Modern Wisdom - #191 - Alcohol, Friend Or Foe?

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

This episode was originally recorded on Ben's show Ben Coomber Radio. I enjoyed this discussion about alcohol and drinking habits so much, I figured I'd put it on Modern Wisdom too. Lots more talking by me on this one, which you might enjoy. As bars & pubs reopen after lockdown, it's a crucial time to remind yourself of being intentional & deliberate with your drinking. Rather than restarting a weekend warrior lifestyle, now could be a great opportunity to reset your routine & habits around alcohol. Enjoy this discussion, big thanks to Ben for letting me use the episode. Sponsor: Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (Enter promo code MODERNWISDOM for 85% off and 3 Months Free) Extra Stuff: Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out Ben's Podcast - https://bencoomber.com/pages/ben-coomber-radio Check out Ben's supplement company - https://awesomesupplements.co.uk/ Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back. My guest today is me, kind of. This episode was originally recorded on Bencumbus show Bencumbu Radio. He invited me on to talk about drinking halfway through lockdown, or maybe a third of the way through lockdown, to just discuss how people were using alcohol to deal with difficult times, and seeing as we're about to reopen, pubs are reopening in the UK and or that bars are in America as well, I thought that now would actually be a really good time to just remind ourselves of how we are using alcohol in our lives.

It's going to be a really dangerous period over the next month where you might take some liberties with your health, with your drinking, with the habits that you've created that are good during lockdown, and perhaps actually undo some of that great work. So I wanted to publish this episode first because Ben's a great host and I really enjoyed this and I'd be meaning to put it out for a while, but I also thought that it would be a really good primer for a lot of you as we get back into normality, right? Let's not use this period to fall back into bad habits. You've potentially done some amazing work with building fantastic routines during lockdown. So let's stay conscious of

those, right? Let's be deliberate and intentional with our actions. So this is an episode where I am being hosted by Ben. I really hope that you enjoy it. We have some really cool conversations. There's a lot of questions I push back on, some of Ben's uses of alcohol, and then he gives some great counterpoints as well. So it's a lot more talking from me, which you may enjoy or you may hate.

But yeah, I might do this a little bit more. When I feature on other people's shows that I enjoy. I might put an episode across onto modern wisdom. So let me know what you think of this. In other news, the modern wisdom Patreon is launching this Monday, the sixth of July. I am so excited to get this going. We are launching a brand new patron only series, recap 101, and 102, 103, where I will cover the last few months of modern wisdom behind the scenes, what I thought of guests, what happened before and after episodes,

and that is going to be only available on the Patreon. You can also get access to be able to vote on upcoming guests and topics that you want me to reach out to. There's the opportunity even to get a shout out on an episode and the absolute top tea, you can even become a researcher for the show. So there are tons of ways that you can get involved and any support that you can give the show would be massively appreciated. This is just me and video guide Dean doing our thing.

And if you love the show as much as I love creating it, any support that you can give would be amazing. So get ready for that Patreon launches. This Monday info will be in the intro before the episode and on my Instagram at ChrisWillX. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Chris Williamsson. Haha. Hey everyone, Ben Cumberadio, what is happening as is the theme with a lot of these podcasts during this lockdown period. We're kind of ignoring it. I guess it's happening, but just pretend it's not there. Let's just look to move forward.

Let's look to improve areas of our lives that we can. Let's look to muse and we will be doing that today. There's not many guests that were returned to the show. There's probably been about six over the years that have returned to the show, but I was watching Chris, I was watching his Instagram stories the other day and he was talking about a topic I've been thinking a lot about recently. It's been covering in the news quite a bit because obviously people are locked at home and what's now happening is our, our kind of habits, our beliefs, our environments, they've kind of compounded, they've intensified because we're at home. And whether that's a positive or a negative

thing, it's either become more positive or more negative. And I thought the topic of alcohol and our relationship with it was something that I wanted to go further down the rabbit hole with and on the first episode of this show of Chris We talked about it. We're only really spent sort of about 10 minutes on it and having watched Chris's Instagram story No, it was just a post on Instagram. I think I was like, yes, let's go there Chris get back on the show So Chris Williamson welcome back to the show. Great, honoured mate. Doubleed up. Two episodes.

What can I say? Yeah, man, absolutely pleasure to be back on and looking forward to talking about something that I spend a lot of time thinking about. So yeah, let's get into it. Why do you continue to think about it? I think that a lot of people's alcohol use is habituated rather than chosen. That's the bottom line. I think most people drink because other people did

and then they started too, which is societal norm, and then re-roll the clock forward by five years or 10 years or 15 years or 20 years. And you've taken a drug, you can just call it what it is, alcohol is a drug. You've taken a drug more frequently than once every fortnight for decades. Like if you just arrived on earth and were like, what's some of the rules about how you operate as a human? So maybe the encivill civilization comes down here in the UFO. And so, oh, there's this and you do this that you do. And you go, walk on your feet and you just grab it and all this sort of.

Then you go, Oh, yeah, by the way, does this drug that you take? And you kind of, you kind of not forced to take it, it will shorten your life. I also give you memory loss. Also, it makes you fat. Also, it makes you want to eat. And it makes you feel like depressed and terrible the next day. but you're going to have it more than you're going to choose to have it more than once every two weeks. And then, yeah, I mean, look at what's happened with lockdown, man. There's the biggest uproar in America. One of the biggest uproars in America was

when the government threatened to make off licenses, like liquor stores, they'd call them, non-essential, and shut them down. And there was people hoarding alcohol. What does that tell us? It tells us that people struggle to get through hard times without the buttress, the scaffolding that is alcohol. So I think about it a lot.

And then I have sixmanso sober.com, which is an online course I made to help guide people that just want to deprogram their use of alcohol, not for people that have substance abuse problems, but just for people who want to use the foundation of consistency that sobriety gives you to then build yourself and improve yourself. And I'm build yourself an improve yourself. And I'm, you know, I'm 20 months sober as of last week. And I just, it's sober's are that going sober's got an addictive essence to it because you see the consistency you have, you have more time, you have more money,

you have more calories to spend on things that you truly care about. And then you realize that when you choose to reintegrate drinking, if you choose to reintegrate drinking, if you choose to reintegrate drinking, that it's on your terms, that you are in full control because you've deprogrammed the need to feel worried that you can go on a night out with your buddies and then say, why are you not drinking? Or you've deprogrammed the need to feel like you need alcohol to give you confidence to go up and talk to that girl or that guy or or to just be in a group, or because you taste buds

have become accustomed to having like a, and you're a sparkly morph on you. I've seen you talk about a spot yet. So, you know, to just be able to get away with a lacroy or whatever it might be, a Sam Pelagrino or whatever at the table instead of getting a bottle of wine in. So you do all this deep programming and you realize, hang on. I'm actually now re-released into the world and I've got full control as opposed to thinking that I've got control, right? So yeah, that's it, man. That's foundation, base. That's what we're talking about. So before we go on and go down a couple of rabbit holes, let's do a quick elevator pitch. Some people have not listened to my show before.

Some people might not know who you are. What is the Chris Williamson elevator pitch? Who is this man? Okay, business owner from Newcastle, Club Promoter, run nightclubs for 13 years. I've seen a million drunk people going in out of them, so I understand how alcohol works. I understand what party life is.

For a very long time was the party boy. I was the dickhead club promoter, the guy around town, big dick on campus, all this stuff. Did take me out, got to go to Fernando's and meet Paddy McGinnis, great. Did love Island, got to meet Caroline Flack and go to the villa. Also great, fantastic blue tick on Twitter,

you know, all the big things, big headlines. Then started Modern Wisdom, which is my podcast, started that two and a half years ago, just crossed two million downloads, which is fantastic, aided in a big way by yourself, giving me a platform early on while we were doing that and drove a lot of plays off the back of that, so I have a lot to thank you for and that, and then that's it, man, I just, I'm curious as fuck, like I just want to know about everything. I'm super super curious and that has led me. I've got a desire with performance and productivity and optimizing as well. Not super like quantified self stuff, but you know I like to get better and I like it. I have a growth mindset. And that just meant a tight plan around with loads of different things, loads of different ways to improve my life within a minute fasting in different ways of changing your sleep up and all the sort of things. And one of the most effective things that I found was going sober despite the fact

that I was a very infrequent drinker, I still found huge gains from it. And I guess that's the root into how sobriety came in there. But yeah, that's it. We're now on the 13th floor and you can step out onto your, on your veranda or wherever we are in this elevator. So you bring up an interesting topic there because I, I've just started talking to a therapist again and I went to this therapist and said, I don't have a problem, I'm not in pain, I don't need anything primarily like solving. But right now I feel like I'm in a really good place with everything, my body, my mind, my business, I'm really balanced and I'm really happy. And I get that I'm very fortunate for a couple of reasons

due to that. And I don't want to kind of deliberate on that because we're in lockdown and I live in the countryside and I'm not in a stuffy flat and all these things, but I've worked hard in my opinion on my mental game to be really content with wherever I am in life. So I went to this therapist and I started chatting to her and I said, I'm here because I wanna understand if I actually know my truth and it's not any element of my ego sort of disguising

my own wisdom. I almost want you to like catch me out. And as we were talking through these different layers, we started to talk about our character traits. And I resonate with you because I think we're quite similar. We love exploring the mind. We just love personal development. And there was a point in the conversation where it's almost like you become, you try and aim to become so pure and so understood and so balanced and so consistent that do you lose yourself in it and that do you forget to relax and have fun and chill out and because my

therapist is using an example that she loves to be really organized and I do as well. And it's like we were almost joking about how we like to organize our downtime. And I just said to her, I was like, do I, am I forgetting how to relax? Like, do I? And it was really interesting. So here in you talk about you just being like fully in control and immersed and having a routine. Like, how does that narrative sit you? Do you feel like you're living every sense of

kind of your life in all this kind of optimization that is almost, are you standing back enough to just sort of be present? I don't know. Do you get what I'm going on? I totally understand your question, man. I think the first thing for anyone that's new or experienced to the self-development world to appreciate is that there's layers to this game, you know. There is, and it is an union, and unfortunately it's an endless union. You peel away some persona, you get rid of, you strip away some ego and you're like, yes, yes, that's it, that's me, I'm at the core. And you're like, oh, wait, hang on. And you realize, and the way to work this out is, do you think that you 12 to 24 months ago on balance was actually a little bit of an idiot? And always, always that's the case. You're like, fuck, I thought

how did you figure it out? I thought how did you figure it out two years ago? And look what's happened. I'm still, I'm still, you know, I didn't know anything. It's like, in two years time, you're going to look back at the person that you are now and you're going to say the same thing, which is both a blessing and a curse because if you're constantly growing, inevitably, you're going to leave old versions of yourself behind, right? And the way that our lives work as well as epochs of our life, these kind of like, maybe between two and five years segments, I think that we moved through where we could bunch together a common story, you know, like a theme that that two to five years has got. And then it's okay. And then I'm on

to this bit. And I'm on to this bit. And I'm on to this bit. And that's real typical, right? So that's a first thing. Second thing, there's this quote from an ancient philosopher, I'm going to see if I've got down here for you. Let me see if I can find you this. I'm reading one of the best articles that I've ever read at the moment. And what they talk about is how spontaneity is actually created through discipline in the beginning, right? And that sounds, that sounds a little bit bizarre. You're like, well, hang on, I spontaneity and discipline to me are two different things. Like, how can you have a situation where you, um, how can you have a situation where you have a very structured life and you are constantly, I know how much I'm going to eat, I know what time I'm going to wake up, I've got my morning routine,

my evening routine, my work routine, and this is how my desk set and all the rest of this stuff. And how can I allow that, or how does that mix in with other things? And there's this, a, we a wool way, there it is. So there's a quote from, and this is a guy called Kyle Entroder who wrote the article, and it's so good. So in the early stages of training, an aspiring Confucian gentleman needs to memorize entire shelves of archaic texts, learn the precise angle at

which to bow, and learn the lengths of steps with which he is to enter the room. His sitting mat must always be perfectly straight. All of this rigour and restraint, however, is ultimately aimed at producing a cultivated but nonetheless genuine form of spontaneity. Indeed, the process of training is not considered complete until the individual has passed completely beyond the need for thought or effort. And this ties in with the way that the brain works as well. Anybody that's read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman knows this. You've got the instinctive response which is your system one. And then you've got the slower, more considered response which is number two. Now, what

you need to do and what a lot of routines do is they actually pull you out of the first type of thinking. They pull you out of that. They stop you from having just the visceral response, the instinctive response. You become more considered and yet you have to go through what's sometimes an almost lifelong period of discipline. But as that slowly reintegrates, what you realize is that the discipline has become your nature. So the fact that you want to be more grateful, so you have to practice gratitude every single morning for three or

four years. And then over time, you're actually like, hang on a second, I'm being grateful here. In exactly the same way as I want to be a little bit more muscular, so you start doing weight training. And at the beginning, you don't have muscles, and over time, you're still doing the training, and yet your muscles are there to stay. Does that make sense? And that kind of movement between the two, but I totally get what you mean, man,

that it feels like discipline can be a bit of a burden. And for a lot of people, it is. But I think that's more a problem to do with the way that we're brought into this world, like school. So the word school is an ancient Greek word that means play. It doesn't mean education, it doesn't mean place of, you know, like discipline, it means play. And yet, when you go to school, you think, I've got to go to school, now I get to go to school and all this sort of stuff. So I think discipline and the way that we get socialized

into that is a big part of it, right? And a lot of people shy away from, you know, their time off that weekend, oh, you know, I'll just sleep until 10 o'clock and I'll do whatever I want and miss that. And you're like, that's totally sweet. But long term over time, if you are disciplined, you're actually oddly enough, end up liberating yourself.

if you are disciplined, you're actually oddly enough and liberating yourself. So, with all that being said, this is one of my pet hate with many people's relationship with technology and alcohol tie into this at a different level as well. But because we're so connected, I feel that everything kind of jumbles through each other. There's like these energies and identities that are constantly mixing. And I've spoken to my kind of therapist and we were identifying layers of my character and how I wanted to behave in my business life, my personal life. And I remember listening to an interview with Ant Middleton, I don't know if you've ever spoken to Ant Middleton. No, I had Oliolitan on last week, so his second in command to

Ant, but yeah, Ant Abaddaz, he's legit. Nice. So I met Ant at the UK fitness awards and I had a little chat with him, great guy. And then I listened to him on another podcast and he gave some really polarizing opinions and there was a couple of things I kind of disagreed with. And I was like, I can't disagree because I don't know enough context. So I downloaded this book at the beginning of the weekend and I started racing through his audiobook, which is brilliant because I love like more stories because it's always like, it's stuff that we, like what I'll say is mortals never get to experience but not fucking soldiers like so I love listening to that kind of stuff and

anyway he talks about all these layers of everyone's identity and most men will have a problem going from work dude to leader dude to workout dude to, to husband dude, because it's all getting muddied of this into connectedness. And I thought it was really good for me, because when I look at my life, I wanna turn up in a certain way to every environment. And I think, you know, what we're getting at with wanting to develop ourselves is like,

when you and I go to work, we wanna be a certain person and we want to turn up for those five six seven eight hours as a certain person but as soon as you walk through the door at home we want to be a slightly different person but actually all of that sometimes gets lost and I never think that I think that people struggle to live that kind of true self in every environment. And perhaps that's the beauty of all of this is developing yourself that you can live to your truest best identity in any given environment. Yeah, I can agree more man. I mean, there's people that you know that are argumentative

at work and they'll be argumentative at home. You know, there's certain themes that go through people's lives. But again, with this, there's another, there's a Seneca quote that he talked about, the virtuous mean, which is not a vice of deficiency, nor a vice of excess. And I think one of the reasons why people like to go all in in like work mode and athlete mode and dad mode and all the rest of it, is that the same reason

it's easier to finish an entire packet of biscuits than it is to just eat one. It's like I'm good at black and white. It's gray area thinking where you have to do a little bit but not too much. So I need to be a bit of a disciplinary with my kids but I also need to give them a bit of love and I also at work I need to care about people. I need to get them to buy into me, but also I've got to treat them as if they are in one way or another, a little bit children. And then with the wife, I also need to make sure that we're loving and caring,

but I also need to stand my own. And you know, all these different things, it's challenging, that's why. Life is real difficult. And this is why for me, a huge, bizarrely like a huge respect to the people who don't bother to delve into the world of self-development. Because they're living, you know, by and large from the outside, just as effective a life

as anybody else. But they're not there. And that's only my business partner, Darren. Like he'll pick up some of the stuff that I say from the podcast, but he doesn't care, man. He's got two kids, two dogs, beautiful wife, beautiful house. And he operates fine, you know? Like he functions completely, completely great.

But I do think, you know, there's things that all of us can improve on here and there. And I think being true to yourself, as you've mentioned a number of times, you know, enacting your logos as Jordan Peterson would say, what is your inner truth and how are you speaking it forward into the world? That's what we should be trying to achieve where we can. Sorry, that was what we should be trying to achieve where we can. Sorry, that was a little tangent. We did start off talking about alcohol. Let's delve back into alcohol. Hopefully a few of those things have made us think on the old gray matter already.

So with alcohol, the first show that we kind of talked about, we talked about the reasons why you'd done, and what it had led to clear a thinking, better routine, not getting a groggy head, or the kind of stuff that anyone would experience if they stopped taking alcohol for a week. You feel a bit better over time. When you challenge people online, what is quite often the roadblocks for people actually committing to what you're saying? Almost what are they scared of? The first problem with people going sober is that alcohol is the only drug where if you

don't do it, people assume you have a problem. There's a branding issue. There is a branding issue with sobriety in that the only people that don't drink are presumed to be closet alcoholics. And I get messages from people who haven't seen lots of my back-end content or like a history of my content. And then they'll just come upon a post that's maybe appeared on the newsfeed and it says, I'm 10 months old, I'm 18 months, I'm 20 months old, whatever it might be. Congratulations so much, I have to say, I loved AA, I thought that the support there was great. And I'm like, I feel like an imposter. Like, I appreciate that.

I thank you for congratulating me. But being honest, I've never had a problem with substances. Oh, OK. Why, what's the reason I just a productivity tool? The same way as people decide to focus on their sleep or their nutrition or their training or whatever it is, I took alcohol out of my life. This might reduce processed foods or you might take out carbs, you might go keto, you know, and like, just another tool.

So challenges that people come up against. Number one is social influence. So they don't want to feel like their friends are going to take a piss out of them because they're not drinking, again, going sober. There's kind of this boy club playful, even for girls, there's like quite boys club playful. Oh, man, go on, just have one. In people make up excuses, people are, I've got the car. It's like, you've only driven so that you can say that you don't have to drink because like,

having the car is one of the few acceptable, like that and being pregnant, are the only two acceptable excuses about why you're not drinking, you know? So, social pressures, big deal for people, right? Butressing of confidence is another one, either in groups, especially if you're single, you know, especially if you're single and especially if you're a bloke that's single, because as a guy, you were expected to be the sexual protagonist, right? You're expected to go up to the girls. If there are

already girls listening who are the ones that start off these conversations in bars and clubs and it doesn't count if you get your friend to go up on your behalf or if you're the friend, that's not how it works. But if you're one of the girls that goes up and says, like, I think that you're really good looking or are you single or high, what's your name, would you like a drinker or any of that? You are a very unique individual, because for the most part, it's men, right? So men use that, touch courage, everyone knows.

Well, that's like, after that, there's the midweek drinker, so you would have someone who has stresses at work, and they would use their alcohol to deal with that, and they'd be well, if alcohol's my coping mechanism, and it allows me, I just want to relax, you know, it just helps me relax on a night. They would never say coping mechanism. They would just say, you know, it just helps me relax after I found it and you'd say,

that's a coping mechanism. That's what that's it by definition. Some people would use it to help themselves sleep on a night. That is just a complete non-sequent, because you're not sleeping, you're just sedated. The research that comes out from Matthew Walker's book, Why We Sleep, is pretty robust on that, where he says, the reason that you have crazy dreams when you've been drinking a lot is because your REM sleep hasn't been able to begin until all of the alcohol's been processed out of your system. And that's why like the last couple of hours, maybe, of a night when you've had a few drinks, is

where you have mad dreams because your body's, your brains can try to condense all of that down, right? So that's, that's some of the big ones. I mean, there's tons of other things, right? There's like, so, before we go down more rabbit holes or give more reasons, I'm fascinated by the first point because that's obviously a Problem for a huge amount of people because a lot of us have certain friend groups and if the friend groups always drink and you don't drink Then the friend group dynamic becomes different or difficult and you become maybe quickly the outcar so

Like when you've worked with people what generally happens does the person almost think I'm not sure if these people or some of these people could be my friends anymore because it's like we just go out and drink But then there's a confidence issue because then Where does that person sort of almost get their confidence from and I suppose it's like anything once you un When she reveal an a layer of the onion, it's like, well, now we need to go to the next layer because you're not actually confident. So now we need to work on your confidence. You don't need the alcohol and the social situation or with girls or with family or with

anything. Yeah. I mean, I've got a quote from James Cleary here that I've just pulled up. Changing your habits often requires you to change your tribe. Each tribe has a set of shared expectations. Behaviors that conform to the shared expectations are attractive, behaviors that conflict with the shared expectations are unattractive. It's hard to go against the group. So that there shows why we are we're tribal creatures.

You know, there's them and us. That's why football teams and football supporters get, so that's why World Wars has started, you know, that's why there's a rivalry between different political factions or religious factions or whatever it might be. So you're right, the first problem is going to be you're around a bunch of people who are used to you drinking. But the way that people that I've worked with a lot of the clients have dealt with it is by finding the friends who they can bear to be around sober. And this is a really challenging thing to realize, right? How many of the friends that you have do you only spend time with when you drink and then think from that group, how many of them could you bear to be around without alcohol?

Like if the only time that your friends are happy with you being with them is when you're destroying yourself along with them, then you need better friends. And if you find out that the only way you can bear to be around them is by being drunk, okay. And you definitely need better friends. You know, like be friends with people that want the best for you. People that don't not just want to fucking take the path of least resistance. People that just tell you what you want to hear. Like the point is to be with people who raise you up, who make you better. And if you say, hey, I'm going to, I'm doing this six-month sober challenge thing. I'm going to do that 90 days. I'm going to track your sober for 90 days. They don't just

go, Oh, fucking L may. Why are you pussy? No, like be with the people who go, All right. Well, I mean, you know, you're going to be a bit more boring on a night out, but that's cool. Like it'll be sweet to see how you get on. And I really hope that you do well in this that and the other. And again, with that, like, as you of competence grows, and this is something that's so insidious, man, and this is why people need to strip away the ego because you can influence someone really negatively if you're not careful, right? So that person, your one friend, I'm the other, you've come to me and you've said, hey, Chris, I'm thinking about going sober, and I'm the guy that goes, that sounds totally

shit. Why would you bother doing that? It's Jonos 33rd next week. You can't miss out on Jon Os' 33rd. Like, wait, 30 seconds was fucking whank. Like, why would we bother about his 33rd? So, you know, but you've got that, and that this person, the me, the like,

shit house version of me that I've just given you there, that could be the barrier that stops you, that creates inertia, that stops you from making a really important piece of behavior change in your life, that would upgrade you, make you happier, make you healthy and give you more money and time and calories to spend on shady care about. Like, that's, you know, you can be that influence in people's lives. It doesn't take much to actually be a real positive influence. So when people decide to go so,

but they need to look at who are the people in the group that support them, you know? As opposed to someone who says, that's totally shit, what about the friend that goes, actually make like, would you, Drek and I could like do it as well? Drek and we could do it together and would like be accountability buddies or whatever.

Like how amazing would that be? You know, those are the people who have your best interests at heart, the ones that want that. And the final point on this is, and this goes for all behaviour change. It also goes for, again, especially a little bit more so with guys because they tend to be quite territorial. But as your domain of competence grows, as a guy or a girl, as your domain of competence grows and you start to improve yourself.

You're going to hold a very, very harsh mirror up to the bad habits of the people that are around you and that can cause those people to start to lash out. They can start to say things because your improvement and your progression makes them feel incredibly self conscious, incredibly worthless because you're pulling ahead. You're like, hang on a second, we finished uni at the same time, but how can you bought a house at 26? So, well, it makes because I'm not a car on PCP that cost a grand a month for the last four years or whatever it might be.

Why are you lean? I went to the gym as opposed to just going out and having a takeaway every night or pick whatever domain it is, but especially with alcohol, because it's inherently so social. As you start to move away from people like that, you can start to lash out and they'll purposefully, behaviors that go against the tribe are kind of punished.

They'll start to push you out. But do you want to be friends with those sorts of people? Like the answer is no. And so many friendship groups have just grandfired it in. That these like artifacts of a time gone by. Ah well, you know, it's when I used to play rugby. Bro, you haven't played rugby in a decade. Like what do you want about?

Like the only thing that you and these people have in common is the fact that you once did a thing forever ago. And all that you now talk about is that thing you did forever ago. That's totally fine if you want to live a life that's stuck in the past. But if you want to live a life that's constantly moving forward, then allow the waste men and the waste chicks that you've accumulated along the way, allow them to fall away. And again, as you go sober, as you do any behavior change, start eating more healthily, go to the gym, do whatever it is that you start to do, but specifically with

alcohol. As you go sober, you will start to see the world for what it is. And this is why I keep on referring to going sober as taking the ultimate red pill, like that you stop seeing matrix and you start seeing code. you realize, hang on a second, that guy is actually really, really negative or that girl is actually really, really bad for me or that person is always really negative because you start to see the world with clear eyes for the first time. You don't, it's not nerfed by alcohol and all your inhibitions going out the window, you know? Well, that is quite often one of the hardest elements of change is looking at your environment and having to sort of potentially slowly move away from friendship groups.

And I've done it loads. I left uni, well I left school and probably had two friends once I left school because I changed an awful lot from school and I left uni. What was the big change? Well, the big first change was that I was the obese fat acting lad at school, and then I became the fit guy that lost five and a half stone, became a person trainer. So I completely shifted identity and changed my life. So it was, didn't know those people anymore,

they didn't know me. And then when I left uni, probably left uni with like five or six people that you keep in touch with, but at uni you've got a Brazilian to friends, but all of those friends are trans unit sports teams, clubs, all the rest of it. And I think that's quite often the beautiful thing of life that friends come and go, experiences happen,

and they go. And, you know, if you have five best friends in your life, like there's nothing wrong with that, but you don't have to have a best friends in your life, like there's nothing wrong with that. But you don't have to have a best friend for 50 years. Like you can do, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. But there's nothing wrong with having, you know, five different best friends as you evolve through life and you're interested in different things

and you have kids and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's fearful for some people because there's probably a level of self worth there to say, well, what if I don't find a new best friend? What if I don't find a new body to go to the pub with or whatever? It's almost like, well if I leave that friend, well another one come. Well it's a scarcity mindset, right? It's opposed to an abundance mindset. And I totally get it, being on your own is a challenge. And I have an extra amount of sympathy

for the people that are listening who are in lockdown direct-stroverts. Now, I'm so fortunate now to be an introvert, because for me, I've been socially distancing for 32 years. I've been practicing social distancing since the day I was born. But I appreciate, and I've had a lot of messages from people who are saying, man, I'm struggling with the lack of social connection here. Like this is really challenging. And to you, my heart goes out.

Some easy hacks, face time people more, do Skype calls more. Make sure that you're organizing like consistent chats with people all the time to give you that sense of that semblance of like being with people and stuff like that. But on the flip side of that as well, like extroverts have an unfair advantage. Every other period of life that isn't a pandemic lockdown,

because you get to network more easily and you tend to go out more and socialize more and stuff like that. So this is this is a little bit of repayment for that. But yeah, man, people hold on to friendships, you know, they this is a little bit of repayment for that. But yeah man, people hold on to friendships, you know, they hold on to friendships that are so bad for them. And I think I think questioning that like, why need people in my life, you know, like being taken a minimalist approach is someone might with their possessions to their friendships. Because friendships because like two bad friendships is worse than it is very, very bad. Like two bad friendships where you've got two people who are impacting you negatively. That is like leading you astray. Maybe you've got a bunch of buddies who are still party, party boys, maybe you get into what's like you like 20s or you're early 30s or whatever.

And these guys are still weekend warriors. They're still getting a couple of bags in on a weekend. And all right, mate, let's go. We're good. The doc house in lead this weekend, like such and such a DJ's playing or whatever it might be. And you're like, yeah, bro, like, you know, that was fun when we were 22, but you know, I kind of, I kind of actually want to try and find a misses and settle down.

Now I really actually want to try and find a boyfriend who could move in with whatever it might be, right? Like people are scared of leaving those people behind. It's like, well, what's out there for me? It's like the fucking tons of people are out there for you. It's just a case of letting go of the ones that you don't need anymore. So when we were chatting on WhatsApp before this podcast, we talked about what I felt my relationship with Alcom was before this. So we've talked about Alcom and its broadest sense and how people sort of use it, generally escapism and I think escapism is something I want to make sure we include in today's

show. So I think that's a fascinating topic. And I don't know what level of escapism is healthy because I think sometimes everyone wants to experience things out of their own body to an extent. It's almost a little bit fun. So my relationship with alcohol probably have between three and five to six drinks a week. and I sort of said to you, you know, I think it's a healthy relationship. I have like one canopy. It's quite often like

before meal with a meal of the misses. Never have more than two drinks because I just hate feeling tired the next day. Don't knock down with any of that. Don't want it to affect my performance. And you were like, oh cool, I want to ask you a couple of questions about that because obviously anyone's relationship with anything is how they want to deal and manage their own life at any given time. I don't think my alcohol relationship has changed with lockdowns and it's been these activities the same. I didn't have a beer last night but I had a beer the night before and then I glassed a champagne with my wife the night before that.

Okay, so why? Why did you have them? Why did you have the beer? So tell me why you had the beer first. Yeah, sure. So my three reasons are I absolutely love sort of craft beer. So I never drink the same beer. I always drink a different beer from a different part of the world all different sours, stouts, IPAs,

NEPAs, all these things. What's some of your what's some of your picks? What's some of your favorites that you've had recently? Oh, Jesus Oh, there's a lot favorites. It's hard when you have a different one every day. I was gonna say well, you're gonna have to remember you only ever get to see them once and then it's in the bin. Yeah, but I literally, I've literally drawn some, where are you getting it from? Have you got like, is it like a service of some kind, a subscription service? Are you just going online and searching like coolipase.com or something? Yeah, no, I've subscribed to a company called Beer 52 and they sell in 12 beers every month with the magazine, the magazines, all about the craft beer movement and how it's evolving. And my brother got me into it.

And before that, I drank shitty lava like everyone else and then he opened up my eyes and I was like, mate, it's like a good one. You start to enjoy the complexity of it. So I really enjoy just having a beer, like an exploring beer as a thing. I love the taste, I love bitter tastes. So my favorite is somebody might really enjoy different types of meats,

or different types of chocolates, or whatever it might be. I get it, man. Okay, so you had that, and then why did you have the champagne? What was the reason for the champagne? Me and the wife wanted to celebrate our daughter being four weeks old. Exactly. Yes, man. Well, I mean, that is a pretty good reason. So, you know, I think, and since I discussion last year, what you talked about this as well, I think you have a very, it seems very balanced relationship

with alcohol. I don't think that there's anything other than the inherent enjoyment of the taste and based on what you've said not the effect of being the reason you have it right. So second reason, you know when you used to have sort of afternoon drinking you'd go out you know you just get a little bit loose, have a bit of fun but you don't really affect the next day. So I might sort of half an hour quite often to myself especially now is be 5.30 you'm about to cook dinner,

crack open a beer, put on some loutunes and literally dance around the kitchen. That's around the kitchen, man. Ever so slightly tipsy, it's only one beer, I don't drink a lot these days. And it's kind of like, I get a chance to just feel a little bit loose, a little bit like, boop boop, but then you sit down for dinner, have a normal conversation. And you're so about APM or whatever. Yeah So it's kind of like this like half an hour of escapism like pure relaxation I'd dance around the kitchen and you know when you sort of challenged me on WhatsApp

You didn't challenge me, but I knew you were gonna challenge me so in my head I was already challenging myself I was like, but why not? It's fun. Didn't have any negative side effects. I enjoyed it. Didn't cost a lot. Didn't damage anyone. Put a smile on my face. And I was like, I was trying to pick apart the habit. So yeah, do that what you meant. That's two. And then what's number three? Or was that number three? Then mine is two reasons. Okay. Okay. So first off, you're one of the most challenging people to convince to go sober because your relationship with alcohol is not destructive. And also, you're very cognizant about the reasons of why you drink. First off, I would say that you are an outlier in terms of the way that people have a relationship with alcohol. I

would wager that a lot of the people that are listening will drink more, more frequently with less control and more regrets than you do. So anyone that's had a hangover within the last month that, wow, actually it's probably about shout-given that we're in lockdown, but anyone that has hangover consistency consistently where they think to themselves,

oh God, this sucks. You are choosing for that to happen. There is an asymmetry with drinking, right? I'll get back to you in a second. I'm coming for you in a second bed, but I'm going to get the people that are listening first. There's an asymmetry with drinking, right? And you get exponentially increasing suffering the more that you drink. And you get exponentially increasing suffering the more the e-drink. And you get diminishing returns of enjoyment the more the e-drink. So if you have five drinks, right, and then you double that to 10. You don't have double the fun as you had when you had five, but you have more than double

the hangover. Does that make sense? Yeah. So the curve of one of them goes up like that and the curve of the other one goes down like that. That, my friend, is called a fucking losing position. If you were a trader and you knew that every trade that you were gonna put on was gonna make a loss,

because that's what it is, it is a loss, right? You would be very bankrupt, very fast. And people that drink heavily and consistently, especially the ones that aren't doing it consciously, cognizant about it, you're doing that with your health. You're doing that with your health, you're doing that with your consistency within life, your routine, your structure, mindset, all that stuff. Right, now I'm coming for you, coming back to you. So again, very balanced, which I like. The few remaining arguments that I've got,

one of them is from health, okay? So there's a study from the Lancet and it's the largest comorbidity study of alcohol that's ever been done. There may be a new one by now, this is back in 2017, 2018. And alcohol was found to be the single largest influence on non-disability adjusted life years for people under the age of 40. What that means is that every drink you have brings you closer to

death. At the very best, it keeps your life the same length. There's a lot of people like wives' tales back in the day of touting around, wow, there's Resveratrol in the red grapes that come into red wine, so actually it's life-lengthening. There is some Resveratrol in there, there are also some other antioxidants and things like that. However, that is offset and more by the increased cancer risk. And this is done in a study that covered over a hundred territories, covered over millions of people, over years and years and years, super long form study. Right, massive, absolutely massive. And anyone just search the Landset, L-A-N-C-E-T alcohol. And the numbers are scary man so you have to consider am I prepared to

shorten my life by however much it's going to be you don't know how much it's going to be I'm I prepared to shorten my life for the price to pay the price of shortening my life for the profit of having this be, that's first one. Second one is if you decide to go sober in a world which is telling you to drink in a society which is completely embraced the norm of drinking and alcohol's not even seen as a drug and going sober is seen as something that's done by people who have substance addiction problems.

If you are able to go sober in that world for an extended period of time and stay disciplined, the deck of cards starts to tumble after that for other behavior change challenges that you come up against. Because if you can go sober, what else can't you do? You can literally do anything that you want because going sober is very challenging. Now it's less challenging than people believe. It's a lot less challenging than people believe actually, especially once you get going. Same as anything the most hard, most difficult bit about behavior changes getting over the inertia at the beginning

it's deprogramming all of the existing structures. But once you start to do it, you actually think like if you can go sober for six months, right? As a young guy your girl, in fact just as an any guy your girl, if you can go sober for six months, right? As a young guy or girl, in fact, just as an any guy or girl, you can go sober for six months. What else can't you do? There's not much more in terms of behavior change that people would think is hard and that, ah, I need to stop cracking manuckles. Ah, I need to stop having like a piece of chocolate on a night's out bro. You went sober for half a year when the entire planet drinks alcohol. How many people do you think have gone sober for half a year? Like in the Western typical Western world, normal people,

normal physiology, you're talking single digit percent of people who go sober at all for more than six months in their entire adult life. So that puts you so much further ahead, right? So that's the second thing. First thing, what was the first thing? How first thing? Hell. Hell, the land superport. Yes. Thank you. Second thing, as we've just gone through there, what was that one? Just what else can you achieve? Yep. Deck of cards. Third thing. What's the third thing? I hope you're not going to ask me about that, actually.

I'm not saying it yet. I haven't said it yet. No. What was the third thing? Ah, that was it. That was it. Right. Okay.

So two different iterations of the universe. So we've got, I'm ready to caffeine. Caffeine levels just dipped below where it needs to be. You know, I just need someone to run in with a IV. So two different iterations of the universe, right? We've got Ben Cumburne in universe one, we've got Ben Cumburne in universe two, everything else is the same. Ben Cumburne in universe one continues to drink, Ben Cumburne in universe two stops drinking. What is the difference six months, 12 months down the line between these two people? Now the main question that you need to ask yourself, like let's forget the stuff about

health, let's forget the stuff about the behavior change because that's quite a long term, right? If you say, if I ask you this question, to listen to a home like consider it as well, like what would happen if you went sober for six months, what would happen if you drank three nights a week for six months or two nights a week for six months? Where would you be? Where would you be financially, health wise, mindset, a friend, you know, wait, all that sort of stuff. Where would you be? Six months time. Where would you be in 12 months time? What's the difference between those two? And if you can see, if it makes you, first off, if you're making you feel uncomfortable

that I'm saying this to you, then you really, really need to consider what your relationship with alcohol is like. Because the reason that you're feeling uncomfortable, the reason you've got that visceral response in your stomach and it makes you feel, ah, fuck this guy, fucking love island prick, what's he on about? Like, that's because you know that the real truth is that you would be

a better version of you in six months time if you stop drinking. And that you can then lay it back on. Okay, let's compound this down the line. How much better would my approach, my belief in behavior change be? How much more could I achieve in the future? I have more time, money, and calories to spend on things that I truly care about. Now, those are almost all of people's problems. The 21st century come from either too much or a lack of those three things, time, money, and calories. That's what I refer to in six months sober

as the key three. So it's the key three benefits of sobriety. Consistency is another one, but I didn't want to call it call for because someone's already trademarked that. But you've got these things, right? And you say, look, what would the difference be between those two? So I'll ask you, like, do you think that there would be a marked difference in the way that you operate in six months time if you decided to cut out the

12 to 24 beers per month. It's coming, you know, you'll know What's the beers are the beers that you'll be having? It'll probably be what 300 cows, maybe three to 400 cows each unless there are stubby. No, there are any small cans at 16 calories. Okay. Okay. So it's not a lot. Yeah, yeah, not not not tons.

So you're back to mini bro. It's all a savings's a magnet mini bro. I tell you what magnet mini is good. So okay, you know, I mean like you can see that right? What's where where's the difference? Is there a noticeable difference between those two bends? I will go deeper into that but I don't think so. So financially not an issue.

My beer box is like 32 quid a month. I'm happy with that, like whatever. Socially, when change a lot, it's people in my family that don't drink, it's people in my family that do drink. Everyone's a lifestyle drinker. You know, they'll just have a glass of wine. They'll have a beer.

No one drinks to like excess in any capacity. When me and my mates go out, we have literally one or two beers, we all drive, it doesn't matter, we all enjoy a pint of IPA, it's like we're done, there's no drinking culture in my friendship group. Would it change my enjoyment and the level of escapism ever so slightly but that's because alcohol you know just relaxes your body and it heightens things it doesn't ever impact on my sleep so I don't allow it to like I literally have a stopgage like if I'm in a pub and someone says you're what a third bit like I'd literally just walk out the door because I know what that means for me so I don't think so but I will

explore and go deeper on that in case I'm giving the answer that I want to give. Yeah, and again, we loop back to your discussion from you and your therapist, which is what is my truth, right? Because a lot of the time and we're kind of going real matter with this for people that are maybe a little bit more new to behavior change. But in the simplest way possible, you don't necessarily know what your brain, what is best for your body and also your brain is really going to telling you lies that you want to believe. So a lot of the time you will give yourself a reason, which is the first reason that comes to mind or the most convenient reason that comes to mind, which is a proxy, a very convenient proxy for the truth.

Super easy to swallow, doesn't actually ask you the hard question. What you're doing there is you're trying to unearth, you're trying to strip off all that ego. Get rid of all that. And say, right, okay, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's Ben, that's what the, that's the first answer you gave, what's the real answer? That might be the same, but it might not.

And again, for the people that are listening, this is something that you should consider, right? Are you giving yourself the easy answer? Are you telling yourself just what you want, essentially telling yourself what you want to hear? And then passing that off as the truth and being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know, I want to about take it from the violent. So again, my main point here is that you are the outlier amongst most people's drinking habits. If you were to say to people, do you spend more or less than 30 pounds a month on average

on alcohol? Huge swaths of people are going to be well above that. 30 quid is like a round of yaga bombs in London. And it's like one drink in New York. I was in New York a year ago today, so I'm sad. But you know, I mean, like it's, it's the financial thing, big difference. The fact that you have your drinking under control

because you've got hard lines in the ground. So let me just pivot for a second, because that's a really good point actually to give people some tacit takeaways on how they can start to control their own drinking. So first off, if you want to have a course that will guide you through it, six months sober dot com slash podcast will take you to everything that we've spoken about. But one of the easiest ways to think about your drinking habit is to do exactly what Ben has done and to set what I call bright lines, to know any behavior changes, bright lines, and it is a rule that you stick to do exactly what Ben's done and to set what I call bright lines, it's known in behavior changes, bright lines. And it

is a rule that you stick to no matter what. And the reason that that works especially well with alcohol is that alcohol is what I've turned an inhibition reduction echo chamber. It means that every drink you have makes not having a subsequent drink more difficult. We've all been there, right? One drink turns into two, turns into five, turns into a bottle of wine, turns into a cabab and a scrap at three in the morning and wake up with the hangover and all that stuff, you know, like, classic. Classical. I was just going, I was just popped out and ended up out out, you know, like that classic old comedy sketch.

So, like, the easiest solution for this is to do what you've done. And you've stumbled upon what I consider as someone who's living in this space to be the most effective way to control drinking if you're not going to go totally sober. I still think that because of the health effects, because of the fact that it sets you up for strong behavior change long term, and also because the two different versions tend will almost always tend toward the person that goes sober being further ahead. I still think that a period of focus sobriety is good, but if you're just going to reduce, then that's the way to do it. The elephant in the room is that I've seen a million people go into my club nights.

So I am both judge, jury, executioner, marketer, and guys stood on the front door of the courthouse letting everybody in. My entire industry, my business, the house is paid for by people coming to my club nights and getting drunk. And a lot of the time people bring up what they might see as a little bit of a contradiction. How can you be a club promoter and also be an advocate for productive sobriety or elective sobriety, as it's called? I don't have a problem with people drinking. I actually think that it's a very important

right of passage, especially for young people. You need to know you're 20 years old. People message all the time, hey bro, I love the podcasts, I'm 20 years old thinking of doing six months sober, what do you think? I'm like, maybe do the like the 28 day or the 90 day thing, if you want, but being honest, you probably still got a lot to learn from being drunk. You need to know what it's like to have an argument with your mate at three in the morning and lose your keys in Manchester, like you need to know, right? Because that is a representative experience, which allows you to relate to people when you're older. Like you will have, especially as someone who played sports,

like when you were a union, all this sort of stuff, you'll have just endless numbers of these stories. And it's kind of, it is a right of passage. It's a path of the course, you kind of got to have it, right? Now, there's a more societal change question where you could say, well, could we get rid of alcohol altogether? Should we potentially make it illegal? If alcohol was introduced two day, it would be a class A in terms of toxicity, addiction, all that sort of stuff.

I mean, that's quite scary in itself. But the societal change thing, it ain't happening. Once something's got brought in and the values have been reduced down, which they have, they don't get taken back. So alcohol's not going anywhere. We're not going to have another, what's that thing? What's that thing in America where they got rid of it all? It was just boo. Yes, probably. So you need to drink bizarrely actually to have like those relatable experiences that take you through later life.

My problem is seeing someone who still drinks like a 20 year old, at 40 years old, 50 years old, because all the work that they've done with mind and body and spirit throughout the week, you know, they've got themselves to the gym. They've just about got over the hangover on a Monday from the weekend and they've got themselves in the gym and, oh, well, I'm eating right and I'm doing this to the other and I've made these sacrifices, right? I've done sacrifice throughout the week. I've worked hard and it gets to Thursday and they're thinking, yeah, yeah, I'm gaining

it. I'm gaining my, I'm feeling better, my mind's feeling better, I'm feeling fresh. And it gets to a Friday and they, I've worked so hard this week. Better reward myself with two heavy nights out that reset all of the progress and the sacrifices that I made during this week. And seeing someone repeat that cadence for a decade or two decades or three decades is a tragedy to me. Like, it makes me so sad, man, like especially coming from, I'm from Stockton on Tees, so it's like the, the, our send of Middlesbrough, which is, you know,

hardly like the most affluent area in the world anyway. And to see, I just, I used to see these, these people who had so much potential, right? And who the fuck are you to judge on what people choose to do with their lives? I'm like, don't get me wrong. Like people can choose to do whatever they want, but I don't think they're choosing. I think that they're taking the path of least resistance, which is just a groove

that's being cut from when they were a kid, and then they've grown up and they've never decided to deprogram this desire to drink. They've never decided, oh, well, I'm actually going to see if I'm choosing to drink it from just doing it because it's what people do. And yeah, man, it makes me sad. It makes me sad that we've got a world where some brilliant people could be a lot happier if they hadn't continued to reset their progress every single weekend with a couple of heavy nights out. And it's like, you get one shot at life, like one shot to get everything right to experience the things you want to

experience, to be with the people you want to be with and you're choosing to take something and it's not even enhancing the situation. Like if you were to choose something, I don't even know what the drug would be. Maybe, I guess maybe like caffeine, perhaps, that would make you more, more present, more focused on to the, obviously not too much. But alcohol, actually, bizarrely, it's memory loss. It's nothing, your emotions. It's sedating you and making you go to sleep.

It's doing all of these things. And like, just to finish this section here, there's a concept called living with the edge. And this is something that's quite interesting. And this is actually coming straight out of the six-month sober course. So if you go through life, leaning on alcohol for support by using it to make stressful times less bad and good times more numb, you will lead a life completely void of edges. Now, edges are dangerous if you fall off them, but they're also the most exciting place to be. Standing near that edge is when you learn the most. You make the most memories. Looking back on your life, you'll find that you spent all your time in

the middle 50% of experience richness, that will be a very dull place to be. So some things for you there. So, you know, I said I had three reasons. I just remembered the third. Now you've read that out. Hit me. So, firstly, I've always had rules. So, part of this for me comes down to what else people want to experience in their lives. When I was at uni, I went out three times a week without fail at uni. Monday night was a fucking blinding night. Where did you go to uni? Hull. Okay, yeah, yeah. Great nightlife, dead sheet.

Anyway, addict. Attic in Hull, is it addict? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like a lovering night or whatever when you were there. Yeah, yeah. Attic didn't go there much because it was a bit more kind of like emo rock sort of, okay, you know, I've always been more electronic. When's the night sports team? So that again, that was a right passage. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Um, no regrets there. And then Thursday night was the big sort of dancing club. Get dressed up. Have a good time. But I'd always say to myself, like 2 a.m. as soon as I get that vibe, the party's dying off, I'm out. I used to walk home with a litre of water because everywhere was like 20 minute walk in Hull. I used to walk home with a

litre of water, grab grilled chicken kebab on the way home and then you do realise how unrepresented your relationship with alcohol is though, right? Like there's no one listening that's going, yeah, yeah, that doesn't mean university. Everyone's going, what a fucking freak. Like, you know, that's not how people live their lives. I know. But my point is, if you create those rules, you can live between both extremes. So I'd be the guy that was up at seven o'clock in the morning, I'd go to the gym, then I'd go to uni, then I'd go and work on my business in the afternoon uni, but it was about making those decisions before you ended into the experience, right? Like I'm going out tonight, but I'm going home by one. I'm having three drinks, so I'm, you know, whatever those decisions

are for you and your life. Bright lines. Bright lines. And I just, and it's because you know when I was younger I always read the books of people that had seen and created success and seen failure and they all had these rules like everyone had Some kind of system that they had to live by to get the output in their life that they wanted so The third reason was actually memory So I love festivals. I go to at least two festivals every summer.

Absolutely lose my marbles, have tons of fun, get covered. Where do you tend to go? We quite often go to one local to us called Sundown in Norfolk. It's got a great dance line up. I've been everywhere, Blastenbury, I've been to probably, I went to Croatia last year.

It was incredible. Four days down. Hi, Donald. Hi, Dowd. No, we went to hospitality records, first. All right, yeah, yeah, yeah. How's the telly, is legit, man. There's some good artists on that label. I'd love to get a hideout as well.

But anyway, so I listened to a lot of drama based. So when I have a beer, I'm making dinner, and I'm listening to those tunes that all come from the festival I just get to spend 15 or 20 minutes re-living the experience of the festival and I for me I just get that moment where I remember when we did that remember when he jumped off that thing remember when he played that track And I love that experience it gives you such a nice energy being able to relive beautiful moments in your everyday life. Why couldn't you do that without the alcohol? I could. I definitely could. It's just you kind of get that relaxness and you know just just that moment, escapism, it's that moment where

you're actually like oh for a moment I feel like I'm drunk, I feel like I'm there, I feel like I just don't give a fuck about anything. Okay, so here we go, here's bonus round, bonus round on reasons why I'm going to try and convince you, right? The final one is that by using alcohol to exogenously give you a sensation. You will never learn to be able to create it yourself. Now that's not to say you've just said that. I could do it, right? But alcohol just makes it a bit better.

And it's like, okay, if you were forced to go sober for a period, you would have to learn to be able to recreate that without the buttress of alcohol. And it's the same for the guy who can only go up and talk to girls when he's absolutely hammered, right? That was me that that still mostly is me, which is probably why I'm single after 18 months or 20 months of sobriety. Um, to know it's not it's not I've got a fantastic Instagram game. Um, so. But yeah, like if that's a guy guy who Has to have the alcohol to go up and speak to the girl If you don't ever go sober you will never actually cultivate the ability to go up and speak to the girl You will never actually develop the confidence to be able to talk in a group sat around a table having dinner

You will never be able to you know people who who drink to have a difficult discussion their partner, or people that drink to be able to deal with the way that their boss talks to them at work so that they can relax on a night time, or the stresses of being a young entrepreneur or whatever, pick whatever it is. For as long as you use alcohol as your support system, as the scaffolding that's in there, right? Like, you're never actually cultivating what it is that you need to get through that situation because you're just relying on alcohol as the buttress. Now again, the challenge with you is that it's a very holistic, non-destructive reason of why you're doing it. And it's not as if you're not doing it because you've got a crazy aggression that you need to chill out by that because you just want to fight

everybody in the street. So, you know, some other kind of malignant version of you, it's not that, it's just adding a flavor on top of reality. But again, with all of these situations, you can see how those four areas that I've taken us through, you know, you are by far and away and anomaly for that to not be one of those things triggering and going, fuck, you know, actually, mate, yeah. Like, you know what it is, I do, I do, I do do that

because I just have a band-aid work and I have to sink like three beers on a nighttime or else, I can't sleep or I can't sleep on that I drink or whatever it is, pick your reason from what we've gone through. And this isn't me trying to be like higher mighty or any of that for the listeners. I want people to know that there is a middle ground

that ultimately has to work for everyone and you have to be happy and like you probe with me, it's like, could we get any more positive outcomes when you're making changes? And if I can hand on heart, say no, I feel every layer of my relationship with it is fine. Then as a coach, you would be happy with that. But if I then said, actually, yeah, fuck,

that's when we need the intervention, that's when we need kind of change. And sometimes you have to go to the extreme to find out where your middle ground is. And sometimes people don't get that with self development. And that's why I quite like going all in on stuff. Like if I did feel I was having a poor relationship, I would be the guys go, cool, I'll give up alcohol or whatever.

Like, because I wanna see what's on the other side of that shit. It's the same with fitness. like I've been at the point where I've gone to the gym every day without fail for two hours a day, cardio, core weights, relentlessly non-stop, to know that I don't fucking want to do that. Actually, I just want to get a gym three days a week and that's cool. So sometimes people have to go to the extreme, but you have to have the awareness to pull yourself out and find where your own middle ground is. Well, what did we say at the beginning? I heard that we weigh, quote, about Confucian gentleman, right? The person who has to do the thing consciously, after deep program what you're doing unconsciously,

choose to do something consciously, and that actually enables you to be spontaneous in a way that's fully, completely internalized, right? It's you choosing to drink, choosing to drink, like it's actual core and not only choosing to drink, but being able to give me like a pretty robust breakdown of like why you drink, which for the vast majority of people before this conversation, that might not have been the truth. Like, are you uncovering the reasons why you do the things that you do? And that goes from everything.

Like, why is it that you get upset about the fact that your partner doesn't text you back immediately? Like, that's a good question to because, you know, this is a whole new, like, uh, whirlwind that we have, we can decide to jump into. But why is that? Or why is it that you always catastrophize a situation or why is it for the entrepreneurs that are listening? Why is it that you have to work all of the time

and you are terrified of taking a day off or that you feel like you should always be progressing and always be growing in your personal development. Why is that? Could it be deep down that you don't feel like you're good enough and that the only way that you can get people to need you and to want you and to become better is to constantly be layering new skills and new achievements and new accomplishments on top of yourself. And this is what at the very, very beginning

when you were talking about like, is this my truth? This is the union that we're talking about when it comes to personal development and behavior change, right? It's like, you strip away one thing or you even like to put a big fat segment out of it, you cut a wedge out of your union. And you're like, oh God, conquered alcohol there.

Did that six months sober thing with brilliant? You're all right, okay. You have got another 500 different areas of your life, precisely like alcohol that you're going to have to jump into. You're going to have to do your relationship with your partner, with your parents, with your friends. Oh, and by the way, what about your health and your fitness and your mindset and the way you view your body and the way you view you, and you just go, and this is why it's a lifelong thing. And this is why I think that, you know, trying to cultivate a growth mindset as Carol D'Wack would say to continue to want to become better to do all that sort of stuff. I think it's the one of the most important personality traits that you're going to get in the 21st century. And hopefully,

today we've started to get people to question some of their assumptions around alcohol, like why am I drinking, is it serving me? And as a coping mechanism, especially now to finish up, I know you were to mention this to do with quarantine, a lot of people don't have much else going on. They think, oh, I'll make my night a bit more exciting. May my night a bit more interesting by having a drink. It's like, well, okay, again, Maybe I'm a bit more interesting by having a drink. It's like, well, okay, again, why is your life not sufficiently exciting without this exogenous injection of alcohol, of something to make it more? Are we just helping you relax? Well, okay, so you're telling me that you can't relax with that alcohol?

Well, no, no, no, I don't mean that. I'm like, well, it sounds like that's what you're saying. That's what your actual answer is telling me, right? Your answer is telling me I can't relax. Your answer is telling me that I can't have fun without, and pick your thing. I can't deal with a global pandemic without a drink. You know, like it's, I like the idea of an aesthetic life, A-S-C-E-T-I-C, which is people that renounce particular things. I love the idea of an aesthetic life because it allows you to see what you're like without it.

You know, allows you to see, and you mentioned this about going all in on things, and Jordan Peterson's got something about this as well, or he says about with young entrepreneurs. So in your 20s, you should see if you can work 12 hours a day, six days a week. You should, you should see if you can do it, and then you should see if you can do four hours a day,

two days a week. You should allow your discomfort see if you can do it. And then you should see if you can do four hours a day, two days a week. You should allow your discomfort to be pulled in one direction and pulled in another. Because the type B person would find the first situation a fucking nightmare, but a type A person like yourself, if I said Ben, you're allowed to work eight hours total next week. It would kill you.

It would turn you inside out. And you go, oh God, hang on a second, like this is really challenging here. So all of these different things, relinquishing control of control, relinquishing control of working, relinquishing control of leisure, of alcohol, of comfort food, of a relationship, being on your own, being forced to be on your own, all this sort of thing, each time that you do this, if you view it as a situation that you can learn from, okay, here this sucks. But what's the lesson that I've learned? How much better and how much more robust and resilient can I be moving forward

having had this situation? I'm like, you know, if you cultivate that mindset, nothing actually becomes a problem. It's just a particular challenge that you need to find a solution to, and after you've found that solution, after you've got through the other side, you have a lesson that you've learned, and then that lesson you can use again in the future. Mate, this has been absolutely awesome. Where can people find you? I know you've already mentioned it. Six months over.com. Six months over dot com slash podcast. If you're interested in that, modern wisdom is the podcast. So check it out. If you enjoy the sort of things I'm talking about here, I have far more interesting and well educate people than me doing the same thing. Just red pilling me daily on

the podcast. We did three episodes a week at the moment. So yeah, search Spotify Apple Podcasts or LASTA for at Chris WillX, wherever you go online. And that's pretty much it. I think that's everything, man. Thank you so much for having me back on, dude. I really appreciate it. And again, I have to say like the opportunity that you gave me whenever it was a year and a bit ago, a couple of years ago, when we first started recording, it made a big difference to the podcast, so I've got a lot to thank you for. Awesome, man. May, I've listened to a couple of episodes, yours is great. It's deep, it's deep, and I like that.

I did one with a porn star. I did one with a girl that started at myme.vip, and I recently did one with a man that spent a million pounds on drugs. So you are right, there's some intellectual ones, but every so often, you can just find out, oh, I love the one with a porn star. I've looked at the one with the guy that spent a million quit on drugs, but you are right, there's some, the son that go, that go fairly deep. Well, that's good. If people want that, that's exactly the place to go. And yeah, mate, big supporter, big fan, and I'm always grateful to speak to you because there's a lot of exploration

that I own mine wants to have with each other and I think that's a good thing and I'm more than happy to be challenged on any of my fucking shit because if I don't choose to challenge it I don't grow and you know people might sometimes think it's almost a self-serving thing or partly it is because it's my podcast and it's my exploration of health and fitness so I get to make the fucking rules. Second thing is if people follow it's the right level of context. So if you listened to me last week and you listened to me next week you get to hear the journey, you get to hear the gaps, you get to hear the kinks, and I get to constantly

paint this picture where you can see what I'm trying to work through because otherwise, you don't allow yourself to really understand who I am and what I'm working through through the podcast and through the experts and stuff. And also, I need to be vulnerable for everyone else to be vulnerable. You need to be vulnerable for the people that are going through your program to be vulnerable. Without vulnerability we don't grow. So what you've talked about today is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable. It's going to make them vulnerable to the future, to themselves. You've got to embrace that. And I think this is why I often say we don't need to celebrate a broadcast ever front online because whatever change you want to make

can be very personal. Like if you want to go and do Chris's program, then you don't have to announce it to the world. You don't even have to tell your girlfriend if you don't want to. For now, just log on, watch the first video and just be like, I'm just gonna have a look at this. I'm just gonna challenge it.

And then when you feel more confident, you can then start to share things with the world. And we do get into a bit of a habit of like, oh, I'm starting, and you die. I'll post it on Facebook and then Karen gets involved and Shirley gets some fucking involved. And then everyone's already feeling judged because they've put it out on social media. So no one needs to be involved in this stuff, if it just needs to be your journey with yourself for now.

So take kind of comfort in that. But Chris, thanks again for your wisdom, legend. Brother, thank you so much. Thank you to everyone that's tuned in. I think the synopsis to what you just said there was like, you know, you need to see me last week and you need to see me next week. I think the synopsis to that is press subscribe to Ben Cumber Radio. Hopefully, they're already subscribed, Jesus. Yeah. Well, man, I keep on getting, I can see the backend.

I have people that listen to podcasts. You think I can't see you on the backend. I can see on the backend an Apple podcast connects metric. And I can see how many people are subscribed. Now, how many are this 30% of you that still need to hit the button and you just, you just get in it delivered. Aren't you just checking when you choose to check and swipe it up? No, go press the button.

Thank you. Boom, right people, if you have enjoyed this podcast, please share it around, send it to a friend, raise discussion around it, reach out to Chris, give him a high five, say hello to him, it's a great guy. If you want to see a good rig, then you know, you're better off going to see Chris's Instagram. You are not getting a good rig on my Instagram. But I'll be honest, I'm doing half decent on the dad porn fun. Bro, you are, you're in a total new lead now. You have a total, total new lead. At least I get to bring out the dad porn program at some point, which everyone does.

That would be, That would be sick. But I'm not going to do it, so whatever. Oh, shame. Chris, legend, everyone listening, all that leads me to say, let's go and have an awesome day. Goodbye. you