Motivation Daily by Motiversity - QUIT DRINKING MOTIVATION - The Most Eye Opening 20 Minutes Of Your Life

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Countless people including Jordan Peterson, Ben Affleck, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Rich Roll, Daniel Radcliffe, Brian Rose and Jack Canfield explain why you need to stop drinking alcohol."All alcoholic drinks, including red and white wine, beer, and liquor, are linked with cancer. The more you drink, the higher your cancer risk."Special thanks to Tom Bilyeu, Huberman Lab, Lewis Howes, and Valuetainment.Speakers:Rich RollJordan PetersonTom BilyeuDr. Andrew HubermanJack Canfield (full interview with Lewis Howes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnYhmOzTVFE&t=0s)Brian RosePatrick Bet DavidDavid NuttMario AguilarDaniel RadcliffeDax ShepherdDavid HarbourDrew BarrymoreBen AffleckMusic:Epidemic Sound Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The link is in the description. Want to go drinking tonight? Thanks, but I'm actually sober now. Okay, no problem. Can I ask why? I'll show you. I was sober for a couple of years, and then I thought, you know, I want to just drink like a normal person, and I want to have wine at dinner and so on. And, you know, I was able to for about eight years.

I'm embarrassed how many times. I quit and couldn't do it. Well, I was at a point in my life where it was like, this has got to stop because my hangovers were getting so ridiculous and debilitating for a whole day. So I'm not doing this anymore, and I read a book, and then I was done. I had my first beer at 11. One of my cousins gave it to me.

It's that awful thing that you hear every alcoholic talk about, and if they don't talk about it, they're lying. Like, you just become an awful human being. Like, you just, you're selfish. Alcohol consumption, even in the low amounts, causes harm to the entire body. So many years that, like, the narrative was for me is this has a hold over you. You will never break this cycle. You are a prisoner of your own weakness.

Addiction is really anything we do or use compulsively to make ourselves feel better that has negative consequences. I, for maybe the first time, I'm proud of myself that I didn't quit, quitting. Because it's demoralizing. Like, to truly be powerless over something is fucking demoralizing and so rough. If you stop drinking for 30 days, just cut back, and what they're finding is people are living longer. It's clearing out their kidneys. Arterial sclerosis is being reversed.

People are having all kinds of more energy. They're losing weight. To me, I know that alcohol is usually bad for you, but I didn't know how bad it was. I started to drink more and more and more every day. I come home for work, I start to drink, and I just sit there drink until I pass out on the couch. From 15 to 24, I drank and used my way through life and eventually ended up in Boston. At that point, my addiction had gotten so bad that I was paranoid and afraid of everything.

To keep it simple, we use for one or two reasons, so to either start feeling something or to stop feeling something. I know, I wouldn't say it's a challenge every day, and particularly, The path that I'm on is, it's one that's, it's one I wished I could have been on a long time ago. You'll ruin your life somehow, some way. It is everywhere. It can pass into all the cells and tissues of your body. It was a very progressive decline in my aspirations. Alcohol is normalized in our society.

You want to figure out something that you're doing with your life that's worth not getting drunk and screwing up. I drank in search of happiness and in search of a lifestyle that I thought would bring me to happiness. It didn't and I woke up one morning going, wow, I've drank a lot, but I'm still not happy. What's that about? I recall in high school, the motivational speakers will come to my school and say, don't do drugs. But absent from those talks was any reference to alcohol. Alcohol got introduced to my life. You might say, well, why do people drink too much?

It's like, if you like alcohol, that's a stupid question. It is ingrained. It's the social glue that sticks everything together. And my mom was chiming in with, it's way bad, you don't want to do it, you don't want to end up like that. Over 3 million people worldwide will die this year to alcohol-related causes. From baby showers, christenings, fresh as week, weddings, parties, funerals, barbecues, celebrations, and everything in between. So she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it. And I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it.

We've been brainwashed into thinking that there are just two types of drinkers. There are those at rock bottom, alcohol dependent, and there's everybody else. happy social drinkers who are just occasionally a bit lightweight and can't hold their beer. You do stupid things when you're drunk, you hurt yourself, you compromise your health, it's really hard on the people around you. You tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life. Yeah, it's like, yeah, but it's pretty fun. Yeah, well, it is, but you need something better than that. And I burned every bridge that I had virtually unemployable. My options had been eliminated. My life was eviscerated. My family didn't want anything to do with me. I'd lost my friendships.

I had no way forward. In fact, the reality is very different. It's a spectrum. I would highly recommend you get off the booze elevator before it hits rock bottom. And I just continued to dig that whole deeper and deeper and deeper until one day I had that moment that you hear with people who are in recovery, that moment of clarity

where I realized I just couldn't live this way any longer. My elevator had, you know, gone down to the bottom floor. And I met my pain threshold, you know, back to this thesis around pain. Like, I had reached a point where I could no longer tolerate the pain of my current situation. And the fear, the pain associated with the fear of change, was eclipsed by the pain that I was feeling in that moment. And that's what motivated me to change. I went to a treatment center where I lived for 100. days, which is pretty long time to be in a rehab center. And I did that because I knew if I didn't

get this right, that my life was done. And so I took that opportunity seriously. I recognized that despite the fact that I think I'm a smart guy, my best thinking had me literally institutionalized and that if I couldn't get a grasp on how to live and develop some new skills and a new toolbox for how to approach my life that I was going to end up in jail or I was going to kill somebody else or myself. You know, now we're about a year and a half later, and my life has been as turned around, immeasurably, it's a wonderful thing. And I say to anybody watching or you're listening to this, that, you know, it's, that there is a lot of pressure on young people not to drink necessarily,

but to find happiness through going out and getting mashed. And that's fun and have a good time and good luck to you. But if it doesn't work for you and if you keep waking up going, hmm, I don't seem to be having nearly as good time as most of my friends, then, you know, then think about it. It doesn't have to be something you do is all I'd say to people. And what's better isn't being straight and not making mistakes. It's like that's all prohibition in some sense.

What's better is, no, you need an adventure, man. You need to get out there and have something to do and something worth waking up for. And you need, that's the substitute for the addiction. Excessive drinking is considered 13 or more drinks a week. If you have three glasses of wine every night, which would be splitting a bottle of wine with your friend, your husband, whatever, you fall in that category. An alcoholic is defined as someone basically where they can't stop once they start. Often they'll drink until they pass out. Wow.

Or they'll drink to where they become dysfunctional. They become the kind of person. Everyone goes, my God, you're slurring your words. You're not safe to drive. They get DUIs. Their boss has trouble. Like, you need to quit coming to work hungover. But an excessive drinker is 13.

If you drink six drinks a week, if you're a woman, you have a 40% higher incidence of breast cancer. If you drink up to 10 drinks, it goes up to 70% higher chance of getting breast cancer. So just the health benefits, one of the things that's coming out of England is research that if you stop drinking for 30 days, just come back. And what they're finding is people are living longer that's clearing out their kidneys. It's arterial sclerosis is being reversed. You know, people are having all kinds of more energy. They're losing weight. Most of the things that we do that are addictions are to numb out our anxiety, to numb out our pain, to numb out the memories of trauma, to numb out.

out our discomfort around being people in a social, being with people in a social situation, the fear that I won't have fun, I won't be interesting, I'm more relaxed, I'm more fun, you know, and that's the big myth is I won't have a fun life. There's something about my mom. She has a way of like making it sound like a really bad f***ing idea. And my, I had a lot of aunts and uncles and second cousins and stuff that were all alcoholics, drug addicts. And watching them, I thought, ooh, that is not a good look. Real, like some real white trashy stuff. And so I was just like, no.

And my mom was chiming in with, it's way bad. You don't want to do it. You don't want to end up like that. So she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it. And I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it. So I just thought, yeah. When I thought I was going to have kids, I wanted to ask my mom, like, you were so good. Like neither my sister or I ever got into trouble.

We never did drugs. We never drank. No trouble, nothing. My sister, to this day is, like, the most. straight, narrow person you will be. So when you tried it, what was it like for you? Oh, alcohol made me feel like I was suppressing the urge to dance on the table. It is awesome, and I love it the most.

I just don't let myself do it because it's not in, it's not congruent with wanting to live forever. There's just too many downsides, but that shit is fun. So like, I get how people get in trouble. I just don't have an addictive personality. So for me, it was easy to be like, yeah, this is fun, but I can weigh it against the disadvantages and there are way too many. Unlike a lot of substances and drugs that actually attach to the surface of cells to

receptors. Alcohol actually has its own direct effects on cells because it can really just pass into those cells. And the fact that it can pass into so many organs and cells so easily is really what explains its damaging effects. Ethanol produces substantial damage to cells because when you ingest ethanol, it has to be converted into something else because it is toxic to the body. And if you thought ethanol was bad, acetylaldehyde is particularly bad. Acetylalde is poison. It will kill cells. It damages and kills. cells and is indiscriminate as to which cells it damages and kills. That's a problem, obviously, and the body deals with that problem by using another component of the NAD biochemical

pathway to convert acylaldehyde into something called acetate. Acetate is actually something that your body can use as fuel. And that process of going from ethanol to acetylaldehyde to acetate does involve the production of a toxic molecule. Again, acetylalalibate. Again, acetylalibate, it does involve the production of a toxic molecule. Again, acetylaldehyde is really toxic. If your body can't do this conversion of ethanol to acetylalal to acetate fast enough, well, acetylaldehyde will build up in your body and cause more damage. So it's important that your body be able to do this conversion very quickly. And the place where it does that is within the liver. And cells within the liver are very good at this conversion process. But they are cells and they are exposed to the acetylalaldehyde in the

conversion process, and so cells within the liver really take a beating in the alcohol metabolism events. It is the poison, the acetylaldehyde itself, that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk. I think most people don't realize that, that being drunk is actually a poison-induced disruption in the way that your neural circuits work. No amount of alcohol is safe. Drinking alcoholic beverages can be harmful to our health. It's the most ambivaled. It's the most drug to society as a whole. The danger goes up with every additional drink. Alcohol is actually considered a Class 1 carcinogen or cancer-causing agent,

so that's the same category as benzene and tobacco smoke. It is the poison, the acetylaldehyde itself, that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk. Canadian health authorities had previously said that a low-risk amount of alcohol was about 10 drinks per week. Your risks start to increase at one standard drink for week. Even just seven glasses of wine across the week, there is going to be some degeneration of your brain in response to that alcohol intake. I was wanting to be a certain person, but making

all the wrong decisions. Citing some of this research about alcohol's impacts suggested lowering that to two drinks per week. In the Western cultures, alcohol is the most harmful drug overall because it's the most harmful drug to society, because it's the most wide use drug. A very small percentage of individuals in the world can quit anything on their own. And really, our main message is that less is better. You know, when it comes to health, you know, less is more. What do we know about alcohol's impact on us? Alcohol is one of the leading behavior-related causes of health problems and deaths

and also some social problems and economic costs, ranging from things like injuries and accidents to cancers and actually heart and cardiovascular disease. Shoveling alcohol, you know, hiding away the problems has been something we've become very But the really sad statistic is that only 10% of people suffering from an alcohol use disorder seek treatment. I hit rock bottom. I got lost in the sauce of drinking. Out of those 10% of the people, only one will have any form of long-term success.

This is why I don't like alcohol and this is why I don't like drugs because I don't, you're not in control. A substance is doing that. And that means 90% of that. percent of people who are offering right now aren't going to seek treatment. And you know why they're not going to seek treatment? Because we've been told that all they can do is quit and go to meetings for the rest of their life. I remember having a conversation with Patrick one night.

He picked me up in his car and we're sitting together. And it was awkward silence for a good 15, 20 minutes. So eventually one of my friends who was going through a bad, I was at the prison to pick him up. I'm sitting outside to 3 o'clock in the morning. Finally, he gets out, gets in a car. This was like his fourth or 50 UI. We didn't say anything to each other. And we're driving home, and I don't say anything to him.

And he says, hey, Pat, how come you're not saying anything to me? I said, you know, just to be honest with me, I just see you being in pain. Finally, I said, I don't know why I choose to do what I'm doing. And he says, you always have a choice. And he says, you always have a choice. And we started talking a little bit about... Two words.

He said, you know, Mara... Two words. And those two words change everything for me. And those two words change everything for me. But as we were having a conversation... I just want to see you get out of this thing. I don't know what you're going through, but you're in pain. And I hope you realize there's value to life.

I don't know how to help you. I don't have a method. The only thing I know is what I've seen others go through, whether it's AA and all these other programs. Key went into asking me who I want to be, what do I want to do? And we just went through a whole conversation. And it was a human conversation.

It was a people conversation. It was no business, no numbers. It was just relationship. But I hope you figure out it would get through this. Do you know that I love you? Yes. You think I care about you? Yes.

Do you think I want the best for you? Yes. Do you want to be friends long term? Yes. Are we family? Yes. Do you want to change? And that's the one where I got stuck.

You have to want to change if you're struggling with some kind of addiction like I was. It's not easy to say that. But I wanted to change. I just didn't know how. And eventually he figured out the way to get through it and he's doing great. He's changed his life, you know, in a complete different way. Yeah, but what you said to him, people should be aware of God. That is love and support. And it's visceral because people don't want it to be true. There are two things I would say about this. The first is both a conscious and a subconscious. level people are fearful of other drugs illegal drugs because it helps deflect their attention away from the problems of alcohol at a personal level

but also at a political level politicians love to get hysterical about a new drug because it means they can do something about drugs and they don't have to be held to account over their failure to deal with the problems of alcohol right so that's the first thing second thing is that I would say that There's almost no family in Britain, if you look at an extended family, three generations, in which doesn't have someone who's been damaged by alcohol, through addiction, through violence, traffic accidents, or being a victim because of someone else who was drunk and violent. Almost every family in Britain is affected.

But we don't own up to it. Right. We kind of push it under the carpet. We know there's a problem, but we don't talk about it because we don't know what to do about it. it were embarrassed and so that shoveling alcohol you know hiding hiding away the problems has been something we've been very become very expert at we know the pharmacology of alcohol in the brain and how it does that it's we can we can explain an enormous amount of what's going on with alcohol I mean to me I find that quite exciting because you know it's a as a brain scientist that's

what I want to understand I want to understand the brain and alcohol is a very interesting probe different brain systems and the changes we see underpin the the effects of alcohol, you know, are relevant to all sorts of disorders. They're relevant disorders like sleep disorders, or epilepsy, relevant to anxiety, depression. This drug which you can just go and buy in the shops can produce these enormous changes in people's lives. Sometimes some habits can turn into lifestyles

and certain lifestyles don't lead to all the benefits and all the amazing things that life has to offer. Some lifestyles lead to very dark paths, a depression, depression, anxiety, stress, and if not controlled, can also lead to some of the worst-case scenarios out there in life. One of them being never reaching your capacity, never really having an identity or a self-worth, losing all integrity, all dignity, and losing yourself. Just a few years ago, I was in a very dark place in my life.

They say that depression comes from the inability to construct the future in your mind. I couldn't see the future. I didn't know who I was supposed to be. I was wanting to be a certain person, but making all the wrong decisions. I made a lot of mistakes. When it comes to alcohol itself, which is something that I was struggling with at the time,

it went slowly from being a work hard, play hard, have a drink to two drinks, to three drinks, to then a habit, to then a daily habit, to then a 24-7 habit, to then a every weekend habit, getting lost in myself habit. Sometimes if you don't watch the kind of habits that you're building,

they become lifestyles. Before I knew it, I was digging myself a hole. And everywhere I looked, it was so dark. And I lost myself. I spiraled into a sense of no self-worth. And I struggled a lot. And nobody knew. I hit rock bottom to the point where I almost lost my job, to the point where some people had to have very tough conversations with me. Some friends had to deal with my drama and they say hurting people hurt people. I was hurting inside and I was hurting others and didn't even know it.