Transcript excerpt from a Joe Rogan Experience conversation in which comedian Nikki Glaser describes quitting alcohol after reading Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Drinking. Glaser recounts severe hangovers, frequent blackouts, and how the book’s method reframed excuses for drinking, leading her to stop drinking on December 9, 2011 and attributing career improvements to quitting. The piece mixes personal anecdote, humor, and critique of industry messaging about addiction.
Chapters
The Joe Rogan Experience.
You want some fake beer? It's so.
I can't believe. Yeah, I mean, I don't drink, and this is absurd to me that I would have a beer.
It's a fake beer.
It's not.0 alcohol. I don't miss the taste of alcohol. Oh, no. Who misses the. No one would drink alcohol if it didn't get you effed up.
I would drink these. They taste good.
Really?
Yeah. I love it.
This tastes like the St. Louis Funny Bone, which is a great taste. It does. It tastes like the St. Louis Funny Bone. 2009. Living my best life.
When was the last time you drank?
2011. December 9th.
Whoa.
Cleveland hilarities after the show, you're like, I'm done. Well, I just had a couple beers to close out the evening. Was by myself. Just gonna go.
Now you're shooting heroin.
I don't know what happened. Well, I was at a point in my life where it was like, this has gotta stop. Because my hangovers were getting so ridiculous and debilitating for a whole day. And I was just doing. You know, I would blackout from, like, two drinks because my mind. John Mulaney has a great joke about it where he says he would black out very quickly after a couple drinks. Cause his mind was like, we know where this is going. Shutting down early. Like, if you know you're gonna black out, your brain just blacks out earlier. Cause every time I drank, I would black out. So.
Wow.
I just. I woke up that next morning, and I had only had. It wasn't a hard night of drinking. Couple beers, but I was just the sickest I've ever been. And the thing about hangovers that I really had to look at was, like, the best part about being sick. If you're gonna find the best part about being sick, it's that people feel sorry for you. You get babied a little bit. You get a nurturing from your friends and family that you don't get when you're healthy. But when you're hungover, no one gives you that. So you're sick. And you don't even get the only good thing about being sick, which is people feeling sorry for you. Everyone's like, you piece of shit. You did this to yourself. So I was, like, in the shower in the fetal position, thinking, this is how I should feel if I'm dying. Like, I really don't want to feel this bad unless I am on my way out. So I'm not doing this anymore. And I read a book, and I.
Was done what was the book?
The Easy Way to Stop Drinking by Alan Carr.
What's the easy way?
Easy way is you read this book and then you're done at the end of it. And what he does, well, I'd used his method to stop smoking. The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr. So many people have read it. It's the one book that when you've tried everything else, nothing else works. This book, my mom quit smoking after 35 plus years.
Really?
So many of my friends I heard about it. I think like Ellen DeGeneres and Ashton Kutcher. I heard a bunch of celebrities kind of talking about it. I, I read the book and you can smoke while you read it. And then by the end of the book, he just promises you, he goes, go have a cigarette. And you're just like, no, I don't want to and I don't need to. His method is, and this is thing he does with drinking, any excuse you have to do that thing, he talks you out of it. He tells you a reason why your excuse is actually bullshit and there's no science behind it. And he disproves any reason that you have to do it. And we've been brainwashed by tobacco and alcohol industries to believe that quitting is really hard. And quitting alcohol is hard. If you have an addiction, you can die from it, obviously. But with tobacco, it's part of their propaganda to tell you that it's hard to quit smoking. They're the ones pushing that method or message, which seems like, why would they tell people it's hard? But they're doing that because if it's hard, you won't quit. So that has been their message to be like, it's so hard to quit smoking. It's so hard when really it's not. It's not, no. The withdrawal symptoms of not smoking last up to two weeks. I think it's less than, I think it's like seven to 11 days. And the discomfort caused by wanting a cigarette is the same discomfort as being a little bit hungry. You're a little bit annoyed. It's like it's not insurmountable, it's uncomfortable, but it passes after seven to 11 days, I think it is. And then even when you're going through it, it's not that bad. But it's the psychological effect of thinking it's hard that makes it then hard. So once he proves to you it's not that hard. And any excuse you have to smoke, which is like, it calms me down, it raises Your blood pressure. So that's inaccurate. It makes me more social. Actually, it isolates you if you really look at it. Every time you smoke, you feel people think you stink. Like, it just every excuse you have. And then he did it with drinking, too. I went through this book. I read it. You can drink while you read the book. You have to wanna quit to pick up the book. You have to wanna be like, I want this out of my life. I don't know how to get it out of my life. And I gave this book to so many of my friends. And my friends don't drink anymore. And a lot of them use program or other things to supplement. But all I needed was this book and I was done. And I'll tell you, I drank every single night of my life, and I never thought I could live without it. It was just. I was just like, anyone listening? That's like, no, no, no, you don't understand. All my friends drink. It's my life. It's my social life, it's my work life. It was everything to me. It's all I look forward to. Yeah. I'll never go like this. When my friend enters a bar again. Like, I'll never.
That's.
I'll never do that. I will never greet a friend with. She's here. Yes, yes, yes. Matt's.
Is that you?
That was me. That was like, that's something I miss. I'll never have that kind of to drink enthusiasm anymore. But because I don't drink, I am fucking killing it. My life changed. I can trace my careers before and after, like, on the dot. So, you know, it's not for everyone. If you have a problem, you should maybe look into it. But that book seriously changed my life.
That sounds amazing. And there was no, like, difficulty in quitting.
None. It really was easy. I never. Maybe a couple times I felt like, oh, it'd be nice to have a drink, you know? I was dating a guy that, like, just wanted to have a glass of wine with me. And I'm like, why can't I just have a glass of wine? And I've been tempted, and I don't think that I would go off the deep end again. But.
But.
But I don't. I just. I go back to that book and I'm just like. I just. Any reason I can give myself. It's just really. It isn't true, and I'm better without it.
Well, it's definitely not true if you're drinking it every night and you're blacking out.
Yeah.
But if you just have a couple glasses of wine with dinner, it feels nice.
Oh, I know.
Social lubricant. You have fun with friends. You start laughing and joking around, but you don't have that ability to stop. There is that.
I could for a few months, and then it would trickle into. It's just exactly the voice you have. People are listening. And I know you relate to this. Of. You go, I'm just gonna have two tonight. But then that person. And you go, promise yourself you're just gonna have two. But then you get that voice drunk. And that voice is like, have another.
Come on, please.
So you can't talk to your. You can't plan for how you're gonna feel two drinks in because you get drunk, and then you. It just keeps going. I miss it, man.
Even I have a bit about that, about drunk driving. The problems. The problem is not whether or not you can drive drunk. The problem is even thinking that you can drive drunk, because when you're drunk, you don't know what the fuck you can do or can't do.
Yeah.
That's why guys get in fights with people way bigger than them when they're drunk and they don't even know how to fight.
You're. You're stupider.
Yeah.
When you're drunk.
You're a fucking moron when you're drunk. So the idea that you could drive drunk like, I'm fine. I like, you don't even know if you're fine. That's the problem.
Yes.
The problem is you're drunk.
And that's a big part of the book is talking to people about this liquid courage that everyone cites. I mean, like, I need a drink because I can't go on stage if I don't have a drink. I need a drink to talk to the girl. And it's not courage. What you're doing is you're making yourself more stupid.
