“Alcohol Is Much Worse For You Than You Think” - Andrew Huberman

coming back to the discussion about alcohol which is one that you tried to interject with Berton I think your episode that you released last year yeah back end of last summer yeah I think that really opened a lot of people's eyes to some of the risks of alcohol I've been kind of flying the flag of it as a tool for productivity for quite a while to avoid alcohol yeah that I think when you entirely or or do do you drink at all uh I've brought it back into my life now but I did six months sober three times and then thousand days without alcohol too um but yeah I'm seeing right now a huge push back against unseen unintentional drinking and I think that yeah your episode last year opened a lot of people's eyes to it thanks I mean again I I don't tell people what to do I give them the facts so they can make the best decisions for them I mean it's very clear that unless you're an alcoholic and provided you're an adult that you know two drinks per week maximum um is about the upper threshold Beyond which you're going to start getting some health that's called that's called a warm-up to a warm-up in England yeah so I you know I've never been a big drinker I don't drink um I I'm lucky that it's not something that's that's a strong draw for me you know I have friends that are recovered alcoholics um and you know their lives are so much better as a function of being sober but for non-alcoholics I mean I think everyone should just know the uh the health risks especially women where the risks for breast cancer and other types of cancers are are elevated so very much and what was interesting to me about the response to that episode is that I think many people took it my the impression I got was that many people took it as permission to finally stop drinking or drink less because they didn't enjoy drinking and as you so you know beautifully put out on social media you know drinking is one of the few activities that if you don't partake people assume or accuse you of having a problem and it's just wild I mean like why would that be and I think that I think also make once actually I was out to dinner with a colleague years ago and I declined drinking that even I was just talking to the the visiting speaker and um she said God that's so boring and I well first of all I don't have a problem saying what's on my mind without alcohol right I don't have I don't have a excessive gabic inhibition um so I'll say what I want to say um you know as uh as best I can but you know I think drinkers don't like people who don't drink because it takes the fun out of it for them because there is this idea that's you know prolific on college campuses like if everyone's drunk that somehow like the entire like Vibe of the party is going to take on a new new flavor and frankly I remember I went to a college UC Santa Barbara where at the time people drank a ton a ton discovered alcoholics you right um and I used to go to parties sometimes I look around I thinking like everyone here is just blasted like if anything happens drinking did you drink in college yeah I drink in college but not that often I I had a habit and I don't recommend this I had a habit of going out about once a month and I would tie one on you know absolutely infrequent but binge yeah I never you know I my tolerance to alcohol was always such that I would get drunk quickly and then sober up really fast so I was drinking late into the night um but then I'd sober up really fast now of course we know the sleep you get after even one drink is vastly diminished every single person that's got a aura or a whoop strap something is feeling you right now um and I think that alcohol to me um never felt good I never liked it and it was a recipe for you know there was a lot of fights there was a lot of you know there were a lot of bad stuff happens when people are drinking too much drunk driving to say nothing of poor decision making I mean I to me it just feels like there's so there are so many better ways to have a good time that that that alcohol isn't necessary but I do understand that it's a big part of many cultures and I do understand that for for many people it's so part and parcel with um relaxing and with festivities and with feeling comfortable and with drawing a boundary between the normal day and the rest of the day that's interesting there's a ritualistic aspect to it yeah there's a sort of it divides the day in an interesting way so I'm not judgmental of it I but um for me I mean I'll go to a party where people are drinking and just hang out I'm perfectly good dude I've stood on the door of a thousand club nights in my career right as a club promoter and I can promise you for the people that are thinking I like the sound of this justification this excuse that I don't need to drink anymore Dr hubman has said that you know maybe it's not for you maybe it's not as enjoyable nothing good happens in nightclubs after 1 in the morning I am patient zero I have the I Am the Doctor of late night parties okay like that's one of my expertise nothing good happens in the nightclub it's this sort of messy sloppy fights and kissing people you shouldn't and and and stumbling all over the place and stuff if you go out and you don't drink and you go home at 1: in the morning I think you probably get to capture about 80% of the enjoyment of the event that you would have done had you have drank pre-drinks gone out done the whole thing and I got a bit of push I got quite a bit of push back from a a sobriety Community a few years ago I did this thousand days sober as a club promoter which was I guess I could kind of big deal in some regards for like pushing the sobriety Community forward but I was never doing it because I had a problem I was doing it because it gave me more consistency and more time and more money to spend on things that I cared about so it was a a productivity tool like like the pomodora technique right or going to bed on time or something and um they had a little bit of a problem they had a big problem with the fact that I said there is something to the enjoyment of drinking on a night out I think anybody that says alcohol has no role in improving the quality of a night out ever just hasn't been on enough good nights out right there there are ways that it can improve kind of loosens people up it can reduce their inhibitions if you want to go and dance you know you're dancing at a rave or or at a festival which I think there's one going on quite close to here um if you're there it's really great but if alcohol wasn't so widely distributed I think people would ask a lot more questions it's like you can't see the wood for the trees right you you don't question it's such a it's baked into the the fabric of of just human life every single time that I take a like a macro dose but low of psilocybin one where I can still function what is what is um 75 75 to one gram of so that's about it's a little less than half of the macro therapeutic dose for for intractable depression which is something like 2.2 grams or so so you can still hold a conversation depending on what strain you've got but every single time that I do it without fail a thought comes into my mind which is why does anyone drink alcohol why does anybody do it because I'll go to bed my HRV my recovery is fine the next day maybe I'm a little bit tired like I've had a lot of like activation I've been super energetic very little hangover on the evening I don't do stupid things it makes me want to say nice things to all of my friends my thoughts are sharper than they were before sometimes they're silly but they're sharper and then you compare it with alcohol and it's this kind of sloppy muddy very unile it's it's just I I I totally get what you mean when you've taken a little bit of time away from it and you look at it in the harsh light of day the effect that alcohol gives you just aren't that enjoyable and it's been folded into people's lives through tradition and through just anchoring bias and continuation yeah and marketing you know the idea that like someone can quote unquote hold their liquor is such like a it's been um made synonymous with you know masculine ideals it's like I mean it's it's kind of crazy because we know it also it crushes testosterone levels what's interesting is that um you know I I forget who said this but you know there's a very different picture of a young drunk versus an old drunk you know someone who's been just drinking for too many years it's not a pretty picture sus they become infantile they become really infantile and um you know again I'm I'm not the anti alcohol Crusader we did I did that episode not expecting much of a response actually um that CHS just how out of uh out of touch sometimes I can be I think just to reiterate it man I think it gave people the excuse MH what you did is you gave people the justification you legitimized them it's like the best bucks tell you something that you already know it was like they everyone always lots of people always had an idea I probably shouldn't be drinking maybe I don't enjoy it that much maybe these aren't my friends they're just my drinking Partners maybe I don't like the way that I feel the next day maybe my life could be better if I sto drinking there's the justification well I'm happy to hear that for those folks you know now the information is out there I've um I was accused several times uh on Twitter SLX of um taking all the fun out of parties in the at least in the Bay Area but I'll tell you I grew up in the Bay Area the good parties ended a long time ago but they still exist you know I mean I think there you know and when I say other ways to have fun I don't mean like oh everyone should sit around and do math or read Neuroscience although for me that's fun um you know I think I think in a broader sense I think there's a shi nowadays that people really think about you know how to engage socially in ways that are interesting I mean perhaps it's a again a sampling bias because of the topics that I cover and who talks to me but like in the Bay Area there are these Russian Bas in New York there's spy 88 by the way they don't pay me a say this by I like to go this uh Russian B down in Wall Street you go there and you know got hot saunas and cold plunge and people are you know young people are there enjoying themselves and they actually serve alcohol so they'll have sometimes they'll do like little gimlets of of vodka or something there and so you know people sometimes that's part of the tradition the most Russian thing that I can think of shot of vodka whilst hot right so that and you know and they've got theories as to how that can help and listen I think some of those Traditions can really be wonderful but you know people are starting to combine socializing with health promoting protocols and you know going out and eating good food together like eating really wonderful food um with the social component the you know I I'll go into the grave talking about getting morning sunlight something that maybe we should talk a little bit more about and people like roll their eyes I'll just say there's this incredible study now just out in nature um mental health published about 80 that has 85,000 85,000 subjects showing that the ratio of getting a lot of sunlight during the day to getting minimal artificial light exposure at night it really sets the tone of your overall system and is and is associated with brain and body that is and is associated with better mental health outcomes across the board and the inverse right if you're getting too much artificial light at night or not enough sunlight or both is associated with everything bad Elevate depression anxiety Etc now I do believe people should get out and have a good time don't avoid the bright lights of a city or a club have a great time like dancing socializing those are great reasons to stay up too late and get minimal sleep or sleep in the next day great reasons so every once in a while sure 20% of your life you're going to do that and probably some percentage of time is also going to be raising kids so you're up because you have to to keep keep them alive which is important to our species so thank you but I think people you know forget that yes you can go outside and get morning sunlight and which I highly recommend people do that as as most people know but I mean so many benefits on mood and mental health and improved sleep that just and it's completely zero cost you know but I often get accused of okay well but what if you have kids like how do you do this well you take the kids with you because guess what they need it too you you take them outside you eat breakfast outside or at least facing a window indoors it's not going to be as good as having the window open or being outdoors but even if the sun's on the other side of your apartment building I mean these things have an outsized positive effect on health and I'll wager both upper limbs anyway uh that many many many of the mental health issues that we see nowadays in young people and in adults is the consequence of disrupted circadian rhythms because of a lot of time in a two-dimensional screen space which I'm not condemning I spend time on and put out most of my content on social media and YouTube Apple Spotify right um and in addition to that to the lights are too bright at night and they're not getting enough sunlight during the day and an important thing to understand about our circadian Health you know circadian system in health is that throughout in the morning and throughout the day your eyes are less sensitive to light and you need more of it in order to get what you need okay broadly speaking and at night your eyes are far more sensitive to artificial lighting and you need far less of it in order to disrupt your circadian system in bad ways disrupt your mental health now does that mean you have to walk around with sunglasses at night and you know Dim All the Lights in your your house well no but you could afford to dim them a little bit um you could afford to switch to the red light function on your phone there's actually a triple click red light function on every phone that um maybe I'll pass the the the throughput of what to do to your phone it's which allows you to El exibility functions on on iPhone mine goes to mine goes to gray scale when I do that yeah you can yeah so you can have it switch to grayscale or to purely red uh you know eliminate the Blu is a trick that my friend Rick Rubin taught me I was like oh this is great you know you don't you know you don't necessarily have to purchase Blue Block glasses or anything like that we'll get back to talking to Andrew in one minute but first I need to tell you about ag1 ag1 is a product that I've been using every single day for over three years now Dr huberman himself is a massive fan because it is the most comprehensive foundational daily nutrition supplement on the market my digestion is so much better since I've started using ag1 and I genuinely can't remember what life used to be like but when I stopped using it I do not like the way that my body feels since 2010 ag1 has led the foundational nutrition Revolution continually refining their formula to create better smarter ways to elevate your health ag1 is the supplement I trust to provide the support that my body needs every single day and that's why they've been a partner for so long if you want to take ownership of your health it starts with ag1 you can get all of this with your first purchase a free your supply of vitamin D five free travel packs free pots shakers and that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink ag1 /wi isdom that's drink a1.com wisdom thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that clip with Dr hberman you will love the 3our episode that you can watch right here go on press it

Channel: Chris Williamson

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Id: QlBh0Gqq77Q

Length: 14min 51sec (891 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2023