Right. I'm thrilled to to start this next section of the Global ADHD Conference. We've got Rory Fairbairns here. He's from one year no beer. He has ADHD, and he's fantastic and incredibly interesting, and I'm gonna welcome him now. So welcome. Welcome, Ruri.

Thank you for having me on. Thank you, and hello, everyone.

And just before this, I asked you, I did the tango, like, how do I say your name? You gave me a wonderful reference.

Yes. Well, pretty much since I was 14, I've been telling people it's like brewery without the b always comparing my name to alcohol and my life to alcohol and everything else. So kind of either irony or destiny that I ended up with one year. No beer. I don't know. You decide. But you pronounced it beautifully. Rory, thank you. Sure. Good, John. Think you've you've channeled your inner Scotsman as well with the Fairbairns bit, so well done. I appreciate it very much. So, like yeah. So.

Ruri Brewery, one year no beer. So would you tell tell us tell me, what is one year no beer? Well.

One Uno Beer was launched a good nine, nearly nine years ago now as an alternative to what is out there in a more sort of preventative fashion, right, to help change the conversation, around alcohol that ultimately, you know, what was out there was you needed to reach rock bottom or have a serious problem or, you know, have a real issue with alcohol in order to get help. And maybe you didn't need help anyway, but we wanted to just turn it into something cool and fun and funky to do like, hey. I'm I'm doing a tough mudder. You know? I'm doing this challenge. And so that's kind of what we came up with with this idea of one year no beer some eight, nine years ago.

We have multiple challenges. So we have a twenty eight day challenge, a ninety day challenge, a three hundred and sixty five day challenge, and we support people daily, content, all of using NLP and positive psychology and the latest sort of behavior chain change techniques to sort of start thinking about their relationship with alcohol differently. And over the years, we've developed more programs and and things like that, and our real flagship program now is called complete control. It's all around helping people get control of their relationship with alcohol. We saw from years and tens of thousands of people, years of studies that people are actually searching for control of their drinking years.

Before they get to the place where they think, you know what? I'm gonna have to stop. In fact, for many people, it's a shame. It's it's that they actually get to this place where they're like, no. It has to be nothing for me. It's become a problem, and it has to be nothing. And I say it's a shame, but in reality, there's no alcohol is not good for us, but it is very prevalent in society. So, really, we wanted to help people find control and, if you like, avert a more serious relationship with alcohol, ultimately to make some changes into their life, their the things around them so that alcohol kind of becomes less of a feature. And that's kind of what we're focused on today.

Now I'm gonna ask you how you came up with one, know, beer, but it'd be great to start with with your ADHD story because it it you have ADHD. Did you find out?

Well, I mean, I was, born at 10,000,000 miles an hour as my as my, mom would tell you, and and she would say that I slept four hours in in every 24. And for a lot of ADHD or a lot of some ADHD research and science is that actually ADHD and sleep deprivation are very linked, ADHD can be caused in sleep deprivation in babies and all sorts of interesting research around that. But I was mega, mega hyperactive and acting out and part of a big family. And I think six years old, my parents were given an ultimatum, and that was drugs or counseling. And then back then.

Really, on the Isle Of Mull and a tiny island in Scotland, you know, population 2,000 people, same size as the m twenty five, they really didn't know what ADHD was. So it was being labeled as hyperactive and hyperactivity. But, you know, all the signs that we know now today of ADHD, and later in life, I was diagnosed with ADHD. And I really struggled. You know? I I I was constantly acting out, constantly misbehaving. I couldn't sit still. I was And so the back then, and maybe you'll resonate with this, it was like more discipline and throw more rulers at his head and force him to sit still and, you know, tell everyone he's a bad boy. And.

What that sort of created inside my head, I know, was this sort of division for myself that I didn't really fit in. I didn't really understand everyone else. I went at 10,000,000 miles and everywhere, but I knew part of me, I must be bad. I must be naughty. So I kinda played into that. And, you know, a lot of a lot of disruptive behavior. Like, I discovered pretty early on that if you're in a big family and you don't get attention, if you set something on fire, you get a lot of attention. And so I kind of went about setting things on fire for a while, which is, you know, a bit of a aggressive description, but you get what I mean. And.

Through this time, I I struggled more. And the first time I attempted suicide, I was 13 years old. I I tried to commit suicide, and that ended up in, my stomach bumping. And then slightly later at 14, I actually attempted to hang myself, and it was a bit of a miracle that I, survived. My parents actually came back early from their anniversary dinner. What a selfish or what a crazy time to think selfish is the wrong word. Apologies. They came back at that moment. And, so coming from that, my parents were kind of desperate for me to see what they saw, right, which was they believed I was special. They believed I was unique. They believed I was gifted.

But the world out there did not see that. Right? The world out there called me bad and disruptive and, you know, naughty kid, And it created, honestly, created a divide, like a split inside me almost and people say, you know, recognize this sort of bipolarness of being one and being the other. And I struggled with that for a long time in my life, and it wasn't until, you know, into my teens and twenties, I met alcohol, and alcohol was such an amazing tool for switching off the brain. And later, met drugs and another great tool for trying to calm down that that brain of mine. But while I was doing all of that, I was also very determined.

I started my first business when I was 15 years old coming out of school, which actually was inspired. I missed out that part. My parents encouraged me to write a letter to somebody to give me hope. You know, my dad was very big on hope being something that can pull somebody out of any situation. And they were desperate for me to make some kind of change. So they encouraged me to write a letter to somebody, who inspired me. And my dad's called Richard, and he had a recording studio. So I wrote a letter to Richard Branson. And, I said, I'm gonna change the world one day. I'm looking forward to having lunch with you. I know from the Isle Of Mau kind of crazy thinking, but I think that's some of the thinking that comes with ADHD.

Like, we don't fit in and we feel unique. We know we're unique. We know we've got something bigger in us. We know we've got more energy and we get more done and we're just, yeah, we're just we're just like, we're machines when we're channeled. But when we're not channeled, it can be incredibly disruptive. So I set up to tried all these different businesses and ended up getting, you know, contestant number 15 on The Apprentice after setting up multiple businesses and then ended up becoming an oil broker in London. And for me, becoming an oil broker in London is where two worlds collided. Right? Partying and being successful. The more I partied, the more successful I became.

And I became very successful. It was. But it fit right into that ADHD style behavior. I could gear up my central nervous system into total hyperactivity mode, and then I could just offload it all with booze and alcohol, but I'd still be working. I'd still be building my business. So it kind of got really into that. And I think the big change for me was in 2013, and I stumbled across what you will all now know as the app called Headspace. It was very early back then. It was still Andy Pudicum in all of the videos. And I started meditating on the train to and from work every day. Like using it as the gap between who I was at home and who I needed to be to thrive and survive in the city.

And and and building that gap, this scratching started to come into my head. This little annoying back here. And the annoying was alcohol is holding you back. And, you know, I I didn't wanna listen to it. I built a hugely successful career. Had all the cars and the houses and the, you know, the wife and all it's just like all of that stuff. And they had this gnawing in the back of my head was just like, is causing you more trouble than they realize. So I approached my boss after thinking about this for some time and I said, I'm thinking about taking a break from alcohol. And he nearly fell off his chair. He was like, you are committing commercial suicide if you stop drinking.

And so so I from that moment, I was like, wow. I can't believe this. I've built up this career. I don't just wanna let it all go and disappear. So I, I decided to it took me about six months to pluck up the courage, and then I decided to take a break from alcohol. And that is when, honestly, everything transformed. Right? I I everything got better, fitter, faster, healthier, happier, better dad, better husband, all of those things. And what I know now really is that think of alcohol like the keystone habit. Right? The keystone of a of a bridge. Right? That keystone is what keeps that archway up. Now alcohol holds up all the bad habits.

Yeah? You you you drink alcohol and then you sleep poorly and you wanna eat a kebab and you can't be bothered to go to the gym and exercise and you don't meditate and you don't do your things and sold all your goals and bloody life sucks anyway, right, as an example. But if you remove that, right, the actual being alcohol free or removing alcohol, changing your relationship with alcohol to a better place, that holds in place the good habits. Suddenly, want to exercise. You want to meditate. You want to look after yourself. You wanna eat right. You know? And suddenly, it's not the difference between one and two. It's the different the polar opposite differences just by removing this one thing.

So that's what got me super, super passionate about it. I looked out there and I was like, there's nothing out here for me. You know, when I'd been drinking quite a lot as an oil broker, and I never had a problem. I wasn't drinking every day. It wasn't anything like that. I was just part of my job. I had a counselor, they said, you should go to some AA meetings. And I went, and I was like, I'm nothing like this. I I I just don't resonate with this this, you know, having gone off the edge and the whole of life destroyed. So it caused me to not change. It caused me to ignore it. Like, I'm not that bad. I'm okay. Society says I'm fine. I don't drink that much. It's normal. So that stopped me from changing.

And I was like, how do I turn this into a more open conversation, a more easy to reach thing where people can just say, hey. I you know, I'm just challenging myself. Right? You know, walk into the pub, and the guys are like, hey. Do you want a beer? And you'd like, no. I'm just doing a ninety day challenge to change my relationship with alcohol, and I'm running a half marathon, and I just need to train and focus on that. And it's like, okay. Cool. Nice one. Well well done for your training. Good luck with that. And it removed all that peer pressure. It removed all that nonsense. And that was kind of the idea to to build out one year no beer in the first instance.

So I think coming back through all of this story, I just want to link back to a couple of things I mentioned is what I really realized now or recognize now is that because of our busy, busy brains as ADHD, way more busy than before, that is is the well known and green tool in society to switch off a busy brain. So this is why we see so many people who have ADHD, think they're ADHD, undiagnosed ADHD, rely on things like drugs and alcohol is because of that busyness inside there. And we can talk more about about all of the links into the central nervous system and how we calm this stuff down.

But when I removed that, when I removed the alcohol, this is what allowed this calmness to suddenly come in, and it allowed all of those other good techniques, all of those good practices to fall into place, which is why it was so transformational for me. So this is something I'm very passionate about, a, in in in all of our programs, but helping people understand. So many people are using alcohol to numb out that ADHDness when in reality, it's actually exacerbating it. It's making it worse. It's driving so many of those behaviors, and it's the one thing that we can do that can significantly help. So yeah.

Oh, I haven't got your audio. Was it me? No. That was me. Yeah. For those that don't like you know, for some reason, right now, someone has decided to take up drum drumming just right behind me. And so I muted it whilst I'm off. That was wonderful. You're the best wonderful interviewee that has, like, told your story incredibly well and succinctly. Gosh, man. Okay. I was it was obviously heartbreaking talking about your childhood and being naughty to terms on your own you know, your own life. Like, that's really, really feel you know?

A dark place.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, obviously, we know I I think so many one thing is I I I I think a lot of people don't understand. I think a lot of people don't understand what happens when somebody really gets into that place. And I think there's a lot of judgment on it. You know? Does was it an attention seeking thing or did the person this or, you know, how selfish. I actually use that word, and it's something I'm really, really against because, of course, it's not a selfish act. This is completely the opposite. Once you get yourself into that frame, you're the issue. You're the problem. You're the reason why everybody else is messed up. It's feeling like it's it's like you're the issue and wanting to exit.

And I think I think the the biggest thing or part in here is, you know, I speak to people every single day, and they're you know, the people who are on antidepressants in this country, it's absolutely insane. And, you know, the quality of research or actual credibility of what these antidepressants do versus the conversation with the doctor being like, okay. I'm depressed, and I'm anxious. Okay. How much alcohol are you drinking? I'm just curious because alcohol is a depressant, and it creates anxiety. Right? So let's just get rid of the alcohol for a bit, focus on your sleep and your exercise and meditation, and then let's have another conversation and see if you need medication.

Yeah. I So we went down a different story there. I did. Oh, shortcuts.

Two people with ADHD tangent off. It's something we see with ADHD. We see a lot of, you know, a lot of diagnosis of anxiety and depression when underlying this is significance of ADHD. And in terms of suicides, we have some really difficult figures that we have to look at. We have one in ten men or boys with ADHD who will at some point try and take their own life, and it's one in four women or girls. It's you know, that's an expression of how difficult ADHD is, the compounding aspects. You, you know, wish you were talking to in your in your childhood about the different aspects come together and it gets very, very, very, very hard. I'll probably have to say, like, I'm not sure I've seen much of the.

And something I wanted to talk to is the reason we're talking, which is that chairperson of ADHD UK, Neil Mankey, he has done the One Year No Beer program, I think, and he's found it incredibly significant for him. Yeah. Something I've also found in interviews and in talking to people with ADHD is that we have a percentage who continue drinking, but we do have a percentage who get a diagnosis and they stop drinking. As part of the conference, we've got Shappy. The reason I'm stumbling is because I know that she wants to opt to stop being called Shappy. It's Shaparak Korsandi. Her book is still says Shabby as the author. Just so I'm I'm allowed some bliber here. Have a word. But I do want to respect her because.

So she's messages here. She she talked about she used to use alcohol in social situations because of the overwhelm. She found them very difficult, very overwhelming, and alcohol took that away. And when she was diagnosed, she was getting support for ADHD, she recognized that and wanted to step away from it. Tanya Bartley is similar, who was interviewed at the last conference. She actually talked also about trying to take her own life as a child. Mhmm. And at the end of the interview, have a sort of traditional question, assuming we have time or we'll we'll do. And which is not to answer it now. I'm trying to no. I don't fire your neurons. You spend the whole time thinking up your answer.

That was easy. Cut me open. I'll say the same thing, so don't worry. Fair enough. Try not to cut me open, but you know what I mean. No plans. The.

But the question is, like, what you know, what's what's your ADHD? What's the as a result of your ADHD, what's the worst thing that's happened to you? What's the best thing? And we always try, no, no, don't answer it yet. You're doing it at the end. Oh, sorry. It's alright. Nice question, yeah. But she said the worst thing was she was, it was after she tried to take heroin off the first time, she woke up in the hospital to see her parents, and she realized at that point her parents knew. They knew how she was feeling, how she was. What was that moment like for you?

I remember oh, jeez. Oh, I remember with my dad desperate. I mean, he was desperate. Yeah. You're gonna get me now. So, yeah, I think it was yeah. Sorry.

I'm not trying put you on the spot. If you wanna move on No. It's okay. Just just yeah.

My dad always had unbelievable faith and love. So I'm lucky to have. You know? I'm so grateful to have. And he had the most amazing vision with me. I say for me because it sounds like the parent wants you to be something. And that wasn't that wasn't how he was. He was just there by my side and encouraging and wanting and and incredibly supportive. And I think it was so hard for him to see me wanting to leave, you know, and he couldn't really understand it. And he wanted to, and he was a very compassionate man. You know, my dad supported my journey, and we went into business together with the first with the first business, and we tried to make that work. And it was an absolute flop, the pair of us together. It was hilarious. But.

When I when I came on to this thing, you know, he was such a huge champion and supporter for what I was doing here, you know, building this organization. And I think this organization was the very expression of me, that energy, the force, you know, the force for good. And I think that's what he saw he saw inside, which was that I was a huge force for good. I'm not gonna be able to pick this back up again. Just okay. I'm there. So he saw I was a huge force for good, and that that it was more about unleashing that energy in the right form. And I tried a long time putting that energy into oil broking, and I I sat every day making money for myself, and it made me fucking miserable.

It made me excuse my language. It made me so miserable. It it it was toxic to my soul. And and, you know, I built these things in this kind of house and all of that crap, and I was just miserable because inside was this expression for good, this enormous energy, this this this this soul to want to make a positive impact on the world and to want to help people and support people through the journey. And I think, you know, all sorts of things happened, you know, when I first had this business growing very largely. It started to grow pretty quickly, and I was still working as an oil broker. And, you know, I sent a tweet to a journalist, like, was talking about getting featured on the BBC. And.

Next minute, I was having a ten minute feature on BBC World News in February countries about the program we were building. And a friend of mine actually messaged me having watched it in Italy, and he said, Ruri, I'm actually part of a team that are going to meet the Dalai Lama, next week. Do you wanna come with us? And literally a week later, I'm was supposed to be at this event and somewhere completely irrelevant and backstage. And if you believe in the power of doing good and when you're doing good, things shift for you, and I do believe in that. Next minute, completely out of the blue, I'm on the stage asking the Dalai Lama a question in front of thousands of people in the center of Pisa.

Really shouldn't have been there. And I asked him a question, and his answer was it literally struck me. It was that was the moment I knew I was a 100% connected to my purpose as a human being and and very emotional getting off the stage. I went in on Monday morning back to my very well paid oil broken job and handed in my notice. And my boss was like, look. You don't you don't need to do this. You've built a successful career, successful desk. You can coast. You can do these two things on the side. And I was like, I can't. I can't spend another day doing this when there's a greater purpose here. And so jumped into this full speed and, you know, the money in a beer is an organization. Wait a minute. Wait a Wait What did he say to you?

I can skip that very important bit. Yeah. I said I said.

We help people all over the world change their relationship with the people who wanted me to say addictions, but we don't usually not use that word because I think that makes people leave the room. And but we help people change their relationship with addictions using what Tibetan and Buddhist people have known for years because meditation is a core part of the program. What would you say to somebody who's trying to change their relationship with addiction? And he said something on the lines of, I don't know what to do to help somebody who's always are addicted. I that's not my place. I believe in people like you who are doing the good work. And for that, I'm very grateful for the work that you are doing in this world.

And he said, but what we have to do is teach our children to feel emotion. And this is his really big thing. This is his like, if you if you look at anything from the Dalai Lama, he's very strong in trying to help people to help their children feel their emotions and and thinks that that is what is going to help us heal. Of course, it is. It's really important to understand and feel our emotions. So, yeah, that when he said about the work and how important it was, and that's just what really hit my soul, if you like, and became very purpose driven. And and sorry.

He's good. I mean, Dalai Lama is good at that. I mean, that's like he's.

He's an incredible presence. I mean, it went on. We ended up we shouldn't have been there. We're supposed to fly home that afternoon. Didn't happen. We ended up staying at his hotel. I met him in the morning in person. So many crazy things happened, and I was just like, okay. You know, this is done. I'm on the right path. So yeah. Interestingly, just a ton tiny little story, which I think is relevant about this whole piece as well. As I was building the business and and I kept saying to people, you know, that that Richard Branson being such a huge fan of mine, and and I kept putting it out and kept putting it and kept putting it out. And and then one day, somebody over in The US invited me to go down to meet Richard Branson down in the.

Necker Island. We were all set to go down there. Very excited. And the guy who running it was like, I'm gonna sit you next to Richard Branson so you can tell your story about the letter with your dad and this business and the impact you're having. And Richard's very interested in the whole not drinking movement and things like that anyway. And that was all set up. So excited. I was gonna FaceTime my dad. And then, unfortunately, COVID hit, and my dad died. So it got canceled. My dad died two months later. And, so it didn't happen. Wind forward another couple of years, and I kept sending this out. And I heard he was here.

Not far away, and actually turned up randomly at this hotel. And at that precise moment that I turned up to the hotel, I'm paraphrasing this rather long story, Richard was standing on his own in a parapet looking out at the view. And he could have been busy or anywhere, but I just walked up to him and, told him my story, got quite emotional. He gave me a big hug, and he he actually then posted about it on his social media about meeting me and the impact that we're having in the world and the and the business. And so that was just another huge accolade and a stamp for the work that we're doing.

You're muted. I'm sorry. Oh, yeah. That's the drums. I'm sorry to hear about your sorry to hear about your father. And yeah. And Richard Branson's one of the gangs. Like or or suspected. So he has talked about thinking he has ADHD in a recent BBC news piece. They actually called me and said, like, we just wanna make sure we're talking about ADHD in the right way, which is very good of them. So anyway. And because Richard's talking about it, and we just want to make sure. And I had to say, I think pretty certain you've got a world exclusive there. Because although he's talked about having ADHD, there's a lot of places that talk say, Richard has ADHD.

He's never actually said it. No. It's a lot of conjecture. Dyslexia, like Yeah. All the time. He's massive about that.

And then the BBC person says, I know we've checked. I'm sure. I was like, I think you should just go check. I got a callback. I got a callback about twelve hours later. Or it was after you call, I got a callback at, 9AM the next day saying, right. Just to be clear, everything we talked about is confidential. You mustn't talk about this until it's broadcast because, yes, you are right. It's never been talked about. So, yeah, no, he is. So he's part of the gang. That's super cool. That's very cool. So one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about Yes. Was your research and understanding into, and you said you didn't want to say the word, but I'm gonna break the rule already, around addiction and the drivers. And.

So so something that winds me up rotten is that we as ADHD is getting advice and being given tools that just don't work for us. Yep. Right? And and actually then that adds to the pain for us because we're then Because you're like, oh, what's wrong with me? Yeah. And it's not and it's not work, but also if someone's recommended it to us, like it's picking a boss, then they think that we don't care. It gets put on us as not participating. So one of the things that obviously you as someone with ADHD in this program, I've witnessed it being so successful with someone I know with ADHD, That's one of the reasons I'm so interested.

You've particularly done research into the, I think, the 12 drivers that you see in world of addiction. I'd love to hear about those, and with particular, obviously, with that regard for ADHD.

Over to you. Absolutely. Yeah. I'd love to. And I think this is when when we sat down with the fundamentals, so my story was to do a year alcohol free, and then I went out for a drink after a year of alcohol free. And I got to a five deep bar, at at the rugby and was like, so I'm waiting for that again. Ordered two pints, and the evening carried on like that. And the following day, I was throwing up in the toilet with my daughter beside me crying and my wife storming out the door. And that's really when I understood something fundamental, which is that abstinence does not equal control.

Right? And so many people are making this error of just, I'm just gonna stop drinking for a month. In fact, they use willpower. They hold on to it for the month. They avoid their social circle. They cancel seeing their friends. They think it's boring. They stay indoors. All you're building is the psychological belief that alcohol is pertinent to your awesome, amazing, great life. So we actually have to we have to we have to change our beliefs.

Our thoughts, our patterns, our behavior around alcohol if you want to be able to control your drinking. And if you feel like you're at that place where alcohol has a little bit of control of you, you've it's just like every day, I feel like I need to take the edge off, or perhaps I'm a binge drinker. I'm all or nothing. When I go in, the wheels come off. Depending on what kind of drinker you are. I mean, the ADHD is gonna be far more likely to be the binge drinker. I'm making an assumption there. I'll need to look at the data. But.

I can actually back that that up somewhat. So I'm not on alcohol, but on gambling. See the propensity for gambling within the ADHD population, just general population, to be the same. Okay. The propensity to be a problem gambler would be at the really serious, at the most serious end of problem gambling. ADHD is much more prevalent. Oh, absolutely. So it means if we're so the main thing is if we have a problem with it, our problem's going to be bigger. And I yeah. That may be what you're referring to. 100%.

100%. So exactly. Not giving the coping mechanisms, not giving it all of that creation stuff. So if you are at that juncture where you feel like it's got a bit of control for you, then if I play this forward for you, what happens is you could try and stop drinking or you take a break, then you go back to problematic drinking again, and you get stuck in this loop. And absence does not equal control until you get to the place where it's like, either you're gonna be drinking and it's causing issues in your life. And in part of the honesty, if you are regularly drinking alcohol, we're not gonna negotiate on this one, but it's causing issues in your life. K? That's just a full stop. Any amount. If you're if you're regularly drinking alcohol and.

It is if if you're regularly drinking alcohol, it is causing issues in your life. It's a depressant. It causes anxiety. It's severely impactful on our brain. If you look at the latest in neuroscience, it's significantly impactful on our frontal lobe where morals are made, rational decision making is made. Doc Amon, one of the top neuroscientists in the world, he says, how often do you want your frontal lobe to go on holiday? I just love it. Right? That's that's where you make good decisions. How often do you want that to go on holiday?

So, but it's causing issues in your relationship because some you usually fight you only fight when you have a drink. Right? And and all of these things. So the truth is if you're regularly drinking alcohol, it is causing issues in your life. And I think that's at that place where we try to get control. We try to do it. We try to get there, and, ultimately, it starts to get worse or doesn't really change that situation. And for some people, they're gonna get to the place where it's like, okay. Absence is your only option. Complete abstinence is your only option because you haven't averted this in the beginning. So I wanted to develop a preventative program. I wanted to develop something.

That wasn't really about addiction. It's about, hey. Is compulsive behavior showing up in your life? Well, yeah. It is for all of us. Right? Well, we understand what drives compulsion. And the thing is, you're not powerless. You are powerful. You can change those things. 100% guaranteed, you can change the things that drive compulsive behavior in your life. So if you can change those things, then you can reduce this reliance and and things like that on alcohol. So that's what we put together. We put together a program to help people see with exact clarity what is causing it. Now this is not a program that guarantees that you can moderate or that anybody can moderate. I don't use that word moderation. Do you know why we don't use addiction?

Because half the room half the people run away the room. Addiction. That's not about me. Right? I'm not an addict. I don't know. I'm not one of those. So we don't use that word. We talk about compulsive behavior. Everybody resonates with compulsive behavior. And then we don't talk about what was the other word that's gone out of my head, that's the ADHD. Somebody remind me. Anyway, I'll move on. So I don't know. I don't know. No. You didn't have it.

I don't know if you said, like, comments, But is that number is this number one of the absence doesn't equal control?

That's just a fact. I know. I've had an abstinence program getting people to start drinking for twenty eight days, ninety days, and three hundred and sixty five days for nine years. And that for many people, for mostly just pure absence does not equal control. Yeah. So but for some people, it will. For some people, they can take a break and then they drink less. And there's all sorts of research on that actually age is one of the best tools to help people get control of their drinking. As people get older, they drink less. And do you know some of the really interesting neuroscience around that is that that's the impact of alcohol on your brain and body? So here's some things that that you will like.

One of the first core drivers that we have to understand of our behavior when it comes to compulsion is our past experiences as a child that form our ego, and they are the patterns that we run every day. They're in the back of our subconscious, the you're not worthy, you're shit, you'll never amount to anything, you're not good enough. Right? We all have these things that we say about ourselves. Now they were formed. The vast majority of those were formed during our formative years as a child.

And we don't even realize that those are going. We can call it trauma, but lots of people run away when you use the t word. They're like, I don't have trauma. I had a wonderful upbringing. Really sorry to break it to you, but childhood is traumatic, and that's a full stop. Okay? We can do big t or little t, and it's just about the eye of the beholder. So a child who doesn't understand their emotions, doesn't understand what's going on, doesn't understand why daddy is shouting or why mommy is frustrated or why daddy's on his phone. Right? And that is the thing that gets imprinted in the child. Okay? So trauma, that is one of the big core drivers for people. And most people are blissfully unaware.

At the fact that this stuff is controlling their behavior almost every day. It's in their subconscious, and it's running around there. So this is one of the core things that we have to to look at. Second, then yep.

And, you know, I it was one the things I was interested when I I listened to like, I think, doing my research. You know, were you talking about trauma? Oh, no. I've had a I got a memory moment. Right? Get back together. Distracted myself by talking about proudly about my research and then forgot my point. So back to you.

I can't remember if remember it, just interrupt me again. So the the the second one is stress. Right? Now stress is like the bullet train that drives our past experiences, our trauma, an an undealt with shit, our baggage. I've gotta stop swearing. I'm so sorry. It's a professional place. I do swear like a You obviously ruin our YouTube algorithm.

Like, it's it's really anti swear. Like, we got in trouble Don't don't do it again. Don't do it with when I interviewed Heston Blumenthal last year, I actually started off with swearing because I I wanted to engage with him really really well. I thought it was a fun way to do it. It was a terrible idea.

Yeah. Ratings. Yeah. So stress is the bullet train that drives those powerful feelings from our past into the now. So what we don't realize is a few things. First of all, that stress obviously, we have our stress of the daily stress. You're like, work is stressful. You're like, life is stressful. Family. So I've got a lot of stress. Okay? Now what we do is we get that stress. So our central nervous system goes into overdrive. It's compounded. Our central nervous system is in fight or flight. Now in our program, we actually use a really cool device to remotely monitor your central nervous system.

And we show people in real time whether they're in fight or flight or recovery. And understanding their stress and seeing it in data is really key. Now most people who are regularly drinking alcohol, they don't realize that not only do they get to the end of the day, that stress has built this ruminating thoughts and everything else because their central nervous system is being compounded all day, adding caffeine, all that kind of stuff, so they need a drink. In fact, we teach people some really simple math. A stressed out central nervous system, which does not get recovery during the day, will always require numbing in the evening. And this is even more so for ADHD.

Like, we are I I spoke to someone who who hadn't got in that cycle, so they're they're struggling. They had ADHD. They're trying to get a diagnosis, and they were drinking to, you know, to to numb their brain, to calm themselves. And then to stimulate themselves to help them in the day, they were drinking a lot of caffeine. Yeah. So you did the caffeine. Caffeine. It was as simple as, you know, these legally available basically uppers and downers. The caffeine is the upper and the alcohol is the downer. It was I really felt for them. It was it it and then they were struggling to get support and help from the medical profession. Were like, you need to stop drinking before we'll get any help. And, obviously, the.

Person who has ADHD and is really struggling and not able to help themselves needs help. And, like, it was just it was tough. I really, really, really felt Difficult difficult cycle. Difficult cycle. I tell you, this is about you. No. Well, no. Hopefully, it's about all of you wonderful people out there because, hopefully, you're resonating with this. Did that really well. Took camera. It was beautiful.

Pro. So one of the things here is to remember as well that what what we see in the latest science is that alcohol significantly increases the production of cortisol. If you're regularly drinking alcohol, then you train your system to create more cortisol. Cortisol is the fight or flight hormone. So you're suddenly sent into more fight or flight. So that's why when you drink in the evening, first of all, it's significantly impactful on your central nervous system so you don't get the deep sleep. Right? We show people in data using some really cool technology, as I said, that when every time you drink.

You're basically giving your central nervous system the flu. Right? It's asked to fight so hard to get rid of this poison. So you're trying to nod off to sleep, and it's great at knocking your head out and all the anxiety and all that stuff so that you can fall asleep, but you don't get the deep restorative sleep. Now that means you wake up sluggish and a little bit tired the next day, but also your tank, your availability to handle stress.

Guess what? It's gone from this to that because you've been tired. And then when you add in alcohol and things like that, it goes to this. So now you only have this much ability to deal with stress. And when you get up to here, you blow the lid and you need to act out again. You need some kind of numbing. You need some kind of switching off. You've gone into mega hyperactive state, central nervous system absolutely going out in the clappers. So this is like a totally symbiotic mess when it comes to stress driven majority by alcohol.

And one of the things that we're seeing now or or we we know is that not only is that cortisol level higher in people who regularly drink, but even when they did take a break from alcohol, like first two, three, four weeks, it takes that long for their system to turn that still the cortisol level is really high. So over time, and I'm talking about the years of drinking and the decades of drinking, we reduce our ability to deal with stress. So guess what? At the time when you need it, you're in your thirties, you're in your forties, you're in your fifties. Right? You feel like life is so stressful. No. You're just drinking alcohol regularly, and it has stolen.

From you your ability to deal with stress. How about them apples? So and this is even more compounded in ADHD. I talked to very successful business owners, high achieving executives, people who've gone out and driven very high to success. Guess what? Vast majority? ADHD. Of course, they are. Right? The amount of energy it takes, the amount of commitment it takes to go and rise to the top and build big businesses and be successful, there's no surprise. Lots of successful driven individuals have ADHD. And guess what? They have poor relationships with alcohol because that central nervous system is in overdrive all the time. There's another little part here, and that's that lots of ADHDers.

Use being busy as a way to avoid feeling those emotions. Anything to distract. Anything to distract from the stuff and the thing of the past. We talked about that in trauma. So stress really is so key. Now the thing about it is we don't need people to go and become a lama. That's one of the Dalai Lama's, colleagues and sit in a cave for four years and meditate. That's not what you need. Right? What we need is people to be able to deal with more stress. Now alcohol significantly decreases your ability to deal with stress, so let's get rid of that. Next, meditation. We know this. Right? Meditation builds the gap between stimulus and response. Med meditation saved my life. The reason why one year novia exists is because of meditation.

This has now impacted hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, this organization. We've reached, honestly, billions of people with our marketing and our content. So we have had a huge impact in the world, and it all came from meditation. And I say every single person who comes onto our program, if there's one habit I can get you to create, one habit I can get you to do is to meditate and meditate regularly and to build that meditation practice, that's the one thing that will transform you the most.

Okay. This is the this is the point which might get kind of awkward. Oh my god. I hate meditation with an absolute passion. Lots of ADHDers do. Oh, I because I don't know what I mean. Like But can I channel can I can I offer something with that? It just makes me feel so inept. Yes. I I like, I watch everyone else happily. I and I'm just like, I can't do it. I can't make my brain empty until I get makes it puts me in a very bad place. Go on. Over to you, please. How many hours do you speak Mandarin?

Yeah. How many hours do you think it would take of practice before you were fluent in Mandarin?

I mean, you are literally picking one of the most difficult languages to to to to learn.

And it's not nearly as difficult as finding a calm brain. So my question to you is is how many hours would it take for you to learn to be fluent in Mandarin? I don't have literally, like Thousands. Let's say thousands. Right? I'm a pretty slow learner. So but my point is that people come along having had an entire life of a brain that runs amok inside their head. That brain has controlled you your whole life. Right? It does. It's like this. Now now the thing is, you come along to something like meditation, which is a skill you've never learned, you've never practiced, and you do it how many hours have you done it for? Just curious. I mean, how many hours have you tried to meditate? Okay. I'm feeling awkward now. Yes. I know.

I like to hit people hard with my sledgehammer.

Not many hours.

No. And you But that's because, like, it stops very quickly. You You're like, this is not working. This is this is what's this is what's wrong about the part of meditation. First of all, go back to the child. You want your child to learn Mandarin. Do you fucking choose my language. Do you berate it if it doesn't go Mandarin after three hours or four hours or five hours? No. You lovingly care it and tell it to just keep practicing. And this is the shift that we have to do with meditation. Just practice. Now if practice is the sole thing of putting in some headphones and pressing play for ten minutes, okay, and during that practice, you're gonna be terrible at it. So you're gonna think about 100%

Everything else. You're gonna think about shopping, home, work, all of those things. This amazing conversation we're having, hopefully, you'll be thinking about it for hours to come. If that's the only thing you think about, you still won because you're practicing. And all you have to do is show up, and you just have to show up again and again and again and put the hours in. And I absolutely guarantee you, not only will you love meditation, but it will change your life.

Something that is is very clear, actually, is there is there a group of people for whom meditation they talk about it very clearly being life changing. Oh, yeah. People who practice. Well, potentially an annoying fact, but it looks like it.

I do I do get I I don't like giving people on and out on meditation. So I that's what I'm pretty sorry. So is it you know, put in two hundred, three hundred hours into it, and then tell me that you don't find amazing peace and amazing clarity. And this is coming from a strong ADHD. My parents would tell you it's impossible for me to sit down for thirty seconds. I can sit for two hours unguided and meditate no problem. And and that has been so transformational for all of my ADHD symptoms for my life. Probably one of the sole factors enabling me to build such a successful organization.

Is me being able to calm down my brain and see things. But I will give you an out because there's a second one which some people some people resonate better with, and that's breath work. It can be easier for you to focus on the breath and easier for you to get into a state in doing it, but it has to be one or the other. Regularly practiced. It's terrible. Very, very bad news. I always I always tell people, and you you may not like this, but that's what I choose to say to myself. I say, look. I'm sick. Now you you you might not like like that label, but I choose for it for myself. I say, I'm sick. And that means that my standard operation of way of being is for me to get more ill.

And I will get more ill and more ill if I don't take my medication, And my medication is always exercise and meditation. And if I don't have those things in order, go and blow up my life.

So it's essentially it's a really interesting, insightful perspective. That like, that's the that's the internal driver in you is that perception. Right. I'm sick, I have to take my meds, and I have to look after myself. If I don't, I go down, and it's a I will.

See how it's a I will blow my life. I used I used to say, I literally don the Rambo head raft and come up with my Uzis, I'm like, destroy my life. Like this. And everyone around me is like, Barry, my god. You're just tearing the walls down. And it's like, okay. He needs exercise and meditation. Oh, and sleep. Yeah.

No. I can it's yeah. No. Can no. We've got I'm definitely keeping, like, in a very non ADHD way, I'm keeping an eye on the clock. And so we do I'd be keen to cover off any sort of any of those more core drivers. Yes. And then we have to start thinking about wrapping up, sadly. Okay. So just.

To touch onto some more of these, what we have is we started on trauma or the patterns that we're running. Stress is absolutely key. Then we're going to go into, our environment. Our environment is one of the core parts. If you look around in your environment, especially with the relationship with alcohol, and everyone is laced, you're always in the pub, you're always around those things, it's gonna be difficult for you to change. So we need to think about that environment being conducive to the behaviors that we want to have, where we're being, who we're spending time with, the things that we do, as an example, our our career. We'll touch onto that again. Relationships.

Now relationships bent out of shape will drive the desire for compulsive behavior. So problems in marriage, things like that. You're like, oh, forget it. I I just it takes up brain space. It eats into you. It adds into that anxiety and the thought process, and you wanna have a drink again. And once again, all of this stuff is symbiotic, which means not only does relationships better shape drive drinking, but often the drinking drives issues in the relationship. And around the circle goes, and it just feels like a mess. And then along from that is our connections. Now you look at this wonderful talk by Johan Harry. Your everything we know about addiction is wrong, and he says the opposite of addiction is connection.

Now so many of us, when we decide to stop drinking, we become more disconnected. We avoid our social circle. We cancel seeing our friends. We become disconnected. Now unless you're a sociopath, you can't be disconnected. It's not inside human nature. So all that does is drive the desire to, like, I'm being disconnected. The only way I can be connected is to return back to the tribe. And this is a big mistake people make. We must make connections with people around us who are living how we wanna live. This is really, really key. Sleep.

Ugh. Sleep. There's a reason why they use sleep as torture. Seriously, we can't survive without sleep. When sleep is messed up, everything else is messed up. We have to start there. Now we just use a a device, an Oura Ring to track our participants' sleep. We monitor them daily. If they've slept poorly, they get messages from our accountability team to say, look, you're gonna be far more likely to desire compulsive behavior until unless you mitigate that because it compounds your central nervous system, sends you more likely into fight or flight from poor sleep. So.

Mental health, this is what we're sitting here talking about. Poor mental health is a big driver for compulsive behavior. We need to do the work. Again, symbiotic. Alcohol is significantly detrimental to our mental health. It is a depressant. So many people are going through life thinking that this is normal. It's not normal. You don't need to feel this way. Stop drinking and see what you can feel like just for a bit. I've I've mentioned environment, meaning, and purpose. And this is something I discovered for myself. In a windowless office, going by tube into a career I didn't enjoy, I was not what I was here on the planet for. I was here to help people. I was here to help people be bigger and better versions of themselves, help families.

Help parents, help friends. That is what my meaning and purpose is. So we need to be aligned with our meaning and purpose. Now wait a second. If you've listened to this and you're like, oh god. I'm so far away from these things. How am I gonna get to being aligned with my meaning and purpose when I've got my dead end job that I don't love? Listen to me because this is really important. Direction. Okay? Direction is as important, if not more powerful than destination. Now what does that mean? That means that if you feel like you're not aligned to meaning and purpose, it doesn't mean you need to be there. You don't need to be in that meaning and purposeful job. It just means you need to be clear on the direction.

And And when you get clear on the direction that you want to give back, support people, help, you wanna build a nursery, or you wanna help save the planet or, eliminate hunger, just choosing that direction and going all in on it, starting to save some money to go for that future business, starting to meet people, join clubs, go in that direction, that significantly does declines the desire, the need to numb out for compulsive behavior. So meaning and purpose must be aligned. And then our habits. Our habits are like our life raft. That's the exercise.

Meditation, breath work, but things like cold showers, so helpful. Right? The dopamine release from cold showers is incredible. I'm just gonna touch on that very simply because this is amazing for ADHDers. You If become a dopamine seeker, right, so you're used to using alcohol, what happens is it's a pleasure pain.

So every time you drink alcohol, you shoot up into pleasure, and then our system automatically recreats because it must balance out. And it goes straight down into pain, and we feel fucking we feel miserable. Excuse my language. And then a long slow tail, and it slowly slowly comes back up to normal again. Right? But whereas ice and cold showers and ice baths does the opposite. It's pain. It sends you straight down into pain, that dopamine of pain down here, which guess what? That means your system must be correct. So it shoots you up into pleasure of the long tail, and that takes a long time to reset back to zero. So we can heal our relationship with alcohol. We can heal our minds. We lose weight, all sorts of improvement to our immunity with cold showers and ice baths. But habits is really key to changing your relationship with alcohol and removing compulsive behavior. Another big one is emotional regulation. We need to be able to deal with our emotions. We need to talk about them. We need to be able to express them and feel them and let ourselves cry and weep sometimes and it be okay. So understanding how to deal with our emotions is key.

Most of us have not dealt with our past, don't like talking about it, and stuff down and pack down our emotions every possible case we can, whether that's binge watching Netflix to switch over, eating cake, or drinking alcohol, anything to avoid those emotions. And that is always going to exacerbate that desire for compulsive behavior. We must learn to control our emotions. Self esteem, self worth. This is again symbiotic. When you change these other things, it will increase your self worth and your self esteem. So we start on the other real core drivers. And then the big one, finding calm. This is our mission, and this is the mission for all ADHDers.

Trust me. You have to find more calm. We can do it even in our offices. I was here today doing breath work on the floor, had a great big tear up. It was awesome. We can do that in between our meetings. We can find more calm. We can drink less caffeine. We can drink less alcohol. We can find more calm in our lives. And when you do that, you're gonna allow for more of this intuition, more of this power, more of this true self that doesn't need numbing out at the end of the day. So that's our 12 core drivers. And, really, we take people through a program to understand where they are with those core drivers, why that's impacting them so they get exact clarity.

On why they're unable to control their drinking, and more importantly, what they need to be able to do in order to get to a place where they can take or leave alcohol. And that's what we're up to. Thank you.

Thank you. And actually, when you're talking about emotional regulation, and and it's important, so I could hear sort of metaphorical ADHD voices going, but, like, I've got ADHD. Like, I struggle with emotional regulation. And then to your exact point of that, why you need to do more work on it Understood. Having that. And and then I thought about what we Stop said to Dan. Let it out. So, yeah, I know. Yeah. Do do more work on it. And then I thought about, like, what are you talking about? Meditation, needing to do more work on that. And I was like, oh, I hate him.

I don't Well, you're gonna meditate now. It's actually all done. Yeah. I was always I'm almost presided about cold showers. It's also a terrible, terrible I passed some cold showers. I'm not going there yet.

Like, that that's a fuses set. Just the simplest thing is just do thirty seconds. Come on. You can do that. Go to the shower. Turn it to pretty cold. Thirty seconds. Do that. The thing about all of these things is it's tiny little improvements. Tiny, tiny little steps. Every time you get a win, every time you get a win, Professor BJ Fogg, Stanford University behavior change, design clinic, he shows that we change behavior by feeling good, not by feeling bad. So don't get into the place where you're like, oh god. I drank again, I'm an idiot and everything else. Or this is too much for me, and I'm gonna fail. Just small, tiny, little marginal gains, tiny habits, tiny tweaks, and that's what adds to massive change.

I do think that's a wonderful, phrase about it. So it's yeah. It's changed through good rather than bad in some some nice ways and good point to look to finish on. So.

Which means we get to do the last question. That's the the wrap up question. Just before we do just before we do, if anybody wants to check out the challenges, want some support, they're thinking about changing their relationship with alcohol, they just want to jump into one of the challenges, I'll get this set up. But ADHD UK capitals, that'll get you for free. We'll just happily give you an access to the the twenty eight day challenge for nothing. I would love to support anybody, who's watching this and and with ADHD. If you're interested in in the other programs that we talked about, just reach out. We're at one yearnobeer.com, all of those lovely things.

Fantastic. Well, then that's great. Thank you for doing that with the with the code. I look forward to hearing how how how that goes. Yeah. We're we're gonna do the the sort of thank yous. And, Arthur, just a last wrap up question. So in terms of your ADHD, what's the worst thing that it's brought you, and what's the best thing? And if we can do worst first and then best last, we end on a high note.

Yeah. Well, I didn't think at all about the question because you told me not to. So it's like you've just asked it for the first time now. The worst thing about ADHD, I guess, is all of that, pain and suffering as a child, which which I think was unnecessary, had had I been equipped with the tools or my parents have been given the information to understand a bit better. I'm lucky I they had I had the love and the support. A lot of people don't have that. And I think that's the wonderful work that ADHD UK is doing, and you guys and Neil and Henry and and things.

Like organizations like this and open conversations and tools and things that didn't exact exist back then. So I think that's really, really wonderful, and I'm very passionate about supporting people with ADHD. What's the best thing that's happened? I mean, absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, one year no beer. I mean, the lives that we have changed. I I I wanna give you some examples. You know, I've had a letter from a son, a handwritten letter from a son, saying, you know, in essence, we've got our dad back, and it's thanks to you and your program. We used to read out these messages. My wife and I in bed at night just with tears in our eyes, like, look at look at what we're doing here. And then, you know, I had a guy who.

Who stood on a bridge, and he'd written two notes to his to his family, suicide notes to his family. And he was like, I'm I'm just gonna see what these guys are about. I mean, he literally was sitting there thinking about jumping, and we run retreats. And he came out to the retreat. And this is a guy who has successful businesses, multiple successful businesses, who was literally about to end it all. And he comes out, and now he regularly messages me just saying, you saved my life. So it saves lives. And I think that's an incredible thing to come from ADHD, and I'm grateful for the ADHD. I'm grateful for the struggles. I'm grateful for the pain.

And the things that that that happened in there because it has been turned. Thank you to that wonderful superpower of ADHD into an incredible force for good that's helping and saving lives.

That is just wonderful to hear. And she brought tears in my eyes thinking about it, and it's a it's a glorious thing. You've been wonderful. I've enjoyed this so much. I've really Thank you for having me on. No. Well, thank you for thank you for doing this, and I look forward to my cold shower. Start a thirty second. Meditation.

Meditation. Get get waking up. I love it. It's very good. Simple simple to follow. Waking up. Just follow each day. Sam Harris is really good. And just say to yourself, look. I'm gonna get to day 40. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna get to day 40. And it don't matter if I'm ignored, but do it first in the morning. Wake up. Just put those headphones in. Swing your legs out of the bed. Put them in, and that's it. I have a four and a five year old. I know. There's every excuse.

Yeah. I I considered it earlier. But it worked. What are you okay. This going downhill terribly at this point. It's been absolutely wonderful. It's actually a bit more genuinely, as you talked about it, you start with small changes and you think about it and you it's the incremental change. And I'm gonna I'm gonna look to do that. Oh, god. I'm promising to do it's gonna happen. Yeah.

Unless I'm infectious.

This This has been wonderful. Thank you very, very much. Genuinely, I've enjoyed it an enormous amount. And if you want to learn more, go to 1yearnobeer.com. So don't forget, use the code ADHD UK for challenge. Exactly. And that's a wonderful thing, thank you very much. That's it, so we're gonna go back to the commerce program. Thank you very much, and I look forward to talking here. Thank you Thank very you.