Those reasons all make sense to me (doesn’t matter If they make sense to anyone else but the person quitting, of course). I quit soon after COVID-19 was in the news in the US, largely because it wasn’t worth it anymore, I’m getting older and have a young disabled child and thus want to be closer to the top of my game not just for myself. I figure we save at least $600/year from this.
What worked? Having a reason, and listening to my body, and a lucky coincidence-catalyst where I felt absolutely horrible The day after one drink and conflated the two, even if the drink wasn’t causative. I don’t miss it, thankfully. My dad died largely thanks to alcohol (well, alcohol as treatment for poor mental health).
I recently realized that my life is bounded by my ability to regulate:
1. no drugs or alcohol
2. no sugar/carbs/processed food
3. good sleep
4. no porn
When I do all of those things, suddenly it is easier to focus at work, i have more energy, am more out and about, more social, wake up with creative enlightened thought, am more human.
And so all of the motivational material, ideas about stoking passion in craft, therapy, theories about how to succeed, etc feel like a facade. And it feels like the real truth in life is radical health practices. And by radical I mean actually not radical at all, just avoiding the traps of society.
Its ranked in the order of effect. No carbs/sugar and instead eating only veggies and grass fed beef/fish is very noticeable to me. I am absolutely my better self when I am on a keto diet.
It's possible that #3, good sleep, is the most important element, and adopting the remaining behaviors largely work because they improve sleep quality.
Drugs or alcohol can reduce sleep quality (e.g. cannabis reduces REM sleep, alcohol can cause you to wake up too early); a diet high in simple sugars can negatively affect sleep quality [0]; and porn at night can mean looking at a screen with blue light, which can cause you to fall asleep later [1].
Yes, and to me good sleep is highly correlated to physical and mental health and all what is mentioned affects one or both of them.
Is not a matter of just to wanting to have good sleep but try to solve other problems such as food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, lack of sport, caffeine, …
Each of those rules requires self discipline to enforce. Have you considered that you are more sociable, productive, and creative at times you are able to maintain good self discipline?
I suppose making a habit of disciplined behavior could foster such behavior in the future as well.
Really, it could probably go both ways in my view, though I suppose from a practical standpoint, whether cause and effect are swapped doesn’t matter.
It's only radical because society is structured in a way that these are hard to do
1. Even if you don't drink, you need to give in sometimes for the sake of socialization
2. All cheap foods are full of sugar/carbs. If you want to eat healthy food, you either need to have access to farm or pay more.
3. Hustle culture promotes pushing yourself to the limit, sacrificing free time and sleep.
4. Technology(like dating apps) was supposed to make us more connected. But it seems that it instead did the opposite. There is much more lonely people in the world. Some of them can only turn to porn to satisfy their primal urges.
I recently quit alcohol for a few months to support someone else doing the same. I don't find I ever have to "give in". I do sometimes bring canned tea with me if I am going to a friends party.
Rice, local vegetables, eggs and basic cuts of meat are all real cheap.
I quit working around 5pm most days (save meetings that get scheduled late, I tend to skip those randomly). I spend my free time working on fun hobbies or reading, a bit of netflix.
Porn is not de facto evil. It is a supernormal stimulus - it will drown out your sex live because porn literally pushes your biological buttons better. If you can moderate it, then great. If it's an issue, cut it out.
Avoid dating apps. Spend your time doing interesting things with interesting people instead.
> I would argue that a supernormal stimulus should be avoided at all costs.
I don’t like these kinds of blanket statements
I had friends that played WoW and were able to have a perfectly functioning life. They got great grades and had somewhat healthy social life.
Unfortunately I’m not in this camp, if I play online games it will consume my life as nothing else.
A better statement is: know yourself. If you have an addictive personality, stay away from supernormal stimulus. Now, If you’re blessed with genes that can regulate yourself, by all means, go ahead, play games and do whatever you like, you won the life lottery anyway.
I wonder if supernormal stimuli are the same for all people. We tend to see differentiation in ideal mate selection, so it's possible we have different biological weak spots to hijack.
Put another way, for some people maybe videogames are just not a supernormal stimulus. I like games but I actually struggle to rack up play time, even when I intentionally clear time to play. I just never find that reward curve, and not for lack of trying.
I do wonder if some situations - games, social media, porn - are adversarial. Meaning we can view this as one party attempting to find supernormal stimulus and trick you into it, while you attempt to avoid the biological hijacking.
If this is an adversarial situation than avoidance is counter-productive (you won't always win the avoidance game) and instead you need desensitization and safe guards.
> All cheap foods are full of sugar/carbs. If you want to eat healthy food, you either need to have access to farm or pay more.
I don't think most people need low carb to be healthy. The hazard ratio bottoms out around a 50/50 split [0] for carb/fat intake. Oats, buckwheat, and lentils are cheap as hell and very healthy. Mix in veggies, leafy greens, and occasional meat and you can be eating healthy as hell for very cheap.
> 2. All cheap foods are full of sugar/carbs. If you want to eat healthy food, you either need to have access to farm or pay more.
Not necessarily! Whole grain products (like bread, pasta, and oats) and legumes tend to be cheaper per calorie and more filling than many junk foods. The cost of produce varies depending on your location, but at least in some parts of the U.S., ethnic supermarkets sell fruits and vegetables at a very low price compared to other grocery stores. For foods of animal origin, chicken products like eggs and chicken breasts tend to be more affordable than other meats in the U.S., and can be prepared in a healthy way.
It does take time and effort to cook, but you save money compared to ordering from restaurants or eating pre-packaged meals, and you can be 100% confident that you are only using healthy ingredients.
Yeah I would not be surprised, one of my favorite meals is smoked salmon and blueberries. The less I eat carbs though, the more I am grossed out by them. Like if I have rice or a piece of bread now, it tastes like sugar, and I can feel it go into my body.
Is this real or a bit of an eating disorder? There's something to be careful of when you're trying to be healthy is if your ideas of what's "healthy" don't start being a psychological problem.
>The less I eat carbs though, the more I am grossed out by them. Like if I have rice or a piece of bread now, it tastes like sugar, and I can feel it go into my body.
Having been around people with eating disorders, this is exactly the kind of thing that they say when they're having problems.
I'm not diagnosing you or trying to make you panic, just a word of caution.
I agree with all of these except for the no sugar/carbs/processed food. It's important to know that sugars and carbs are good for you. I wouldn't say cutting out fruits are a good idea, but not eating chocolate bars and lollies is definitely a good idea.
I've gone down the no carb approach before and it did not work for me personally. I have found better balance with a reasonable amount of carbs in proportion to the rest of my diet.
I only ask because I stopped caffeine for months hoping it would help me get some sleeping problems under control. I was surprised to find that stopping caffeine, ~cups of coffee a day, didn’t have a noticeable effect.
If it's too early for bright sunlight (winter, Northern hemisphere), thirty minutes in front of a daylight lamp works great for waking up in my experience.
Urgh. Alcohol has been with mankind since the beginning.
I'm sorry you like yourself less with your inhibitions removed but, in my experience, that is all alcohol does.
> I'm sorry you like yourself less with your inhibitions removed
You seem to imply that alcohol is actually her liberator, showing her true self which she dislikes, and that she has decided she can only like herself when "inhibited."
>[...] you like yourself less with your inhibitions removed but, in my experience, that is all alcohol does
This is medically implausible; alcohol has been clearly shown to negatively affect sleep, be addictive, reduce your coordination, and dehydrate you. It's also a carcinogen [0]. The snark with "Urgh" in response to reflective writing isn't helpful, either.
However: >Alcohol has been with mankind since the beginning.
This is potentially an interesting argument if further developed. I mentioned this book elsewhere in the comment section, but a philosophy professor wrote a book where he argues that "intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers." The Goodreads summary of the work continues: "Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication."
I would argue that it's plausible and potentially worth discussion that alcohol has had a net positive effect on the development of human civilization, though in practice this has no bearing on whether an individual alcohol habit (especially in excess) is useful for the individual.
> I would argue that it's plausible and potentially worth discussion that alcohol has had a net positive effect on the development of human civilization
Of course one could also raise the question if the development of human civilization (as we know it today) actually had a net positive effect on humanity.
Not really. The rhetoric you get from a lot of people is "X is bad for me, X is therefor bad for everyone, everyone should stop, I don't understand why they don't" sometimes explicitly, sometimes with subtext.
People are really quite unprepared for diversity in responses. Alcohol is terrible for some people, wonderful for others, somewhere in between for most.
She does generalize to others though with quotes like, "I’ve never seen anyone improved by drink, ever" and "you can see it in people’s faces as they get older"
I'm not sure if it counts if you say you're not generalizing but then do anyway.
I moved out to college when I was 17, one day I realized I was drinking alone on a Tuesday and visualizing how "the world" would be better without me on it - my parents would save a lot of money, my brother would have to compete for attention... I was 19 (started around 15) when I decided to quit. Never looked back, never missed it. Best decision of my life.
Why I'm sticking with alcohol. Because the cultures I love embrace it. I love going to an izakaya with friends and co-workers. I love drinking under the cherry blossoms with 100k others. I love commiserating with friends about the heat at a rooftop beer garden. I love sitting on the edge of the Kamo river on a summer night mingling with my friends. I love going to a restaurant street with all the kinds of foods and crowds drinking together. I love finding the tiny bars in tiny alleys that hold 5 to 20 people max.
My experience of drinking in the USA sucked. My experience of drinking in Japan was pretty great. I wouldn't give up those experiences and I believe they wouldn't have happened or been as good without the social lubrication of alcohol.
I suspect many cultures have good (UK pubs?) and bad (death from vodka in Russia?)
I disagree that it's true for all people. When I was young and in college with mild social anxiety, yes, alcohol was an excellent social lubricant and made for much more enjoyable nights.
But now that I'm in my 30's and comfortable being open in just about any social situation, I don't find that alcohol adds much. I can lower my inhibitions on my own.
Or staying late at a party and speaking with the last few people to leave, really opening up to them.
The way life turned out though, I'm not in touch with any of those people anymore. The idea of >"You get tired, you say goodbye to the people still staying out, you go home, drink water, and go to bed." sounds amazing, because I have energy to do personally rewarding things the next day without feeling wiped out and hungover.
Anecdotally, we're on hacker news, none of us should be that removed from hackathons where mid 20 year olds stay up if not all night until 2am and start by 8.
Anecdotally, at 35 I still sometimes wake up at 2 and stay up until sunrise thinking of cool new ideas.
I'm sticking with it too. I love the way it makes me feel, I love the taste, I love the little head rush as it first hits your system. I love spending hours talking rubbish over a bar table with friends.
I love the science behind brewing, and the sense of achievement I get from making a good beer or cider, and I love enjoying those results with friends and family.
The UK has a very mixed culture on this (and I can only really speak for England, and southern england at that). The youth binge and go mad, it's loud and unsightly and the rest of us try to avoid their pukey drinking holes. The quieter pubs are a great place to have some decent food, a few local beers and a really chill time.
Alcohol is toxic, it's addictive, it's carcinogenic, it's all sorts of bad things, but it's also added a lot to my life. These days (I'm in my 40s and in Australia) I don't overdo it very often, I go to beer festivals and craft bars and enjoy the cameraderie and the silliness and the laughs.
I gave up smoking 15 years ago. I still sometimes dream that I'm smoking again. Although interestingly, it's only ever in dreams, awake I never feel the urge for it. But I guess it shows how much addictions mess with your brain.
I first drank alcohol in my 30s, surrounded by supportive friends. I can only muster a drink or two, and do not think I've been buzzed before. For me, I enjoy the social aspect, the lightened mood, and the opportunity for further social bonding.
I've seen some folks have their life wrecked by it.
I applaud those that leave what they feel as negative behind. Kudos!
It was very soon after I quit sugar that I noticed how ridiculously "available" sugary / sweet treats are.
I was able to stockpile a surprisingly large number of chocolate bars, that I'd somehow passively gathered, in a fairly short amount of time. The realisation "this is how much of this crap I'm eating?!" went a good way to motivating me to continue avoiding it.
I've been cutting alcohol down to almost nothing for a while now. I wasn't a big drinker before, but once I hit my 30s even a small amount socially I still felt in GI effects the next day (which has always been an issue for me) so eliminating it entirely was a pretty easy choice.
Non-alcoholic wine is my current experiment, since it provides a way to get very close to a flavor which goes comfortably well with meals, without the alcohol - and I'm very much hoping it catches on as a standard offering in restaurants and the like as a way to still participate.
Whether to consume alcohol or not is an incredibly personal decision. It’s best if you evaluate your situation and decide if it’s providing any real benefits for the cost, which has scientifically been shown to have real costs on life expectancy.
My very personal take: I have friends who like to socialize over drinks, and others who don’t. I try not keep much alcohol at home, but do love the culture of drinking at bars and having drinks with certain kinds of food. It is a personal risk profile that I am comfortable with.
I'll occasionally drink socially every few months, but never more than one or two drinks. That wasn't the case earlier in life. Alcohol is horrible for you in so many ways. If you are unlucky and are wired the wrong way, it's also horribly addictive. My moments of regret in life seem to involve alcohol. It's not worth it. Find different hobbies to blow off steam. Exercising, staying engaged with others, learning new things, and maintaining a healthy diet are the keys to a happy life.
Yeah, if you are crying after 3 drinks, drinking is really not for you, and it's likely you have deeper issues that should be taken care of. (I probably come off like such an asshole right now, I know, don't really care.)
Reason 10 is the best reason. I strongly dispute some of the assumptions built in to the other reasons, but it's great to try some things out or try giving certain things up just to see what happens.
I've never had any alcohol before, but in my opinion, it is one of the worst things to have happened to humans. Of course, now that it's out of the bottle, it's not going back in. I don't see a good way of removing it from our culture (at least in the US).
Personally, I'd rather have pot be legal than alcohol. We'd save a lot of lives.
>it is one of the worst things to have happened to humans.
Philosophy professor Edward Slingerland advances the opposite view that alcohol is one of the most important inventions for the development of human civilization.
From the Goodreads summary in his book [0]: [...] "In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication."
I personally find myself happier without regular alcohol consumption, but there is a strong argument to be made that alcohol has played a positive role in the development of civilization.
> I've never had any alcohol before, but in my opinion, it is one of the worst things to have happened to humans.
I almost thought this statement was satire. Imagine someone saying, "I've never been to another country, but in my opinion, other countries are the worst."
All these posts about willpower and self control are great. Just remember we tried to ban alcohol once and it caused the greatest crime wave in history. Don’t let your clean life turn into coercing others - let me have my booze and I’ll let you be sober.
I like this one "Because this will be a great way for me to filter friends and lovers better—does it still work sober, are we having fun with the lights on… can you live with remembering me to the fullest?"
I am pretty much given up alcohol (let's say I drink 1-2 units per month). I could go zero, and this has inspired me to do so. The reason for me is simple. Health issues. Can't afford to carry any "passengers" on my body/health, be that excess sugar, alcohol, etc. Even with a health problem, still get people not understanding why you wouldn't want to get wasted at work, like I am weird, like an elf. Interesting.
I get de-energized trying to defend my position on anything, so I now have decided to try to decline drinking-encouraged situations.
I drink (when I want to, not constantly or anything...), my partner doesn't.
It's amazing to see the flak she takes for it, and how people sometimes just won't give up. It's not that weird! Some folks immediately ask lots of personal questions, and others react like she's crazy.
I must admit since being with her it has become very apparent how normalised drinking and being drunk are in our society.
At my house we joke that it'd easier to tell friends we're recovering alcoholics. Then people instantly respect your decision and respect you, instead of pegging you as a downer.
I've had a similar experience with certain groups of people, but not all social groups are like that. Most recently, the groups of people I currently know overwhelmingly don't drink alcohol when I see them; sobriety when meeting up for dinner or karaoke is normalized, and it would seem out of place to order a drink.
> Because quitting alcohol is the cheapest, fastest, simplest way to acquire a major superpower and make my life drastically better.
This is a recipe for disappointment and one of the lies alcoholics themselves. "I'd be X if only I didn't drink!"
When they stop and they're not X it leads to a lot of "well, that didn't work" reasons to go back.
If you're dependent on alcohol and you stop, your life will be better. But sometimes those ways will be imperceptible or subtle. Expecting the clouds to open and to rise to the heights you deserve is an unrealistic expectation. It's amplified here without any irony.
I read it differently. This seems like someone who has not actually been dependent on alcohol, and now realizes that the downsides outweigh the so-called enjoyment. So, she'll simply give it up completely, and instantly do away with all the negatives.
I can very much relate. I drink only rarely, and overall enjoy it but then my head and body complain the next day, even after just one cocktail or glass of wine. Or, I'll have a tall beer at home and then notice I can't talk as clearly, in front of my kids. So it's just not worth it, and I'm debating just walking away completely. Instant win.
> So, she'll simply give it up completely, and instantly do away with all the negatives.
That is a very different thing than claiming you'll be granted a superpower. And again, people who do have dependency issues often use them as a crutch to avoid looking at other problems or root causes.
Alcohol isn't the one thing holding you back from writing the great American novel or becoming a 10x developer or learning Mandarin, and telling yourself that when you attempt to quit or limit is a very good way to find your way back to booze.
I don't know author's real meaning, but you may be reading too much into "superpower." I took it as: she doesn't drink so much to be dependent / alcoholic, but enough that it's fucking with her life (bad experiences, body damage, gateway to smoking again, etc). And she seems convinced that it'd be easy to give up. So that's the superpower: to be able to so easily erase negatives in her life.
It's like: I have alcoholic friends trying to give up drinking, and it's very difficult for them, meanwhile it's trivially easy for me not to drink (in fact, my body mostly dislikes alcohol.) From my friends' POV, I have a superpower they wish they possessed.
I experimented with quitting alcohol for January and I felt immediate results. Like, the first evening was different, I stayed up reading, and every day I felt significantly better in the morning and had far more “juice” left in my brain at night.
I didn’t make it all the way through the month though. A glass of wine at the end of a difficult day is just so … attractive, if not exactly effective.
This was a bit of a shock to me one of the first times I took an extended break from alcohol. After a couple of days, when the fog clears, you find yourself sitting there and realize life is kinda dull now.
All that time you had been filling with alcohol now needs to be filled with something. Quitting alcohol didn’t magically fill the time with rainbows, unicorns, and success. You still must find it in yourself to go out and DO things that will bring you joy or success or whatever it is you seek. Quitting alcohol makes it significantly easier to pursue that. However, as you mention, the act of quitting alone is not the magic cure to suddenly finding happiness, success, or, in the author’s hope, a super power.
Hah! I just happen to be a counter-example, but probably very privileged in being able to do so. I've given up on attempting to climb the ladder, I'm on course to retire comfortably so long as I can maintain finding work in similar roles for another 10-odd years.
Been through too much political BS in too many places to even have the ability to "care" about what happens anywhere up the chain from me. I'd have to luck into a company that's truly worthy of it to rekindle that particular heavily stomped fire.
That might be the reason that IQ is fairly strongly correlated with depression (and drug use). The less likely you are to believe in fairy tales and bullshit, the more you're forced to conclude that the universe is indeed cold and brutal - and worse, your place in it is absolutely infinitesimal.
I don’t think there is a true causal relationship though… I am fairly smart (IQ tested by a professional amounted to 147) and I am e very happy person. So are my parents that I would deem as smart as me! It’s about finding joy in the small things and accept the fact that at a cosmic scale we do not matter… and that’s fine!
[Citation needed] on the part where you said being smart makes you less likely to believe in bullshit. I know plenty of smart people who aren’t independent thinkers at all.
The super-power is the clarity you get from not being in an alcoholic fog. Clarity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for finding happiness*, success*, etc.
If I quit alcohol, or at least moderated it better, my Sunday mornings would be perceptibly improved and my calorie tracker would no longer say "24,000kj". In this sense I think the benefits are probably more noticeable for binge drinkers than day-to-day alcoholics.
I gave up alcohol almost entirely many years ago, primarily for health reasons. While the OP may be overselling it, at times it really does seem like a superpower.
If you're used to drinking in social situations, you may not realize how much mental capacity you (and the other drinkers) are leaving on the table. When you start being the soberest person in the room, you see everything with a lot more clarity than your inebriated peers. You could use this to your advantage in an adversarial setting, or just as a way to impress and charm people otherwise.
I did find that talking about not drinking made things more awkward in some situations. In that case, it's easier to "go with the flow." Indeed, I often will accept a drink and sip slowly, then dump the stuff when I go to the restroom, to avoid any awkward conversations. My favorite technique, back before the pandemic, was to order a seltzer water with lime at a bar. Most people never ask what you're drinking, and assume it's a boring vodka or gin and tonic.
Disagreed, I quit drinking when I was 18 and it was a super power. Not only I had now Saturday/Sunday morning where I was fresh, but when I did go out with my drinking friends and clubbing it felt like I had a super-brain (think the movie Limitless). The only problem is that, at least initially, it was harder talking to girls in the club, but I decided I'd overcome that myself over going back to drinking (and I did).
But to be fair I only drank once, maybe twice a week with friends (though not little), so I don't consider either me or my friends were` alcoholic. Also I had a new group of friends who didn't drink, so we instead did urban exploration. I did go back to drinking socially back in college when I was 20-something.
Now that I'm over 30, I miss more the non-drunk days than those I was drinking, though had great experiences in both.
> Also I had a new group of friends who didn't drink
You had an alternative... you had something better. Stopping alcohol won't give you an alternative to alcohol, it will merely allow for a better alternative to happens.
OP is warning people that it's not a given. Either change your expectation, or make sure that you are ready to do the efforts to find a better alternative.
I was drinking every night, feeling shitty in the morning and slowly crawling back to normal. I quit a year and change ago and I sleep better, feel better, think better. I should have quit twenty years ago. I imagine how much better I’d have done in school if I’d simply taken the time I used to spend drinking and got enough sleep instead.
When alcohol is hurting you cutting it out feels like being superhuman.
> But sometimes those ways will be imperceptible or subtle. Expecting the clouds to open and to rise to the heights you deserve is an unrealistic expectation. It's amplified here without any irony.
This is so true! It's subtle but real, at first. And then everything can change, or at least that's how it was for me. An entirely different life arose from that decision to quit.
As a side-note, I can't quite imagine parenting while drinking either. To think of that depressed hangover state while also taking care of a little one? No thank you.
The closest I've personally come to experience a superpower was regularly going to the gym for about 3 years, consistently, and doubling my strength in terms of lift numbers.
Even then, after you take into account the amount of time spent, the additional cost of nutrition, driving and even just the gym membership and apparel - that superpower had a pretty significant opportunity cost.
For me, it was worth it, but understandably, it is not for many people. I would imagine the same holds true for alcohol consumption.
I fully agree. Setting up regular exercise and goals is the most rewarding thing. It has been years since I have done much, but it had so many positive results. Someday when I have more time and stability I will start at it again.
One of the main results was far less drinking. Instead of a few beers most nights. It may just be enjoying a six pack over many hours, a few times a month.
Definitely matches my experience. Maybe it relates to the reasons why one drink - I did it because I felt like I was my real self when I was under the influence, and because drinking alcohol was the only conscious activity in my repertoire to ease my anxiety. So what was my experience of giving that up? A bunch of deep shit because I felt disconnected and anxious. Sure, at least I wasn't hungover, but instead of the usual highs and lows, it was a droning monotony of feeling like shit.
Actually, I agree with the author. While writing a book, I needed all the productive time I could have so I stopped drinking too. I only drank once a week, but I could definitely notice that my brain was much sharper without having had alcohol the day before. Say that you drink once a week, then not drinking provides 2 to 4 hours of extra focus hours per week (if not more) which is a lot. Also, being the first to be running around and doing things on the day after a big party feels like a superpower too
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadWhat worked? Having a reason, and listening to my body, and a lucky coincidence-catalyst where I felt absolutely horrible The day after one drink and conflated the two, even if the drink wasn’t causative. I don’t miss it, thankfully. My dad died largely thanks to alcohol (well, alcohol as treatment for poor mental health).
1. no drugs or alcohol
2. no sugar/carbs/processed food
3. good sleep
4. no porn
When I do all of those things, suddenly it is easier to focus at work, i have more energy, am more out and about, more social, wake up with creative enlightened thought, am more human.
And so all of the motivational material, ideas about stoking passion in craft, therapy, theories about how to succeed, etc feel like a facade. And it feels like the real truth in life is radical health practices. And by radical I mean actually not radical at all, just avoiding the traps of society.
Drugs or alcohol can reduce sleep quality (e.g. cannabis reduces REM sleep, alcohol can cause you to wake up too early); a diet high in simple sugars can negatively affect sleep quality [0]; and porn at night can mean looking at a screen with blue light, which can cause you to fall asleep later [1].
[0] https://www.sleep.org/sleep-questions/sugar-impacts-sleep/ [1] https://www.sleepfoundation.org/bedroom-environment/blue-lig...
Is not a matter of just to wanting to have good sleep but try to solve other problems such as food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, lack of sport, caffeine, …
I suppose making a habit of disciplined behavior could foster such behavior in the future as well.
Really, it could probably go both ways in my view, though I suppose from a practical standpoint, whether cause and effect are swapped doesn’t matter.
This is something I have experimented off an on for the last year, I am certain of the cause and effect.
1. Even if you don't drink, you need to give in sometimes for the sake of socialization
2. All cheap foods are full of sugar/carbs. If you want to eat healthy food, you either need to have access to farm or pay more.
3. Hustle culture promotes pushing yourself to the limit, sacrificing free time and sleep.
4. Technology(like dating apps) was supposed to make us more connected. But it seems that it instead did the opposite. There is much more lonely people in the world. Some of them can only turn to porn to satisfy their primal urges.
Rice, local vegetables, eggs and basic cuts of meat are all real cheap.
I quit working around 5pm most days (save meetings that get scheduled late, I tend to skip those randomly). I spend my free time working on fun hobbies or reading, a bit of netflix.
Porn is not de facto evil. It is a supernormal stimulus - it will drown out your sex live because porn literally pushes your biological buttons better. If you can moderate it, then great. If it's an issue, cut it out.
Avoid dating apps. Spend your time doing interesting things with interesting people instead.
Get your endorphins from healthy and productive activities and your life improve immensely.
Video games are another for me. They give a huge sense of achievement that real world tasks struggle to complete with.
I don’t like these kinds of blanket statements
I had friends that played WoW and were able to have a perfectly functioning life. They got great grades and had somewhat healthy social life.
Unfortunately I’m not in this camp, if I play online games it will consume my life as nothing else.
A better statement is: know yourself. If you have an addictive personality, stay away from supernormal stimulus. Now, If you’re blessed with genes that can regulate yourself, by all means, go ahead, play games and do whatever you like, you won the life lottery anyway.
Put another way, for some people maybe videogames are just not a supernormal stimulus. I like games but I actually struggle to rack up play time, even when I intentionally clear time to play. I just never find that reward curve, and not for lack of trying.
I do wonder if some situations - games, social media, porn - are adversarial. Meaning we can view this as one party attempting to find supernormal stimulus and trick you into it, while you attempt to avoid the biological hijacking.
If this is an adversarial situation than avoidance is counter-productive (you won't always win the avoidance game) and instead you need desensitization and safe guards.
I don't think most people need low carb to be healthy. The hazard ratio bottoms out around a 50/50 split [0] for carb/fat intake. Oats, buckwheat, and lentils are cheap as hell and very healthy. Mix in veggies, leafy greens, and occasional meat and you can be eating healthy as hell for very cheap.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7589789/
Not necessarily! Whole grain products (like bread, pasta, and oats) and legumes tend to be cheaper per calorie and more filling than many junk foods. The cost of produce varies depending on your location, but at least in some parts of the U.S., ethnic supermarkets sell fruits and vegetables at a very low price compared to other grocery stores. For foods of animal origin, chicken products like eggs and chicken breasts tend to be more affordable than other meats in the U.S., and can be prepared in a healthy way.
It does take time and effort to cook, but you save money compared to ordering from restaurants or eating pre-packaged meals, and you can be 100% confident that you are only using healthy ingredients.
Are you a bear?
>The less I eat carbs though, the more I am grossed out by them. Like if I have rice or a piece of bread now, it tastes like sugar, and I can feel it go into my body.
Having been around people with eating disorders, this is exactly the kind of thing that they say when they're having problems.
I'm not diagnosing you or trying to make you panic, just a word of caution.
I only ask because I stopped caffeine for months hoping it would help me get some sleeping problems under control. I was surprised to find that stopping caffeine, ~cups of coffee a day, didn’t have a noticeable effect.
No carbs, so keto or paleo?
Caffeine I have not removed yet! But the interesting thing is I notice that I need less when I am doing those 4 steps.
Enjoy a destroyed liver when you're older.
I'm pretty it also kills you albeit "slowly"
You seem to imply that alcohol is actually her liberator, showing her true self which she dislikes, and that she has decided she can only like herself when "inhibited."
That is a poor reading.
This is medically implausible; alcohol has been clearly shown to negatively affect sleep, be addictive, reduce your coordination, and dehydrate you. It's also a carcinogen [0]. The snark with "Urgh" in response to reflective writing isn't helpful, either.
However: >Alcohol has been with mankind since the beginning.
This is potentially an interesting argument if further developed. I mentioned this book elsewhere in the comment section, but a philosophy professor wrote a book where he argues that "intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers." The Goodreads summary of the work continues: "Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication."
I would argue that it's plausible and potentially worth discussion that alcohol has had a net positive effect on the development of human civilization, though in practice this has no bearing on whether an individual alcohol habit (especially in excess) is useful for the individual.
[0] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-e...
Of course one could also raise the question if the development of human civilization (as we know it today) actually had a net positive effect on humanity.
My polite well mannered controlled self would have only thought the "urgh" and never posted it on this forum.
Smoking doesn't work that way.
People are really quite unprepared for diversity in responses. Alcohol is terrible for some people, wonderful for others, somewhere in between for most.
I'm not sure if it counts if you say you're not generalizing but then do anyway.
My experience of drinking in the USA sucked. My experience of drinking in Japan was pretty great. I wouldn't give up those experiences and I believe they wouldn't have happened or been as good without the social lubrication of alcohol.
I suspect many cultures have good (UK pubs?) and bad (death from vodka in Russia?)
Drunken, joyful reverie without inhibition is living poetry. Sobriety is admirable, important, and just. But no, you did not 'do all of those things'.
But now that I'm in my 30's and comfortable being open in just about any social situation, I don't find that alcohol adds much. I can lower my inhibitions on my own.
The way life turned out though, I'm not in touch with any of those people anymore. The idea of >"You get tired, you say goodbye to the people still staying out, you go home, drink water, and go to bed." sounds amazing, because I have energy to do personally rewarding things the next day without feeling wiped out and hungover.
There are sober people at burning man.
Anecdotally, at 35 I still sometimes wake up at 2 and stay up until sunrise thinking of cool new ideas.
Sounds like the perfect ending to a nice evening, where's the problem? Fear of missing out?
I love the science behind brewing, and the sense of achievement I get from making a good beer or cider, and I love enjoying those results with friends and family.
The UK has a very mixed culture on this (and I can only really speak for England, and southern england at that). The youth binge and go mad, it's loud and unsightly and the rest of us try to avoid their pukey drinking holes. The quieter pubs are a great place to have some decent food, a few local beers and a really chill time.
Alcohol is toxic, it's addictive, it's carcinogenic, it's all sorts of bad things, but it's also added a lot to my life. These days (I'm in my 40s and in Australia) I don't overdo it very often, I go to beer festivals and craft bars and enjoy the cameraderie and the silliness and the laughs.
I'd still like cannabis legalised though...
Though I rarely drink for any other reason
I first drank alcohol in my 30s, surrounded by supportive friends. I can only muster a drink or two, and do not think I've been buzzed before. For me, I enjoy the social aspect, the lightened mood, and the opportunity for further social bonding.
I've seen some folks have their life wrecked by it.
I applaud those that leave what they feel as negative behind. Kudos!
I was able to stockpile a surprisingly large number of chocolate bars, that I'd somehow passively gathered, in a fairly short amount of time. The realisation "this is how much of this crap I'm eating?!" went a good way to motivating me to continue avoiding it.
Non-alcoholic wine is my current experiment, since it provides a way to get very close to a flavor which goes comfortably well with meals, without the alcohol - and I'm very much hoping it catches on as a standard offering in restaurants and the like as a way to still participate.
My very personal take: I have friends who like to socialize over drinks, and others who don’t. I try not keep much alcohol at home, but do love the culture of drinking at bars and having drinks with certain kinds of food. It is a personal risk profile that I am comfortable with.
I generally recommend it.
Now all I have to do is get back to going to bed early again.
Felt great.
Personally, I'd rather have pot be legal than alcohol. We'd save a lot of lives.
Philosophy professor Edward Slingerland advances the opposite view that alcohol is one of the most important inventions for the development of human civilization.
From the Goodreads summary in his book [0]: [...] "In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication."
I personally find myself happier without regular alcohol consumption, but there is a strong argument to be made that alcohol has played a positive role in the development of civilization.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55643282-drunk
I almost thought this statement was satire. Imagine someone saying, "I've never been to another country, but in my opinion, other countries are the worst."
I was never a big drinker, but I seem to get IBS issues when I drink. I prefer to not have those really unpleasant experiences.
I am pretty much given up alcohol (let's say I drink 1-2 units per month). I could go zero, and this has inspired me to do so. The reason for me is simple. Health issues. Can't afford to carry any "passengers" on my body/health, be that excess sugar, alcohol, etc. Even with a health problem, still get people not understanding why you wouldn't want to get wasted at work, like I am weird, like an elf. Interesting.
I get de-energized trying to defend my position on anything, so I now have decided to try to decline drinking-encouraged situations.
It's amazing to see the flak she takes for it, and how people sometimes just won't give up. It's not that weird! Some folks immediately ask lots of personal questions, and others react like she's crazy.
I must admit since being with her it has become very apparent how normalised drinking and being drunk are in our society.
https://www.dryfeb.ca
This is a recipe for disappointment and one of the lies alcoholics themselves. "I'd be X if only I didn't drink!"
When they stop and they're not X it leads to a lot of "well, that didn't work" reasons to go back.
If you're dependent on alcohol and you stop, your life will be better. But sometimes those ways will be imperceptible or subtle. Expecting the clouds to open and to rise to the heights you deserve is an unrealistic expectation. It's amplified here without any irony.
I can very much relate. I drink only rarely, and overall enjoy it but then my head and body complain the next day, even after just one cocktail or glass of wine. Or, I'll have a tall beer at home and then notice I can't talk as clearly, in front of my kids. So it's just not worth it, and I'm debating just walking away completely. Instant win.
That is a very different thing than claiming you'll be granted a superpower. And again, people who do have dependency issues often use them as a crutch to avoid looking at other problems or root causes.
Alcohol isn't the one thing holding you back from writing the great American novel or becoming a 10x developer or learning Mandarin, and telling yourself that when you attempt to quit or limit is a very good way to find your way back to booze.
It's like: I have alcoholic friends trying to give up drinking, and it's very difficult for them, meanwhile it's trivially easy for me not to drink (in fact, my body mostly dislikes alcohol.) From my friends' POV, I have a superpower they wish they possessed.
I didn’t make it all the way through the month though. A glass of wine at the end of a difficult day is just so … attractive, if not exactly effective.
All that time you had been filling with alcohol now needs to be filled with something. Quitting alcohol didn’t magically fill the time with rainbows, unicorns, and success. You still must find it in yourself to go out and DO things that will bring you joy or success or whatever it is you seek. Quitting alcohol makes it significantly easier to pursue that. However, as you mention, the act of quitting alone is not the magic cure to suddenly finding happiness, success, or, in the author’s hope, a super power.
Been through too much political BS in too many places to even have the ability to "care" about what happens anywhere up the chain from me. I'd have to luck into a company that's truly worthy of it to rekindle that particular heavily stomped fire.
That's sort of the epiphany about it all, no? You realize your life is dull, because you are a boring person.
* of your own understanding.
If you're used to drinking in social situations, you may not realize how much mental capacity you (and the other drinkers) are leaving on the table. When you start being the soberest person in the room, you see everything with a lot more clarity than your inebriated peers. You could use this to your advantage in an adversarial setting, or just as a way to impress and charm people otherwise.
I did find that talking about not drinking made things more awkward in some situations. In that case, it's easier to "go with the flow." Indeed, I often will accept a drink and sip slowly, then dump the stuff when I go to the restroom, to avoid any awkward conversations. My favorite technique, back before the pandemic, was to order a seltzer water with lime at a bar. Most people never ask what you're drinking, and assume it's a boring vodka or gin and tonic.
But to be fair I only drank once, maybe twice a week with friends (though not little), so I don't consider either me or my friends were` alcoholic. Also I had a new group of friends who didn't drink, so we instead did urban exploration. I did go back to drinking socially back in college when I was 20-something.
Now that I'm over 30, I miss more the non-drunk days than those I was drinking, though had great experiences in both.
> Also I had a new group of friends who didn't drink
You had an alternative... you had something better. Stopping alcohol won't give you an alternative to alcohol, it will merely allow for a better alternative to happens.
OP is warning people that it's not a given. Either change your expectation, or make sure that you are ready to do the efforts to find a better alternative.
When alcohol is hurting you cutting it out feels like being superhuman.
Alcohol and hangovers really make some people feel incredibly terrible.
Other people are affected very little by moderate amounts.
Some people are marginally improved by alcohol.
The first sort of person actually can see a significant improvement in quite a short time, many others will notice basically nothing.
You have to repeat this over and over: drugs don't treat everybody the same.
This is so true! It's subtle but real, at first. And then everything can change, or at least that's how it was for me. An entirely different life arose from that decision to quit.
As a side-note, I can't quite imagine parenting while drinking either. To think of that depressed hangover state while also taking care of a little one? No thank you.
Even then, after you take into account the amount of time spent, the additional cost of nutrition, driving and even just the gym membership and apparel - that superpower had a pretty significant opportunity cost.
For me, it was worth it, but understandably, it is not for many people. I would imagine the same holds true for alcohol consumption.
One of the main results was far less drinking. Instead of a few beers most nights. It may just be enjoying a six pack over many hours, a few times a month.