'The Average Drinker Suffers The MOST!' Andy Ramage On How Alcohol Steals Our Time & Productivity

0:01I am so glad you could join us. I'm your host, Mo Gaudet This podcast is nothing more than a conversation between two good friends sharing inspiring life stories and perhaps some nuggets of wisdom along the way This is your invitation to slow down with us Welcome to Slow Mo

0:34Welcome back. My guest today is Andy Ramage, who is a professional footballer until age 23. After getting injured, he, you know, like changes his career a little. So he opens two major brokerage firms that become very successful and in the process becomes the almost the godfather, the biggest advocate, if you want, of alcohol free living. He's an author and an activist, if you want, for the topic, and definitely one of the world-renowned coaches on how we can live alcohol-free. I am not familiar with alcohol-free topics because I have never had a drink in my life, not a single one, other than one glass of wine that my dad gave me when I was 11.

1:22Yes, dad, it worked. and for that I'm actually quite curious not only about how to live alcohol free but why we live with alcohol in the first place and I am so grateful that you're here I'm I like very much what I read and learned about what you do before we talk about the sort of the purpose-driven part of your life I'm very curious about that shift I was a prof not professional but in Egyptian terms I was playing for the national team until I was 23. I was also injured. And not football, but handball. And then I remember vividly at the time how immersed I was in it to the point that when it was not in my life anymore, it just felt completely confusing.

2:08For you to be able to leave that and jump and do something else so successfully is actually quite interesting. Yeah, and we see this all the time, actually. I do a lot of work with athletes now. So I'm also part of the Professional Footballers Association's business school, which have just opened for former players. Because the stats around professional athletes in general that retire for injury or through natural causes are terrible. You know, depression, bankruptcy, divorce, extremely elevated rates. And I think you're describing something that I went through there was a sense of loss. You know, I signed with my professional club when I was 10 years of age.

2:47No way. So my life was mapped out. I was always going to be a professional footballer. And I became a professional footballer. And that was my life, my love, my passion, my meaning, my purpose. And then it's gone. Yeah, your identity, your whole self is gone. Everything, gone. You know, you lose your meaning, your purpose, your means of income. Correct. Your identity overnight in a flash, either through injury or through retirement. So I think that's why so many people find themselves lost. And having gone through that at a young age, the irony is like many of these things, I think it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

3:18You know, I think it made me so resilient because it was really hard to come back from that. But I did. And, you know, that then I think made it so much easier for me later in my business career, having been through that process. Have you actually gone to the depths of it? Like, you know, rock bottom, depression? I wouldn't say it was anything clinical, but there was definitely that sense of loss. And it happened to me twice. So I got released at age 18. So at 18, I had to more or less queue up like the ex-factor outside the manager's office. That's how brutal it was. And they were either going to make my dreams or break my dreams.

3:56Because I was going to walk in there and I was going to become a full professional. Or I was out on the streets. And we queued up literally one by one. We went in, lads coming out, you know, big, strong, young men in tears. Dreams shattered or dreams made. Mine were shattered. I was told I wasn't good enough. So that's in my story. I then came back from that and said, you know, I'm going to prove you wrong, which I did. And then found another professional club and played in the league and scored in the lead and achieved all those dreams and then got injured. So I went through it twice in the space for about two or three years.

4:29But again, back to my point earlier, I think, you know, those massive monumental moments in your life very often are the making of you if you come out the other side of them, you know, with the right mentality. And I think I did. What do you think is the difference between those who completely collapse and those who actually collect themselves and reinvent themselves? yeah it's only now I think I can look back and understand that and a lot of that goes back to what you've done brilliantly through unstressable and stoic wisdom I think it's the stories that we tell ourselves the narrative that we put around those moments it could be a narrative of I'm not good enough I'm never gonna earn any money again you know I didn't focus on school I'm doomed or it could be actually I've just had this incredible experience and it's probably going to be a massive of a door opener for me because I've achieved something that most boys and girls would absolutely love to and I think yes there was a bit of loss for me but then I bounced back quite quickly from that and I maybe that was a natural thing for me in my mind but it was very much I've just had this brilliant experience now I'm gonna go and really enjoy myself because I don't have to worry about trading for football anymore okay I'm gonna stop you there because you make it sound easy and by the way it is brilliant it is actually the way to look at it and it doesn't matter if it's football or a breakup or a job or a book that you write and everyone hates or whatever right we all get those experiences but you know some of us on a breakup will stop and say my life has ended and some of us will go like woohoo I'm free right I can I can sort of go out again and and find myself in another experience, right?

6:08And there is, I don't know, I mean, I don't know what defines someone who becomes this and someone who becomes that. It's not just the stoic view of like, this was wonderful, let me start again. I think there is a deeper thing about maybe comfort with what's familiar versus love for adventure or change. change maybe it's a bit of a of a well you know doesn't feel comfortable here so I'm going to leave where while you know like my my wonderful wife is a therapist so she teaches me all of that stuff all the time how some of us will go like look it feels like shit right here but it's familiar I'm I'm okay with familiar regardless of how bad it feels but there must be a secret ingredient something that makes you keep trying to change yeah I think humans in general are so scared of change as you described there people will stay in relationships that don't serve them because the fear of ending that relationship outweighs the pain of staying within it the same with people in careers we see that all the time yeah um w h ordon the brilliant uh poet and writer from many years ago a clip of what he says was we would rather die in our dread than change and i always love that old english way of saying it but it's so true people get stuck in their habitual behaviors in their careers in their relationships because the fear of change for a lot of people outweighs the fear of staying so maybe you know the adventurous part of me quite welcomed the opportunity to change and actually what it did it forced change within my life on numerous occasions so maybe that was something that helped me do with those and i think if there is a secret source to these things it is practicing change and i think a lot of adults especially get so comfortable they get so stuck in their their bubble as it were their safety blanket gets bigger and bigger and bigger and they're not used to change whereas i think when you become a bit more courageous as an adult and you take on new challenges and of course life's going to throw its own curveballs you actually become better at change which i think builds resilience it's interesting that you look at it as a skill almost like you know as practicing your your kick or something like that right and it really is quite true I think because when when you said that I looked at some parts of my life where you know I had a friend of mine most of my friends are math geeks like I am so so they he came to me one day and he said just out of the blue I have no idea why he said that he said oh by the way I was thinking about you and 63 percent of your life you've spent in hotels.

8:47And I'm like, why would you tell me that? Why did you even bother with the math? But then I sort of did the math myself. And at that time, it was very true, actually, because of my career and so on. And in a very interesting way, it's a very lonely life. In a very interesting way, it's a life where you have nothing that is repeated day over day, right? It's different people, different city, different bed, right? different working hours, different sleep patterns, different foods, different everything. And somehow when people look at my life now, which is also not a very comfortable life, they think you're mad for the amount of travel that you do.

9:26And I'm like, this is nothing. Like you have no idea how it used to be. It becomes so much easier. You sort of like almost develop a muscle. Yeah, I think like everything in life is a skill. I always put it like that in my mind, from confidence to change is a skill. I've just come back from Athens. and really to walk in the footsteps of Socrates, who I loved. And he has that real philosophy around the life unexamined. And a life worth living is one that is examined. And I think so many adults are stuck in that frame where they actually just don't ask themselves questions enough around their life and the way they're showing up or even doing the maths around the amount of time they're traveling and actually thinking, well, actually, that might be a good thing.

10:09It might not. I think too many lives go out unexamined. So again, back to my own personal philosophy, I love that. I love asking questions of myself and trying to figure out, is this the best way to do it? Is this optimal? I don't know. Unless we ask the questions. Big questions in your life right now. Actually, when you just said that, massive question in my head is, so I lived my creative life like an executive, which is so wrong. I see that now. So I am a creative. By definition, I'm no longer a business executive that people will show up at my office, you know, at certain times, be given 25 minutes for a meeting and then go.

10:50I may literally in this middle of this conversation, I may be inspired to write about something and I'll probably have to tell you, hold on, I really have to take a note of this, right? And it's just all so random. And that idea of living the life of a creative in the schedule or calendar of an executive has been killing me for a while. And for the last few months now, especially post my marriage and losing my mother and my brother and so on, it just starts to get you to think, how am I investing this valuable resource that's called time? right so that's the biggest question on my mind now funny to start questioning that at 57 but better than when you're 77 right absolutely what's your biggest question my biggest question at the moment i think is how can i optimize and thrive in this world and for me that's really important because having moved away from the world of broken into what i do you don't do that anymore No, I stepped away from that about four years ago.

11:51Man. Yeah. You're as nuts as I am. Yeah, I am. And at the time, I walked away from my biggest ever contract. It was, you know, multi-million pound contract. I still haven't really told my wife that, so hopefully she doesn't listen to me. I'm in a world of trouble. But it's worked out really well. So fortunately, if she does listen, it's not, yeah, it won't be too bad. But because it wasn't serving me, you know, I was asking those big questions that so many people don't ask of themselves. Is this serving me? Yes, income's amazing and all those things, but there's more. I always felt there was more than that.

12:27I looked around at my peers, my colleagues, broken bodies, broken minds, broken homes. I just had that real epiphany awakening of, what are we all doing? This is nuts. Yes, we're all getting paid all this money. Brilliant. But are we actually happy? And when I looked around, I didn't find many people that genuinely were. So I think I've been on that quest to optimize everything for the last 10 years, really, to live a life at its most fullest. And something actually came to me recently, a question that I'm asking, again, reflecting on those great philosophers of old. They had time. Yes, they had time to think.

13:05Yes. And so few people do. And that's why it's so important you keep doing what you're doing and I keep doing what I'm doing. because I think we're trying to carve out the time to think to be able to create the insights to be able to pass on to people that don't have the time to think. A hundred percent. I mean, this entire podcast is about this. It's about the idea of, you know, I could have probably built a bigger podcast talking about being a leader of a multi-billion dollar corporate and, you know, talking about business and innovation and creativity. And it's like, it's crap. Really, honestly, it's crap, right?

13:40I mean, in my mind, the idea of slowing down a little bit to reflect on something that actually matters, right? Not just another hundred dollars in your pocket is probably what life is all about. And it's really interesting how people don't see that. Yeah, I was with a friend recently on a walk and I shared an insight. I can't even remember what it was. And he paused and went, that's unbelievable. No one's ever explained that to me like that. And he went, but you've got time to think. I don't have time. And again, he just reiterated that point that I think those like ourselves have taken huge gambles in their life and walked away from big, you know, corporate careers, whatever it is to go and pursue these creative arts.

14:23I think the whole idea of that is that we can create time for ourselves to do that deep work. So what's your time practice? Like, how do you allow yourself free time? Morning routines for me are huge. And we'll get to it in a bit more detail, but removing alcohol was massive for me. Was it? It's such a time drain. Is it? It's such a time drain people don't realise. Not even the physical act of consuming alcohol. It's the fact that it will destroy your sleep, which we know medically, which means you wake up tired, groggy, or you certainly don't wake up earlier than normal. Your energy levels are lower.

15:01Often there's a, for me, there was a state of anxiety, anxiety that would hang around, which meant I was far from optimal. And therefore it shrunk my day. your productive diet time yeah i was on survival mode i was in that classic trap that you look around but you were not like a an alcoholic you were not no you call it the middle lane right the middle lane so just to define that for people listening that would be your average drinker really and the middle lane is sandwiched between those that would be physically dependent alcoholic let's just say and those that are abstinent everyone's in the middle lane who drinks on the odd occasion a few more at the weekend the occasional binge which is about 70 percent of the adult population about two billion people worldwide would fall into that bracket and i think that for me is the group that i always like to talk to because you know alcohol's been very black and white for years it's been very much you've either got a problem and maybe you don't drink and if you don't you do drink there's almost no questioning around that whole bit in the middle so everything I say really is aimed to the average drinker because I think it's the average drinker that's suffering in many ways the most because they're unaware completely unaware that those couple of drinks in the week those couple more at the weekend are having this huge impact on their time for example so for me when I removed alcohol suddenly I woke up before the alarm that never happened to me before I always wake up before yeah it's the same so I don't even have a I haven't had an alarm for years unless I've got a catch a fly I don't even I said the alarm but it never wakes it wakes me up before it yeah yeah yeah and i think that's a wonderful thing and what i started to find was the energy started to come back into my life the the time because i started to wake up early so i would get up at 5 a.m this was just a new thing to me it just didn't exist in my life i was like who gets up at 5 a.m so definitely not someone who's been drinking until until 1 a.m not in a million years can that happen and even for me it was wasn't even the day after it's the day after that and the day after that interesting so then if you start to do the maths and i did the reflective maths and i worked it out that if i was drinking once in the week and once at the weekend and it was taking me probably towards the end three and a half days in truth to recover from that that's a hundred percent of the time i was underperforming if i was to drink just twice during the week and i looked at that and went that can't be right i'm underperforming for me in every domain from the way i've shown up in my career my relationships my fitness so if i removed alcohol i got this glimpse of this optimal performance that was underneath and time was one of the huge huge wins that i got so that two hours a day bearing in mind i left school at 16 to pursue the dream of playing football i did a degree a master's degree started three different businesses wrote two books all before work it always happens before work yeah yeah that's incredible i never had a drink in my life yeah not a single one my dad played a very interesting trick on me when i was 11 he he gave me a glass of wine a red wine we were in egypt we had friends over they were drinking and they basically so i said what is this can i try this and like everyone was like about to pounce and say oh no that's you're too young for that which obviously would make me want it more my dad immediately was like yeah sure and pour the full glass for me right but then in a very gaudet family way said uh but you have to finish it right so i felt like crap i was really i can vividly remember how i went to their bedroom my mom and dad and i lay on the bed and i was in so much, you know, fog in my head and it warmed me up.

18:53You know, Egypt in summer is not the most cool place on earth. And I just hated the experience so much that the reverse psychology worked, never had a drink until I was a professional. I mean, professional in Egyptian terms. I played for the national team, athlete. So basically, I was very focused on my fitness and so on and by the time i also got injured i was 24 i think you know i had seen so many people drinking that i thought to myself maybe not me okay so i don't know the experience and please excuse my ignorance why do people do this it is an actual poison yeah when you get some distance from it you can really see that and i think it's very hard because my friend matt pink has a saying when you're inside the jar you can't read the label it's so true isn't it you have to get outside and that's why i'm such a big fan of people taking a break because genuinely the culture that you see most people start drinking in their teens and never stop never stop they drink for the rest of their life and like i described even once or twice a week you're underperforming in every domain and i think people's new normal is just so ingrained and enthused with alcohol our culture at large you know people couldn't imagine a christmas period without alcohol yeah couldn't imagine going on holiday and not drinking couldn't imagine going to a concert or a birthday without alcohol it's so ingrained in our society but clearly there must be some upside otherwise people wouldn't do i mean they say a glass of wine with a day is like very good for your heart Yeah, which is total nonsense.

20:38Is it? Oh, it has to be because, not to get too technical, but alcohol is a group one carcinogen alongside asbestos radiation. Is that true? It's true. And it's been identified as a group one carcinogen for 38 years, the last 38 years. So to try and say through research that somehow that could be good for you is complete nonsense. It's the same as saying, if you swim this 100-meter swimming pool, it's quite good for you because there's aerobic exercise in there. But what we haven't told you, it's feeding time and it's full of ravenous sharks. It's the same thing, isn't it? It's completely ludicrous.

21:20I mean, so much of that research, which frustrates me, is sponsored by alcohol firms. Of course it is. Of course. But the fact is, if it's a number one carcinogen, it doesn't matter what they say through that research. They can dress it up all they like. Like that thing that's in it is a cancer-causing toxin. It is a toxin. I mean, it's like those old ads and movies where the doctors of the world were always holding a cigarette in their hand. It's like somehow convincing us that because they're doctors, they know well and they're still choosing to smoke. I think it's the same. It's motivated by an industry that's making a lot of money and basically trying to tell you, yeah, it's good for you.

21:59Yeah, and what's happening, which is really exciting, people are starting to wake up to it. as they did with smoking. And I'm, you know, to set my stall out, I'm not anti-alcohol as such, far from it, but I'm really pro-awareness. And at the moment, everyone is aware about tobacco and their health, and if they decide to smoke, great, that's their choice. Whereas at the moment, most people are completely unaware about alcohol's relationship in their life, not just from a health standpoint. And my approach is very much not around sort of hitting people over the head with the health stats and facts.

22:31It's much more the fact that it's probably preventing them being optimal in their work, in their athletic performance. If we look at the average person that drinks, again, the average drinker, and they're honest with themselves, the number one thing that gets in the way of them being consistent in terms of their health, activity, exercise is alcohol. You know, how many gym sessions, spin classes, great intentions get cancelled the day after because we're going into a state of mini withdrawal? Even again as a middle lane drinker, what's the number one thing that disrupts most people's nutritional plans?

23:08Alcohol. What's the number one thing that disrupts our mental well-being? Alcohol. What's the number one thing that disrupts our performance, our temperament? It's alcohol. whole it's this sort of cultural blind spot that we have as average drinkers we're not again back to what socrates says when asking the questions is it serving us in the way it pretends to can i ask you to be honest and then say the upsides of it because there seems again it's a funny story but i you know after after my marriage my first wife for 27 years wonderful wonderful amazing woman we spent 27 years together she didn't drink i didn't drink so we never had alcohol at home.

23:47We didn't even get exposed to the topic at all. It wasn't a topic on our mind. You know, friends came over. When they came over to our place, there was no drinking. If we went to their place, we didn't really notice it. And then I started when, after we broke up, I started dating and the women I dated drank sometimes and man, they were so much nicer when they did. and I actually have to tell you openly when I was like oh maybe I want one of that like some of that right and and I tried but interestingly again which is very eye-opening for people when I tell them that when you haven't started at a young age was almost impossible for me to swallow it so I actually tried quite a few of every time someone one of them would order a drink I'd take it I'd smell it it smells really interesting i take a sip of it and the very first taste is incredible but then it just tastes so it's almost like your body's telling you don't swallow this this is poison right and i could never swallow it right but there must be benefits to it you know there definitely is social benefits to it there definitely is sort of like um you'd be a little isolated if you don't drink in a in a society when it's typical and so on what just for the devil's advocate point of view what do you think are the upsides yeah i think the social aspect is huge really for lots of people and i think we live in a society now that's so geared around alcohol yeah it's just got a lot easier though which is great because of alcohol-free drinks now i think has really changed the landscape over the last four or five years i'll come back to that but i think there's there is that social upside i think used in the right way and i think what's happened is if we look at this from an evolutionary sense i think we're drawn towards intoxication as humans i think we are is that true yeah and there's some great sort of research and literature around that talking about intoxication being almost the fourth drive of being human since time began i think we've been interested in altered states to find meaning and purpose whether that be mushrooms or certain plants and i think even for our evolution we've always had these opportunities to get intoxicated again be it mushrooms or plants or a harvest festival but it was very infrequent you know it might have been once a year a religious festival whereas what's happened over the last 30 years especially is 24 7 365 and i think our primitive brains cannot handle that at all so yes there's those pro-social benefits that i think at one point were probably really beneficial whereas now I think it's coming back to bite us because we live in this world that's so awash with alcohol that it's moved away from let's get together with a group of friends and have a drink that is probably in terms of its strength of lager much lower it used to be or wine and actually really come together and celebrate and connect whereas now people are plonked in front of the TV on a Tuesday night because they're a bit stressed drinking half a bottle of wine Wow.

26:56Like on their own or, you know, just with a partner but not communicating and then suffering all the knock-on consequences of that. So I think some of the natural upsides are not really being used in the way that they were once used as natural social glue, as it were. Also what it does, because it disrupts our neurochemistry. You know, it's a drug like all the other drugs. Is it an addictive drug? Would you consider it that? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there's some really interesting research from a guy called Professor David Nutt. Professor David Nutt, about 12, 15 years ago, was the drugs and alcohol advisor to the UK government.

27:30And he runs some really interesting research. He's just a scientist. He looks at all the drugs, legal and illegal. So heroin, crack cocaine, alcohol, the full list, ecstasy, and did research as a researcher for the government. And he scored them all from one to 100, with 100 being completely lethal and one being totally safe. And of course, the government funded this research, assuming that all the horrible, naughty drugs were going to be really high on the scale and alcohol would probably be very low. So he runs his research, he presents his research, and they scored the amount of 100, 100 being most lethal.

28:06Crack cocaine was about 52. Ecstasy was something like a 10. No way. Alcohol was 72. It was the highest of all of them. In terms of? damage to individual and society at large. 72 it scored on the scale. So obviously that wasn't the information the government wanted. And this is all in the literature. Professor David Nutt was probably sacked by the UK government because it didn't really portray the message that they was hoping it would portray, that the illegal ones would be the really dangerous ones and Alcar wouldn't. Three million people a year die from Alcar. Three million people. Every year.

28:43And most of those... Because they kill themselves or they kill others. like the damage to themselves. Damage to themselves. But alcohol is connected to almost about 40 % of most violent crime. I mean, the stats around alcohol. 40 %? Of violent crime are horrific if you actually look into it. It's incredible. What they said recently was that if alcohol was reintroduced today, it would never, ever be legalized. It just couldn't because it's a carcinogen. Yet we live in this world that's completely awash with it. But it does carry those perceived benefits of social glue. When it disrupts our neurochemistry, what it does, it overstimulates a neurotransmitter called GABA inside the brain.

29:27And you have two neurotransmitters that are like yin and yang, GABA and glutamate. GABA calms the system, glutamate excites the system. So when you drink alcohol, it attacks you. It's like temporary brain damage is the truth. But this is back to that Socrates moment. It's like no one ever asked themselves that question, do they? No one ever, anyone that drinks never actually drinks and thinks, I wonder actually what's happening, why I feel this way. No, I'm sure no one's or very few people have ever thought, actually, what is happening? What is happening? It's like temporary brain damage. It attacks you at the neurochemical level, overstimulates a neurotransmitter called GABA, which calms you, which creates this sense of relaxation.

30:07So I think that's why a lot of people drink. So it makes you more relaxed socially because you're starting to calm somewhat. but what's going on there first and foremost it starts to shut down your prefrontal cortex so as you probably know that's the bit that makes us human exactly the logic part of our so that that's the first bit that's shut down so i always liken it to you know that lovely evolutionary chart where you've got the ape and eventually it goes to that lovely like man or woman in a suit yeah it just takes you back a step backwards i don't want to go backwards on that chart you know and that's why you end up saying things or doing things that you would that are ape like you would never normally do so hold on let me describe this basically the moment when someone's drinking he or she is basically saying let me ingest this toxin so that i cause myself some drain brain damage that will make me an ape again yeah in a roundabout way there you go i couldn't describe it better myself but no one's doing that self-investigative work they're just thinking oh i feel a bit squiffy a bit different i've changed my state and i think alcohol is brilliant for that it changes people's state very quickly from a stress state and they're like now i can have a drink and i can relax but so do lots of other things help us relax and change state and they don't carry with them all the negative consequences even forget the medical side of it the fact that it will destroy your sleep the fact that you might do or say something you would never normally do and you might wake up with a sense of shame or regret or it might mean that you underperform a little bit in your relationship the following day because you're a bit tired a bit snappy a bit grumpy you might have a bit of low-grade anxiety so you don't make the sales calls you would normally make the knock-on consequences to people's lives are so dramatic yet very often back to my i think overarching point there's just that lack of awareness we've just not seen it we're not talking about it yeah it's funny because then you know what my other sometimes i i really think deeply about this because it wasn't that my life was always the calm and happy and happiness teacher type of person i went through some very tough times in my life.

32:26And I'll tell you very openly, sometimes I associate my ability to teach that stuff to not having had the escape route through alcohol or drugs that would make me not face them, right? In a very interesting way, when times were tough. And I remember one time in my life, early 2000s, where I sat in front of my fish tank and, you know, something was really bothering me. and I was basically telling myself, maybe it's time to start drinking, okay, just because I just don't want to deal with this right now. And I didn't. As I said, I mean, I somehow never managed to swallow it anyway. And I have to say being stuck in it to actually work through it is the reason why now I'm calm and peaceful most of the time, because I don't rely on an external agent to outsource my depression or my anxiety or my unhappiness to.

33:25Over time, it's very difficult at the beginning, but then over time you learn the skills to deal with it without the escape, without the drug. This is such an important topic, and I've always wondered about that because for many years I didn't do that. I turned to alcohol for stressful days, for tough times, for bereavements, whatever it might be. I had this thing in my life that was ubiquitous and pressurized in our society that i could look at and legal and wonderful and on the in the supermarket next and everyone was doing it so i like and the reason i started drinking i was 13 terrible my young brain and i wanted to talk to girls as you do and i was a bit awkward in that and quite shy kid in many ways so i drunk alcohol and it was like this elixir all of a sudden i could talk to girls which my little brain would have lit up like a christmas tree and gone wow whatever you just did then do that again yeah because this thing that's really important to you talking to girls when you drink that stuff it becomes easy so i think this is the story for so many adults they make that early association with alcohol in their brain and then when those moments of pressurized moments it's like oh i know what to do it's almost becomes habitual in many ways i can drink alcohol and i'm going to feel a bit better about this situation and i always reflect on that and think had i not had alcohol i would have had to have figured that out at some point and i would have figured it out it would have been much harder for me but i would have trained myself at some point to talk to girls interesting yeah and then i would have kept that for the rest of my life that skill of talking to girls without alcohol i had to wait till i was mid 30s happily married and all those things when i removed alcohol i had to retrain myself again to deal with stressful events to socialize and i liken it to yourself and that's why this is a lovely conversation you had to do that organically yourself and it made you a stronger person for it i think so there's lots of people now that would drink and they become a bit of a slave to it even as a middle lane drinker because they haven't trained themselves to deal with those situations to have fun to socialize without it yeah again that's such an eye opener for me because I'm not the guy that dances at parties and weddings.

35:42I don't dance. And I never trained myself to do that. There's something in my young years where I was a really good dancer. And then I think the corporate world screwed with my mind. You know, when you're the manager of a few people, you want to always look like you're in control somehow. So I lost that rhythm. And a lot of people go like one drink and you'll be like Michael Jackson, honestly. And I'm like, but I don't need to be that way. And there is an interesting side of maybe if I want to be that, I should learn. I should just go take a dance class and basically become better at it. But you have to admit that this puts a lot of weight on trying to be alcohol-free because it's not just like I'm going to stop drinking, which honestly for a lot of people is a pleasure.

36:34But if you have one drink, it's nice. It's fun. And it's, you know, like there is little harm, even though there is a bit, but there is a lot of upside, right? But now you're saying, and by the way, also, it's not just that we're not going to remove the fun. You're going to have to train yourself to find the fun without it. I think that's probably the biggest motivator not to stop. Yeah, and this is the, it's so funny you picked up on the dancing thing. Yeah. Because my number one fear when I came to this, so, you know, mid thirties and classically, and I think this is a story for many people that drink in the middle lane.

37:10I wanted to optimize my performance. That's why I was in search of optimal performance. And I looked at nutrition and I was inconsistent with that because alcohol. I looked at movement. I looked at meditation. The last thing I ever considered removing was alcohol. It was so part of my identity. And I see this all the time. people are doing ice baths and they're doing all these wonderful things but yeah but the one thing they're not even considering is is alcohol which is the place where we should all begin in truth but my number one fear and i had lots of fears for example would my wife run off with the postman that still liked one of two drinks suddenly you're not that nice anymore like where's where's fun time four pints andy gone yeah you know i've got to stop telling that joke because my wife's like at one point the postman's going to listen to one of your podcasts and he's going to think he's got half a chance so but my biggest fear and this is true was how the hell am i going to dance at weddings that was my biggest fear and i always joke about it my number one fear was how am i going to do that as a you know middle-aged ginger guy i'm not even sure if that's legal let alone you know if that's going to be able to happen and i genuinely i joke about it but it's true in my mind it was like hold on but if i stop drinking it's not just a stopping drinking thing how can i do those things dance at weddings how am i going to be able to spend time with my friends and that fear back to what we said earlier that fear is so overwhelming for most people yeah that they're never courageous enough to make that change and for me that was the hardest part dealing with those going to the first wedding and not drinking and dancing did you dance i did i tell them to off basically yeah i've danced it's not pretty it's not nice to look at but it wasn't pretty when you were drinking i just didn't know because i was halfway back down that evolutionary chart i didn't notice um but i've done it now and i i've got a wedding this weekend coming up and i will deliberately just for me i i i don't do it for anyone else i do it for me i'll go and i'll throw some shapes on the dance floor but just to remind myself i can do challenging things you know and i've demonstrated to myself that i can have more fun than i've ever had whilst not drinking i'll tell you a nice story my friends my best friends are irish they all like a drink all the lads like a drink so when we get together we try and do something a bit different that's not just let's go to the pub like i did with them for years that's what we did and we enjoyed it you know i've got no regrets so we went on this trip to an island off the coast of ireland called the and we'd arranged mountain biking so the lads were arranging things for me to do really the usual story so we get off this little boat on this tiny island and it's typical irish weather sheet rain you cannot see for the rain it's half 10 in the morning the lads are like we can't do the mountain bike it the only place that's open is the pub i'm like you know my heart at 10 a.m in the morning oh no here we go and i don't blame them because there isn't anything open i sit down it's still raining two o 'clock rolls around they're singing in the pub they're on the chair you know the usual and it was fun up until that point and it was starting to not become fun anyway i see the clouds part the sun comes out so in my mind i'm ready to go they're finished for the day so i'm like right i'll find out where we're supposed to go but i couldn't tell them i was leaving because if i tell them i'm leaving i'm gonna get you know the rubber arm and the neck twist so i just walked out and i had no mountain bike i knew we were going to this place called dunangas fort which is like a spiritual three thousand year old fort in this little island so i just started to walk and i kept walking and i kept walking five hours later i find this fort in total solitude it's a tiny island there's only a hundred or so people on the island and i i happen upon this place and genuinely i think i had one of the most powerful experiences of my life it was it was a spiritual i'll describe as a spiritual moment i connected with something bigger than oneself it was never meant to be that way the solitude i was met with this sheer granite cliff face about 100 meters into the atlantic ocean the wind the spray obviously this ancient space anyway and i felt alive in a way that i probably never felt alive before i knew there was something bigger at play and as i left there and i walked back again on my own took me another night on six hours to get back smile beaming on my face i came back to the same pub and they were still there and they were still on the same table singing the same songs talking the same no that's such a powerful image yeah and it was you went out found one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of your life and they're singing the same songs and and and that would have been me and and that was that lovely moment of you know the joy of missing out you know you can tell yourself stories and go oh life's not going to be as much fun i'm going to miss out on all those events and i had a beautiful sliding doors moment of seeing where i would have been in that pub versus the experience that i had because i wasn't in that pub and for me that was again a ground shaking moment in my own did they even did they even notice that you were not there no of course they didn't once i disappeared are you serious no they were you know and that's again they're still my best friend i see them all the time you know i know how that feels when you're in that world and you're intoxicated with alcohol you've sort of lost connection with the you know broader thinking they knew i was safe i'm sure but yeah outside of that they would have had no real recollection of me not even being there i don't think so let's shift gears and summarize so far it's it's okay if you want to drink but you're missing out on a lot is what you're trying to say okay that there is another way where if you try if people are open to the idea of living without that thing all at all there is another life out there and that other life might be a little more difficult at the beginning but it's quite an interesting life once you've got the hang of it what should people do i mean if someone believes that they want to try this what should they do i think the best thing to do is to take a break a break what's a break so a break might be my preference would be 90 days okay 90 day break from alcohol as a middle lane drinker even if you're someone that drinks on the odd occasion why not give it a try um because i think you'll never know unless you try yeah back to a point i made earlier most people start drinking in their teens and then never stop yeah so what would it be just to give yourself a 90 day break with the right attitude and i think what i mean by attitude or mindset is you're not giving something up you're gaining all these incredible advantages you know will you have more time more energy yeah try it out sort of yeah like what would you have to lose i did a radio show recently with a guy called chris evans i'm not sure i love chris oh my god yeah he's wonderful so chris has just done a year alcohol free so invite me when did you go i met him in may last week oh so he was a year last week invited me on he's such an amazing guy actually he looks like he's so energetic and upbeat yeah and and he would have been in the 90s notorious for being quite a big drinker so for someone like that to take a break but the overwhelming benefit that he's noticed is a sense of peace a sense of calm and to share that you know will be so inspirational to so many people and that's back to my point that you won't know unless you try you know um by taking a break if you're a middle lane drinker so but you're not saying taking a break like you know uh drink once a week that's different yeah i'm so a break of abstinence complete yeah no drink for 28 days to 90 days there are some practices like dry i don't know dry january or dry whatever is that i don't know which are the seasons for that yeah but you're saying dry three months i prefer 90 days because i think in 90 days you're more likely going to have the stressful day you might have a wedding in there you might have the part you know yeah you might have to overcome your irish friends will come over once or twice or at the wedding you know you might have to throw some dance moves and see what it's like to live a life.

45:44And what I believe, and I really believe, and this was certainly true in my case, I think I was leaving close to 50 % of my optimal best self on the table due to alcohol, my middle lane relationship with alcohol, 50%. And I think so many people are leaving 10, 20, 30, 40 % of their optimal self, whatever that looks like for them, their most peaceful self, their most energetic self you know their relationships their career unbeknownst to them because of their average relationship with alcohol so just imagine if you were to take a break and you got 10 back or 20 back or 30 back like what would that be like and i think if people have that lived experience then they don't need me to tell them yeah they know what it feels like to be alcohol free and maybe they are better at being a parent maybe they are better in their career what a gift that would be to just give yourself as an experiment three months of your entire life just give it a try do you think they'll be facing challenges like are there again i'm not a drinker so i don't know would there be withdrawal symptoms would there be like would you advise them to to meditate more to run in the morning any any tips that makes it easier to to leave for 30 for 90 days yeah i think i'm always talking to the middle lane as well to be It's the average drinker.

47:04So if someone identifies as alcoholic or dependent on alcohol, to stop too abruptly can be lethal. Oh. Yeah. So to stop drinking if you have become physically dependent in extreme cases can be lethal. Okay. So if anyone listening experiences any unwanted symptoms or identify or are worried that they might have become physically dependent, it's best to sort medical advice before you stop. So it's safer to withdraw from crack cocaine than it is alcohol. No way. Which is completely nuts because crack cocaine is a stimulant. Alcohol is a depressant on the central nervous system. I mean, these are the things we just don't, you know, people are just unaware of.

47:42Oh my God, that's so eye-opening. And cocaine is advertised as one of the most addictive substances out there. Yeah, and I think people don't realise this. Of course, for the average drinker, it's perfectly safe. You might go through the odd, you know, slight tiredness, headaches, like you do if you remove other... Coffee. Yeah, for example, and I have that with coffee. So most people will be absolutely fine. But just to say that out loud. But I think with that right mindset, one of the great things you can do is leverage the time that you get. Better sleep. Everyone wants to sleep better. People will be amazed how their sleep improves.