5 Reasons Quitting Alcohol is The HEALTHIEST Thing You’ll EVER Do

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all right man you're one of these guys that does not drink alcohol I'm the same way and I've done content on my channel talking about this is what happens to your body if you cut out alcohol this is what happens to your brain if you cut alcohol you know coming from experience as someone that's cut out alcohol what are five things that you noticed happened to you brain body spirituality whatever when you cut out alcohol noticed was I had more consistent sleep wouldn't shock horror if you're drinking it's usually not in the middle of the day it's probably until midnight one two three in the morning I was a club promoted by trade for a long time so my bread and butter was in the trenches running nightclubs and getting drunk as well it's one of the perks I suppose of the job um so I had more consistency with my sleep and that Downstream from it made a huge difference to my psychological Health to my training to everything that I wanted to do um that consistency allowed me to build habits that I'd failed at building for five years before I popped the link down below for House of macadamia if you want to try them out too they are where I get my macadamia nuts these days they're all grown in South Africa when you buy from them you're directly supporting the farmers as well so the farmers really do take a hit in South Africa so by going through House of macadamia a lot of it goes back to working through the farmers and helps support those Farmers but everything is harvested and package less than an hour from each other they harvest them and then they drive them less than an hour away package them everything's Super Fresh not going rancid which macadamia nuts don't really go that and rancid anyway but the point is they have macadamia nut oil macadamia nut bars straight up macadamia nuts with all kinds of different flavors so really easy to add to your diet I just I recommend them if you're going to get it you're going to spend a fortune at the grocery store macadamia nuts are not the cheapest nut but using that discount you can save a few bucks I'm getting some good macadamia nuts from House of macadamia plus with any purchase using that link a free 20 ounce bottle of cold pressed macadamia nut oil literally the only cold-pressed macadamia nut oil that I know of that's on the market and you're getting one completely free if you just use that link down below there's no catches it's just to get the word out there so the first time that I ever went sober I did six months and in that time I built my meditation habit I built my reading habit and I built my breath work habit first thing in the morning those are still habits today that I use right and that was just a six month period the same way as um one really good cut and a good recomp back up in terms of like re-dying and building those calories back in could basically be all you needed if you did it right you could get lean once and then hold on to that leanness basically for the rest of time that was kind of how I saw it so um consistency of sleep first thing second thing it forced me to develop real social confidence which was very surprising I didn't realize how much I was leaning on alcohol as a buttress for my social anxiety for my confidence to go up and speak to girls in a bar um apparently I needed it and you have two choices when you cut out alcohol you can either stand in the corner on your own and not talk to the girl or not really interact with the group that you're with or you can pluck up the uh like endogenous courage to be able to go and do it without the assistance of alcohol and go and get stuck in both of those things together were really really profound um the third one that I saw that was kind of surprising after around about six weeks or so of going sober and remember I wasn't a heavy drinker right like I would binge every Fortnight to every three weeks or so so it was a heavy club promoter style drink night out but it wasn't that consistent certainly not for the UK and I'm in my 20s I made of rubber and Magic right like I don't there's nothing nothing's gonna happen to me um uh uh third one that I went through that I thought was like very surprising after about six weeks or so was the Improvement in my mental agility so I have no idea whether this was Downstream from good quality sleep Downstream from uh better eating habits because I wasn't staying up late which meant that I wasn't eating dog the next day or whether there was something special about not having had alcohol in my system right so I don't know whether it was approximate or a byproduct effect of what was going on uh but my thoughts just ended up being sharper I had more uh uh like nimbleness with my thoughts I was more precise with the way that I was speaking and again this was on top of the meditation being facilitated and the breath work and the journaling and that everything was working together so it really supercharged my personal development um socially one thing that it really forced me to do was to look at the sort of events I was attending and the sort of people I was attending them with so I guess that my number four is something that's a consideration that might be a danger to some people which is a lot of the events that you're attending you couldn't bear to attend if you were sober and the only reason that you can is because you're drinking and a lot of the people that you're going with you can only bear to be around because you're drinking and they only want you to be around them because you're drinking as well and this is a really uncomfortable realization and thankfully I didn't lose many friends from this like I was I was pretty sort of selective with who I was hanging about with in any case um but that definitely did happen it made me think why am I going to this party which I've been this particular event which I've been to 20 times before and I never really enjoy but because I get drunk I kind of forget that it until the next time before I go I then get drunk to forget the date again um and that that was that was a really really interesting takeaway and then the final one which we spoke about in our conversation on caffeine as well which is it gave me this sense of sovereignty over myself which was I think the overarching most important thing that I took away from it I didn't like the idea of any substance having a control over me and again I had as healthy of a relationship as a 26 year old 27 year old young guy in the UK can have never had a dependency on it never felt like I needed to use it I just chose to to assist me when I wanted to go and party and have a good time and stuff like that they'd never question my usage and getting rid of it made me feel proud made me feel really proud of myself I was like yeah like I did this thing like I'm you know forging ahead I'm trailblazing in this new frontier of sobriety for no reason other than I want to improve myself so uh sleep and all of the downstream consistencies that came from that uh the uh social confidence that came through as well the mental agility and the improvements I saw with that the social group changes and finally The Pride that I felt in myself interesting did anybody composition changes that you noticed or I mean you've kind of been in shape so it might have been you know tough to ascertain like what was dictated by what but yes I would say for sure um definitely found gaining muscle more easy it was during both times that I did it first I did two six months stints and then a thousand days and the two six months were both during quite aggressive hypertrophy phases and that was great um I was able to eat more you know even though you binge the next day after you've been on a night out you're not binging appropriately you know it's not oh let me go and cook another steak it's like let me order another Pizza um and then the third time the big one that I did was when I was in my CrossFit phase and I've never changed my body composition as quickly as when I started doing CrossFit my body really responds well to that high intensity High load thing so yeah with all of those it was great yeah and I think a lot of what you're describing and I may be speaking out of turn because I'm not a neuroscientist but you know from the research that I have seen and that I've spoken about probably a nauseam on my channel you know neuroinflammation is a huge piece with alcohol right there's there's very solid links published with neuroinflammation and even moderate or even Light alcohol consumption and the things that you're describing the Sleep the you know social awareness the mental acuity these are directly correlated or seem to be correlated with neural inflammation and I mean that has a direct effect on on your performance that it has a direct impact on you know dopamine in your intensity and if you look at how you know dopamine works at a very basic level I mean you're constantly comparing your body your bright mind is constantly comparing past and present in immediate past and you know present and if things that are Intense or difficult are more intense and difficult and you have more limbic system resistance you know because it's just harder to do that because there's more neuroinflammation well think about it I mean you're not going to push it as hard your subjective score your subjective rating of perceived exertion is still going to be a seven or an eight or a nine but your absolute is not yes right so your absolute intensity improved and when you're starting to look at something like crossfits a perfect example because that's I typically have trained too and it's like you need like it's that intensity and at that high percentage of intensity the Delta between like slacking and the Delta between pushing it is so much and so important like high intensity compared to just not quite high intensity is huge yes so with that it makes sense that you'd see such a huge huge difference with that now I mean when it came down to aerobic performance did you notice anything specifically with that because I've talked to people that have mentioned that specifically they're like I don't get winded anymore I don't particularly have an explanation but I hear it all the time yeah that'd be a good point um the first few times a total bro lifts in the gym so uh intensity and cardiovascular endurance wasn't that much of a fuss the second oh the the large one for a thousand days with that that was my Noob gains in CrossFit so everybody is basically vertical with with their lines but basically you know even outside of the training thing you mentioned there about doing difficult things building new habit is really hard building a new habit is disgustingly difficult to do doing it was hungover is essentially inhuman there is no way if you've been meditating for two weeks or if you've been going to the gym or eating clean for two weeks and you're hungover guess what you're not doing it today and you know that you're not going to do it today so that was the biggest thing for me was the ability to Compound on consistency time money energy Focus to dedicate to things that I really cared about yeah you you in essence become a master of your craft versus being distracted right it's right I talk about it even with I've been with my wife since high school right and people it doesn't sound relevant to alcohol but in some ways it is because because of such I don't have much of a desire to drink I don't need to go out and attract a mate you know I've got one like I'm not worried about it uh you know our social Dynamic comes as a result of what fits in with the family and who clicks with us on the moral compass level and our connections are deep circle is small but connections are really deep and uh it's allowed me to be a master of my craft I'm not spending time doing things artificially inflating relationships that otherwise wouldn't be meaningful to me right and how many relationships did I develop at a time when I was drinking that really weren't actually people I wanted to be around you know like you mentioned this is No Malice nothing negative towards them but are these people that are going to enrich how I feel about life and are these are people that I really want to bring into my circle perhaps not or the people that I care about absolutely like I care about all people that come into my circle but are they people that really want to surround myself with and as a result it's amazing how much more of your just Literal time you get back you know when you you're able to emphasize like the importance of those close relationships better well you realize how little you have in common with some of the people you're hanging around with and that's not a comment on you know us we are not the same and I am in this position and they're it's like no you guys just don't have the same energy but alcohol flattens the energy so you guys have a lot in common because you're both eight drinks deep and other than that you don't uh and you know in the harsh light of day think about it man like so many people when you're young especially in the UK when you're like 21 22 23 you don't have friends who have drinking partners you have people that you just go out and drink with and you go well do you ever speak to them during the week about anything that isn't to do with the next night or the last night no okay you have nothing in common uh so that was that was a big realization for me um and here's one thing as well that it made me realize which is a lot of the events that I was attending a lot of the events I was running as a young guy in my 20s I always wondered why I felt a bit disjointed remembering that I've ran about a thousand club nights and met a million people running my own events but I always felt disjointed when I went downstairs and I would go into one of the parties that we had on you know DJ Big Club blah blah blah and it's because I didn't have much to talk to people about I realized that I didn't have anything really to talk about in a club that was like that because I was optimizing for the kind of experience that I wasn't built for now if it had been a live music thing that was just chill in the background or we were at a cocktail bar or whatever that would have been my sort of vibe so what I needed to do is I needed to drink to be able to get myself onto a level where I could resonate with that experience which for some people they might not need to so you know you've got people that go and Rave sober all the time that wasn't me and the events were um not aligned so much with where my like primary interests lay as I got older so I needed to drink more in order to be able to enjoy them or else I wouldn't go out because my friend group went out to those sorts of events and the only way I could do it was if I was drunk well it's like your your denaturing this fundamental sort of law of reciprocity that we have with people too it's like if I go and uh I feel like I'm getting something from a relationship with you at a deep level that is not superseded by alcohol then there's this level of satisfaction that I get out of this in our you know very natural inherent selfish ways right you're probably getting the same if we're connecting on a sober level are we truly getting that satisfaction of reciprocity if we're both operating out of this masqueraded state I don't think we are I mean I could be entirely wrong I don't know I'm just V shred but at the end of the day at the end of the day I think there's something there I think that it's like you're putting a mask on you know and it's like are you and I connecting Chris or is this you know as my wife would say she always says my initials Thomas sander delauer I'm being Tad when I'm like my Alter Ego you know or are you hanging out with Tad right now uh you know interesting it's uh so it's funny because it brings me back to you talking about your drinking Partners it's like man it's almost like you have an alter ego it's like hey like in my drinking State like you are my buddy because it's only this deep but in our conscious sober State it's a lot deeper and those are the meaningful connections that we I think strive for as human beings we're always looking for that connection and maybe we fake ourselves into thinking that we're getting that connection with alcohol and it's just been a giant fake Revolution I think so I you know I I really wish that more people would be able to realize how great it is to filter out all of the relationships in your life that don't actually serve you and this isn't me saying like that you are somehow better or more deserving than the people that you currently hang around with it's that if you had fewer friends and your friends were better for you you would go out and find more good friends that are better for you but at the moment they're just these holes can often be plugged by people who maybe aren't you don't have that much in common apart from the fact you get drunk together what about people that drink because they feel like they feel they feel they're someone else when they drink that can be a very difficult situation for someone that says in order for me to change I need to be able to look at myself differently but when I don't drink I don't like who I am that's a very difficult situation that you know coming from I grew up in Sonoma right so it was like uh everyone drinks everyone it's like Sonoma Napa Wine Country right and I was like this was constant it was like people just felt like they needed to drink to be themselves and when they weren't drinking literally throughout the day it's almost like they became so functional they just didn't feel they were who they were supposed to be that can be a very difficult thing I don't have an answer for that but I'm curious your take on that yeah I I would be very surprised if most of the people that are listening would say I don't like the person I'm when I don't drink there's a lot more people that say I don't like the person I am when I do drink you know they become jealous they become aggressive they become insecure they become whatever but it's all papered over and God everyone's got that friend right that as soon as they cross a particular threshold like Todd comes out or whatever like the equivalent of Tad um if you're someone who feels like you need to drink to be worthy accepted loved confident you know if you if you are at your best when you drink you have got some serious problems and you are not going to make them any better by drinking more right I give the best that you show up to the world is when you're drunk come on like come on like it it's so obvious it's staring you in the face that you need to do some more self-work here like do you really want that to be the best that you've got to offer the world drunk you and when are you at your Peak flow highest contribution everything is is aligned and the astral realm and the Physical Realm are together oh it's when I'm eight drinks deep nah come on I think it happens a lot with people when they're one or two drinks deep they become almost more looser than they see like this is something they're not not when they're three sheets to the wind but when they're saying this this is functional for me good you know that's interesting you've got the people that even come home and they have to have a drink at five because it's like the rest of their life just feels terrible until they have that drink all right well dude I mean you know people have got the they're all manner of different ways that life can iterate some people can have pretty difficult lives and of all of the things that they could do to make that better would both mean you try and prescribe do they go into a high intensity workout yet probably but you know well maybe these people do need a support system to help them get through it and me telling them to just rip the Band-Aid off and stop drinking maybe a little bit difficult but I do know that the sense of Pride that you will have if you can be as confident competent fulfilled balanced calm as you feel like you are when you drink without that not only do you now not need to use alcohol in all of the terrible Health destruction that occurs Downstream from that but bigger than that you have the story that you can tell yourself that you are the kind of person that has been able to do this without assistance yeah I think that's I think that's very fair and being able to have someone remove that element of their life first that is the ticket to being able to do the inner work you cannot do the inner work with that in the equation correct it just does not work and if you literally think of it as this neuroinflammation as a static I always describe it as a static you've got this static like you know fuzzy static it's like a fog right and you can't neurotransmitters everything can't function you can't cross those bridges because there's so much fog it's like you're afraid to cross this bridge because the fog is there when the fog figuratively lifts you can actually do the inner work you're not going to try to sit there and meditate when you're drunk I don't think you're going to get much benefit out of it but removing that equation or from that equation that's going to put you in that spot to actually do that work and a metabolically I always encourage people you know metabolically the science is there too I mean because some people need that sort of physical piece of it they need to say like well what's going to happen to me physically I mean the data on visceral fat the data on uh you know hepatoxicity the like the liver load just being able to actually metabolize fats metabolize feels better because everything's not taking a back seat to acetaldehyde to the alcohol that's all there too and we've done plenty of content surrounding that but anyway man I want to wrap this up but where can everyone find you uh Chris Williamson on YouTube Modern wisdom on Spotify Apple podcasts etc etc