Gray-Area Drinking in the Legal Profession

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Molly Ranns:  Hello and welcome to another edition of the State Bar of Michigan’s – On Balance Podcast on Legal Talk Network.  I’m Molly Ran’s.

JoAnn Hathaway:  And I’m JoAnn Hathaway.  We are very pleased to have Wendy McCallum, former lawyer; now, professional burnout and alcohol coach and wellness expert as well join us today to talk about gray-area drinking in the legal profession.  Wendy, would you share some information about yourself with our listeners?

Wendy McCallum:  Sure.  Hi JoAnn.  Hi Molly.  Thanks for having me here.  I am a burnout and alcohol coach and I live in Canada.  I’m on the east coast of Canada.  I am also a former lawyer.  So I spent 12 years practicing law.  That was my first career.  I did that in Calgary, Alberta on the west side of Canada.  For about seven years, I was an associate at a large law firm and then I became a partner.

So, for the last few years that I was there, I was a partner.  And during that time, I had two children within seven months of each other and suffered from my own burnout really, although at the time, I didn’t realize that was happening.  And that all culminated in me leaving the practice of law and moving back to my home province of Nova Scotia and eventually going back to school and becoming a certified coach, which is what I do now.

Molly Ranns:  Thank you so much for being here today, Wendy.  Would you mind sharing your own personal story with us regard to gray-area drinking?

Wendy McCallum:  Sure.  I mean, I think my drinking story, Molly, is really similar to a lot of people’s drinking stories and that I drank kind of like a typical high school, college student, even a law school student.  Mostly on the weekends and, you know, sometimes to excess but what wasn’t happening in my university days was any — I was not drinking during the week.  I wasn’t ever drinking by myself.  It was really just a social activity for me.  And then when I started at the law firm, it became apparent to me really quickly that drinking was part of the business of law.

For the very first time ever, I think I was drinking wine at lunch time and client marketing events and lunches and also, alcohol was just part of all of the socializing.  So, it became part of my week in a way that it had never been part of my week before.  So. I think I always say like my drinking career really began in earnest when I started at the firm.  It really didn’t become problematic for me though until I had my kids.  And I think this is also really typical, so you know, my drinking slowly ramped up as I worked as a lawyer.  Just because again, like I said, it was everywhere.  When I had my kids, that was really the first time that I started using alcohol as a way to relax in the evening.

So up until that point.  I think I was mostly still using it as a social tool and as a business tool, for lack of a better word.  Once I had the kids, it started to become more of a way to relax, to cope, to escape at the end of a hard day.  And, you know, I also ended up in something that we call “mummy wine culture”, which is, you know, this was in 2003-2004, but now that is really, really rampant.  So you will see that everywhere on social media and, you know, it’s really like the “pinkification” of the alcohol industry, where the alcohol industry realized there was sort of this huge segment of the market that had hadn’t been marketing to, which was women and all of that happened to coincide with when I had my kids.

And so alcohol was everywhere, all of a sudden like not just in work, it was also at, you know, birthday parties and after-soccer tournaments and at my book club and really was normalized as just like something that you did as a busy working parent.  And so, I think really that’s when it became problematic for me.  For a long time though, it didn’t seem problematic.  I wasn’t really thinking about my drinking.  It wasn’t affecting my life in any way.  I think probably a series of really stressful life events are what led to it getting to a place where I really started questioning it.  Including my dad being diagnosed with a degenerative disease and requiring significantly more care and a couple of other things and I ended up just — I just realized that I was using it more and more often to cope and I just had kind of gone down the slippery slope where it was something that I felt like I needed every night.

I do want to be really clear though, we’re talking about gray-area drinking here like my — my relationship with alcohol from the outside did not look problematic.  So nobody else in my life thought that I had a problem with alcohol and I think, still, people don’t really get why I don’t drink anymore.  But that’s why we’re here today.  Because I want to talk about that.  I wasn’t drinking in in a way that was in any way destructive.  I was still highly successful in all areas of my life, not doing anything risky, not putting my kids at any risk.  But at a certain point, it started to cause anxiety, for me.  This was really the main problem for me.  It was that I was waking up in the middle of the night, which is a really common thing when people drink.

(00:05:02)

I was waking up at 3:30 — in usually, 3:00 – 3:30 and could not turn my brain off and I was just so stressed and anxious, and I would be thinking about all kinds of different things.  But always was thinking about the fact that I drank the night before.  And I would sometimes get up in the middle of the night, get my laptop out and Google, “am I an alcoholic?” And I would fail that test every single time.  I never met the test for an alcoholic and sometimes that would be enough to calm me down and other times, I would have to, you know, turn on the television for a while and I go back to — go back to bed eventually and go to sleep and then I’d get up the next day and I would make promises to myself about how I didn’t want to drink tonight.

And with the best of intentions would get on with my day and then every night at five or six o’clock, I would start thinking about when I could have a glass of wine.  And that anxiety that was connected to the midnight, like middle-of-the-night waking and the stress around making all these rules for myself and trying to moderate eventually just got exhausting.  And that led to me, basically just getting sick of my own stuff for lack of a better word and just thinking to myself, “I gotta change this”, but all these — the efforts that I have made in the past, they’re not doing anything and my drinking is not changing as a result of me saying, “oh, I’m only gonna drink on the weekends” or “when I drink, I’m only going to have one glass of wine”.

I keep finding myself back in the same place where I’m drinking most nights, and this is not what I want for myself.  Maybe it’s time for me to try something different.  And that is when I listened to Just sit — still think it was just Serendipity that I downloaded — my very first audio book ever that I have ever downloaded was a book called “This Naked Mind” and I had to go get an MRI and had to drive for four hours, because it’s the Canadian Healthcare System.  I did drive for four hours to get my MRI and I had to drive four hours back.  And I listen to this audio book all the way there and all the way back.  And I sat in my driveway and finished it before I went in to see my kids because I was so caught up in this new way of thinking about alcohol.  And really, the focus of the book, again, it’s called This Naked Mind by Annie Grace.  I recommend it to everybody.  That book basically said, “this is not your fault.  Alcohol is a highly addictive substance.  You have been sold a false bill of goods about this substance.  And here’s what you need to know about it”, and it was just life changing for me.

And that led to me doing a 30-day alcohol experiment, where I took a break from alcohol for 30 days and the rest is kind of history for me.  It’s been about four years since I’ve had a drink and I went on to get certified.  I was already working as a coach at this point.  I’ve been working for about, I don’t know, maybe nine or so years as a coach, but I went and got certified as basically as an alcohol coach as well, so that I could add that to my burnout practice.

JoAnn Hathaway:  Wow, that’s quite a story, Wendy.  We’ve heard you talk about gray-area drinking several times when you were sharing your story.  So, can you tell us what — can you define that?  What is gray-area drinking

Wendy McCallum:  Sure, we don’t really use the word “alcoholic” anymore as a diagnosis.  So, instead we use something called “the alcohol use disorder spectrum” and that is really a huge spectrum and it has, you know, on one end, the extreme kind of sort of typical Hollywood idea of an alcoholic.  Somebody who is, you know, drinking in the morning when they get up and, you know, maybe has lost a lot as a result of their addictions.  So their career is gone and they’ve lost their family.  Maybe they’re living on the streets.  So that’s like one end of that alcohol use disorder spectrum.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, we have people who have like a couple of drinks a year.  Maybe they just they only have champagne when they’re at a wedding.  And so, that spectrum of alcohol use disorder is really, really big.  And in the middle is gray-area drinking.  And, you know, most of the people who’d find themselves in that gray-area spectrum are people like me.  And these are the people that I work with as a coach, they have not hit any kind of rock bottom.  So there has been real consequences to their drinking.  There certainly were not for me, but, you know, so again on the outside, they look like really high functioning people.

They’re incredibly successful.  It looks like their lives are fantastic, but they are not happy with drinking.  It is starting to bother them.  But at the same time, they don’t fit into that classic definition of alcoholic and so, they feel like there is no reason to change or it’s not bad enough for them to change and they’re also unsure of how they would even go about doing that because they don’t — the idea of going to an AA meeting doesn’t resonate with them and they’re not sure what is available out there for them for support.

Molly Ranns:  I love this conversation, Wendy, because it’s really about raising the bottom up, you know, is what I’m hearing you say.  You often talked about alcohol as being very present at legal functions and many of the lawyers that I speak with believe that drinking is so much part of the norm.  How does somebody know if they have a problem with alcohol?

Wendy McCallum:  That is such a good question, Molly, and I really think that we’re looking at this the wrong way.

(00:10:00)

I will tell you that not passing the test for alcoholic kept me stuck in my drinking patterns for a very, very long time.  I think we are often asking ourselves the question, like “is this bad enough for me to make a change?” and I think that’s the wrong question.  I think the question we need to be asking ourselves more often is, “is this good enough for me to keep going this way?”  And if I had asked myself that question, I probably would have stopped drinking a lot earlier than I did.  Because the truth is, when I look back, I can see that it was really taking a toll on me.  And now that I’m alcohol-free, I realized how much better my life is without alcohol.

But, you know, for so many years, that was the test.  It was like, “is this bad enough for me to stop drinking?”  And, of course, there’s always somebody lower than you.  There’s always — you can always point to someone, in your social circle who is drinking as much or more than you, for whom it doesn’t seem to be problematic or, you know, somebody who maybe it is more problematic, who has hit that rock bottom.  And I think again, that keeps us really stuck for too long.  I always encourage people to start paying attention to how alcohol is actually affecting them and start asking themselves that other question, which is like, “what?  Is this good enough?  What might be possible for me if alcohol wasn’t playing the role that it’s playing now?”

JoAnn Hathaway:  So, Wendy, the million-dollar question:  What’s the first step for someone who’d like to change their relationship with alcohol?

Wendy McCallum:  Yeah.  So that is — that’s a really good question.  You know, as I said, I think the first step is to really start paying attention to what is actually happening with alcohol in your life.  And to start, you know, dig into curiosity and what I mean by that is start, you know, get mindful with your drinking and for a lot of people that a great practice at the beginning is to actually get a journal and start writing this stuff down or just a notebook and start writing things down.  So, I always encourage people to — the first thing you want to do is you want to get out of self-judgment.  So, this is where we find ourselves a lot.

With this certainly, I spent years beating myself up over the fact that I was like, by all accounts killing it in all the other aspects of my life, but I couldn’t get this thing under control.  So, I think the first step is you want to step into self-compassion.  So, this is not your fault.  Alcohol is a highly addictive substance, anybody who drinks it for long enough, and in large enough amounts is going to become addicted to it.  That is the way this substance works.  In fact, it’s the most dangerous drug out there, and it’s more addictive than so many of the other drugs that we, you know — from a societal perspective, see as like highly damaging, problematic drugs.  So, it’s not your fault and you are among the millions of other people in the gray-area of drinking.

And the thing that I would suggest you do is celebrate the fact that you’re aware of that, because this is the first step.  You can’t have any change without awareness.  So, start by stepping into self-compassion and really celebrating your awareness and then, start recording what is actually happening.  Look for patterns.  So, when is it that you are drinking?  How much are you drinking when you’re drinking?  What are the common triggers that are leading to cravings and urges for you to drink?  When you have that first glass, how does that feel?  How long does that feeling last?  How long is it before you are really craving another drink?  How hard is it to not have the second drink?  When you have the second drink, does it feel the same the way as the first drink did or does it feel different?  How do you feel after that second drink?  How does that affect the rest of your night?  Do you keep drinking, or do you stop after the two drinks and how does the rest of your night evolved from there?  Are you doing things in the night after you drink or is that the end?

Like, for me, it was just like, basically, a signal to the rest of my family that I’m done.  It was like, I was throwing up a white flag.  I’m out for the rest of the night.  And so I was missing out on all kinds of things as a result of just having a couple glasses of wine.  I would get on the couch and that was it and then I would go to bed.  So, pay attention to all of those things.  How do you sleep?  Is it affecting the quality of your sleep?  Are you waking up in the middle of the night?  We now, you know, we know that from science what’s happening there is that interestingly, alcohol is a depressant, but it’s also a stimulant.  And what happens is we drink it and it’s a chemical depressant.

Our brain gets slowed down and then our brain immediately launches into the rebalancing because our brain is always trying to maintain homeostasis. And so, it will look for — it will notice when it’s not where it’s supposed to be and when it’s depressed, it immediately tries to bring you back up.  And the way that it does that is by releasing cortisol and adrenaline, which are actually our stress hormones because they’re stimulants and it will sort of pick us back up.  The problem is, there’s a lag between the depressant effect of alcohol and the release of the stimulants.  And so what happens is after our last glass of wine, we are still filling mellow because we’ve, you know, that depressant effect is still there, but then our brain releases those stimulants usually after we’ve gone to sleep.

And that’s what wakes us up at 3:00 A.M. often with a pounding heart and, you know, a racing mind.  So, pay attention to that, “is that happened to me?  Is my sleeping disturbed by this?  How do I feel the next day?  What am I saying to myself the next morning?  Am I making promises to myself?  How good am I at keeping those promises?”

(00:15:00)

Again, all of this is outside of judgment.  So this is just an exercise in the collection of data.  You’re just trying to figure out what the status quo is and understand better your relationship with alcohol, how it’s affecting your life and also learn something about alcohol.  So I do recommend This Naked Mind because it’s a great resource book and it gives us lots of really useful information about the substance itself.  And I think that’s really important when we’re starting out here.  So, that’s why I recommend people start is really slip into that self-compassion.  You’re going to have to practice that, it’s going to be hard.  You’re going to find yourself beating yourself up, but you’ll get better at it as you go along and you know, don’t launch right away into quitting, drinking.  Instead, spend some time learning about your relationship with alcohol.

So, I think that’s really the first step that I would recommend.  So, that’s really self-compassion combined with curiosity.  And then at some point you’re probably going to find that you are ready to take a break from it.  And so then what we do is we actually experiment the other side of it, we experiment with what it’s like to not have alcohol in our lives.  And that can be really hard depending on where you are on the spectrum and how rooted you are on your behaviors.  But even just experimenting with a night or two without alcohol can be really eye-opening.  Like how does that change things?  If I don’t drink tonight, how does that change everything about my night?  How does it change my sleep? How does it change the way I feel the next day?  How does it change how I feel when I go to the gym?  How does it change how I feel when I’m at work working?  How does it change my mood and how I am with my kids?  All of those things.

Molly Ranns:  Wendy, what are the keys to making it small and irrelevant and getting back in control?

Wendy McCallum:  Yeah, also a great question, Molly.  There are — I think lots of pieces to this.  My goal for everyone that I work with us, to help them make alcohol insignificant or small and irrelevant to their lives.  So, that it’s not running the show anymore.  For me, it was running the show.  I was always thinking about when I was going to have a drink, you know, not during the day while I was working, but once I got to the end of the day, all I could about is “okay, when am I going to get the kids sorted?  When is my last drive?  Or I have to drive somebody somewhere?  When is it safe for me to actually have a glass of wine?

And so, my goal, always for me was to get to a place where alcohol wasn’t running the show and where I could truly take it or leave it.  And I think there are lots of different pieces that help people to get there.  The first two I’ve already talked about.  So, I think it’s important to be really, really important to stay out of self-judgment.  Get out of the shame-and-blame cycle.  If you’re like me and you’re questioning your relationship with alcohol, you’re probably also beating yourself up on the regular because you, you know, you’re listening to this podcast.  You’re probably a pretty accomplished person and you have had lots of success in other areas of your life.  You’re smart and you cannot figure out why you can’t get this thing sorted.

And the answer is, because it is such a highly addictive substance and because you have some really ingrained patterns and probably not just physical behavioral patterns, but also mindset patterns and beliefs around what alcohol is doing for you.  So, the first step is self-compassion for sure.  I think that’s key.  The second piece is the curiosity that I talked.  So, really getting into experiment mode and thinking about this as an opportunity to gather information.  I also really, really believe in the importance of reframing your goals around alcohol.  So, if your goal is to drink less or maybe to not drink at all anymore, those are both great goals, but we have to be really careful that we don’t frame our goals from place of deprivation.  So, when we say things like, “I can’t drink anymore.  I have to stop drinking.”

What we’re doing there is we are framing it again from this deprivation place and it feels like we have to give something up and we’re going to be missing out on everything.  And it’s really hard to make permanent change from that place mentally.  We know there’s been lots of research on this now.  We know that human beings make change better when there’s a positive emotion associated with the behavior.  And the starting place for that is how you frame your goal around this.  How you’re actually looking at the change that you’re trying to make.  So, instead of that deprivation-based place of like “I can’t drink anymore.  I have to stop drinking”.  I really encourage people to focus in on what they’re going to get from this.  So, I get to take 30 days off alcohol.  I get to sleep really well for 30 days.

I get to experience what it’s like to not feel foggy every morning when I’m driving into work.  I get to experience what it’s like to not wake up at 3:30 in the morning.  I get to experience what it’s like to not be beating myself up every single day because of this habit.  So, shifting yourself from deprivation to abundance, you know, it sounds like it’s semantics but if not, it’s much bigger than that.  It has a huge impact on whether we actually take the action steps that are required to get us to that desired outcome.  So, it has a really big impact on our ability to actually achieve the goal that we set for ourselves.

So, that’s also really important and the other piece that I think is really critical is connection and this was really hard for lawyers, because a lot of lawyers are really afraid to step forward and actually admit that they’re questioning their relationship with alcohol.  And that’s why I wanted so badly to have this conversation with you guys on this podcast and why I’m so passionate about talking about gray-area drinking out loud and sharing my story.

(00:20:05)

Because it’s not something to be ashamed or embarrassed of.  The truth is, most North Americans drink and the majority of them are worried that their overdrinking.  So, we’re actually the majority here.  And as I said alcohol is just — it is just an addictive substance.  So, anybody who drinks it for long enough is going to become dependent on it.  So, the talking about it piece, though is really hard for lawyers, there’s often a fear that there’s going to be repercussions for that at work.  And so, confidentiality can be really, really key, which I absolutely understand.

And so, it can be hard to find a community or to talk to anybody about this.  But I would say, the first step is find one person you trust that you can talk to about this.  And if you’re looking for a connection or a community, there are ways to do that, that feel really safe and confidential.  I mean, I coach every day all day in an incredibly confidential way with the people that I work with.  And there are lots of other people out there doing what I do.  I also have small communities of women.  I vet them, there’s a confidentiality agreement and you know, that allows for that safe connection space.

And again, there are a lots of other opportunities out there for that.  So, I’m not in any way dissing AA, it works really, really well for a lot of people, but it also feels really inaccessible to a lot of people, especially to gray-area drinkers because it doesn’t feel like the right place for them to go and I understand that, that’s how it felt to me.  I just — it never crossed my mind to go to an AA meeting.  And so, finding that connection and community can feel really challenging, but the great news is that — and this is one of the small silver linings of the pandemic is that we’re also accustomed now to being online and there’s so many of these communities now that have opened up during the course of the pandemic.

Because of course, you’re probably aware that there’s been a big spike in drinking as a result of all the additional stress and isolation of the pandemic.  And so, again, the flip silver lining of that is that there are so many big groups that have opened up out there and you can go on those anonymously.  You can turn your camera off, you can change your screen name so that you’re able to actually participate and feel connected to other people and hear shared story without disclosing who you are.  So, I think connection is — it’s hard, it can be really tough for lawyers.

It’s tough for a lot of people, not just lawyers, but it’s such an important piece of this because the shame that we feel really only exists in isolation.  As soon as we share our story and we hear other people, “Oh, I’m not the only person who’s struggling with this right now”.  That just does — it does just wonders in terms of like dissipating that shame and allowing us to feel better, which is again, like we want to be feeling good and excited about this change.  Instead of feeling this is going to be the worst thing in the world and we’re going to be doing it all alone.

JoAnn Hathaway:  So, Wendy, this question is kind of twofold.  So. what do you say when someone asks you, why you don’t drink, but the second part of the question is what about those people that many lawyers may be used to drinking with all the time?  I mean, that’s what they do and suddenly it’s like, “well, why are you stopping?”  Which might even be harder for them than meeting someone for the first time and having them ask, “Why don’t you drink?”  So, how can — what is your response to that?

Wendy McCallum:  Yeah, that’s a really great question.  And I love the distinction that you drew there because it’s really important.  I mean, if I’d meet people that are complete strangers now, I just tell them I’m a non-drinker.  I’d just say I don’t drink and I don’t give them any explanation and usually nobody asks me for the explanation, but it is really different.  It’s first of all, it’s different in the beginning.  So this can be a continuum.  There’s no right or wrong thing to say.  You have to say something that feels comfortable to you and I think everybody knows — probably lawyers more than anyone.  It’s impossible to deliver a line unless you — there’s some truth in it and you believe in it, right?  So, it has to be something that feels good to you, but I also think it has to be at least partly rooted in truth.

So, saying that you’re not drinking because you’re on an antibiotic often comes off really, you know, not in a genuine way, but it could be as simple as, “you know what, I took a break during the pandemic and I feel so much better, I’m just going with it” or “well, I stopped drinking a while ago when I was on a bit of a health kick and it felt great.  So, I’m still doing that.”  But as you go forward, you may feel more comfortable, disclosing more information.  But I think in the beginning, especially with other people who are still drinking, it’s really important that — I’ve learned this from experience, it is very important that you make it about you and not about anybody else, which is why I always say something like, “alcohol wasn’t doing me any favors.  I realized it was taking more than it was giving, so I took a break from it and I never looked back.”  Right?  So, then it’s about me, it’s about what alcohol was doing to me as opposed to alcohol is this like horrible substance and then it can feel like you’re passing judgment on someone else and then that can lead to problems, because you can get some push back there.

(00:25:01)

So, I don’t know if that answers your question JoAnn, but I don’t think there’s a single right answer to this.  I think it has to be something that you’re comfortable with, but at the same time, you don’t owe anybody any explanations.  And I like to say, drinking less or not or not drinking is nothing more than a positive wellness choice.  Sometimes it’s a positive physical wellness choice.  Sometimes it’s a positive mental wellness choice and usually it’s both for people.

So, I really want to normalize not drinking, it’s the only drug we have to justify not taking, you know, I have the conversation all the time with clients about what are you going to say to people because people get really nervous about what they’re going to tell people.  And we always come back around to this whole like, isn’t it crazy that we’re having this conversation, where we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to tell people that were not using this drug.  Why we’re the ones who have to explain why we’re not using this thing and it’s so normal for them to use it.  But it’s the reality, it’s our social reality.  We live in a really allocentric culture.  So this can be challenging, but again, you had to find something that feels good to you.

Molly Ranns:   Wendy, this podcast has been so helpful.  What advice do you have for a legal professional listening to this episode and worried that they are drinking too much?  What advice could you offer them?

Wendy McCallum:  I would say, first of all, celebrate the fact that you’re aware that maybe things are not where you want them to be.  That in itself is just such a great place to be.  I know it feels scary and it feels uncomfortable.  But as I said, no change happens without awareness.  You can’t solve a problem if you don’t it exists.  So, this is the necessary precursor to change and it’s a great place to be.  The next thing I would say is get curious.  Start journaling, start recording, start paying attention to all of this.  I also highly recommend that you read This Naked Mind.  Again, you can get it’s published in a bunch of different languages and you can get it online, and I think that’s a really great place to start.  If you want to learn more, there’s also a great book called Alcohol Explained by William Porter that I recommend, fantastic resource.  And stay in self-compassion on this.  Really try to get out of the shame-and-blame cycle and just get into like experiment mode around this and start gathering that data and that information.  And then when you feel like you’re ready to make a change, reach out, it is not a sign of weakness to ask for help, it is a sign of strength.

I needed help to make change in this and, you know, I always like to remind people of this.  You don’t need to be an alcoholic to need help with this.  Gray-area drinkers have trouble changing their relationship with alcohol.  Everybody has trouble drinking less.  It’s really tough.  My guess is everybody who’s listening to this podcast has at some point, tried to drink a little less and realized it’s not nearly as easy as they think.  And the longer you have been drinking the harder this gets.  It’s okay if it’s hard to change your behaviors with alcohol, it’s totally okay.  In fact, that is normal that it’s hard, but there’s also lots and lots of help out there available for you and I really encourage you to reach out.  A couple of questions that are great to ask yourself and this is for me, really was the pivotal question that led to me making change.

I got really honest with myself and I said like, “what are the chances five years from now, if you do nothing that this is going to be better, worse or the same?”  And the clear answer was this will be worse, you will be drinking more.  And that is because we build a tolerance, so scientifically, we know we build a tolerance, the more we drink, but also just be five years further into my habit and I could not live with that.  So, that’s a great question to ask yourself.  It can be really motivating.  And then, as I said, reach out, ask for help.  Lots of resources out there, I have a page that I’ve created called — you can just go to lawyersandalcohol.com.

So again, it’s just lawyers A-N-D alcohol.com.  I’ve put a bunch of free resources on there to get you started some podcast episodes that I love along with some of the books that I’ve been talking about.  So you can go and access them there.  There’s also a really fantastic tool called the Free Alcohol Experiment.  Again, it’s through Annie Grace who is the author of This Naked Mind.  I am a certified This Naked Mind coach, which is why I know so much about This Naked Mind.  I loved the book so much.  I basically started asking them when they were going to certify coaches, because I wanted to be able to add this to my practice, because it’s such a great approach, I think to making change, especially for gray-area drinkers, but Annie Grace has Free 30-day Alcohol Experiment, you can sign up for it, it’s completely confidential and it will send you a short little video every day and give you the opportunity to take a mindful break from alcohol and learn a lot about alcohol and also your relationship to it.  So, I think that’s also a really great place to start.

JoAnn Hathaway:  Well, Wendy, it looks like we’ve come to the end of our show today.  We would like to thank our guest today, Wendy McCallum for a wonderful program.

Molly Ranns:  Wendy, if our listeners would like to follow up with you, what is the best way for them to do so?

Wendy McCallum:  Oh, thanks, Molly.  Best place to find me is just through my website, which is just wendymccallum.com.  So it’s M-C-C-A-L-L-U-M dot com.  And you can reach out to me through the website, through the contact me page, and there’s lots of other resources on there as I said.

(00:30:07)

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Molly Ranns:  Wonderful, thank you so much.  This has been another edition of the State Bar of Michigan – On Balance Podcast.

JoAnn Hathaway:  I’m JoAnn Hathaway.

Molly Ranns:  And I’m Molly Ranns.  Until next time, thank you for listening.

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Male:  Thank you for listening to the State Bar of Michigan – On Balance Podcast brought to you by the State Bar of Michigan and produced by the broadcast professionals at Legal Talk Network.  If you’d like more information about today’s show, please visit legaltalknetwork,com, subscribe via Apple Podcast and RSS.  Find the State Bar of Michigan and Legal Talk Network on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn or download Legal Talk Network’s free app in Google Play and iTunes.

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The views expressed by the participants of this program are their own and do not represent the views of, nor are they endorsed by Legal Talk Network or the State Bar of Michigan, or their respective officers, directors, employees, agents, representatives, shareholders and subsidiaries.  None of the contents should be considered legal advice.  As always, consult a lawyer.

Podcast transcription by Tech-Synergy.com