The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Stoic Alcoholic: It’s Not Only About Counting Days by Benton Savage

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

The Stoic Alcoholic: It’s Not Only About Counting Days by Benton Savage https://www.amazon.com/Stoic-Alcoholic-Only-About-Counting/dp/B0H1RRSBXV After thirty years of addiction, broken relationships, and self-sabotage, Benton Savage reaches a turning point. The Stoic Alcoholic is an honest and deeply reflective journey through sobriety, discipline, and personal responsibility. Through daily entries, Savage confronts the habits that nearly destroyed his life while applying timeless Stoic principles to rebuild it one day at a time. Raw, real, and unfiltered, this book is not just about quitting alcohol. It’s about taking control, finding purpose, and choosing a better path forward.

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And we're going to be talking about his insightful book called The Stowe. alcoholic. It's not only about counting days by Benton Savage. We're going to get in with him. Find all the cool details and all the wonderful stuff he's going to educate with, educate us with. Welcome to the show, Benton. How are you, sir? I am good. How are you, Chris? I am excellent. I am excellent. It's good to have you. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find out more about you on the interwebs? My website is bittensavageauthor.com. I've got

that's just that's the easiest way to do it right there got your name right on dot com you got to love it so give us a 30,000 over you what's inside this book sir this book is a count it started I've started writing on September 4th

2025 and I was going to write the stoic alcoholic the first 366 days of sobriety and I was doing daily entries or at least every other day entries like a diary about a page I started with my own stoic alcohol my own stoic phrase that I made up myself and I'd write about my day of how I was dealing with my alcohol or my addictions.

And I did that for about 100 days and then I fell off wagon. So then I gave, I kind of gave up for a couple months. And I was like, what are you about the book? The whole thing was about getting sober. It wasn't about really publishing the book, even though that was the goal. And I thought if I didn't go through 66 days that it was a failure. After two months, I said, let's just pick it back up and see what we can do here. And so I did it.

I kept on working the steps and everything else, and I decided to kind of start only about counting the days because it's really a mindset. My message I want to get across is, they just say you go three months or 20 years and you have that bad day and you fall off like most of us do. It's not over. You don't need to call it quiz and call yourself a failure.

Just chalk it up to it. Sure, you lost your day count, but it's really just 24 hours of your life that's missing. And hopefully you didn't get into trouble, and you can just start over, and really nobody's the wiser. except you lost your day count unless you really you know unless you extended it so that's my point is that it's really a mindset more than just the days ah so it's not about counting dates it's about that mindset

and you had you suffered through 30 years of addiction broken relationships and self-sabotage give us a give us a little lowdown on what some of that experience was i don't speak i don't communicate with my mom and sister that much i do communicate but they're just they're tired of it i've said about a million times. I joke, I think I even joke in the book that I've said at least 500 times before I went out, this is my last time going out. And then I do my thing. And I wake up in the morning and met, I'm like, leading the little hair of the dog. So I didn't even tell anybody this time because my word is no good. My word is no good on this subject. And so I just did it. And I, you know, really an alcoholic's word is kind of questionable anyway when it comes to that

kind of stuff. But I have really honestly thought I was quitting about 500 times and called it my last night and then you just chalk it up to another one. But I'm doing really well this time. And it is more about living calendar days. I've had six months here, six months there before in the past. But it's really, you just got to accept that if you do mess up, it's just a day or two days. You doesn't have to ruin. It does not have to ruin your life. Yeah. So how about what your alcohols if you don't mind me? I'm trying to lay a foundation. There's people out there in the audience that maybe you're suffering for a year. I was opening up the liquor stores five days a week at 9 o'clock.

And sometimes I'd be at the beer stores at 7 when they opened up because I get a beer. And then go back at 9. I went to 915. I wouldn't be the first customer of the day, of course. And so I'd show up at 915. I did that four or five times a week for a long time. Wow. When you're drinking in the morning, when you're waking up or early in the morning,

it's always never a good sign. No. I think there's songs written about that. Unless you're rock star. or heavy fuel. You fall on that cycle. Yeah. Yeah.

And did you suffer from addictive addiction? Do you have an addictive personality? Yeah, I think I, yeah, everybody says I do. I've had other addictions. I've abused drugs, but alcohol is one. But I, addicted personality is a funny thing. If you drink every day for 30 years, you're going to be addicted, whether you have any person or not.

You're just feeding it. So I think addictive personality is a nice phrase, but I think do something over and over, of course you're going to be addicted to it. I mean, you know, some people that just don't like alcohol a lot. I happen to like alcohol a lot, so I like to do it as often as possible back in the day. Yeah. And addiction is a really powerful tool. I drink pretty hard for 20 years, but I'm a big guy and I have a huge, I have a huge,

now, what do you think people? Don't get dirty there in the audience. I have a huge tolerance for everything. I have to take extra aspirin or Tylenol if I take it. Just about any drug, I have to take a lot of anything to what most people do off of nothing. I'm a big guy too. Once I was almost 400 pounds, so I hold a lot of alcohol. But I'm just that way.

And thankfully, I've been that way, it's helped me keep out of harder drugs because I'm just with cocaine. I'm like, this is stupid. I got a post nasal drip like I have a cold. cold and I have a coffee high. This is not worth the money. I'll just buy a coffee. Yeah. Feeling sick.

And so with booze, I used to drink a lot of booze to really get a good buzz on. And I drink every couple days, every other day, every few days, every other day. Sometimes I think at the peak. But half a bottle of vodka at a time is still a lot. But yeah, there's some people they can't stop. When it came time for me to stop, my body was just like, we're not doing this with you anymore. you want to look at booze, we're going to give you a hangover. It just became a couple hours at night.

It was like three days of pain and dehydration and bloating. And it just got ugly. And so my body was just like, fuck you, man. You want to, you want to drink? We're going to really make this hurt for three days. And so finally I just quit cold turkey one day. I've quit a lot of stuff that way, Mountain Dew, bad food, all that stuff. It's a challenge.

So did you use stoicism? There's a lot about stoicism. I study stoicism. Marcus, Pettitus, all those guys. Do you stumble into stoicism and maybe it helped you with your alcohol issues? Yeah, I started reading about two, started reading Stoicism about two years ago for other stuff I was working on. And I just got to, I was stuic alcoholic, it just rang like a bell with me. I was studying it and I'm an alcoholic.

I was like, and I quote a poet, so I was like, this is, I thought it was a very obvious title, to be honest. But I write, Mo, I do quote the three, some of the students, some of the students, Stoics as well, but I have one of my own quotes before each one, and then a day up. But you're talking about the withdrawals. The first five days is almost me. It's like a paragraph or two that I'll be like, woke up another morning in the cold sweats. This is a day-by-day blow-by-blow. This is not, I did not look back. I really read it and corrected it, but I did not rearrange.

Oh, I shouldn't put that in there the next day. I wish I didn't say that. It's a day-by-day diary, and I just lived with the weather I put. Sometimes it was negative. Sometimes it was positive, but I just put it. I was feeling that day. But the first three or four days are waking up and the sheets are drenched. Oh, really? Wow.

Yeah, completely drink. Sweat soaked. Yeah, probably sweating it all over your system, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, and that wasn't the first time it's done, but that was a pretty bad one. That's the first time I've documented it. Yeah. And so is the book inside kind of a journal?

It is a word. Okay. I would call it more of a journal or a diary than a memoir because it's really just day by day. There is some reflection, but it's really, really on time. I talk about sugar addiction. And I've had a lot, a lot of things, some of the things I would substitute in. I talk about my cocaine addiction at one point and alcohol and cigarettes. I'm pretty much run the gauntlet, but gambling, whatever.

I've done, it doesn't have to be physical addictive. I can do it. I can pick it up. Yeah. So I guess I have an addictive personality, but I think I've asked for it. Well, I think some people get, I think there's some genetics involved there because you know, I've lived in Vegas for 20, 25 years now. And, and yeah, it's, people will quit gambling and they'll go to booze and then they'll quit

booze and then they'll go to gambling and then they'll quit gambling and go to cocaine. That's kind of their thing. They're addicts. And then when they're gambling, they're stealing checks and all sorts of stuff. And I remember walking to a bank and they were giving a hard time. I'd first move there, so I really wasn't set up. And I was trying to cash check and I wasn't used to their bank. My banks are up in Utah the time when I come down.

And they give you the hardest time. They even had to call the people who'd hire me to build a company for them down there. And they're like, this check good. I was like, this is really embarrassing. And they go, you don't understand. The thing about gamblers in Vegas is gamblers don't die of their addiction. They live forever. So they can just keep stealing checks on their life.

And I'm like, Jesus, that's kind of a cop way of thinking about it. checks. That's what the bank said. Yeah. And I've had friends, they've had girlfriends that have stole their checks and cleaned out their account to just go out to get it. That's crazy.

Yeah, I've seen lots, I think about 30% of Vegas has an addiction problem. And that's not the town to live in if you have an addiction problem. It really, you can get everything in Vegas. It's, it's wide open almost.

Technically wide open, but it's pretty much wide. I lived in New York City for 10 years, and we say, I can get you everything including a dead body within an hour. I don't want to ask who needs a dead body in the middle of the night. We all get lonely sometimes, I guess. Those are jokes, people.

They'll write me about whatever that was. So what do you, you, you put all this journal down in the book. And then do you outline maybe any things that people should do to learn lessons of what you do? I do. I go through some process. I think a routine is very important, especially I'm a writer, and I've got my own little business, but basically I work on my own. I think keeping a routine is very important, especially if you're not working, if you're not working steady hours, which is a good chance if you're drinking a lot.

You've kind of found other ways to make means, but keep it a schedule, keep a schedule, getting up and showering every day. You can get bad enough where you just let your personal hygiene go, and you know, just getting up and taking a shower, you've got your first mind, your first thought is cigarette, alcohol, maybe I'll get a shower after I feel right. Yeah. See, I'm an entrepreneur. Let me write this down. Take a daily shower. Yeah. I know that feeling is an entrepreneur. It's the truth. Yeah, sometimes I'm like, when's last time I bathe? Because I reek. And my dogs are looking at me going, won't come near me because they're like, I don't know what smells coming

off of you, but it's not like they can point fingers. They're gastric outputs or will clear a room, make your face melt so they're pointing the finger i've got a theory that the longer you go without a shower the longer the longer the longer you go without a shower the harder it is to take that shower you go a couple days that's true you go a couple days oh no i can wait one more builds up you kind of have this cocoon of of of shell around you that's on your skin that keeps you warm unless you're wearing hats so maybe you hadn't showered today that's what i usually wear. Don't tell anybody.

Don't tell anybody, Ben. You're going to tell everybody my trick on the show, so I always wear a hat. Hey, audience, please ignore whatever Ben just said. Where's that men and black eraser memory thing for audience? No, people now know why Chris is always having a hat on the show. But I don't know. I haven't a joke for that.

So you hope people, what do you hope for this? What do you want to achieve when readers come away with them? Really the same thing I achieve through it is that just if you do fail and a lot of us do fail at, you know, staying sober. It just is your day count is just a day count. It only means something to you, really. Your life goes on whether you want your day count, whether your day count stops or not, your life goes on. And if you've been counting days and you know alcohol is bad for you, don't just throw in the towel and say, I failed. I can't do it.

I can't do it. I failed. Just pick a bit, start over again. It's just a new day. The day count is important. The object is to be completely alcohol-free, but it doesn't happen like that for everybody. Yeah, it's a good thing to share, too,

the process, the journey that you went through like you did. I'll give you an example. I read Pend Gillette's book, Presto, where he lost 100 pounds. And I'd read a lot of books on losing weight. I was close to 400 pounds. I was miserable. I felt sick and painful and awful every day. I was living on mountain 10, 50 mountain dews.

and fast food and just the worst stuff you could do with your health, really. And I was drinking a bottle of vodka every other night. And I was mixing it down with Mountain Dew too, or orange juice, but usually Mountain Dew because I was too lazy to go buy orange juice. And I was always out of it because of the way I was drinking. And so there's nothing worse than vodka in Mountain Dew. Like when you reach that point where you're mixing, you're spiking your vodka with Mountain Dew,

it is so awful. Let me tell you, it's the worst mixer you can use. But if you can choke that shit down, you know you have a problem. Let's put that way, folks. So I read a lot of stuff. I knew how to lose weight. I knew what I should be doing and all that stuff. But I had all these rules, all these bullshit things.

These little self-cons, if you will. It's not these fostian bargains I'd make with myself. You know what? If you're, maybe I'll have a fruit every now and then, and then I'll offset all the shit. I'm eating and drinking. And so what helped me is I read his book, and it wasn't just about him. It was like your book.

It was the process of what he went through and how he had to redesign his rules. All these little stupid games to play with ourselves. We're always cutting it and trying to figure out how to justify it, but whatever. And so what helped me the most is, as he had a lot of the same rules I do, He'd go to the store and he'd say, I need a reward for going to the store. That was one of my things. I got to have a Coke and a big old candy bag of whatever crap is going to poison me and yellow number five.

And I would do that. And I'm like, you're 40 years old. Why do you need a reward to go to the grocery store, idiot? And that reward is a reward. It's fucking poison. You're literally going, I'm going to poison myself as a reward. How is that a reward? And so that book really helped me because I could see him.

him through his journaling, talk about his belief systems and how he's, okay, this needs to get changed and that needs to get changed. And it gave me that a great blueprint. So I love what you did with mapping this out as a journal because it can help people walk through the process just like you did of getting out of that dark room. Yeah, it really is. It does kind of read like a novel because I do grow as a character. I raise it. I get a puppy. It goes into my daily life, but it's all centered around how alcohol has affected my life, mostly negative. It talks about the first time I drank and how that. First time I drank when it was 14 or 15 changed my life.

Every weekend from then on until now has been that's cooking about alcohol. That's been the main goal. If I couldn't drink it, then I probably didn't have a good weekend. If I was strained it somewhere and couldn't drink, I was probably kind of angry about it. Not anymore, but still at a weekend, a freaking weekend. Ready to get going. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And so you came through it and you guided your journey. And so that's, that's a lot of people come on the show and I'm not faulting. And they write a lot of great books, self-help books on how they got out of whatever cathartic times they were going through. But that journal and that pathway really helps because you can see the steps. And so that's what I was able to do with Penn Gillette's book. I could take a first step. Oh, he became this epiphany that, there's something more healthy to eat than cheese, which is these, so I forget what they call them, but they're basically flakes that taste like cheese, but they're really healthy for you and they help your gut bio. And so I was able to walk through the process of what he did and walk through the process of what I needed to do to get out of that room. Yeah, I love that you did that and did it. Did you do the artwork on the cover? Did someone do the artwork? No, a friend of mine did the artwork.

Yeah, a friend of mine did the artwork. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. Yeah, he's good art. It's pretty cool. No, I think we're talking tomorrow about another book that you have on the show. We're going to feature that for the hour. But to tell us, you've written a lot of books.

When did you start writing and getting involved in that? I've been writing off and on for about 20 years, really about 25 years now. Oh, wow. And I originally, and we'll get into this tomorrow, but I've diagnosed with, I've got a severe mental illness. And I started writing about that back in around two. And that memoir we're going about tomorrow is about those is about mental health. I've also written novels and short stories and I've aphorisms. I've got a book out right now called Free and Satisfied.

It's a novel. And I've got a couple more that are coming out in the next six months or so. I'm approving them going through the process. So I'm on the move after 20 years of being nobody. I'm now. Good for you, man. Better as late than ever. Exactly.

years of drinking. I wasn't very productive and probably wasted a lot of unproductivity that I could have outputed at the time. But now we're back on. Besides, most people at their stride in their later years, that's when we earn as men when you earn our most money. And yeah, what do you find writing does for you? Does it help you? What does it do for you? I've always enjoyed reading. I just, I just like telling the story. These are different than what I usually write fiction. And both of these books are memoirs, and they're both the first ones to come out, and everybody said for a long time, Benton, you write pretty good fiction. Wrong side out is a crazy story about history with mental illness. It's called Wrong Side Out, Madness Misdiagnosed.

So I've had some real, quite some experiences of being homeless and living on the street, even though I have money, thinking I deserved it, the kind of thing. Just really self-destructive behavior beyond your imagination, really. And so it's alcoholic, so they really go together really well because, Once I got on the right medication, then I needed to quit the alcohol. So it was kind of first and then next. So it's been quite a journey. So I guess we'll get into this tomorrow with wrong side out. But let me ask this quick question.

Was the mental illness, were you medicating with alcohol, the mental illness issues? I've drank since before. Everybody says that you self-medicate? Certainly when you feel miserable, it helps to drink. I don't know if I was self-medicated. I don't sleep much. I sleep three or four hours a night. Really?

Yeah, it's really miserable. And so I went through a period where I was having that problem. Yeah, so I drink to fall asleep a lot. Yeah, go two o'clock rolls around in the morning. I'd run a start and just get a couple beers just hoping to catch a couple hours of sleep before I get up. Wow. It's hard to quit. That's a hard one to quit is the sleeping one.

Yeah. I remember I used to think that I was sleeping better. because I would just drink a night. Nightcaps, that's when I would drink as at night. And I started doing it to wind down and go to bed. But sometimes I need a little bit more juice. I think the sugar from the alcohol would really affect me. And so I get tired, but if I had some alcohol, I could work for two or three more hours.

And as an entrepreneur, that was pretty valuable because I had plenty of stuff I still needed to do. You're pretty much 24-7. That was in our early days of the business where we were working. So for me, alcohol was like, just like an energy drink late at night. It would relax me and I'd be able to keep working. And I actually thought for good 20 years that I actually slept better with alcohol, which isn't. That was one of those stupid games you play with your brain where you go.

Oh, yeah. There's not the game. Sure, this works great. Yeah. Until the hangovers kick in. Yeah. It's kind of, did you have one of those things like I did where your body just started giving out, but became dehydrated all the time.

It just seemed literally, I think at one point, I drank a beer and I got a hangover. the next day. My body was just like, fuck you. We're not doing this. I was further along than that, I think, is that I hang them where it's got less and less. Really? If I drink today, if I drank a lot today, I'd be hung over tomorrow. But if I drink like I used to, I'd wake up. I'd be a little slow, but not hung over. It's ready to roll again. I'm jealous. No, the hangover's got less for me or I got used to them. Yeah. Mine, my, my body just slowly over time. There was times I could game around it. I used to play games where I'd drink a gallon of water before bed when it was time to roll into bed.

And then I drink, take a handful of electrolytes and vitamin Bs and vitamins and shit. And I try and beat the hangover. And for all there, it worked, but then it didn't anymore in my body. And my body just eventually, and I'm kind of glad it did. It kind of said, this is going to be really painful for you if you want to drink. and we're going to blow it the fuck out of you. It would be like three days of bloating and the dehydration. And the third day you're pissing off 10 gallons of water that you'd bloated into.

Because your body's just trying to offset the dehydration, right? And so it would just be this shit shimus. And I, at my age, just started feeling the drag for three days. I would just drag ass. And you'd just be like, okay, a couple hours of fun. This isn't, I'm not doing this anymore, I guess. but edibles are really nice for me. I don't seem to have too many problems,

but I don't have an addicted personality, so that could be dangerous for you, maybe. No, I like edible. Sleep. Yeah, I use those for sleep. I'm sure you like them. No, I still take edibles, eat edibles in a lot of a while.

Yeah, they're really good, and you don't get hungover. Not too much, unless you eat too many of them. It sounds like you went through quite the journey and maybe some rough times with your alcohol, You said you were homeless and stuff. There's a lot of hard journeys. I went with a girlfriend to AA twice to try and get her to quit drinking.

She had a serious addiction problem with alcohol. And one of her problems is some people, they're a fun drunk, like most of us are fun drunks. She was a mean. She would just go from being the nicest person in the world to being just mean, evil, and just awful. Her inner face would change. It was like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's sort of thing. Last couple of years I got pretty mean myself. Oh, really?

Yeah, I get pretty mean. That was really what I started hating it. I mean, you're being mean, being told you're like, you're mean. Now, he's ever called me mean before. Now it's like I hear it from more than one source. It's like maybe I am mean. Yeah, yeah. Some people like that.

I've had salesmen that like if they drink, they become mean. but and they become really amped up, jacked and instead of like relax, like most of us do with booze. And then with cocaine, they'll have the booze effect with cocaine. Like cocaine will make them relax

and they just want to take a nap. Kind of the opposite. I'm like, I've heard about those people. Yeah, they just have a weird chemical. Thankfully I have some. It's written with their kids too. Probably.

That would probably be, yeah. They were using my top. salesman, cocaine and top salesman. They would call me from, they would call me from the limos with the hookers in them and the Coke and be like, yeah, well, what are you dude? I'm like, hope you make it back. You're my top salesman. You guys get arrested and die. We're screwed. So what are some other aspects about the book that you think are important for the honest to hear about? I talked, speaking about the heavy drink and I was, one of the funny things was once I got

sober, I started wishing, and I looked this up on, after I started thinking it was, I wish I'd drink more when I was still drinking. I could have, like, I drank as much as possible. But when I quit, I was like, I wish it just drink a little bit more when I was drinking. I could fit a few more days in. And I looked it up. It's the kind of phenomenon for heavy drinkers. You look back and you're like, God, I wish I just drink a little bit more.

And it's crazy talk. It's crazy talk. But I've been hard for me to drink more. Very difficult for me to drink more. It's interesting the way the brain plays games on us, doesn't it? Yeah. I love me. And then I think rationalizations.

that the justifications are always there always oh yeah oh i had mine oh it makes me sleep better oh it just makes me relax and gives me some energy at the end of the night and next morning you're waking up and blood in your eyes and your your kidney is is trying to kick its way out of your body so i can get away from you it's especially hard for artists because they artists had to feel like drugs and alcohol make them more productive and a lot of the great don't have been done it but i i disagree i don't think it's really true i think they're just i don't know it's a tough call i don't think it helps me i'm not very productive when i drink alcohol so it doesn't matter how creative i am i don't know that i used to play piano and i couldn't really

write or do anything unless i drank and my psychiatrist told me he said what's happening is when you drink you suspend your left brain your logical brain and they your creative mind can come play and i'm like lay out of hell i write a lot of cool stuff in the piano studio but i had a piano studio at my house at one time and but now and in writing too i thought i was better at writing emotionally and and putting emotion into writing and bringing more drama to telling stories when i would drink but now i write just fine without it it probably was one of those games i was playing with myself you know i played that game in the towns Yeah.

You've got to bust the bargains down, don't we? Now I don't play that game. It's a lot easier. It's a lot better to write sober. And sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I don't even listen to music. I like it just dead quiet. I try different things, whatever it takes, whatever it takes.

I'm sure you're going to help a lot of people with this. The title of the book, about how it's not about counting the days. And that's a reference to the AA thing where they be, you know, friends that are like, hey, it's been 5,000 days or 500 days. And they've got the coin and stuff. And I guess for different folks, there's different measurements or different ways to self-reward the brain for behaving properly. Yeah.

So your message is if you fall off the wagon, it's fine. Just get back. Kind of fine, but just get back on the, that's right? Just don't give up. It's just a day. Yes, you lost your 5,000 days, but really, it's just a day. Nobody really cares about those 5,000 one day. You're the only one that really matters to.

Maybe your family, but it's really only important to you. Yeah. That makes sense. And people who do have addiction issues will fall off the horse. I remember when I went to with my girlfriend to the AA clinic, she got to know another gal there who had really bad alcohol addiction. Boy, you want to talk about some fierce shit. She would beat up her whole family, her husband and kids.

and then she would take off to Wendover and write checks in the casino against their house. And I had to bill him out a couple times using his home equity in my mortgage company to pay the Goombas off or come call it and looking for $100,000. And she would blow $100,000 in a weekend

after she beat the wife and kids or the husband and kids and took off. He had a real problems. And I remember this is actually one of the things I reached the end with the relationship with her. I had talked to him, and the husband had lived with this for 20 or 30 years. He loved this woman. He started out with her.

They had children and family together. There was probably some good times. But he was just living in hell. And I remember he looked at me one day, and he goes, Chris, if you're going to down this road with her, you've got to be ready for her to fall off the wagon because she's going to fall off the wagon. And you're going to have these days. And you've got to make a choice that that's going to be the right.

of your life and that you love her that much. And I went, yeah, I think it's time to call it now. It's a sad state of affairs that people get into with addiction. It's kind of, I don't know, lesser, I haven't written $100,000 checks or anything, but unless people have got that up with me, it's like he will fall off the wagon. He is doing well. Yes, he is doing well. But it has the self-sabotage button that he will sabotage as soon as he has some success,

he will sabotage. I'm really focused because I'm having a little bit of success right now. not to sabotage it and get over excited or whatever, whatever happens. Because it's very easy to fall off. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, one of the problems of alcohol, I think I saw a movie start talking about this who had addiction problems with alcohol.

He goes, it's everywhere. It's not like if you have cocaine, it's technically illegal in most places. You've got to kind of be under the wire there. But with alcohol, it's everywhere. You go to a bar or someone's buying alcohol. You go to, in most states, you go to the grocery store. Yes. There's a whole row of it.

And so you're going to see it everywhere. And then usually people drink for social stuff. That doesn't help. You know, you go to a party, you go to an event, you go out to eat. The first thing I do when I go out to eat is they always got the bar menu there for you. They're usually trying to juice the hill with liquor. And it's funny. They'll hand that to me first, and I'll hand it back to him.

And I go, yeah, I'm not drinking. I'll have some coffee. In fact, they're usually in shock. They're like coffee. Yeah. I've ordered just a Coke. I feel like I'm on breakfast. I was at Ridgemont High.

Yeah, I'll just, I'll just, I'll just a Coke. You know what's funny was when I, when I, when I cut back on drinking, I would just get coax at, at the bar. And the bartends were always cool because they don't want to serve you. They lose their license. And they were always really cool. But I used to have friends that used to be like, don't you worry that people are going to think you're weird because you're not drinking.

nobody knows that I just have a Coke. Only me and the bartender know that it's, it's me in a Coke. I used to drink vodka and Coke, rum and Coke all the time. So no one knows. And no one's going to drink out of my drink. And that would be weird. But especially at a club where you're like,

can I drink out of your Coke or isn't fuck off? One of the hardest things is that people that do drink when they're around, you're like, oh, sure you don't mind me drinking? It's like, I'm going to not stay in my room the rest of my life because everybody else is drinking. And seriously, no, I drink. I've got friends that dealt with me that were sober when I drank. I mean, just deal with it. And it is annoying and put you on the spot.

It makes you want to drink, maybe. I don't know. Because I have people. Your pressure. Because I have dates do it to me. If I go on a date, I've got a, you know, I'll order my coffee and I'll be like, order whatever you want. And they're like, was it okay if I drink around?

Do you drink? I'm like, no. And I'm not Mormon because I'm sometimes visiting Utah, so they always think I'm Mormon. And I'm just like, no, I just don't drink. And they're like, oh, oh, you had a problem. Good for you. Good for you. Yeah.

And they're like, are you, are you sure you okay if I have a wine? I'm like, yeah, I don't give a shit. One of my dates, she was like, are you sure? Because I don't want to relapse you or anything. And it's annoying. So finally, I just reached over, grabbed her wine, took a sip of it and said, see, I can drink. It's fine. I just don't drink because I don't want to have a hangover and I don't want to live that way.

I read a great book. I'd like to bring up. And it's really a best seller in the alcohol section. It's called This Naked Mind. And I read it. And it's like second best for alcohol recovery sales. And I read it. And it's really good.

It talks about how I believe the author will take a drink like you just said. She's like, I don't, I will take a drink if I want to. I can take a drink if I want to. I just choose not. And that's the way I try to look at is, yes, I'm a grown man. If I want to take a drink, of course I can. It's maybe to my detriment. but I can do it.

Yeah. And addiction is hard. One of the things that sobered me up about my girlfriend's alcoholism was when I, when I had your cut off alcohol and was trying to make it so she stopped drinking totally, there were times where I caught her with NyQuil. She drank hairspray at one point. I walked up and kissed her because I was just passing by her in the house and gave her a kiss. And it was freaking hairspray.

And she'd been drinking it. And I was just like, my God, that was, is that kind of addiction for her. And I remember when I was at AA, there was this little Mexican guy, and he talked about how he built this great life. He had his family, and his kids. He had just great job, the house, pick a fence, all that stuff. And he was cooking along, got into booze, and lost everything. And next thing he knew was living under the bydok, right? Lost his family, his house, kids, job, everything, all wiped up.

back to ground zero. And so he did that for a while, and then he found his way out. And he told the story. This was like his testimony there at AA. And then he got the family back. He got the kids. He got the car. He got the job, the house, got all of his shit together.

And then he sabotaged again and lost it all. And I just watched it. And I was just like, oh, my God. I'm not, I am not marrying into this. I'm not going to have it happen. But it was sad to hear the story and journey that he went on. You felt a lot of empathy for him and probably his family members and stuff. So it's a really big deal.

But I'm glad you're writing books that can help lead people out of the wilderness, giving them a pathway. I really wrote a morph to help me out of the wilderness to help others, really. To be honest. Well, since we do that and we help others. It really is a good exercise to write. If you have an alcohol problem or anything to write about it and think about your behavior each day, You'll have some insight into yourself. You really have some insight.

That was the most rewarding part of the whole thing, was really thinking about it. Because I just went day to day. Who cares? Next day. Carpe die. But then you started journaling and keeping an activity record. And probably that gave you some insight to your patterns,

your behaviors. And you could go, what am I doing here, right? And I was very honest in the book. Yeah, I don't exaggerate. It's not preachy for sure. It's hard. It's hard on me.

I'm being hard on myself. It's really, really inside me, not really outside. That's why a lot of successful people journal, because you get that, you kind of can feedback and see, you write something on the page and you read it and you go, wow, there's something there I need to maybe work on. It's a way to learn something to write it down. Yeah, it really is. And you kind of get that, we get in our own blind spots, our own, what are they

call them scatomas, where we have our own belief systems. We don't really see the real world or outside those belief systems in reality. We joked about having our own little bargaining things that we do. But writing stuff down really helps you get perspective and kind of give you a perspective on the page. So good for you, man. As we go out, give people a final pitch on the book and where to get it and reach out and find out more about you. It is available on Amazon, the Stoic Alcoholic. It's not only about counting days. The last name's Benton Savage. And really, the whole message is just it's a life.

I will be fighting alcohol the rest of my life. I may drink the day before I die, for all I know. But you've got to take it day by day. It's more of a mindset that you just realize alcohol is not good for you. And every time you drink, it's going to make your life, every aspect of your life a little bit worse. There's no upside to it when you get to a certain point. Yeah. But if you do fall, you just get back up.

It's the old saying, but it's true. And it's really forgotten because I've quit. I've gone six months and just gone right back to it and just giving up. And that's something you should do. Yeah, yeah, totally. Thank you very much for coming the show. We really appreciate it, Ben. We'll look forward to tomorrow talking about your book as well.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thanks, thanks for tuning in. Order up his book, wherever fine books are sold. You can get it there and take a look at it. And if you know somebody who's struggling with addiction, and stuff. This might be a great book for helping them, so be sure to pay it

forward and pass it around. The Stoic Alcoholic. It's not only about counting days by Ben Savage. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve

your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed.