The Big Drink Rethink

What if the craving you feel for a drink is actually a craving for relief, regulation, or connection, and there’s another, more healing way to get it? In this episode, your host Anna Donaghey is joined by breathwork practitioner Jon Paul Crimi, whose powerful personal story weaves together addiction, grief, emotional numbness, and a breathwork experience that profoundly shifted his life.

They discuss why most people reach for alcohol (it isn’t what you think), how drinking becomes our “solution” for regulating uncomfortable emotions, and the striking similarities between addiction and the universal longing for a shift in state. Jon Paul breaks down what breathwork really is (spoiler: it’s not just box breathing!) and shares how circular, connected breathwork specifically offers a physiological and emotional “reboot” making space for release, self-connection, and even joy. Anna shares her first-hand experience with his class, highlighting how breathwork can offer real, lasting relief that alcohol promises but can’t deliver.

Whether you’re sober-curious, in recovery, or just looking to break free from unhelpful patterns and cravings, this conversation points to practical, science-backed ways to rethink your drinking.

Highlights:
00:00 Welcome & intro to breathwork
01:01 Jon Paul’s story: addiction, loss, and seeking relief
04:13 When drinking goes from fun to just problems
07:29 The emotional “arrest” that comes from early drinking
08:25 Grief, trauma, and the search for tools
11:05 Why our brains equate alcohol with relief
14:15 What finally made sobriety stick
19:26 How breathwork entered Jon Paul’s life 12 years into sobriety
22:44 The first breathwork class: from scepticism to transformation
28:01 How breathwork helps regulate cravings, states, and emotions
30:17 Craving isn’t the enemy, it’s information
34:10 Breathwork vs. psychedelics: power inside YOU
35:48 What actually happens in a circular breathwork class
39:00 “Turning off your brain” and moving into your heart
46:08 Using breathwork for current and past pain, grief, and shame
52:16 Cravings, choices, and living an extraordinary life.

Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!
Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/
The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/
If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethink

About the host Anna:
Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.

Connect with Anna:
Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonaghey
Instagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethink
Produced by winteraudio.co.uk
About Jon Paul Crimi:
Jon Paul Crimi is a world-renowned breathwork facilitator, teacher trainer, and recovery advocate - known for a zero-filter, East Coast approach that strips breathwork of its "New Agey" reputation and replaces it with something practical and results-driven enough to win over sceptics, CEOs, and everyday people alike.
He started out as an actor, celebrity fitness trainer, and sober coach in Los Angeles, carrying his own struggles with alcoholism, addiction, and low self-worth long before he found a way through them. Almost by accident, around 15 years ago, he wandered into a breathwork class and had a transformation so profound in that first session that it reshaped the entire direction of his life. He's now 26 years sober, and that lived experience - not theory - is what sits underneath everything he teaches.
His method is trauma-informed at its core, built around somatic release, nervous system regulation, and processing the emotional weight people carry without always knowing it. It's also gone mainstream in a way few breathwork practices have.
He runs weekly live classes, digital workshops, and his Emotional Detox course.

You can find him, and all of it, at: https://breathewithjp.com/

What if your drinking is driven less by choice and more by invisible beliefs running beneath the surface? In this solo episode, Anna Donaghey breaks down how beliefs act as our “operating system,” quietly driving our thoughts and behaviours, especially around alcohol. Anna reveals why it’s so difficult to spot the beliefs shaping our drinking, how to distinguish between a thought and a belief, and why simply changing behaviour rarely works unless you dig deeper.

With practical examples and the “reverse chain” technique (starting with your behaviour and working backwards), Anna offers clear tools, including the powerful “downward arrow” method to help you uncover the beliefs at the root of your drinking habits and gently rethink your relationship with alcohol.

Highlights:
00:00 Welcome & intro
00:41 Recap: The belief “pyramid” and last solo episode
01:20 Why beliefs matter more than thoughts or behaviours
03:10 The difference between a thought and a belief
05:07 Real-world examples: how beliefs quietly shape our actions
12:18 “Alcohol, please help me...”, the jobs we hand to booze
13:38 How habits and beliefs wire together neurologically
14:44 Aaron Beck’s model: core beliefs vs. automatic thoughts
15:35 Why starting with your behaviour is the key to spotting beliefs
16:14 Step-by-step: working backwards from behaviour to belief
24:23 Free guide to run this process anytime
25:30 New episodes: breaking down the most common alcohol beliefs
26:14 Where to find helpful resources.

For the worksheet referred to in the episode, visit the toolkit full of free resources on Anna’s website thebigdrinkrethink.com, and download ‘How to Identify Your Drinking Beliefs’
Listen to Episode 137: The Beliefs Driving Your Drinking | Rethinking Alcohol, where Anna shares about the “Pyramid of Belief" and how deeply rooted feelings of “not enough” shape much of our behaviour, including our drinking habits.

Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!
Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/
The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/
If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethink

About the host Anna:
Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.

Connect with Anna:
Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonaghey
Instagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethink
Produced by winteraudio.co.uk

What if the life you’re chasing, and the drinking that comes with it, are both keeping you from the life you really want?
In this honest conversation, Anna Donaghey welcomes recovery and transition coach Alina Roselli, who shares her journey from living “outside-in” - seeking validation, people-pleasing and pushing through burnout, to soul-led sobriety and deep self-acceptance.
Together, they explore why we can lose ourselves trying to meet other people’s expectations, how burnout and exhaustion can force us to question the life we’re living, and why transformation isn’t simply about giving up alcohol, it's about discovering who you are without it.
They also explore self-worth, radical honesty, the trap of external validation and practical ways to start living more “inside-out”.
For anyone questioning their relationship with alcohol, their sense of purpose, or whether there could be more to life, this episode offers an invitation to stop chasing approval and start coming home to yourself.
Highlights:
00:00 Welcome & introduction to Alina Roselli
00:40 Alina’s unraveling, burnout, alcohol and not knowing herself
02:46 The culture of drinking and starting at 15
05:55 Seeking belonging and landing in “image-driven” circles
10:07 What is “outside-in” living and how it shaped Alina’s self worth
12:28 When alcohol shifts from fun to medicine
15:46 How self-image creates our lives (and can keep us lost)
16:43 Burnout as a wake-up call
17:40 Trying everything (yoga, therapy, self-help) but not getting better
23:27 Filling the “God-shaped hole” - how misaligned living leaves us empty
26:04 Making hard changes and letting go of old identities
28:46 Why inside-out living is terrifying and ultimately liberating
30:10 “Pain pushes until the vision pulls”: learning to listen to your soul
32:43 Finding calm, silence, and the right conditions to truly meet yourself
34:19 Discovering introversion, the need for solitude, and creative renewal
36:29 How the small actions revealed a bigger self and a life worth keeping
39:32 How to reconnect with your needs and stop abandoning yourself
41:36 The courage in honesty and the gifts waiting in the unknown
43:42 Acceptance, creativity, and the joy of simply feeling okay
46:35 Becoming yourself changes the world around you
49:33 People have no idea how amazing they are
50:19 How to join The Big Drink Rethink community.

Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!
Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/
The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/
If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethink

About the host Anna:
Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.

Connect with Anna:
Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonaghey
Instagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethink
Produced by winteraudio.co.uk

About Alina Roselli:
Alina is a recovery and transition coach who believes we are in an epidemic of not knowing who we truly are. Through her recovery and coaching work, she is witnessing firsthand how most people are living as smaller versions of themselves without knowing it. She's developed Soul Coordinates, a portrait that bypasses the mind entirely and reveals who you actually are underneath the survival strategies. Her online community and course, The Naked Soul Path on Skool, is an accessible way to come home to yourself in community. Her own journey through burnout, addiction recovery and self loss is the source of everything she offers

Connect with Alina: https://www.alinaroselli.com/

What if your drinking habits aren’t really about alcohol at all, but about the quiet, powerful beliefs sitting beneath the surface? In this solo episode, Anna Donaghey dives into the “Pyramid of Belief”, a simple framework that explains how deeply-rooted feelings of “not enough” shape much of our behaviour, including drinking.
Using lived experience and insights from Dave Gray’s "Liminal Thinking," Anna breaks down how our early experiences, the culture we grow up in, and the swirl of online comparison, all reinforce beliefs like “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m not interesting enough,” and “I’m not enough, full stop.” She explores why alcohol so often becomes the go-to answer for the emotional discomfort those beliefs trigger and guides listeners through the first, vital steps to uncovering what they’re really thirsty for.

Highlights:
00:00 Welcome & intro
00:40 The "not enough" beliefs we rarely examine
01:13 Why this episode isn’t (really) about alcohol at first
02:14 What is the Pyramid of Belief
05:04 How our minds filter reality
05:57 How a single shame-triggering moment forms a core belief
09:03 Why you’re not flawed and how “not enough” beliefs got there
10:30 Anna Donaghey’s own formative “not smart enough” moment
13:39 The modern "comparison machine"
14:20 How alcohol soothes the “not enough” wound
16:15 Key question: “What is my drinking actually trying to answer for me?”
16:27 Find your own “I’m not enough” belief
17:47 What “I need...” before a drink reveals about your core beliefs
17:59 Why pinning down beliefs (not just thoughts) is tricky
18:42 Announcing a series exploring specific “not enough” beliefs
19:37 None of this is your fault
20:23 Resources & how to join The Big Drink Rethink community.

Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!
Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/
The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/
If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethink

About the host Anna:
Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.

Connect with Anna:
Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonaghey
Instagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethink
Produced by winteraudio.co.uk

Why does alcohol seem to have a different, more intense pull for some people - and could undiagnosed ADHD be the missing piece of the puzzle? In this episode, Anna Donaghey is joined by Matt Wing, a midlife mentor who spent over 30 years in a cycle of high achievement and high-functioning drinking, before a late ADHD diagnosis reframed everything.

Together, they explore the misunderstood relationship between ADHD and alcohol use, bust the myth that it’s a simple willpower problem, and break down the real, neurological drivers behind compulsive drinking.

Highlights:
00:00 Intro: Meet Matt Wing, midlife mentor, exploring ADHD and alcohol
01:13 Decades of "normal" drinking and the invisible exhaustion under it
04:45 Compulsive self-fixing, failed solutions, and obsessive searching
06:12 The pink book, ADHD traits, and why self-help didn't always land
10:21 ADHD as a chronic dopamine deficit
11:08 Instant dopamine hits: why nothing's enough
12:44 Why attempts to cut down usually fail: it's not a "willpower" issue
15:03 Alcohol's social acceptance hides its true addictiveness
18:02 ADHD drinking: urgency, intensity, and chasing the unattainable
23:19 Why 4pm is the real problem, not "having a drink problem"
24:16 Racing head syndrome: alcohol as the only "off switch" that works
29:19 Hyperfocus, the evening crash, and alcohol as relief not reward
31:13 Rejection sensitivity and rejection-sensitive dysphoria in ADHD
33:28 Why social drinking feels so necessary (and so hard to quit)
34:38 "Time blindness": why the ADHD brain struggles with "forever”
43:04 The missed ADHD generation: making sense of the past
46:22 New ways to soothe the nervous system
51:40 Growth mindset: you're not stuck, and social skills can be learned
53:37 ADHD as a superpower if you channel it right
56:40 Where to find Matt Wing and resources to get support.

Anna’s book "What Are You Thirsty For? Rethinking Alcohol and The Life You Want", is now out in the world for you to buy!
Order your copy, access her free tools and explore her coaching programmes at: https://thebigdrinkrethink.com/
The Thirsty For More Mindset Lab is Anna’s ‘inner circle’ - a calm, thoughtful space where conversations continue, patterns are explored, and things begin to make sense. Find out more at: https://thirstyformore.substack.com/
If you appreciate the podcast and would like to show a bit of love, you can donate the cost of a coffee here. It helps support the time and care that goes into making the show: https://buymeacoffee.com/bigdrinkrethink

About the host Anna:
Anna is a certified Alcohol Mindset Coach, trained by Annie Grace of This Naked Mind. Drawing on her own journey out of alcohol addiction, she now helps others explore and control their drinking. With a career spanning 25 years as a Strategist in the Advertising industry, she combines her own lived experiences, with great insight into what makes us tick and what influences us to behave the way we do.

Connect with Anna:
Website: thebigdrinkrethink.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/annadonaghey
Instagram: instagram.com/bigdrinkrethink
Produced by winteraudio.co.uk
About Matt Wing:
Matt Wing is the founder of Midlife Mentor, a coaching and content brand for midlife adults who want to change their relationship with alcohol without calling themselves an alcoholic or sitting in a recovery group. He's the creator of the 4PM Reset Method, built around the idea that most people don't have a drinking problem, they have a 4PM problem: the daily window where old habits take over. Matt speaks from experience, not theory, and has helped clients through his 30-Day Reset, 90-Day Deep Work, and 1:1 coaching programmes. He shares free tools and weekly insight through his newsletter, The Friday Feeling, and on Instagram @midlife.mentor, where he's built a community of over 100,000 followers.
Connect with Matt:
Website: https://www.midlifementor.me/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/midlife.mentor