In this episode Dr. Joy Kong converses with a guest (Speaker A) about the hidden dangers of alcohol and why it has become entrenched in modern Western culture. They explain that ethanol is metabolized into the highly toxic acetaldehyde, which short‑circuits the nervous system and creates an adaptive, euphoric response that is ultimately a stress reaction. The discussion expands to cultural factors: alcohol’s historical role as an easily produced social lubricant, the collective belief that it is necessary for social interaction, and how modern stress, trauma, and pervasive environmental toxins drive increased reliance on it. The conversation critiques the lowered neurochemical baseline that develops with regular use, using a "biochemical credit card" metaphor to describe tolerance, dependence, and withdrawal. They introduce the "sober curious" movement and explore the desire for non‑toxic alternatives that can provide similar social and emotional benefits without the side‑effect profile. Throughout, Dr. Kong emphasizes the importance of educated personal decision‑making, encouraging listeners to assess the true cost of alcohol use against its perceived benefits.
Chapters
Alcohol objectively is a metabolic poison. It is a toxin. It goes into the bloodstream and it basically short circuits the nervous system and, you know, creates this kind of like ubiquitous dump of chemistry as kind of like an adaptive response to its presence. Right.
Some people may still not buy into the fact that alcohol is really bad for you.
You culturally, we've developed into this state, this collective state where we actually believe that alcohol is, is is a necessary catalyst for facilitating a social or recreational environment? Is there a way that you can have your cake and eat it too? That you can get the experience that you want, the feeling that you want, the mental stability, the function, the energy, the focus, motivation, all that stuff without the side effect profile and without being dependent on an exogenous source of something that constantly steals your attention With the level of stress that people have been experiencing, not just in the modern world, but in very recent times, I think a lot of people are seeking all kinds of substances to cope.
What do you see as what's going on in the society?
Oh, yep. That started off soft, you know, surrender. No, I mean, I think that, you know, modern civilization, in the West, really all over the world, but definitely in the West, in large part, has kind of become a trauma-generating machine. We have a lot of things. Now, I don't want to broadly, exclusively characterize this that because it's like we've got chronic disease, we've got disconnection, isolation, loneliness, we've got mental illness, we've got ridiculous polarization.
So how are we coping? Yeah. So are using— a lot of people do use alcohol. And even psychedelics, right? To check out kind of.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Caffeine and yeah, other forms of addiction, food. So, and what, but what's interesting is the use of alcohol has actually declined in the younger population.
Yeah.
Right?
No, no, it's so fascinating. So you look at this and I, you know, I talk about this a lot. Every culture around the world, both, both modern, ancient, et cetera, like has their altered states of consciousness that they hold up as like, you know, the core of like the recreational and like social environments or that can be used for like weddings, funerals, spiritual ceremonies, or social gatherings, any of those kind of things. But in the West, we got to where we embraced alcohol.
Well, apparently the Chinese can hardly reach business decisions without bringing alcohol to the meeting, right? Yeah. So is this so much of part of the social fabric?
Yeah.
At the detriment of their liver and right. Every other organ.
Exactly. You know, alcohol, you know, alcohol kind of, you know, got its hooks into, you know, civilizations across the world, you know, hundreds of years ago. And you know, there's reasons for that. I mean, it's can be easily produced by anyone and really it's a, you know, it's a toxic byproduct of fermentation. And it's something that gives an immediate pleasurable feeling and hits on a few of these basic human needs that most people desire. And, you know, and you utilize altered states in order to obtain, you know, that's, that's, you know, social lubrication, you know, meaning the ability to kind of loosen up. And then there's also stress relief, right? You know, stress relief, introspection, you know, loneliness, all of those different things. Those are, those are core underlying desires and reasons why people alter their consciousness.
I was talking to my brother And he will hang out with his friends. And here's, you know, he's a guy who knows how to be healthy. But he chooses to drink quite a bit of alcohol with his friends. He said, I think it's worth it because of the social connection. But I know how bad it is for his health, right? So like, even for me, if I go to a place, you know, when there are a lot of people, it gets a little overwhelming. It would be nice to kind of tone that edge down a little bit and be more relaxed. But I'm just not willing to put a toxin in my body.
Right.
So it would be so nice to have something that's an alternative that doesn't hurt me. You know, talking about hurting, like, what are the problems with alcohol? Because a lot of people are saying, oh, moderation, you know. Yeah, that's, you know, it's all about moderation. What are your thoughts on it?
Well, it's an interesting point too, because we've, we've kind of, you know, culturally we've developed into this state, this collective state where we actually believe that alcohol is, is a necessary catalyst for facilitating a social or recreational environment. And the reason is, is a lot of us have developed as having that as a crutch, you know, to stimulate the neurochemistry to allow you to do that. And so, so many people haven't developed the skill set to navigate social experiences without that band-aid there, because it is a state and it's sort of like a, it's a biochemical crutch obviously that, that, that you can use. I mean, think back, you know, whenever you were a kid, whenever you were 12 years old, you didn't need any artificial stimulation, you know, to feel good. You woke up vibrant, excited.
Yeah.
Go to work.
I got on my bike, just the wind on my face.
On the wind on your face. You like, everything was a drug. It feels like that neurochemical state. And a lot of that is just because you're so youthful that you have the metabolism in place to create healthy neurochemistry. Metabolically, all that kind of stuff, hormonally and in different things. And I think that the assumption is we start to— a lot of us start to degenerate a lot faster than, than we should. And because it becomes so common, it becomes typical, and then it just becomes like, well, that's just how it is being an adult, is that you need some sort of artificial stimulation, some sort of exogenous, you know, lever to pull to get a dopamine spike. But anyways, it's just It's, you know, there's been this kind of collective belief, you know, just because something is typical doesn't mean that it's normal, right? So there's a difference there, right? And just because it's typical to not only not have like the software skill set to navigate social situations and like the physical like resources to actually feel good, it's become so typical because you have a culture that is largely diseased. There's just a lot of suboptimal function that's going on. I think it's the framing, right? That they kind of think that like, that sobriety is a state of deprivation, right? Of a state of— because in that belief system, you know, comes from the fact that we're so used to having a baseline, like a mood and functionality baseline that's so low. And unfortunately, the more you actually use synthetic substances to artificially stimulate an elevated emotional state, the, the, the lower your baseline actually gets over time generally. And so what they're acting as is basically, I call them biochemical credit cards. They borrow from tomorrow's feel-good chemistry to pay for today.
Mm-hmm. Right?
So there's no free lunch with these things. It doesn't give you anything. It just, it's, it releases what you can't even afford to spare. And so the problem with like a credit card is the more that you spend, the more in debt you get with, your body's own chemistry, which is what leads to tolerance, habituation, you know, dependency, and eventually withdrawal. Culturally, and as far as the world and certainly the West today, a lot of it is due to stress, trauma, and toxicity, right? We're exposed to so many foreign molecules, you know, in our food, in our air, in our water, the things that we breathe, the things that we put in our skin. Oh, it's, it's thousands. It's tens of thousands of chemicals that interfere with the natural intelligence of the body. And the body can adapt to a certain degree, but you start to build these things up over the last 10 to 15 to 20, you know, you know, years and, and multiple decades. Now we have an explosion of illness that's toxin driven, but the framing is incomplete because the question is, it's not like some people can't get away with it. The question is, is it the highest road and the best strategy to take, right? Is there a way that you can have your cake and eat it too, that you can get the experience that you want, the feeling that you want, the, the, the mental stability, the function, the energy, the focus, motivation, all that stuff, and kind of choose what you want to feel more. So be able to press natural buttons, you know, that help to elevate you naturally without the side effect profile and without being dependent on an exogenous source of something that constantly steals your attention. Your body can't naturally regulate itself. So you never have full autonomy. Your attention is constantly going towards, okay, I got to get that next fix. I got to make sure and take my thing to drink my thing, to take my caffeine to drink, you know what I mean? And so it's this kind of thing that mines your attention. And so you don't have full stability and full reign over your own nervous system.
And some people may still not buy into the fact that alcohol is really bad for you. I mean, what— maybe you can lay it out. What, what, what, what, What do alcohol do to the body? Absolutely.
Really? Okay.
Okay.
So like I said, you know, alcohol, alcohol objectively is a metabolic poison. It is a toxin right now. The degree at which you can adapt to that, right? It varies from person to person. Now, ethyl alcohol, ethanol is not actually psychoactive. And it's not responsible for the effect that people know, know it for, right? You know, the euphoria, the relaxation, that release of chemistry. Whenever you ingest alcohol, it actually gets converted into a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde.
Mm-hmm.
And acetaldehyde is very toxic. You know, it goes into the bloodstream and it basically short circuits the nervous system and, you know, creates this kind of like ubiquitous dump of, of, you know, of, of chemistry as kind of like an adaptive response to its presence, right? So it's kind of like euphoric response to like the extreme stress that's going on in the nervous system. But it is, it's, it's a, it's a response. It's like an adaptive response to a toxin. And it feels good. You know, it's this numbing, great effect, but obviously we all know what comes with it. So it's not like I try not to characterize it like this whole sober curious movement that I've, you know, really involved with and everything. It's not even, it's, it's exactly that. It's sober curious. It's, it's really a curiosity and it's an honest exploration of the emerging treatments, therapies, strategies, compounds that are slowly moving the culture away from our sole reliance on alcohol. And synthetic molecules in the form of pharmaceuticals for our elevated emotional states and for our social bonding in recreational environments. That, that doesn't mean that we're getting rid of it totally. It's basically just an exploration of like, what are the technologies that might be more efficient that we can throw into the mix and maybe sometimes use the alcohol, special occasions, layer in the other ones, or a lot of people are making the conscious decision to just give up alcohol altogether. And so it's one of those things, a lot of people are making the decision just from a performance standpoint.
Yeah.
It's just like, okay, we're exposed to a lot of toxins, a lot of stressors. Are there other technologies that are available that don't add to that toxic stress burden? But, you know, again, it doesn't mean that it's the end of the world and everybody should be able to do exactly what they wanna do. But I just really believe in educated decisions that whenever people are doing things, especially on a regular basis, like, if you're— if you're— if you choose to use a strategy like alcohol regularly to alter your consciousness, to put yourself in a totally different perceptual space, and you're going to log in hours of time per week in that state, like, you should be well educated on, on what the quality of that state is and what the impact of being in that state is, right? And then you can just look at this, you can make a scorecard for yourself and decide if it's worth it.
Thank you for watching. I really hope you enjoy the episode. If you're intrigued by this plant, kava, please click on the link in the description and use Dr. Joy 10 to get 10% off your purchase.
