How to make alcohol less bad?

I definitely agree with your post. I think I disagree with your defininition of “moderation”! :rofl:

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I would argue with you, but I’m too drunk, right now. :face_vomiting:

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Depends on what your goal is and how your body processes it.

I love a good dark, strong beer. I also like scotch.

But i know that if i drink’em as much as i’d want to, i’d balloon weight wise.

So what i’ve been doing is getting whether one big bottle of 10% beer (porter, imperial stout) or having 2-3 glasses of 2 fingers of whisky scotch, usually socially. It’s quite rare that i drink by myself.

Sometimes wifey will rope me into downing a bottle with her which i find is also reasonable. But that’s me.

On a very related note
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt_MduhALVE/

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My personal experience is higher frequency, lower volume impacts my overall health and training less than lower frequency, higher volume.

It comes down to how you feel. If you go with low frequency, high volume and are then wrecked for two days afterward then try high frequency, lower volume if you’re planning on keeping the quantity the same over the week regardless of schedule.

Do what works for you, most of us aren’t pros and there’s joy to be had in life outside being an ascetic bike racer. My personal model is I drink a couple times a week but try to keep it to 2 or so drinks per time. Partying one night a week leaves me feeling worse and I dont get to enjoy my scotch or craft beer the way I do when I keep it volume low.

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Fitting quote from someone who still performs at quite a high level, even if it’s not cycling :rofl:

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Hi bhrylski i am agree with your thoughts. Consuming alcohol in less than average quantity is not bad for health.:100::100:

I agree with everything in moderation but holy hell 6-9 drinks would knock me on my ass for a week. The better my nutrition gets the more I feel the effects of poor quality foods and drinks.

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I’m reviving this because I’m working on the same problem. Well, actually I’m at 4-5 six days per week and would like to get to one day per week.

But 2 drinks 3x per week is barely drinking so I’d say that’s healthier. 9 drinks once per week is probably least healthy. (Just guessing)

What we need is a better delivery system. You have to drink all of this stuff so that a little bit can get past the liver and to your brain.

I’m thinking IV or something. Or maybe we need a new drug.

I don’t hate my liver. I just want to feel euphoria.

Joe

I used to be there, drinking 6 days per week. It wasn’t healthy or sustainable. I quit and didn’t drink for 10 months. After 4 months of detox, I was feeling better than I had felt in a decade.

Now I limit myself to a glass of wine or a beer when we go out and eat at a nice restaurant and that amounts to once a week, occasionally twice a week.

Occasionally, I’ll buy a bottle of wine but mostly I don’t because I’ll drink it over 1-2 evenings. If I buy alcohol and keep it in the house, I’ll just want to drink every night so mostly I don’t buy it.

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At university and in my 20s used to have far too much on a night out…

Now 38 and these days I probably have a drink 4-5 nights a week but ALWAYS just 1 drink - usually a glass of wine (175ml) or a gin (50ml) and tonic - which I measure out to check not too much! On christmas day and my birthday i might have 2-3 drinks but otherwise always stick to just 1 and feel that is a (relatively) healithier way of drinking.

My wife doesnt drink red wine which is my favourite so often open a bottle and have a glass each night for around 4 nights.

You ok?

I sort of joke, but on a way more serious note, that’s a LOT of alcohol. Definitely meets Alcohol Use Disorder criteria. Good that you at least want to cut back. But 2 drinks 3x a week is nowhere near “barely” drinking.

This seems like a pretty good target…not having it in the house is a really good tip.

Well the facts are with you, no doubt. I’m sure my views are skewed but I blame my environment LOL. It’s a drinking town with a golf problem. What are you going to do? Be the one guy in the foursome who doesn’t celebrate a birdie?

I did make it thru yesterday w/o alcohol, it’s a start :slight_smile:

Joe

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It’s made me realize that I do have some sort of craving problem with wine. If it’s in the house I’ll drink it and I won’t just drink one glass. I’ll drink 3 which is 1 too many.

I’ve never been what I’d consider an alcoholic. Even when I drink, I don’t drink to sloppy excess. If I only have a bottle of whiskey in the house, I won’t drink it. It can just sit in the cabinet forever. If I have beer in the house (rare) I can drink just one. I won’t drink 2 or 3 beers in a row or evening. I just don’t enjoy the bloated feeling. But red wine, I love it. I don’t know why and thus I don’t bring it in the house very often.

I highly recommend a period of detox to gain perspective. One, two, four months off is very instructive. You’ll recalibrate your body not to want the alcohol and you’ll feel a lot better.

If cold turkey detox is hard, you can taper - drink half as much as you usually drink for a week, the next week drink half as much again, repeat.

I toss these ideas out there because I’ve been through this and I’m in a way better place not drinking so much. These ideas didn’t occur to me at the time but since you posted I gather that you are coming to terms that drinking 6 days a week is a bit much.

One final thought - alcohol is a toxin to the body. It’s not a food that appears in nature. It rarely occurs by accident in small quantities - usually in the form of rotting fruit. A doctor I respect told me this. He said that alcohol was a dirty drug. Your liver works very hard to detoxify the body after ingestion. And then there is cancer - all the cancers of the digestive tract - mouth, stomach, colon show increased incidence with alcohol consumption.

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Alcohol pickles the brain. Personally, I have no use for the substance. The End of Happy Hour? No Safe Level of Alcohol for the Brain

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I usually have 1-2 drinks every night, either gin and tonics or sometimes subbing for a bottle of wine with dinner split between me and the wife if we have date night. Seem to operate fine, never drink to get drunk (last time I was truly drunk was over 5 years ago at her HS reunion). The biggest ride I did 120mi 6000ft was after a night of whisky and cigars and felt great.

I’m honestly more concerned with my lack of water consumption during the day rather than the alcohol consumption at night, but alcohol is water based so….

Totally guessing here. I’d bet lower frequency but slightly higher volume is slightly better. I have no evidence for this claim.

I do have evidence that’s it’s bad at these amounts, and worth considering reducing substantially. Detailed here.

Paywall / TLDR:

  1. 3-4 beverages per week for women starts to have measurable increases in mortality rate due to cancers, mostly notably of the breast tissue.
  2. ~7 beverages per week for men starts to have measurable increases in mortality rate largely due to cancer.
  3. ~14 beverages per week causes strikingly increased rates of cancer and years of life lost.
  4. Any cardioprotective effects of certain alcoholic beverages are vastly outweighed by these things listed above.

Just putting this out there because I think it’s important during any discussion of alcohol consumption distribution.

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I appreciate it! It’s so easy to fall into the habit.

I have no doubt of the above ^^ I really wonder if those “studies showing moderate alcohol is beneficial” are funded by some outfit selling alcohol!

Then again, I’m pretty sure Ironman isn’t “healthy” (at least it sure didn’t feel healthy at the time LOL).

That’s something I can really grab onto…we’re going for the brain effects of ethanol…that little bit that gets thru the liver without being converted to acetate. What an inefficient delivery system…it’s like, is it even worth intoxicating the whole system for the neurotransmitter modification?

I gutted out a dry January and it really sucked. But I’m 2 days w/o it now and feeling fine so I’m definitely going for 3!

Joe

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No, but they are All Cause Mortality studies showing a correlation, and the same studies show that your level of drinking is increasing your risk of death.

If drinking is tied to a social thing it’s difficult to reduce. I was a city drinker, get out of the office and de-stress with the team. I couldn’t stop at one in that situation so I quit entirely for five years.

Because we had to drive to golf there was never a drinking culture in the golf club.

Good job. I know the usual AA model is complete abstinence but during my research I found others recommending the taper model. Like I mentioned above - cut alcohol use in half, and then half again, etc. Or, maybe you make it 3 days. Go for 4 days after that. After the next drink go for 5 days. Whatever works for you. Cutting use down significantly does work as long as you can maintain it. And obviously for others the complete abstinence model will work better.

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You may want to check this thread too: Stopped Drinking Alcohol

A lot of good advice there !

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