I've read a lot of books and articles and listened to a lot of podcasts and watched a lot of videos on drinking and health and exercise and quitting and behavior and habits. One thing I've noticed is that the message is one-sided and simplified and the positions are biased and hard-lined. People who are compelled to write or blog or vlog about drinking are biased. They are either teetotalers to begin with and therefore would never understand the allure (and are likely already biased against it without knowing much about what they're biased against) or they've been through the ringer with drink and have come out the other side an admirable foe. Or maybe they've been through the ringer with a family member. The message is largely that alcohol is bad anyway you look at it and it will kill you and it almost killed me. Drinking behavior is measured by arbitrary scales that smack of "degrees of badness", like "moderate", "heavy", "binge". If you binge, you are in serious trouble. Yet everyone binges. The preponderance of evidence that some level of drinking can in fact be good will often be cited but not dealt with in a rational argument. If it's always bad it can't sometimes be good. And good is defined by the number three or less for males and two or less for females per day. But save those all for the weekend and it's bad. Binge. Bad. It's odd to me that the facts that teetotalers don't live as long as drinkers and drinking is always bad and will kill you can coexist in same conversation.
The notion that heavy drinkers also live longer than teetotalers, which I've seen more than once and deserves to be googled, shall not be allowed to enter the room or even tap on the window. How would we deal with this? And how would we bring it up without seeming to advocate drinking? We are not advocating anything. We are trying to have a rational conversation.
Everybody Likes a Quitter
The preponderance of books and confessionals and testimonies and bleedingly honest videos follow a familiar and predictable line. Started at age 13, blackouts, fights, violence, stealing, property damage, poor judgment with vehicle, arrests, near death experiences, financial loss.... Then a wake up one day and never again sort of triumph. This makes great reading and listening. I also know it's exceedingly rare. The person who downed a fifth of Jack at age 13 likely had it in the cards to be on the far end of the spectrum. This narrative is extreme, and I suppose that's what sells books and attracts attention. But I think the majority of people who buy the books and listen to the podcasts aren't quite so extreme. I also know that successful quitting can be a gradual process done by one's own devices and can be a moderation in behavior rather than a hard stop. But that would be a boring book.
All Vices are Not Created Equal
My starting point here is health and fitness. If you know nothing on the subject and tried to research whether alcohol and health and fitness can coexist, you would get an equal number of extreme yesses and extreme nos. EVERYONE knows a glass or two of red wine with dinner is a ticket to perfect health. Yet chronic alcohol use ravages the body and WILL kill you. Two glasses of red wine a day is chronic alcohol use. Is it all in the amount? I just don't see how it could be that there would be a magic cutoff point where the same substance is physiological nirvana then absolute assassin. I know that the poison's in the dose, but still...
I read a lot of posts and watch a lot of videos by health and fitness people, muscle-builders, who discuss these things. I'm really interested in what the "golden era" bodybuilders of the 70s used to do. I also watch a lot of videos on fat loss, calisthenics, intermittent fasting and various other health topics that are currently in vogue. Turns out they do a lot of the same things. Relatively low carb diets, resistance training, hard work, consistency, self control, and ...... cheat day! A cheat day, or a break, or a day off, or a carb cycle or a periodicity whatever, seems to a key to success. The golden era bodybuilders spent Sundays eating junk. Cakes and donuts and pancakes the size of a table top. According to more than one account, they did this on Sunday and then on Monday were bloated and puffy and sick and miserable, but went back on the diet (low carb, high protein, relatively high fat) and by Wednesday they were back in shape. Ric Drasin talks about this a lot. He was there.
Some of the vloggers I follow try to spend the cheat day taking in as many calories as possible. They may start the day with a giant box of sour patch kids. The rest of the food choices follow this line. Ah, youth! This would kill me immediately. I don't think anyone older than 30 would do this and that says a lot.
Ok, fine. The cheat day keeps you in the game by allowing for one precious minute with all the evil vices you've spent the rest of the week avoiding in the quest for a small waist and abs and muscles self-actualization.
But what of alcohol? Let's say that I proposed to all of these venerable experts that my cheat day will be a case and a half of beer. Or maybe two chickens and two fifths of Irish Whiskey. How do you think that would compare? Would I be laughed out of the room? Run out of town on rail? What's the difference? Why is sugar squeaky clean and alcohol evil?
I watched a video recently where two old school bodybuilders from the golden era discussed alcohol and said that if you follow your diet and exercise programs diligently during the week and then go out on the weekend and drink yourself into oblivion, you will wipe out all your gains. Why? Because alcohol metabolizes as sugar. Yet, these are the same people who spoke fondly of the cheat day. And that cheat day was full of donuts and manhole-sized pancakes. (And according to some, pitchers of beer back in the day.) Uh.... ?
Alcohol will always be on the dark side. It's bad. It's dirty. It's not for Puritans. But, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would be much better off if I drank 6 beers a day or 6 whiskeys a day than if I drank 6 Cokes a day. I haven't drunk 6 Cokes in the last 25 years. I can't even imagine it.
But this observation will not fly with most. Coke is squeaky clean and alcohol is dirty. Even if they metabolize in roughly the same way.
And never mind the obvious fact that doing without either would be a golden ticket.
What's the Point Here?
I've been drinking every day for 30 years. Always more interested in the nightly buzz than the binge or blackout. I don't like to get really drunk. I don't like to drink all day. I sleep before I do either of those. I'm reasonably healthy and definitely strong. But in those 30 years my minimum daily requirement has roughly quadrupled. Something else is going on here besides a relaxation crutch. At this point I don't really care what that thing is as much as what to do in order to turn the progression in the other direction. Alcohol is stigmatized and only the extremely ill then recovered tend to end up blogging or talking about it on video. I can't identify with either of those. That's why I don't think I can put a name or definition to exactly what I'm grappling with here. And it's also why I can't get inspired by narratives I keep seeing and hearing on how they got from there to here.
Goal: To not drink alcohol every day and to not use it as a way to wind down.
Plan: Taper, then move to dry week nights and free week ends.
Method: Reduce consumption by 10% of the prior day until zero.
Reward: Don't worry about the weekends.
Long Term: Ebrace the raw, feel, be awake and don't worry about it, see how it goes, be honest, reassess. Practice not drinking and get good at it.
Tonight: 8 drinks minus .8 (round up to 1) equals seven drinks.
Tomorrow: 7 drinks minus .7 (round up to 1) equals six drinks.
No comments:
Post a Comment