[00:00] James Swanwick: If you’re a peak performer and you are wanting to make gains in the gym, drinking alcohol is essentially putting a ball and chain around your ankle in terms of the gains that you want to make. So all of this evidence is increasingly coming out, and I can say with conviction, there is not any amount of alcohol that is beneficial to anyone.

[00:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man, real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today I bring you James. Swanwick James is a former ESPN SportsCenter anchor and he is now the creator and founder of a neuroscience-based process that is scientifically proven to reduce drinking by 98%.

[00:51] And before you say, ah, I don’t need to listen to this episode ’cause I don’t have a drinking problem, I challenge you to listen to this and think of this in a different light. Think about this as a way to optimize your life. Think about this as a way to. Hack peak performance as an unfair advantage that you can have in the world.

[01:10] Because listen, I’m probably in the, in the boat, same boat as a, as a lot of listeners, I don’t drink that often. Actually, I hardly ever drink. I probably drink three drinks a month or something like that. But this is a really interesting episode that it opened my eyes to a different way of thinking about alcohol, and I think it’s gonna do the same for you.

[01:28] So I want you to go into this with an open mind because it is going to change the way you think about alcohol consumption. And I’ll also ask you to do this, forward this to a friend. Share this podcast episode, or maybe it was one you heard recently with a friend, because that’s how these things grow.

[01:42] That’s how we find new listeners usually is through folks sharing this through social media or or texting a friend. Hey, check out the latest episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Thank you for sharing. Let’s get right into my interview with James Swanwick. So let’s go back to that moment at ihop.

[02:00] You’re sitting there, you’re hungover, you’re looking at a, a plate of greasy food in front of you. Talk to us about what happened leading up to that moment, and then what was going through your mind that made that shift for you?

[02:12] James Swanwick: I was a socially acceptable drinker growing up in Australia, in that I would have two or three drinks most nights of the week.

[02:20] On weekends, I would drink heavier. Sometimes I got drunk, but I certainly wasn’t what society deemed. To be an alcoholic. I didn’t wake up in a ditch. I didn’t get arrested. I didn’t get a DUI. But from age 15, 16 until age 35, almost two decades, I drank two or three glasses of attractively packaged poison.

[02:38] Most nights of the week might be half a bottle of wine, a bottle of wine, could be half a bottle of wine with a couple of beers or a scotch, and that took its toll. I got to Austin, Texas in 2010. I was 35 years old. I woke up after having a couple of drinks the night before. I looked in the mirror and I thought, wow, you’re 30 pounds overweight.

[03:00] You’re tired looking. You are weathered, you’re irritable, you’re envious of other people. You’re not sleeping great. Your relationships are strained. You’re just blah. Blah is just mediocre. And I was in that ihop, which was right next door to the hotel that I was staying in, sitting there about to order all you can eat pancakes.

[03:18] And it suddenly dawned on me, what the hell am I doing in an ihop? And in that moment I said, enough, James, it’s time to take what I thought would be a 30 day break from alcohol. It’s now 15 years in accounting and in recent years, I’ve created an organization called Alcohol Free Lifestyle, and we help high performers to rewire their mindset around alcohol and choose willingly an alcohol free lifestyle.

[03:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So, you know, you weren’t a rock bottom guy. Why? Why make this change? I guess the 30 days make sense to me. There’s dry January and you know, a lot of my clients will abstain from alcohol for a short period of time. You weren’t a rock bottom guy. What really made the long-term shift for you?

[04:00] James Swanwick: There’s a book by the author Napoleon Hill called Outwitting the Devil, same author who wrote, think and Grow Rich.

[04:07] And in that book, outwitting the Devil, he talks about the drift being the deadliest thing to a man, and the drift is drifting through life being mediocre. And the longer you go. It feels like death by a thousand cuts. It’s not obvious in the moment that you’re dying, but spiritually you are until you get to, in my case, mid thirties, and you go, wow, I’ve just been living a mediocre life and if I keep going and I keep getting stuck in this drift, where am I gonna be at 40, 50, 60, and 70?

[04:41] And so for me, even though I didn’t have a rock. Bottom moment. I had this sense of the drift of drifting through life into and towards mediocrity. So that was enough for me in the moment to make that change for what I thought would be 30 days. What happened was I lost 13 pounds in 30 days. It just fell off me.

[05:01] I didn’t exercise anymore. I didn’t really change my dietary habits intentionally. Unintentionally I ate less burgers and fries because I wasn’t drinking beers and scotches out of the pub or the bar most nights. And so. That also meant I wasn’t eating as many calories, which gave me more energy, which helped me to sleep better.

[05:21] And I just started to feel really good. And I got over my initial social awkwardness and people challenging me as to why I wasn’t drinking. And I thought, well, I’ll just see if I can get to 40 days. I’ll see if I can get to 50, I’ll see if I can get to 60. And what happened over that first year was that I attracted.

[05:38] A great romantic relationship. I realized I was less irritable and less stressed. I started raising money for charity. I trained for a half marathon. I joined the LA Fitness Gym up on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles where I was living at the time, which exposed me to some other health conscious people.

[05:54] I. I just started to think, well, this is pretty good. I ended up getting a job at ESPN. I hosted the TV show Sports Center, and I credit the clarity and focus that I had from being consistently alcohol free to helping me get that job. And I just got to a year and I went, you know what? This is pretty damn good.

[06:11] I think I’ll just keep going. And that’s what happened. And now it’s been 15 years.

[06:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How do you attribute that success? Starting a seven figure business, landing the job with ESPN? How do you attribute that? How do you make that connection to stopping drinking? Couldn’t have been from other things happening.

[06:29] You’re probably already a high performing guy, successful at certain things. How do you attribute that to not drinking?

[06:37] James Swanwick: As it related to getting the gig hosting SportsCenter on ESPN, in those first 30, 45 days where I stopped drinking, I realized I. That I was being much more generous to people. And I remember intentionally saying, I’m just going to experiment with reaching out to people and checking in, seeing how they’re doing.

[06:59] And one of the guys I reached out to and checked in and said, how you doing? And I helped him out with a little bit of advice. That was the guy that contacted me a couple weeks later and said, Hey. I know this producer at ESPN who’s looking for an international anchor for SportsCenter, and I thought you’d be really good.

[07:14] I know you’ve got some journalism background in print. I know you’ve got no TV experience, but I thought maybe you’d be a, a good fit. Do you want me to introduce you to the producer? And I said, heck yes, he did. And then, because at that time I now had clarity. I now had focus, I now now had energy. I. I just made a choice.

[07:35] I said, I’m gonna get this job. I’m gonna go for it. So I flew over to Bristol, Connecticut, I auditioned. He said, no, it was no good. Wasn’t gonna gimme the job. And in that moment I said, can I have another shot? Can I come back tomorrow and take another stab at it? And he said, okay. I. Came back and then the next day I crushed it and then I was on the air two weeks later with no television experience.

[07:55] I like literally made my TV debut hosting SportsCenter, probably the most iconic sports TV news show in the world, arguably with zero television experience. So I can trace that back to a, I was alcohol free and I helped someone. Without any expectation of it coming back to me. And B, I had more energy and clarity and strategy to figure out how I was gonna get this gig, and then I just implemented the strategy and no way I would’ve got that job if I was tired and foggy and irritable and not sleeping well and dragging my ass through the day.

[08:31] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, I mean, how we do in life, it’s a performance game. Athletics, we understand this, you’re not gonna go drinking. Certainly anytime near a competition. And you know, for me, when I was in wrestling season in college, it’s, you know, you almost never touch a beer. Why? Because, you know, performance is the thing, and it’s the same in life.

[08:51] We’re not winning and losing games or matches or events. It’s every day. There’s clarity and consistency and focus and energy that you bring, that you show up with at networking events. I don’t actually, to be honest, I don’t care if it’s networking events or, or returning emails. Right. You, you’ve got to stay focused.

[09:12] I, I was working yesterday and I remember I, it was like a two hour sort of head down, just grind it out, crank this thing out, and I had the energy to, to sustain it for two hours. At the end of it, I. Got up and took a walk and kinda cleared my head, but it was like in order for me to execute that, it takes clarity, it takes focus, it takes energy, and this is a performance thing.

[09:30] And we wonder how certain people execute at a higher level. Well, if you, the individual, I’m talking to the listener now. If you want to execute at your highest level, I. Whether it’s returning the emails or at a networking event or anything else that you do it for your job. If you wanna execute at the highest level, the highest, not a pretty high level, not at 80 or 90%, but at a hundred percent, then you gotta think of this as performance, and that’s what James is talking about.

[09:55] James Swanwick: Let me use an example here just to try to illustrate the point that you are making. Jim,
[10:00] imagine if you will, an entrepreneur. Maybe an entrepreneur in his thirties, forties, or fifties, and let’s just say he is drinking, not an alcoholic, not waking up in a ditch, but consistently drinking one or two drinks a night, most nights of the week.

[10:15] Very socially acceptable, right? Those drinks are probably having that entrepreneur. Operate at about a six or a seven out of 10 compared to their potential because the alcohol is compromising their sleep. It’s making them irritable, tired, frustrated. They don’t make an additional call in the afternoon.

[10:31] They don’t think strategically. They don’t hire that person. They don’t fire that person. They procrastinate. They’re operating a six or a seven out of 10. Now, in this scenario, let’s just say they have an existing business, and that business generates a million dollars a year in annual revenue. So at a six or a seven outta 10 of compared to your potential.

[10:51] You’re making a million dollars revenue. If you are consistently alcohol free now you’re sleeping better. Now you’ve got more energy. You’ve got clarity focused energy. You hire that person, you fire that person. You take action quicker, you make an additional call. You attract better clients. You are able to think through the business and attract higher paying customers.

[11:12] You work out the average order value, the lifetime value. Now you’re operating at an eight or a nine outta 10. I would submit, in most cases, you are able to then generate an additional half a million dollars annual revenue from that clarity and focus. And I can say that with conviction because I speak to prospective clients and clients all the time who come to me to help them stop drinking alcohol, and they always say.

[11:36] Said, where are you and your potential with your drinking habits the way they are? And they always say the same thing, five six outta 10. I was being generous when I said, you know, let’s look at a scenario here where there are six or a seven out 10, so half a million dollars additional revenue someone could make in this scenario.

[11:52] Now if we pull out my calculator here. And I go half a million dollars, 500,000 divided by 365 days of the year. Every day of the year that entrepreneur drinks is costing his business. $1,369 and 86 cents. If they say on average they’re drinking two drinks a night, which is modest, right? Conservative divided by two.

[12:15] Every single drink that that entrepreneur drinks is costing his business $684 and 93 cents. That’s a pretty expensive drink, Jim.

[12:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I have to also challenge the guy who’s, I’m just thinking about my clients who I just got back from a retreat and, you know, most of those guys don’t drink even that much, right?

[12:34] They might have a few drinks a week, but still the numbers are pretty significant. It might not be a $684 drink, it still might be a, a pretty dang expensive drink for you. And so whatever that number is for you, you can calculate it out for yourself, but it’s gonna be an expensive drink and. Interestingly this, I just had this thought, James, this is not something you actually have to do.

[12:56] It’s like, okay, I’ve gotta block off the time to meditate, or I’ve gotta find more time to work out, or I’ve gotta find additional time to go do something. This is actually something you just, you, you don’t do. You don’t have to add this to your plate.

[13:11] James Swanwick: Well, you add a lot of things to your plate when you drink.

[13:14] There’s the time thinking about drinking, preparing for drinking, drinking, recovering from drinking, lamenting the drinking, pondering your drinking, relaxing from the drinking, preparing for drinking, drinking, and so forth. Right? That’s a lot. There’s a lot of time. There’s a lot of time thinking about that, and especially to the listener who’s listening to us now, who’s pondering their relationship with alcohol.

[13:39] Think about how much time you’re thinking about it. Regretting it, lamenting it, wishing that you didn’t drink as much, if at all. So as an, as an energy drip there, which is stealing your focus from the things that truly matter in your life. Then of course, I. Because we drink, especially if you go out with clients or you’re entertaining them, or you go out to dinner, you’re eating more, you’re drinking more, you’re sleeping less, or at least not as well, and that’s compromising the following day, which leads you to reach for a sugary food like a muffin or a, or in my case, go into an IHOP and and eat all.

[14:16] You can eat pancakes. Or you’re eating a chocolate bar, or you’re drinking a Gatorade instead of soda water. Now you’re putting on these additional calories, and now you’re having to work to get rid of these calories because you’ve added some unwanted body weight that affects your confidence. You don’t trust yourself.

[14:34] You start making these, oh, I’ll do dry July. I’ll do sober October. I’ll do dry January. But when you do it, you feel like you’re in a prison and then all prisoners wanna break outta prison. And so on day 30, you end up drinking to celebrate the 30 days that you just did. And then you return to the same level of drinking that inspired you to do a 30 day challenge in the first place.

[14:51] And on and on and on it goes. You’re stuck on this vicious stop start cycle. It’s just an energy suck. It’s a time suck. It’s a focus suck.

[15:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. I like that concept as a drip. It’s just a drip. The guys listening to this podcast right now, you know, you’re sitting there listening, or you’re working out or commuting, whatever you’re doing.

[15:10] You’re listening this, you’re guy who wants to optimize. This is a, a very relevant way to, to optimize. So what’s actually going on in our brains here, James? Like when we’re drinking alcohol the day after alcohol, what is happening in our brains that’s that’s thrown us off.

[15:27] James Swanwick: When we consume alcohol, which I refer to as attractively packaged poison, because that’s what it is, it’s poison in a very attractive bottle.

[15:35] It lights up our dopamine receptors like the 4th of July, fireworks go off. The dopamine receptors are like, oh yeah, amazing celebration. This is great. This feels good for a while temporarily. And then what happens is the body goes, wow, I’ve just digested a poison. I gotta get this poison out of the body.

[15:54] So now we’re clocking the body in for a night’s work. Most of us are drinking close to bedtime at nighttime, at a time when we’re supposed to be resting throughout the night, we’re essentially clocking the body in for a night’s work because the body now has to get rid of the poison the liver turns on.

[16:10] The heart rate goes up at a time when we’re supposed to be resting during sleep. The body’s like it’s working, and that shows up the next day when we’re tired, we’re irritable, we’re stressed. Even if we’ve got seven hours of sleep, eight hours of sleep, we still wake up tired and lethargic because the body was working throughout the night.

[16:28] There was a study in 2022 out of the uk. It was a study of 35,000 middle aged adults. They had them drink one seemingly innocent drink per night. What they found was that was enough to destroy gray and white matter in the brain. The bumper sticker is even one drink a night is enough to cause some level of brain degeneration.

[16:51] Now, you may not notice that each day or week or month, maybe even in a singular year, but over many years and decades, you notice it. Anecdotally, my mother’s husband is 83 years old. He has dementia. He drank two or three drinks a night for almost every day of his adult life. Now, I can’t say definitively that he has dementia solely because of the alcohol, but I see increasing evidence of folks who’ve had a lifestyle of drinking.

[17:18] It’s amazing how many of them are suffering from dementia, Parkinson’s, et cetera, et cetera. And there are increasing studies now that are coming out that even modest amounts of drinking modest amounts, seemingly innocent consumption is linked to cancer, libido issues, unwanted weight gain, high blood pressure metabolism slows down.

[17:40] If you’re a peak performer and you are wanting to make gains in the gym, drinking alcohol is essentially putting a ball and chain around your ankle. In terms of the gains that you want to make. So all of this evidence is increasingly coming out, and I can say with conviction, there is not any amount of alcohol that is beneficial to anyone.

[17:59] Jim Harshaw Jr.: We can be looking back on this in like 20 years. Is the cigarette, like nowadays fewer and fewer people smoke. We, it’s so obvious. How did we not know and how did we get duped that cigarettes were. Okay to smoke. I mean, we can look back and think, how did we not see the harm on this?

[18:17] James Swanwick: I’m confident that in the next 20 or 30 years we’re gonna look back on alcohol with the same level of disdain.

[18:23] We currently do cigarettes. Back in the fifties, early sixties, there were doctors in white lab coats in television commercials and billboards saying Camel cigarettes, the cigarette preferred by doctors. And we look back at that now. And just laugh, shake our head and think, what were we thinking? But that’s what we’re increasingly thinking now as it relates to alcohol.

[18:47] And I don’t think time and history is going to be kind to these Hollywood celebrities, including Dwayne, the Rock Johnson, George Clooney, Ryan Reynolds, who all have liquor brands and. Those three celebrities that I referenced, they do a lot of good in the world. Like they give to charity. They’re seemingly good people.

[19:05] They have nice families. I, I get it right. Like there’s a lot to admire about those guys. However, simultaneously they are peddling poison, they are peddling poison. Ryan Reynolds, uh, in particular I know is very big about mental health and mental awareness week, I think it is. But simultaneously, he’s selling his aviation gin, which has been known to cause some level of brain degeneration through its consumption.

[19:30] So the hypocrisy is startling to me, and I don’t think that history will be kind to them. I. So I’d really want this conversation to open the eyes, hopefully, of your listeners, because there are smiling assassins all over the world. And a smiling assassin is your friend or your family, or your colleagues, or the waiter or waitress who say, hi, Jim, can I get you started with a drink?

[19:54] Oh, hi James. Hi. Can I get you a drink? And we’re well intentioned, right? We’re well intentioned. We wanna be
[20:00] hospitable. The barman wants to make a tip. The restaurant person wants to get us to drink. They’re being nice, and we associate alcohol consumption with bonding and romance and celebration. But nevertheless, I.

[20:11] A smiling assassin is someone who is offering you attractively packaged poison. The waiter or the waitress may as well say when they’re offering you a drink. Hello, sir, can I get you started with a glass of 10 pounds of unwanted body weight. Hello, ma’am. I’ll be your server for the evening. Can I get you started with a glass of irritation in the morning?

[20:28] Can I get you a bad night’s sleep? Oh, may I make a suggestion? How about this irritability with your wife or husband tomorrow morning? That’s essentially what they’re inviting us. To do when they’re inviting us to have a drink.

[20:42] Jim Harshaw Jr.: How do you flip the narrative around the concept of I can’t drink to, I choose not to drink because I’m aiming higher.

[20:51] James Swanwick: There’s a bundle of nerves in the front of our brain called the reticular activating system. And it’s like a laser seeking missile in that if you and I were to talk in this conversation about red cars, for example, a red Tesla, a red Ferrari, chances are Jim, you and I would go out over the next few days and we would just start to see red cars because that bundle of nerves is focusing on what we’ve been talking about.

[21:16] Now, when people say to themselves, don’t drink, I need to quit. I have to stop. The RAS actually doesn’t understand the negative command. It only hears drink alcohol. For example, cigarette smokers are saying, I gotta quit smoking. I need to quit. I have to quit, and then it’s, they find it very challenging. I would submit, if they just change their verbiage to what they will do, then quitting will be very simple.

[21:40] For example, instead of saying, I need to quit, they could say, I easily only breathe in fresh air. The only thing that goes in my lungs is fresh air. I easily only breathe in fresh air. Now you see how the RAS now understands and go, oh, okay, that’s a positive command. I’ll do that. Very, very simple. As opposed to don’t smoke.

[21:59] Need to quit. Don’t smoke. Now it’s a negative. Commander doesn’t understand the negative. Commander still thinks about the smoking. So the same with alcohol. Instead of saying, I need to quit, don’t drink, gotta cut back. Start saying to yourself, I easily only drink soda, water, ice, and a piece of lime. I’m gonna walk into the restaurant tonight and confidently order a beautiful tasting mocktail.

[22:21] I’m gonna walk up to the bomb and say, what mocktails you got? What do you got? I’ll take a soda water with a splash of cranberry, some lime, some mint. That sounds great. Let me have that. That’s what we’re focusing on doing. And so a lot of our clients who come into our 90 day stop drinking process, they come in with this verbiage of, I need to stop.

[22:38] I have to quit. It’s ruining my relationship. And we say, we get it, but let’s just change the verbiage to. I get to be alcohol free. I love living alcohol free. I’m choosing this lifestyle. The name of my organization is Alcohol Free Lifestyle, with an emphasis on the third word there, lifestyle. It is a style of life.

[22:58] It’s not white knuckling it trying to be sober. It’s not doing a 30 day challenge. Which implies it’s hard. It’s choosing a style of life. You get to be alcohol free.

[23:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Love that. Because we have a default, I think a lot of times of walking into the bar, just ordering the beer and, and when you’re having conversations with your clients.

[23:22] You’re bringing this to a conscious level where you can go, oh, I don’t have to just do the default thing, and you know, this is something I get to do, not something that I have to do. That’s going to be hard for me. You know, I know for myself. I do this seven C challenge in the summer. It’s no cake, cookies, candy, chocolate chips, cola, or complaining all from 98 days from Memorial Day to Labor Day in the United States.

[23:46] And it’s a great, there you go. Refrain from complaining. So if you’re not watching this on video, he just held up, uh, it says refrain from complaining. Yeah, that’s great.

[23:53] James Swanwick: I have a screensaver on my iPhone, which says refrain from complaining. And so, uh, sometimes I catch myself complaining. I’m like, complaining is an absurdity.

[24:02] What, what the heck is that gonna do? So yeah, just dragging you down mentally.

[24:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. But when you’re conscious and aware, which I am, especially during those times, then I just don’t eat junk food. It’s great. Like it just. I’m like, oh, I’m about to pick up a cookie, which is my default, and, and I don’t pick up the cookie.

[24:18] It can be the same thing with alcohol. So like, I guess we’re talking about your brain, the RAS, like what is happening in our brain when we think we need a drink, but we don’t really need it? Like, what’s happening? What is that habit that Pavlov’s dog, you know, part of us that is thinking we need a drink, but we actually don’t because we think it maybe we’re stressed or maybe we can unwind with it, whatever it might be.

[24:42] James Swanwick: A craving for any drug is really just us acknowledging that we’re feeling uncomfortable. We want to change our state. To be clear, it’s not that we want to drink, it’s that we want to just change how we are feeling in that moment. Now, the way that most people today. Handle that feeling of discomfort is to reach for a drink.

[25:06] In your case, maybe a cookie. Maybe it’s to eat food. For other people, it’s becoming a shopaholic or a love addict, or a sex addict watching porn. For other people, it can be just an obsession with exercise and over obsession. I would submit Now I think it’s better to be obsessed over exercise than consuming drugs.

[25:26] A lot worse

[25:27] Jim Harshaw Jr.: things you could be addicted to. Yeah.

[25:28] James Swanwick: Yeah. So in that moment. All we’re saying to ourself is, I don’t wanna feel this way. I need some temporary relief. And the default has been reaching for alcohol. So what we do and what we coach our clients with is instead of reacting, how do we respond?

[25:48] Reacting is what most people do is the default. I don’t wanna feel this way, react, having an argument with our wife or our. Daughter or son or our husband in the moment, our partner says something, the internal dialogue is, this is upsetting me or she is upsetting me. We react by saying something or appearing flustered or reaching for a drink if we change the verbiage from This is upsetting me.

[26:13] Or from she’s upsetting me or he’s upsetting me too. I am upsetting me. Now we can respond and all of peak performance, I would submit lives in that half second, second five seconds, minute between feeling discomfort about something and how you respond. Most people feel that discomfort. React, gimme a drink.

[26:41] Let me eat a cookie. Let me say something that’s gonna hurt my wife or husband, or let me defend myself. Let me resist what’s going on here. But if we can get you to just in that moment, pause, reflect. Respond, not react, respond. Then peak performance flows through us. Now we take a different action and that different action, at least as it relates to alcohol, is not consuming the alcohol.

[27:10] It’s anything else in that moment. There are 1 million different ways to change how you are feeling in the moment. Give us three examples,

[27:18] Jim Harshaw Jr.: three examples of how to change your state, how to change how you feel in the moment.

[27:23] James Swanwick: I’ll give you three, three things of what I do, and these are so simple. It’s almost laughable.

[27:28] I’ll literally get up and move my body, go for a walk around the street. That’s it. It’s so, so damn simple. I’ll get up and I’ll go, okay, I am. I’m just, I need to go and walk or move or something. Sometimes I’ll just get up and I’ll do burpees or I’ll do jumping jacks, and in 10 seconds my whole nervous system has shifted and changed where that stress that I had has been moved through, or at least is moving through.

[27:54] Completely different physiology. Completely different thought that comes because I’m changing that Another way is just breath work. I know that you’ve been talking about breath work and you had a retreat recently and you had a meditation person come through. It might just be breathing in for four, holding for five, breathing out for seven.

[28:15] You do that three times. It takes what? One minute to do that. That can change your physiology. If you are at home, you might go and reach for alcohol. If you get rid of the alcohol, you can’t reach for the alcohol. It’s just not there. But you could stack your refrigerator with soda, water, Perea, peg Pellegrino.

[28:36] Even alcohol free drinks. I’m an investor in a Denver based company called Groovy, G-R-U-V-I, and they do lots of alcohol free beers and alcohol free wines and things like that. If someone initially is trying to quit drinking, I wouldn’t recommend you go for those alcohol free alternatives, at least until you’ve gone 90 consecutive days alcohol free.

[28:54] Then you could start to introduce them, but nevertheless, that’s gonna be infinitely better than going into the fridge and reaching for a beer. The whole point is that you do anything else For me, I like to get up and walk. At the end of the day, I like to take the dog for a walk. I always used to think that was gonna be a chore and, uh, I, I appreciate it when my wife did it.

[29:14] Now I’m like, let me take the dog for a walk. Because that changes my mood. That helps me relax. At the end of the day, most people to relax at the end of the day are going home, pouring themselves a wine, pouring themselves a beer, a scotch or a whiskey, having a shrine to alcohol with their liquor cabinet, or a beer or a fridge full of beer.

[29:30] I’m like, let me take the dog for a walk. I take the dog for a walk. I walk out. Sometimes I call my mother back in Australia or my father back in Australia while I’m walking. But I’m moving my body. I’m relaxing.

[29:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. And, and for the folks listening, I, a couple things I do. So I do those. I’ll do like three burpees.

[29:49] My clients, I’ll laugh at me ’cause they know this. I like three burpees is my thing. Actually, right before we jumped on this call, I got up and I did three burpees. I’m like, I need to like, you know, get the blood flowing here again.
[30:00] Another one is I’ll, I’ll go outside and just put my face into the sun and kind of close my eyes and, and feel the sun on my face is a really good state changer.

[30:08] Another one is splashing your face off with cold water is just another good way to change your state. There’s all kinds of ways to do it. For the listeners, I want you to understand this like. Just try these, try try a different way to change your state. And for me, alcohol, uh, I, I still drink, but it’s, I probably drink three drinks a month or something like that.

[30:25] And the craving for a beer after work, I just replace it with kombucha or seltzer water, or just drinking a glass of water would just change your craving for it. So there’s all kinds of ways to, to address the craving that will satisfy you and, and also change your state. So for the listener also, this isn’t about guilt or shame, like you’re not a bad person for drinking alcohol.

[30:49] This isn’t about any of that. If you’re like, wow, I get this. You know, liquor cabinet, or I’ve got a case of beer in the fridge, or whatever it might be. This isn’t about guilting you or shaming you. This is just another conversation about like, how do I be even better? We could be talking about a meditation practice.

[31:05] We could be talking about fitness. We could be talking about a goal setting technique or framework. This is another one of those, right? This is another thing that you can do, or in this case that you can not to do that will help you be an even better version of yourself. I.

[31:22] James Swanwick: Yeah, I think it’s, uh, an unfair advantage for anyone who chooses to go alcohol free, but there’s a big difference between.

[31:30] Being sober and choosing an alcohol free lifestyle. ’cause being sober, practicing sobriety I submit is incredibly ineffective because it gives off this idea that under normal circumstances you would choose to drink, but you can’t because when you do, it creates problems. I don’t think that’s a great way to be living life.

[31:51] I would much rather be willingly choosing and loving. A certain lifestyle. And so in our Project 90 Stop Drinking program, we don’t use verbiage like sober sobriety, challenge recovery, surrendering, clean. We don’t use any of that verbiage as is a very empowering viewpoint of choosing to live alcohol free.

[32:15] We make it fun, simple. So this isn’t about white knuckling it as most people. Do most people attempt to stop drinking through white knuckling it and willpower? Incredibly ineffective. But if you can rewire your mindset to actually look at this lifestyle as being preferable and desirable and fun. Now you’re gonna stay motivated.

[32:39] Now your RAS particular activating system is just focused on all the beautiful benefits that you get as opposed to this fun that you mistakenly believe you’re gonna miss out on. A lot of people fear living alcohol free because of this identity shift. Who will I be if I don’t drink? I’ve always drunk.

[32:58] I’m not gonna be Jim, the party guy, or James the connector, or. Tina the facilitator of good Times anymore. Will I have to stay at home and lock away the key and retreat from society? No, we have you run towards society loving being alcohol free with a big smile on your face, having more parties, more celebration, more romance, more connection, even while people around you are drinking alcohol and you are drinking your alcohol free alternatives.

[33:26] That’s the shift. So stop looking at alcohol as like, oh, this is gonna be hard. And start looking at as, yes, I get to do this. And you will get all of the benefits of an alcohol-free lifestyle.

[33:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. Unfair advantage, I use that term with my clients. What’s your unfair advantage? This is a great, great unfair advantage.

[33:43] So you’ve got your book clear. A lot of what we discussed here and, and so much more is covered in the book. Clear. I. Tell us about Project 90 James.

[33:53] James Swanwick: In 2023, the University of Washington conducted a scientific study on our 90 day stop drinking process, which is called Project 90. The result of that study was a 98% reduction in drinking amongst the study participants.

[34:10] So those 90 days in the Project 90 program is group coaching, group accountability. So we. Have mostly folks in their forties, fifties, and sixties who consider themselves high achievers. They might be an executive, an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, a retiree, well-educated, articulate, either affluent or financially comfortable.

[34:32] We curate a like-minded community to go through that 90 day stop drinking process together. Now, note there that I didn’t say a community, I said a like-minded community. Most folks think that the only option really, if they’re drinking is a serious problem, is to go to an AA meeting. Now, when you go to an AA meeting, yes, you’re in a community.

[34:53] However, if you’re a 40, 50, 60 something high achiever, and you are sitting next to a 19-year-old meth addict who’s holding up a gas station, there’s no relatability there. Of course, you want the best for that 19-year-old. But do you really wanna sit in a meeting and listen to someone lament their life and talk about going to nightclubs and bars and all this kind of stuff when you are a middle-aged person seeking peak performance, I would submit no.

[35:18] And because of that, you’re not motivated to return. You’re not motivated to go there. You look at. Drinking alcohol or stopping drinking alcohol is hard or is deprivation. So what we do on Project 90 is we curate a like-minded group of high achievers. We coach them using neuroscience. We have professors from Cambridge University and Harvard, and some of the world’s top addiction experts and behavioral experts.

[35:43] Peak performance experts come in. They’re the coaches. They coach our community not only on how to live alcohol free, but also on nutrition, on fitness, on conscious communication, on mindset. We have the world’s best sleep Doctors come in and coach our clients on sleep. So really during those 90 days, we’re helping folks rewire their mindset around alcohol while in addition, helping them implement some of the world’s top peak performance habits.

[36:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: James, for the listener who is picking up what you’re putting down, who likes what you’re saying here? What’s an action item? What’s something they can do in the next 24 to 48 hours to follow through on what you’re suggesting here?

[36:25] James Swanwick: Be open to the mindset that living alcohol-free is preferable, more fun, better in every way than your alcohol-filled life.

[36:35] You don’t need to be an alcoholic, waking up in a ditch, getting arrested for alcohol to be compromising many areas of your life. If you desire to be a peak performer, I would just invite you to explore the notion that removing alcohol. Will get you there a lot quicker and will be much more effective.

[36:58] And then the first step really after that, after just understanding that mindset might be to get yourself into some like-minded community and. Really start to surround yourself with people who are choosing to live alcohol free as well. Because a like-minded community will build in accountability, which will ultimately support the breakthrough that you desire.

[37:20] So whether it’s you come and join us in project 90, or you just get at a group, get in a group of guys or other people who are more health conscious, that may be your current social circle. Get around people who share a similar. Viewpoint on alcohol to you and it will be a lot easier for you to live an alcohol free lifestyle.

[37:39] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So for the listener who’s interested in this, James, where can they find your book? Where can they learn more about your program, et cetera?

[37:48] James Swanwick: The book is called Clear. It’s a neuroscience based approach for high achievers to quit, alcohol without willpower, aa, or rehab. You can go to alcohol free lifestyle.com/clear.

[38:00] And if you’re interested in Project 90, you can always go to alcohol free lifestyle.com/project 90. We also have a podcast. It’s in Spotify, an Apple podcast called Alcohol Free Lifestyle. And then I’m on Instagram where I put out a lot of videos on, on helping people rewire their mindset around alcohol.

[38:18] It’s just my name at James Swanick.

[38:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Excellent, and for the listener. Of course. As always, we have everything that James just shared there in the action plan. Just go to jimharshawjr.com/action, get the action plan. It’ll have all the links to his social media book, website, everything else. Excellent. Great wisdom.

[38:35] Thank you, James for sharing. Thanks for making time to come on the show.

[38:38] James Swanwick: You’re welcome, Jim. Thank you for having me.

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