Boozing in the MORNING is for biohackers!

You might be shaking your head and questioning: Jonathan, are you drunk? No, actually as I write this I'm on day 64 of no booze!

Here I'll explain why biohacking purists, super learners, and orange-tinted-glasses-sporting sleep hackers should actually drink in the morning.

But first I'll invite you to join me in doing some intermittent no-boozing...

This means taking 30 days, 2 months, or even 6 months totally off booze, not one drop.

For ethical hedonists like myself included, this is a dramatically better approach to alcohol than simply resolving to "enjoy responsibly in moderation." If I have some booze around the house I tend to have a drink with dinner most nights, but it turns out that this is a worse habit than I had previously thought. The benefits of a booze fast might seem obvious but I'll enumerate them here...

• Abstaining from booze has a positive overall effect on your health; testosterone levels, inflammation, weight loss, and importantly immune function. Your immune system is what keeps you alive and kicking in this world full of microscopic nastiness.
• Mindset management; no boozing subtly shifts your mental health habits. Instead of looking forward to a drink with dinner to relieve the stress of a busy day, you get a bit stricter about wielding stress management tools; things like meditation, sex, exercise, spirituality, etc.
• Economically it's a total no-brainer, whether you're a booze snob or not it will save you money. Money that you can splurge on better booze when you finally do drink or spend on something else you might enjoy.
• When you no booze for at least a couple of weeks you acquire a keener sense of things - your discernment and judgment improve subtly. Your priorities naturally re-align positively. You treat the people in your life a little better. The windshield on your view of the world gets cleaned.

Intermittent no boozing is a pragmatic way to live with greater temperance (a virtue that is being rapidly forgotten) in contrast to the pious, puritanical approach of declaring booze to be "evil" and swearing to abstain from it henceforth! During the months of stoic abstention, you have something to look forward to and when you do finally get to drink, you're filled with a sense of accomplishment instead of guilt.

People tend to drink more during the wintertime and chilly early months of the year when our biology needs to work harder to keep us healthy. Give your immune system every edge you can, if you can't take all the fancy immune-boosting supplements I talk about, please at least don't undermine your natural defenses with an indulgent and unnecessary vice.

"It's just one drink..."

You may tell yourself, but even a little alcohol in the evenings may bring a wrecking ball to your sleep quality as explained in the sleep science deep-dive, Why We Sleep, which I reviewed recently...

alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors of REM sleep that we know of... People consuming even moderate amounts of alcohol in the afternoon and/or evening are thus depriving themselves of dream sleep.

The research in the book thoroughly debunks the myth that a single drink (or two) a day is ostensibly "healthy."

alcohol fragments sleep, littering the night with brief awakenings. Alcohol-infused sleep is therefore not continuous and, as a result, not restorative. Unfortunately, most of these nighttime awakenings go unnoticed by the sleeper since they don’t remember them. Individuals therefore fail to link alcohol consumption the night before with feelings of next-day exhaustion caused by the undetected sleep disruption sandwiched in between. Keep an eye out for that coincidental relationship in yourself and/or others.

Get something like an Oura ring that monitors your sleep quality and it will become exceedingly clear to you that even a single drink seriously messes with your sleep quality.

There is a sad and extreme demonstration of this fact observed in alcoholics who, when drinking, can show little in the way of any identifiable REM sleep. Going for such long stretches of time without dream sleep produces a tremendous buildup in, and backlog of, pressure to obtain REM sleep. So great, in fact, that it inflicts a frightening consequence upon these individuals: aggressive intrusions of dreaming while they are wide awake. The pent-up REM-sleep pressure erupts forcefully into waking consciousness, causing hallucinations, delusions, and gross disorientation. The technical term for this terrifying psychotic state is “delirium tremens.”

It gets worse, a study of college students found that alcohol is essentially anti-learning sauce...

In contrast, those who had their sleep laced with alcohol on the first night after learning suffered what can conservatively be described as partial amnesia seven days later, forgetting more than 50 percent of all that original knowledge. This fits well with evidence we discussed earlier: that of the brain’s non-negotiable requirement for sleep the first night after learning for the purposes of memory processing... The overnight work of REM sleep, which normally assimilates complex memory knowledge, had been interfered with by the alcohol. More surprising, perhaps, was the realization that the brain is not done processing that knowledge after the first night of sleep. Memories remain perilously vulnerable to any disruption of sleep (including that from alcohol) even up to three nights after learning, despite two full nights of natural sleep prior.

So there's a learning lifehack we can extract from this study, if you're trying to learn something abstain from booze for at least three nights. Matt Walker Ph.D., the author concludes...

The politically incorrect advice I would (of course never) give is this: go to the pub for a drink in the morning. That way, the alcohol will be out of your system before sleep.

There it is! Especially if you're in the middle of trying to learn something new, do your drinking in the mornings (or at least the afternoons) and, yes, there is a biohack for rapidly sobering up - it's called Dihydromyricetin (DHM).

Dihydromyricetin (DHM)

Category: Nootropic Ingredients

If day drinking is just not for you, intermittent no boozing is the best option

But perhaps you justify regular "moderate" drinking the way I have...

I work hard. By the end of a grueling workday, I'm not the most pleasant person to be around. I'm stressed, frazzled, and my mind is still juggling myriad concerns. I'm not in a particularly social or conversational mood. Yet, I want to enjoy the life I'm working so damn hard for. I want to enjoy dinner with my family or friends; laugh, joke, be whimsical, and forget about how much I have left to do! And alcohol is hard to beat for taking the edge off.

Ideally, we'd all have 20 minutes of meditation a day as a line of demarcation between the world of work and our personal lives but that's often not possible.

Fortunately, there are a few pretty decent alternatives to alcohol...

Phenibut - A Gabaergic supplement (actually a drug originally developed for cosmonauts) that has almost the same effect as booze but with almost none of its downsides. You can take it as tablets or not-awful-tasting tangy powder that dissolves easily in the beverage of your choice and replaces a social drinking habit for about $1/night (although being a Gabaergic like alcohol, it's not a great idea to take it every night).

Phenibut

Category: Nootropic Ingredients

Kava Kava - This is an anxiolytic herb that belongs on your "Must Try" list; it has a calming, stress-relieving effect. And it may even make you a bit "rowdy" - it's renowned as an aphrodisiac.

Kava Kava by Double Wood

Category: Nootropics & Anti-Aging

"Happy Water" Infoceutical - This is regular water imprinted with an infoceutical complex of Diazepam, Duloxetine, Fluoxetine, Piracetam, Venlafaxine, and Phenibut (which we mentioned earlier) and it has a subtle effect taking the edge off. I regularly use it as an alternative for a glass of wine and if you're skeptical yet curious (as I was) read my article about Infopathy, Downloadable medicine is NO longer science fiction, here...

IC Pad by Infopathy

 

4.3

Category: Mind Hardware

However, maybe you don't need pharmacological (or quantum colocation - in the case of the infoceuticals) help to relax at the end of the workday, at dinner try sipping...

Non-alcoholic beer - actually doesn't taste terrible or all that different from normal beer. In fact, there are some delicious artisanal, European-style non-alcoholic beers - you don't have to sacrifice taste going alcohol-free!

San Pellegrino and balsamic vinaigrette - Add a few splashes of the best balsamic vinaigrette you can find (or afford - try to get the stuff from Modena, Italy) to a glass of San Pelle (as I like to call it), the fancy green-bottled fizzy mineral water that you can find at almost any grocery store, and you'll be pleasantly surprised to discover that it tastes almost just like Coca-Cola. But it's quite healthy - I call it guilt-free-Cola!

Tonic water - This is mineral water infused with quinine which gives it a bitter taste that I love. The quinine packs an anti-viral punch; making it an immune-boosting beverage. You can buy it at nearly every gas station but carefully check the label to make sure it doesn't have a bunch of additives, fructose, or sugar added - you're probably better off getting it from an organic grocery store or ordering tonic water online.

Will you join me?

In going 30, 60, or 90 days this year with no booze? It's one of those seasonal habits that empowers a productivity sprint; giving you a little more of an edge to accomplish a medium-term goal. Perhaps you're saying to yourself...

Intermittent no boozing, biohacking, and all these lifehacks sound great but my self-control tends to go out the window around the holidays! I always resolve to do all these self-improvement things but then life gets in the way...

I hear you! Frankly, not everyone has the discipline to implement this sort of thing consistently enough to enjoy its fruits. It might not be something you can do on your own. I'm here to help, I've got a few spots open in my Lean Life Coaching practice, here's how this works...

1. Fill out the Lean Life Coaching form, this gives me all the information I need to know if can actually help you. In the form, you'll describe what's worked for you and what hasn't.
2. Then we'll get on a 90-minute call to put together a holistic action plan
3. I'll keep you accountable to a 30, 60, or 90-day goal. I'll monitor you using a habit-tracking app so you'll know that you need to stick to the plan we put together.
4. After that period we'll touch base on another call to audit your progress and make adjustments to your action plan as needed.

Often for the 30, 60, or 90-day period, I'll keep clients accountable for abstaining from all the things that make them weak and waste their time (crappy food, porn, alcohol, weed, video games, etc - be prepared to suspend your Netflix account!) for the duration of the productivity sprint. And they surprise themselves with how much progress they make in a month (or two) towards the goals that matter to them. I call this Lean Life Coaching because we are focused on action - we're not going to spend hours and hours talking. This lean format allows me to keep this life coaching service affordable.

Apply for Lean Life Coaching

If you want to outperform the average and make your goals happen, you MUST stack multiple motivational mechanisms and tools - otherwise, you can anticipate waking up with a hangover on New Year's Day 2025 a little older, fatter, poorer, and unhappier than you are now. Seriously.

Please Respond

Are you onboard with the intermittent no-boozing thing? Or are you going to take up morning drinking? If the morning drinking sounds good, let me know - maybe we can organize somekind of morning boozing biohacker Zoom hangout...