think the most important thing for me is to find support to do it, especially alcohol. It’s so much harder to do if you’re doing it by yourself and other people around you are still drinking and they don’t understand.

And food can be very, very difficult as well, because one of the easiest sides of giving up alcohol is you don’t need alcohol to survive, but you do need food to survive. And so people can simply sort of say, just don’t buy the stuff. That’s one way to do it.

Don’t buy the Tim Tams or the chocolate ice cream or the bags of chips or whatever. That’s all fine and good. People say the same thing about alcohol.

But the best thing that happened to me when I was drinking was when BWS started doing deliveries. Fantastic. I ran out of wine on a Sunday afternoon.

I just ordered and it was there cold in an hour. Beautiful. And of course, Uber Eats and all that other kind of stuff makes it much harder to just simply put those things into practice.

So I think no matter what you’re dealing with, it is really understanding the strategies and the tips and the mindset. And I think the motivation to do it is really important. Sharing the struggles is really important and having somebody who understands what those struggles are and be able to say, this is what has helped me or this is what I know has helped other people and just not feeling like there is just only one way to do it.

And I guess the other really, really important thing is just understanding that lapses are absolutely a normal part of the process. So as I said, I lost 20 kilos and put it all back on and I had to do it again. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to moderate my drinking, stop drinking.

I mean, I didn’t drink through both my pregnancies, but after I had my children, a couple of months later, I was straight back exactly where I was. And you would think, well, I hadn’t drunk for 10 months or something, made absolutely no difference whatsoever. It was just very easy to go back to that because I hadn’t done the work.

I just made my motivation to not drink at that time was for the health of my unborn babies. That was motivation enough. But for a lot of women, when we’re pregnant, we’ve got so many other issues we’re dealing with that we’re not sort of really thinking about drinking.

And a lot of times, a lot of us get so sick with blood out, having toast alone, going to sit down and have a cocktail. So I think just understanding where you could get that support for people to really understand that and then the different challenges you have, but also going that just because you have a lapse doesn’t mean that turns into a relapse. And those are two really different things.

So a lapse is sort of like you might have just sort of gone, oh, you just have a few drinks or a lapse might be, oh, I had a packet of chips. But just because that’s happened once or twice doesn’t mean you have to go back to engaging in that behavior. It doesn’t mean you have to go back to drinking a bottle of wine a night.

Doesn’t mean you have to go back to eating a whole block of chocolate a night. It’s okay to sort of stop yourself, refocus and be able to get back on track. So I think it’s learning as much as you can about the process.

So certainly before I stopped drinking, I did a lot of preparation work for that, really did some research, understood different strategies, looked at doing a sober course. I did that at the start of the year and that’s sort of what really pushed me into then going back to uni and realizing actually this is something I want to help other people do.

So if you asked me this time last year, would I have gone back to uni this year for the first time in 15 years and after being a binge drinker for 30 years be teaching people and supporting people to give up alcohol? No, not at all.

That old adage of through pain comes purpose has been really true in my case. So I sort of consider myself to be a bit more of a, I wouldn’t say I’m not a religious person, but a bit more of a spiritual person and sort of go, well, okay, the universe was really pushing me off in a new direction here. And that’s the thing, right? You don’t know what is going to be positive effects you’re going to get from making this change.

And in all the people I’ve spoken to who are more so in terms of people who have chosen to become sober, I don’t know a single person who said they regret becoming sober. Not a single one. Everybody just says they regret not doing it sooner.

And in saying that though, you have to be ready. And that’s why I couldn’t do it for 30 years. I had to be ready, but there was just something that clicked in me to sort of realize I had tried moderating my alcohol consistently, moderating my alcohol for 30 years.

And if somebody came up to me and told me that they’d been trying to learn how to do something for 30 years, and they haven’t achieved it, I’d be thinking, well, how long does it take you to waste your time? You clearly cannot do this. And I thought, okay, you need to take some of your own advice. This is clearly just something you cannot do.

So instead of wasting your time, instead of beating yourself up, instead of carrying around all this shame and guilt and anxiety around wanting to do it, but not being able to do it, but thinking you should be able to do it, just stop trying to do it and dump all of that and see what the flip side looks like. And it certainly has a life-changing decision for me.

Jane McFadden:

Oh, absolutely. So if there’s people listening that let’s say are thinking, I really do need to look at my drinking, for example, or my food intake. And I’ve got a husband or wife or partner or significant other of some sort that I live with. And they really like to open a bag of chips every night.

And I eat half that bag every night. Or they open the wine up and they ask me to have a glass of wine. And that’s how we connect.

It’s easy to blame the other person and say, well, I can’t because they won’t. And then get in their ear. What are some tips around being responsible for your own self and not waiting for someone else to make a decision to then give you permission to do something? How can we do this with people in our house that are not on board?

Fiona McIntyre:

Yeah, well, I think you’ve sort of nailed it right there. It’s about taking responsibility for your own choices and your own behavior, because nobody forces you to put the chips or the wine into your mouth. So what that does is just question what is your motivation? And what are you prepared to do to achieve what you want to achieve?

Now, I would suggest having conversations with your partners or family in terms of what you’re doing. If you sit down and you can connect over a glass of wine, that’s okay. There’s so many alcohol free wines and ciders and cocktails and things available. So if you like, we just like to sit on the deck and have a nice glass of wine. Fantastic.

Have an alcohol free wine. It’s not the alcohol that makes you connect. And if it is, then there’s broader things to consider about your relationship.

If it is, well, we’d like to sit down and share some chips. Okay, great. Maybe try some rice crackers and salsa instead.

What are some just different alternatives? Yeah, okay, we might like to sit down and have a bowl of ice cream. I like to sit down and have a bowl of ice cream with the kids. Great.

There are ice creams out there where the entire tub is only 300 calories. So you could sit down and just have some of that ice cream and you’re still part of that. So as I said, education is so important.

It’s about going, well, these are the things we like to do. What are some different alternatives that I can do? What are some different food options, drink options, whatever that is, and go out and try them. There’s so many, and I think especially for alcohol free options, there are so many.

I certainly spent, I was a white wine drinker. So I certainly spent an enormous amount of time trying all the alcohol free white wine. Never really found any that I liked, but I was also a cider drinker, so found some alcohol free ciders that I really like.

And I still have that feeling of a really hot afternoon just going, oh, I would just love to sit down and have, out on the patio watching the kids jump on the trampoline with a really cold cider. And I can do that because I’m having an alcohol free cider and I’m just sort of sitting there enjoying that time. What’s been triggered for me is just the memory of, I used to do this with an alcoholic version.

I don’t need that alcohol to just sit there and enjoy watching my kids. I think the conversations are much harder around how your partner can support you. And I think you definitely have to have the conversation and ask them, give them some options.

Yes, okay, maybe they could have the chips, but maybe they could have the chips in a different room. Or if they are having a glass of wine or having chips or something, you move into a different room. Go and focus on something else to do.

And that’s the thing, especially when you stop drinking or binge eating, because a lot of times it’s mindlessness behavior. We’re doing it in front of the TV. We’re not even really focusing on what we’re doing.

Suddenly you find your hands are free and empty to do something with your hands. So if you haven’t knitted for a while, take up something that you used to really enjoy doing. If you haven’t played the piano in a while, go and do that.

If you’ve always wanted to learn some new skill, jump onto YouTube, learn a new language, take some painting classes, whatever you’re interested in there. You don’t have to go out and spend money on it. There’s plenty of YouTube videos on everything under the sun, but it’s about engaging your mind and engaging your brain.

And I think the key part to all of this is going, nobody’s going to make this change for you. So there will always be a reason not to do it. Things are hard, there’s stress at home, there’s stress at work, there’s stress in your life, something terrible has happened, whatever it is, there will always be a reason not to do it.

But you can’t let that stand in your way. Because then you’ll never achieve anything. If you let every single hurdle that’s put in your way stop you from achieving your goals, then you’ll never do it.

But what I also say to my clients is have a think about everything you’ve achieved in your life. Everybody has achieved something where there were hurdles put in front of them. Whether that’s going to uni, whether that’s getting a job, whether that’s having family members that you’re caring for, whatever it is, we’ve all achieved something that was really hard to do.

And so we forget that we actually do have those skills. Because when we wanted to go to uni, or we wanted to buy our first car, or we wanted to do whatever it is that we did, we figured out what we needed to do. We did the things we needed to do to get the thing we wanted.

So we’ve all got at least one experience in that. So it’s about understanding that yes, you do have the skills to do it. You might not have used those skills for a while, but it’s about tapping into those to remind yourself that you do have the capacity and capability to do that.

And chances are you did one or two of those things without anybody else’s help. So you can do that too. So personal responsibility, absolutely key for all of you.

Jane McFadden:

What’s your take on Australia as a society? Because 10 years ago, definitely I believed very strongly that Australia as a country had an addiction to alcohol that we all encouraged. What do you mean you’re not having a drink? And then you kind of like heckle that person. We’ve all witnessed it happening at family events, like low-key family events, barbecues.

And I think that’s always been there. I’m trying to make an assessment on whether Australia has changed in the last couple of years, or maybe it’s who I hang out with. Because I noticed recently, I was at a birthday party and they had all the wines and the beers out.

And I was actually thinking, yeah, no, I’m not. I’m probably not someone to drink at a birthday party, depending on my mood. But I was like, nah, I’m not really keen.

And I lined up next to someone else and she just said pretty openly, oh, look, have you got a water? I’m like not drinking at the moment. I’m going to take a year off or something. And she kind of announced it outright, whereas I’m coming a bit more closet with mine.

I’m like, yeah, I’m sweet. I just kind of avoid and don’t really kind of go up to the esky. She announced hers outright.

And I looked at her like, power to you, sister. I’m like, right, okay. And I looked around to see what the reaction would be.

And it was interesting because probably a quarter were like, oh, really? Are you sure? Like, I think they were probably the people that were maybe triggered thinking, I probably need to do that, but I’m not going to. Maybe it was that group there. But most of the people there, they’re like, oh yeah, cool, sweet.

There’s a soft drink there. And a couple of people said, I’ve actually been really wanting to do that myself. Can you tell me more about it? And I looked around and thought, I think the world’s changing a little bit because really I felt like from that announcement, if that had been five or 10 years ago, I think it would have been different.

What’s your take on that?

Fiona McIntyre:

Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right. When you look at the statistics in terms of the percentage of the population who are actually drinking, it is decreasing.

So that’s a positive thing. I think probably the generation we grew up in, a lot of people who are sort of in their early forties now, we sort of still grew up with that very much. Alcohol was just everywhere and it was totally the norm.

But I think we’re also in that probably the top of the generations and the following generations who are really making that more conscious shift away from alcohol now. Not to say that it’s not still a very big part of society. But I think in terms of the response of people, their responses are reflections of what’s going on for them.

And a lot of people, especially when you talk about alcohol, would say, oh, what do you want to do that for? Are you sure you don’t just want one, whatever? Which is normally about, oh, if people aren’t drinking around me, I don’t feel comfortable drinking. I need that group support to be able to drink because otherwise I don’t want to stand out from the crowd to drink. Where it’s a lot more acceptable to be able to say, actually, I’m happy to stand out from the crowd if I’m not drinking.

Because there’s always people who are driving or whatever. So it seems to be more acceptable if you’re not drinking rather than if you are. So I definitely think that if you get that resistance, if you’re trying to just even reduce the amount you’re drinking, moderate what you’re drinking, or you just sort of want to stop all together, it’s about feeling that you don’t have to justify that decision to people.

Because I know a lot of people who have been in situations where they’ve been really grilled over their decision to do it. And the advice I give people around that is just to simply say, I’m a better person without alcohol. Or my life is better without alcohol.

And just leave it at that. And I sort of find that sort of tends to kill off most conversations. But you’re exactly right.

The majority of people will go, oh, actually, I’ve been thinking about that. What have you been doing about that? How have you been finding it? What’s working for you? And I think if people are just brave enough to just own their decision and just really be open about it, the majority of people are really supportive and want to know how you’re doing it. And I know so many stories and myself included, where even just announcing it to people, I’ve had people message me or call me up or whatever to just sort of say, can you talk to me about your experience? Because I’m really thinking about doing it.

And I think if we are more open and honest with each other about it, then that’s how we change that cultural understanding that we can sort of say, tonight, it’s okay to do this. We can put the pressure on restaurants and bars and cafes and stuff to have more alcohol-free versions of things available. Because we’re still adults, we don’t necessarily just want to sit there and have a glass of lemonade.

It’s nice to have something that’s a bit more than just a juice or something like that. And a lot more restaurants and cafes are jumping on board with that. I’m sure a lot of people have seen all the alcohol-free options that are in Coles or Woolworths and the different supermarkets now.

So that is a real shift in understanding that those are the options people are going for. But even looking at the alcohol-free industry, it’s become a billion-dollar industry. And the alcohol companies themselves are the ones who make a lot of the alcohol-free drinks.

So they’re understanding that there’s the demand for that, and they’re catering to that need. So I think just don’t feel that you have to hide the decisions you’re trying to make. Because the more people you’re open with, the more support you’re going to get.

And you can just stand proud. Stand proud in choosing that for yourself, or your families, or your kids, or just wanting a better life. Because that’s what a lot of people are scared to do.

And a lot of people will be empowered by seeing you do that.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, I really love what you’re saying. I think a couple of points from me.

I think announcing and owning being alcohol-free is similar to me in some ways with announcing that you have ADHD. I’m consciously extremely open with it now. The reason being is because it gives permission to other people.

And also it normalizes it. Because someone goes, oh yeah, nice to meet you. We’ve had a really nice time, or whatever it is.

I’ll drop I have ADHD. If there’s someone that has no, I suppose, reference point for that, they will kind of go… You can kind of look at them double-take. Like, she seemed like a cool person. We had a good time. Now she said she had that. That’s blown my mind and blown some of the stigma.

So I consciously do that. And I think announcing I’m alcohol-free for the year, or I’m reducing, or I’m not drinking today, being more open with it, I think gives other people more permission. I absolutely love what you’re saying there.

The other thing I was going to mention is sometimes I feel like with mums, and this is my own personal experience, I have trouble sitting down. So for me, I have trouble sitting down and having a coffee, or doing something and just sitting down there. Unless it’s purposeful.

Like I’m connecting with my husband. I’m trying to spend time with him, or I’m doing something with a friend. And sometimes for me, the reason that I have drunk in the past has been because if I know I have a cold glass of Prosecco in my hand, especially living in Queensland, I feel like this is me time.

I’m chilling. I’m listening to some music. I’m having 10 minutes if I know the kids are inside and I’m sitting by the pool or something.

And to shift that into non-alcoholic champagne, it’s taken me a long time to find a good one, has been a real shift for me. And I suppose it depends on why you drink. For me, I just connected it with me time.

And I wouldn’t actually even necessarily be looking for the high or to be drinking. That’s actually not what I wanted. And it would be like the glass would empty because I’d be enjoying myself and I’d get another one for the feeling of having a me time and extending it.

And then I’d accidentally be three glasses in and I’d be pretty tipsy. But actually, if I stripped that back, that wasn’t what I was there for. So I really love what you’re saying about the non-alcoholic drinks because I understand that some people are looking for the high and it’s absolutely different trigger.

But for mums who are just connecting it with having some time with my husband, having some time with myself, I think the non-alcoholic options are phenomenal.

Fiona McIntyre:

They really are. Yeah. And look, there’s, there’s so many different options available. There’s alcohol free cocktails and martinis and ciders and wines and everything under the sun. But you’re right.

It’s the story, right? That you’ve told yourself time to myself with a glass of Prosecco. Why isn’t it a cup of tea? Why isn’t it just a glass of orange juice? Why isn’t, why isn’t it a nice mineral water? Whatever. So it’s well, what, what is the association that you have with alcohol, that having alcohol equals time to myself? Alcohol doesn’t give you time to yourself.

Alcohol just gives you something to drink. So there’s the core belief, there’s a belief we’ve built up in that relationship, which is why we do that. So I absolutely agree.

I think it is a really hard thing for mums to do, to actually just sit down and do nothing, even if it’s just for 10 minutes, because we look around our house and there’s always something to be done. There’s always a load of washing. There’s always the floor that needs vacuuming.

There’s the clothes that need put away. The dishwasher hasn’t been empty. There’s always something.

And I think as women and as mothers, society has kind of frowned upon sitting still and resting. That’s not something we were, it’s not something our mothers ever showed us. It’s not something that people gave us permission to do.

But the thing is, especially for those of us that have ADHD, we need to rest because our brains work at a million miles an hour. And like, I certainly have noticed it this year that I’m becoming more and more tired that if I don’t take opportunities to just rest and actually just do something quiet and not phone scrolling or internet surfing or anything like that. I’ve started just writing in my journal, just taking, like that to me is time to myself now, actually going, let’s just write something in my journal.

And it doesn’t have to be any big, deep thinking, earth shattering revelation you’ve had about yourself. Although sometimes that definitely happens. It can just be writing about your day or writing about what was good about your day or writing about what was challenging about your day or what you were proud of for your day.

I mean, if you Google it, you’ll find a million different journal prompts for somebody who struggles with that. But I’ve actually found that to be really valuable for me because I can ruminate on things terribly. And I tend to process my day at the end of the day before I’m going to bed.

And I really find that helps me get everything out of my brain. So I’m not hyper focusing on it when I’m trying to go to sleep. And so there’s just little things like that where you can say, all right, if I need time to myself, what do I want that time to be? What do I want to get out of that time? Do I just want to sit down and check in with myself? Ask myself, how am I going today?

Past things? Is everything working as well as what it could be? Person changes? Are there things I need to talk to the family about? What can I do to just help myself? Because no one’s really coming up to us to say, hey, mom, how can I help you today? We really have to look at saying, let’s check in with ourselves as women, as mothers, as people with ADHD and ask the questions.

What do I need right now? What would help me right now? What are some issues I’m struggling with right now? And how can I ask for help around those things? And I think if we can sort of start to give ourselves time to do that and give ourselves permission to do that, then it helps to just take some of that emotional and mental load off us that we carry around for everybody else in our homes.

Jane McFadden:

Oh, absolutely. And I think taking time and actually feeling into ourselves and seeing what’s there is a huge thing that is, I think, incredibly difficult, particularly for people with ADHD, because you’ve been kind of glazing over the top of it for so many years, whether that’s food or alcohol, whether that’s productivity or work, whether that’s having lots of kids and of such a full life, you can’t breathe.

And is that then a coping mechanism to take the space away where you don’t have the time to sit in yourself truly and completely? And for me, having tried medication and being on medication, that’s one of my hardest things that I’m dealing with at the moment is trying to, I suppose, now the chaos is lifted and I’m not following every impulse and my brain is cleared a little bit. Well, what am I actually doing with my life? Because I feel like that would be a big question as well when you’ve had so much of your time being taken with addiction of food or alcohol, if you’re not doing those things anymore, and I imagine there’d be a big time commitment with the actual act and then the cleanup of it for both. If you take all of that away, what’s left? Because if you’re just sitting there with yourself, that’s where I think people then would replace it with something else, because it’s terrifying to sit with yourself, especially in moments where you want to numb.

I can only imagine what that would be like.

Fiona McIntyre:

Yeah, it is. And that’s why it is learning a new process to be actually going, can I just sit in this moment and feel the discomfort? Because we tend to assume that that’s going to be uncomfortable for us.

Can’t necessarily say why, it’s just because I’ve been engaging in this behavior for so long, I don’t know how else to do it. And that was one of the things I really had to focus on too, to say, okay, what does it feel like to sit here and watch TV and not have a glass of wine in my hand? What’s the discomfort I’m feeling about this? Why was I even having the wine? Was I just bored or was it just because that’s what I’d always done? And it’s not until I actually experienced the discomfort that I could really start thinking about that and just kind of going, it’s okay for me to be uncomfortable in this moment because I’m figuring it out. And then once I did, and I was then able to say, okay, part of it is maybe this show is just boring me and I can pick a different show.

Or maybe I just don’t have the mental capacity to watch TV right now. I actually am just going to take a shower and go to bed. Whatever it is, it’s kind of going, okay, well, I can feel the discomfort, then I can make a choice about that.

I can make a choice about how I respond to that discomfort. It’s okay for me to be in it. Maybe I can sit in it for five minutes and then go do something else.

And it’s just that exposure, right? It’s building the muscles, the sober muscle that we have, the food balance muscle that we have. We’re not born into the world wanting to numb ourselves with food and alcohol, right? We learn that as a coping strategy. And the reason we engage in those as coping strategies is because we don’t want to feel the discomfort of whatever is triggering us to do that behavior.

So that’s why I come back to just, you can look at how to portion your meals. You can look at what food you should be eating. You can look at what exercise you should be doing.

And you can have a whole plan around that. And most of us know that though. Most of us know what food we should be eating, how much we should be eating, the importance of exercise, the importance of water, all that kind of stuff.

But it is the emotions of triggering the behavior. And that is the most important thing to be looking at in terms of making the changes will get you so far. And in terms of going sober as well, willpower itself will only get you so far because you will hit a roadblock where the willpower is not enough to get over it.

And you’ve got to push yourself further than that. And that’s when doing that emotional work and being brave enough and vulnerable enough to face what is there, that’s when you get over those roadblocks. And those are the biggest hurdles to overcome.

But the ones you have to be prepared to overcome if you want meaningful and long-lasting change, because otherwise it’s just too easy to slip back into those old patterns and behaviors.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a really nice point to finish on actually, Fiona.

I think you’ve really, we’ve done some deep diving here. I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for your time.

I’ve learned a lot and I know that the people listening would have learned a lot as well. If someone’s clicked on this episode, I think that will be for a reason. So I really hope that we can positively impact as many women as possible.

If we even just get someone thinking about really reassessing their life and what they’re doing, then that’s a great start. If you’d like to work with Fiona more, I’m going to put all of her information in the episode notes. And thank you so much for your time, Fiona. You’ve been so knowledgeable. I really appreciate it.

Fiona McIntyre:

Not a problem. And as I said, even if it helps one person, I’d be really thrilled about that. But thank you so much for the opportunity to come on. It’s been really fun.

Jane McFadden:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, if you’ve enjoyed this podcast and you’re looking to share it, that would really help me out. If you’re looking to do a review, that would be awesome.

Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It will help bring up the ratings, which will then mean that more Australian women will hear from Australian women about ADHD. Done, Fiona?

Fiona McIntyre:

Awesome.