The WORST THINGS about Alcohol That Will Surprise YOU!

How most people view drinking in general.

The question is, is alcohol causing you a problem? You know, the truth has been just like cigarettes for decades, misrepresented by millions and millions of dollars, funding research from the alcohol industry to prove that moderation was true. But you're sitting here with your whole system in fight or flight, restless, low, deep sleep, low rem. Guess what? You wake up the day now. Sleep deprivation caused by drinking alcohol or once again reduces your ability to deal with stress. The fact that you are feeling disenfranchised and the lack of busyness. It comes down to trauma. They stay inside us and they cause all sorts of things. They cause addiction, neurodivergence, mental health illnesses, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancers, all sorts of diseases and issues. So then you're unable to deal with stress so calmly the next day you've both got sleep deprivation and a hangover. And guess what? You need a drink again at the end of the day. And you need a drink again at the end of the day.

Coming from the world of addiction recovery, a lot of 12 step groups, a lot of people that I work with, they're, you know, I mean, they're about abstinence, they're not about tapering off, they're not about reduction. But you, you, you know the stats inside and out about how much alcohol is consumed, what percentage of people. They don't want abstinence, they just want reduction. Talk about that a bit so people can get some perspective of how most people view drinking in general.

Okay, so the first thing to put into here is to understand that we are a health prevention company, okay? We work in prevention rather than in recovery. And the place in prevention is anyone who is regularly consuming alcohol. And I'm just talking about two drinks a week. Okay? So in that space of prevention, in that conversation, we're, we avoid this thing which is very black and white. Are you an addict? Are you not an addict? Do you have a problem? Do you not have a problem for us? Forget all of that. The question is, is alcohol causing you a problem when it comes to the industry and all of that stuff? I put up a post just yesterday, in fact that they estimate that around if you were the alcohol industry was to achieve its campaign. Is it also called here Drink responsibly? It is in the uk, yeah.

Which is like I think one of the most crazy and also smart because the first word is drink. So it's a command. Drink responsibly. It's similar to what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, except for debt and guilt. And STDs and all that other shit.

But yeah, so I mean the drink responsibly. If they achieved that, they would nearly half the industry. So half of the alcohol industry's revenue comes from people who drink problematically. So they don't want to solve this problem, guys, they've got no interest in solving the problem. They want you to drink more. They're doing everything they can to create a problematic relationship for you. They're advertising everything. Mummy wine time, relax, holiday, celebrate, commiserate, congratulate. And do you know what they have done and spent trillions of dollars doing this that now society's taken over from them. They don't even need to do that work anymore. Your mates are doing it to you. Sometimes you're doing it to people. You're doing it just in like really gentle ways. Hey, should we catch up sometime? Does that mean we're drinking alcohol? Right. Hey, should we, you know, go for a beer or, you know, and all of these little nuances are in there that keep this. What we did a huge amount of research which we did with Sterling University to show the effect of peer pressure in the UK and just how great it is. And it's the major thing that keeps us drinking alcohol at a significantly issue rate or high rate. Some of the stats from here is the highest peer pressure demographic that we found serving, I think something like 40,000 people. The highest demographic was women in London by their bosses. Yeah. So the greatest element of peer pressure felt there. So you're all business owners, you're all founders. Are you creating an inclusive environment? Do you allow people to not drink? Are they as inclusive as everything else? Do you have great alcohol free alternatives? Do you celebrate in other ways other than just bloody drinking alcohol all the time? Do you know, I don't know about some of the other statistics, but there is a very high chance that a good proportion of your staff have problematic relationships with alcohol. They are waking up on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, either hungover or feeling depressed or low or miserable or all of these other facts. If we just go onto that for a second, because let's talk about the truth about alcohol. And you know, the truth has been just like cigarettes for decades, misrepresented by millions and millions of dollars funding research from the alcohol industry to prove that moderation was true. Check the New York Times, they did this massive expose where one of the largest ever studies where they stood on stage saying, we want to prove that moderation is good for you. What study ever has a preordained outcome and the vast majority of the audience was the alcohol industry. Just recently, they were changing about. They were rediscussing in European Union about minimum unit pricing. The vast majority of people who were in there lobbying the conversation was the alcohol industry. So there's so much manipulation going on there. And if I go back to how we operate in this part is if peer pressure is the biggest part that keeps people drinking and the downstream effects of drinking is. I mean, we could be here for hours, right? Of the truth. It's a neurotoxin, right? It is shrinking your brain. It's 100% poison. I know lots of people don't want to hear that because it's literally everywhere. If we were to do a reclassification of drugs right now, alcohol was one of the world's most harmful drugs. Professor David Nutt proved this in the UK government and then was fired because they didn't like his message. He went to eight different European countries and proved exactly the same thing using different models, that alcohol is one of the world's most harmful drugs. We have medicines that are currently banned and that we have a law or a whole war against. And we have an incredibly harmful toxin that you can go outside and buy as much of it as you like without even talking to a doctor. You don't have to get a prescription. You can just walk in and kill yourself with this toxin. So that's the truth about alcohol. The one thing I will say about that is a lot of people don't want to hear that message. You know, we hear that an awful lot, especially on TikTok these days, Right. Sugar's killing you. My shoes are giving me cancer. All of these messages. And I think this is where we have tried to stay away from that. Oh, it's the devil. And everything else. It's absolutely blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because we actually live in a world which pays homage to alcohol, is obsessed with alcohol. That's the truth of the world we live in today. So we don't come at it from that angle. We just come out of this angle of saying, hey, do you want to be better? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to. Do you have some niggling ailments? I don't know what they are, but they could be pain, they could be psoriasis, they could be high blood pressure, they could be cardiovascular issues, they could be all sorts of brain stuff going on for you. Why isn't the first thing to take a break from alcohol? Let's just start there. So that's the angle we came at it from. Yeah.

Wow. So why do you feel trauma is at the heart of what you're doing? Because you have a big. So much of it. I go back to trauma.

So what we touched on that element of emotions. I thought the conversation earlier was so fascinating about the nervous system. And Dr. Don is going to resonate very strongly with here about how we're starting to understand the impact of the central nervous system. So that element of trauma as an example, or our past emotions, our past feelings that directly links into stress, we don't really realize that we're carrying around the thoughts of our childhood or the pain. What it really does is it starts to form our ego. The patterns of our past form our ego. And this kind of dictates some of the things that we do in our life. We all have these subconscious patterns in our mind and that adds into an element of our central nervous system. So how you ultimately process stress. And so trauma links into our central nervous system, which also links into stress. And actually on our program, we use a really, really cool device that remotely monitors your central nervous system. We're really tracking HRV who. Hands up. Who's got a Garmin watch? Yep. Cool. Not that many. Great. So Garmin bought a company called firstbeat, the world leader in heart rate variability. And we use their device, firstbeat. It is unbelievably accurate at measuring your heart rate variability. And their algorithm starts to show you the difference of when your central nervous system is in fight or flight or recovery. And we ultimately show people in the data, just teach them some very simple math. And that is that a stressed out central nervous system which does not get any recovery during the day, will always require numbing in the evening. Okay. And what we did earlier on with Jason, that was activating your parasympathetic nervous system, it took three minutes. Right. Now, what that enables you to do is handle a far higher level of stress. It allows you to calm down your central nervous system. Hands end up in here. Who would like to be able to handle much higher levels of stress calmly? Yeah, right. But we're not doing these things. We just get stuck in that fight or flight. We just get stuck in that. Absolutely going on. I always. I diverted slightly from trauma, but that's good. But I want to give you this little analogy as well. Like, especially for those neurodivergence in the room, which I'm going to bet is not too.

Define neurodivergent if you could.

Okay. So neurodivergence is really going along the bipolar ocd, adhd, add, sliding scale, as we will say, it is not on or off. It is a sliding scale. It's a sliding scale that we're now starting to understand that I can take a entirely non neurodivergent human being and sleep deprive you for five days and you'll 100% pass an ADHD test.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So we're now saying, and there's a big body of research out there which is saying that neurodivergence is a coping mechanism for a traumatized child. This is Gabor, mate. And also sleep deprivation in babies causes elements of adhd. There's lots of other factors in there. You know, diet isn't a factor. They took whole bunch of kids, heavily diagnosed severe ADHD children, and they put them on a restrictive diet and 70% of them in 30 days are showing no signs of ADHD. So it's a sliding scale is what I'm saying about that. But the thing about. Where was I? Neurodivergence. So neurodivergent.

No add. Yeah, I was just gonna say. Remind me.

Prompter.

Prompter.

So we're talking about stress in the central nervous system. So here's the analogy. Imagine for a second that you, you know those little plastic toy cars you get, they've got a little dynamo in them. You wind it up and you push it on, it shoots across the room. That's your central nervous system. And you wake up in the morning and you start to wind up your central nervous system. Coffee. Right. Financial woes. I know you won't believe this, but past trauma from your childhood that you still haven't dealt with yet. Yep. Winding up that central nervous system, or more rather than particularly winding up, it reduces your stress coping mechanisms so you have a less ability to deal with stress. So as you start to wind this thing up through the day, you don't really take any break. You wind it up. We wind it up. Wind it, wind it up. And then you get home at the end of the day and you put the car down, expecting it to relax and it goes fuck you, shooting across the room and you're like, oh, I just can't Calm down. I really need a drink to take the edge off. And guess what? Alcohol is one of the worst things for your central nervous system. It's 100% poison. The moment you ingest that alcohol, your system has now been poisoned with a toxin. So it's now working overdrive. Your heart rate shoots through there. It's now trying to process this toxin out your body. If it does not process that alcohol of your body, you will die. Right? That's because it's a poison. So now instead of you getting a nice night's sleep, yes, it knocked you out. But you're sitting here with your whole system in fight or flight. Restless, low, deep sleep low rem. Guess what? You wake up the day. Now, sleep deprivation caused by drinking alcohol once again reduces your ability to deal with stress. So then you're unable to deal with stress so calmly the next day you've both got sleep deprivation and a hangover. And guess what? You need a drink again at the end of the day and you need a drink again at the end of the day. And most of us are just caught in that pattern constantly. Now the reason why I brought up neurodivergence is because you are that gearing in that little car. It's five times the gearing of everyone else. Your central nervous system gets even more wound up. You just need a little bit of energy and you shoot across the room. And that's what makes us entrepreneurs, that's what makes us business creators, that's what makes us different and, and want to go and do these things. And that's why it's so important for you to calm down your central nervous system. I should calm down right now.

I was going to say something. Let's just hum real quick and do. No, this is really good, really interesting. I think in rooms like Genius Network and I think in our world there's a lot of emphasis and focus on trauma. And I'm almost, I'm now seeing so many people that are living in woundology. You know, they use their trauma as an excuse as to why they're debilitated and can't go somewhere. And it's bizarre. It's almost used as a form of learned helplessness. But I also, like in other places, I will hear things and they're like, oh my God, I've never heard anything like this before. So as a whole, most people are oblivious to the impact of trauma. Completely oblivious. So I think it's such an important thing to talk about.

But also as well, I think we been we'd Been really conditioned to run away from it. I mean, you know, decades. Come on, pick yourself up there, there. Be strong. I always have to drop this into every single conversation I have, but when I met the Dalai Lama. When I met the Dalai Lama and I got to ask him a question in front of thousands of people in pisa, and that was the moment my life, other than being at Genius Network, profoundly changed. Meeting that man and discovering that being an oil broker was making me sick. And this is when I started to understood the importance of meaning and purpose. So many of us are in businesses, we're in careers where we don't feel purposeful, where we don't feel connected to our true meaning. Lack of meaning and purpose is a major driver of compulsive behavior. And so when you look at that and you say, oh, wow, coming back to meeting the Dalai Lama, I got to ask him this question. And his big thing is, I don't know how we heal addiction today. He said wonderful things, but the way we change society is by teaching our children to feel their emotions. And we've all been so good at running away from them. Most of you lot are still doing it super fast, trying to pack it down. Busy, busy, busy. Build the next business. That's what I wanted to say to you, Darren, is like, here is a great opportunity for you to get busy again and come up with the next thing. And like, oh, I've got to be busy. I've got to be busy. I've got to find the next challenge. But go one layer deeper than that, because the layer deeper than that is that you are running away from the painful feelings. And so many of us build our businesses because we want significance. We want to prove our dad wrong. We want to show those bullies that actually it was true. But actually, at the core here is just this hurt child. And that's my encouragement to you, is to say, instead of just doing the fixed thing, of course, we can get you on and do the next business or the next thing that you feel meaningful. But take a moment now to just do that inner work in there, because then it will come from a more powerful place. And I will say this one other thing. You know, Mo Gaudat was on the Stephen Bartlett Show. Hopefully you know what that is. Diary of the CEO. And he did a big call out to the AI engineers. And he said, if you are an AI engineer right now and you are working on something that is not absolute good, maybe it's either in the middle or bad. Stop what you're doing down Your tools right now and work on AI for good. And that message is true for all of us. Building a business. I realized how much being an oil broker and making money. I made a lot of money as a very successful oil broker, but it made me fucking miserable and sick and tearing my life apart. And self destruct. A life of meaning and purpose, a life of contribution, a life of service, of helping other people. That is where we feel true contribution. And in there, not all of us can do that. Right. I work with business leaders all across the world. I work with people in the finance industry. I had a guy who's literally number two at one of the largest financial institutions in the world. And he went, ruri, fucking great. Thanks very much. I'm on the website. What do you want me to do about that? And here was the big thing for him is that direction, when it comes to meaning and purpose, direction is as powerful as destination. Okay. So you don't have to be out there building the schools for Kenya, digging up water wells, whatever it is. You just have to be clear that that's the direction you are going. And from a compulsion, behavior, or, you know, an addiction or compulsion that starts to calm things down.

That's good. I like that line. Direction is as powerful as destination. So are there any health benefits to drinking alcohol? Because, you know, like, it was recently featured on Blue Zones and there's. Yeah. I mean, two things. The question is, is there any health. Well, we'll do that and then I'll. There's something I want to say to this, so. Because I was. It's funny, I just shot this video. Yes. Two days ago with Ben Greenfield. So we're sitting down in North Scottsdale at Enico Loud's office. The dentist and I filmed this thing. And he's talking about in minimum doses, in moderation, because there's all these studies, most of them are done by people that have an agenda to show that there's quote, unquote, benefits of drinking wine and all of the different cultures that are healthier. You have someone that was 103 years old and they drink a drink or two every night and that sort of stuff. So no health benefits to alcohol.

Absolutely zero. Yeah. So here are the things. And I was recently on the Rich Roll podcast, which was an amazing experience.

That is a damn good interview.

Thank you very much.

Well, let me say, not as good as this one. What's that?

Not as good as this one.

Whoa. Of course, the interesting thing is he comes from a world also. Like, for him to even do that because he's more of a 12 step guy who's totally abstinent. So for him to be like, you know, is there drinking in moderation? Can you have? Yeah.

So, well, we're going to talk about that because here I am sitting telling everyone about how much alcohol is a devil and there's no benefit and yet I drink alcohol. And I think that blows a lot of people's minds sometimes. So anyway, we'll come on to that in a second. I was recently on the Rich Roll podcast which is now 18 million views, 360,000 shares. It's his most watched and most shared podcast in the last 18 months, which is fantastic. And when he invited me on, he said, just to let you know, the main reason we brought you on in week two of January is because this is our peak listening time. We want the most amount of earballs, eyeballs both because the Huberman Lab podcast on the Truth about Alcohol is his most shared and most watched. Now I have been banging this Frickin Jum for 10 years. So I'm super excited to hear that finally people are listening to this message. The truth about alcohol is finally being listened to.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it out absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So the blue zones thing came out onto Netflix and it was like, oh, you know, we found all these places where people are living longer because of alcohol. Now this is really interesting. Again, one of the biggest things that people do when they try to change your relationship with alcohol in a society which is absolutely, absolutely drenched in alcohol is what they do is they say, okay, I'm gonna stop drinking in January. Hands up who does, you know, dry Jan or stops drinking in January. Yeah. Oh, not that many. I was thinking more. Great. I really need to do work on you guys, so. And what they do is most people, they tend to write. I'm gonna make a challenge out of this. I'm gonna try and do it. I'm going to avoid my social circle because nobody wants to be out with somebody who's not drinking. I'm to going, I'm going to count down the days until the first of the month when I can go have a drink again. Now that kind of does two things. One it constantly reiterates this belief, Right. We are our beliefs. We are our neural pathways that you need alcohol to have a happy, healthy, great life because it's so boring when you don't. And the other major part that it does is that you become more disconnected. And I'm sure you've heard so many times in here, the opposite of addiction is connection. Unless you are a sociopath. As human beings, we can't be disconnected. So then you learn that not drinking is becoming more disconnected. It's boring. I don't have a social circle. I'm being more disconnected from society. So the only way for me to be connected again is to go back into the community of people who are drinking alcohol. And what this does is send you on a yo yo here drinking. Boring. Absolutely terrible. Sorry. Not drinking. Boring and terrible drinking. Feeling connected and happy and healthy. Well, guess what you're doing to your brain. You're causing more of a problem. You're creating more associations in your brain about how important it is for your life. And this is why people, even though they're taking breaks, end up getting a worse and worse and worse relationship with alcohol. So this is the real important part of building a community of people who are living how you want to live. And, you know, a wonderful environment in here. Right. I'm sure lots and lots of people choose to drink less or not drink. Doing different activities where you feel more connected and you're feeling that sense of connection. And it's really, really important for changing our relationship with alcohol.

Yeah, so what is the.

I'm just coming back onto it full circle. So the blue zones and the study, because we got it, we got. We can't leave that one alone. So the blue zones studies, and most of these studies around alcohol, showing that, you know, that people live longer. What they're missing out on this part is that that's the only way to feel connected in these communities or in these various areas, you are. If you are connecting with people, then you're drinking. In the west coast of Scotland, if you are not drinking alcohol, you are staying at home, full stop. So it drives disconnection. Well, they're literally saying now that one of the major signs of longevity, you living a whole, a whole long life, is having a good social circle. So these are nonsense studies. It's really to be put to test. And more importantly, we need to create a society which is more inclusive, a place that's more inclusive for people who are choosing not to drink. And you guys get to do that in your companies. You Know, making sure that you really make people who are not drinking feel inclusive, doing things and unwinding with your team that doesn't just involve alcohol. As I said, making sure that there's great alcohol free alternatives, great functional drinks. We've got this wonderful can in here today.

So you say you drink, explain what's going on.

Yes, I drink as much as I want, whenever I want. I just usually choose not to drink. So the evolution of that was I took a break from alcohol as an oil broker in London, which was unheard of 10 years ago. My boss told me I was committing commercial suicide.

In that world, you're just drinking all the time.

Yeah, you're doing a lot. You take people out to lunch at midday and it finishes at 6 o' clock in the morning type thing. And I was very good at that job. And so I took a break and just couldn't believe how much my lights turned back on, you know, it was amazing. Did a year alcohol free. But because I didn't quote unquote, have a problem, you know, I didn't, I wasn't an alcoholic in that word. We don't use that term anymore. Just so you know, we don't use alcoholic, we don't use alcoholism in the scientific community. We use alcohol use disorder. And so when it, when it comes to having alcohol use disorder, we can touch on that. About time. Don't let me forget. So the, the, the main. I did a year, amazing. And then I decided to go and have a drink because I never wanted to stop forever. That wasn't me. I didn't want to stop forever. And it wasn't one, it was a lot. And the next day I was throwing up in the toilet with my daughter beside me crying and my wife storming out the door. And this is when I realized something really important. Abstinence does not equal control. In actual fact, what we now understand is an awful lot of people going in search of abstinence, sobriety, stopping drinking is the solution, are actually making their relationship with at worst, right? Because they're not actually treating the underlying causes. They're not doing the work on the thing that's driving in the first place. Alcohol is not the problem, guys. It fits really well into the problem. Right? We've got to ask alcohol is how you are treating your problem. What is underlying in that? So as I went on this journey, I did another year alcohol free. And then I started to reintroduce alcohol. Most of the time I choose not to drink. I don't drink because if I Do I really feel it? You know, when you stop drinking for a while and you have a drink, I mean, you really feel it. I'm going to feel miserable for three or four days afterwards. My cognition is not going to be there. They're saying it's like a 20% reduction in IQ just after two drinks. Guys, you're in here to be smarter. You're in here to be better. You're in here to build your businesses. What would 20% improvement in you building your business over the next year say? What would that add to your business? So the more the other part was here is that we started to do user research. And in the beginning, I launched one year, no beer. We had people doing challenges. 90 days, 365 days. That's what we're doing. And we talked to customers and they would say, you know, it took me years to sign up to your challenge. And I was watching those ads on Facebook for years. Well, anyone who does Facebook advertising knows how that expensive that is. No wonder we weren't making profit. And so two years to acquire a customer. And so we were like, wow. And we kept doing user research. And then we put out a piece of research and we asked a bunch of questions. But the main question was to totally random people out there in the world. What would you like relationship with alcohol to look like? 6% said they wanted to stop drinking. Right. 94% wanted a better relationship with it. So you're like, well, hang on a minute. If the only message out there is stop drinking and sobriety, and this is the only thing, we're not talking to 94% of the market. We're not talking to 94% of people who wake up regularly on Saturday, on Sunday, wishing they hadn't drank so much, which is, come on at times, all of us, right? So that's why we moved everything over to focus on control. It turns out that control is a thousand times more complex than just not drinking. Just to not drink. That's easy. I've been doing that. I've helped hundreds of thousands of people all over the world do that. That is easy. Getting somebody to go from drinking too much, binge drinking or daily drinking to going to a place where they can drink and control, that is far more complex. I'm going to give an example. Don. Not that Don. He's amazing, though. Don is a ex pro NFL athlete. This guy's an absolute machine. He was a major player. Don Davey. Don't know if anybody who knows that that is he 13 times Ironman world champ runs a large private equity business. And he comes onto the call with me and he's like, really? I just, you know, I don't have a problem with not drinking. I could do a year, no problem. I've done it twice. That is easy. But when I do have a drink, it's like, I've won the super bowl and I'm gone for three days, right? And he said, and he said, look, if you can fix that, I mean, I don't know what kind of miracle worker you are. And I was like, well, you know, give it a shot. And he was like, nah, don't believe it. You know, over here in the US it's very indoctrinated with, no offense, the sort of 12 step you have to stop. And it is this disease and things like that. And so that colors a lot of people's minds, especially when you're talking about in prevention. So he was like, don't know, I'll give it a shot. So he comes onto the program three months after the program. Two biggest triggers were his brothers and the super bowl itself. So three months after he comes through the program with us, our complete control program, he sends me a message and he's like, went on a four day trip with my brothers. One day I just drank low beer up until midnight. The rest of the time I didn't really drink. I can't believe the level of control I have. I just don't want to have a drink. I feel so amazing. Like this wonderful, wonderful case study. Then he sends me a picture, another six months or so. So this is November just gone. Or whenever it was, he sends me a picture from Vegas at the super bowl with a picture of his alcohol free beer. And he's like, day four in Vegas. What the fuck have you done to me? So, and there are people out there, there's a huge proportion of the scientific community which will tell you what I've just told you is impossible. So this is what we have to change in here. We can help people so much earlier in their journey if we help them with the control. I run a preventative healthcare business, okay? So preventative healthcare should always swim upstream. My mission, my purpose is to go upstream as possible. And that's the hangover. If I can help everyone in the hangover with data and we use things like this to help people understand their physiology with evidence, with clarity, like what is happening to them and steer them away from developing a more significant relationship with alcohol. That is how we can really make a massive impact in the world.

That's what I'm trying to say. So let's talk about how stress acts as a catalyst for compulsive behavior, because you mentioned that. And what are some methods for managing that? Because, like, similarly, I don't believe addiction is a disease. I've had many conversations with people that are even doctors that believe and explain it as a disease model. I believe it's a solution. You know, the problem is not the drugs or the alcohol. It's the underlying things that cause them to do it in the first place of. So when you're stressed, when you're lonely, when you're hurting, alcohol, lots of different substances behaviors bring relief. They make you feel better, makes people feel confident. There's all kinds of positive benefits to it. The challenge is it's got consequences. So if there were no consequences to this stuff, people would be doing all kinds of crazy shit, right? So it would be a great solution.

If the consequences weren't there.

Right?

And I just don't think most of us are doing the math. We're actually indoctrinated against doing the math. You know, it's too easy to take a drink. And then we delete all the hangover and how we're feeling and how we're operating. You know, with hundreds, thousands of business owners. We've kind of focused now our core program on business owners. And you ask them the question, like, on Monday, be war really hard on yourself. This is not about you versus the world. You're a top performer. You're crushing out there, right? I'm sure you're amazing. But you versus you, the best you've ever been. You 100% peak performance. What percentage of you is showing up on Monday? And you know, most people are like 30%, 50%. Sometimes I'm canceling meetings or moving stuff about. We had one of the top entrepreneurs in the UK come through the program, and he's like, really? I just discovered I've spent the last decade operating on 80%. I don't know what that's cost me, but it's millions.

So I was recently at my buddy Peter Diamandis event, bunch of talk on longevity and stuff. And I'm walking through, people are up getting fucking hammered. And a lot of them are up there, the ones doing events on longevity and health and everything. It's just like the incongruency here is just. But they're out of control and they're stressed. So that is like, they're stressed, they're lacking sleep. So what are they doing? They're drinking alcohol and it's like it's so infiltrated into everything.

It is.

And I go to so many of these different entrepreneurial groups and masterminds and everything. People are getting hammered, you know, and it's like, and they're all. You think like, okay, is this going to help you with. You're investing all this time, all this money, all this energy to build your business and you're just getting shit faced all the time.

So two things about. First of all, there is a solution. I went to number 10 Downing street, met the Prime Minister and the Chancellor got to convey my thought, which is really simple. Unlike the tobacco industry, because the development of E cigarettes was far beyond the destruction, if you like, of the tobacco industry or the reduction of it, the force of the healthcare change. These two are actually mapping with each other in the alcohol industry. So the alcohol industry has an opportunity to do good and that is to really put their hand up and go, do you know what? Alcohol is shit, it's really bad. It's so bad for us. And we're going to put all our efforts into developing functional drinks. Now Professor David Nutt has developed Alcarel, which is a synthetic version of alcohol designed to give you the two drink buzz, which is really where we all want to get to. We want to get to about, I feel loose, I get rid of more my thoughts, I get to feel more socially connected and things like that. And I think that is where there's a massive opportunity, even offering tax credits to the alcohol industry, R and D and development into alternative and functional drinks. And I think for us it's like alcohol is the worst stress reliever. If you come away from anything, just do that math on that. It is severely debilitating your stress coping mechanism. It is costing your business, I guarantee it. And if you go all in on developing actual stress coping mechanisms. So the first thing we use is data to show people how stressed out they are. 100% of people come into our program, there's a lot of stress and they're not doing anything to deal with that stress. In fact, they're actively attacking their stress coping mechanisms, the devices, the lack of sleep, sleep deprivation from stress, all of that. Right. So they've got this really stressed out central nervous system. And so then it's really about teaching them the skills, the tools and there's a few things from that. So who in here meditates? Great, Good, good, good. So there's the Muse headset. I have it with me. Muse headset is great if people like tech. Lots of our Business owners do. It also means we get to monitor your brain remotely. Vagal nerve stimulation. Hand up. Who knows what that is?

Cool. Good.

A lot of them. So we are using a device called Neurosym right now which I absolutely love. It's amazing. Sends you into parasympathetic within five minutes of putting it on. It is so cool. Sit at your desk within a few minutes, plug it into your. Just put it on here. Little electrical stimulation. It's so funny listening to early on, I can't remember his name, talking about electrical stimulation. I think very soon we're just going to be electrically stimulating ourselves all over the place.

Yeah, sorry Garrett.

So there's one. I've also got another one in my bag which anyone is welcome to try. It's called the pulsetto and it just clips onto here. And the pulse setto is electrically stimulating your vagus nerve through the neck here. And this stimulation into the vagus nerve is starting to come calm down our central nervous systems. Breath work. You don't need a device. Right. 10 rounds of the physiological sigh. It takes you less than a minute. It goes. Do you know the physiological sigh? Should we just do it really quickly? So it's two inhales, it's one long and then short up inhale and then a long slow exhale. So do it with me now. Ten of them between a zoom call. Now what that does, I'll show you that in data, I'll show you that in data that all of a sudden your chart goes green. And when it goes green, that's the parasympathetic system activated. You're far less likely to desire compulsion at the end of the day if you do that. And this is a life skill. So you know, I interviewed Dr. Brigitte Sinha and Dr. Brigitte Sinha you need to talk to, she is the most under known incredible scientist out there. She was the head of addiction research at Yale University. 35 years studying addiction. 150 peer reviewed studies. Two years ago she turned round to the board at Yale University and she said, I want to change the name of the department. They were like what? What are you talking about? She said, I want to change it from Yale University study for addiction to Yale University study for stress because addiction is just the outcome. So that is the importance of you learning stress coping mechanisms and not using a tool which is actively sabotaging your stress coping mechanisms.

Alcohol dramatically affects negatively sleep. How significant is sleep? Because I think in a lot of ways people that are lacking sleep drink alcohol which just perpetuates the problem. So how is it all interrelated?

I think we're now starting to understand how. I mean, we have known and I'm sure you know, but I think a lot of people are just hoping it will go away and, you know, might use alcohol to get to sleep. And maybe you've been doing that for years. I often talk to people who've been doing it for decades. You know, oh, well, alcohol gets me to sleep and it does knock you out, but it is so debilitating for you the next day. Your mental clarity, your focus, your energy, your productivity are just severely sabotaged by that. But I think now we're starting to understand about the various illnesses, ailments, problems that are showing up because of sleep deprivation. Like I said earlier, you take somebody who's not neurodivergent at all and you sleep, deprive them for five days and they show up as adhd. Another interesting piece of research. You take somebody and you sleep, deprive them for five days and they'll pass a type test, diabetes test. Right. So if sleep is kind of having that massive amount effect on our system, if you don't sleep, you will die. And that most of us are significantly sleep deprived, then we actually have to put sleep at a much higher rate. And most of us haven't actually gone all in on sleep because it's not that I'll just get it like go all in on sleep. I want to give you some practical tools now with sleep. Cool the room down. Everyone's rooms are too hot. Mostly. The ladies love really thick duvets. They love to keep them on for far too long. If you can invest in either eight sleep or ula, eight Sleep is cooling the mattress. It changes the temperature for the mattress either side. She can choose her temperature, you can choose your temperature. I always recommend you to do a little sleep test. Get the blankets. Start with the sheets. Put one sheet over you. If you get cold, pull another one sheet over you. If you get cold again, pull another one sheet over you. You will learn the thickness that is relevant for you at that time. Most people are restless and not sleeping well because it's far too hot at bed. Make sure you cut off the stimulation. Get yourself to calm down that central nervous system. And sleep starts with exercise in the morning. Right? We must be getting a little bit of exercise in the morning. There's interesting things here, but part of the lymphatic or lymphatic system doesn't have a pump. It needs motion in order for you to start detoxing. That's where the liver is and it sets you up for a good night's sleep. So those are just some tools. But if you are disruptive with sleep, if you've always had poor sleep, make it your number one. After changing your relationship with alcohol, of course.

Yeah. So where do you see the alcohol free and like sober, curious or whatever you would call it, movements, because you're the. Probably the biggest one in the next five to 10 years.

Yes. Super, super, super excited. It's really gaining momentum and unfortunately, alcohol consumption is growing globally.

I want to talk about what happened during the pandemic.

I'll do that now. During the pandemic, here in the US the alcohol industry lobbied to have alcohol as an emergency supply. And so they changed the laws in this country that they could supply alcohol 24,7. Alcohol consumption increased by 20% in one year. And they're expecting it to continue growing another 20% in the US over the next five years. So this problem is not going away. I've been shouting like a crazy man for the last 10 years. The problem is not going away. I really, really believe, and I keep going on podcasts like this, encouraging my sober influencers, sober coaches, anyone who runs an alcohol free podcast to start talking about control, to start helping people with mindful drinking, to start talking about helping people drink less. Let's focus on that because that's more manageable, it's more achievable, it's more realistic, it's more in the world we live in. So I think that's one core element. I think the second thing is, you know, there is going to be a drugs revolution. We're going to see drugs reclassification. I don't believe that alcohol is going to get outlawed or prohibited or anything like that in anytime soon. But I do believe that with the rise of, with the sharing of messages like this, you inviting me to come here and speak to you guys, this increase in conversation, I think that we have such an amazing opportunity to change the consumer choice by talking about what people want and meeting them where they're at. Right. Which is not, you have a problem, you have to stop drinking. That's not it. It's. Hey, do you know, I know you're trying to lose weight at the moment. Why don't you just think about drinking a bit less? Alcohol is so many calories and it's full of sugar and it's really not good for you. Hey, I know you're struggling with depression at the moment. You do realize that alcohol is one of the most powerful depressants you know. Do you do realize you know, hey, I know you're struggling with sleep. Oh, I know you're struggling. What about you're trying to get promoted at work? I know you want to do think about just drinking a little bit less and then more importantly making that available to your staff, your teams resources, having the conversation with people, creating a more inclusive environment. So I think the way we change society is is by encouraging people with the messaging of what they want.

How many of you found this conversation to be insightful and helpful? You're doing good work, my friend.

Thank you.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead.

You're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.