Alcohol: The Beautiful Lie and the Boring Truth

I have to be zero. My body does not handle ethanol (the actual chemical name for alcohol) well. Never really has. These days it is especially zero because of the performance I have built. Not the success. Success is just the trophy on the shelf. It is the ability to perform that matters.

I can honestly say I have never been in better shape physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Step one was zero alcohol. After that, the rest was simple. Not easy. A grind, yes. But a simple process.

And before you roll your eyes, I will say this: I am not preaching from a mountaintop. I am asking you to challenge what you are about to read. How is drinking helping you? I guess if you have no goals, want to get worse, or want to stall out then alcohol is the perfect tool. I say this out of experience.

What alcohol actually is

Strip away the labels and the tasting notes. Alcohol is what yeast (tiny single-celled organisms) make when they eat sugar. Fermentation (the process of turning sugar into alcohol) gave us beer, wine, mead. Distillation (boiling alcohol so it is stronger) gave us whiskey, vodka, gin. Humans figured out fermentation before we figured out plumbing.

Why did we start drinking it? Because it killed bacteria in dirty water. Because it preserved calories. Because it dulled pain. Because it turned off feelings when life was nothing but sharp edges.

Alcohol was never about health. It was about survival, then celebration, then habit.

What alcohol does in your body

Your body does not lie. It does not care about your cheat day or your “just one drink” rule. The second alcohol shows up, the chemistry kicks in.

Metabolism and the mess

Alcohol lands in your gut and heads straight to the liver. That is where the cleanup crews live. They are enzymes (proteins that speed up chemical reactions). The first one, alcohol dehydrogenase (the bouncer), turns ethanol into acetaldehyde (a harsh, damaging chemical your body wants gone fast). The next one, aldehyde dehydrogenase (the cleaner), turns acetaldehyde into acetate (a weak vinegar-like chemical your body can burn for fuel).

When you drink heavy or often, a backup system kicks in called the microsomal ethanol oxidizing system (a liver pathway that activates under stress). It works fast but creates oxidative stress (cell damage from unstable oxygen molecules) like smoke pouring out of an engine running too hot.

The liver takes the first hit. Mitochondria (the power plants inside your cells) get sluggish. The gut lining (the barrier that keeps toxins out of your blood) gets leaky. The immune system (your internal defense team) lights up and starts throwing alarms.

You do not feel that in real time. You feel it the next morning as brain fog, lower motivation, skin acting up, workouts feeling heavier, and energy that never quite recovers.

Sleep, the quiet casualty

Alcohol knocks you out fast. People love that part. “It helps me sleep,” they say.

It does not. It sedates you, then wrecks the second half of your night.

It kills off REM sleep (the dream stage that restores your brain). It chops up slow-wave sleep (the deep stage that repairs your body). It spikes cortisol (a stress hormone that keeps you wired) and wakes you up at 3 a.m. even if you do not remember it.

You wake up having “slept,” but the quality is junk. Sleep debt (the recovery you owe your body) stacks up in the background. Mood, focus, metabolism all pay the bill later.

Hormones and recovery

Alcohol scrambles hormones (the body’s chemical messengers). Cortisol (the stress hormone) drifts up. Testosterone and growth hormone (the repair-and-rebuild chemicals) drift down.

Protein synthesis (the process that repairs and builds muscle) slows down. Recovery time stretches out. Energy feels flat. The system that should be firing on all cylinders starts running like it is missing parts.

The gut and the immune switchboard

Your gut is not just a food tube. It is a huge ecosystem (trillions of microbes) and a control panel for your immune system. Alcohol throws the whole system off balance.

It changes what grows there. It makes the gut lining more permeable (leaky). That leak lets fragments of bacteria slip into your blood, where the immune system reacts like there is an infection even when there isn’t.

That low-level inflammation (background irritation in your tissues) is like static on a radio. Not enough to drop you, but enough to steal energy, focus, and mood day after day.

What alcohol does in your brain

This is where it gets sneaky. Alcohol does not just change your night. It rewires your next day, your baseline, even your sense of self.

The brake and the gas

In the brain, alcohol leans on the GABA system (the network that calms things down). It also quiets the glutamate system (the network that keeps you alert). That one-two combo feels like relief.

But the brain always pushes back. You press the brake too often, it starts hitting the gas to keep balance. Stop drinking and suddenly you feel anxious, jittery, restless. That is the rebound effect. The Sunday scaries. The reason the next day feels like you are crawling out of your own skin.

Reward and habit

Alcohol lights up the dopamine system (the brain’s reward circuit). That first sip is a chemical jackpot.

The brain tags everything that led up to it. The bottle in the fridge. The bar on the way home. The text from friends saying “just one.” Those cues become triggers.

Pretty soon you are not making a choice to drink. You are just following the script your brain wrote behind your back.

Mood, panic, and cognition

Over time, alcohol shifts your baseline mood. A little flatter. A little grayer. Words come slower. Focus drifts. Stress feels heavier.

And then there are the panic attacks. The heart-racing, chest-tightening, breath-stealing moments out of nowhere. They come from the same rebound effect. Alcohol sedates the nervous system over and over, so it pushes back harder each time. One day you wake up and your heart is pounding, your chest is tight, your brain is screaming there is a problem when there is none.

It is not random. It is chemistry snapping back.

Your heart keeps the score

Alcohol hammers the cardiovascular system (the heart and blood vessels). It spikes blood pressure. It irritates the lining of blood vessels (the endothelium). It messes with the electrical rhythm that keeps your heartbeat steady.

That is why some people get palpitations (fluttering heartbeats) after a few nights of drinking. Doctors even have a name for it: “holiday heart syndrome” (irregular heartbeat after binge drinking).

The risk climbs with dose and frequency. But even moderate drinking can leave your heart learning rhythms you do not want it to learn.

The myth of the safe dose

Everyone wants rules. Three a week. Only on weekends. Only wine, never beer.

Here is the truth. Safer exists. Safe does not. A rare toast is safer than a nightly pour. A single beer is safer than five. A month off is better than none.

But your liver does not care about your intentions. Your heart does not care about the day of the week. Your nervous system does not care about the excuse. The chemistry does not change because you want it to.

The wine myth

You’ve heard it. “A glass of red is good for your heart.” The studies, the headlines, the excuses. Here’s the truth.

Those early studies lumped “non-drinkers” into one pile. That pile included people who had quit drinking because of health problems. Of course the “moderate drinkers” looked healthier in comparison. It was not the wine making them healthy. It was the statistics being sloppy.

Yes, red wine has resveratrol (a plant compound found in grape skins). It’s been linked to things like reduced inflammation, better blood vessel health, improved insulin sensitivity, and even longevity in some lab studies. But here’s the kicker: you’d need to drink hundreds of glasses of wine to get a meaningful dose. At that point the alcohol wipes out any benefit.

That’s why I supplement resveratrol directly. You get the benefits without the poison. Cleaner blood flow. Better recovery. Lower inflammation. More support for the systems that actually keep you performing.

The heart benefits you’ve heard about with wine? That was never about the alcohol. It was about lifestyle. People who drank a little wine often ate better, exercised more, had more money, more access to healthcare. It was not the cabernet saving them.

Bottom line: alcohol does not make you healthier. At best, it is a trade-off. At worst, it is a slow poison dressed up in a crystal glass. If you want the resveratrol, skip the wine and take it straight.

The gateway nobody talks about

People love to call weed the “gateway drug.” That’s the old story. But let’s be honest. The real gateway is alcohol.

Think about it. How many bad decisions start with “I only had a couple drinks”? How many nights slide from a beer into something harder? “Have a beer, get a bag” is common now. It’s the trade of the times. Alcohol lowers the brakes and suddenly cocaine, MDMA, pills, whatever’s on the table feels like a good idea.

Weed? The worst thing you’re probably going to do is call the cops on yourself or order three pizzas and forget you did it. Alcohol doesn’t work that way. Alcohol is gasoline on impulse.

Here’s why. Alcohol hits the prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain that handles judgment and impulse control). It dials it down. At the same time, it lights up dopamine (the brain’s reward system). That mix is a perfect storm. Less inhibition, more craving. You stop thinking about tomorrow and only think about now.

Cocaine takes that same dopamine system and slams the gas pedal. Alcohol opens the door. Cocaine walks right through it. It’s called cross-sensitization (when one drug primes the brain to want more of another). The more often you drink, the easier that handoff becomes.

Add in the social part. Most people are not sitting at home sober and suddenly deciding they need a line of coke. It happens at the bar, at the party, after the shots. Alcohol is the setup man. Cocaine is the closer. And the closer doesn’t leave without changing the game.

Call it what it is. Alcohol is the gateway. Not weed. Not some mystical plant. The legal drug sitting in every fridge is the one that opens the door to harder drugs. And once that loop starts… drink, coke, repeat… it is hard to close.

Why my stance is zero

I have lived both sides. The nights where alcohol took the edge off. The mornings where panic rolled in like a storm. The heart pounding. The shallow breathing. The feeling that the room was getting smaller by the second.

I have done the negotiations in my head. Only on weekends. Only two. Never three. The rules always bend. The biology never does.

Zero is not about perfection. It is about getting my baseline back. My brain calms down. My heart beats steady. My sleep stops feeling like a bad loan with high interest. Work, training, conversations, love. They all run cleaner without the chemical fog.

I like waking up without panic in my chest. I like workouts where my heart pounds because I am sprinting, not because my nervous system is overcorrecting from last night’s whiskey. I like a body that feels like it is on my side again.

Zero is not deprivation. It is permission. Permission to stop fighting my own biology. Permission to stop paying a tax I no longer owe. Permission to feel everything and still handle it.

And once you feel that steady baseline again, you realize how much you were trading away for the buzz.

I challenge you to challenge this idea. How is drinking helping you? If you have no goals, if you want to get worse, then alcohol is the perfect tool. But if you want to perform, if you want to be sharper, calmer, stronger, it starts here. Step one is zero. The rest is simple. Not easy. A grind. But simple.

I say this out of experience.

Want help with this? I’m ready to go!!