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All else aside, I think the trend of people that didn't have any apparent drinking problem proudly announcing that they've quit drinking and feel so much better is really weird. I'm really not clear what they're optimizing for or what they're experiencing that is ostensibly so much better in their post-alcohol phase. I guess Andreeson spells it out a bit:
I can buy the sleep portion of things and sleep certainly has downstream effects, but I also think that you have to drink a lot for these to be all that noticeable. I drink more than I probably should, but do no meaningful experience any problems with energy for exercise or controlling my diet. Are the people that say that they feel much better sans drinking just even heavier drinkers than me or are they experiencing the world very differently?
As irritating as people that make drinking their identity are, people that make not drinking into an identity are even more irritating.
Some of it is probably the zeal of the convert, but some of it could genuinely be trying to help others like them. "Hey dude, I was like you. I was drinking, and drinking way too much. I didn't believe all the warnings or the do-gooders because how the fuck could they know what drinking was like, they didn't drink. I never believed all that shit that not drinking was so much better. And then I got sober, and I'm telling you it's true, and I'm telling you that you can believe me because I'm not one of the do-gooders, I was right down there just like you are now".
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One of the major points in the Huberman episode he references is that even occasional drinking has long-term negative effects on mood. This was a surprising thing to me though it prompted me to stop drinking altogether, around the same timeframe, and I can say similar things: overall a positive. It wasn't hard to do, but never tried it before as I didn't think of myself as suffering any ill effects.
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This makes sense on an intuitive level if you assume HBD (in a less CW application) is correct. Alcohol is basically poison and causes widespread if minor damage to every system it touches, and if you're a descendant of a culture or lineage of teetotalers then you might not have the same degree of resilience to/recovery from the holistic harm dealt by booze (HBD isn't necessary for this, variation amongst individuals is an equally plausible explanation).
Speaking only for myself, I went through a period of heavy (.5-1L of cheap bourbon daily) drinking some time ago. The main reason I stopped was the general malaise that I felt, but the thing that kicked it over the edge for me was how frequent my more intense nightmares became when I would crawl into bed wasted. I still have this problem now, more than 6 drinks in a day (with very little correlation to how close to bedtime I've been drinking) is almost guaranteed to have me visited that night by the very worst my unconscious mind has to offer. As a result I don't really drink that much, when I even bother to in the first place (still enjoy the sensation of being drunk, but I have enough consistently bad dreams already that it's just not worth being haunted by myself, the hangovers have gotten significantly worse as I've gotten older too).
1 litre of cheap spirits a day probably didn't do your liver any favours either, and if you managed to escape fatty liver be very glad (as well as the excess calories going to belly fat, the worst place to have it).
Absolutely, though it wasn't a full litre every day, or even most, that was more of a weekend thing. I was drinking at least 500ml daily. Colossally stupid of me in hindsight, but at the time I wasn't exactly thinking about my liver, more concerned with drowning my sorrows and committing slow motion suicide (narcissistically, I thought it was kind of tragic and cool). Hindsight makes that seem laughable to me now, but at the time I very much felt that I was in a complete dead end in my life. My coolguy self-affirming mantra has since changed from "live slow, die whenever" to "live purposefully, die after around 30,000 days".
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How much are you drinking?
I certainly notice some effects when I stop drinking. I have a sleep and heart rate monitor and it is easily apparent how much alcohol affects my sleep.
Also while some people (like my doctor) consider me a heavy drinker, in some of my social circles I'm a light drinker.
A light night of drinking for me is 4-6 drinks, usually spaced out over 2-3 hours. A standard drinking night is more like 10 drinks, and a heavy drinking day is about 15-20 drinks over the course of an entire day.
I don't notice the effects of just two drinks, enough so that I'd rather just not drink than have only two.
The main benefit of me going sober for a few weeks is that it seems to lower my tolerance back to more normal ranges.
I'd say my modal day is two beers. Having four or five standard drinks isn't uncommon, particularly if I'm dipping into barrel-proof whiskeys or barrel-aged stouts. On a football Sunday, I'll go quite a bit higher, maybe 8-10 standard drinks over the course of a day.
From stress score and sleep metrics, I see only a transient stress effect from a couple beers and no impact on sleep. Going up to four or five has a large stress score impact and adversely impacts sleep. The heavier days depend on timing and spacing of drinks. Even if I'm hungover, I'll get up and run in the morning, but the performance hit is large if I had ten drinks the previous day.
So maybe this is just a dose thing and I'm underestimating how much people are drinking when they say, "quitting drinking made me feel better". If I was slamming ten drinks a day, yeah, I'd be a lot better if I stopped.
I thought this might be the case, which is why I gave my numbers. I drink an unhealthy amount, so when I stop the effects tend to be easily noticeable. I'm also only in my early thirties. From everything I've seen and everyone I know, the effects of drinking get worse with age. I have mild-moderate hangovers these days, a decade ago I didn't really get hangovers at all. My friends that are a decade older get knocked out for a full day.
Quitting my current level of drinking in my forties seems like it would be extremely noticeable.
Here is where I say "Go fuck yourself, that horseshit about being the tough realist who knows the underbelly of life and the real grit and dirt is that same old 'tortured artist' bullshit which makes mediocre wannabe rockstars start a heroin habit because all the great artists are crazy in some way or druggies or drunks".
That's unkind, but the "non-drinkers are stuck up perfect guys" reeks of an excuse about "so what if I piss myself and vomit all down the front of myself, that's real life bitch". Next thing is a quote from Fight Club, right?
The non-drinkers are the ones mopping up the puke afterwards, they see plenty of shit and clean it up.
I drink, but I have to restrict myself because the way I drink I know it's bad for me, I don't make any "social connections", and there's alcoholism on both sides of the family for several generations back so very easy to get addicted and end up down that path. That's why I find the pretentiousness about seedy bars and the real side of life annoying. Drunks are drunks, they're not some cheap guru with the inside track on the reality of experience. They reek of shit and piss and vomit and stale booze and cigarette smoke, you're right about that.
What do you care what other people do or don't do for fun and enjoyment? If they don't nag you to stop drinking, why need you nag them to start?
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I think you nailed it with the "fog". It was hard for me to really gauge where my drinking was at for a long time, before I started having frank and honest talks with my doctor. I had friends that could finish a half bottle of whiskey in a night, and this would only result in them a semi functional drunk and a bit hungover the next day. I would look at them and be like 'thats insane, I don't drink that much' and think I'm fine. I don't know many of those friends that continue to do that, so maybe that should have been an answer in itself.
I find myself kinda agreeing with the take of either drink nothing, or drink enough to feel something. I don't like to be drunk, I do like to be a little buzzed. But I can see that the difference between me and a serious alcoholic is in that slight difference in preference. Having a drink without the buzz feels pointless to me. But to maintain that buzzed, or tipsy feeling over multiple hours is where the quantity comes in. Two to three drinks in the first hour to feel tipsy, and then one or two drinks every hour afterwards to maintain. Usually its on the 'more drinks' side of those numbers if I haven't recently gone without drinking for a few weeks, because my tolerance has gone up. So that easily ends up being 10 drinks over the course of 4-5 hours.
I do like the social lubricant aspects of alcohol. There are some sober people I know that don't seem to need any social lubricant, or if anything they get too lubed up from alcohol. To those people I feel like "you don't need to drink, but please let me drink around you so I can be on your level". I don't think I think any better of someone for throwing up from alcohol. If anything it downgrades my opinion of them. When I throw up I consider from alcohol its kind of a failure to me, it means I drank too much. But I'm also not really willing to hangout with people in the first place if I think they are stuckup.
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Wow, unless you have a weird definition of "drink", then those are truly massive amounts of alcohol. Like Huberman would say, this is called "alcohol use disorder".
Those wouldn't be considered particularly outrageous amounts in many Finnish university student circles (assuming you are a big guy). Not daily, of course but for parties / weekend.
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I saw that podcast when it came out! Huge fan of Bert and Tom.
It might be thrown off cuz I've generally switched to low carb beers and hard seltzers that are in the 4-5% alcohol range. Back when I was drinking heavier carb beers in the 8-12% range i was definitely drinking half as many. I do drink hard liquor as well, and maybe that is a better gauge of alcohol consumption. Though its not like I'm measuring out shots, and I usually mix the liquor with the light beers. My numbers might be 20% lower if I assume my liquor consumption is more accurate, and the lower alcohol drinks I normally have aren't a "full" drink per can.
But yeah in general I am aware that I consume an unhealthy amount of alcohol, its something I hope to work on one day. Op seemed to be surprised that people could have drastic improvements in their life by just quitting alcohol. I wanted to let Op know that yes, you can have drastic improvements if you are drinking an unhealthy amount to start. And based on ops response, they aren't quite at the level of an obviously unhealthy amount of drinking, so the effects are probably less noticeable for them.
Not germane to the discussion, but can you explain Bert Kreischer for me? I like Tom fine, think he's quick and pretty funny, most of the rest of the deathsquad guys are pretty okay at least to me, but Bert has always been a guy I just don't get. He feels to me like he isn't a real person, I've always felt like he's some kind of cutout for a PR company whose name no one knows (Bent Pixels maybe?). Am I just a hater? I'm okay with having an irrational dislike of a comedian, pretty easy for me to just not consume content that rubs me the wrong way.
Its kind of hard, on paper I really should be a fan of Tom more.
Bert isn't fake though. He is the real life thing that marketing companies try to imitate. And a real life party animal doesn't get that way by being a stable normal human being.
I maybe like something about his energy. "life of the party" is not an exaggeration. He is the embodiment of the energy and excitement of a party. I like that energy.
If I got to hangout with Bert and Tom separately, I'd choose to hangout with Bert for a night of partying, and then hangout with Tom two days later after my hangover. I'd reminisce with Tom about the fun I had during the Bert party.
Fair enough, maybe my personality is too neurotic to find "the life of the party" attractive. Thanks for letting me ask in a place I'll get a straight answer, fans and haters alike would rattle off the weird inside baseball stuff that I know and don't care about, which can be fun and funny but is counterproductive to getting a straight answer. Sounds like it really is just a me thing.
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20 5-6% beers is still an incredible amount.
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I think a large contingent of people at the parties I go to drink that much at parties but don’t drink much at all other times. It’s definitely binge drinking but I don’t think it’s that unusual. Alcohol use disorder sure, but it’s common at parties in my experience
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depends on bodyweight and proof
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I do not have a drinking problem, but part of that is that it runs in my family, and I take some care about it. If a buy a bottle of whiskey, I will have 1-2 glasses a night until it is gone, taking maybe 4-6 nights. But I notice a significant difference in QoL stuff between those 4-6 day spans and weeks where I don't drink at all. It amounts to maybe a 10-15% overall difference in a general "how good do I feel?" sense. Some combination of better sleep, less stress on metabolic systems, etc.
A few people have mentioned bottle are we talking 5ths or handles or pints?
I am talking about 5ths.
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Personally, I've never noticed a large difference. But maybe it's psychosomatic - I've never deliberately resolved to quit drinking, so maybe people who make a Thing of it end up manifesting the difference, like the No Nut November guys who claim to unlock telekinesis.
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I'm not a heavy drinker when I do drink, up to 3 or so drinks in one session at most, and more typically 2, and I'll say that I definitely notice the sleep benefits when I stop drinking. Just 2 drinks in an evening tends to make my sleep highly restless, while also making me feel dehydrated before and after sleep. The dehydration tends to lead to more drinking of water, which leads to more peeing which also leads to shorter sleep/more awakenings at night.
So I think people are just experiencing the world very differently from you.
This is very much an aside, but your comment reminds me of my experience with melatonin, which I was convinced for a very long time was pure snake oil. I have not once experienced any sort of sleep aiding effects with melatonin, whether that be help falling asleep or help staying asleep or help getting more restful sleep, and I tried it many times at many different periods of my life. So I was convinced that it was just a society-wide placebo. More recently, seeing just how many people report sleep benefits from it, I've come to be convinced it's just that different people experience that chemical differently, and I'm one of those people for whom it does literally nothing.
Yeah. I had assumed melatonin wouldn't do anything for me. But I've been taking it, and it absolutely has an effect on me.
Tangentially - and I mean very tangentially - if you have any experience with those rhino erection pills? I had one recently and I was surprised that it seemed to work. I'm not entirely certain. Think a somewhat delayed effect, if there was one.
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One of the tricks with melatonin is to take a low dose. It's a signaling hormone rather than a drug, so it doesn't work properly if the dose is too high, and most commercial brands are too high dose and don't work (at least not for me). 1-3mg works well in my experience.
I've tried a large range of dosages over the years, including taking 1mg pills and chopping them in half to get half dose and taking multiple 3mg pills at once and many in between, and I never noticed any impact that was different from not taking anything. I think it just doesn't work for me.
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