Health and Alcohol Use in the Modern World: 100

Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Ian Anderson, and this conversation has been a long time coming. He is the founder of Sunnyside, which is a really awesome app that I've been checking out for the last couple years because, you know, I like to bring you guys all the things that will help you in your health and wellness journey. Um, but we're going to save that for a little while because Ian has a really interesting backstory and an interesting, I think, perspective on how he created this product to really help people. And so Ian, I'd love for you to share some of that now. Maybe first talk a little bit about your professional background and then like what led you to create this product.

Yeah. Cheryl, thanks for having me on the podcast. Like you said, it's been a long time coming. I'm glad we finally got to make this happen. And it's always a pleasure just to be able to meet new audiences and offer, you know, my personal story and whatever wisdom I can offer around alcohol health. It's something that's really important to me. So The, the product is Sunnyside and it's an alcohol moderation and mindfulness app. So we will, we will get to that, but I'll, I'll tell you a little bit about my story and how it led me to create this product that tens of thousands of people are using. So professional background, I, um, was born and raised in California and I went to school at UC Santa Cruz and studied sort of information systems management. So, uh, like the kind of the blend of technology and, um, business. I, uh, started my career out in web development, which isn't that exciting, uh, this was many years ago, but I, I was having a blast at the time and I kind of weaseled my way into marketing and, uh, learned how to help position products to help people, consumers, um, find, find what they needed. Fast forward many years later, I started working. I had the opportunity to work at a mobile app company called MileIQ, which did mileage tracking for people that drove for work, which was pretty, pretty neat because we were helping people get their biggest tax deductions. I met some people there that were really instrumental in helping me kind of navigate the business world at that point. They were startup founders. And that sort of gave me some of the early skills or at least confidence that I needed to branch out and start Sunnyside. So I call myself a sort of marketing generalist by trade and at Sunnyside I lead marketing and growth along with many other things. We wear a lot of hats because we're still a small company. We're, I call us like a medium-sized startup at this point. We're based in California technically, but we have employees all over the world.

Yeah. And it's such a, um, you've done a great job with the marketing part because I, I'll just share, I came across this, so I think, uh, during, I think it might've been, I first saw it during the pandemic. I, I don't know what year you started, but I think there was a little push during that time because, um, especially in my health and wellness space, you know, it really started to blow up on social media how much additional trouble people were having with their drinking habits during the pandemic and, and how that really increased during that time. And then fast forward kind of to today. The last year or two years. I mean, Andrew Huberman, he's a huge podcast, and a lot of other people have really been bringing this idea about alcohol health to the forefront. And I think it's caused a lot of people to really start looking at their behaviors and just noticing, you know, if it's really serving them and kind of looking for tools to help them along the way to make them either more mindful, which is, I think is one of the great things about your app. It's not necessarily like quit it altogether. But it might just be like, hey, you're going out for the night and normally you might go a little crazy with your friends and have 5 or 6 drinks, but it's kind of just touching base with you to, you know, remind you to just be more mindful and be in the moment and, you know, make good choices. So I think it's a very interesting product in that regard and really useful for this new push into the wellness space about, you know, alcohol's a poison. I've, you know, the previous episode I had on alcohol, You know, we mentioned that it's a neurotoxin. There's really not a lot going for it other than the social aspect that a lot of people do find relaxation and those things in it. But I do think it's just great that you're bringing this idea to be more mindful about it to the forefront and just offering more education in the space about drinking habits. Just so if you make the choice, you know what you're getting into, I guess, is kind of part of the point.

Yeah, absolutely. You said a lot of great stuff there. I first want to recognize that the Andrew Huberman Andrew Huberman podcast on alcohol was I had already been digging into alcohol for 2 years before that came out and I was still blown away. So I think I like to think of Sunnyside as an essential tool in your toolkit for building healthier habits around alcohol. But I think it's best when used in combination with something else in your life, whether it's an additional piece of education like a really great podcast or a therapist or maybe even just connecting with a friend on the idea because alcohol is the way that it integrates into our lives is very personal and sometimes feels complex. So Sunnyside, we like to think of ourselves as the front door for anyone looking to make a change when it comes to alcohol, whether they plan to eventually quit or maybe just try to find moderation with their, with alcohol in their lives. We want to be the place where tens of thousands and eventually millions of people start making that change on their alcohol health journey. And we will provide all the tools and sort of programming to help you build that healthy relationship. I'd love to get into more detail when the time is right, but we can talk about like how we actually make that happen. But yeah, I just wanted to recognize Huberman was a great podcast for me as well. I was pretty blown away and I would— I'm still a mindful drinker myself. Or rather a drink. I still drink alcohol way less now, especially since starting Sunnyside. And one of the main things for me, aside from all the things that we've built within Sunnyside, is simply educating myself more about how alcohol actually works. You mentioned that it's a poison, but it's also true that it has these sort of tendencies and addictive qualities that make you seek out more after you start. And one of the biggest learnings for me was to understand that I wasn't sort of going to be an exception to the rule when it came to alcohol, that because when I drank, I wanted to drink more, that that was actually alcohol doing exactly what it was supposed to do on me. And it almost made me feel like I had more power understanding that knowledge when it came to moderating my own alcohol use. I should also say, Cheryl, that we did actually start in 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. And it absolutely was not because we were trying to take advantage of that moment. It was totally coincidental. Um, my—

yeah, you don't just suddenly magically have a company go live in 3 days, right? I mean, this was a long time in the works, I'm sure.

Absolutely. We had actually started cooking things up in 2019, uh, the initial ideas and the initial product. And then in 2020, um, everything just kind of lined up for us as a business. It was really a good year, but also for us to be able to be there for people that needed to moderate their drinking at a time when adults were drinking more almost than almost ever at the beginning of the pandemic. It was just a really nice way that everything lined up.

Yeah. And so to get, to get back to, and, and we'll, like you said, we'll talk more about how the product works and, and how it's useful and all that kind of good stuff a little bit later. But with most founders that I talk to, I mean, people that have listened to this podcast before, know that I love hearing the backstory because I think it shows you that for the most part, people don't start a company to make a lot of money, right? I mean, you hope that you make money, you hope you make a living at it, but people start something like this podcast or Heal, Nourish, Grow or whatever it is, cuz they have a passion for what they're doing. So I would love to hear what in your world kind of was the impetus to wanna do something like this to help people with alcohol use.

Yeah, thanks for asking. It's a, bit of a heavy story, but I think it's one that a lot of people can relate to. So I'm an identical twin, and several years after my twin and I were born in sort of Northern California, my mom and my dad both took to drinking heavier than they ever had when I was a young child. Let's just say it's around 5 years old because it's all pretty murky. And my dad was a carpenter and he got into a daily ritual where he would, uh, start drinking beer after work. This went from, the way he explained it, from a beer a night to 6 beers a night to 12 beers a night pretty quickly. And, um, this was happening at a time when my parents were starting to sort of lose interest in each other, if you will. And they, they, they had a rocky relationship for most of my childhood. And so my dad also started coupling his drinking with some other drugs on the job site. And so I just learned about this recently. So there were some pretty vicious cycles going on there. My mom, on the other hand, she was a very private drinker and she actually, she would literally go into her room sober and come out totally drunk. And these were very traumatizing events in my childhood. I think one of the things that probably saved my sanity in my life was having a twin. There's a lot of probably psychology and stuff to study around that, but I was very blessed to have, be able to have my twin and I like create a support system and a comfort system for ourselves. So my parents started growing apart and their drinking started getting worse. Around 7 or so, things started getting really bad with my mom and my dad decided to go to, to stop drinking altogether. And he went cold turkey through the AA route. So I have all of the highest respect for AA as a path for people that need to seek sobriety. And I don't know if he ever hit like what you would call a rock bottom or anything like that. That's kind of a tricky term anyway. But what his rock bottom was, was realizing that if he didn't make a change, that my brother and I would probably end up in foster care. So he actually left the household and found sobriety through the support of AA. While my mom unfortunately didn't find her way out of her disease. You know, we called it alcoholism at the time. These days it's more commonly known as alcohol use disorder. Regardless, she was highly addicted to alcohol and it was a very, very destructive path for her. So my dad eventually got my brother and I out of the house after he got sober. We moved to Novato, California, Marin County. And unfortunately, after not seeing my mom for 2 years, she died from liver failure due to alcohol. And so her path was one of sort of deepening self-destruction when it came to alcohol. And my dad's was a path of finding sobriety because he decided that he wanted to live a healthier life. And I believe one thing I've reflected on a lot since starting Sunnyside is at that time there weren't digital apps to help my mom and dad find take the first step to finding a healthier relationship to alcohol, it was still very much the all-or-nothing approach around AA. You know, if you, if you want to stop drinking or cut back on your drinking, you go to AA. Otherwise, you're perfectly healthy. And I'm sure I'm paraphrasing that slightly wrong, but we do know that today with harm reduction having been studied for multiple decades as an approach to moderation, that there are a lot of additional options out there when it comes to people wanting to make a change with their relationship to alcohol.

So I think you're really, I think you're really accurate on that just to interject really quickly because my minor is actually, actually in addiction studies and, um, amazing. So, and this is like 25, 20 ago at this point. Um, and at that time really AA was still the best and only option. And it was either kind of like you're an alcoholic and you're going to AA and you have to completely stop. Or you have a social relationship with alcohol and you're totally fine. And there was kind of nothing in between at that point. At least that's how I remember it. So I think you're totally spot on with that. And so anyway, you're saying about the harm reduction studies now, I'm sure you've taken a deep dive into all this now that you've gotten the app out there.

I have. I still sometimes feel a bit like an imposter when it comes to these things. You know, you've, you've studied addiction, but I've had the pleasure to talk to a lot of people, especially customers. I've talked to some experts in the space, so I'm getting more informed as time goes on. But one of the first people we talked to was, um, Andrew Chatarsky, who's been studying, studying harm reduction mostly in alcohol for 3 decades. And he, um, is probably one of the sort of like forefathers of, of that movement. And he's actually seen sort of a pushback against harm reduction when it comes to alcohol to lately a major acceptance to the harm reduction approach when it comes to alcohol. And just to touch on what you said, this is something that I'm deeply passionate about is where AA plays in all of this. My dad went to AA and it saved his life and it saved my life potentially. But AA ultimately has, I believe, like a 9% success rate. And the other thing that AA did for my father was He was an alcoholic until he died. Last year he passed away, unfortunately. And he— thank you— he still identified as an alcoholic because AA indoctrinated that into him. And even though he was 30 years sober, and it just created this really tough life for him to accept. And I don't think he was an alcoholic for 30 years before he passed away. I think he was an amazing person that sort of beat a rough patch when it came to alcohol. And the harm reduction approach says that— actually, it's really interesting, the National Institute of Alcoholism and Addiction, it's the NIAAA, I always get it slightly wrong. A couple years ago, they updated their definition of recovery to remove the requirement of abstinence from the, from the definition of recovery, but they did say that you have to start, you have to stop heavy drinking patterns and that you have to seek out support and you have to like identify, basically like work on identifying internal issues. So the fact that they remove, they like sort of quote, still allow drinking in the definition of recovery, this is a major change in the understanding of how alcohol and addiction impacts people and how people can sort of be recovered from a rough patch with drinking or even years of overdoing it. So that is the crux of the Sunnyside's approach is using a scientific sort of formula based in harm reduction, based in the work that our advisors do to make sure we're on the right track to help people find balance., and also see, find other solutions within their lives around how they can, how they can find balance with alcohol.

Yeah, it's interesting that again, I think that the pandemic helped bring some of this to the forefront, but even prior to that, it's kind of this, an interesting social acceptance, I think, of these, like if you'll look on TikTok or Instagram or anything, there's this kind of like this mommy wine culture. I'm sure you've run across this in your work.

Yes.

Where it's really or, you know, taking your Stanley Cup to your kids' games full of booze, or just these kind of really interesting things in our society that were really never really acceptable before. And somehow now they've become the thing. And I think it's becoming a contributing factor to why people are starting to behave the way that they behave. And I'll even say, you know, just in my social circle and friend group and something stuff it is. I mean, by the definition of how many drinks per night or per week or whatever is acceptable, I would say widely in my social circle that that is not followed whatsoever. It is far more drinking than that. And these even are among people that are in the— into health and wellness and taking care of themselves in so many other ways. And yet, it has become acceptable for some reason to do this. And I think, again, a lot of it has to do with poor coping skills and people kind of leaned on that, uh, during the pandemic and are now realizing, okay, the world is back to normal. I can go outside again. I can use the other things I was using to cope, but then they've found themselves in this place, um, with alcohol that is no longer really a healthy relationship. So that being said, I think maybe it's a good spot to, uh, bring in how this actually works. Cuz again, I said I found it during that time. I was reading these articles, always doing research, and I thought, well, this is a cool tool. I wanna check this out. So I think at the time, this is like when you first launched, you had a free trial and maybe that still exists too.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah. Yeah. And I'll just go ahead and say this now for people just in case you don't get there, but healnourishgrow.com/sunnyside is the link where you can go and find the app and get that free trial. But then I just found it so useful because I was using it for myself to be more mindful. I had just gone through my dad's— I was a donor for his bone marrow transplant and I was traveling during the pandemic and, you know, I'm worried that I'm bringing something home to my family every time I'm on a plane. And it was just really stressful. And I found myself in a place where I was definitely drinking more wine at night. And, um, yeah, so I got the free trial. I found it useful, paid for it, kept using it. Um, like, liked it so much that I wanted to become an affiliate because I do think it really helps people. And I would love to like just go into a little bit how you explain to people how it works.

Yeah. I, um, I, I'm going to sort of connect a couple of thoughts here. You said a lot. There's so much to unpack in 30 or 45 minutes on, on this topic. Um, okay. So the, the pandemic was a shock to a lot of people. And I think a lot of people found themselves drinking more, um, even not under, not realizing they were drinking more initially and not understanding why they were drinking more. And there were just these underlying stressors that help, that sort of caused us to lean into the thing that would help us sort of decrease anxiety at the end of the night. We, I believe most of us know that alcohol actually increases anxiety, but for a drink, for one drink, it can help decrease anxiety. When you get to 2 or 3 drinks, it starts to impact your sleep and recovery and cause more anxiety the next day. I found myself drinking more than I expected at the beginning of the pandemic too. I'm sort of like a fitness tracker. I like to quantify my behaviors.

Oh yeah, all the things.

I got that. I love it. And I, um, we were locked inside and I was using my Peloton and yet I found myself drinking quite a bit at the beginning of the pandemic and, um, kind of wondering why that was happening. But I think as we sort of get some space from the pandemic, we can all realize that it was sort of just shocking to us. Parents out there were having different stressors. Everyone kind of had their own reasons. So with that said, when we look at the data, 49% of people that drink in the US want to drink less. And that's been sort of corroborated by multiple studies. Yet only about 10% of those, and it might actually be less than that, actually do something to make change and to take the first step to drink less in their lives. So 50% want to drink less and only 10% actually do something about it. I think this is still because most people, there's still so much stigma in a black and white approach to alcohol. I think if I was walking down the street and I asked somebody, hey, if you were to cut back on drinking, you're drinking, what would you do? I think the most common answer would probably be still something like AA. And then I would say, well, would you do AA? And they would say no, because I'm not an alcoholic. So it just creates this like cyclical problematic understanding of what we're supposed to do when we want to cut back. What we're trying to do at Sunnyside, and let me tell you a little bit about how this started. My co-founder Nick was in Mexico with his wife about 5 or 6 years ago. He now has a couple of kids. So this was like pre-kids. They were doing a little hiatus and Mexico, and they, they found themselves enjoying their time off and having wine almost every day. And him being sort of a quantified, um, health nut as well, wanted to see if there was an app that would help him track his drinks and plan his drinks. And when he found nothing out there, he realized that there might be an opportunity here. Like, how can this— how can all of the apps out there focused on alcohol be all about sobriety and tracking your your sobriety streaks because that's really what was out there. So he set out to build the first version of Sunnyside and it was just an, it was a text message system that him and his wife could use for themselves. So he understood how to, he works in marketing too and he understood how to build a two-way SMS little platform. And he found it really kind of effective and fun. So now his wife and him and his wife were on this vacation, but now they were like using this tool that he made to plan their drinks every week over text message and track their drinks. And he found that this is actually creating behavior change within him and his wife to a point that was, um, kind of profound. So he started sharing this little text message program— it wasn't even an app at the time— with his friends, and they kind of liked it too, and they kind of all saw this Of course, there were the early rumblings, like friends would kind of tease us for like, oh, you're, you're trying to make us quit drinking. And what we really want to emphasize to people is that my co-founder and I still enjoy alcohol. We are just way more mindful about it now, especially as we get older. And that's what we're trying to do is introduce new ways of tracking and planning and quantifying alcohol in your life so that it doesn't become sort of a slippery slope issue. We track everything else, right? We track our running and our calories. We track our sleep. And yet we have this sort of mental pushback against tracking alcohol. But in reality, alcohol has— well, here's the right way to put it. Drinking less alcohol has a positive impact on almost nearly every area of your health. So you don't have to quit to see the benefits of drinking less.. And that's the thesis on which we started building Sunnyside. So my co-founder came to me and asked if I'd be interested in talking about this idea. He then learned about my family history with alcohol, and I learned that he also has two parents that are in recovery from alcoholism, having gone through AA for 30 years. So it was something that we really connected on. And what we, what we did from there was set out to make, turn this into an actual business. So we're in California and we decided to start making it happen. Fast forward about 4 years later, we've really matured the product significantly. It's not just an SMS text message system anymore. It has an Android app, it has an iOS app. And when you sign up for Sunnyside, I'll start getting into just kind of the how it works now. The first thing that we do, and this is very common with apps like Noom or Calm, we collect a bit of personal information up front. We ask you about your goals, your motivations. We ask you about your baseline drinking behaviors, and it's all private and anonymous. And from there, we're able to kind of personalize your experience using Sunnyside because we want this to feel like a really one-on-one interaction. We want it to feel like we're creating plans specifically for you. We also ask you if your goal is to ultimately quit drinking or cut back on your drinking. And regardless, whichever one you choose, Sunnyside does not bring you down to zero drinks on day one. Our goal is to find a gradual path of decreasing your drinks over time. And if you're on a moderation— if your goal is moderation, we're going to try to bring you down to the CDC recommendations, which is no more than I feel like I'm going to mess this up right now. 14 drinks a week for men and I think 7 drinks a week.

I think it's 7. Yeah.

For women. Yeah. Thank you. I'm getting mixed up with the binge drinking ones, which are a little bit different. So yeah, 14 for men and 7 for women. We should caveat though that there's a lot of studies saying that those guidelines might be outdated. Canada recently updated its recommendations to 1 drink a week and a lot of science is coming out now saying that no amount of alcohol is healthy. So we're not here to demonize alcohol. Our job is to simply, I would say, help you reach these recommended guidelines from the CDC and avoid— like, bringing yourself down slowly to a nice new baseline with a system of habits in place that work is much better than leaving your sort of drinking patterns unregulated to where they might slowly build up over time, because alcohol is one of those substances, that's really easy for it to just stack over time. And if you don't pay attention to it mindfully, it can get there for a lot of people. So we want to make sure that you kind of put a system in place of moderation, tools, best practices, and education so that you, you keep yourself healthy for the longest amount of time possible. So after the signup, um, the main sort of tenets of Sunnyside are tracking and planning. So every Sunday we offer a suggested plan for you for the week ahead. We're not condoning drinking, but We're looking at your previous patterns and recommending a slight decrease week over week over week. The longer you stay with Sunnyside, obviously the better. And then tracking drinks is really a powerful habit that we help you build. And you can track your drinks in the app, you can track them over text message— excuse me, you can track them in real time or you can track them the day after. And there's absolutely science behind the act of tracking your drinks. It creates sort of a what we call a conscious interference. If you're doing it in real time, it helps you pause. And understand and kind of evaluate if you really want that next drink. I've also found that our customers will say that tracking their drinks they thought might have been kind of silly or simple, but it turns out to be the most profound thing they've ever done when it comes to changing their behavior of alcohol around alcohol. And before starting Sunnyside, I was tracking my drinks in an Excel spreadsheet, and it was profound. It helped me sort of map patterns over time. For one, as a kind of a quantitative person, I liked to see things going down, but it also helped me start to correlate increases in drinking to things like stress, work, other behaviors and patterns in my life so that I could start to undo those correlations and start to be more proactive about how I was, how I could live a healthier life.

That is one thing, and I don't know, maybe I've missed it somehow because I haven't been using the app in the same way lately, but I think it'd be really, and maybe it's probably in there and I just don't know, so I want to ask the question. If there's a way to tag, like for example, Thanksgiving week, like obviously Thanksgiving, you'd be like around family, it's a festive time, you might be extra stressed. There's a number of things happening there. Like if you can tag, was it a party? Was it a night alone where I was stressed? You know, is there something in there like that and I've just missed it? Or is that a nice idea for a future upgrade?

It's a little bit of both, I would say.

Okay.

We actually just introduced notes, which is a way that you can, when you're tracking your drinks for the previous day, you can add a little note in there. Okay, cool. So that's the most direct way that we have it at this point. We have a little bit of work to do to make that searchable and sort of mappable in a longer period of time. And we also have those, the ability that when you type in those notes, you can send them to a coach so that the coach can respond to you and offer you like sort of a real human touch when it comes to support. Uh, great idea though. We will work on that. I will say, um, sort of in relation to that, we're working on a complete revamp of our analytics and progress tab. So it's one of those things that a lot of people have been telling us needs to improve. And I think a lot of people don't realize how much they'll use it once we have made it way better. And that's actually going out into beta, like as we speak. So we're hoping that within a month or two. We have a fully refreshed analytics tab on the app. I don't know about you, but like my Whoop analytics are killer. I look at those every morning. And with Sunnyside, we don't want to, we don't want people to like obsess about alcohol because sometimes that can feel triggering to people, but we want to surface just the right data so that it's motivating them on a daily basis to keep their quantities down and their, their, their healthy streaks alive. So We have some room to improve there. And I think, I think we're going to crush it in the next couple of months.

Well, that might be one of those questions you ask at the beginning, like, are you a data nerd or not? Because I will say one of the other things that's been a great behavior modifier for me is the Oura Ring. And I just got my notification, I think it was today, that said I've been on it for 2 years actually. And what I observe, and people will know this if they've heard the Huberman podcast or if they've dug into a little bit that there's so many negative effects of alcohol, especially when you have it excessively. But, one of the main ones is how much it affects your sleep. And so, I will notice on nights that I drink even— I mean, one is usually okay, but if I have two or more, my HRV, it's like the ring thinks I'm dead basically. It's so bad. And so, it's like that is a really motivating thing to see. So, that with being more mindful because I think One of the things that you mentioned that I just want to call out for when people go to the link and they try the service is that I think it's most effective when you track in real time. And it's kind of fun because you can just send like a little cocktail emoji on the text thread and then it kind of gives you a message like, hey, think about whether you really need to have another one or something. Whereas I feel like if I wait until the next day, I kind of just do whatever I want, whether it's 1 or 3. And, you know, I'm not having that cognitive intervention. And I think that that's really the main point. And maybe also sending texts at like 7 or 8 o'clock at night. I think sometimes when I get the text, it's either too early or too late to like have an effect on my behavior. But anyway, that's just a Cheryl thing. That might not be for everybody, but it's just kind of interesting because the, I think the most effective behavior interventions are when you can catch yourself in the act, kind of like a dog or something. Oh, I like that. You know, you gotta like get it right then.

I, I totally love that. I, I totally appreciate that. We, um, first of all, I just want to say you can actually adjust the timing of the messages now in the, in your— Aha!

So I need to do that. Okay, that's good to know. You see, this is good because when people try it, they'll know that they can change these things. Where I've just been using it for so long, I kind of like forget to even go in there and see what's new.

Absolutely. Um, I also find that tracking drinks in real time is more beneficial for me. Um, but I also have a tendency that, um, to not to try to like avoid it. So I think that tracking in real time can feel like a challenge for a lot of people. But to your point, if you can get that habit ingrained, it really will start to make change because you'll become more conscious of the drinks that you're having. And we do want you to do that at Sunnyside. We, we know that that's actually the more scientific route is to track in real time. It creates that conscious interference. Although like you can't always do that if you're out at a party or something.

Especially if you're trying, like I, you're trying to be mindful, like be in the moment with your friends or something when you're doing that. So it's, there is a little bit of a conflict there. But anyway, maybe there's something else.

I mean, to that point, there's so many strategies we can talk about, about being mindful in the moment, such as rotating with non-alcoholic drinks. It's the most simple thing. But probably my favorite when going into a social situation, I'm just gonna drop this little nugget here, is to not have an alcoholic drink first. It sounds so simple, but when everyone else goes to order the first drink or pour the first drink, just don't have alcohol and let that first non-alcoholic drink just settle for 30, 40 minutes and take a chance to mindfully settle into the party or the vibe that you're in. And it really changes the game in terms of feeling like I'm speaking for myself here because I have this sort of tendency of chasing the next drink. Because once alcohol gets in my system, I'm like, okay, let's go, like, let's get more alcohol. But if I can slow that down and kind of observe this, the world around me a little bit more, I might even decide just to not drink after that. Because, um, this— I— a lot of us have a drink because of social anxiety, whether we think we do or not. It helps us settle into that situation. And if you don't have a drink while everyone else is you'll realize you don't really need that drink because everyone will start kind of vibing around you. So that's, that's a way to do that. I love that. I like it a lot. It's like a little mini challenge. And if you decide you still want to have a drink after that, you haven't really lost any time. You can—

Yeah, I love it. Still make it happen. Yes. Speaking of time, before we run out of time, I really would love to get to the part where you have this thing coming up in January, because when this airs, it will be in December. People will start thinking about New Year's resolutions and Dry January has become such a thing that I'm sure that will be on some people's minds. So could you share how you guys are kind of celebrating January with your app?

Yeah, this time went by really fast.

Um, I know, I'd love to have you back.

I mean, yeah, there's so much to dig into here and we could, we could spend a whole 45 minutes on like techniques. We could spend time on science in the future. But yes, Dry January. So let me start by saying that, um, 75% of US adults will partake in Dry January in one way or another. That's what the last couple years of surveys have said. And a lot of people are saying that because they're like, yeah, I'm going to cut back a little bit, or I'm going to track my drinks in a spreadsheet. And I think most people say, I'm going to do Dry January, and they fall off. And from what we've seen, people fall off around the day 7 or day 10, just because you get to that first weekend and motivation starts lacking and it just becomes stressful. What we offer at Sunnyside is a system for doing Dry January. So we call it our ch— challenge, and it changes the way that you start with Sunnyside. Normally what we would do is take your data and then propose a plan of sort of diminishing drinks over time. With the Dry January challenge, you get to go right into a preset template of like a commitment for yourself. So the cool thing that we do at Sunnyside is we call it Dry-ish January, and we want to offer you 4 different, 4 or 5 different challenges that you can choose. The first is going fully dry. About 32— I want to make sure I get this right— about 32% of people that did have done our challenges choose the fully dry path. The reason that's so interesting is because a full 68% actually opted to do the non-fully dry pass. And to me, this shows that when we talk about Dry January as a dry challenge, that's actually excluding so many people from even trying a challenge in January. What we want to do is make Dry January feel super inclusive to anybody that has an inkling that they might want to drink a little bit less. We'll provide you a fully dry challenge if you want. We'll provide you a challenge where you can cut your drinks back by 50%, by 30%. There's a challenge to only drink on, to only drink on Friday and Saturday night. We call that like the work night challenge. And then you can fully customize. And by doing this, we open the top of the funnel as big as possible for people that want to make change. And we actually studied about 30,000 participants in our Dry January challenge in the past, and we found that it didn't matter which challenge you signed up for, you still saw a significant decrease in your drinking over the course of that month. And that's the crux of this is like, if you think that you want to make a change around your alcohol and you think that January might be the right time to do it, come join us for the Sunnyside Drys January Challenge and you won't be disappointed because we're not going to pressure you to quit. We're going to hold your hand. We're going to give you tracking and planning tools. We're going to give you a lively community where you can get support and have a little bit of fun chit-chatting with people. And we also have real human coaches. But I just want to say it's totally optional. A lot of people don't want to chat with other humans around alcohol, and that's fine. And it's also anonymous and discreet. So like, you're not going to see anybody that you know in this community. Also, Sunnyside has a 15-day free trial, which you will get for signing up for Dry January. And after that, the subscription is only $99 a year. We do encourage you to try the annual plan, but if you want quarterly or monthly, just message your coach and we'll make the switch for you. So for less than the cost of one drink per month, one or two drinks per month, we will help you save money, live a healthier life, cut out some calories, improve your sleep, and never pressure you to quit drinking. So that's the promise of Sunnyside. And we expect a huge number of people to start in January, and we'd love to have as many people as possible join.

And two of those things that you just mentioned are especially relevant to this audience because a lot of people come to Heal Nurture around, like, weight loss kinds of things. And that is one of the things that I noticed around, uh, when I— I can't— I think you've always had this in there, maybe with the app, was it— it would say how many calories you've saved by not drinking that week. Um, so if you're looking to lose weight in the new year, cutting back on your alcohol is one really simple way to facilitate that process. You mentioned good sleep. What was the third thing? I lost it.

Well, I have—

was another really good one. Save, save money. Save money.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, everybody wants to save money. That's That's one of the better things too.

We, we have a customer that saved $23,000 on cutting back on alcohol after like 2 years of using Sunnyside. So, wow. Once you get into it, the savings are real. I also wanna say like people experience much improved mental health and physical health as well. And I think mental health is one, a really important topic to me and probably you and a lot of other folks. So you will experience a huge wealth of benefits from taking a step back from your drinking. And, um, one of the coolest stats we have from this survey is that 92% of participants— no, it's even— it's higher than that, I think it was like 96%— um, said that they are going to continue using Sunnyside into February. So we want to make sure it's not just a flash-in-the-pan challenge where you slingshot back to your old habits. We want to make sure you put a lasting system in place.

Yeah. And like I said, I, I mean, I don't know, I'd have to go back and look when I first signed up, but I, I've used it for at least 2 years, if not 3 or 4, because I first, like I said, became aware of it during the pandemic. So I think it's a super awesome tool. I love that you created this. I love how much you're helping people with this. And, um, yeah, thanks again for coming today. And so again, for the free trial, go to healnourishgrow.com/sunnyside. Any final words of wisdom, or do you have a personal social account where people can follow along with your fun times or any other links you want to mention? I had time for that.

You can follow us on Instagram or visit Cheryl's link. My personal bit of wisdom is if you— like, you know if you should be seeking a healthier relationship with alcohol, and if you're feeling that inside of you, it's not as scary as it sounds. We at Sunnyside will help you take baby steps, and we're going to do it in such a kind way that I think you're going to really appreciate having this digital anonymous approach. So if you're feeling it inside and this podcast is resonating with you, come sign up. It's our passion, and we'd love to have you join the community.

Awesome. All right, thanks again so much, and I hope to chat again with you in the future.

Thanks so much, Cheryl.