Charisse Deschenes (00:32)
To close out 2025 we're talking about a topic that shapes more lives than people acknowledge, alcohol. Not in a dramatic way that gets written into movies in a quiet habitual way that numbs the edges of stress, smooths the friction of leadership and becomes culturally woven into how people cope. Dry January is ahead and this is when leaders start contemplating their relationship with drinking, not from guilt, but from exhaustion.

As a health coach, I see the same pattern over and over. A drink to decompress, a drink to transition out of the work mode, a drink because it's expected, a drink because it's easier than saying no. But the body never treats alcohol as neutral and it impacts your hormones, sleep cycles, metabolism, immune function, emotional regulation and cognitive clarity every single time.

Kellye Mazzoli (01:24)
Wow, every single time. That's powerful, Charisse. So for me, I would say that alcohol and drinking like this isn't theoretical. I actually stopped drinking on August 8th of 2020. And the way I remember that is it's 8-8, 2020. But it had nothing, there was no rock bottom. There was no...

Charisse Deschenes (01:41)
Hahaha

Kellye Mazzoli (01:46)
incident or anything like that that happened really nothing was dramatic about it. It was just I decided to simply take a weekend without drinking and to observe what happened and you know this is 2020 so we all know that that's the COVID time. ⁓ And so what I was doing we were actually quarantined in the state of Washington so I was in my studio apartment.

Charisse Deschenes (02:02)
Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (02:10)
And my husband was actually deployed at that time. It was interesting. You mentioned a transition out of work mode. And I would say that's why I drank was to transition out of work mode. I never drank while still answering emails. But man, would wait. I mean, it would be like eight o'clock at night. But what I found was I was having my wine delivered because it wasn't really going out or anything like that. But yeah, it was just sort of like, OK, what am I doing here? So I just tried.

Charisse Deschenes (02:29)
Right.

Kellye Mazzoli (02:36)
I decided to try a weekend to see, just to see what happened. Really honestly, honestly, was just simple curiosity. I told myself, this isn't about quitting drinking or anything like that. It's like, let's just see what happens. So that little experiment, that one weekend turned into, well, let's see what a week feels like after the weekend. So that was pretty easy. And once you get through a week, it's like, okay, how about a month? And I was able to go a month. And at that point it was like, okay.

Charisse Deschenes (02:55)
Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (03:01)
How about six months? And once you cross six months, I mean, you might as well go for a year, right? So, and the next thing I know now it's been six years. So all because I got curious about a habit that honestly I never really questioned. It was just sort of like integrated into the fabric of my life. ⁓ And once I experienced the difference, I mean, going back just didn't make sense. So.

Charisse Deschenes (03:16)
Yeah.

Kellye, I just want to give you props for like, know, way to go for six years. That's a big number. It really is. And congratulations.

Kellye Mazzoli (03:28)
Yeah, it's it's crazy to me. It's crazy to me.

can't can't believe or I guess it's just over five years. We're coming up on six. I just say that this first weekend it was a baseline reset for me is all it just started with pure curiosity. And I told myself, I just wonder how I'll feel if I don't drink this weekend. It wasn't a commitment. It wasn't a declaration. It's kind of like data gathering, to be honest.

What surprised me though was that it really wasn't the absence of alcohol. It was the presence of myself that came out of it. And I immediately started sleeping better. I didn't feel that sort of low grade morning fog whenever I'd wake up. My energy got more stable very quickly. I would say that I didn't want like coffee to compensate for the drag, but I still wanted coffee. So to be clear, the caffeine didn't go.

But my thoughts got, I mean, my thoughts really got clearer, almost cleaner, and I could feel my inner signals more instead of just overriding them with a drink. Like, I don't want to think about that. So yeah, that one weekend really revealed more information than I ever expected, and it was just enough to make me try the same thing for just one more week, one more weekend.

Charisse Deschenes (04:32)
you know, that's exactly how physiology responds. Alcohol interrupts your REM sleep, period. Even one drink, when people remove alcohol, their REM sleep becomes, it rebounds quicker. Their melatonin normalizes. Cortisol stops spiking at 3 a.m. and you wake up. And the brain completes sleep cycles it hasn't completed in years. So people feel

Kellye Mazzoli (04:36)
Mm-hmm.

Charisse Deschenes (04:58)
that big difference when immediately after they start drinking because the body responds immediately. So you're experiencing a biological truth. It's just, Hey, you're going to feel this much better or hopefully you will when you get your sleep back.

Kellye Mazzoli (05:11)
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, if people are wondering, like after the first week, I would say that the friction wasn't really, I mean, it wasn't like a physical issue with not drinking. really was more social. it was easier in the sense that we weren't actually having the same kind of social lives that we've always had during COVID, but I still had to experience that whenever we were able to go out.

And so whenever we were able to go back out and Friday night arrives and it was the familiar like you should have a drink, it reactivated. And honestly, it wasn't because I wanted a drink. It was just because of like a routine, almost like an identity that it was a habit that was just doing the talking. So I caught that. And once I caught that, then it became easier. And that's, know, and then it just didn't feel like deprivation anymore. It really came from like a space of clarity.

You know, and after the first few months, I was experiencing those benefits that I hadn't associated with alcohol at all. Like, I felt grounded. I felt regulated. My mornings weren't just something to endure. And I think that's the point. When I realized alcohol had been numbing, not just like my emotions, but my internal feedback loops, I wasn't, I hadn't been listening to myself. I wasn't really hearing myself. And so very quickly I could, I could sort of hear myself again.

Charisse Deschenes (06:23)
So that is that that's like your nervous system, know, and when you really think about it and break it down, the science behind it, the body is wired for internal communication that signals from the gut, your heart, your liver, your hormones, the circadian rhythms, you know, alcohol dampens all of those signals. People interpret the absence of distress as calm.

But I mean, it's actually disconnection. And when you stop drinking, the connection came back online for you, right? And that's why that clarity just showed up in your life.

Kellye Mazzoli (06:56)
Yeah, that makes more sense now, Charisse. I would say, I mean, after the first couple of months, and I was like, okay, let's try this for six whole months, that it required a different type of thinking at that point. And so in order to keep going past that couple month mark, I had to reframe the whole process as more of a game when it became long-term.

Charisse Deschenes (07:04)
Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (07:17)
And so then, you know, when we started going back out again, I had to give myself like permission and almost like made it a game to drink the coolest thing I could find on the menu. I mean, anything else on the menu other than alcohol. And so it was really kind of cool because then that single reframing helped me keep it felt expansive and not like I was depriving myself or being restrictive with me. So I found.

really cool things. Like I did not realize that there were restaurants that had kombucha on tap and this is the non-alcoholic version, but I did and I found some really good kombucha and so I got really into that for a while. I don't actually drink it now. There's a lot more sugar in it than than what I like to drink, but I gave myself permission to drink anything else on the menu and that meant things with sugar as well. And one of the best things I found was root beer on tap. Like a keg of root beer. It is so

good. Like, I can, if you see root beer on top, you've got to try it. But anyway, so, but there were just like different teas and different, different drinks as they came up. I went ahead and tried and I made it more of a game. I didn't really try to mimic alcohol in the beginning because I didn't really want to get, I didn't want to just like replace the alcohol. I wanted to try things outside of myself. So I became

more interested in options that I'd never even like thought of never even bothered with before.

Charisse Deschenes (08:40)
Yeah, Kellye, I'm just like reflecting on that. Like you shifted and you kind of gave yourself another option, right? You gave yourself.

Kellye Mazzoli (08:40)
So.

I gave myself all the options.

Charisse Deschenes (08:50)
Yeah, yeah,

and that root beer does sound delightful. I'll have to try that sometime. I need to stay away from the sugar a little bit myself. ⁓ you know, what you're really describing makes me think about the shift that reflects on two different things. And one is the biology. At three to six months without alcohol, the inflammation in your body, it drops significantly and your liver enzymes start to normalize.

Kellye Mazzoli (08:55)
Yeah.

Right.

Charisse Deschenes (09:15)
your blood sugar is stabilizing, your hormones regulate across the board, your thyroid, the cortisol, estrogen, testosterone, all of the hormones, you're getting the clearer energy and clearer thinking, all of that is returning after that six months. then secondly, when you think about the psychology behind it, when you've repeatedly, you choose something different and

Kellye Mazzoli (09:18)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Charisse Deschenes (09:38)
environments where you used to outsource your choices to expectations, you build agency. So that creates the type of identity shift leaders spend years trying to develop through mindset work. And you grew it by practicing decisions in real world contexts. So amazing. mean, you're experimenting on yourself, but like really that's great, great leaps ahead. Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (09:56)
Yeah, yeah, it was. I have to say.

It's the best way to learn. It's the best way to learn.

I would say that there was something that happened that I wasn't expecting in the whole process and that was that my confidence grew. And I know that sounds kind of odd because we think that drinking alcohol gives us confidence in social situations. At least I've heard that, I've thought that, you know, maybe not everybody, but my confidence grew by not drinking because I learned how to walk up to.

Charisse Deschenes (10:22)
huh. Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (10:28)
any bartender and in 2023, you know, we moved to New Orleans. So a fun place to to not drink alcohol. Right. Like alcohol is practically a mascot here. So just going to say. But I have I walk up, I can walk up to any bartender or ask any waiter or waitress for what I want without apologizing. Like I'm able to say, hey, you know, what what non alcoholic options do you have? Because what you find is that they're not already on the menu.

Charisse Deschenes (10:33)
Mm-hmm.

Kellye Mazzoli (10:54)
I'm usually ordering off menu. And before I wouldn't want to, you know, sort of do that. Like I would, would, I would, you know, shy away from that and just order whatever's on the menu because that's what's available to me. And this really helped me grow my confidence and just like asking like, hey, you know, do you have any non-alcoholic options? And I have to tell a story because one of the best ones here in New Orleans, whenever I first got here, I walked up to a lovely young bartender.

And I asked her, said, hey, do you have any non-alcoholic options? And she offered me a Heineken. And I said, oh, so you have Heineken 00, right? So Heineken 00 is the non-alcoholic Heineken option. She goes, no, no, just Heineken. And we both, like, I just kind of laughed exactly, right? Like, and I was like, no, hun, know, regular Heineken doesn't count as non-alcoholic, although I think some people might agree with that statement.

the whole point is this, like those sort of, like now I can go up and have those conversations without like just going, my gosh, you no. And I've had people make fun of me too that are like, you know, why are you in a bar if you're not drinking alcohol kind of thing? And I have my reasons, but yeah, really I have a lot more confidence now and I feel like I'm even better. Like those are other skills of advocating for myself without making it.

Charisse Deschenes (11:57)
Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (12:09)
without it being awkward, like it's okay, like it's fine. It's not a big deal. let me talk a little bit about like once I got past that sort of initial awkwardness, like I would say after six months, what kept me going after that time period was that going backwards just felt counterproductive.

Charisse Deschenes (12:28)
Mm-hmm.

Kellye Mazzoli (12:28)
At the

point that I was able to get to the six months, I had evidence that my life was objectively better without alcohol. So at that point, would say pushing towards the whole year wasn't about any sort of willpower. That started coming from logic because I had the data to go off of. And then by a year, I had changed more than just my drinking habits. I I had changed my evenings. I had changed my...

my mornings look different, my energy was different, my ability to feel without numbing. Really, I just felt like I had more space, more mental space, and I wasn't negotiating with myself every week about, you know, was I gonna have a drink or not have a drink? How was I gonna feel? Am I gonna be navigating a hangover or anything like that? So, and you know, even more importantly, I didn't miss it. my mind wasn't really wrapped around drinking anymore, and I realized that my mind used to be actually quite,

wrapped around drinking, which was sort of weird. It was very freeing. And I felt free to start going out to enjoy my vacations. Like the vacation wasn't about, I mean, we took a cruise. And of course, so here's the thing. The fun fact is, is that if your partner wants and my partner does still drink, he drinks in front of me, around me. Like we have alcohol in the house. It's not really a big deal. But he like in order for him to get the package, the

Charisse Deschenes (13:31)
Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (13:45)
I don't want to call it an all you can drink package, but that's basically how they do that. Everybody in the room has to have it. So I had to get the all you can drink package for the cruise that I didn't have a single alcoholic beverage on, which was crazy. But yeah, but your mind no longer, you know, I found other things to drink.

and other things to do and I felt really free and I, you know, I'm free to be the designated driver. Like we don't have to worry about Ubers and things like that whenever we go out. It's just, it's amazing. I mean, we save money, I'm fully engaged. I don't have to worry about managing myself. I'm not worrying about, you know, maybe saying something I shouldn't or being embarrassed. I mean, all of that just because of removing something, I actually gained so much more and alcohol really just became a non-factor.

Charisse Deschenes (14:29)
Kellye, what you're describing, I would say, let's peel away the layers and look at the science again. And from the biological standpoint, that one year, pivotal, pivotal, that you're looking at neuro-inflammation, it's dropping, your neuroplasticity is increasing, all the decision-making, your working memory, emotional processing, all of that is strengthening at that point.

Kellye Mazzoli (14:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Charisse Deschenes (14:55)
you replaced micro dysregulation with stability in your life. And that changed not just your health, but your leadership. And I want you to, yeah, yeah, you're making so many differences and everything that you described. Yeah, it's, I just, again, wanna congratulate you on that five years, six years. It's just wonderful what you're doing.

Kellye Mazzoli (15:03)
For sure.

great.

Thanks. Yeah.

Thank you. And you know, and I'm going to share with you like some really cool things that I experienced over this year that were different. Being somebody who who no longer drinks alcohol as a beverage of choice. But I do want to say, too, is that one of the things you mentioned, emotional processing.

So everything sounds really really great, but I will say this that there was a period of time Where I had to do some emotional processing. It's almost like it had all just sort of stacked up on me Because I wasn't doing it whenever I was drinking and so I did for there was like a period of time where I felt like I wanted like I I cried a little more than I normally would and I think honestly as I looked

Charisse Deschenes (15:46)
Yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (15:59)
back now. I mean, it's like I said, it's almost been six years. So whenever I look back, I see that as like emotional processing and having to sort of like catch up with all the things that I just sort of like put off. And it actually was it was kind of it was kind of a weird thing. But I learned really quickly, like my emotions were not going to kill me and they were OK to have.

But no, but there's still some like really, really great things. So I mentioned a little bit about traveling and being on the cruise ship, but this past year, I got to experience something completely new. In July, we were on a vacation in Lisbon, Portugal, and my husband and I, and my father-in-law traveled with us as well. We did a non-alcoholic wine tasting with a sommelier.

I know. Yeah, an actual an actual sommelier wine tasting, right? And they're not substitutions like the real wines. They're complex. They're layered. They're crafted by legitimate wineries. And a lot of people are really surprised whenever they hear that, because I mean, I can't count how many times people like that's just grape juice, you know. And it's like, no, no, no. Yeah, not exactly.

Charisse Deschenes (16:48)
I need to know more.

It's Martinelli's, yay!

Kellye Mazzoli (17:10)
So, but wineries are actually investing now in non-alcoholic production of their wine. So you have very legitimate wineries who are doing this. now, you know, there are sommeliers out there who are able to recommend specific wines that are non-alcoholic. So it's really, the world is changing. It's catching up. And I would say too, in November, when I was on my business trip in London, I, that was...

Insane to me. I walked into restaurants and had a full menu, an actual alcoholic beverage menu with multiple pages that were for it was dedicated to non-alcoholic options. And I have never had, know, normally they'll just like pepper in one or two or they'll put a little asterisk by something like we can make a mocktail. But in London, was was regularly there were full menus dedicated to to non-alcoholic options. The mocktails had a lot of depth.

Charisse Deschenes (17:52)
Uh-huh.

Kellye Mazzoli (18:02)
like they weren't just like your typical, well we can throw together like a non-alcoholic mojito. I mean, these were like, they actually put some time and effort into creating and crafting these cocktails. So, you know, there were whole bottles of wine and sparkling wine that you could purchase like entire bottles. And honestly, I would just say like,

this was the first time that it didn't feel like to me that the non-alcoholic options were the afterthought. really, I mean, I just felt respected in a way that I hadn't anywhere else, anywhere else that I had traveled other than Lisbon as well. So Lisbon and London, they're on the up. think we're really seeing a change in how alcohol and non-alcoholic options are viewed in society. mean, it's not drinking wasn't weird.

It wasn't inconvenient, it wasn't isolating, was just, that was normal. It was normal, it was fine. It was cool.

Charisse Deschenes (18:50)
I think you're seeing that trend globally and also generationally. It seems like the younger generations aren't drinking as much too. So I'm so glad to hear that there are options for you traveling abroad. And I think people are recognizing that that alcohol really compromises recovery, your cognition, your metabolism and emotional regulation. And those things we value, right? We really love those things as humans. So

Kellye Mazzoli (19:14)
Right?

Charisse Deschenes (19:16)
you know, things that high performing leaders might want to focus on as well. So just think about that as a takeaway

And the hospitality industry is responding because demand is shifting from sedation to clarity.

Kellye Mazzoli (19:30)
That's so powerful.

Yeah, sedation to clarity. And I think too, and you were saying like as high performing leaders, it's like, what is it that as a leader, what is it that we're doing? How do you lead? mean, it's through it's through your thoughts. It's through your your cognition. It is through your brain. It's through how you carry yourself, your emotional regulation. Those are the key things to being a great leader. So why would you do anything to compromise those things?

Charisse Deschenes (19:49)
Exactly.

no, no, no. So no, I was just going to talk a little bit about the emotional breakthrough. So the physical benefits are predictable. The emotional benefits are where transformation really happens. Months, like two through six, the intense crying, the emotional surge. Those are textbook Kellye.

Kellye Mazzoli (20:13)
thank you for telling me that. You know, honestly, if I have to tell you, like, I want to tell people, like, the hardest part so that they can, they know that the hardest part is that my emotions came back online at full volume, right? Like I said, I mean, I cried probably more in, like, a few months than I had in years. honestly, it wasn't sadness. It wasn't actual sadness. It was release. The hardest part was thinking that there was something wrong with me in the beginning.

Charisse Deschenes (20:14)
Ha ha ha ha!

Kellye Mazzoli (20:38)
until I had to realize like, wait, no, no, no, no. I've just been stacking up all this emotion for so long. And the alcohol had really just been a lid on that bottle. So I just want people to know that's literally like, that's the hardest part is that whenever I stopped drinking, the lid came off and everything I kept in the background surfaced. It felt a little messy. I judged myself. It felt inconvenient. But at the same time, like I felt alive. I felt like it was really real, like I was able to.

really be real. once you learn that the emotions don't break you, everything changes. Your emotional intelligence is like it's no longer theoretical because you've lived it and you practiced it. So I think really that the hardest part, which let's be real, like now that I'm on the other side of it is not the hardest part,

It made me a much better leader. It made me a much better partner for my husband, a much better human.

Charisse Deschenes (21:32)
Most people assume that that emotional regulation means suppressing or managing, but it actually means experiencing without collapsing. Your alcohol use was suppressing all of your emotions and without it, you meet your emotional landscape like honestly. So that's resilience and that's maturity and that's integration.

Kellye Mazzoli (21:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, quitting drinking, it taught me one thing. It's that I don't have to live inside of an inherited identity. Like I don't have to do something because it's what I've always done. I don't have to follow this routine just because society has normalized it.

Removing alcohol wasn't a moral stance for me. It was a design choice and it gave me access to things that I had buried and it gave me clarity and it helped me because I didn't know what was missing. It really actually, honestly, it helped me feel, it helped me heal, it helped me lead and I choose differently. So it all started with a weekend.

Charisse Deschenes (22:30)
one little shift. Well, mean, leaders under they really underestimate the impact of clarity. And alcohol makes everything 5 % harder, your sleep, your metabolism, your emotions, your boundaries, and reducing or removing it gives leaders capacity that they don't realize that they've been missing. This isn't about perfection. It isn't about alignment. It's about designing a life that can sustain the leadership that you want to deliver.

Kellye Mazzoli (22:30)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely. And gosh, just like, what you pointed out, that alcohol makes everything 5 % harder. Like, your sleep, your stress, your metabolism, your emotion, your balance, like all the things, like, hey, yay, yay. So anyway, all that to say, if you're thinking about dry January, start small, try a weekend, notice what changes, track your data, track your sleep, track your mood, that's the best way, your energy.

Charisse Deschenes (23:04)
Yeah, yeah.

Kellye Mazzoli (23:20)
Let the experiment inform the next steps instead of forcing a big declaration or like a big quitting or anything like that. And I would say, know, my five plus almost six years without drinking really all began, you know, just with a weekend with a 48 hour experiment and that made it so doable and so easy. And so that's how I highly recommend giving it a try.

Charisse Deschenes (23:41)
And if you're a leader who is overwhelmed, exhausted, dysregulated, or stretched thin, reducing or eliminating alcohol isn't about your self-denial. It's about your capacity, your brain, your hormones, and your nervous system can rebuild in ways that change your entire experience of leadership.

Kellye Mazzoli (23:59)
Yeah, and if you decide to try out like your own dry January, I think it'll just help you lean into your new year with some new clarity, new conversations. And with that, I just want to say remember to stay unmuted because if you try out dry January, you just might unmute some of those those emotions and things that you've you've been suppressing. So this concludes season one for Charisse and I. And I just want to say.

Charisse Deschenes (24:16)
You

Kellye Mazzoli (24:24)
Charisse, thank you so much. It has been really, really awesome to go on this journey with you. And I appreciate you for helping me to find my voice and to unmute. I really have had a great time.

Charisse Deschenes (24:35)
Kellye, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed the exploration with you as well. And thank you to the audience for listening and supporting us through our 30 plus episodes. It's been incredible and amazing to stay unmuted with you. Look for us in 2026, our season we think will begin in the spring of 2026. So more to come on that. And thanks again, stay unmuted.

Kellye Mazzoli (24:57)
Yep, thank you.