Yeah, so Back in October 2012 I was working in the telecom industry and I had gotten involved in one of the first CICD efforts at my workplace And I had my project lead come by and and explained to me like what the current situation was and he said So Eric we make releases roughly every six months, right and Development of those releases typically start at around a year before the actual release But the verification department doesn't really get started until about three months before the release date So I was thinking then well sure this surely this means that sometimes the developers have to wait a long long time Between developing the feature and getting feedback on it worst case it can be several months So if they get a bug reported to them they have to make the mother of all context which is to try to get back into what they were doing and If you are anything like me and having a problem Like remembering what you did this morning imagine trying to remember what you did seven or eight months ago it's tough and My project lead then said so this Delay between development and verification. We need to get that down from a couple of months to a couple of hours And I'm thinking this is a crazy big step But it turns out and I've been shown over and over again since then that the step is actually not that crazy But you do need good inputs. You do need to know where your bottlenecks are and for that we need metrics So I am Eric Stanis on and I'm Andrea Frittoli and Yeah, so today we are going to welcome to Building DevOps metrics for your choice of CD tools through CD events So today we are going to talk about CD events and going to introduce them We are going to talk about DevOps metrics and Also, we're going to discuss how the two technology actually can fit together Thank you, Andrea. So I'm gonna start by talking a little bit about the CD events project So what we're trying to achieve on a conceptual level is to define a common language for communication in CICD solutions and surrounding areas What we are concretely doing to try to achieve this is two things. We are developing a specification for events in CD and We are building a number of software development kits or SDKs for Producing sending and receiving these events And let's dig a little bit into the specification first So in the specification we define a number of events. They can be related to source code They can be related to pipelines. They can be related to deployments or other areas that we want to cover For each event we define like what are the mandatory and optional parameters that Both the the sender might want to communicate and the receivers might want to know about this message and Also, since we build on top of cloud events, which is a CNCF project We also provide some guidelines for how to use the fields that are provided by cloud events when you're sending these events So based on the specification we can then produce a number of SDKs to help people build Or yeah, send and receive events in in their own languages and platforms If anyone attended the excellence talk by Edison eski yesterday talking about generating clients from schemas That is also something that we want to do So Andrea has actually been working on the schema quite a lot lately and we have a goal to be able to do that But we're not right there yet But with these SDKs things like producing a new pipeline run queued events Can be done without having to like manually put together a JSON object So you can use the SDK to create your message and send it So then with these SDKs and application code to produce events We can then work on Integrations and proof of concepts to try out the things that we are defining them and see What are the Attributes that are missing what are the the information that is needed by an observer or a receiver of this message And it sort of feeds back into a cycle a development cycle actually. I probably shouldn't call it a cycle It's more like a reverse tornado. Just trying to pick up thread some information or nuggets of ideas and useful stuff and Create some order out of it. That's what we're doing And when I say we it's it's not just the the seed events team Which is like responsible for and maintaining the specification We actually get a lot of help from people involved in other CICD projects So at least one of the SDKs that we have and quite a lot of the proof of concepts and integrations Have been built by members of other communities that we have collaborated with But let's talk a little bit about what we want to achieve with cd events. Why are we doing this? We have covered this in more detail in previous talks that we've had So for the purpose of this session There are two goals that I want to focus on one is interoperability So making things work together by providing a common language So switching out a tool should not be hell. It should be quite easy Because the tools are all speaking the same language The second one which is more relevant for this talk is observability So providing directives on what to send and when to send To tell the surrounding world what you are doing and what you are achieving And through this observability comes a great opportunity for building metrics And we have some metrics that we're going to talk about today Andrea, so do you want to talk about those? Yes Thanks Eric for the great introduction to cd events So today we are going to focus on a special kind of metrics which we call DevOps metrics And yeah, while DevOps practices are becoming ubiquitous different organization There are different points in their journey to DevOps And going continuing in this journey requires a continuous investment of resources And so this organization needs to to understand Is they're getting The investment paid being paid off basically if they're getting a return for if they're investing resources in the right area If they're focusing their team on the right tasks Apart from these I mean the recent surge in Software supply chain attacks is not making things easier because it puts extra pressure on the team to like starting bringing security left And implementing pipeline in a secure way and making sure that the the build system are Approved and secure and so forth So I wanted to mention the state of the DevOps report by published by puppet since 2014 they have been looking at how Organization has been implementing DevOps practices Yeah in their organizations and What they do they divide or the group organization in three groups like low and medium and high Depending on this level of success. They have in their in this implementation and something that they have seen over the years almost 10 years now is that there is a strong correlation between this level of success and The numbers they get on specific on a specific set of metrics So how well they are doing on a specific set of key metrics that they have identified And to calculate these metrics this DevOps metrics, you need data and as you can imagine Getting this data doesn't scale very well with Increasing number of repositories and teams and applications So if you have one you may go and collect this data manually But you have a larger organization. It doesn't work that well So what kind of data we are talking about So the four metrics that the state of the DevOps report refers to are the Dora metrics You probably or may have heard about them They've been developed by the Dora group, which is DevOps research and assessment group I will just forget the name And what these metrics are Develop the deployment frequency. So how often do we deploy into production? Lead time for changes. So how long it takes for a change in the code to actually get in production? Change failure rate How often does a change in production causes an issue or a failure in in our application or service? And finally the time to restore the service.  Working Nicely and something that is apparent Looking at this list already Is that no single tool is actually going to be able to provide the data for all the metrics? I mean the if you look at the cd landscape, it's relatively fragmented We have tools which focus vertically on areas of your entire pipeline So you will need to use a combination of tools to collect all this data And here is where cd events we think can help Because on the producing side. So when you're creating the events it provides It provides Kind of a a minimum model for the tools For a minimum data model for the tools that they can produce to be interoperable with the rest of the world And on the receiving side it makes Injusting the data consuming it storing it and processing it easier And what we believe is that For cd events we can foster an ecosystem of tools that can process this data And as long as more tools become compatible with cd events Then it will also lower the barrier for Introducing new tools or switching out tools because let's say you have your setup with Your tool chain and your Workflows running and you're collecting metrics and you decide to introduce a new tool or switch out one of the tools As long as the new tool produces cd events Then it should seamlessly integrate with existing metric collection that you have in place So let's look a bit then at how we Produce the metrics that andrea talked about The first one we're going to look at is probably the most straightforward one and its deployment frequency Essentially just counting how often and how many times we deploy So let's pretend that we have a setup like this We have our yeah, we have an environment a production environment running some form of service We're going to use potato for this example because it's it's fun and um Yeah, we have a new version of this image coming in And we want to deploy it And we will say that we both want to deploy Yeah, we want to upgrade the existing environment and we want to deploy a new environment and and install the service there Through some orchestrator it could be tecton controlling cube ctl It could be argocd spinnaker captain something else that helps us Do this orchestration What we provide in cd events then are two related events one called service upgraded for when use upgraded an existing environment and one called service deployed for when you deploy a new environment And just essentially counting those messages An observer has enough information to be able to count deployment frequency So that was not very difficult. Let's move on to something slightly more involved So the next one is lead time for changes. How long does it take us? To go from an approved changed to this change actually being built packaged uploaded and deployed So let's go through that journey. We start with the change. We have the same observer as we had last time So first thing we're going to do is we're going to need to make this change available in our repository So we involve scm We Create a pull request we get it approved and when it's merged A change merged event is sent telling the surrounding world Some information about like what is the repository where this change has happened What is the Shah of the commit things like that that can help uniquely identify this change down the line Next we're Probably not going to just run the source code. We need to build it And as part of the build or as the last step of the build We have some sort of artifact Created it could be a jar file. It could be a container or an image rather But when that is available, we send an artifact packaged event and this connects back to the source So we know what source we built or we know the change that we built this from And it also identifies in this case the image But just having an image On the build server doesn't really help anyone So next step is to connect it to a registry So we upload the image and then the registry can send an artifact published event So this announces to the rest of the world that this artifact is now ready to be used Which means that it can be picked up by an orchestrator Who can deploy as we saw in the previous picture maybe upgrade something and then send a service upgraded event And with these we again have enough information To declare lead time for changes But Andrea, I think we've had just about enough slides for some time Are we brave enough to demo this live? Yeah, let's give it a try Okay, so first I'll quickly introduce the demo setup that we're using For these two metrics So I can use the pointer No Maybe Okay, so here in the top corner. We have the sources of events. So we're using gt as an scm So where it's we do our code changes pull requests and so forth We have a container registry where we are storing our container images And we have a kubernetes cluster running on ibm cloud where actually the entire thing is running And we have a nice streak through k native to take events from the api The api server in kubernetes and convert them in Cloud events So we get all these sources of data And we feed them into a project called tecton triggers which allows to react to basically htp requests with adjacent payload and through the go sdk plus some Other tooling that we created here we call cd eventer. We basically generate our cd event So here in the middle there, this is a cloud events broker. This is powered by k native eventing And so basically every message every cd event that is produced Is deposited here on the broker. It's like a channel And the nice feature of these is that then you can define triggers and triggers are like subscriptions So you can say you can decide how many clients and which client will receive which messages and you can filter logic and so forth so And for the for this Demo specifically We have a trigger here that takes all the cd events and send them to another instance of tecton Which basically allows us to to visualize them so that for the purpose of the demo We can see those events and they are actually being stored in htp But you could have another Database where you store all your events a document database or something like that Or these are other tools that you can use to visualize events So let's see If We can Show the demo so I need to mirror display first Hopefully this is readable Okay, so we uh, eric Discuss presented two metrics. The first one is the deployment frequency So the first thing that we are going to do Is to Deploy an application. So we are using the pod data application. This is the container image That we're using and I'm just going to create a deployment From that image right So we can have a look Isn't he fantastically cute? And here it is in version 0.1.0 And the other thing that we can do we can open the tecton dashboard And here in the dashboard See a bit bigger You can see A service upgraded or actually a service deployed event here That was sent Just a few seconds ago And if we look into the event Okay, so we have the context with the type In the custom data, we have all the Data we put all the data that was in the original event So this is coming from the Kubernetes API Um and finally if I scroll to the bottom, this is the The key the core data model that we are providing. So this is a subject And the subject is a service the source. This is the IP address of our Kubernetes API service Um, the ID is the idea of the subject. The subject is the application that we deployed So in this case, it's a deployment. And so this is the whole path to the deployment And the key is that the combination of ID and service must be unique So it must be uniquely identifying the resource that we are talking about Additionally, we get extra context like the artifact ID. So this is the image that we just deployed with the SHA At the environment where it was Deployed and for the demo we are using the namespace. So this is the Kubernetes namespace where we deployed the application all right, um so and you can see I tested this demo a few times and I get the nice thing is get I get a number of Deployed and upgrade service deployed and service upgraded events They've just stored in at cd and I can see them here And I could run some queries and get some data about how often am I deploying and how often am I upgrading the service? um It's a bit uh more verbose That you might expect because in this case I deployed the application and I got some service upgraded events And this is because we are Basically tapping directly from the Kubernetes API service, which every time there is a small change in the deployment definition The status updates then it sends an event. So we get that event as well Uh, but let's continue. So from here, um the other The other metric that we wanted to talk about Is the lead time for changes. So how much time it takes For a change to get into production. So first thing we have to actually create a change Um, and so that I'm creating a branch and Opening the doka file And we're going to run a different version of the potato application. So changing to version zero one one Okay, I'm pushing the branch Right, we get a handy link here And open up the git t interface We can see the change that was made here looks good. So let's create a pull request Right, um, so in git t is configured with webbooks that are pointing to our environment or tecton triggers So now that if I merge this Change and let's switch back to the tecton dashboard Yeah, you can see it's running now. Um, we just got a change merged event. Okay, and similarly to before We have the type in the context In the custom data, we have the original event from git t Which all the details from the pull request and the owner and the repo, etc And here we get the slice of the data model that we define a standard on city event side So we have the id which is the git shot of the change that was just merged The source which is the url to our git t instance Slash the owner and repo so that again the combination of these two uniquely identifies this subject Um, and we get some extra content like the repository id So next step then, um, we have a change Um that we have made so we want to run a build With the version so this is going to take a second, but not too much. Hopefully Uh, the build script is going to Create a container image a new version of the container image And it's going to send an artifact packaged event about it And then it's also going to push this new container image to the container registry The container registry as a web book configured It's a nice feature found in the azure container registry. Actually you can configure webbooks So it's coming down to triggers again, and we are converting into cd events Okay, so we have the new container image here. I can set up To the new image. All right, um Let's go back to the dash to the tecton dashboard And we have here two new events artifact packaged and artifact published As we expected in the context we have the event type Um, right and our subject is an artifact The source is the script that I just executed The id here is the artifact id So this is not yet in the spec the format But we are considering using pearl package url as a format Because in this case it's a docker image But it could be another type of artifact could be a jar file or anything else And we want to make sure that we have like a consistent format for addressing artifacts Um, what is interesting here is that for the artifact package we get a link to the last change So this is a gitsha and the repo Of the last change that it is included in this artifact So it's a bit simplifying the model here We are considering an artifact that comes from a single repository in future We plan to extend to multiple repositories And so this allows us to link the change event With the artifact package The other event is the artifact published So this comes from the container registry The container registry does not necessarily know about the repository this comes from So that's why we have two events to create the link So we have the event type This is the in the custom data we get again What was coming from the container registry originally And here we have the pearl Which is consistent with what we've seen before And the source which is the This instance of the azure container registry Right, so we have got the build done So the next thing that we want to do is to actually Update our deployment so we can use kubectl Set image on the deployment we created before And set the image to the new images we just built All right, and if we do that and go back to our friend here There you go, we got the one one version with arm raised and shoes We have service upgraded events This is similar to the service deployed so we got the type We got the Kubernetes API server data And we got here the artifact ID and environment production So these events basically put together They give us enough information So we can calculate how long it took for the original change We've made to get deployed into production Right, so and we can do this for every change that we do In our system or in our multiple repositories And calculate this metric consistently Right, that's all for the demo That means which back Okay, so with this we've seen the first two Dora metrics and we see them in practice There are other two metrics you wanted to discuss And that we are working on The first one is the change failure rate So this is how often a change that we are implementing Is actually causing an issue in production So this is interesting from event point of view So let's dig into it So for the number So for this we could consider this metric As a ratio between the number of deployments That we are doing and the number of issues Or incidents that we are seeing in production And for the number of deployments We already have this information For the number of incidents we don't I mean we could look into the versions That we are deploying and make some assumption And say, okay, actually we are rolling back To a previous version So that means that there was an issue But this does not give us a complete picture Because counting incident Actually requires more information As incidents may come from different kind of causes So it could be that there is an issue In the application that I'm deploying Let's say I'm putting out a new port data server With the wrong color of the shoes No one likes the application That's the file a bug, that's an issue It could be that there is a configuration error So we are working for the demo In Kubernetes type of environment Maybe there is an issue in the manifest They put the wrong shot Something doesn't work Or it could be an environment error So something may be external to the application But the tendency we depend on That is not working anymore Or it could be something else And also who can discover the incident So who can produce the information About incident happening Again, it can be an orchestrator Like Kubernetes or whatever system we use It can be a monitoring system That is looking, watching the application So something is wrong Maybe their performance is degraded It can be the application itself Or it could be an end user Or a DevOps team Which is looking at the application And say, okay, well, something is wrong here So how can we deal with all this kind of possible Sources and type of incidents Again, we want to solve this And try and solve this with an incident event So this is not part of the CD event spec yet But we want to extend the spec To include a new bucket of events We group our events in different areas And this would be a new kind of bucket of events That would allow us to model this kind of incident And so you would have, like we described Incidents from the operator From a monitor From the application itself Or from an external users All going to an observer So we would collect these incidents And we would need to make We will need to make sure That we have enough context in this incident To be able to kind of correlate them with each other So that we can know how many incidents we actually have And produce the change failure rate out of that And the next metric, similarly, time to restore service We need to know about restoring the service So when things come back to be working fine And again, what can restore the service We could change the version Roll back the image to the previous version Or install a new version You could have a configuration change Scaling up the service Maybe it's under pressure Or adding new hardware even Or maybe it's something completely external That is solving the incident Oops, sorry, too quick And so the key thing is that We need to have enough information To correlate this back to the sources of the incident So we'll need to make sure that in the data model We have things like Well, the environment ID The artifact that is deployed with the version So we have this enough information To be able to connect these events To the previous event And that will make it possible to calculate the metrics And yeah, we think that A lot of the value from CD events Is that we will have a common way To address this data model So these fields to indicate To indicate what the environment ID is What an artifact ID is So that you can reason across Events that may come from many different sources And again with events in place If we look this on the similar diagram as before We can see resolution type of events Coming from the different sources And we collect those as an observer And finally we can calculate the time to restore Something we want to mention as well There is a project called Captain within the CNCF And they use cloud events today And they have some modeling around this type of events So we are discussing with the project To see if there is a surface of the events that Or a fraction of the events that they defined today That we could use as a standard for CD events as well So we look forward next time to be able to demo these as well Thank you Andrea It's been a little bit sweaty this afternoon I'm not sure if you noticed But I think network stability took an early launch today But it came back so it's really nice that it worked But we're nearing the end of our talk So we would like to leave you with A few messages to take away First is that metrics are tricky There are some really important metrics That we want to be able to capture But there are also a whole lot of different sources Of data for these metrics And it's our firm belief That having a common language really helps here So rather than having to understand 10 or 50 or 100 different types of events Or hooks or anything like that If we can get it into one language In one set of events Then observing this is or can be a lot easier And that is what we would like to achieve with CD events But we are not going to be able to do that alone So in the demo Andrea showed translators Between existing web hooks or event type things to CD events We have had support from some communities To get various solutions to natively produce CD events But those are the things that are going to be needed For CD events to have any level of success And for people to be able to benefit From the observability and interoperability that it provides So what me and Andrea would really like Is for anyone who is interested in the work that we're doing Want to read more or want to get involved To go to cdevents.dev There you can find the spec You can find the SDKs You can find our communication channels You can find GitHub and all that stuff So yeah, we are looking forward to getting in touch with you With that, we would like to thank you all for attending the talk I've been Erik Stanensson This is Andrea Frittoli And we would like to open up the floor for questions If anyone has a question, I have a mic here And thanks everyone for being with us on a Friday afternoon After a long conference week We're all kind of exhausted then, so I appreciate it Yes Yes


This 2013 Ram 1500 Quad Cab Short Box is stock number 12495Z. We're here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. You're new and used light-duty truck and Ram headquarters. This 2013 Ram 1500 has the 5.7-liter V8 Hemi engine. This truck has been fully-safetyed and inspected by our service shop for the state of Wisconsin inspection process. It has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off and this one is 100% ready to go. This thing is ultra clean all the way around inside and out. And that's exactly what we're going to do in this video. Go inside underneath, check out under the hood, start it up. Black clear coats the color and we shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer, tablet, smartphone, or television, I highly recommend turning them on right now because it is your best way to check out the quality, condition, and options on this particular truck before seeing it in person. And if you like the video and how we do things here at Summit Auto in the upper right-hand part of the screen is a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Click that and then click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Automotive. Comes with the factory chrome step bars, the 20-inch alloy rims with the chrome covers, and it has Goodyear Wrangler SRA P27560R20s and they have just a little bit under half the tread left on them. But still good tread on there. Front fender is in nice shape, no major dents or dings on there. And the headlight lenses are in excellent condition as well, no cloudiness or anything. Front bumper is in great condition too, no dents or dings on there. The hood is in excellent shape. And this truck is pretty much like this all the way around. And there's a reason for it. There's only 21,000 miles on this vehicle. Passenger side front rim, excellent shape as well, no scuffs or scrapes. And wait till you just take a look at the underbody on this, which we're going to do in just a second. As you go down this side of the truck, take note of how clean the body is, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. And we take these HD videos. So if you are far away or even if you're close by and just cannot make the trip down, but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can see the truck, hear the truck, and have confidence in the vehicle that you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises. And you can make a smart and informed buying decision from wherever you're at. Very nice down that side. This back rim is in excellent shape as well. And the back tires have just as much tread as the front tires. It has the plastic wheel well liners, which are really nice because it keeps your frame and underbody looking as clean as this one. Which is amazing. Looks like it's brand new underneath there. Cab corners and lower rockers are all in excellent condition as well as are the step bars. Pass in your side box, really nice shape, no dents or dings on that. And as you come around to the back where your bumper is in great condition, you do get the chrome tipped dual rear exhaust full towing package, which includes the receiver hitch four pin and seven pin wiring. And that tailgate is in really nice shape as well. Does have a locking tailgate back up camera. Beds in pretty nice shape. Does have just a little bit of light duty usage, but nothing too bad. Tailgate shuts nice and solidly. And as you go down the driver's side, just as clean as that passenger side, does have the mud flaps on here, which is a nice feature. Keeps your lower rockers looking good. And for full disclosure, this back rim, really nice shape as well. The driver's side door is looking good. Does have the heated power mirrors built in directional signals on there. Inside the big horn package gives you the gray cloth interior. This one has the 40, 20, 40 split bench seating in the front. The seats are in excellent shape. This truck smells very clean inside. I don't think it's ever been smoked in. Has a power driver seat with lumbar, factory floor mats, auto headlamps, power windows, power locks and power mirrors. These mirrors do power fold in. I always like showing both sides so that you know that both sides are working properly. We'll hop inside the truck here, turn the ignition on, check out the mileage of the radio and everything that this truck has to offer on the interior. And once again, this truck only has 21,449 miles on it. Really incredibly low miles for a 2013. Instrument cluster is very nice and clean. Comes with the heated leather wrap steering wheel, cruise controls on the right, Bluetooth and information center controls on the left, audio controls on the back of the steering wheel. This one does have the six speed automatic transmission with the optional tap shift. It does have the 8.43C radio, which gives you AM, FM and Sirius XM radio capabilities. You can do your heated seats and heated steering wheel here as well. And it does come with your climate control there. You can do the climate controls on the radio or you can do them down here.  You can also do your heated steering wheel and heated seat buttons right there as well and your stability control and tow hull mode. 115 volt, 150 watt plug-in. This is also where your backup camera shows up and that's working nicely. You can see just how nice and clean that carpeting and passenger side format are. Passenger side seat just as clean as the driver side and once again, smells very clean inside this truck. I don't think it's ever been smoked in. The headliner is in excellent shape. You do get map lights up there, power sliding rear window button, home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems and assist and 911 buttons in the rear view mirror. We'll take a quick look at the back seats and then we'll start it up and take a look under the hood. The back seats are just as clean as the front seats, no rips or tears back here. It does have the latch child safety system for any child car seats you may have. Power sliding rear window. Once again, those seats, really nice shape. It does have a load floor underneath these seats, which is nice. If you've got muddy boots or tools, put them on there. You're not going to get your seats dirty. Or if you've got pets put both sides down, they get a nice flat place to lay. Then you get storage underneath there as well. This truck does have side current airbags and you do get child safety locks on the back doors. Bottoms of the doors all look really good. And we will start it up and take a look under the hood. Starts right up. No check engine lights or anything like that. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. And hopefully from this HD video, you will have been able to verify the quality and condition of this truck all the way around inside and out. Super clean, super low miles. Good luck finding a 2013 this nice. Under the hood, we have the 5.7 liter V8 Hemi engine. Engine based, very clean runs, very smooth. Once again, this truck has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop as a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. There's your mission sticker. And this truck is 100% ready to go.  And I would highly recommend this truck from a quality and condition standpoint, especially for the age on it. And to see more pictures of this truck or one of our other 450 new and used cars, trucks, SCVs, minivans, Wranglers, half tons, three quarter tons, one tons. You name it, we got it. Go to that website right there at www.summitauto.com. Full pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle from two locations all at summitauto.com. And if you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. Click the bell notifications. You'll get updates on the videos we do each and every day here at Summit Automotive. In fact, in a second, you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on the upper left. Link to more Ram 1500 truck videos like this one on the upper right. A link to this vehicle on our website on the lower left. And a link to one of our latest YouTube videos on the lower right. Click those checks us out. And we're super excited to help you with this ultra ultra clean 2013 Ram 1500 quad cab short box, big horn, and black clear coat. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe, and share.


BOOM! Hello my friends! And wow! You know what today is? It is December 31st 2018 and I'm going to try to squeeze in one more video. So let's do this. Guess what? This video that you are watching right now is my 70th video of 2018. Which kind of blows my mind because it takes a lot of time to make each one of these videos. But you know what? It also takes a lot of time to watch these videos. So thank you all so much for being part of this channel. All my new subscribers and old subscribers. I've been making YouTube videos since 2006. Hello and welcome to Out There! It's crazy that I'm still doing it and I'm about to turn 40. Can you believe that? Do you see all this gray hair? I'm becoming an old man. But I don't care that I'm an old guy YouTuber. I take pride in it. And I really do enjoy creating these videos for you to watch. And I get emails all the time from people saying that my videos have inspired them in some certain way to get off their couches to go biking or running or they've lost a lot of weight or they spend more time just outside. And I really believe that being outside makes us humans a lot happier.  My channel has grown quite a bit this year. And this is the first year where I've really seen big growth. You know I've been making videos for like since 2006. And my channel has just been creeping up and creeping up and creeping up. But this year it's really kind of, bam, gone up pretty fast. At this time last year I had 10,000 subscribers. Today I have 32,000 subscribers. And even though that's a pretty small channel, it's exciting to have that audience. To know that every time I hit the publish button on my computer that it's gonna go out to 30,000 people. And that makes me happy. Alright, let's get into what we all came here for. A 2018 year in review. Oh man, I'm gonna start out with an adventure early on in the year that really set the tone for the entire year. Alright here I am at the bus station. I'm gonna take the bus to the Denver International Airport. And that was the adventure to the Copper Canyons in Mexico to run the Caballo Blanco race.  But I had never been to the Copper Canyons with Ali Geiser. So I'm sitting here on the bus and this girl sits next to me and she's like, I want to go to Mexico. Actually it didn't happen like that. But this was a very last minute decision. This is my friend Ali. We were at a bar last night. I told her what I was doing. And she's like, I want to go. I essentially met her the night before. And I was like, wow, this girl is adventurous.  Well, it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Yeah. And I'm feeling really confident still that it was the right thing to do. It will be the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do. It's gonna be the best adventure of your life. And at the time, I had no romantic inclinations. She was just gonna be a girl that was part of a 20-person trip down to the Copper Canyons. But slowly and surely, I got to know Ali better. How you feeling Ali? Feeling good. Jumped in some beautiful waterfalls. And I was like, this girl, there's something to this girl. She is really cool. And what more romantic place to fall in love than the Copper Canyons. It is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been on the planet. She turned out to be a pretty awesome runner. I had no idea she was such an awesome runner. But she got fifth place overall for women in the race, which was very cool. And that's essentially when I fell in love with Ali, when we fell in love with each other and that set the tone for the adventures to come. I love life. What do you love? Coffee. Good deal. Right after I met Ali, I left for Cuba. These are my good friends, Dominic and Dana. And together, we're going to ride bikes around the western Cuba. We rode bikes from Havana, all along the northern coast on the western side to Vinales. And it was a great trip. I had been to Cuba before on my bike, but I was alone. This time, we got to share the adventure together. And that's what really made it magical. It's so much more fun to travel with your dear friends. And we stayed in people's homes. It's one of the safest places to ride a bike. There's like not much traffic at all. There's lots of horse drawn buggies. And it's just like taking a step back in time in Cuba. I love it. I love it so far, Ryan. Thank you for bringing me to Cuba to ride my bicycle. And then on our way back into Havana, when we finished our little one week loop, guess who was waiting for us? My mom was there. And Xantha, Dana's wife was there. And so we had a great time together. All as one big unit. And then they went home and my mom and I continue traveling to a town called Trinidad.   And now she finally gets to breathe a little easier. She gets to wake up late in the mornings and she gets to do whatever the heck she wants because she's retired now. And today is an exciting day because it's my mom's last day of work at the city forever. Is this kind of a surreal moment? Yeah, it feels so right. Feels so good. One of my mom's goals with being retired now is to go on more little adventures with her family. And that's exactly what we did. We all jumped in the cars and headed down to Southern Colorado to visit the great sand dunes. My mom had never been there. I'd only been there once many, many years ago. But what made this adventure special is that we all did it as a family. My brother's wife, Haley was there with their two cute, super cute little kids, Carter and Brindley. Are you making one of your videos? Yeah, is that okay with you? All right, I got to I got to wax it up because I want I want excessive speed. All right, mom. That was a short ride. But it was a fun ride. A younger brother, Ethan was there with his wife, Melissa, who was pregnant. They have a baby now, but we're talking, you know, back in time, she was pregnant then. And we just had ourselves a great time at the sand dunes. Your whole face is covered in sand. In May, I took Ali down to Mexico for her birthday.  It's this beautiful freshwater lagoon about two hours south of Tulum on the Yucatan Peninsula. And this place blew us away. Isn't this crazy? Look at that sunset. Ali, look where we are. At the end of May was the Boulder Boulder 10k race. Right? It's time to run. Can't wait. It's gonna hurt.  My absolute favorite day of the year. I think this was my 30th time running this race. I started doing it when I was six years old. And this is the race that got me into running as a little dude. Right after that, I went to Montreal to cover a very, very huge bike event. And you know me, I kind of like bikes. I don't know how these organizers did it, but they made the sunset right on this street. It's beautiful. And now it's time to talk about the granddaddy of adventures this year, an adventure that will forever hold a very, very special place in my heart. And that is the adventure called love cycles. A lot of you probably watched all of those videos I made 35 of them. It was a very well covered event. And to give you a little backstory, I was gonna ride across the country by myself like I have done many times before Trek was going to sponsor the ride. And I was going to ride the checkpoint and just do my thing across the country and make videos like I usually do. But then Ali came into the picture and I was like, I don't want to leave Ali for three months this summer. I just met this beautiful girl. I can't just leave her. So what did I do? I invited her and Trek said, bring her along. We love girls on bikes. So that's exactly what we did. Starting in early June, we left a Storia, Oregon, and we rode our bikes all the way to New York City about 3500 miles away. I made you this burrito Ali. For me? This is for you. You really love me. Our goal was to travel a lot of the back roads and see hidden places of America we had never been to before. I keep on saying that this campsites the best site, but this one really might be the best site. Look at that. That is insane. Ali, we scored once again every single day. The good world is taking care of us. This is incredible. The whole goal of the ride, you know, it was titled love cycles was to learn from people about love and what makes relationships work. And we met wonderful humans all across the United States. And these people opened up their hearts to us total strangers. We'd known them for a matter of minutes and we'd be like, Hey, do you have any love advice for us? And sometimes they're like, Yeah, of course I do. And it was really fun to hear the stories from such a wide variety of people on the subject of love because that's something we can all jump on board with. You know, there's no division. There's no left or right or conservative or, you know, liberal. It's love. Everybody loves love and we all love someone or something. And we all have something to say about it. And that adventure with Ali by my side for three months all day every day sleeping in a tiny tent was something that we will never forget. It was absolutely incredible in so many ways. And thank you all for following love cycles. That was really, that was a big project. And we put a lot of our heart and souls into that project. And I think it turned out pretty well. This is one of those trips in life, which is an absolute dream come true to be able to do something like this with somebody you love. It may sound crazy, but riding my bike for almost three months kept me from running for almost three months. That was the longest break of my life with no running. So when I got home, I was like, I want to start running again. And it was hard. Like my body was not into running mode. It was into bike mode and my legs felt very, very heavy. That took me a while to get back in shape. But once I got back in shape, I decided to go back and give the Havelina 100 another shot. This is a 100 mile race that I did back in 2017. It was an amazing experience, but it was incredibly difficult. I had never put my body through so much pain in a 24 hour period, as I did during the first Havelina 100. One more lap, deep into the pain cave. Yeah. Yeah, you got it. And there are many times in that race, I was like, I'm never doing this again. But you know what? Humans are silly and we forget pain. We're like, you know what? I want to do that again. I want to put myself right back into that pain cave. And so that's what I did. Signed up for the Havelina 100. But this time, I had a secret weapon with me. I'm so glad you're here. I had Dana and Xantha, the most amazing crew in the world, keeping me hydrated and full of nutrition. But also, Allie was there. And she ran the last 20 miles with me, which really made a huge difference. All right, Allie. I've been waiting for this all day. Get to run with my Allie. She was the silver bullet to having a good race because I ran over two hours faster, which is awesome. A country that is very near and dear to my heart is Sweden. And Allie and I got to travel to Sweden just a few weeks ago in early December to visit my host family. And I lived in Sweden 20 years ago as an exchange student. And I fell in love with this country. It was like destiny that I met these people. They are the most kind and loving people I had ever met. And they welcomed me into their family like I was one of their own. And so now I consider them family. And so it was important for me for Allie to meet my Swedish family. So we went over there and had ourselves a great time. This is Sophia, my Swedish sister. It was Christmas season. And so it was all cozy. Now we dance around the Christmas tree. So we just had ourselves a wonderful cozy Swedish Christmas. You know, Allie, I think Santa Claus is technically from Sweden. So we're seeing the real deal right now. When we got back from Sweden it was time to do Christmas again here in Boulder. And we had just about every family member present this year.  My sister, Sarah, and her two kids. She lives in Tennessee. We had Logan and his wife, Haley. Logan is my middle brother and his two super cute kids, Carter and Brinley. And this year we had Ethan, little Ethan, with his new baby, Ellery, and his wife, Melissa, and my mom of course. And we had ourselves a good old family Christmas. Like when you're a kid you want lots of things and it's fun to want toys and video games and all that stuff. But we're at the age now where that stuff doesn't matter. And what matters is just being around each other and having a great time and playing games. And that's exactly what we did. So that's it my friends. 2018 what an incredible year. And I'm sitting here the final day of 2018. And my heart is very full. And I'm so grateful for all of the adventures I had this year. And the people I met and Ali and my mom retiring and our family being in good health. And I'm very, very grateful.  But my goal is to make this world a better place. It really is. I want people to live full lives. And if I can help them get motivated to do that, that's awesome. So stay tuned for more in 2019 my friends. You will see more of Ali. Don't worry. She will be back in some of our adventures here very shortly. And have a wonderful new year. And let's do this team dozer.


but have changed scenery using a different camera and mic. So let's get the chat overlay up so everybody can see each other and talk to each other. And let me close this. Just somebody give me a wave and let me know that you can actually hear me. I'm pretty sure it's working. I had to change browsers to be able to use my iPhone camera for this week stream. And today we're gonna talk about alcohol and caffeine because when I first started podcasting and writing and doing things like that in a million years, I never would have thought that I would talk so much about things like coffee or wine. But I know it's an important thing for us to talk about. So we will talk about that today. Hello guys, here we are. I finished my coffee. Totally fine. Hello, Carol. Good to see you. Good to see everybody. This is the 67th time we've done Recovery Monday. Thanks, B. Appreciate the thumbs up with the audio in the video. And yeah, so let's wait for some folks to pop in like we usually do. How's everybody doing today? Let me know where you're from. Let me know what's going on. Bonjour for my solo parish trip. So Kathleen, I guess is back from Paris. I hope that went well. Hello, Katya. Katya's in Russia. Hope everything's going okay over there. And yeah, we'll just wait for some folks to pop in. We have 19 people, which seems a little low, but that's okay. We will wait for a few more folks. Hello, Twitch. What's happening? Good to see you, Twitch. When I heard alcohol help perpetuate my anxiety, I went and poured all my Pappy Van Winkle down the train. That's a good comment. Hello, New York City. How are you? What's going on? Oh, yeah. Nice to see you, Oh, yeah. Mara from Montreal, Carol from Essex. Hi from Tampa. Hello, Heather. Just a quick reminder, if you're in my Facebook group, I will only see you as Facebook user. That's just the way Reestream does it. So I'm really sure. I was really sorry about that, but what are you gonna do? First time joining live. Hello, Cody. Good to see you. Glad you could make it. Hello, Virginia. Hope everything's okay. Marina's still from Paris, where I guess Kathleen just was. So we got the French connection going on today. So anyway, let's get into the whole alcohol and caffeine thing. I am going to have a little drink. This is, you guys ever had this La Croix? I've never had La Croix before. It's just like bubbly water, key lime. It's pretty good. Anyway, hey Viola, good to see you. So let's talk about alcohol and caffeine. This really encompasses more than just alcohol and caffeine. It really is like any food or any drink that you think you should not have because you think it will trigger your anxiety or it makes you more anxious. Most likely it's alcohol or it's caffeine. Those are the top two sort of offenders, if you will. But it could be anything. So a lot of people have a long list of foods that they will avoid because they are afraid that they will get triggered if they have those foods. So we show of hands if you guys are those people and you either avoid caffeine or a coffee or chocolate or you avoid alcohol or you avoid any sort of food because you're convinced that it makes you anxious, just a show by show of hands. It's actually a very common thing. So you're not alone in that at all. If you have a list of food and drink avoidances then you're not the only one for sure. So caffeine and alcohol tend to be the top offenders here or the top of the list. And people will often hear, conventional wisdom would say, if you're anxious you should definitely not have any caffeine. You gotta cut caffeine out right away. No coffee, no chocolate, no anything with caffeine in it. Tea, like regular tea is caffeinated, right? So people will hear that right away. You should cut out caffeine for sure because it will make you anxious. And then on the flip side, people will often say, like, oh, you should totally not. Okay, cool, we're getting some comments in here. Sugary desserts, cookies, foods, I'll avoid anything sugary. Let's see here. I'm gonna read comments as we go because I asked a question. I can proudly say that I was like that two weeks ago but not anymore. I'm enjoying all the sugar and coffee now.   Alcohol increases anxiety. And it's that paradoxical thing because a lot of people will use alcohol, there's a little bit of a self-medicating thing. And in fact, this week on the podcast on Wednesday, we're gonna talk about that. People who have addiction problems but people will sometimes self-medicate with alcohol because it calms them down but then there's the rebound afterwards.  So you should stay away from alcohol because it will increase your anxiety when you get off it. Okay, fair enough. So really what's going on there is I want you to think of a time maybe before you had an anxiety problem if you have a time before that. And I want you to think about that and think about all the things that you ate and drank back then that did change what made your body feel differently but you did not attach fear to them. So the first thing that I like to talk about when we go over this topic is the idea that we should stop saying coffee makes me anxious. We should stop saying caffeine makes me anxious. We should stop saying alcohol makes my anxiety go through the roof. What those things do and there's no doubt about that is they will make you feel differently. There is no doubt about that that if you drink a big cup of coffee unless you're super used to it and you're resistant to caffeine, you'll feel different. I know that for me, I think it was yesterday morning. I generally drink decaf coffee because I'm used to it now but I was one of those people that I stayed away from caffeine like the plague for years. As soon as I developed an anxiety problem nothing with caffeine, no chocolate, nothing with cocoa, no caffeine, nothing. And I don't do that anymore. So I'll occasionally drink decaffeinated coffee just cause I like the flavor of it in some cases but so I did it, I had some coffee on yesterday morning and I mixed them sometimes, I'll grind my own and I felt it yesterday for whatever reason. I was a little extra tired, I don't know. I felt it so my heart was pounding yesterday morning after that coffee. Okay, but I expected to happen cause I had some caffeine. So 100% those things will make you feel different. Caffeine will make your heart rate increase. It's a vasoconstrictor. Caffeine is weird cause it has multiple effects. It's both a vasoconstrictor and a vasodilator. It's a really weird chemical but it does have an effect on your body and it will create feelings in your body that feel like anxiety symptoms. So specifically the jittery thing, the keyed up thing like it was weird, my foot was tapping, I was sitting at my desk and I was tapping my foot. So we'll definitely do those things. The issue with anxious people is that since it feels like anxiety feels we will say, oh, caffeine makes me anxious but caffeine doesn't make you anxious. It just makes your body do things that you interpret as I can't allow those things to happen. This is anxiety and it's no good. I cannot ever allow it to happen or it'll feel like anxiety or it'll remind you of anxiety and you don't want to do that. So you declare it off limits. And the same thing with alcohol. Like when you drink alcohol, clearly nobody denies this with you consume alcohol, you will feel different. And interestingly, people tend to focus on the after effects of the alcohol. So the next day they will say my anxiety is through the roof the next day when I wake up. Whether you were drunk a lot or not, sometimes it's just I had two glasses of wine, person wasn't drunk by any stretch of the imagination but the next morning my anxiety is through the roof. So there's the next day or the sort of anxiety or the, what if I call, I've heard it called anxiety. Maybe you drank too much and there's a hangover. But also during the drinking. So for me, it was the old like, if I have any alcohol, I will start to feel different, right? So we know it makes us feel different. People literally drink just to feel different. And it will make me feel different and I don't like feeling different. I'm on guard against any change of state in my body. I will guard against any change in my hearing or my vision or the way I perceive the world. And as soon as I would start to feel that, no bueno and I would start to freak out and I would, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And I would head toward panic. So I stopped consuming any form of alcohol, right? So I didn't drink alcohol for many, many, many years. I was never a big drinker anyway. I'm a terrible beer drinker, just for the record. If you hand me a beer, I'm the guy that holds onto it for like an hour and a half. It's flat, it's warm. I don't like beer. So I was never a big drinker anyway, but I would avoid alcohol like the plague because it would make me feel different. And I was interpreting that as dangerous and it would trigger like anxiety. I would start to go into the OMG cycle, right? So those are the two main reasons why people like will avoid drinking, eating or drinking those things. No caffeine, no alcohol. And let me be clear, like that's a perfectly acceptable choice to make if you want to not consume certain foods because for health reasons or just personal preference I don't like to drink or I like to keep my sugar intake down. That's totally fine. Like nobody is here saying like, oh, you should be just guzzling coffee and eating chocolate all day long at all. It's totally fine to decide the type of diet that you want to have. There's nothing wrong with that. But I just want to really address today is one of those sort of things where we take a personal choice or maybe a dietary choice, a taste choice, a moral choice for some people, totally fine. Then we turn it into an anxiety issue. I don't like when caffeine and alcohol become an anxiety issue. When they're not really anxiety issues and then it starts to fuel that avoidance cycle.   That's what we're sort of talking about today, right? So let me just go back to the comments which is not something I usually do but I just want to see what everybody's saying about this because I did ask a question. Yeah, a bunch of people were saying that they are in a food avoiding people. Brene is, let's see here. I drink coffee like crazy but I have others that I avoid. Any food that triggers heartburn. Oh, I'll put that up on the screen. That was another one for me, like heartburn, some foods would give me heartburn because I just, they do. And I would avoid those too because the heartburn was a symptom that I didn't want to feel. So I get you on that. That's really good. I like it. I do believe when you are first sensitized that you should watch what you eat and drink. I would disagree with that. So I would ask you, why do you believe that you should watch what you eat or drink? Especially early in recovery when you don't understand what's going on. So I would disagree with you on that.  There's nothing wrong with that but I'm not sure why when you are first sensitized you should avoid things. When we become sensitized in the beginning and we begin to start to eliminate things from our lives, we are creating the problem. The reason why you guys are in a room with me today is because you felt some things and then got into a cycle of avoidance. So I would say that any avoidance, including food and drink is not a good idea. It's not a good idea. If you know what's going on and you still choose to do it, okay, that might be one thing but I would completely disagree with the idea that when you start to get anxious you better avoid certain things for what? Because then it teaches you like those sensations are not, I need to stop them from happening. So I'm not sure that that's true. Let's see, I avoided coffee more out of being nauseated and me thinking that harsher foods would make it worse. Let me throw that up on the screen. One of our Twitch people, hello Becky. I avoided coffee more out of being nauseated and me thinking that harsher foods would make it worse. Distinction, I mean, I knew it didn't cause anxiety. I don't know. I love the end of this comment, don't know. Don't know is the ultimate comment for sure. But it's funny because we get into these moods and listen, I do understand that if you are anxious and you are sensitized and you are afraid there's not a lot of rationality there. I understand that. Believe me, I avoided a ton of foods for a while. I've told this story quite often. There was like a three year period or four year period where I did not eat Chinese food. Didn't eat Chinese food at all. Why? Because I used to eat Chinese food all the time. And then I ate Chinese food one night, I had a swing and panic attack and I was 100% convinced that it was because of the Chinese food and I didn't eat it for years. For no reason, no reason whatsoever. But it just, you know, it just didn't do it. So that happens and there isn't necessarily rationality behind that. So I do understand like the whole thing. I avoided coffee because, you know, it'd be nauseous and then it just sort of grew into something bigger than that. And we don't know why, we don't get it. So I get it. Let's see here. I caught up with caffeine, but I'm still avoiding alcohol because I'm scared of the effect and scared to not, okay, this is good. Hey, Australia, just saw somebody pop in from down under. I caught up with caffeine, good job, but still avoiding alcohol. I'm scared of the effect and scared of not being able to take a benzo in an emergency. So this is a good thing if you are taking a benzo or really any medication that you should not combine with alcohol, definitely do not combine anything with alcohol, very good. That goes without saying. Do not use alcohol as an exposure or decide you're gonna kick anxieties asked by having alcohol if you're on a medication where you should not drink. So let's be clear about that. That is also a common statement and that's something that I could recognize too. The whole like if I have a beer or I have a glass of wine, a drink or whatever, that I won't be able to take a Xanax that I would not take anyway because I'm a stubborn jerk but I wouldn't take them but I was afraid that alcohol would preclude me taking it just in case, right? So really good comment there. Starbucks isn't coffee, my dude. I don't mean to start a coffee war, especially here in the Northeastern US you have the Starbucks versus Dunkin' Donuts war and that's nasty, I'm staying out of that. People are getting hurt. Anyway, I used to avoid alcohol and caffeine and realized there was no help. So back to adjoining coffee and the double beverages. Very good. I hardly drink any alcohol really, basically a tea toddler. Hey, you know what? That's totally fine.  I'll drink now. I do enjoy bourbon. I like to try different bourbons and different whiskeys and I have whole closet full of them but maybe some of them will outlive me because I just don't drink a lot but I'm not afraid to drink anymore. So the funny thing about it is, this is good one. So we'll put this up on the screen. I drink coffee, I have no effects. I'm odd, I guess. I'm amazed at the number of anxious people that are like, what do you mean coffee makes me anxious? So like some people just love their coffee, they love their caffeine, it's totally fine. I know anxious people that if they stop drinking coffee or they eliminate caffeine, that's worse for them because then they have that little caffeine withdrawal thing, headaches and stuff. That's a real thing, by the way. And they don't like that so they keep drinking the caffeine and they just feel like they feel worse without it. So it's not universal to avoid caffeine.  And that's totally fine. But for some people, it doesn't bother them at all. I don't understand. Personally, I don't understand caffeine as like it wakes me up. It has never woken me up, never. Like caffeine makes me jittery but it doesn't wake me up at all. Just makes me tired and jittery. But whatever, it's all cool. Okay, GBG says it thinks it got worse when he stopped drinking caffeine, I get that. It's kind of a paradox because we stopped drinking coffee because we think it makes us anxious but we only think this way when we are already anxious. That is 100% true. And you have to realize when no caffeine and no alcohol is not a thing that used to exist in your life, but it does now. That's a red flag, for sure. Also some people stop with caffeine and alcohol while anxious, but then they don't fear it anymore. They just don't want to go back to it. That's totally cool also. Some people just decide, I don't want alcohol. Like I was fine without it, so why go back to it? Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong. Okay, so this I can relate to a little bit too. Hi, Christine. I have decaf tea. Does chocolate cause palpitations? I love my chocolate. Well, let's talk about decaf for a second. I was at the point where I would still once in a while want to drink coffee even when I was really struggling with my anxiety problems. And I would make sure that I made decaf coffee. And I got to the point where I went to, I think I was at a Dunkin' Donuts with a friend once and I got a decaf coffee and I would add, if I ordered coffee out, I would ask like 67 times. It's decaf, right? It's decaf, right? As if they were literally accidentally putting rat poison in my coffee, but I was that afraid that it's decaf, right? Yes, it's decaf. Okay, cool. And I was a little jittery and I was a little panicky but I was panicky anyway. Like that day and I was convinced that Dunkin' Donuts decaf is not really decaf and I was like on a holy war.  But decaf, does chocolate cause palpitations? I love my chocolate. It might, you know, it might, but it depends on the amount of caffeine that's in the chocolate, I guess. It might cause your heart to go a little faster. It's possible. Let's keep going here. I was weaned on sweet tea. That would be a Southern US thing, right? Like sometimes interpret too much alcohol. Okay, let's throw this up here. Mustard rain, great name and always good comments. I appreciate your contributions. I would sometimes interpret too much alcohol with fear of losing control. For me, if I had a little bit of alcohol back in those days that like, it would feel like depersonalization to me. So the feeling of getting a little bit buzzed or the beginning of very little bit of drunk would feel like DPDR to me. And so I would avoid that like the plague. I get that. Stop drinking sweet tea for a long time because of the caffeine. I decided that I love to taste. Okay, this is a good comment. Stop drinking sweet tea because of the caffeine. I decided I love to taste more than I cared about the anxiety. So now I have it when I go out to eat. You know, sometimes you can do good comment Heather. Sometimes you could do the old like, oh, I don't drink it normally cause I don't want to walk around jittery all the time. Like for me with coffee, I don't really want to walk around jittery. I don't need my heart to pack. So, you know, there's no point in that. So I'll generally not have caffeinated coffee but I have some caffeinated coffees. Some I got as gifts that I really like. And in which case I decide, well, I really want the taste now. So I know I'm going to have to deal with a racing heart for 40 minutes after drinking. And you make that choice. But it's contextual. Sometimes you wouldn't, sometimes you wouldn't. It's all good. In my neck of the woods, not drinking coffee or alcohol is a religious tenant and going against, oh, okay. Don't go to hell, y'all. Sometimes that's part of the equation. So Becky, that's a really good comment by the way cause sometimes, especially alcohol and abstinence is tied to moral or cultural or religious concepts. So that adds another thing to it. Sometimes abstaining from alcohol, not drinking comes with social or cultural ramifications that happens too. So sometimes people in our community inside, I can't, I'm not going to drink anymore. And then their friends sort of turn on them a little bit. Like you're not as much fun anymore. Why don't you drink anymore? That can happen too. That's unfortunate when it does. So that's another source of pressure that no anxious person needs. My friend Larry makes me, he becomes a pseudo-commediate. Let's see what Renee has to say here. I miss wine when I'm scared to feel different. That was me, Renee. That was totally me. I didn't have a problem the morning after cause honestly, why would I? Because I would drink a little bit of alcohol and totally bail on it. And again, I always say I'm not a little person. So it was ridiculous. So I didn't have to worry at all about the next day. It was in that moment when I started to feel different that I would totally bail. Ametaphobes tend to avoid anxiety for obvious reasons. Well, that could be part of it also that a metaphobia thing does drive a lot of food avoidance for certain. My, let's see here. A lot of questions. You guys are like rapid-fire comments today. What did you go to whiskey? I don't necessarily have a go-to. I do like bourbon. I'm partial to bourbon. But if I'm going to drink something else, I like really like PD scotches. Like, Islay scotches, Isla scotches. I'm sorry, not Islay, Isla. So I really like those. But otherwise I'm set up a bourbon guy. But again, I don't really drink a lot of it. I mean alcohol. Yeah, I get it. I know what you're saying. Let's see, Christine says, I used to drink before and then completely stopped cause I didn't want to trigger. Air quotes, love it. I miss drinking here and there, but I just don't do it. I barely started to eat sweets again. Well, again, that's one of those things where if it's something that you miss because it was part of, sometimes they're part of cultural rituals. Like growing up in an Italian family, wine is a thing, right? So if you're not drinking, you are a little bit left out of the ritual sometimes, the cultural ritual, it wasn't getting drunk or anything like that. But if you are missing out on social things or cultural rituals, or it's just something that you miss cause you enjoyed the taste or whatever, going back to it is not a bad thing. So I barely started to eat sweets again. So let's get down to this before I take more comments. Some people will ask, can I use alcohol or caffeine? Can I use coffee or wine as exposures? And the answer is, yeah, you totally can do that.  Don't do silly things like everything in moderation, but using alcohol or any, or caffeine or any food that you're afraid of as an exposure is a good idea. It's actually a good idea.  It's also the people who avoid foods because they think it'll make them anxious, that's a really good exposure. Sometimes people start to avoid foods because they somehow are fearful that they've developed an allergy to those foods. That's a different thing. We'll talk about that one day for sure. Some people start to avoid certain foods that they are not allergic to and have never been allergic to and have no evidence of being allergic to, but suddenly have decided I might be allergic to this now and then they're terrified to eat them. And in that situation, the exposures are starting to nibble on little bits of those foods. So let's keep going. Drunk people make me anxious. That's fair. That's solely fair. Okay, this is a good comment here. Little avoidances definitely pile up and then become a huge mountain when we notice finally, yes, and that's why I sort of challenged Viola before with the like, I think you should avoid, you know, caffeine and alcohol in the beginning. I don't think so because of this because every time we do that, we're treating ourselves like we are fragile and like anxiety needs to be managed and it has to be very carefully managed and we can't allow it to happen. And I know it might seem like a little thing and I'm not saying that you should like guzzle a giant 32 ounces of caffeinated coffee before bedtime at all. But this is a great comment right here because this is true. Every time we do that, we are essentially sending the signal to our brain that says we are fragile and we have to be very careful about what we put into our bodies. So just consider that. Good comment, thank you. Coffee can interfere with sleep and like, oh, here you go, Viola's back, sorry. And lack of sleep will definitely make you, lack of sleep will make you tired. It will not make you anxious. So this goes hand in hand with this comment and I've done, if you go to the anxious shoot.com and search for sleep, you'll see a bunch of podcast episodes I've done in the last six months on that. So this one avoidance now becomes another. If I drink coffee, it might, I might not sleep properly. And then if I don't sleep properly, my anxiety goes through the roof. Not sleeping will make you tired. Fearing how you feel will make you anxious. So again, you can see how avoidances begin to chain together. It's really important that we ferret these things out. And you can disagree and you can make whatever choice you want. And I respect your ability to make a personal choice. But from where I sit, we have to be careful because they start to pile up. Let's see. I'm the same with Chinese food. Yep. Circus peanuts and peeps. Circus peanuts is orange marshmallow things. I haven't seen circus peanuts in a long time. Let's see here. Okay. Penelope. I know I was using it as a crutch to be social. I need to change my relationship with it but I do miss drinking. And I hate that I'm avoiding it. That last part is I think a big deal because a lot of people will say that too. A lot of people will say, it's not really even so much that I want to drink. I just hate that I'm avoiding. So that's a good point. I get it. Yeah. Christie taking booze bar. I never know how to say that. Bus bar, booze bar. Kent makes alcohol with that. So you gotta be careful. I drink coffee now because all it does is make my heart rate after years of decaf. You guys, is there a difference in taste? Can you taste decaf coffee? I'll just throw that out there. I don't know if I can but I don't have discerning taste buds anyway.  Oh, okay. This is cool. Thanks, Yon. Good to see you, man. I made caffeine exposures for four months. Now I'm at the point where you don't feel it anymore. Now caffeine is, I believe one of those things that we can build a tolerance to for sure. So people who are regularly caffeine consumers need much more caffeine to feel that racing hard thing. That is true. So, but this says that now it has no effect on you or not an effect that you care about. Good job, Yon. Very good. How about foods that we puked up for? Okay. Well, that's another aversion for sure. One day I'll tell the barbecue, the barbecue corn chip story. It's not a good story.  I'm telling a story right now. So this is, it's a funny comment, I'm sure. For me, it's shrimp, kielbasa and Doritos.  I had two incidents. One was my senior year as an undergrad. My friends and I went to Wendy's in the US. We have Wendy's fast food place. I don't know if you guys have Wendy's in the UK. I think you do. And we went to Wendy's, whatever. And I had whatever. I don't even know what I had at Wendy's. And the next morning I was sick as a dog, but I was sick as a dog for like three days to the point where I missed classes and I missed an appointment. I was really sick, but I just had a really nasty stomach virus. None of my friends were sick. There was nothing wrong with the food at Wendy's. 100%, it was fine. I just got sick. I did not eat at a Wendy's. I still don't really eat at Wendy's because I'm not a big fast food guy, but we refused to even walk into a Wendy's for years, a good 10 years. And then it was before that, it was barbecue potato chips. I had, I was a big procrastinator in high school. I had a big paper to write for my college English class. And on the way home from my high school job, I stopped and I bought junk food and I was going to like sit up and eat junk food and write this paper the last minute overnight.  But those are illustrations of how we do not want to repeat adverse experiences. Those were crappy experiences. I don't want to repeat them. And so boom, avoidance kicked in, 100%. And by the way, barbecue corn chips are vile. Do not ask me why I was doing, why I was eating those. I have so learned, I learned from you that how easy it is to have a feeling. Oh, this is good Sonya, good comment here. I've learned, so how easy it is to have a feeling and then immediately connect it to whatever I'm doing or eating at the moment. Yes, that is the need to figure it out. So if I am struggling, if I am there, whatever, if I am anxious about, I need to figure it out. What caused it? What is it? What triggered it? How can I avoid that down the road? And sometimes we attach it to what we eat or drink. That's a great comment. But that can, we can attach it to people. We attach it to context, places, tasks. That's how agoraphobic people become agoraphobic. I can't get in the car and drive away because I had a panic attack in the car. So I can't drive. I can't, I felt panicky after I drink coffee so I can't drink coffee. That's a great comment. This speaks to the exposure thing. Yeah, sure. Again, if you have addiction problems, of course I am not telling you to consume things that you have problems with or physical medical problems, intolerance, mismatches with medication. No, I'm not telling you to do any of those things. But yes, I think it's a perfectly valid thing to do to start to reintroduce those things so that you can start to practice moving through that fear. I did that. I did that. I remember drinking an entire glass of wine one night and I was terrified, but it was a good experience. And then I was able to start to slowly do that again just in social situations and I'm not afraid of it anymore. So, it's important. I understand, Viola, that you are talking about people who are new to this but people who are new to this who avoid because they are new wind up being old to this when they don't have to. So I know I'm being really aggressive here but I am gonna argue with you in public here because if you are new to this and so you think because you are new you should avoid things. That's exactly what makes people who are then old to this and six and 10 months and a year and a year and a half later are wondering how they got into this very restricted space. So when you're new to this if you have access to this type of information that's exactly why you should not enter cycles of avoidance. It's, I know I'm being really aggressive here but I disagree with that argument in a big way because for most people in this room even when they were brand new if they had not started avoiding they wouldn't be in this room today. That's really important.  Clearly there's caffeine in here, they're terrible. Maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, I don't know. Let's see, thank you for your podcast who helped me a lot. You're welcome Robbie from Australia. Welcome, welcome mate. Yesterday I ate a cookie my mom brought from home. What if there's weed in them? Okay, let's throw this out here. This is not necessarily related to the alcohol and coffee thing but since it's here and we're talking about food and drink another more common thing than you think. So like that's an intrusive thought thing, right? Or an obsession. That is where you start to get, you have a thought in your head what if somebody tampered with this? What if there's weed in this? What if somebody poisoned this? What if it's gonna make me sick? What if I'm allergic to it? And then group that thought sticks with you and then you start to freak out. That's actually a really common thing also, believe it or not. Let's see, I understand. Pots legal here. By the way, I'm not trying to pick on you by the way. I'm just trying to make sure we don't condone avoidance. Let's see. Yeah, so this is a good one. Thanks B for propping this up here. That's true professionals will even urge patients not to consume caffeine or alcohol. And I think a lot of times it's interesting because you would never find somebody that sounds like me telling you to do that. But you would find somebody who treats anxiety symptomatically telling you that. So I mean, I know a lot of doctors, the first thing they would tell you would be like, stop that, right? Stop that. So don't drink alcohol and stop drinking coffee because they will view it symptomatically. We will try to treat the symptoms of it. And in a way, you can do that. Like in a way that is a valid choice that somebody can make. You can try to treat your anxiety symptomatically. And if you make that choice, that's okay. You were allowed to make that choice. It's all good. So let's see. I heard something about like decaf is the electric car, the electric car of coffee. Really good. So these are, I see a couple of comments coming through about how I can't drink these things because they make my heart race or like Ron says, hey, Ron, how's it going?  But then the next couple of days my anxiety is even worse. The next couple of days, you feel different. So you feel different the next day.  And then you interpret that as, oh my God, I feel different and I am anxious because I don't like feeling my own body. It's so important when you think about that. Still has corn. What is this? This sounds like a Southern thing. Still has corn whiskey, peach tea flavor is delish. Sometime comes in a pink thinner can. Why do I feel like you can only get that like Virginia and South? I could be wrong. Maybe wrong. Let's see. Sugar affects my heart rate more than, so again, for anybody who's possibly, like, you know, some people will say that sugar is as bad as caffeine. Maybe it is, maybe it is. I'm not here to argue the physiology of sugar and metabolizing sugar, but again, if you are avoiding things because it raises your heart rate, that is problematic because that is going, I'm not saying you have to walk around with your heart pounding all the time just gorging yourself on sugar all day long, but when we say, I must avoid things that make my heart rate go up, when your heart is literally doing what it's designed to do in the presence of that particular chemical because you are afraid of that elevated heart rate, we have a problem. Like we have to be very mindful of that. So when you are drawing a line in the sand because your heart rate might increase, that's the thing we really have to examine. Let's keep going here. Comets keep coming, we're cranking here. I am scared to drink alcohol because they think it'll make the intrusive thoughts come true. Okay, well, that's actually not the way that works. I'm sure you've been told that before, but intrusive thoughts are just thoughts. Alcohol doesn't increase, doesn't change thoughts, doesn't make them come true. It doesn't change the real world, doesn't do anything like that because thoughts are just thoughts. So by way of some feedback, I don't recognize your name. You may have not heard that before. That's not the way that works. I've tried eliminating caffeine ahead. Okay, there you go, that no effect. True, stop drinking last year. My project is much, much better. Okay, so this is it. I appreciate you sharing this, by the way, Stacey. That's a personal thing and I appreciate you sharing it because it's a good comment. Sometimes, sometimes people will get into a trap where they don't avoid alcohol. They will use the alcohol almost excessively to knock down the anxiety. And that's a situation like Stacey is talking about here where it can make things worse for sure. That's a tough one. So Stacey, good job. And I'm glad you're feeling better. Very good. All this talk to make me wanna drink an espresso martini. Oh, look at that. I thought it was at the end of the comments. I'm clearly not. I'll keep going, I guess. But thank you for sharing that, Stacey. It's important. Since my anxiety, my stomach and bells are more sensitive to stuff like dairy, milk, et cetera. Well, anxiety is gonna directly connect to your GI tract. That's true. So people with anxiety problems often find that they run to the bathroom more than they have to do that sort of stuff more so again. We just have to be really careful about drawing a direct line. Now that I have anxiety, I have to be careful and don't ever drink milk again. Be careful. That's a slippery slope. I get anxious when I feel sick. How can I change that? You don't change that. You allow that to happen and you stop trying to fix that. So, Christina, I don't recognize your name. I don't know how new you are, but we're never trying to change being anxious. If you get anxious because you're sick, then allow yourself to get anxious when you get sick. And I'm sorry that, oh, you're not sick now. But the trick is what you do when you get anxious. If you frantically try to find a way to fix that or not be anxious, then that's the thing you have to work on not doing. We learn that we can be anxious and still be okay. That's the key here. I'm gonna kind of speed up a little bit. Where are we, 241? Let's see here. I had a night of heavy drinking when I was in the process of slowly tapering off my SSRI. I woke up the next morning. Whoops, sorry, didn't mean to do that. With terrible anxiety the last two weeks now, I'm terrified to start my taper again, huh? We have to be really careful about that too. I mean, now I'm repeating myself again and again and again because what we're seeing is like a constant references to like, this made me anxious and so therefore I must avoid that. Christine, I will talk about that. I'm gonna get to your comment. Hang on, unclean foods. No, no, no, we can't go there. Decaf sucks, can't tell the difference. It's way less strong. Perks and crust, all right. Decaf, there we go, the electric car, good. Wimpy's here, we never had Wimpy's here. Food poisoning at Wimpy's. Had bad sushi once at sushi last weekend was good, excellent. Sushi was one of my first exposures, very good. Oh God, the bizarre foods guy. Is that guy still on TV? He would go around the world and eat the strangest stuff. That's some crazy stuff. It's taken me years and years, very good. Thank you, Viola, I appreciate that. I'm not trying to pick on you personally. It has nothing to do with you personally. Thank you for understanding. I appreciate the comment. I wish, okay, let's throw this up here. Again, this is another one of the repetitions. I wish I could have coffee. I miss iced coffees, but damn, my heart races. So go ahead and make your heart race. Remember that sometimes we talk about interoceptive exposures. Have you guys heard me talk about interoceptive exposures? Interoceptive exposures are what we do when we intentionally try to bring about the physical sensations of anxiety.  We do them on purpose, often with a therapist, so that we can acclimate to those things and we can get used to that. So when you say, I wish I could have iced coffee, but I can't because my heart races, I would say, go ahead and have that iced coffee and practice being in a situation where your heart races, that you can use as an exposure. You don't have to do that, but that's a thing. Went to a concert, there we go. Okay, there we go. This is another fearful thing. Again, we're talking about alcohol and caffeine today, but again, in the beginning, I said it can expand to all kinds of different foods, drinks, substances that we get really afraid. Thank you, Bea, I appreciate that. It's like saying I can't do exposures because I might get anxious. I really, really want to learn how to swim, but if I jump in the pool, I get wet. So that's what that's saying. Let's see here. Let's keep going here. Okay, this is good. Avoiding is really easy and quick. Avoiding avoidance is a totally different thing. Not beginning avoidance is the best choice possible. Yeah, and again, if we had better education about these things, I believe in my heart that fewer people would go on, I think just as many people would experience anxiety, but far fewer people would go on to develop full-blown anxiety disorders like panic disorder or agoraphobia. If we had a little bit more education about this, so I agree with you on that. Have you done any episodes about cannabis? No, I have not, and I don't plan to do that either. I don't have, I'm not judging. Anybody's for free to smoke or ingest whatever they want doesn't matter to me, but it's not a thing I want to talk about. I never talk about things to swallow or ingest or breathe in to deal with anxiety ever. Let's keep going here. A lot of good comments here. I had to give up tea because it's got caffeine in it too. Or you chose to give up caffeine because you don't want to feel those effects. I'll stop saying those things. Now I'm a broken record. Let me keep going. Okay, let's get to Christine's comment because this one I dig and this one we'll probably try to wrap things up with. How about avoiding unclean foods or fear of how they affect their health? So I did a podcast episode a couple of years back. I think it was maybe the first one I did with Jenna, Jenna Overbaugh and we talked about a thing called orthorexia. Now orthorexia is not actually a diagnosable mental health condition. It has not made it into the DSM or the ICD that I'm aware of, but orthorexia is what we call it when people become incredibly fixated on eating only the right foods. So sometimes it's often tied to health and fitness obsessions, like I can only eat organic, I can only eat clean. I mean, listen, I was in powerlifting for a while and around strength and physique athletes. It's rampant there for sure. Like if I do not have a shot of complex carbs 30 minutes after I finish working out that I will miss the insulin window, it gets crazy. But among anxious people, orthorexia can present as if I eat anything that isn't totally natural, if I eat anything processed, I'm putting poison in my body and that might make me anxious because anxiety is me being poisoned. It's really, really tough. And it can get really vicious so that anxious people can wind up with forms of orthorexia where they are literally down to eating four or five safe foods and that's it. And sometimes that starts with I can only eat clean, natural, unprocessed foods because they start to latch on to words like toxins or poisons or carcinogens and it becomes really, really extreme. So you have to be careful about that. I know as many recovered people that exist on cigarettes and candy bars and coffee that exist on whole organic foods that are only like free range. So you do not have to eat clean to recover. That being said, if you wanna eat as clean as you can eat for your own personal health as long as it doesn't become extreme and restrictive that negatively impact your functioning and your lifestyle, have at it. It's okay. Let's see here. What's wrong with fearing our own bodies just trying to rewire this guy? Yeah, well, that's kind of the way that works, right? We start to learn to see our own bodies and minds. Sorry for bringing up my intrusive thought made weed. No, no, it's totally fine. Like the intrusive thought about, this isn't about weed, that's about the intrusive thought that somebody may have like doped your cookies with weeds. That's a different animal, so it's okay. Orthorexia is 100% rampant in certain circles. I lived in those circles for quite a long time and it does get bad to the point where anxious people can develop those habits and it can be really restrictive and have a lot of negative lifestyle impacts for people in other areas that develop things like orthorexia, those impacts are very real too. I mean, I watched a lot of guys walk around always with a backpack full of Tupperwares only with the own food that they made. They could only eat broccoli and sweet potatoes and chicken and brown rice and that was it. And so anything can become extreme, like almost anything can become extreme if we're not careful. So that's about it for today. I think what we're really talking about today was more so like, you know, that habit of avoidance and not blaming the alcohol and the caffeine or the sugar or whatever for your anxiety, just recognizing that the attachment is my body feels different when I eat these things and I'm intolerant of changes in my body. I'm afraid of them. And so I go into the OMG cycle. That's what we kind of care about here. It's important. So that's it. Great comments today. You guys are really great. I saw you guys supporting each other as always, which is awesome. This will stay on my YouTube channel. If you're not subscribed to the channel, you should subscribe because that's the easiest way to find these videos. They're in a playlist called Recovery Monday.  And that's it. This week we're gonna talk about alcohol on the podcast. I have a special guest who shares openly about his recovery from alcoholism. It's really good. He's a good guy. I think you'll like it if you're struggling with that problem. And if you're not listening to Disordered with me and Josh Fletcher, you should do that disorder.fm. We just recorded another episode this morning. Episode five or six comes out on Friday. It's called panic dot dot dot attack. So that's a good one. So you should check that out. We're done. See you guys not next Monday, but the Monday after, because we're doing it every week. Thanks for hanging out. I appreciate it. See you later.


You are not autistic. I've seen kids, adults having meltdowns. You do not do that. I actually do. You just don't tend to see them because when I'm in public, I tend to kind of bottle all that I have motion inside and have a shutdown instead. Okay, fair enough, but you're not like one of those people who are like banging their head against stuff, are you? Again, I do. It only tends to happen on the odd occasion when I'm in a bad place, you know, my mental health is bad, too much socialising, too much sensory stuff. It's like a combination of lots of different things, and it tends to be when I'm not feeling too great about myself that that tends to happen. Are you happy that you asked now because, you know, you should be pretty thankful that I'm so open about these things? Those things are actually really personal questions to ask.


That old four in front of the scorers table now along the far sideline play to buy the Mustangs here comes believe this is Lee into the box a chance and a shot and a save rebound six and a half to go