Saturn Returns with Caggie - 1.2 Getting ‘sober curious’ with Ruby Warrington

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Ruby Warrington; author, speaker, thought leader and host of the Sober Curious podcast, joins Caggie to unpack the complexities of our relationship with alcohol. They discuss their own experiences, what it means to be ‘sober curious,’ and how to navigate a society with a dominant drinking culture.  --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a new podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. No matter how potentially alienating it feels to be that one non-drinker at a party when all your friends are saying where's the old kaggy and you're like this is the real kaggy love me that can be so painful hello everyone i am speaking to you from my sitting room in london um you've just heard a clip from today's guest who is called Ruby Warrington. Ruby has been a huge inspiration for me. She's an author, speaker and her own podcast host. Through all of her work, her guiding mission is to help people engage with life on a deeper,

more meaningful level. And I can really say that she's done that for me. We're so lucky that we're going to be meeting in person because Ruby isn't actually normally based here. She's based in New York. So it's a real treat for me to get to sit down and have her on my sofa in London and to have this very, very inspiring conversation. Before we get to Ruby, we're going to check in with our astrology guide, Flo Devereux, who's going to be dropping in throughout the series to help explain a little bit more about what Saturn Returns means. In our first episode she explained how when Saturn comes back to the same position it was in at your time of birth it prompts a period of reflection and transition to a more authentic way of living. So I wanted to know why Saturn in particular has this association with change and growth.

If you see images of Saturn, he often has a sickle because Saturn cuts away what is no longer necessary. So like I said, Saturn is on the edge of our visible solar system. And so Saturn has this kind of, it holds things, it's a containing energy. And so Saturn rules boundaries and limits and is very much to do with the laws of nature. So a nice story about Saturn that relates to that is in Greek mythology, there's

the period called the Golden Age. And that was when Saturn ruled. And it was a time when all the crops blossomed on time and the harvest came out at the right time. And people did die, but they died in their sleep. In antiquity, a lot of farmers would worship Saturn because Saturn knows how to regulate systems and divine timing. Do you know the myth of Uranus and Gaia? So this is like primordial mythological stuff. Before the gods that are more personified came along, you had Gaia, which was the earth goddess, and you had Uranus, or Uranus, which is the sky god, and they were the mother and father of everything. And every night,

Uranus would come down and, depending on your interpretation, either having sex with Gaia or raping her. And she got really fed up with it. She had lots of children. And she went to all of her children and said, I'm fed up with this. I don't want to be procreating anymore. And who's going to step up and kill their father? And every god said no and was terrified of Uranus, this massive, awesome sky god. And Saturn said, I will, I'll do it.

So in that story, again, you can kind of see Saturn steps up and takes responsibility for things that other people don't want to. So in your charts, the position of Saturn really shows what area of life, where can you develop mastery? Through struggle, because Saturn teaches us like discipline because it's all about limits and boundaries there are laws of nature and if you learn how to manage and navigate the laws of nature you can become a master of something I find the way Flo explains that really interesting because it obviously suggests that Saturn is all about discipline

and owning up to things that are quite difficult and exercising our boundaries. If you have any questions for Flo, you can find her at astrologyforthecurious on Instagram and you can find me at kaggy'sworld. Our guest today is Ruby Warrington. Now, at the top of the show, you would have heard a segment

of our conversation and I I just want to say how what an inspiring conversation it was to have so Ruby's work became familiar for me when I um I heard her as a guest for Lacey Phillips expanded podcast and I then sort of fell into her own podcast which is called Sober Curious and for me personally my own sober journey has been huge and it's been particularly prevalent during my Saturn returns where I've made a massive massive shift in my life and so having her on this is just hugely expansive for me and I've learned so much from her podcast and I feel like I know her so much already so it's um it's really incredible to have her sitting here with me today.

So I really hope you enjoy it. I hope you get something from it and I hope it resonates with you. Hello. Hello. So you wouldn't know this, but you have been actually like a really pivotal person in my life over the last year, basically. Specifically, your podcast Sober Curious was something that's been incredibly expansive for me so it's such an honor for me to be sitting in my sitting room with you and actually quite

strange to be honest thank you that's so lovely to hear I always love to hear that that that works specifically Sober Curious of all the different things that I've done is having a positive impact on people because obviously this podcast is about you know once Saturn returns and how to navigate it and I would have loved to have you on this even if you had no anchoring in astrology but you also do so it's like you've got these two very important things one is the astrology aspect which we'll talk about and then one is the sobriety and for me personally going through my own Saturn Returns this was such an important part of that journey you know stepping into adulthood and taking responsibility for stuff which is really essentially what it's about yeah so I mean there's just so

much that I want to ask you about but I guess to anyone that doesn't know your podcast or know exactly what Sober Curious means even though it's pretty obvious in the title would you just sort of explain to me yeah what it what it is well the podcast is an offshoot of a book and it was a reflection of my own journey navigating my own relationship to alcohol for about seven or eight years before that so it's been about nine years now that I've been questioning and being cute and getting curious that mean that's literally what the title or that term refers to being to be sober curious is really to choose to question all the ways that alcohol impacts us all the ways that we use alcohol individually and as a society rather than just blindly going along with drinking culture and i describe it as that dominant drinking culture

because in in the uk and also in the, it is absolutely the norm to drink. It's just what we do. And we do it pretty well, right? The English really do. And, you know, I moved to New York eight years ago. I'm from London originally, but New York as well is a very social town. And much of that is lubricated with alcohol in the same way. So, yeah, for for me I found myself

questioning hold on is that how is this really making me feel how much of how much of the way that I'm drinking is actually exacerbating and contributing to the overall sense of anxiety and just kind of uneasiness that I'm feeling in my life and that was where I was at and it wasn't my Saturn return it was just before my first Saturn square which we were kind of discussing I don't want to get too technical but this is something that you explained to me earlier which I was unaware of which is quite interesting for anyone that doesn't know like I did and yeah your Saturn square is essentially that you go through mini kind of so I'm going to break it down as simply as I can, and we might as well get this bit out of the way. So Saturn takes about 28 years to go around our whole chart.

So we have our Saturn return, meaning it comes back to the same point as it is in our birth chart every 28 years. So every seven years, Saturn will make an angle to our Saturn. So after seven years, it's a Saturn square. And then 14 years, Saturn opposition, 21, a square, 28, Saturn return. And then you go again, 35, Saturn square, 42, Saturn opposition. So you'll get little reminders of what Saturn is teaching you in this life every seven years. You'll get little reminders, little knocks to get you back onto that path of maturity, back onto taking responsibility for your path, not expecting things to just miraculously sort themselves out. I think that will resonate for a lot of people, actually, that sort of seven years.

Well, if you even, you know, it was kind of breaking it down a bit earlier. If we even think about how we develop as humans, age seven is when we first start to gain real independence from our parents age 14 we're going through puberty and we're really looking for like no I want to I want to live my own life thank you you know 21 I mean that's the legal drinking age in the US and it kind of reflects our coming of age into adulthood and then as you say 28 is often when we have you know it's a lot of time when people will think about they're taking on more responsibility at work or maybe they're thinking about settling down starting families those sorts

of things and you can see how transitional all those times are looking back and also how painful often they are often they can be the pain come the pain the way i see it the more resistance we have to whatever responsibilities we're being asked to pick up and carry on the more resistance we have to that the more painful it will be right yeah something to take note of so my my sober curious it was a bit before my satin square i guess i was maybe 30 33 34 when i really started to question it um but yeah i just then you hadn't no I had you know I'd had a very from my kind of teens into my even college years I didn't drink and that's a whole other long story I was in a really abusive very controlling relationship with a guy who basically banned me from drinking alcohol so in

a way alcohol helped me get the courage to get out of that relationship because I started drinking here and there with a friend in college and it sort of gave me the courage in a way to just walk away and that was around age 21 so that was a satin square moment um and then I kind of you know I started working in journalism um which is a quite a boozy social you know field um and I really loved drinking I was a good drinker like I would never black out. I never had nights where I forgot. I never quote unquote embarrassed myself. Like I never got sick.

Like I just didn't have any of those kind of problems with drinking. Yeah, of course I had hangovers. But by and large, it was just fun times. It coincided with me meeting my, who is my husband now. And he was a music and a club promoter and so free drinks everywhere. It was, it was kind of fab until it wasn't. So then when wasn't it? Well, it wasn't when, you know, I worked my way up the kind of magazine ladder and landed a job

at Sunday Times Style Magazine. And I remember when I first got that job, it was really, it represented a lot of what I'd been working towards and what I wanted for myself career-wise and I actually took an extended break from drinking when I first got the job just because I knew I really wanted to have all my wits about me and I wanted to be really sharp but once I kind of settled into it it kind of crept in again and when I say crept in I mean I started using alcohol fairly heavily but no more heavily than everybody else I knew and when I look back at how much I was drinking and the way I was drinking in the way we when I say we my social group and we collectively

drink like wow we really problem drinking is normal drink like it's so normalized you know alcohol abuse is how most of us actually use alcohol but I would never drink more than two nights in a row you know I'd never I'd never drink a bottle of wine at home on my own I wouldn't even drink on my own like all those kind of markers that we have as kind of like oh that's problem drinking so I still never thought of it as problem drinking the problem was my anxiety was through the roof I couldn't sleep properly through the night I'd wake up in the middle of the night pretty much every night just like full of anxiety I was often exhausted in the office and not feeling quite tearful not sleeping properly and just really feeling quite depressed even though I had

on paper all of the things I'd been working so hard for nothing really felt meaningful to me and I began to just draw a real um link or notice a real link between my drinking and my anxiety in particular I would just go through the roof if I was hung over like unbearably and it takes it takes quite a lot of time because obviously if you if as you said you didn't have like a problem with drinking or whatever. But once you start noticing that correlation between, okay, if I did a graph here and we showed my anxiety and normalizing and then me drinking and then it spiking. But it takes a really long time for you to actually sit back and be like, this is undeniable now. Exactly. And I had a very similar experience.

Right. But it's funny because it is the social norm to sort of binge drink essentially. And problem drinking actually should just be like, is it affecting me in a negative way on a personal level? And I don't think people approach drinking in a personalized way. It's just like this one size fits all. Exactly. This is what you do. You should be able to handle it, like get a grip kind of thing.

And they then think that the repercussions are about other stuff and numb it with another thing like prescription drugs or whatever. But actually like maybe drinking isn't for everyone. And maybe, you know, that's why I love what you're creating because it's just a way of normalizing sobriety, which is bizarre that that is such a niche thing unless you've got such a problem and it's really interesting actually because I've never heard you speak about your own journey and how actually it wasn't like that you were backing out because I mean for me it was definitely I would always go to extremes and so it was very problematic and sometimes I wouldn't but it was hard to know when that moment was that sort of Russian roulette of like that one drink too many and i've and i've gone and i used it as an escapism which again i think a lot of people will relate to but you know the fact that it wasn't a problem for you and yet you still

had these sort of pings and downloads that you're like this isn't this isn't right for me this isn't serving me yeah and i think so many people will relate to that and I think it's really important to start creating a community around people that you know don't and normalizing that because I even find when I say to people I you know I don't drink at the moment or I don't really like the term sober because people automatically think she's in recovery or like she can't it's a choice you know it's a choice that we make and I think that that needs to be far more of an open dialogue yeah you said made a few really interesting points there I mean the first one people ask me you know why did you write sober curious I mean ultimately I wrote it because actually once I started talking about my own struggles or my own conflicted

feelings about alcohol openly all of a sudden it gave loads of other people permission to go, oh, you know what, me too, and can we actually talk about this? And so I wrote it for that. But the wider mission is really, I've realized, to make it as normal not to drink as it is to drink. That feels to me like it would really even the playing field because I think the other really important thing you said, alcohol is not a one-size-fits-all

substance and there are so many different things that play into that from our biology like our bodies are all different we all process alcohol differently our upbringing and what we've kind of learned about drinking and what we've learned about drinking culture but also our psychological state and also the kind of the the community that we're part of. All these things can have a huge impact on how alcohol affects us. And yet we're all, like you say, expected to be able to drink, to have fun when we drink, to become more X, Y or Z when we drink, more fun. Like I'm sure you've heard that plenty of times.

Oh, you're not drinking. Why are you being so boring? Oh, I'm boring. I'm boring, am I, if I don't have alcohol inside me, you know? And again, going back to the idea of we've had this very black and white approach to sobriety and to drinking, it's either you're an alcoholic or you're a normal drinker. And I think it's just that there are many many shades of gray in terms of alcohol addiction and alcohol dependency and as many shades of gray as there are human beings even yeah and ultimately this is really about the reason I encourage people to ask questions and the questions can get very deep and soul-searching people don't want to go there people don't but ultimately this is you know knowing ourselves and knowing what works for us is what this is all about it's not about saying alcohol is bad or evil

or it's bad to drink or you're weak if you drink or any of those things and it's not about judging anybody else's drinking choices it's about helping each individual feel so empowered to be able to make the right choice for them you know to recognize their relationship with it because i think also and you touched on it it's like alcohol addiction and problem drinking it's like well if i'm not you know blacking out and damaging myself or whatever that therefore it's not an issue but I definitely know people that I can just see that it might not be now but give that 10 years and let that develop and you can you can just see it's like it's a dependency that's not healthy and I think that that's something that isn't

people don't watch and I do think with alcoholism I mean you know this is a quite not dangerous thing to say because a lot of alcoholics, I'm not belittling the illness side of it at all. But I do believe that if you start approaching a relationship with it and really looking at it and looking at what it's giving you or what it's numbing for you, whatever that void may be, you can get a grasp on that early and not allow it to be something that gets so out of control that you literally have to remove it entirely from your life and it becomes this this monster that you have to deal with daily yeah yeah that's really well put I think the the big the biggest sober curious kind of question of all is why am I using alcohol and it came up for me with a friend recently it's really interesting to have watched all pretty much all the people i'm close to now are sober curious and not because i'm going around telling them you're you should be you should quit drinking you've got a problem with anything like that people are just genuinely

curious and they've seen the positive impact that it's had on my life and then oh okay yeah maybe we can actually i'm quite looking forward to hanging out with you tonight means i don't have to drink now that's more like whereas i used to get oh you're being boring now I get oh good I don't have to drink tonight it's a relief exactly they're like I'm seeing Ruby therefore like exactly I can have a night off yeah that's awful though that people still at this age feel like oh god I'm going out I'm gonna have to even if they don't want to and I think it's amazing for people to stand up and be like you don't have to and this is like my experience and hopefully inspire them to be like actually I'm not going to exactly but yeah I was speaking to a friend about it and she was kind of like acknowledging she's like you know I've really

I've been able to notice now that I mainly used alcohol to kind of keep other people happy because it was expected of me you know her family are very like jovial drinkers and they all love to get together and have a good old knees up and she became you know the version of her that they that was expected in those scenarios so for her it's been quite a relief she's like oh now I just now I just don't have to do that hard absolutely whereas I acknowledged I was mainly using it to change the way I felt right I wanted I was using it to feel more confident or to feel more relaxed and I think when you're using it to change for an emotional reason it can actually be trickier there's slightly more to navigate there but still very difficult if you're yeah if your family if your colleagues if your partner is a drinker

and you drink together it can really what's that thing of ceremony like we said yes yeah absolutely in its original format that is what it is so it's there's there's a bond there okay there's two things that we just sort of touched on there's the friendship aspect that you know it's part of the role you play in that community that you have of those friends that's one thing I found incredibly difficult because I was playing that role yeah and that sort of version of me that you know whenever you change you have to accept that certain people might not be in your life as you do sort of like an up leveling and there's an isolation in that process because then there's a space between where you were and where you're

going to be and the people that are going to come and be around you and that was for me a constant like back and forth because I didn't want to feel isolated or alone and I didn't want to be that person that was like I'm not drinking they'd be like oh Kagi's being boring we want like old Kagi and so I was torn between like what I knew in my in my soul and like old kaggy and that and that person that I created that I'd spent a decade forming that validated me but it was causing me so much upset on another level that I had to shed it and there's that you know I think that people will totally relate to that it's like friendships and how we bond over it and also it's a thing of well if you're not drinking you're highlighting that I am and when they say you're

being boring it actually means like I don't want you to be of sound mind and see me behaving this way I want us both to sort of spiral together and there is something bonding about that even though it's negative it's like you kind of I don't know like fester in this demise a little bit of yourselves and behave like in your worst versions and it's it's very strange but then also something that you mentioned about how I think a lot of people will think you know how on earth would I date sober and that is an incredibly challenging thing because even in my mind now the prospect I mean I've just broken up with someone the prospect of dating someone but I am at a place now where

I'm like the right person won't mind and it's not at all by any means that I would want someone sober it's about their relationship with it and then being like not needing me to drink to make themselves feel okay yeah and but it's also this thing of you feel like you're not partaking and you're not fully there if you're not drinking and so I'm just curious how you got over that obstacle okay I'm going to speak to the friendship piece first because I loved what you said what you described was so eloquent and it's so challenging that piece i recently discovered a work of somebody called toko par turner and she writes a lot about belonging and what it means to belong but she talks about how inevitably we go through periods in our life

and this could coincide there's quite a saturn return sort of thing actually we go through periods in life when a period of self-imposed exile is necessary in order for us to find the true version of ourself and true belonging with people who will accept us as we are right I heard I think it was Mark Groves was talking about her and it just landed for me so much it was like how we will sacrifice our authenticity to feel like we belong yes and i know that i know what that feels like so much and it's so many people well we have these two you know extreme needs and us to be our authentic selves but also to feel like we belong and when they're at conflict with each other we will sacrifice ourselves to belong and alcohol eases

the pain of that sacrifice alcohol makes it so much easier to cut, if you think about even the phrase, to fit in. In order to fit in, we'll have to cut parts of ourself off, in order to fit into that mold or to play that role that you were talking about. And that's so painful on soul level. So alcohol eases the pain of that as well, of the fitting in, the pain of fitting in, right? It's so deep.

I love it. Sorry, I feel like I interrupted you a little bit on that thing about getting to your authenticity you exile yourself I do want you to expand a little bit on that because I do think that that's I think some people will get to a point where they're doing it they're doing it they're on that path and then they're like I'm this is too painful because I'm alone and also I think there's this sort of misconception that if you go sober you're not gonna have pain or like you're not gonna feel bad things like if you if you've got to a point where you're associating drinking with

pain and that it's causing you upset then you're like well I'll go sober sober and I won't but of course like it's almost like a deeper kind of pain because you're having to really look at and feel those feelings that you've been numbing for however long. Absolutely. So on the point of exile, yeah, that's we have such a deep human need to not be alone. Like it speaks to our deepest fear of being literally cast out of our family and left alone kind of in the forest to just perish because we're too much to carry or we're not contributing something useful so we have this huge need and desire to to belong but not to fit in it's not about fitting in right but true belonging is about really like I touched on finding a community where we really feel like we're appreciated for exactly who we are um and it can take time but recognizing that you're doing something to fit in is the first step on the piece about the the period of potentially

feeling a little lonely or feeling like an outcast there's so much this is when we really need to cultivate trust that when we're following what is true for us trust in ourselves trust in ourselves trust in our path as well and trust that the more we radiate the energy of our true authentic self that will attract people who resonate with that to us and it's the trust muscle that we have to start at the trust muscle not only activating it because it's always active but following it and then seeing how it unfolds believing in it exactly and and trusting oh yeah that no matter how potentially alienating it feels to be that one non-drinker at a party when all your friends are saying where's the old kaggy and you're like this is the real kaggy love me that can be so painful and also the the going home like at a point where

everyone's sort of getting to that drunken phase and like silliness and and being like i'm gonna go home and going home alone like there's so much pain in that there's so much isolation but you have to go through those experiences and you know what you're you're closer to yourself in that experience than you would be if you stayed out and this is also about cultivating a much closer relationship to yourself so you spoke about you know the initial initially when you first quit drinking if it's been a very heavy toxic physical load for you and you've been experiencing anxiety and horrible hangovers then yeah immediately wow i feel so great and that kind of feeling can build over the first few months really of quitting drinking.

But it dissipates and it normalizes. However, it becomes quite normal to feel that good. You sort of get an up level in your normal and then you'll be asked to feel some of the deeper wounds that you may have been medicating with alcohol. The reason you don't feel like you fit in. You know, the reasons that the deeper why is that you're using alcohol. Why do I feel like you fit in you know the reasons that the big the deeper why's that you're using alcohol why do i feel like my family only loved me when i'm playing this role you know

why do i only feel confident enough to date when i am slightly drunk you know what what am i what am i really using this for so that's when the deeper kind of self-work comes in and actually that's we have to do that work on our own. Ideally, if it gets, you know, if it becomes very challenging with the help of a therapist or even a coach or even an astrology or a healer, you know, who can help us navigate some of those deeper questions. And from there, it really does become about trusting that the more you align with your real authentic self, the more people, like I said, who resonate with that will be drawn to you align with your real authentic self the more people like I said who resonate with that will be drawn to you and will just cross your path and they just do I mean yeah

well that I guess that was my experience in LA that kind of started and it was through my Saturn returns that I kind of was like I'm making big changes and for a moment there was a lot of isolation and there still to a degree is and then but people just started arriving in my life that were just more like-minded and and I think for people listening aware of navigating that is that in the same way that anxiety feels like for me it kind of feels like bad pins and needles and it kind of is in the back of your neck and that sort of like prickly feeling if something's off yeah when you stop drinking as well all those intuitive feelings get so much more intense to the point where they're undeniable and then and you can no longer be

like oh i feel this way because i'm hungover or because i'm drunk which is just like confusing everything and then when you start having that and activating that and trusting it it becomes very clear who's supposed to be in your life exactly and who's not yeah but there's also a lot of pain in that because our minds are also so conditioned to be like well you know this works with like how i've been brought up socially or what sort of group i should be in or what sort of boyfriend i should have and your body can be telling you something totally different. And trust, there's one thing at the moment I'm finding incredibly hard because my mind is still like replaying certain narratives. Not necessarily about the drinking, but just about like how I should fit in or how I'm supposed to.

Whereas my body is telling me often something slightly different. And again, that's a trust muscle of being like it is i'm going to follow this even though there's no set path with it but i'm just going to take each step and know that things will fall into place and that's like a terrifying thing yeah our society doesn't work that way because actually it makes that makes us very powerful having this incredible intuitive instrument that we're embodying that's helping guide us towards decisions that are right for us rather than make choices that make life easier for other people or mean that we fit into this neat little

mold that can be marketed at really easily from certain companies. Do you know what I mean? It's like there are breaking out of that mold and thinking for ourselves is extremely empowering and it goes against everything society wants because it means we're no longer predictable entity we could do anything and that's what's great but it's also yeah we have to um relearn how to trust it and find allies along the way who are also on the same path which is I think why I've been so happy in a way that sober curious is that term has really helped a lot of people I think who were on this path privately going through this painfully privately alone now feel they have permission to speak openly about it and start to find each other because it is all is the language of it

that it's sober curious it's not just like sober because people so many friends that I have that have come to me recently and they're like going through their own journey and they're not quite there because it does it takes a really long time yeah but and then I've said to listen to it because it's like the fact that it's curious it's like you're not committing to anything yeah I think that's what it's about as well it's like you're not having to completely erase something from your life. It's just about being curious about the alternative option, really. And getting really educated. This is an extremely toxic, psychoactive drug, one of the five most addictive substances on the planet. And I've just been using it without questioning it.

I mean, I'm not definitely not pro-prohibition. If anything, I'm more on the side of all drugs should be legal. We should just have proper education about what they actually do. But again, that's kind of a whole other conversation. how they impact us but let's get really educated about what our body is telling us what our emotional needs are how to properly communicate with each other what we need etc all the things that were not taught in school basically oh god yeah i want to touch on the dating thing though because we skimmed over that and it's huge and part of the reason i skim over it's because my i haven't been on a date since like 1998 or 1999 which is when i met my husband so you don't know what it's like I don't although I will tell you even with my husband we've been we actually met 21 years ago last week but um going on our first sober date together was so awkward and it was probably about 10 years ago

like you know when I first started experimenting or getting curious myself, I would say to him, you know, maybe this Friday night, let's do something else. And I think we went to the theater or something, which just felt so grown up to me at the time. It's like, oh, we're going to go to the theater and not to the pub. And it kind of felt really awkward. We knew each other so well by that point. You know, we've always had a real sort of soulmate connection. But I felt

like a teenager. And I realized I felt the way I would have if I'd have been 14, which is around the age that I started drinking. That part of me hadn't developed the part of me that's like, how do I act around boys without alcohol? Because I'd been using alcohol in all of my kind of romantic situations. I mean, I then said I went on to have a relationship with someone who kind of banned me from drinking so that was a whole other thing but it was it we sort of had to relearn how to talk to each other and how to laugh and have fun and now he doesn't drink at all either and we have actually I would say we're actually closer and we have a more intimate and trusting relationship than we ever have, which is amazing.

But it definitely wasn't without its own kind of uncomfortable parts. Yeah, because I guess like people, you know, it gives you depth, courage and it sort of eases the sort of awkwardness of dating, which is always there anyway. was there anyway but I also think looking at it I had an experience quite recently where I went met someone at the pub for a drink who was someone I had dated a while ago not even that long ago it was like a year and a half ago and at the time a year and a half ago I sort of was really really into him and automatically what would happen with me is like I wouldn't be drinking wouldn't be drinking then I'd meet someone romantically and everything would go out the window I would just behave exactly how they did because I wanted to fit in with them I wanted them to like me and it would it was insane how I could literally go for like months not drinking

then suddenly I was back to my old ways immediately and I did that with him and I noticed I was like you know it's not a good sign but this time when I went to meet him I didn't drink and we had nothing in common it was really awkward we had nothing to talk about but afterwards I was like I'm not interested in that person we have nothing in common exactly and that's totally fine yeah but like before I would have been like well I'll drink to it and I'll then you know go out with him and go and do things that I don't want to do that don't fit with who I am anymore. And it was so liberating to be like, yeah, he's like a gorgeous guy, but we're not, you know, we're not compatible. No, we're not compatible. Because yeah, if you'd have had a drink with him, maybe you'd have snogged him, whatever. Maybe then for the next few weeks,

you'd have been in this weird texting thing, this weird battle with your intuition of like, do I like him? Does he like like me like all of that mental anguish when you're just not compatible and that's fine so yeah I think that you know a friend of mine she's always like you wouldn't get drunk on a job interview and if you're genuinely if you're genuinely if you're dating to have to potentially meet someone you want to have a relationship with getting drunk in that situation you're not you're not finding out what the deal is on their end you're not presenting your best or true self necessarily so it's just a bit of a false economy yeah exactly

100 well i i mean i would say from when we start drinking at quite a young age it's sort of contradictory to what everything we've been saying but there's so much of it that allows us to be ourselves and that I think we develop this association with alcohol that I'm like well I relax more I let my guard down and that I am a bit more authentically me so what would you say about people that are like struggling with that because it is this sort of contradiction really well the piece to know about that and it comes up in the dating piece as well what alcohol very specifically does in our brain is it switches off the part of our brain that monitors what other people are thinking of us

so with that piece of our brain disabled we feel like it's okay to be ourself because we're no longer worried about what other people are thinking about how we're behaving. The key is to find ways to be that self without having to put a toxic chemical into your brain that could cause addiction problems later in your life. And how do people do that? Well, multiple different ways by putting yourself in those situations without alcohol and realizing if I don't feel comfortable being myself around these people, these are not my people. Brene Brown talks about something that I found very interesting. Because I think my whole life I've wanted everybody to like me.

And when people would say things like, not everybody's going to like you. It would fill me with, you know, I'd be like, but everyone has to like me. And I think a lot of people will relate to that. But she says, she was like, who is your everybody? She was like, be very considerate about who your everybody who everybody is and of course we all think everybody is everybody especially in social media world exactly but if you actually just think about what your values are and what you stand for and what makes you you in your best form and then pick your everybody based around five people that inspire you whether they're people you know or you don't know and then relating your behavior to like do I care what they think not what like the idiots down

the pub think that aren't going anywhere with their lives like what do those people that inspire me and mean something to me think of my behavior and I think that's quite an interesting way of helping people with that need for fitting in and validation. Yeah, and the need for belonging and for feeling like it's okay to be myself. And of course, there are so many things that can impact our ability to feel confident to be ourself. And one of the, you know, I shared earlier that I used alcohol to be more confident, to be more extroverted. And in a way, I can be that person when I'm around people that I completely trust. In a way, I can be that person when I'm around people that I completely trust.

But it's taken me a long time to realize that because for so long I had been outsourcing my self-confidence to alcohol. So when I removed it, I felt like I was petrified that I would be totally introverted, wouldn't ever know what to say, would never be able to get on the dance floor. Like all these things I kind of thought that alcohol was helping me to do. But ultimately, and this has been one of the biggest, I call it the confidence paradox. floor like all these things I kind of thought that alcohol was helping me to do but ultimately and this has been one of the biggest I call it the confidence paradox I feel so much more confident without alcohol because I know exactly who I am I know exactly what's coming out of my mouth I know exactly if this conversation is pissing me off I'm just leaving bye like no you're quicker yes and you want so conversation yourself you're also like fully present because you're not sitting there being like okay where's my next drink like what because that becomes like

the aim of the evening often and then it's like oh i feel better more confident but to the other person you're speaking to yeah you don't care what they think anymore because that part of your brain shut down but they probably think you're an idiot you know what i mean whereas if you're fully in yourself and fully engaged and present in that moment they're gonna think you're great and if they don't then like say what exactly so what and this is like this is why i love astrology i do a talk actually on the astrology of addiction which is so niche but so interesting and it's kind of where my two worlds collide in a way but one of the reasons I love astrology is that in learning to read our own birth chart and to understand our kind of cosmic factory settings in a way, we can see where our confidence

might have been not. And we can see where we actually have gifts that we can lean into if we sort of develop other parts of ourselves and put ourselves in situations or choose a path for ourself that actually supports who we truly are astrology is an amazing tool for self-awareness and self-discovery in that sense because again you know if you you look a certain way in the kind of society that we live in and you have a certain kind of a family there are so many expectations about like you said the kind of relationship you should be in certain kind of a family, there are so many expectations about, like you said, the kind of relationship you should be in, the kind of job you should do, the kind of clothing you should wear, what shape your body should be. Having all those expectations placed on us is

ultimately what kills our confidence and it's ultimately what prevents us from feeling like it's okay to be our true self. And so being able to really acknowledge what all of that conditioning is and who we are on a soul level underneath what we look like, underneath the circumstances that we were born into, etc. Connecting to that in whatever ways we can through meditation, yoga, yes, of course, but also through dance and also through amazing conversations and also through therapy and all of these different things. Ultimately, the goal, I don't really like thinking about goals because I think everything is kind of circular and just an ongoing exploration but ultimately this is about a path of really getting okay like really really okay with saying no to what doesn't service and pursuing what truly does and I think astrology does give this sort of beautiful guidance that you can sort of take and leave

whatever parts of it you want but in in a space that otherwise can feel a little bit unknown yeah the intuitive path is an unknown path there is like the answer is unfolding in front of us and we have to again it's that trust thing like am i trusting what feels right okay we can only feel what feels right when we're clear and present as well you know and also they're just even speaking to people and them saying you're going through this part of life or like this is happening because of this like some people might be listening and thinking it's utter rubbish but actually that gives you a bit more like okay this is happening because of this rather than it just being chaotic and I think that's why there's such an attraction

towards this world at the moment more than ever. It's kind of booming. Absolutely. And I think people are looking for something that's like a bit more mystical that they can still find purpose in. Well, I think people are looking for perspective and that's what I love.

Astrology allows you to kind of zoom out from whatever kind of chaos or difficulty or challenge you may be experiencing and sort of get a bird's eye view and just be like, okay, this is part of a much bigger picture. What I'm experiencing now, no matter how challenging is a small part of my life, you know, and in the grand scale of what I'm here to experience in this life, this is just a small kind of bump in the road and i'm going to get through this and i think astrology really helps provide that particularly we don't necessarily turn to organized religion for that anymore but we used to society when i

say we society used to use organized religion for that same function. We still have an innate need for something spiritual in our lives. And I think that there's just a movement that's going towards this as, you know, people aren't perhaps connecting to the traditional religious formats as they used to. Exactly. But it's giving us the same, it's fulfilling the same need, like you say, which is this need to understand that our lives are part of something bigger and that we are actually all connected in a bigger way than we can actually see in our day-to-day lives 100 well I mean this has been such a beautiful conversation for me to have and

I'm so so pleased that you were here I mean also we'll just explain to the listeners it was we were supposed to have someone come someone else come on who's going to be doing it at a later date. And I just was sitting in the bath and I thought, and I knew that Ruby lived in New York. I just suddenly had this feeling, message her because she's going to be in London next week. And you were. And so I'm so, so happy that we got to do this and sit here in my sitting room and I got to have this conversation with you. So thank you. Yeah, me too.

And that's a great example, isn't of when intuition calls just follow the call thank you for having me so Ruby has just left and we had such a deep and beautiful conversation and it's strange actually because podcasts when you've been listening to them for so long you really do feel like you know someone on a on a deep and level, even though we'd never met before. And I must say the conversation was just incredible for me. I've had that conversation in my head so many times and we really went in on some quite complicated stuff. open and honest about her own experience especially talking about her abusive relationship and how that stopped her from drinking and then how you know it began to be a way of her being herself and I think that that's something we can all relate to also about how alcohol shuts down the

part of your brain that makes you care what people think again something that we probably know but actually hearing that it really does do that on a physical level is just fascinating. And when we talked about dating and friendships and how, you know, this journey that you go on, if you do make these decisions to get sober, how that it brings up stuff on quite a deep level and, and just having that conversation with her and having that realization that, that it's normal and that things that I'm experiencing are you know part of this process was very comforting for me. I guess a lot of what mine and Ruby's conversation was about did make me reflect on what Flo said at the top of the episode about Saturn ruling responsibility boundaries and limits because so much of it was about confronting things in

ourselves that are quite difficult and painful and really having to own up to to the truth of who we are you know that can be a difficult transition to go through but it's a necessary step if you want to hear more about what ruby has to say you can find her on instagram at ruby warrington and listen to her podcast and read her book which are both called Sober Curious. Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production. The producer is Hannah Varel and executive producer is Kate Taylor.

I really hope you enjoyed this episode. For me the aim of this podcast is to unify us in a time that can be quite challenging and difficult and feel isolating. If you did enjoy this podcast I would love it if you could share it with someone you think might find it useful. So until next time thank you so much for listening and remember you are not alone. Goodbye.