This episode of Cali Sober Mom dives into the inspiring journey of Holly Hilyer, co-founder of Utokia, as she shares her transition from corporate life to cannabis entrepreneurship. Holly discusses breaking addiction stigma, exploring cannabis for wellness, and making education fun through her innovative brand, Utokia, that blends fantasy and healing
In this episode, Monica sits down with Holly Hilyer, co-founder of Utokia, a cannabis and hemp company blending wellness with imagination. Holly shares her deeply personal story of overcoming addiction, discovering the healing power of cannabis, and building a brand that inspires joy, relaxation, and adventure. From secret childhood memories of her parents growing cannabis to becoming an entrepreneur in the space, Holly opens up about her journey and passion for educating others about cannabis.
Topics Discussed:
Additional Links:
Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode with someone who would enjoy this insightful conversation!
Monica Olano [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the Cali Sober mom podcast. Monica and Brittany are changing the conversation about motherhood, cannabis and mental health, considering themselves unhinged, Martha Stewart adjacent. Monica is a previous corporate America warrior turned mom and voice in the cannabis and consumer advocacy world. Brittany is an artist, business owner, mother and mental health advocate. Now here are your hosts, the Cali Sober Moms.
Monica Olano [00:00:25]:
Welcome back to this week's edition of Cali Sober Mom. We are going to mix things up a little bit. Britney was unable to make it with us today. You guys know she is a busy, busy bee. So I will be leading the pack solo back to the old school days of season one. And I have with me the amazing Holly from Utopia. She is the co founder of the company. She bridges the span of both cannabis and hemp, which is really fascinating because there's not a lot of people out there that have really lived in both worlds from the personal and the business side.
Monica Olano [00:01:04]:
But what's really exciting for me about this company is she really merges wellness with fantasy, which is really fun and it creates just unique products that they inspire joy, relaxation, and it's about adventure and fun. So really happy to have you here, Hollywood.
Holly Hilyer [00:01:22]:
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Monica Olano [00:01:24]:
I know I gave a very broad overview and we have talked before, but I would love for you to be able to share your story about getting here because it's really fascinating.
Holly Hilyer [00:01:40]:
Yeah, so I kind of going way back over nine years ago, my journey started really it was longer than that because my parents were growers, but they didn't really tell me they were growers when I was growing up.
Monica Olano [00:01:58]:
You didn't grow up in the farms with them?
Holly Hilyer [00:02:01]:
No, no, we had a farm, a lot of animals, beautiful childhood. But my parents grew in secret because back then you had to grow literally underground. They grew under a chicken coop, which we built into the story. So you mentioned our brand. We'll get to that. But my brand is a lot of fantasy, a lot of fun. It's the world of Utokia. So you can view it like you would maybe Harry Potter or, you know, Chronicles of Narnia or something like you're going through a portal into our world when you try our products.
Holly Hilyer [00:02:34]:
So.
Monica Olano [00:02:34]:
And I have to tell you, I. I'm not a fantasy person. Like I have never watched in a full episode or a full movie of Harry Potter. Is that. It's a movie, right? I don't live in that world. That's just me. But I had posted because I knew you and your husband also like Marvel. My husband's obsessed with Marvel.
Monica Olano [00:02:53]:
So I had reached out to you and then posted when I tried one of the products to go to the new Marvel movie. And when I posted that, turns out a lot of my close friends ordered your product immediately and they've been playing the game like I didn't even know. My friends have been playing the game separately and they talk about it all the time like they know when the new cards are coming out.
Holly Hilyer [00:03:15]:
Oh, funny. Yeah. That is amazing. Well, it's funny too, because I recently. There's someone on TikTok that was doing a live. She's a giggling granny. And so she's an older woman and she said that she thought our cards were hoagie at first and. Oh, shoot, let me grab one of the cards.
Holly Hilyer [00:03:36]:
Oh, yeah, yeah. We have these cards. There we go. This is our World of Utopia 1. This is the one that you get for completing our whole Origin series quest. So we have a whole quest that we do. This is like the old man. We have strains.
Holly Hilyer [00:03:50]:
I have. You can see back there. That's like a whole wall of just a little portion of the cards that we do. Yeah. So we have like over 15 illustrations. We work with a local artist, by the way, to do most of the illustrations. So we love supporting artists, especially in the world of AI. Now a lot of them are being replaced.
Holly Hilyer [00:04:10]:
It would be so easy for us to just utilize AI to do a lot of what we do, especially in fantasy. But we do love supporting art.
Monica Olano [00:04:19]:
And I'm sorry, I totally. I'm a ADHD rabbit hole squirrel girl. So I took you away from the underground chicken coop. I apologize. From your parents.
Holly Hilyer [00:04:28]:
Yeah. So we. My parents grew, and I didn't know about it when I was a kid. I only learned about it when I was an adult. And really, my first adventure into partaking in any cannabis was after I broke both the bones in my wrist. I came off of my horse. I've been riding since I was 3 years old. I've come off plenty of times.
Holly Hilyer [00:04:51]:
But this time we both fell. He slipped. He slipped on a slick patch. And so we. I went over the top of him and I was prescribed oxy. I have a plate in my arm now with a lot of screws and hardware, and my doctor just prescribed me oxy. My body quickly became addicted to it. You just can't help it.
Holly Hilyer [00:05:16]:
And it's just something physiologically that happens.
Monica Olano [00:05:18]:
And I want to stop you right there because I think you just brought up a very important point. A lot of what we do is breaking stigma and shame.
Holly Hilyer [00:05:26]:
Right.
Monica Olano [00:05:26]:
And there's such a stigma and shame that comes with carrying the burden of addiction to anything, let alone oxygen. And it's not. If anyone else is listening to this, and they may have struggled, it's not your fault. The drug itself was designed to be addictive. And so I just. I really want to emphasize that point and how confidently you said it, because a lot of people will hide from that and just know it's not your fault. So thank you.
Holly Hilyer [00:05:54]:
Oh, absolutely. And it happens to. It can happen to the best of people and athletes. There's been so many stories with athletes that have a sports injury, and then, you know, their life takes a whole different turn. And it's. It's very frustrating because when I went to my doctor and said, look, I am. The pain is still there, but I don't feel like myself, I was kind of a shell of a human being, if I could. Like, that's the only way I could really put it, because I'm a very outgoing, bubbly, talkative person.
Holly Hilyer [00:06:25]:
And on Oxy, I was in my bathrobe outside in the summer, shivering and not talking to anyone and just very, very depressed. Yes. So I went to my doctor, and he said, I'll prescribe you more, and gave me another prescription. There was no talk of any other choice alternative. I was cutting my pills in half, trying to just take less and less. And every time I would hit, like, a few hours after my last pill, my body would get the shakes, I would get nausea. Like, you go through all the withdrawal symptoms, and every part of you just wants to take more or just to make it stop. And I knew I.
Holly Hilyer [00:07:01]:
Luckily, I have a fantastic support system. Huge. My parents being the cannabis growers that they were.
Monica Olano [00:07:09]:
The secret cannabis growers that they were.
Holly Hilyer [00:07:12]:
Yes. So they kind of came out of the cannabis closet there and said, hey, here's some tinctures and edibles. And I'm like, whoa, okay, okay, wait.
Monica Olano [00:07:21]:
What was your reaction? Was it more like, I want to get off? Like, where was your head out when they came out of the closet? Like, not only here's some healthier alternatives, but we are cannabis growers.
Holly Hilyer [00:07:35]:
Yeah, it was. It was quite a shock, I think, I must say. But after knowing it wasn't, everything kind of made sense. So I was like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. You know, it's fun. Fun learning about your parents, like, secret.
Monica Olano [00:07:52]:
Secret lives that they're real human beings, too, and not just the mythical creatures that are perfect in our head.
Holly Hilyer [00:07:59]:
And at that point, I'm in my late 20s and I'm like, okay. And so, yeah, and I was very grateful. And at that point, too, my arm was still all in a cast, and so it was hard for me to, like, light a joint. And I had never smoked a cigarette in my whole life. And I, you know, I was a straight A student. Like, my parents really did it right. And I'm not saying you have to hide it from your kids. We were definitely in a different era now than they were.
Holly Hilyer [00:08:24]:
But they gave me some edibles and tinctures, and that helped with the nausea. It helped with all the withdrawals. I was able to get off of it very, very quickly without. I don't know how long it would have taken me, but it was a matter of maybe two weeks of really using that. I just completely kicked it. That was kind of my first real experience other than that I had tried to, you know, smoke a joint in a Dave Matthews Band call with my friend and her parents. Her parents gave me a joint, and I was on fire immediately. Like.
Holly Hilyer [00:09:01]:
Like, the bangs dropped as I was lighting it and just singed my little bangs. And I don't even think I. And I was so embarrassed. I had these little spiky bangs for, you know, in. In high school for, you know, a good while, until those grew out. So that scared me off for a little bit.
Monica Olano [00:09:18]:
Yeah, I would love to have been a fly in the wall telling people at high school, like, why you has singe bangs, or telling a teacher, let.
Holly Hilyer [00:09:25]:
Alone, oh, yeah, I can't remember. I must have come up with a brilliant excuse. But, yeah, so that was kind of my introduction into using it medicinally and finding all these benefits. And I'm a big researcher, and, you know, and I try to live a pretty healthy lifestyle. And so that opened my eyes because I grew up in the DARE era, and even though my parents were growers, they didn't have me in that part of their lives. And, you know, I kind of grew up like most people and then got a corporate job right out of college, and none of my friends at all partaked or admitted to it. And as soon as I started growing, so I got real bored with, you know, just the office job, the daily, you know, grind of going to your cubicle. We were looking to break out of that, and Adam and I were looking into other.
Holly Hilyer [00:10:20]:
Starting other businesses. We had a lot of different ideas. And then it was perfect timing with the legalization talk happening in Oregon and us looking for another career path, and my parents already having this knowledge, and they said, hey, have you thought about Growing. You have a green thumb. You grew up on a farm. Like, I love vegetable gardening. So, you know, after a lot of talking, we decided to find a property. And, uh, so we found a property out in rural Oregon, actually, coincidentally, like, pretty close to my parents.
Holly Hilyer [00:10:56]:
Um, do they still grow?
Monica Olano [00:10:57]:
Do your parents still grow as well?
Holly Hilyer [00:10:59]:
Yeah. So my mom retired from growing, um, finally. It's pretty brutal in the body. It is a lot of work, especially when years and years of trimming, um, she finally stopped. And my dad still does.
Monica Olano [00:11:12]:
Yeah.
Holly Hilyer [00:11:12]:
But seeing them, it is. It is hard. It's hard work. Yeah.
Monica Olano [00:11:16]:
And that was eight years ago. Being that you guys were part of recognizing it.
Holly Hilyer [00:11:21]:
Right.
Monica Olano [00:11:21]:
As legalization was talking. You've been around doing it for eight years, which, I mean, I've only been. I've known about cannabis, but I've only been interested in it for six months. You have seen a lot. So you've seen from the marijuana legalization to now what's going on with hemp. Do you kind of want to walk us through how you view both worlds and what we should know about both worlds?
Holly Hilyer [00:11:46]:
Absolutely. It's a very interesting, I think, evolution of cannabis. And it was really exciting at first in Oregon. You know, we started with our medical license, and then we got our recreational cannabis license. And Because Oregon was huge on the medical program and serving its patients and the growers being really passionate about that. And that lasted a couple years, I would say. And growing was all about, you know, cool genetics. And, you know, I remember growing the first purple strain that I ever had, because purples weren't really a thing back then.
Holly Hilyer [00:12:21]:
Now you go into. For those of you who have dispensaries, you see a lot of purple weed.
Monica Olano [00:12:26]:
Okay.
Holly Hilyer [00:12:27]:
It's. It's pretty. It's. It's dazzling.
Monica Olano [00:12:29]:
Let me. I don't want to interrupt you, but, like, this is how different our worlds are. So I don't know what a purple strain is, because in Louisiana, recreational is not legalized, and we have medical. But you can't go in. You have to order online just by pictures of the package.
Holly Hilyer [00:12:50]:
You don't even see the flower. It's just the package. Oh, no.
Monica Olano [00:12:54]:
And you go in and they scan your id. They give you a number, like if you were at a deli, and then they call your number, number 37. You can't go until you get a text that your order's ready. It takes 24 to 48 hours. They give you this number. You go. And then it's like a Walgreens pharmacy counter. So they're in like the pharmacy scrubs and then they just check you out and that's it.
Monica Olano [00:13:18]:
That is the most. And they say you can schedule an appointment with a pharmacist to ask questions, but you can't see anything, you can't touch anything. And there's no pictures of flower on the website either. It's strictly just the label. So you have to go off your eyes or talking to your friends. Same thing with Iowa. So a purple strain or just even, you know, I heard recently, like if you smell the flower, your body internally knows what works for you and doesn't in a type of way. I don't know if that's true or not, but a lot of folks don't know what seems so normal and simple to you.
Monica Olano [00:13:54]:
That's how misinformed some of us are.
Holly Hilyer [00:13:58]:
Yeah, there. And it's interesting going into hemp too, so. Because even the word like Delta 9 people are scared of. Oh, Delta, Delta 9. Oh, that's, you know, the bad stuff. I want the real stuff, the good stuff, you know, And I'm like, wait a minute. So I come from grower knowledge and I've always known that delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol. Tetrahydrocannabinol is the THC that we're all familiar with that is the most abundant compound in the plant.
Holly Hilyer [00:14:28]:
It's the thing that's psychoactive and gets you high. And so it was quite a surprise when I jumped over to hemp and I heard everyone go, no, Delta 9. I'm like, wait, isn't that what everyone wants? And there's such confusion though, on terminology. And I get it, we've made it really confusing. Even wine, you know, and wine culture and stuff I think is very confusing. On knowing the different, you know, varietals and what you're drinking and it's barrel age and this and that. And I think cannabis is even more complex than that because there are thousands of strains and they've got all these off the wall names. Because cannabis is unique in a couple of ways that it has both the male and female parts of the plant.
Holly Hilyer [00:15:12]:
So you could have a male plant and a female plant. Most plants have male and female reproductive parts in the same plant.
Monica Olano [00:15:18]:
Really?
Holly Hilyer [00:15:18]:
Okay, yeah. So yeah, you grow flower or something and it has the pollen and it reproduces on its own. It doesn't need a male plant, a female plant. Cannabis is one of the only plants that you need a male and a female. Once in a while you'll get a hermaphrodite a female plant that's supposed to just be flower and will herm you. But we.
Monica Olano [00:15:38]:
Okay, we'll save that for a more technical one.
Holly Hilyer [00:15:41]:
So you want the females. It's all about women. In this world of cannabis, females are what produces the buds, the flowers, and the males are what produces the pollen, and that gives you seed. So you don't want any of the males. And in the world, cannabis, you get all the females and you cut all the males away.
Monica Olano [00:16:00]:
Trust the women, follow the women, because.
Holly Hilyer [00:16:04]:
No, nobody wants seedy bud. It pops when you light it, you know, and you're. Yeah, when you're smoking it, you'll get little pops and it makes it taste weird. So, yeah, you want. You want the female plant. So, yeah, there's a lot of complexity to growing in Oregon. I guess we're really incredibly lucky with how, at least from a consumer standpoint of understanding plant more and being more educated on it. Because when you walk into a dispensary, you just walk right in whenever, at your convenience, show your id, of course, and then you see all of these jars of bud on the wall.
Holly Hilyer [00:16:39]:
And we're one of the only states. I don't know if we're the only, but at least one of the only. That budtender will take whatever jar you want to see, and they'll open it up and you can smell it, you can look at it, you can't touch it, but, you know, you can get a good feel for it. And. And some dispensaries have maybe, you know, 20, 30 strains on the wall at one time. And so you get a really good variety of indoor and outdoor. And you'll see with. And they say what you were talking about, trust the notes.
Holly Hilyer [00:17:08]:
And that is kind of a thing. I think it's with just with anything. You're. When you're eating something, you're eating it with your eyes and your mouth and your nose, all your senses. And the same thing with cannabis, you know, if you smell it and it doesn't smell good to you, like certain strains, like gelatos that are really popular, that are kind of smell like butt to put it in the prank. No, skunky. I don't like those ones as much. I like the fruity, the floral.
Holly Hilyer [00:17:37]:
And so with thousands of different strains, it can get really confusing. But it's really exciting being a grower. And so back in the day, I used to be able to kind of grow what I wanted, discover new strains. Pheno hunt. So pheno hunting is when you plant A whole bunch of the same seeds. So you'll have maybe skunk number one or something. You'll plant a hundred seeds, and those hundred seeds might be slightly. Each one is slightly different.
Holly Hilyer [00:18:04]:
They have different characteristics of bud size and smell and potency and the color. So you'll have a lot of variation just in one generation. Um, yeah. So I had a lot of fun until probably, I don't know, even three years ago, I would say, is when it started to really change. It became all about potency and just the cheapest weed for the. And getting the highest potency. The easiest comparison is just if you walked into a liquor store and you just said, get me whatever is the most, you know, potent, the highest alcohol percentage ever.
Monica Olano [00:18:42]:
Clear. Yeah.
Holly Hilyer [00:18:43]:
Yeah. And I'm like, I would not do that to myself since last time was in high school or in college and drinking jungle juice with Everclear. Worst mistake ever. Um, yeah, there's so much more about it. It's. And cannabis too. The other thing that's complex is even the THC percentage, THC changes over time for when you harvest it and you test it even on the same plant. If you have a butt up here towards the light, it's going to test at a different potency, a different THC level than a bud down here, kind of in the dark, you know, underneath all the leaves.
Holly Hilyer [00:19:17]:
So even on the same plant, it's not homogenous. And then when you harvest a thousand plants and then you pick maybe five buds out of there and you grind them together and you have potency, it's not really going to be, even from the very beginning, really truthful or accurate to the customer. And it doesn't tell the whole story of how that's going to interact with your system, along with terpenes and all the other hundreds of cannabinoids that are in it, like CBG and CBN and all these other fantastic components of the cannabis plant.
Monica Olano [00:19:50]:
Yeah.
Holly Hilyer [00:19:51]:
It's not just about thc. So when it started to change and then the focus just became on that and nobody was talking about for medical purposes at all. Like, I haven't heard a single person in the last three years of growing and selling and being in and out of dispensaries on a daily basis, talk about it for medical medicine. And then when I started the hemp, I immediately had customers from all over the United States and in other countries. I wish we could UK and Australia. I wish they had options because they reach out so frequently and they're asking, well, I need help with anxiety and depression and sleep. And then hearing about the stories once they started consuming. I was getting just dozens of emails and reviews saying, oh, my gosh, this has helped me with pot syndrome.
Holly Hilyer [00:20:42]:
This has helped me with Ms. I could walk better. And like, just these really phenomenal stories. Even this older. She said she was giving it to her grandma for a runny nose that she's had her entire life. I didn't even know that that was a thing that I could help with our products. And she said, yeah, it cleared up a runny nose. And like nothing else has ever worked and no pharmaceutical.
Holly Hilyer [00:21:06]:
And so it's been an amazing journey to go from cannabis and almost lose the passion for it. It was just like, I'll grow the strains that will produce the most bud, be the highest testers. Like, you know, that's the only thing that will sell, to be honest. And then, you know, to step into this new world. And I didn't know what to expect. I guess I just expected more of the same. And then to get so surprised with, wow, we can really help a lot of people. And then my motivation became more and more about access and making sure that, you know, people can get good quality product, the same quality that they can find in a dispensary.
Holly Hilyer [00:21:46]:
Because we do all of the testing, like all of the control standards that we do in Oregon, Recreational cannabis on the hep side as well, because I think that's a big fear people as say you can get at the gas station or here. Well, we don't sell at the gas station, obviously, but we sell mostly online and we have a few select retailers, but we do not cut any corners. It's all the same or better quality than what you can get here at an Oregon dispensary. We have so many options. So it's really brought a lot of joy and any passion back into it. And now that's all I want to do.
Monica Olano [00:22:24]:
Yeah, I could tell the first time I talked with both you and Adam, the passion that was there and the drive for consumers and for human beings and away from the THC percentage, which is a commercial tactic to sell more. And then with the hemp and the farm bill, for the first time, we are having it be readily accessible, but there's still the where do we find reputable information? Do I trust what Google's telling me? Because people pay to be on Google. There's just so much misinformation out there. So I absolutely love that you and Adam have decided to bridge the gaps, show both worlds, talk educationally on it. That's what's so key to me is, you know, the education of both, which I just absolutely love.
Holly Hilyer [00:23:17]:
Yeah. We also want to bridge it and make it more approachable with, like, our cards, you know, so our cards, it may just be kind of you get a booster pack in your order. And the cards are different strains. They're different, like cannabis kind of topical thing. Like, we have a munchies card and the cotton mouth card, and then we have some strain ones that are, like I mentioned, there's thousands of strains and some of them are just so funny. You have to, like, this one's inspired. Actually made a plushie out of it is our vanilla frosting yeti. So we had grew up in vanilla frosting strain.
Holly Hilyer [00:23:48]:
And I was like, what would this look like in the world of Utokia? So we're trying to, I think, in our way, destigmatize and make it approachable, make it not so scary by just having this fantasy world of what would all these things look like in our wacky world of Utokia that people can just understand a little bit better.
Monica Olano [00:24:10]:
I think of how my daughter just started Pre K3, and she does her best learning when she's interacting with it. And it's a fun experience. And that's what this is saying to me right now. It's saying, like, come in and learn in an approachable, fun way. Not. Here's a ton of information. Research it, and you should know all of this. I think one of the biggest things for me that I find hard is when I want to try something new or I'm suffering from something, how do I find that product? Like, if I were to go on your website today, how would I walk through your website? How would I find the right product for me, and how would I know what its effects were going to be?
Holly Hilyer [00:24:48]:
The main two categories that we have is the CBD joints, so smokables and our edibles. And I think for a lot of people, deciding what works best for you is that's the individual decision. So a lot of people don't like smoking and find it healthier to consume edibles. There's pros and cons to both. Our CBD flower isn't psychoactive, so it's more for pain, anxiety, stress, and it works pretty immediately. So that's the benefit with flour, is it's going to work right away. And you can moderate a lot easier on it, actually, because you can modulate, I guess, because you can take a toke and kind of see how you feel within a couple Minutes and then go, okay, I want to take a little more. And with edibles it takes a little bit of practice and I think that's what I've been trying to really educate.
Holly Hilyer [00:25:38]:
Especially we have, you know, I'm following on TikTok and I do little short clips on some more educational pieces on edibles because it can be more complicated because you have to time it right. Because it does take, you know, 30 to minutes to an hour to kick in and then the effects can last several hours. But knowing your dosage is really, really key.
Monica Olano [00:26:02]:
Low and slow folks, if you haven't. Low and slow, yes.
Holly Hilyer [00:26:07]:
So we always recommend starting with a really small amount, probably anywhere from 2.5 to 5 milligrams. And just as a starting point and then being patient because often you can take that and then yeah, you're like, I don't know if I'm feeling it yet. And then you'll, you want to take a little more. And especially because they're so delicious, you might want to nibble, nibble. If it's really your first time, especially just take a tiny bit, wait. And it might take over the course of several days or even a couple weeks and it's fine. You have your whole life to the rest of your life to be enjoying these. So take the time, explore, find the right dose for you and then you'll have a wonderful experience.
Holly Hilyer [00:26:45]:
Because a lot of people say, oh no, I had a bad experience, I took too much, I got massive anxiety and usually getting increased anxiety instead of decrease, it's just taking a little bit too much. So I think we, we try to lay it out in a really easy way of categories. So we even have, we have the smokables, which is our flower, you know, pre roll forest and then our edible gardens and then we even have catnip joints for cats. So it's literally, literally catnip joints with catnip toys for your cats for fun. People love to buy them and they take pictures. And we actually have a quest coming out. So we had a whole kind of origin series quest that I didn't get a chance to dive too deep into. But you can find more on our website.
Monica Olano [00:27:30]:
We're going to link a ton of stuff too.
Holly Hilyer [00:27:32]:
And then we have our crazy cat lady adventure quest where our crazy cat lady has lost her cats and you need to find the three cat cards and it's a lot of fun. Kind of spoiler alert. If you actually participate in the quest and get all three, then you'll be written into the story in A really fun way. So we try to really tailor it to have each experience really unique and fun. So we also have a lot of blogs on our website and then on TikTok, like I mentioned, I have a lot of little educational pieces, you know, that people can come and learn. And I'm so excited that people actually love learning about these things because I have so much knowledge over the years to share and being a grower was kind of lonely and a little bit isolated, but now, yeah, I'm trying to share that with the world and do more and more education and just little bite sized pieces for people to digest.
Monica Olano [00:28:23]:
The other thing I want to touch on too before I let you leave me is you mentioned, you know, take your time, be patient. And I think with alcohol we are trained so differently, right? It was always like grabbing. That's the nature of alcohol. It's, you want more dopamine, you want more dopamine, like, go get that dopamine fix. And so we're used to that constant like, have another, have another. And I know you and your husband have also went alcohol free over the recent. How do you guys use cannabis and hemp for wellness in leaving alcohol behind?
Holly Hilyer [00:28:55]:
Yeah, it's been an incredible journey. I will never look back at drinking alcohol. It was a pretty, you know, integral part of our lives. I think it was a habit and it was a daily thing. At a certain point when we finally stopped, it became daily. And yeah, cannabis has been the one thing that has really helped me let go of that and let go of the habit, let go of the feeling and everything because you can just take like a little bit of edible. For me, I take a quarter gummy kind of once per day, twice per day. And I just feel a little bit elevated, a little bit lifted, just nice, in a good mood.
Holly Hilyer [00:29:34]:
It's healthier. I'm like, couple grams of sugar is all that I really worry about rather than damaging, you know, everything, all your organs and all of the negative side effects with alcohol. So we just find that it's, it's a much healthier, better way for us to live and with no judgment on anyone who still drinks, you know. But I was surprised at that stat that you shared on, I think a LinkedIn post that said 33% increased breast cancer for like daily consumption. I consider myself a very intelligent, like educated, well educated person. I didn't know that.
Monica Olano [00:30:10]:
They don't want you to know that.
Holly Hilyer [00:30:12]:
I never thought of the increased cancer risk when I was drinking. Never, not once. I was like kidneys and liver and stuff.
Monica Olano [00:30:19]:
And like, most people don't know this. It's out there. You have to actively find it. They're paying to suppress it. But alcohol a, it impacts women more than it does men, but it actually changes your DNA. The alcohol itself goes in and alters your DNA and that is what causes the cancer growth. And you never know how your genetics are going to react to that. So one person may be able to drink 10 drinks and have minimal damage to their DNA, whereas one.
Monica Olano [00:30:48]:
And so it's not so much a, you can't control it. This is a product that's altering your DNA. But I digress. That's for another.
Holly Hilyer [00:30:57]:
Well, whereas cannabis for me especially, like, instead of feeling bloated, it actually, like decreases inflammation. With our cbg gummy, like headache and migraine, like, I no longer wake up with a, with a hangover. And if I have a headache, I actually use to fight my migraines that come on. There's a lot of things, and even, you know, my back pain and other things, it's just like, it's a nice, healthy thing that I can just introduce, you know, when I need it. Throughout the day and, and especially for night. I've had so many people say how they finally are getting sleep with the CBN gummies, and a lot of people are taking melatonin. You know, again, big pharma melatonin you should not be taking regularly. It actually inhibits your own body's ability to produce it.
Holly Hilyer [00:31:45]:
So all of these supplements with melatonin, CBN is a wonderful natural way to get some sleep and to stay asleep, especially with restless leg syndrome like I have, or two dogs in the bed like I have. It's kind of the only way that I can sleep now throughout the whole night. So it's been a game changer for us. And yeah, we won't look back at, you know, I'll miss some things about drinking, like the variety and just the social aspects. I'm hoping now with hemp, there's more and more cannabis drink options which are really fun and great.
Monica Olano [00:32:20]:
So amazing. Well, I want to thank you and your husband Adam for everything you guys have done with Utokia and helping bring this wellness to folks that may never even have had it as an option or known about it before and doing it in such a fun and experiential way. So thank you so much. We loved having you here and we will have you back again on Cali Sober Mom.
Holly Hilyer [00:32:43]:
All right, thank you.
Monica Olano [00:32:46]:
Thanks for listening to the Cali Sober mom podcast. The best way for us to get the word out is you. So share this episode with someone you know who will enjoy it. And be sure to follow Cali Sober mom on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're consuming the show right now.