- Four bottles of whiskey,
four bottles of bitters,
old fashioned mix, the Cachaca, gin, vermouth,
two bottles of tequila, Cointreau, margarita mix, whiskey,
vodka, vermouth, and 31 bottles of wine.
(bottles clinking)
(Mark laughs)
(bottles clinking)
This, by my calculations, is roughly
how much I drank each year when I lived in New York City.
What the fuck?
(jazzy music)
After 22 years of heavy drinking,
last summer I decided to quit alcohol for good.
There were a lot of reasons for this
that I'll get into in a second,
and obviously there were benefits.
I lost some weight.
I slept better at night.
And I have no more ungodly hangovers.
But there are also some life changes that happened
that I was completely unprepared for,
and once these hidden benefits kicked in,
I knew that I was probably done with alcohol forever.
But first, before we can talk about the benefits
of not drinking, there's a far more important question
to start with, and that is,
what are the benefits of drinking?
- To alcohol!
The cause of and solution to all of life's problem.
- For me, the benefits were social.
Like most, I started drinking as a teenager,
and as someone who struggled a lot with social anxiety
and codependency issues as a young man,
alcohol was the only thing that allowed me to socialize
with large groups of people comfortably.
Then, at university,
I discovered what I thought was a superpower.
I could drink, a lot.
And still, somehow remain highly functional.
Combine this with a social environment
that rewards an ability to drink with status,
and by my early twenties,
I had adopted an identity as the party guy.
I was out almost every night, Tuesday through Saturday,
drink in hand, having a blast.
This lifestyle continued throughout my twenties
into my early thirties,
and by this time, I had moved to New York City.
And as anyone who's lived in New York City can tell you,
it is an alcoholics' paradise,
that is, a ridiculously expensive alcoholics' paradise.
I was married, a successful author,
flying around the world, writing and promoting books.
Throughout all this, the alcohol continued to flow,
but it was around this time
that something started to change.
My party guy identity had helped me survive my insecurities
in my twenties.
It helped me build the confidence
and social experiences necessary
to become the successful man that I was in my thirties.
But it also began to destroy me in my thirties,
because by then, life had changed, my values had changed,
and more than anything else, my metabolism had changed.
My body and mind couldn't handle the booze anymore.
I gained a ton of weight.
I fell horribly outta shape.
I slept poorly at night and became stressed all the time.
Like many people, I decided to use 2020 as an opportunity
to lose some weight and get back in the shape.
Drinking less was a big part of that,
and I cut back drastically
from roughly 10 to 15 drinks a week
down to just 3 to 5 per week.
But then a few catalysts happen
all around the same time that made me quit for good.
The first was that I actually started to notice
how bad alcohol made me feel.
When you're having 15 or 20 drinks a week,
you're pretty much constantly in a state
of being either drunk or hungover,
so you don't really realize the degree of damage
that you're causing to yourself.
But when you cut back
and you're only having a few drinks each week,
you open up enough gaps of clarity in your day
to notice how fucking terrible you feel
when you have a drink.
Even just one drink, one fucking drink,
and it can just
ruin a whole weekend.
The second thing that happened was that a lot
of new research on alcohol began to come out.
This research showed that alcohol is actually far worse
for us than anyone initially thought.
See, when I was young,
the conventional wisdom was that a few drinks each week
was actually good for you.
Hell, a glass of red wine was supposed to make you healthy,
but now, we have better data and better studies.
And, sad to say, the news is bad.
- No, God!
- It's all bad.
Every last drop of it.
Alcohol is bad.
- Wow.
I'll never drink another beer.
- Beer here.
- I'll take 10.
- Not only is it bad for you that day or that week,
but if you're a consistently heavy drinker
like I was for many, many years,
it can take up to a year for your body to completely reset.
- Alcohol is kind of a double hit.
It's causing changes in our brain circuitry
and neurochemistry, that at the time
in which we're inebriated are detrimental,
and it's causing changes in neurocircuitry
that persist long past the time
in which we're experiencing the feeling
of being tipsy or drunk.
If people are ingesting alcohol chronically,
even if it's not every night,
there are well recognized changes in increased stress
when people are not drinking,
diminished mood and feelings of wellbeing
when people are not drinking,
and changes in the neural circuitry that cause people
to drink even more in order to get just back to baseline
before they ever started drinking in the first place.
- But the final thing and perhaps the most important thing,
I left New York and I moved to LA.
It is impossible to overstate how big of a deal
this move had on my day-to-day health.
Everything in New York revolves around bars,
restaurants, parties, and shows.
LA, on the other hand, is in many ways the opposite.
First off, you have to spend hours
in your car to get anywhere,
so you can't really drink that much in the first place.
Second of all, the weather is perfect all the damn time
and there are beaches and mountains like 20 minutes away.
So you have healthy, fun activities in the sun
that require energy and clarity
and getting up in the morning.
Suddenly hangovers actually have social costs and downsides.
Throw on top of that,
the fact that everyone is so goddamn beautiful
and healthy here, and yeah,
you start to feel a little bit weird
when you order a double rye old fashioned
at 5:30 on a Tuesday.
And by weird, I mean people look at you
like you're a fucking degenerate.
Finally, everything reached ahead last summer.
I remember I went to an event
and it was event I signed up for and paid for.
The first night, I ended up hanging out at the bar
with a few guys that I had met
and just got absolutely plastered,
like just fucking shit-faced.
And I was so drunk, I couldn't get up
and go to the event the next day.
So I gave it up end of July last year.
Initially I was gonna do three months.
The three months was so amazing that I was like,
"Okay, I'm gonna go to the end of the year."
And so my goal for 23 is to actually do all
of 2023 without a drink.
One year's worth of alcohol, like that, ran through my body.
It's pretty crazy.
Okay, let's talk about the benefits of quitting alcohol
and why you should quit too.
First, there were the obvious benefits.
I lost some weight.
I slept like a baby.
Date nights with the wife got much, much cheaper.
But there were some unexpected benefits as well
that took me by a little bit of a surprise.
Number one, less insecurity.
I actually began to notice this
when I cut back drinking only to a few times per month.
The two to three days after I would drink,
I would be more emotional the next couple days.
I would get crankier, more excited, more embarrassed.
But since quitting drinking entirely,
I find that I am on an incredibly even keel.
This has been an unexpected boon
for my productivity and work.
There's much less energy being spent
on trying to manage my own emotions
and much more energy being invested into creativity.
Number two, more clarity around my values and priorities.
Back when I used to drink a lot, I would get excited
about three or four different project ideas
in any given week.
I'd feel anxiety and FOMO if I passed up opportunities.
I would dedicate myself to a new idea,
only to start questioning that idea a few days later.
I would ride this rollercoaster of emotion.
One day feeling like I was doing exactly
what I was meant to be doing,
and then the next, having a complete existential crisis
that I was wasting my time.
Now, I have a handful of goals
that I know I wanna accomplish and I focus on them.
I say no to all conflicting opportunities
and there's no drama, no bullshit.
- No more bullshit!
(audience applauding)
- Number three, fewer but better friends.
In my twenties, I drank alcohol at social events
to bury my anxiety.
In my thirties, I drank to bury my boredom.
The epiphany I had when I stopped drinking is that
if I'm bored when hanging out with certain people,
I should simply stop being friends with those people.
For some reason, this thought never occurred to me
in the 15 years that I was drinking,
but now that I'm sober,
it seems like the most obvious fucking thing in the world.
It goes without saying,
if you need to drink to enjoy a person or a thing,
you don't actually enjoy that person or thing,
and you should stop doing both.
Sober socializing is definitely a case
of quality over quantity, and I like it that way.
Number four, changed hobbies and interests.
For years, I thought I was really passionate
about food and fine dining.
Turns out, I just like getting drunk at restaurants.
I thought I loved the theater and live shows.
Turns out, a lot of them aren't as entertaining
when you're sober.
I thought I liked certain events
and networking groups and parties.
Turns out, sober Mark would rather be home.
Overall, from the outside,
my life probably appears a lot more boring and dull,
but strangely, I'm way more satisfied and happy.
Number five, better sex.
This is a strong pipe,
like a strong, firm, solid pipe.
Definitely stronger than my old pipe.
Wife seems very happy with this pipe.
(chill music)