Speaker 1: Yo, what's up. It's dexter. I wanted to share a
Speaker 1: new show on the Kaleidoscope Network. It's called two Percent
Speaker 1: and it's hosted by journalist Michael Easter. The show explores
Speaker 1: how we can live better by examining pop medicine hype
Speaker 1: with healthy skepticism and putting real science first. The clip
Speaker 1: we're sharing today is from an episode about alcohol and
Speaker 1: how the recent trend of not drinking at all might
Speaker 1: not necessarily lead to a healthier life. Here's Michael.
Speaker 2: The way that I figured out that I had a
Speaker 2: drinking problem was that literally every problem in my life
Speaker 2: was caused by my drinking. So if that is you
Speaker 2: probably don't drink. Yes, if you're more like Dean, where
Speaker 2: you are doing one hundred healthy behaviors, you go out,
Speaker 2: you have a couple of drinks in the context of friends,
Speaker 2: you have great conversations, you meet new people. You maybe
Speaker 2: don't have to get super caught up in this idea
Speaker 2: that like removing alcohol is going to vastly improve my health.
Speaker 2: There have been a lot of conflicting reports about drinking
Speaker 2: and health over the past few years. So for most
Speaker 2: of time, scientific bodies said, you know, if you have
Speaker 2: one or two drinks a day that could actually help
Speaker 2: your heart health. But in the last halful of years
Speaker 2: that has totally been flipped and now a lot of
Speaker 2: people are saying no alcohol at all that is going
Speaker 2: to vastly improve your health. Now, I do think there
Speaker 2: is a bit of nuance in this topic. For example,
Speaker 2: take me, I do not drink at all. I've been
Speaker 2: sober for eleven years, and the reason for that is
Speaker 2: because my favorite drink it was always the next one.
Speaker 2: And if you drink like that, you can rack up
Speaker 2: some life problems. But on the other hand, most people
Speaker 2: are having one to two drinks every now and then,
Speaker 2: and I think a big question is is that enough
Speaker 2: to really hurt health? So I'm going to read a
Speaker 2: couple of stats here. Gallup recently found that drinking is
Speaker 2: at an all time low. So when the seventies up
Speaker 2: through about twenty twenty, between sixty to seventy percent of
Speaker 2: the population drank. Now the figure is fifty four percent.
Speaker 2: We also have wineries that are closing in Napa Valley
Speaker 2: because not enough people are buying wine. And I recently
Speaker 2: spoke to a friend who owns a restaurant in la
Speaker 2: and she said that a lot of LA restaurants are
Speaker 2: struggling because no one is drinking anymore, and restaurants make
Speaker 2: a lot of money from alcohol sales. So big question
Speaker 2: here is drinking bad or can it be even good?
Speaker 2: I have a friend, his name is Dean Statman. I
Speaker 2: used to work with him at Men's Health magazine, Very
Speaker 2: fitness minded, healthy guy, and he saw all this stuff
Speaker 2: out there about how not drinking is the answer to health.
Speaker 2: So we decided to jump on the wagon. He lasted
Speaker 2: about three months because he found that although his health
Speaker 2: scores on his fitness tracker did improve, a lot of
Speaker 2: really interesting things happened to his mental health and his
Speaker 2: social life. He wrote a piece about it in GQ.
Speaker 2: It is called why my twenty twenty six resolution is
Speaker 2: to start drinking again. All right, Dan, thanks for coming
Speaker 2: on the show.
Speaker 3: Pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: So let's back up a little bit. It's summer of
Speaker 2: last year and you decide you're gonna stop drinking. Now.
Speaker 2: I think the context it's important for this is this
Speaker 2: wasn't like, oh I got a duy, I got arrested,
Speaker 2: I'm going through a divorce. What prompted all this?
Speaker 3: No, none of those things. Thank God.
Speaker 4: I've been a journalist, a magazine editor for literally my
Speaker 4: entire career.
Speaker 2: That's how we met because we both were we both
Speaker 2: worked at mental health and Overlapdorek. Yeah, and as you know,
Speaker 2: you know, you can work in wellness, but it's not
Speaker 2: like I guess, I don't know, like maybe accounting or
Speaker 2: something where you really do have this this constant it's
Speaker 2: every day is different. Like as these sort of wellness
Speaker 2: trends come and go, you're covering them, you're learning about them.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time, you're actually sort of trying
Speaker 2: things out yourself. And I think I had just seen
Speaker 2: the space evolved so much as it continues to do.
Speaker 2: There's so many ways you can optimize your wellness. And
Speaker 2: you also have I will point out because of your work.
Speaker 2: You work out all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of hit classes, a lot of running,
Speaker 4: and then there's the stuff that I just sort of
Speaker 4: personally love, you know, playing soccer every week. I got
Speaker 4: again just by virtue of covering this stuff, got like
Speaker 4: really into meditation for a while, got really into like
Speaker 4: saw on a cold plunge, red light therapy. I've been
Speaker 4: doing a bunch of higer archs, races recently, and this
Speaker 4: is all throughout you know, also just just drinking like
Speaker 4: an ordinary person. So I think at a certain point,
Speaker 4: I just you know.
Speaker 3: I did. I kind of got swept up.
Speaker 4: In this like aura around the NA movement where you've
Speaker 4: got you know, Tom Hollands, Biro and Lewis Hamilton has
Speaker 4: like a tequila or a gave or whatever, and then
Speaker 4: plus the other a dozen plus celebrities that have like
Speaker 4: non alcoholic beers and spirits and things. Now you know,
Speaker 4: it's back in the day, it was like everyone had
Speaker 4: their like vodka.
Speaker 2: Now it's no alcohol vodka.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think at one point, actually the situation from Jersey
Speaker 4: Shore had like a protein infused vodka which was which
Speaker 4: is quite funny if you pay attention to nutrition science.
Speaker 2: Did you drink it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Hen no, no, no, no, I mean no shade to him.
Speaker 4: I think he actually is sober now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's sober now too much of the protein vodka.
Speaker 4: So I guess I just thought, like, why not give
Speaker 4: this a try, Like I'm already doing so many other
Speaker 4: things for my health, for my wellness, why not just
Speaker 4: sort of add this. The science I think has moved
Speaker 4: past the point now where it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 4: healthy for you to drink a glass of red wine
Speaker 4: a day or whatever, Like we know now that that's
Speaker 4: really not.
Speaker 2: True from a physical health perspective.
Speaker 4: Yes, physiologically it's it's not a plus, it's it's likely
Speaker 4: a minus if you're sort of guess going past a
Speaker 4: certain point or probably in any any quantity really, which
Speaker 4: is also really interesting, just by the way, about the
Speaker 4: new nutritional guidelines that the FDA just came out with,
Speaker 4: because they actually removed specifying the number or the amount
Speaker 4: of alcohol that is considered healthy, opting rather to just
Speaker 4: say drink less, which is quite interesting because if you're
Speaker 4: aready drinking an.
Speaker 3: Absolute shit load, like what is less?
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're having fifteen drinks a day, you're like,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, fourteen, all right, you're following the guidelines
Speaker 2: of fourteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you're just following the FDA's guidelines. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I decided to just give it a try and see.
Speaker 4: I lasted about three months, which is not very long.
Speaker 4: And the reason really at its core was that I
Speaker 4: didn't realize going in how alcohol is not just about alcohol.
Speaker 4: You might be pulling one lever, but it affects so
Speaker 4: many there are things it's not just like my night's
Speaker 4: going to be exactly the same, except my beer didn't
Speaker 4: have any alcohol in it. It's got sort of roots
Speaker 4: that just go so much further than I had imagined.
Speaker 4: I was noticing how not drinking was affecting my friendships,
Speaker 4: my marriage even and kind of just my general like
Speaker 4: mood Outlook, you could maybe even go so far as
Speaker 4: and say mental health. Maybe had I done this for longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was most interesting. Is you said
Speaker 2: like you weren't as happy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, hundred percent. I think. You know, I'm someone who
Speaker 3: I work from home.
Speaker 4: I'm writing most of the time, which is, as you know,
Speaker 4: it's a very you know, solo activity, and so I
Speaker 4: used to really look forward to those times when I would,
Speaker 4: you know, go play pick up soccer with the guys
Speaker 4: that I had in New York and we'd go grab
Speaker 4: beers afterwards, or or just going out on a weekend,
Speaker 4: whether it's a Friday night going out to dinner with
Speaker 4: friends and then going to a bar afterwards, or just
Speaker 4: going to bars and bar hopping. It's someone's birthday, or
Speaker 4: you go out and then you decide like, hey, let's
Speaker 4: go somewhere else after this instead of just going home
Speaker 4: that just got kind of decimated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like the big point here is that
Speaker 2: I think there's a massive difference between drinking alone at home,
Speaker 2: you know, watching Netflix or whatever, and the context in
Speaker 2: which you were doing it in, which is I have
Speaker 2: a group of friends, We're going to this dive bar,
Speaker 2: or we've just finished this game of soccer. And in
Speaker 2: the piece, I liked how you got into the fact
Speaker 2: that in the context of a bar when you're drinking,
Speaker 2: the conversations almost changed, where you had a great example
Speaker 2: where you're like, you know, on after the first beer,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, hey, guys, we should all go to
Speaker 2: this music festival in Virginia. Let's roll. I got this right,
Speaker 2: and that those moments didn't happen as much when you
Speaker 2: stop drinking. You did say that you would still occasionally
Speaker 2: go to bars, but you were like the non alcoholic
Speaker 2: beer and it just kind of it just changed things.
Speaker 2: So what was that like, and like, how did that
Speaker 2: manifest itself in those actual situations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'll give a great example just from
Speaker 4: a couple of days ago, even because now obviously that
Speaker 4: I'm you know, not doing that experiment anymore. So, my
Speaker 4: wife and I were out in the sort of like
Speaker 4: area of Zurich that we hadn't been to before, so
Speaker 4: sort of like industrial part. It's very much like like
Speaker 4: Short Ditch in London, kind of like a little Brooklyn
Speaker 4: sort of, and we were out looking for furniture. It
Speaker 4: was sort of a long day, and then we were
Speaker 4: about to go home and we saw this like just interesting,
Speaker 4: sort of mysterious almost looking bar. From the outside, it
Speaker 4: looked like a almost like a little sort of warehouse,
Speaker 4: but it was like clearly marked like as a bar
Speaker 4: and had some cool like neon in the windows. And
Speaker 4: we were just passing by and on the way to
Speaker 4: the train, and I was like, do you want to
Speaker 4: just grab a beer before we go?
Speaker 3: And she was like, yeah, let's do it. So we go.
Speaker 4: Inside and it turns out it's actually this huge like
Speaker 4: badminton hall and there were like like eight games of badminton,
Speaker 4: like full court badminton going on in this like giant hangar,
Speaker 4: and in the front there was this bar, and it
Speaker 4: was so weird. It was almost like a kind of
Speaker 4: like like Nashville like honky Tonk kind of theme, but
Speaker 4: it also had this like Japan sort of inspur It
Speaker 4: was very and visually it was very like, it was
Speaker 4: very cool. It was sort of like Wes Anderson meets
Speaker 4: like kill Bill kind of aesthetic is the best way
Speaker 4: I can put it. And I was just like, I'm
Speaker 4: so glad we found this spot. And then we started
Speaker 4: talking to the bartender about the badminton and turns out
Speaker 4: it's this like badminton club and we ended up booking
Speaker 4: a court for the next weekend and that was last
Speaker 4: weekend that just passed, and so my wife and I
Speaker 4: went and played badminton and we've never done that with
Speaker 4: each other before. We've never really done anything like that
Speaker 4: with each other before, because I I run a lot,
Speaker 4: I left a lot, I like to race this ovary solo.
Speaker 4: I play soccer. She doesn't play soccer, you know, she
Speaker 4: has other things that she does. But we never had
Speaker 4: that kind of like intersection, and so had we not
Speaker 4: gone in for a beer, we wouldn't have found this
Speaker 4: cool badminton place, and we wouldn't have done this like
Speaker 4: great activity together as a couple. And then afterwards we were like,
Speaker 4: that was so fucking rad, we have to go back.
Speaker 4: And so now we're going to go back totally. So
Speaker 4: I think that's just one example of like alcohol kind
Speaker 4: of leading you down the rabbit hole to unexpected things.
Speaker 4: And if I wasn't drinking, I mean, this is another
Speaker 4: great example, Like I would have never said, you want
Speaker 4: to stop for a beer before we go home, because
Speaker 4: like in my mind at least, I'm sure other people
Speaker 4: will disagree.
Speaker 3: Like what's the.
Speaker 2: Point I think for me? So I don't drink. I
Speaker 2: went sober eleven something years And the important point is
Speaker 2: that this was not prompted by like I listened to
Speaker 2: a four hour podcast that told me alcohol is associated
Speaker 2: with all these risks. I was like the guy who
Speaker 2: you know would wake up and go where did I
Speaker 2: park my car? And when you drink like that, that
Speaker 2: can come with some reapers, obviously for your health, but
Speaker 2: obviously for your life, for your social for your social
Speaker 2: relationships and things like that. I rarely miss alcohol. When
Speaker 2: I first got sober, I thought I missed alcohol. What
Speaker 2: I eventually realized is I didn't actually miss alcohol because
Speaker 2: I knew that if I have one drink, it's going
Speaker 2: to lead to X number more and that's not going
Speaker 2: to be good. What I missed was the setting of
Speaker 2: bars in the sense that you walk into a bar
Speaker 2: and everyone's relaxed, and it like levels this playing field.
Speaker 2: There's not like people have a warmness and it's not
Speaker 2: awkward if someone's sitting next to you to just start
Speaker 2: talking to the dude next to you, Whereas if you're like,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know a counter of a Wendy's
Speaker 2: or like sitting there, like you start talking to the
Speaker 2: dude at the Wendy's. Next year, he's gona be like,
Speaker 2: what the hell are you talking to me, dude? But
Speaker 2: it's in that bar setting, it's like people there's like
Speaker 2: a certain sort of social comfort there. There's a warmth,
Speaker 2: there's a sense of like with my work obligations, I
Speaker 2: could just be like, Okay, now I can just finally relax.
Speaker 2: And I do think that bars are unique in giving
Speaker 2: us those situations where it like I would just feel
Speaker 2: like I let off. And so for me, like after
Speaker 2: getting sober, I've been like, Okay, where can I find
Speaker 2: that that isn't a bar? That's not always easy. Which
Speaker 2: I'm trying to say is like bars have this like
Speaker 2: unique sociality to them that doesn't necessarily come from a
Speaker 2: place that isn't serving alcohol, And it sounds like you
Speaker 2: realized eventually through this experiment, oh, I was getting something
Speaker 2: akin to that as well. And then when that got removed,
Speaker 2: you go, well, why the hell is my mental health weird?
Speaker 2: Like why am I not why am I not having
Speaker 2: these wacky conversations with my friends? Why are we not
Speaker 2: like connecting as much? And it all went back to
Speaker 2: the fact that you had a beer in your hand,
Speaker 2: and you were the type of person that would just
Speaker 2: have one or two, right, I.
Speaker 4: Mean you described like the bar kind of environment perfectly.
Speaker 4: And then in a very stark contrast to that, like,
Speaker 4: during that three months stint, I ended up in a
Speaker 4: couple of situations where I was standing in you know,
Speaker 4: typical literal social circle of you know, five six people talking,
Speaker 4: no one's drinking. And this wasn't just like people happened
Speaker 4: not to be drinking in that moment, but like people
Speaker 4: who aren't.
Speaker 3: Drinking for health reasons or whatever reasons.
Speaker 4: Really yeah, but it felt like there was just this
Speaker 4: sort of in the In the piece, I called it
Speaker 4: like a LinkedIn coded coldness, because it almost felt like
Speaker 4: we were like waiting in a room before going into
Speaker 4: like a job interview, Like I felt like everyone had
Speaker 4: their kind of pr face on, and it just it
Speaker 4: just felt weird, and maybe it made me sort of
Speaker 4: in the moment, feel like, well, I don't like this
Speaker 4: whole life about drinking thing. It seemed to me that
Speaker 4: like if you were someone who just drank like and
Speaker 4: did not sort of do it to a problematic extent,
Speaker 4: that it was just something that you did. It wasn't
Speaker 4: like a part of your personality, like, oh this is
Speaker 4: d he does xx and drink like it's not something
Speaker 4: you mentioned, It's just something that's whatever.
Speaker 3: You drink water.
Speaker 4: But I found that people a lot of the time,
Speaker 4: the people I was encountering who who were specifically sober
Speaker 4: in the wellness scene were like people who it felt
Speaker 4: like that was like an important part of their personality.
Speaker 4: Like it seemed like very few conversations went by without
Speaker 4: people sort of like announcing in some form or fashion
Speaker 4: that like or like making it known that they don't drink.
Speaker 4: And I just think that it it kind of made
Speaker 4: things conversations just feel a little more like edited, maybe
Speaker 4: is a good word. Guarded guarded, Yeah, And I think
Speaker 4: this really clicked for me when I connected with an
Speaker 4: anthropologist for the piece, Ben Tannenbaum, who you know, like
Speaker 4: looks into this stuff for a living, and he kind
Speaker 4: of told me about this concept of costly signaling, which
Speaker 4: is essentially this idea that like one of the reasons
Speaker 4: that alcohol sort of serves as like a social lubricant,
Speaker 4: as we say, is nothing to do with actually like
Speaker 4: you know, getting drunk and sort of letting your guard
Speaker 4: down because of that, but more this idea that like
Speaker 4: cost costly signaling basically is this concept where you do
Speaker 4: something to sort of inflict like a incur a cost
Speaker 4: quote unquote like upon yourself, do something like negative to
Speaker 4: yourself as almost as like a social buy in, so
Speaker 4: that people sort of trust and see that like, oh,
Speaker 4: this person's let their guard down. So in this case,
Speaker 4: it's alcohol, because alcohol is something that's like you know,
Speaker 4: not necessarily good for you like health help wise, but
Speaker 4: it's one of the ways we sort of subconsciously or
Speaker 4: subliminally like let people know like, Hey, I'm just I'm
Speaker 4: just here to hang out, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Like I just want to like chat to you, get
Speaker 4: to know you, like there's no ulterior motives here. And
Speaker 4: I think that's one of the reasons why alcohol does
Speaker 4: sort of serve as this like social lubricant, and then
Speaker 4: in the absence of that, you really feel it when
Speaker 4: you're kind of paying attention to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a book that I love. It's called Chapel
Speaker 2: on the River and it's about it's written by this
Speaker 2: lady whose name is Wendy Bounds. She's a friend and
Speaker 2: after nine to eleven she moved up the Hudson River
Speaker 2: to a town called Garrison, and she was a reporter
Speaker 2: for the Wall Street Journal, and she took a job
Speaker 2: at this bar called Guidance. It's like this old pub
Speaker 2: in this town, and the book really focuses on the
Speaker 2: relationships that were built in this bar in this little
Speaker 2: town and how it was really the focal point of
Speaker 2: the town. So you would have people come in, there
Speaker 2: were regulars. The place didn't serve any hard alcohol. It
Speaker 2: was beer only. And she wrote about how people would
Speaker 2: come in who had totally different viewpoints politically, totally different backgrounds,
Speaker 2: but in that setting any disagreements were really dropped. Like
Speaker 2: people would give each other shit, they'd rip each other
Speaker 2: about whatever, but it was like people would just connect
Speaker 2: who otherwise would have never connected. And that could really
Speaker 2: only happen in that bar setting. And I think that
Speaker 2: that to your point about the anthropologies you spoke to.
Speaker 2: It goes back to that idea you pointed out of
Speaker 2: costly signaling, and I think when you look at for
Speaker 2: most of time, bars were these places where people would
Speaker 2: go to connect. I do feel like since twenty twenty
Speaker 2: the rise of sort of the health wellness podcast sphere,
Speaker 2: which grounded I'm part of, I think that's tapered off
Speaker 2: and we're realizing that in the sort of quest for
Speaker 2: optimal health. Then you pointed out, like the perfect Whip score,
Speaker 2: which tracks a million different data points, we have lost
Speaker 2: these things that are so much harder to measure, which
Speaker 2: is the interactions we're having with the people around us,
Speaker 2: the people that we maybe don't know but could have
Speaker 2: an opportunity to know. And something gets lost in that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one hundred percent. And look, I still wear the
Speaker 4: golden handcuff over here. I maybe don't check it as
Speaker 4: often as as you're supposed to because it could be depressing.
Speaker 2: Now that you're drinking, You're like, I can I can't
Speaker 2: look at the dude.
Speaker 4: I mean, everyone who's ever worn a whoop and has
Speaker 4: had a beer in their life. Notice that, like the
Speaker 4: effect is it's incredible, like it it'll drop your recovery
Speaker 4: score faster than you know anything. I think part of
Speaker 4: this too was again being in this in this space,
Speaker 4: you obviously also come across a lot of people who
Speaker 4: are doing who are kind of taking things to the
Speaker 4: maximum and spending most of their time doing things that
Speaker 4: are like optimizing their body. And at a certain point
Speaker 4: I was like, we're all, you know, not to get
Speaker 4: like grim or anything, but like we're all gonna die,
Speaker 4: Like we haven't gotten to the point yet where like
Speaker 4: immortality is something we've discovered. And so with the assumption
Speaker 4: or the understanding that like we all do have the
Speaker 4: sort of limited time here, it's like do I want
Speaker 4: to be spending most of my time in the garage
Speaker 4: tuning the car and washing the car or do I
Speaker 4: actually want to be out there like fucking driving it
Speaker 4: and you know, enjoying it. And so I think I
Speaker 4: got to a point where somewhere in those three months
Speaker 4: when I just realized, like, you know, kind of cost
Speaker 4: benefit here, like what am I gaining by not drinking?
Speaker 4: And absolutely I was gaining things. I mean, whoop could
Speaker 4: tell you that, like I was waking up feeling great,
Speaker 4: no more hangovers. I save so much money. I just
Speaker 4: was more yeah, clear headed in the mornings. I could
Speaker 4: have an earlier start to the day. But on the
Speaker 4: other hand, everything that I was trading off. And it's
Speaker 4: not like I stopped getting invited to things. It was
Speaker 4: more like I started actually removing myself from things. You know,
Speaker 4: I don't want to go bar hopping with friends if
Speaker 4: I'm not drinking alcohol, Like it's so boring and like
Speaker 4: you're just watching your friends get absolutely slashed. The conversation
Speaker 4: becomes increasingly like annoying for you. And yeah, it's like
Speaker 4: there's just so many better uses of my time in
Speaker 4: that situation. And I think ultimately I kind of waited
Speaker 4: out and I was like, you know, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to stop doing other things. I'm literally just going to
Speaker 4: reintroduce drinking. And you know, not like claiming or having
Speaker 4: the illusion that this is like a good thing for
Speaker 4: my health, but I just felt that ultimately, net net,
Speaker 4: it actually was positive when I factored everything in, and
Speaker 4: I think that's, you know, maybe just something good to
Speaker 4: considering wellness generally, that you don't have to do everything
Speaker 4: and it's important to you know, manage your priorities as
Speaker 4: well and still have fun because otherwise what's the point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean when you just look at the data
Speaker 2: on the importance of being social and having strong social connections,
Speaker 2: if that thing is enhancing that, like, that's a really
Speaker 2: important part of overall health and lifespan. And I think
Speaker 2: your analogy to a car is perfect because now that
Speaker 2: you're back drinking again, it's not like you're just redlining
Speaker 2: all the time. You're not just like ripping that thing
Speaker 2: around twenty four to seven redline, never changing the tires,
Speaker 2: never changing the oil. You're living in a way that
Speaker 2: you're doing all these things to maintain the car. It
Speaker 2: goes in the garage every day, you top off the oil,
Speaker 2: you make sure the tires are looking good, it's aligned.
Speaker 2: But you also are willing to like go out and
Speaker 2: drive it. That's why you have the damn car. So
Speaker 2: it's really like I think the takeaway for the average
Speaker 2: person is like finding a balance between those things where
Speaker 2: people can get so caught up in health practices optimizing
Speaker 2: that you forget to actually ask yourself, well, why am
Speaker 2: I doing all this stuff in the first place? And
Speaker 2: a lot of times it's like, well, so I can
Speaker 2: live better, And then you look at all those things
Speaker 2: you go, is this actually making me live better? Or
Speaker 2: is this just making me a slave to all these
Speaker 2: routines for this possible tomorrows and my whip score and
Speaker 2: you just like forget to live in the process.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And something that I
Speaker 4: also find myself keeping in mind is like, wellness is
Speaker 4: a big business right now. You know, like you see
Speaker 4: categories just being like absolutely blown up by like one
Speaker 4: product takes off and now you've got like seven competitors.
Speaker 4: You're seeing brands that did one thing really well now
Speaker 4: coming out with their line extensions and like the version
Speaker 4: two O and the pro and like the whatever. And
Speaker 4: so I think part of it is also just remembering that,
Speaker 4: like this is a business and people are trying to
Speaker 4: sell you things. And also the human body has not
Speaker 4: like changed very much at all, you know over the
Speaker 4: past couple hundred plus years, where to the point where
Speaker 4: like you need especially like a new thing every like
Speaker 4: year or two years or three years. Like I think
Speaker 4: for this is probably something that you'd agree with based
Speaker 4: on on your writing, is like if you just do
Speaker 4: the basics, like if you just focus on the foundations
Speaker 4: of health, like moving your body, eating like relatively well,
Speaker 4: and doing something to take care of your your mental health.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can really get a lot of this
Speaker 4: done by just sort of living your life and not
Speaker 4: really like buying anything that requires like a discount.
Speaker 3: Code off of Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, common sense stuff.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting too is when you when you
Speaker 2: really look at the data on alcohol and health. Obviously,
Speaker 2: some people say any amount is toxic, never do it,
Speaker 2: but a lot of those studies are not actually that great.
Speaker 2: There's a guy, vin I Prisad, and he was an MD.
Speaker 2: You might have heard of him. He's the he was
Speaker 2: the former director of the Center for Biologics and Evaluation
Speaker 2: of Research, and he did this deep He's like kind
Speaker 2: of one of those guys that really peels back studies
Speaker 2: and goes, Okay, what's really going on here. He asked
Speaker 2: a lot of questions and when he looked at the research,
Speaker 2: he was like, yeah, drinking a lot isn't good for us.
Speaker 2: We know that. At the same time, if you're having
Speaker 2: one or two drinks every now and then, there's really
Speaker 2: nothing we can say that's gonna tell you that is
Speaker 2: going to take time off your life or really affect
Speaker 2: your health in a way that's gonna change your lifespan.
Speaker 2: So we had this really great quote in a substec
Speaker 2: post which I will link to. He said, advising people
Speaker 2: who don't drink to start drinking daily is silly and unproven,
Speaker 2: and advising people who are drinking a little bit each
Speaker 2: day to stop is silly and unproven. The point being
Speaker 2: if you're having like one or two every now and then,
Speaker 2: there's no real, hard, reliable data that says that's going
Speaker 2: to help you in the long run.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: And there's actually another piece that I wrote recently also
Speaker 4: for GQ, which kind of touches on something very similar,
Speaker 4: which is I don't have the name of the study
Speaker 4: in front of me now, but basically it was weighing
Speaker 4: the looking at the data and this was very good data.
Speaker 4: This is from where is it in Norway? I want
Speaker 4: to say, I'd have to check, but like a decade's
Speaker 4: long study that's been going on, and they were sort
Speaker 4: of looking at like what is a more effective leverte
Speaker 4: pool when it comes to longevity. Is it starting to
Speaker 4: work out or is it stopping drinking, And overwhelmingly it's
Speaker 4: it's fitness. You know, if you're going to change one thing,
Speaker 4: like if you're a relatively if you're a sedentary person,
Speaker 4: that's that's drinking. And again drinking like within sort of
Speaker 4: the bounds of common sense, you're going to do a
Speaker 4: lot more for your longevity and your health span by
Speaker 4: upping your activity, then you will by reducing or stopping
Speaker 4: alcohol consumption totally.
Speaker 2: So when you fall off the wagon, was the change immediate?
Speaker 4: I mean not really, because I think I like to
Speaker 4: have a beer if I go to or whatever, if
Speaker 4: I go to like a concert or something, or if
Speaker 4: we're at a restaurant and the table's not ready, like
Speaker 4: that's sit at the bar and have a cocktail. Like
Speaker 4: these are things that I'm not like consciously thinking about.
Speaker 4: They just sort of feel like right in the moment.
Speaker 4: And yeah, like a lot of the time they just
Speaker 4: lead the cool shit happening. Like you talk to a stranger,
Speaker 4: you know, you go out and you find a cool
Speaker 4: badminton all because you want to have a beer. Like
Speaker 4: there's just all these all these random the serendipity that
Speaker 4: I just I feel wasn't there when I was like
Speaker 4: very consciously abstaining.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like my big takeaway from this piece,
Speaker 2: given what you've written your experience, my own experience not
Speaker 2: drinking is the way that I figured out that I
Speaker 2: had a drinking problem was that literally every problem in
Speaker 2: my life was caused by my drinking. So, if that
Speaker 2: is you probably don't drink. Yes, if you're more like Dean,
Speaker 2: where you are doing one hundred healthy behaviors, you go out,
Speaker 2: you have a couple of drinks in the context of friends,
Speaker 2: you have great conversations, you meet new people, you find
Speaker 2: badminton courts embedded in like old railway stations of Zurich.
Speaker 2: That seems like it's probably adding to your life. And
Speaker 2: so I think it takes a little bit of introspection
Speaker 2: to figure out where am I on that spectrum. But
Speaker 2: I think if you're more in the Dean spectrum, you
Speaker 2: maybe don't have to get super caught up in this
Speaker 2: idea that like, removing alcohol is going to vastly improve
Speaker 2: my health. I think it might actually do the It'll
Speaker 2: either be neutral or it'll do the opposite.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think another takeaway for people to should
Speaker 4: be that, like, you don't have to like if you're
Speaker 4: not drinking not drinking, you don't have to just kind
Speaker 4: of start drinking in order to like get the benefits
Speaker 4: of a more fluid social life, you know, Like I
Speaker 4: find that it's something that helped me kind of explore
Speaker 4: life more fully and open more opportunities, more doors that
Speaker 4: I otherwise wouldn't have seen. But every personality is different.
Speaker 4: I'm also like quite an introverted person. I think if
Speaker 4: you are not drinking and you find that you are
Speaker 4: just like thriving anyway, it's not like, oh, well, let's
Speaker 4: see what this could unlocked for me, Like that guy
Speaker 4: said that it worked, Like, you don't need to do that. Like,
Speaker 4: I don't think any sort of KPI from like a
Speaker 4: fitness tracker is going to be what ultimately is what
Speaker 4: makes you make a certain decision here, because when my
Speaker 4: WROUP scores were at their best, I was probably at
Speaker 4: my like least happy. It's more just doing like a
Speaker 4: holistic inventory of your life, a very honest taking a
Speaker 4: very honest look at yourself and saying, like am I happy?
Speaker 4: What are the sort of roadblocks that I feel are
Speaker 4: sort of standing in my way from being happy? And
Speaker 4: then just sort of like chisel away at those based
Speaker 4: on what's causing them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks a lot for coming on. Man, I'm glad
Speaker 2: you were at the pace. I thought it was really smart.
Speaker 2: I think it was a good read in the context
Speaker 2: of all the information about this today, and I think
Speaker 2: you approached it really fairly and with a good i'll
Speaker 2: call it sober head on.
Speaker 4: Thanks, so I appreciate that and great to be on here.
Speaker 4: This is definitely a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear the rest of the episode
Speaker 1: or check out the whole show, you can find two
Speaker 1: percent with Michael Easter anywhere you get your podcasts and
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll be back
Speaker 1: with a new episode of kill Switch on Wednesday.