One Tuesday morning I was in Bangkok leaving my boutique hotel to go to the gym.
This was around 8 in the morning. I was near a very busy intersection and near a part of town where a lot of “falang” (white people) like to party.
This morning as I turned from my soi (side street) onto the main street I saw a chubby white man passed out on the sidewalk.
Obviously he had been drinking the night before and had “one too many.”
As I walked past his bloated body he started urinating on himself.
He was wearing khaki colored shorts that quickly turned dark with urine stains.
In broad daylight, a grown man was passed out on a busy sidewalk peeing on himself.
I watched with total disgust and then went on my merry way.
I've never pee-peed on myself on a busy sidewalk in another country, but I have had alcohol several times.
I don't care for it and I'll explain why…
#1 - You become a fool when you drink.
When you drink you turn into a retard, a devil, a hooligan, and a suicidal maniac all in one.
When you get drunk, the real you vanishes and the devilish you appears.
They say a drunk man says a sober man's thoughts. I say those people are drunkards. Just because a sober man has a thought doesn't mean he believes them.
We all have thoughts all day long. Some we believe, some we don't.
Thoughts are not our beliefs.
As any writer will tell you that the fight against writer's block is a fight against our own thoughts. We constantly have thoughts to “quit writing now, finish it later” but we have to push past these lying thoughts.
Buddhists will tell you that the mind is a liar, and is always trying to get you to do something you shouldn't.
When we drink we aren't expressing our true beliefs, we just don't have a filter on our thoughts. This is a terrible thing and makes you look like a fool in the eyes of all who are not drunk.
#2 - Drinking kills more relationships than anything else in the world.
You always do some stupid when you drink and it doesn't only affect you.
Drinking affects everybody around you. Your friends, family, and most of all your children.
Any man who drinks in front of his kids isn't a man. Same for any mother.
Nearly all child abusers are also alcohol abusers. Any father or mother who drinks alcohol is despicable to me and I spit on them. Ack-too!
I already told you, drinking turns you into a devil and when you get drunk your friends and family get to see you as a devil.
So many men are drunken devils that eventually the wife has to leave them. These men go on to cry about “divorce rape and child theft” and this and that but the reality is it was their own fault.
If you drink, expect bad things to happen.
#3 - You sleep terribly when you're drunk.
I've heard many drunks say they drink at night to help them sleep and I have to give them my “skeptical eyes.”
When you're drunk, your sleep is TERRIBLE! HORRENDOUS!
Drinking alcohol before bed is linked with more slow-wave sleep patterns called delta activity. That’s the kind of deep sleep that allows for memory formation and learning.
At the same time, another type of brain pattern—alpha activity—is also turned on. Alpha activity doesn’t usually happen during sleep, but rather when you’re resting quietly. Together the alpha and delta activity in the brain after drinking may inhibit restorative sleep.
It can interrupt your circadian rhythm… After drinking, production of adenosine (a sleep-inducing chemical in the brain) is increased, allowing for a fast onset of sleep. But it subsides as quickly as it came, making you more likely to wake up before you’re truly rested.
Another reason people get lower-quality sleep following alcohol is that it blocks REM sleep , which is often considered the most restorative type of sleep. With less REM sleep, you’re likely to wake up feeling groggy and unfocused.” (source)
Drunk sleep is the worst sleep in the world.
It feels like something is terribly wrong when you sleep drunk.
That's because when you sleep drunk, something IS terribly wrong because…
#4 - Alcohol is a poison.
Yes, alcohol is a poison not a “love potion.”
Alcohol is literally poison and the feeling of being drunk is the feeling of your brain cells dying.
Alcohol is a toxin that kills cells such as microorganisms, which is why we use it to preserve food and sterilise skin, needles etc.
Alcohol kills humans too. A dose only four times as high as the amount that would make blood levels exceed drink-driving limits in the UK can kill.
The toxicity of alcohol is worsened because in order for it to be cleared from the body it has to be metabolised to acetaldehyde, an even more toxic substance.
Any food or drink contaminated with the amount of acetaldehyde that a unit of alcohol produces would be immediately banned as having an unacceptable health risk.” (source)
#5 - Alcohol is massively addictive.
Alcohol is probably more addictive than pain pills and heroin.
A study in The Lancet concluded that alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered.
The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs also ranked alcohol as three times more harmful than cocaine or tobacco because it is so widely used. (source)
Curiously I have never felt the pull towards alcohol that so many others have.
I've kept a bottle of vodka in my fridge for over a year without even thinking of opening it.
I've gone out to social dinners, ordered a beer, and took only one single sip from the beer in the entire evening.
I know so many other people who cannot even have one drink because when they do, they will want to keep drinking until they black out.
But I have noticed that if I drink on alcohol 2 nights in a row, I will absolutely feel the desire to drink it on the 3rd night. I have to get past this craving and by the 4th night I'm back to normal.
For me, the cravings are easy to non-existent but for many drinkers, the cravings are intense. This should be a big warning: Anything that causes intense cravings is NOT GOOD for you.
#6 - On alcohol you completely lose control.
Alcohol causes people to go insane, lose their jobs, lose their health, lose their family, abuse their family, and go to jail.
Alcohol is involved in more homicides across the United States compared to other substances, like heroin and cocaine. In fact, about 40 percent of convicted murderers had used alcohol before or during the crime.
Excessive drinking can lead to more severe forms of violence that can quickly escalate to extremely dangerous situations.
The short- and long-term effects of alcohol blur a person’s mental state, contributing to an increased risk of committing violent crimes.
There are strict legal punishments in place for homicide convictions and can land you in jail for many years, or even the rest of your life.” (source)
It would be a real nightmare to wake up from a alcohol induced black out and find out you killed somebody and now will spend your life in jail.
Yikes.
Alcohol will do it, too, because you have no control over yourself when you're drunk and you don't even remember what happens when you're too drunk.
Alcohol is the worst thing you could ever partake in.
#7 - Alcohol kills your brain as well as your body.
The amount of damage alcohol causes to the brain is incomprehensible. Those little moments you don’t remember from the crazy night before – that’s temporary amnesia. Keep it up and you can develop Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome (WKS), a memory-impairing, vision-and-speech-affecting, seizure-causing disorder. You won’t be able to form new memories. You’ll mumble involuntarily. Your eyes will twitch constantly.
And that’s not all. Drinking releases excess GABA and dopamine, two naturally occurring neurotransmitters. GABA is responsible for calming the brain down, and dopamine is responsible for pleasure, a part of the brain’s reward system. Too much of these neurotransmitters can lead to shortness of breath, high blood pressure, increased heart rate, night terrors, delusions, hallucinations, spasms, and increased levels of both aggression and depression.
Drinking also releases endorphins, which are similar to neurotransmitters except they carry natural pain-reducing chemicals instead of ‘messages’. Endorphins are normally released upon rewarding actions, such as exercise, sexual activity, eating, etc. Too much endorphin release can cause depression, lower sex drive, low testosterone, infertility, and extreme fatigue, among other complications.” (source)
#8 - Every time I've ever had alcohol I've felt worse, not better.
We have this delusion that alcohol helps you celebrate but literally every time I've ever had alcohol I've felt nearly instantly worse.
The only way to get past this is to keep drinking and get black out drunk.
If people would actually pay attention to their own minds and bodies they would notice that when they drink, they feel like they've been poisoned.
Alcohol is a long-term depressant, not a long-term mood enhancer. Those initial happy feelings are soon replaced by others…
Alcohol is a depressant, which means it can disrupt that balance, affecting our thoughts, feelings and actions – and sometimes our long-term mental health. This is partly down to ‘neurotransmitters’, chemicals that help to transmit signals from one nerve (or neuron) in the brain to another.
The relaxed feeling you might experience if you have an alcoholic drink is due to the chemical changes alcohol has caused in your brain. For some, a drink can help them feel more confident and less anxious. That’s because it’s starting to depress the part of the brain we associate with inhibition.
But, as you drink more, more of the brain starts to be affected. It doesn’t matter what mood you’re in to start with, when high levels of alcohol are involved, instead of pleasurable effects increasing, it’s possible that a negative emotional response will take over. Alcohol can be linked to aggression you could become angry, aggressive, anxious or depressed. (source)
How much alcohol can you safely drink?
None.
It's like asking how much gasoline or paint you can safely huff. The answer is none.
“Victor, how much meth-amphetamine can I safely smoke?”
None, silly. Same for alcohol.
They have a saying that goes “one too many” but actually even one is too many.
“But wine is healthy”
No it isn't.
Wine gets you drunk and you love to be drunk because you're a subhuman.
There is nothing healthy about it.
People in the past used to say smoking cigarettes was healthy too. It isn't healthy, but they were so heavily addicted that they wanted it to be healthy.
“But my doctor says a little wine is ok?!”
Well, if your doctor says it it must be true, right?
I'm not so sure about that.
So sorry for waking you to reality but your doctor doesn't care about your health as much as he cares about his wealth.
And here is the FACT regarding your health: Alcohol will kill your health. DEAD!
“But the government guidelines say we can drink XYZ amount of alcohol?!”
Don't make me laugh at your government guidelines.
Government guidelines also have sugar as the suggested base of our diet.
Your health is in your hands.
When you listen to government health advice instead of listening to your own body, well, guess what happens.
When you displace control, you get sick.
All people who are not proactive about their own health will end up sick and dead before their time.
How I completely got rid of all alcohol cravings
When I cut out all carbohydrates from my diet and started to eat only animal products a curious thing happened….
Any mild desire I ever had for alcohol completely vanished.
Without sugar in my system (all carbohydrates are sugar, and so is alcohol) the desire for alcohol is less than zero.
After I went through carbohydrate withdrawal, and after I started eating just one meal a day, all negative desires disappeared from my mind.
Poof.
With total mental clarity I can see that alcohol is a poison and I have absolutely no attraction to it. It pretends to offer you happiness but when you imbibe it offers only misery.
I have noticed that every time I craved alcohol in the past it was usually when I ate some pizza or burgers or other junk foods.
When my diet is clean (and by clean I mean tons of cholesterol and saturated fat and zero carbohydrates) I have absolutely no desire for alcohol at all.
When I fixed my diet, literally all things in my life and health became abundantly clear.
Since the day I started eating a natural diet, the desire for foods and drugs that cause harm have completely vanished.
I could look at a tray of cakes, donuts, pastries, pastas, pizza, craft beer, champagne, wine, cocaine, reefer, pain pills, and orange juice and think to myself…
“Yuck!”
And then walk on by.
I feel too good to ever imbibe on chemicals that make me feel down (sugar, alcohol etc.).
It is such a wonderful feeling to be free and clear from nearly all vices that I cannot help but share this wonderful news with all who have ears to hear.
I make no money from sharing this information, not even a dime, but when you feel good you want everyone to feel good.
When you feel bad, you want everyone to feel bad (which is why alcoholics always want you to have a drink with them, drugs users always want you to toke with them etc.)
There are so many reasons to never touch alcohol and there are no reasons to imbibe (unless you enjoy turning into a devil).
At the very least, if you take my advice and give up alcohol, you will never urinate on yourself on a busy sidewalk on a Tuesday morning.
And if you're a businessman and want to succeed wildly, I suggest you take the advice of the great P.T. Barnum…
No man can succeed in business unless he has a brain to enable him to lay his plans, and reason to guide him in their execution, so, no matter how bountifully a man may be blessed with intelligence, if the brain is muddled, and his judgment warped by intoxicating drinks, it is impossible for him to carry on business successfully.”
Woo-wee.
That's a whole bunch of reasons to never drink poison.
Don't you think?
Until next time.
Your man,
-Victor Pride
When I was a little kid, my dad gave me a beer to taste how it is like. I hated the taste of it, it was disgusting.
I asked, “How can you drink such a thing, dad?”
He replied, “I gave you this to never forget how bad it tastes.”
I never liked alcohol. I sometimes drank it in teenage years but never liked the taste of it. Because I could never forget the awful taste that it gave me the first time…
When you are a kid, you have a perfect sensation about what is good or bad intuitively.
If someone says that alcohol tastes good, they are addicted. It is clear that they lost the true enjoyment.
Basically, these people are sick.
You can give the best food to a sick person and he can deny it easily. Why? He lost the sensation.
Alcohol makes some part of your brain dumb and you start to act unconsciously.
That makes people forget for a moment what kind of misery they live in.
Like most addictions, alcohol addiction is just a result of a weak mind.
It’s pathetic to drink vine just because someone says it is healthy. That healthy part comes because it is made from grapes. Go fucking eat some grape and you get more nutrients without the poison.
Whatever, this comment has become longer than necessary.
Great article, Vic.
For the record, the part of wine that everyone keeps claiming is healthy is called resveratrol.
You can easily buy resveratrol capsules extracted from grape seeds and get the antioxidant properties of more than 100 glasses of wine without any of the drawbacks of alcohol.
As soon as you ingest alcohol, the very first thing your body does is try to eliminate it. That pretty much says it all. Great article.
On a side note Victor, you should write an article on the benefits of quitting caffeine. You’ve alluded to the fact on several occasions how you no longer consume it and feel better without it, I and many others would love to see an in-depth article discussing why.
Thanks again,
“Coffee should be given up, coffee makes one gloomy”
(Friedrich Nietzsche - Ecce Homo)
Do you think its too late to “make it” in blog business at 2019 or do you think the time is just ahead?
Do you think blog business is honorable business, compared to real jobs such as construction, medical field, science etc.
It’s never too late to make it if you’re willing to put in the work. There are less and less good blogs out there, everyone is tweeting and instagram storing etc. Very rarely are people writing deep about subjects. I think there is still great potential in blogging.
Any business where you help other people and enrich their lives is as honorable as it gets.
Blogging is still gold. There are billions of people out in the world that are looking for answers. Ask yourself how many are providing the answers. Then ask yourself how many are providing great answers. That’s your answer.
i love the article etc but you put on the other page that a glass of wine or a beer is fine with a meal i know many proper 100 percent healthy people proper athletes and they even drink i think a couple of beers on the weekend or on occasions special ones and these people are fanatic about health these people actually dedicated there whole lives to the gym im sure a treat now and then wont hurt you vic right? got to have a little bit of a life
“got to have a little bit of a life”
People who drink alcohol do it to escape life. Real life is right here, in your right mind, intoxicant free. Only the sober man is living a real life.
Alcohol is forbidden in the religion of Islam and All praise to Allah The most High and have many negative consquenses.
Great article Mr. Pride. Keep the work going on.
Alcohol as well as smoking, drugs and coffee/stimulants are forbidden in the Mormon religion. All praise goes to Heavenly Father and His prophet Joseph Smith.
Good afternoon Vic,
I am a Brazilian lawyer, who reads assiduously his understandings.
Another issue of alcohol is hereditary. Alcoholic parents make children more likely to become addicts.
I fight it every day.
I’m on the 30th day on the carnivore diet.
In Brazil we have a beef cut called “picanha”. Juicy, and full of delicious fats.
Thankful for the teachings.
Brazil in da house!
I used to binge drink and smoke tobacco. Completely degenerate. First I stopped smoking, and within a few weeks, didn’t even want to smoke anymore. This year, I have had only one pint of beer, and that was over 6 months ago. I don’t even get an urge to drink alcohol anymore, I even avoid food products that are cooked in the horrible poisonous stuff. There is literally nothing good that can come out of drinking alcohol and every reason to totally abstain from it, like I’m sure I will for the rest of my life.
I gave up smoking roughly 75 days ago and looking back, I can’t figure how on Earth smoking ever appealed to me. Cigarette smoke today disgusts me and even as a passive smoker, it’s way too harsh. As for alcohol, I have never really had any use for it. There was a very short spell of time when I foolishly used it to ‘medicate’ my anxiety… until I realized I was being an absolute idiot.
Lot’s of good reasons. That said, I tend to be an overthinker. A moderate amount of alcohol, particularly in social situations, takes me out of the artificial world in my head and into the real world. It helps me take the stick out of my ass and be a fun person. People flat out tell me they like me a lot better when I’ve had a couple.
That said…yeah…it’s a fine line and harmful to abuse. Empty calories and it lowers testosterone, too.
If there ever was a reason to give up alcohol, it is that last one you gave. These days, high testosterone levels in men are rare enough and the last thing you need is another useless thing that lowers it.
If you give yourself a couple years, you can train yourself to put yourself in that “real world” without alcohol. Respect yourself and kick the bottle mane.
“People flat out tell me they like me a lot better when I’ve had a couple.”
You should tell them to go fuck themselves.
“A moderate amount of alcohol, particularly in social situations, takes me out of the artificial world in my head and into the real world.”
No it does not. It helps you assimilate with the fake-ass losers you are hanging out with. No one needs alcohol. Cut the bullshit out of your life and you’ll be confident, secure in your own skin, and not overthink.
Great comment
I salute you for this article.
Anything beyond very moderate doses of alcohol is an uglifier, fitness destroyer, confidence-killer, fattener, speech-destroyer (heavy drinking really fucks speech up your speech quality down the line), and all-round vitality-decimator.
Maybe I’m just being weak-minded, but I allow myself one drink for an entire night, because I meet new people a lot (including business networking, where everyone drinks) and the effort of repeatedly explaining that I “don’t drink”is fucking tedious.
So I grab a drink, nurse it all night, and it has no noticeable effect on my health. But I live in Ireland and if you don’t drink, people treat you like you’re a judgmental prat looking down on them. They get visibly tetchy.
They’re so mentally weak that they dislike seeing anyone stay sober for any reason beyond being on death’s door. It’s a sickening trait, really.
Hey Kevin,
Fellow Irishman here. I hear you. I left Ireland and that solved that problem for me. I live in Spain and if somebody doesn’t drink it doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. Nobody gives a shite. You don’t drink? That’s your business.
Recently quit the drink and was home at Christmas, went down to the lads house to see them while they drank themselves into a stupor. I hadn’t told them I had quit the drink since I last seen them during the year. Showed up with a few bottles of Kombucha tea, and along with that was drinking regular normal tea. Cue lots of juvenile slagging and other sorts of bullshit. They even tried to get me to have “just the one or two” and get a taxi home instead of driving, or even risk driving “sher the one won’t put ya over the limit, you’ll be grand!” Yeah - why not alright, I got stopped by the Guards on the way home, I’m sure they’ll agree with you.
I remember taking a look around the room, all of them were developing bellies, why would I want to continue going down that road? Answer - I wouldn’t, nor I shouldn’t.
Giving it up was the best thing I ever did.
Mick
I rarely ever drink and when I do it isn’t much. In the past I would drink once every few months and I would end up black out drunk because I would drink too much too quickly. I did so many stupid things that I look back on and think “fuck” I was lucky that didn’t end up a lot worse than it did.
I have stopped drinking many times but I always end up going back to it. I am not sure why I do this as I don’t actually enjoy the taste of it. As it is not something I do regularly I guess I came to the conclusion that a drink every now and then isn’t a bad thing.
Watching people close to me become completely different people when under the influence of alcohol should have been enough to make me abstain years ago.
This was a fantastic article and it’s a good thing to go back to if I feel like I want to drink again.
Victor you’re on fire lately, love it. I live in a muslim country and I have been observing the increasingly loose grasp of religion, which means more and more people start drinking. They do it for status (see, I can afford this expensive bottle!) and peer pressure/acceptance (what, you don’t drink? Are you a monk or something? You think you’re holier than us?). All the people who I see drinking are spiritually dead, without exception. They’re wasting their lives in shitty jobs, drowning in hollow personal relationships, sometimes both.
DONT KNOW wheere u live lad, but ppl are becoming SO dumb around the world.
and dey drink to forget about their sad lifes.
those who have great live DO NOT need to forget about it.
Charles Bukowski would disagree.
This should be required reading in all public schools. I’m serious. If I was a teacher, I would read this article out loud and make people listen to it like it was the pledge of allegiance.
Alcohol made a childhood friend of mine so violent that he threatened me to have sex with him at knifepoint. I had never seen a person act so psychotic. I could have died that night if I didn’t let him take advantage of me.
Alcohol (along with over the counter drugs, which are worse than fucking CRACK COCAINE) drove one of my buddies to end his own life.
Whenever my stepdad hits the bottle he literally threatens to kill people.
Alcohol does nothing for anybody. Sugar and carbs are bad too, but nothing, NOTHING is as bad as alcohol.
Everything Vic wrote here is correct. This article should be shown to everyone under 21 around the world.
Depending where you live in the world one can still see liquor stores marked as
“Wine & Spirits” SPIRITS. It’s right there for all to see. The truth staring back at you.
Like Vic has said in the past, we’ve forgotten knowledge that was common among people all over world once upon a time.
Great article Vic, shame many won’t heed the warning.
Thanks for the podcast & congratulations on your November challenge.
Dear victor,
I concur with your post 100 percent. I rarely if ever drink alcohol mostly because im too busy and wprk alot. When i was younger i didnt drink at all but when i picked it up and started I became a total asshole(forgive my foul language) and lost all my friends. Your are correct when you say its poison and for some its affects are extremely bad and gets them to do horroble things they may not normally do. Thanks for the post. Tim
Good friend of mine killed himself drinking too much. He wasn’t yet 40…. a damn shame. That poison is a slow death. Cut it out completely.
Note that consummate loser Donald Trump, who hasn’t accomplished anything in the fields of real estate, entertainment, business, public speaking, persuasion, politics or family building and has no energy, has never had a drink in his life.
If you are from Balkan you can drink it safely, people are built differently here. Or maybe the west is truly feminized. A drink or two is the mans equivalent to yoga.
I’m in the process or writing an article about this only with medications. In many cases, medications are just as bad as alcohol and probably worse.
I’ll drink exactly one beer per week and not even finish it. I’ll literally have half of it then see if someone else at the bar wants it or something lol.
I’d argue that pills are probably worse, since unlike alcohol they promise grander things. Here’s 10 reasons I have not taken any pills of any kind since 2011:
https://www.keepclimbingforever.com/10-reasons-why-i-do-not-take-any-medication/
I like the articles and I did 30 days of cold showers at 4:30 in the morning, in November. Now it’s no alcohol for me this year. Thanks.
Thanks Vic. Quit drinking for a month now and I have no desire to turn back. Everything is clear now.
For those who want to quit but can’t: eat lots of red meat. That’ll get rid of your poisonous drinking urges soon enough.