BITESIZE | The Surprising Truth About Alcohol | Andy Ramage #615

Today's Bite Size episode is sponsored by The Way. I have tried so many meditation apps over the years, but I've never come across one as good or as effective as The Way. I find it a fantastic way to start off each day and it has really helped me feel calmer, relaxed and more present. In fact, I love this app so much that I recently decided to invest in the company and join them in their mission to get more people meditating. Meditation has been shown to have all kinds of benefits, reducing stress, increasing calm, improving focus and over time has even been shown to result in positive structural changes in the brain in areas linked to memory, focus and emotional regulation. But of course, you only get those benefits if you actually do it. And that's one of the main reasons I love The Way so much. It makes it really easy to establish a meditation practice that sticks. The Way are offering my podcast listeners an incredible 30 free meditation sessions to get you started with your practice. To take advantage, all you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash live more. Welcome to feel better, live more bite-sized, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 438 of the podcast with performance coach and bestselling author Andy Rammage. Andy is the co-founder of the one year no beer movement and since his first appearance on this podcast back in 2019, countless listeners have gone in touch to share how they've transformed their lives by giving up or changing their relationship with alcohol. In this clip, Andy explains why he believes that removing alcohol could help you become the most productive, present and healthiest version of yourself. In your opinion, what are some of the signs that might indicate somebody is drinking alcohol, not because they like it, but they're doing it because of either social expectation or because they're trying to numb some internal discomfort? I think it's a really simple test. For example, if I said to all the middle lane drinkers, so my advice is always aimed at those in the middle lane. So I'll just set that up and that's very much my story. Middle lane for me is the average drinker. So if you've got your alcoholic, your dependent alcohol, use disorder severe and those that abstain, everyone else is in the middle lane. So you're looking at hundreds of millions of people, probably about 2 billion people worldwide. If I said to most people, take a break, stop drinking for 90 days, I would say for lots of people, the thoughts of that would drive fear into their hearts, the thoughts of having to deal with those stressful events, the thoughts of having to deal with those social events and not consume alcohol. And I think if there's any sense of fear or rejection of that, I think that's a really good indication that maybe alcohol has a grip over you, then you don't realize. So basically, if you have a healthy relationship with alcohol, then you're suggesting that the thought of not consuming any for 90 days should actually do nothing for you. Absolutely. You should just be like, yeah, OK, no worries, I can do that. But if you're starting to push back or start to tell stories or make excuses, you're saying that might indicate some kind of problematic relationship. Yeah. And I think it's on a sliding scale, isn't it? That whole middle lane, there's those that drink very infrequently and those that drink, you know, quite regularly that are not in that place of dependency. But I think what we find is we've got this cultural blind spot to alcohol and the impact that it's having on our lives in many ways. We treat it like water or a fizzy pop in many ways. And we consume it all the time for every celebration and commiseration and day that ends in why and stressful day. And I don't think we realize the impact that it's having on us in many ways until very often we remove it. And I think that's why I always like people to take a break just to have a look. What does it feel like for you, the other side of that break when you join me on the fun side of the island, as I like to say, for long enough to experience life without alcohol. And you might find that many of those things that you thought you needed alcohol for to socialize, that actually you're even more social, that you have more fun. And maybe what's underneath some of those low mood, maybe mild anxiety, maybe depression, a lot of those things for lots of people, not for everyone, often disappear when you remove alcohol, even as an average drinker. Throughout my medical career as a doctor, one of the things I've always been keen to do is to help my patients make changes to their lifestyle, change their daily behaviors, because so much of what we see these days is driven by our collective modern lifestyles. And one thing I've noticed is that too often we try and change our behaviors without understanding the role that those behaviors play in our life. And what I've found is that in order to really change your behavior in the long term, you have to really identify and understand what role did that serve in the first place. So for example, with alcohol, if your alcohol intake is a way of managing the stress in your life, well, yeah, you can go on a 28 day break as many people do in January, for example. But what I've found, and I'd be interested to hear your experience here, I've also found that a 28 day break, whilst for some people can be really helpful, that it wasn't long enough for them to realize what is alcohol doing for me? Do you know what I mean? I don't know if you found that at all. I'll completely. So if you look at it in terms of optimal performance as an average drinker, at the end of the day, you're consuming what is a drug. And people don't like to hear that word because they like to disassociate from what it actually is. But as middle-lane drinkers, it is, we can't ignore that. You know, there's a great quote from Kent Dunnington. He wrote a book called Addiction and Virtue. There's a quote in there that I love. And it's this, those with severe addictions are like contemporary profits that we ignore to our own demise because they teach us a great truth about ourselves. And I think there's so much of that when it comes to alcohol. We forget that actually we're messing with this thing that is highly addictive and can disrupt our performance in every which way. And I really believe that most adults in the UK, 70% are underperforming in almost every domain of their life without even realizing because of their middle-lane relationship with alcohol. So 28 days is great. Any break is great, in my opinion. And 28 days feels really achievable. But I think over 90 days, you start to get the results from returns that can transform your life like it did for me 10 years ago as a middle-lane drinker. It was the 90 day break where I started to lose weight. I started to get fitter, my mental clarity started to improve. My anxiety disappeared and never came back. You know, I started to feel better and look better. I started to sleep better. 28 days, I hadn't slept like that in years. That deep restorative sleep. My relationships were better. It was such a powerful experience. I'd love more people to have that experience as an average drinker because to see that and experience it and feeling. And then when you do it's like a penny drop. It's like this alcohol-free magic that happens that I described all the time. It's like getting a superpower back. It genuinely is. It's like you've removed the kryptonite from your backpack that you've been carrying for the last decade or two to get a glimpse of your optimal self. That is such a powerful experience. I think that's why millions and millions of people are coming to this same realization at the same time. For example, lots of people will be listening to this podcast, thinking they're operating at 100% in terms of their health, their vibrancy, their career. But they might be falling short of what that peak is. By 10, 20, 30, 40, 50% just don't know because it becomes your new normal. That's what happened for me. I remember it, right? This is how ridiculous it is. I remember being mid-30s, overweight, unhappy, unfulfilled, career plateaued. And I remember this almost epiphany moment of thinking, oh, I know what it is. It's middle age. Ah, here I am. This is middle age. My destiny is to feel a bit rubbish for the rest of my life. What a load of nonsense. I'm almost 50 now. You know, 10 years at this fitter, faster, healthier than ever been in my life. You know, from when I was playing professional sport. And I think that's the message to get out to people. I think we get so stuck. We believe our new normal is very often so far short of what we're capable of. And it's alcohol. It's always been alcohol. It's the thing that trips you up in terms of your consistency in the way that you exercise. It is. It's the number one thing. It's the thing that blows up a nutritional strategy. It's the thing that destroys our sleep. It's the thing that destroys our mental well-being. And we're all doing it. We're all doing it on such a massive scale. So imagine if people remove it, the gifts you get. It's like a superpower. And that's what I'm really trying to portray is just wake a few people up like I needed to be woken up just to go, oh, I wonder. I wonder is actually how cold the thing that's behind, you know, my lack of performance in certain areas or my grumpyness or my tiredness or my inconsistency. And the reason I'm telling myself and beating myself up so I don't have the willpower is the last thing we have a question. It's just sort of part of who we are. Right. It was part of who I was in my relationships, in my business, in my career. So to challenge that, I found really difficult and I struggled with it at first in amongst that social pressure and that identity that I'd formed as a drinker. It's how I met my wife. It's how I did business. You know, it's how I thought I had fun to take that away. It was like, I don't know if I'm going to come out the other side of this. My biggest fear and this is the truth. How the hell am I going to dance at weddings? That's impossible, right? Middle-aged ginger bloke dancing at weddings without alcohol. How's that going to happen? You know, I had all those cultural worries where my friends going to disown me. My mates not think I'm funny anymore. My wife run off, you know, with someone that drinks and, you know, out the other side of that is that fear. And I think humans are so scared of change. You know, there's that W. H. Alden quote that I always come back to. We would rather die in our dread than change. And I think it's so true, isn't it? We run up against something like a break from alcohol as a middle-aged drinker and just tie ourselves in knots. And we're so scared to make that change that we never do. With your work, Andy, you've helped so many people change their relationship with alcohol. I'm interested as to where the obstacles are for people. So I imagine that some people will say, I get really nervous in groups. I struggle to talk to other people. When I have a drink, those inhibitions go and I can connect. Is that something that has come up with the people or some of the people you've coached and how do you advise them to sort of get through that? There's a couple of things about that. That's social anxiety. Like I'm quite introverted by nature. A lot of people don't think that, but I actually am. So I think I would drink to overcome that introversion. It made me more extrovert as it were. But also, I think we have to realise a lot of the time because we start drinking so early, which is terrible, really, when you think I'd like to drink and I was 13. My lovely, you know, young brain. I wanted to meet girls. My emotional pain was that I'm awkward. I don't know how to talk to girls. You know, if you look at it, a habitual routine, that was the pain, the trigger, the routine, I drunk alcohol, the reward. I could talk to girls. I was socially at ease. Imagine how powerful that was to my young brain. My brain just lit up and went, whatever you just did there, do that again. Every time you feel that emotional angst, as it were, do that again. And I think what happens for lots of adults, we bury that habitual routine into our subconscious and then we keep playing it forever. So we say to ourselves, oh, I need alcohol to socialise. But I was still telling myself that when I was in my mid 30s. That just wasn't true anymore. And then when I started to realise when I removed it, yes, I was a bit socially anxious, but what I'd never done in most of my adult life is just sat with that. So I just had to sit with it. And what I found almost as if by magic after 15 minutes, it just went away. It went away because I think your primitive brain settles down and says it's safe. It's OK. So what I've realised is all those years I'd been drinking to overcome something that had I just waited for 15 minutes, would have gone anyway. And I think there's an element of that when it comes to social anxiety. You've got to retrain yourself. Now, look at all these people that socialise without alcohol. They've just had to retrain themselves to socialise without taking this drug. Effectively, that is alcohol. I had to get comfortable showing up and socialising as me. Yeah, that's such a good point, isn't it? Because one thing I've realised over the last few years, and you see this online all the time where people change who they are in order to get validation. And it's a very, very dangerous trap to fall into because once you start changing who you are and you get celebrated for that different version of yourself, you're incentivised to keep doing that because we all like to be celebrated by others and have that connection with others. But a lot of the time we're doing it with someone who isn't really who we want to be. Absolutely. And there's a real power when you meet someone that's showing up and shining through their authentic energy. Yeah. There's a power in that that is attractive. You can sense it. You pick up on it. So, so, no. And I found that when I would walk into a room and not drink and got really confident with it, people would still gravitate towards you. They could feel that there was a different strength going on. Therefore showing up and shining full power, whether it be socially, whether it be in your career, whether it be in your family, there's something inherently attractive about that. And I think people miss out on that. They're trying to be someone that they're not. When actually their real power sits with themselves, their authentic self. And I think we're always trying to be this other person or create this character when really what people are most attracted to in terms of friendship, in terms of connection, in terms of business is you. Yeah. The authentic you that's underneath it all. I mean, a lot of people have got insecurities. They're deeply, deeply insecure. I have been for much of my life. So again, not a judgment, just an observation. In certain cultures, there is such a social pressure to drink that you've got to be pretty strong willed to go up against that and actually be confident that actually you're not going to drink, even if people around you are. It's something I've come up against. The reason I find it so, frankly, easy these days is because I have done a lot of work on myself. That's a very broad term. I've shared some of that on this podcast in the past, so I won't reiterate it now. But I feel very secure in who I am today. I know who I am. I know my values. I know what I stand for. So it's very easy for me to not drink and not be swayed anymore by social pressure. In your experience of coaching people, how much of a factor is this internal insecurity? How do you help them manage the social pressure that they often face when they go down this path? It's a brilliant question because I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg. So do I. Because actually by removing alcohol, I see these transformations. It was the same for me mentally and physically. I think people have to overcome something that they feel is terribly difficult, that may be impossible, that they face all that social pressure. And in doing so, in many ways, plus they get their mental clarity back because they're not blown up their neurochemistry. So that momentum and that courage builds on one another. And I think that's why I see dramatic transformations in people's confidence. The biggest thing that I see as a coach is lack of confidence, that same sort of thing, insecurity. The quickest thing that comes back when people remove alcohol is that confidence again. So I think it's a bit of chicken and egg. I think a lot of people do suffer from those insecurities, but I think our middle lane drinking feeds that beast. It makes us more insecure. It takes away our power. I really believe that. I worked with a guy just recently and he described it like this. If it was a battery pack on his back, he was down at 1%. He was still operating in the world and doing all those things, but he'd lost all his power due to that middle lane drinking. Of course, he removes alcohol for a period of time, has to deal with those social events, that social pressure. It's hard, but we grow stronger through doing hard things, don't we? So through that process, we regain confidence. That's why I continually see it, and I've seen it up close for hundreds of thousands of people. People take a break from alcohol, transform their career. They take a break from alcohol, transform their relationship, transform their body, transform their mind. They regrow their confidence back up as their authentic self. So for someone that's feeling insecure right now, the greatest thing you can ever do, in my opinion, if you're a middle lane drinker, is remove alcohol. And it might feel like you've lost that cloak, that persona, that guard that you used to put up and appreciate that you have to go two steps back to go 10 steps forward, but then you regrow your power. Imagine what it feels like to go out that first time and socialize. When you wake up the next day, you feel like a hero. Let's say there's someone, Andy, who's listening to this and they're like, OK, all right, I'm hearing you guys. I reckon that maybe I could experiment with my relationship with alcohol. OK, let's see if what they're saying, let's see what Andy's saying holds true for me. They're drinking twice a week, maybe a couple of glasses of wine or whatever it might be. If they want to start on this alcohol free journey, and perhaps they've never had a period of time without alcohol, as is the case with many, many people since they were 18 or 16 or whatever it might be. How do you encourage people to start? People have to be ready to change as well. I think this is really important. And that's great if someone's listening to this and they're inspired. We need to put a quick caveat in here. I'm talking to the middle lane, so this is the average drinker. If you're someone that might identify as alcoholic or you're worried that you might be dependent on alcohol, if you do decide to take a break, you need to seek professional medical advice. But let's just say someone wants to take a break, which is great. I think the place to start. I've got a tool, a little technique, so we just walk. I'll just walk for it. Yeah, yeah, I think it's great for anyone listening. I think this is really beneficial because it helps you see your relationship with alcohol on a page. So I train all our coaches in this. I call it the ambivalence seesaw. So you'd almost draw a line and a triangle underneath it, like a little kid's seesaw, if you can imagine. And what I'd get everyone to do on the right hand side of the seesaw, write down your perceived benefits for drinking alcohol right now, not in the past, not in the future, right now. And what you tend to find is it's quite short list. It'll probably say something like, helps me socialize, helps me relax. It's not an exhaustive list. Catch up with my mates. Yeah, it's normally quite small for the individual. And then on the left hand side, I'd say, write down all the consequences that you're currently experiencing in your relationship with alcohol. As a middle-aged drinker, it might be tiredness, might be groggyness, to more extreme bit of anxiety, bit of load mood, you know, not performing as well as I like to in my career, grumpy, snapping at the kids, not as consistent in my exercise, not as consistent in my nutrition. It's quite a big list. So instantly you're starting to get a visual representation. On top of that, I'd put a line and say, what are all the benefits you think you might gain from being alcohol free? And if you haven't had that experience, you've heard me bang on about all the benefits you might get, more time, more energy, better skin, better health, more momentum. So visually, you start to see this big list on the left, starts to dwarf some of these perceived upsides on the right. And then what I'd like to do and I get people to do, I challenge the truth in those perceived upsides on the right. I.e. alcohol helps me have fun or alcohol helps me relax. And we start to unpick that. And like we've been saying all along, what might have been true in your younger years might not be true now. Does it really help you relax? Like if you take the bigger picture into play, yes, it gives the chemical illusion of relaxation after those couple of drinks, but then what happens? If you were to stop drinking, you're more relaxed or less relaxed. What about the next day? More relaxed or less relaxed when you're suffering from maybe anxiety? So you start to unpick that beliefs. You've got your relationship with alcohol on a page. You're starting to unpick some of those beliefs. And then you start to crowd them out. This is like retraining your brain. What other ways can you achieve the same reward of relaxation? What other ways can you achieve the same reward of socialising with my mates? And you start to put all other ways in there. And it might be take a bath. It might be go for a run. It might be go for a hike. So all of a sudden really quickly, and we've just gone through that in record time, you start to see your whole relationship with alcohol on the page. It's really visual because you see that those little perceived upsides are caught in all those consequences. You're missing out on all those incredible benefits. And you're really clear about what it is that you need to do, the rewards that you seek to overcome them. Yeah, I love it. It's bringing the dark out into the light. Yeah. It's why I love, you know, solitude practices, self-awareness practices, things like journaling, whatever it might be, because it allows you to step outside of your life to reflect on your life. That's a great tool. Where unless someone's done it, it's quite obvious when you hear you walk it through. But when you're in your life and it's just habitual that on a Friday night, you open a bottle of wine and you have half and your wife has half. If that's habitual, you've probably never done the pros, the cons calculation and just literally five minutes of doing that. You'll actually visually see it on a piece of paper very, very clearly. It gives people that distance. And I think what happens, there's a great saying, my friend, Matt, talks about this. When you're inside the jar, you can't read the label. Yeah, it's so true, isn't it? And I think we've got two billion people inside the jar at the moment in the middle lane. So that exercise gets you out of the jar. You get outside the jar and now you can look at it. It's on a page. You can see your relationship with alcohol on a page. And from that place of awareness comes the ability to make change. It doesn't necessarily make it easy, but you gain a whole new level of awareness. And I think as coaches, that is a great foundational skill to start with someone. Because it's like light bulbs going off everywhere. Oh, maybe it's not the thing that I thought it was. Maybe the stories that I've been telling about it all these years, actually once were true for me and no longer true. That's a game changer. So the person does the exercise. It goes, OK, there's a lot of negatives here. Not many positives. All right, I'm getting even more convinced now that I might want to experiment with a new relationship. Do you recommend abstinence, like 28 days, 90 days? Is that what you like people to do to fully experience how good you can feel? Or sometimes, I don't know, let's say you're drinking six glasses of wine a week. Is it useful for them to make that three glasses of wine per week? Any change is good because three versus six is a massive benefit. But on a personal note, I want people to take a break to experience all the benefits for themselves, to have that physiological, visceral experience of sleeping better. What it feels like to wake up without that low grade anxiety hanging around, to get your authentic self back for a month or two and collide with life. Do the big social event. Go to the wedding and dance if you have to deal with the stressful event. Like that is so powerful. What we spoke about earlier, that's how you rebuild and regain confidence. I think so many people are lacking confidence. So many people are lacking a sense of meaning and purpose. And I think we're looking in all the wrong places. So the longer you can have that stretch of sobriety, whether it be 28 or 90 days, the more impactful that will be. Then you won't need me to tell you. You will know for yourself. Yeah. And sometimes it's just about awareness. That's why these podcasts are so wonderful, right? Because what we're doing is just raising people's awareness. It might be in the corner of their consciousness. They might be thinking, I wonder, and when they wake up with a bit of a hangover and realize it's taking them a week to get over it, it might be like, well, actually, are those perceived upsides worth that week of underperformance? And it might take them a year or two. They might come back and listen to these podcasts as people do all the time. Years later and make that change. What a wonderful thing that is. And I think that's what's so important about this. We're not wagging fingers. We're not telling you what they should do. We're just trying to show up and shine our light. You do it so beautifully as well. And in doing so, we motivate and inspire people. That's how you make change. Hope you enjoyed that bite size clip. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.