Beyond the Gray

If you've ever reached for a drink before getting intimate because you didn't know how to relax without it, this episode is for you. Things change in the bedroom after 50, and a lot of what men blame on age is actually the alcohol. In this episode of Beyond the Gray, I'm going there. Sex, intimacy, and what really happens when alcohol leaves the bedroom. If you're a man over 55, your baseline risk...

Nobody pressures you to drink. Nobody says, "Come on, have another one." It's just what your group does. Friday night, drinks. Golf, drinks. Dinner, drinks. And eventually it stops feeling like a choice. It just feels normal. That's not peer pressure. That's influence. And it's shaping who you're becoming whether you realize it or not. In this episode of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear tackles one o...

Decision Fatigue is EXHAUSTING! Let's talk about it, shall we?  “Am I going to drink tonight?” “Maybe I won’t.” “Well, maybe just one.” “I’ve had a rough day.” “I’ll start tomorrow.” Sound familiar? What if the thing exhausting you isn't the decision itself? What if it's making the same decision over and over again? In this episode of Beyond the Gray , Kari Schwear explores what happens when we ge...

What if the reason you keep struggling to change isn’t a lack of discipline, motivation, or willpower? What if it’s your identity? This is one of my favorite episodes from the early days of Beyond the Gray , and it’s worth bringing back because this conversation goes way beyond alcohol. We all carry stories about who we are: “I’m not a morning person.” “I’m just not disciplined.” “I have a sweet t...

You took 30 days off. Then 60. Then 90. You proved you could do it. And then you went right back. Six months later, you're in the same place, asking yourself the same question: "Am I really ready to quit, or do I just need another break?" In Episode 30 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear tackles the cycle that keeps gray area drinkers stuck for years: the break game. Take a break, prove you're fine,...

Your energy is crashing by 2pm. Your sex drive isn't what it was. You're gaining weight even though you're doing everything right. And you're telling yourself it's just part of getting older. But what if it's not? In Episode 29 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear gets personal about hormones, aging, and what alcohol is really doing to your body after 50. She shares her own recent lab results that rev...

You quit drinking. You thought you'd feel amazing. Instead, you can't sleep, you can't sit still, and your brain is screaming for something, anything, to turn off the noise. You're not broken. Your nervous system just doesn't know you quit yet. In Episode 28 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear tackles the thing nobody warns you about after you stop drinking: your body has no idea how to relax without...

You can stop drinking and still starve your marriage. You can stop scrolling and still starve your health. You can quit the thing that's hurting you and never start building the life you actually want. And then you wonder why you still feel empty. In Episode 27 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear tackles the principle that explains more about your life than almost anything else: what you feed grows,...

I turn 60 in less than six months. And I made a decision: I'm not arriving there by accident. I'm not interested in a party or a trip. I'm interested in who I get to be when I get there. And more importantly, who I'm going to be in the decade that follows. Because I'm not training for 60. I'm training for 70. In Episode 26 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear introduces Project 60: a six-month persona...

No frameworks today. No five-step method. No guest. Just 25 hard truths in 25 minutes from almost 10 years of living alcohol-free and thousands of coaching conversations. At least one of these is going to follow you around for the rest of the week. In Episode 25 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear does something completely different. She drops 25 truths she's learned the hard way, one per minute, cov...

You made the decision. You committed. You know your why. And then you woke up the next morning in the same house, with the same spouse, the same job, the same stress, and the same habits trying to pull you back. Now what? In Episode 24 of Beyond the Gray (Part 2 of 2), Kari Schwear tackles the part nobody talks about: what happens after the decision. Because the hardest part isn't saying "I'm done...

You've tried to change before. Maybe it lasted 30 days. Maybe 90. Maybe even a year. And then you went right back. And the worst part wasn't the behavior. It was the voice in your head that said, "See? You can't do this." In Episode 23 of Beyond the Gray (Part 1 of 2), Kari Schwear breaks down why lasting change fails for most people and what actually makes it stick. She shares what she's never sa...

Jumping into a pool in my bra and underwear at a 4th of July party wasn't enough. Passing out on my husband's shoulder five minutes into a Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga concert we'd waited eight months for wasn't enough. Saying a cuss word in front of 700 people with their heads bowed in prayer at my husband's work event wasn't enough. But telling my then 23-year-old son to go blank himself while bla...

People will talk about politics. They'll talk about money. They'll even talk about their drinking. But faith? That's where most people go silent. In this episode of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear sits down with Joshua Jurkovich, entrepreneur, ultra-runner, and founder of Level10 Growth and Kingdom Impact Network, for one of the most honest, unapologetic conversations this podcast has ever had. They...

Millions of people are currently taking a GLP-1 medication or an antidepressant. Many of them are also drinking. Very few of them have been told what's actually happening inside their bodies when they do. That changes today. In Episode 20 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear breaks down the real risks of mixing alcohol with GLP-1 medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound, as well as com...

What happens when you feel the urge or nudge to drink and you know you are better off without it? Back in 2018, I was 18 months sober, standing in a grocery store, staring at a display of Chardonnay right next to the fish counter. My mouth was salivating. My brain was screaming, "Just buy it." And I did the only thing I could think of. I yelled "STOP" out loud. In the middle of the store. In front...

You already know something is off. You've known for a while. And yet you keep hoping it'll somehow fix itself while you pour another drink to make it easier to not think about it. Sound familiar? This episode is for you. In this solo episode, Kari Schwear breaks down the pattern she sees in high-performing men over and over again. One area of life is thriving while everything else is quietly colla...

My dad passed away the morning of this recording. This episode wasn't planned. I hit record because something happened this week that made everything else feel insignificant. Twenty-three family members gathered in Branson, Missouri. We laughed, we played games, we sat on the porch together. My dad told my husband, "You won't see me tomorrow, Rob. I'm going home." We didn't know how true those wor...

We went away for our 37th wedding anniversary and we didn't eat a single thing for three days. No food, no phone, no noise. Just water, sea salt, worship music, and God. And what happened changed us both in ways we're still processing. In this episode, Kari and her husband Rob walk you through their three-day water fast, day by day. This wasn't about weight loss or a cleanse. It was a spiritual di...

You raised them to leave. And they did. So why does it feel like grief? In Episode 15 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear talks about the gray area that nobody warns you about: the sandwich generation. That strange middle ground where your kids are grown and thriving, but your parents are aging or already gone. And you're standing in between, proud and grieving at the same time, wondering, "Who am I...

He wasn't drinking because he loved alcohol. He was drinking because he didn't think people would like the real him. In Episode 14 of Beyond the Gray, Kari welcomes Billy Lahr, host of the Mindful Midlife Crisis podcast, joining live from Seoul, South Korea. Billy shares his full story: growing up in small-town Minnesota where the bar was the Sunday restaurant, building a drinking identity in coll...

There's a name for what you've been feeling. You're not an alcoholic. But you're not fine either. And nearly one in four American adults are in the exact same place right now. In Episode 13 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear delivers the foundational episode she says she should have recorded first. She breaks down exactly what gray area drinking is, where the term originated (a 2011 NIH-sponsored st...

If you only had three years left, what would you change? Not hypothetically. Actually. Would you keep drinking the way you are? Would you stay in the marriage you've been checked out of? Would you keep putting off the conversations, the reconciliation, the real work of becoming who you're supposed to be? In Episode 12 of Beyond the Gray, Kari Schwear delivers the wake-up call that most people over...

What if the label that was supposed to save you is actually the thing keeping you stuck? Ten years ago, Kari Schwear quit drinking. She wasn't in crisis. She wasn't hitting rock bottom. She was a successful, functioning woman who knew something was off. And when she looked for help, the world gave her one answer: Alcoholics Anonymous. She went. She did the work. And she got something genuinely val...

You're not sleeping as well as you think you are. And if you're waking up at 3 a.m. with your brain on full blast, this episode is going to explain exactly why, and what to do about it. In Episode 10 of Beyond the Gray, Kari welcomes her very first guest: holistic sleep coach Morgan Adams. Morgan spent nearly a decade dependent on Ambien, survived breast cancer twice, and has since built her caree...