Alcohol Myths

William: And I think that goes back to treating alcohol with a bit more realism, rather than putting it on this pedestal that we have. If you think that drinking a Group 1 carcinogen mixed with a load of refined sugar is a reward, then I would say to rethink that.

Brent: Welcome to Death Clock. I'm your host, Brent Franson. Today we're speaking with William Porter, author of Alcohol Explained, his book that addresses the common misconceptions we have about alcohol. This topic is particularly interesting as alcohol is so highly regarded in our society and plays such a central role in so many of our social situations. However, many of the assumptions we make about alcohol are simply incorrect.

Brent: We tell ourselves that it can help with sleep, or that it's a good social lubricant, or that it takes the edge off after a tough day. But as William points out, these ideas are far from the truth. He takes a methodical approach to dispelling the myths surrounding alcohol and providing clarity on what actually transpires in our bodies and minds when we consume it.

Brent: Whether you're reevaluating or simply curious about your relationship with alcohol, today's conversation with William is enlightening. With his hyper-rational deconstruction, William demystifies what alcohol truly is and isn't. So regardless of your drinking habits or if you intend to change them, I think this episode can offer a fresh perspective. Without further ado, here's the show.

Brent: William Porter, welcome to the show.

William: Hi, Brent. Thanks for inviting me.

Brent: This topic is one that I've recently spent a little bit more time thinking about. As some of our listeners will know, I've spent a lot of time around addiction. I went to rehab myself in my early 20s. I was, for a long time, mostly familiar with inpatient treatment and the AA version of basically stopping drinking or moderating drinking.

Brent: In that context, it's not really moderation. And then I saw an interview with the comedian Nikki Glaser, who mentioned Allen Carr's book on quitting drinking, which to me is in this category of unwinding the brainwashing we have around alcohol. It's a different and much more rational approach than AA is. Then I read your book, and I really liked it because it feels like a very contemporary version of that.

Brent: It feels like it's in that spirit and in that category. You should correct us if you feel differently, but it's just much more contemporary, updated, and has a different flavor to it. But I really love the category of, "Wait, let's understand what alcohol is, what addiction is, and all of the misconceptions we have around it."

Brent: And just understanding those things, I think, can help us change our relationship with it. So I'm excited to dive in. Maybe before we do that, will you give us a little bit of your background and how you came to be the author of Alcohol Explained?

William: Yeah, absolutely. So I started drinking and smoking when I was about 14, which these days probably feels very young, but back in the '80s and '90s, it was fairly standard, particularly over here in the UK. Funny you should mention Allen Carr, because I started smoking at 14.

William: I came across Allen Carr's book when I was 16 or 17, and I found it really interesting and exciting because, like you said, he brought this entirely new approach to addiction. It was very much centered on smoking and nicotine, but he just took this really rational approach to it, which resonated with me.

William: I read his drinking book, and again, that all started to meld with me. I stopped smoking, but I carried on drinking, and I drank like that for about 25 years. I was always a binge drinker, so the idea of having one or two drinks was just bizarre to me. I couldn't see the point of it.

William: We would always go out and get as drunk as we possibly could. Then I ended up in the military, and again, there was that very hard-drinking culture. I served out in Iraq, and that very much accelerated my drinking. When I left the military and went into more normal employment, I still had those drinking habits with me.

William: And they were escalating as I was going through life. It was in my late 30s that things were really starting to become unstuck and my binges were getting longer and longer, suffering more and more coming out the other side. When I said I was binge drinking, what I would do is drink a lot, fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the night with insomnia, which drinkers do.

William: And then I would drink more alcohol to get back to sleep. Then I would wake up in the morning and drink again. So I would start drinking Thursday or Friday, drink through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, wake up feeling awful on Monday, call in sick, and then just carry on drinking again. It was becoming more and more unmanageable. In February 2014, I crawled out of a five- or six-day binge feeling absolutely dreadful.

William: My wife had left me and taken the kids with her, and I hadn't been to work for the best part of a week. I realized, "I cannot keep doing this anymore." So that was me quitting. It was about a year or so after that that I wrote Alcohol Explained. Having come across Allen Carr very early on, I had taken that mindset into understanding the drug—in this case, alcohol—and applied it throughout my drinking years.

Brent: Was that part of your process of stopping drinking? You dive really deep into, "Why am I drinking the way that I am? What are all of the different mechanisms at work here?" You wrote the book pretty quickly after a rock-bottom moment, having lost family and not being sure.

Brent: Was that work an important part of your process of changing your relationship with alcohol?

William: Yeah, I think it was. I was never a particularly sociable person, and I found alcohol very important for social occasions. But as my drinking progressed, I found I was happy just sitting on my own drinking. I would go out, have a few drinks with friends, and just think, "You know what? I want to go home, sit on my own, and drink."

William: I spent an awful lot of time sitting on my own, drinking and thinking about it while I was doing it. When I woke up in the night, I'd ask, "Why am I doing this? How do I feel now? What does the drink make me feel like?" I was analyzing it all the way through. When I came to quit drinking, I had a pretty good idea of the mechanics and psychology behind what I was doing and why, but it was in the period after that where I really started to learn a lot more about how it all fitted together.

William: Writing it was certainly very cathartic for me. You quite often hear people say, "If you want to know a subject, teach it." I always say, "If you want to know a subject, teach it or write about it," because when you actually sit down to write about it, you realize there are things missing.

William: Certain dots weren't connecting, and you have to go back to the drawing board. Although I thought at the time I had a fairly good idea of it, setting it all out in writing really helped me complete the picture.

Brent: You adhered to the approach that you recommend in the book. What I like about your book—and Allen Carr's approach does the same thing at the beginning—is that it says, "Hey, if you're a drinker and you want to stop, but you're currently drinking, you don't need to stop right now."

Brent: Try not to have too much while reading because you won't absorb it, but there's no need to stop immediately. Allen Carr is very explicit: "You won't drink by the end of this book, but you're drinking now." That might be an oversimplification, but for somebody curious about changing their approach, opening up with "You don't need to stop immediately" is very inviting.

Brent: You can consume this book and see what happens. But you do recommend that if you're going to continue drinking, do it alone so you can be more reflective and aware of what is happening to you as you consume alcohol and go through the cycle of drinking, not drinking, and drinking again.

William: Absolutely, that's quite right. The reason for telling people they don't need to stop while reading the book is simple: if you have something to do, you prepare first, then you do it. For me, reading the book is the preparation. You do that first, and then you worry about stopping afterwards.

William: That's quite useful. Also, we put alcohol on a pedestal, making it responsible for the good times, the bad, and everything else. But a lot of the time when we drink, we tend to drink in pleasant situations anyway.

William: When we start drinking, we're out with friends, which is enjoyable anyway. As drinking progresses, we still tend to drink in enjoyable situations: we work all day, get home, open wine or beer, and it's a pleasant environment. It's very easy to take it at face value that alcohol makes you feel great.

William: Much of the time, it's because we're doing it in specific situations. It can be incredibly powerful to stop for a minute and think, "What is the great feeling I'm actually getting from this?"

Brent: That's a good segue into the pleasure and anxiety cycle, which is well laid out in terms of why alcohol is addictive and how it transitions into the cognitive cycle. I don't think you call it the pleasure-anxiety cycle, but that's how I think of it.

Brent: Can you describe that cycle—the reason we have the drink in the first place, the corresponding anxiety, and how it feeds on itself?

William: Alcohol is a drug—a sedative and a depressant. I'm using "depressant" in its chemical sense, as something that decreases or inhibits nerve activity. That's why when you take an alcoholic drink, it makes you feel slightly dull or relaxed if you're nervous. It has that sedating effect.

William: The human brain creates and excretes a huge array of chemicals, drugs, and hormones naturally, like adrenaline, cortisol, endorphins, and dopamine. While there's a lot we don't understand about this process, we know the brain works through homeostasis—a chemical balancing act where these chemicals balance each other out.

William: When balanced, you generally feel positive and resilient. When you introduce alcohol, a sedative, your brain realizes there's been a disturbance to that balance and seeks to counter it.

William: It releases stimulants like adrenaline and cortisol (a stress hormone) to counter the sedating effects of alcohol. Imagine an old-fashioned balance scale with sedatives on one side and stimulants on the other.

William: When you consume alcohol, you dump weight into the sedative side, tipping the balance. Your brain counters by adding weight to the stimulant side. The problem occurs when the alcohol wears off, leaving that feeling of anxiety hanging around.

William: For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Whatever sedating effect you get from alcohol, there's a corresponding feeling of anxiety when it wears off.

William: The more you drink, the more your brain counters the sedating effects, and the worse you feel when it wears off. This is why people often wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. with a racing heart, unable to fall back asleep despite being exhausted. It's the equivalent of drinking loads of strong coffee.

William: You're overstimulated and can't sleep because of that chemical imbalance. That anxious feeling isn't pleasant, and there are two ways to get rid of it: wait a few days for your brain chemistry to return to normal, or take another drink.

William: Taking another drink feels wonderful, but it does nothing more than relieve the anxiety caused by the previous dose wearing off. Imagine driving a car at exactly 30 miles per hour on a smooth, flat road with your foot steady on the accelerator.

William: But who wants to be miserable and tense for a few days because there's a much quicker way of doing it, and that's to take another drink. Now, when you take that other drink, it's a wonderful feeling. But it's no more than relieving the anxiety that the previous dose caused when it wore off. I sometimes explain it to people imagine you're in a car and your goal is to drive at exactly 30 miles an hour.

William: If you go off onto mud and gravel, the vehicle slows down, so you have to push down much harder on the accelerator to maintain 30 mph.

William: When you transition back onto dry road, your car surges forward out of control. That's essentially what happens when you stop drinking. The relaxation regular drinkers get from that first glass of wine or beer is simply relieving the unpleasant feeling created by prior doses.

Brent: It seems so obvious when you explain it, but it falls under the category of "there are no free lunches." I was explaining to my daughter that when she eats ice cream, she uses up a lot of "happy," leaving less in the tank afterward.

Brent: With alcohol, it's the exact same principle: you're using up a bunch of your happiness, and then you're left with the deficit.

Brent: There's only sad left. I mean, it's, you know, in this case, it's the same principle.

William: Yeah.

Brent: It took me a long time to connect passing out with waking up in the middle of the night with a racing heart. The gas pedal analogy makes total sense.

Brent: When the brake pedal (alcohol) is removed, you suddenly have way too much accelerator pushed down.

Brent: Can you speak to why alcohol is addictive? You explain the disconnect between drinking and its delayed negative consequences, which confuses the subconscious. Walk us through that.

William: People talk about the subconscious as a catch-all, but I'm referring to a specific part of the brain that automates reactions.

William: If you feed the same response into your body over and over, it triggers an automated reaction. For example, if you're a passenger in a car driving too fast, your right leg might tense up ("air braking").

William: There's no brake pedal on the passenger side, but your subconscious has absorbed that straightening your right leg slows down a vehicle.

William: If you repeat an action with the same result, your brain triggers that action whenever it wants that outcome. Every drink leaves an unpleasant feeling that requires another drink to relieve.

William: Over the years, your brain links those two things. Whenever you feel uptight or anxious—whether from alcohol wearing off, an argument, a bill, or a bad day—your brain jumps in.

William: It says, "I know how to get rid of that tension—let's have a drink." That learned behavior becomes deeply embedded. The problem is that the subconscious only operates on immediate cause and effect.

William: Let's have an alcoholic drink that's learned behavior, but it becomes very, very deeply embedded in us. And the problem is your subconscious only works by immediate cause and effect. So what your brain is doing, it's just think it's just looking at the situation and saying, okay, so tense and nervous. I don't know how to get rid of that.

William: It doesn't look at the big picture or realize that 15 to 20 minutes later, anxiety increases, sleep is ruined, and negative effects follow. It only sees immediate relief, constantly prompting you to reach for a drink.

William: This happens despite rationally knowing thousands of reasons why you shouldn't.

Brent: The immediate positive effect is all that matters to the subconscious habit loop. It doesn't take into consideration hangovers, anxiety, or long-term consequences.

Brent: All bad habits share this structure: immediate reward and long-term consequence. That's why bad habits are so much easier to form than good ones.

Brent: Good habits have little immediate reward but long-term benefits, requiring cognitive effort to establish.

William: When you drink, you get maybe 10 to 15 minutes of pleasurable effects before it wears off, leaving anxiety that can linger for 24 hours while ruining sleep.

William: You get a very brief period of pleasure followed by hours of feeling under par. Exercise is the opposite: pushing through discomfort yields endorphins and hours of feeling good.

William: Rationally, choosing 15 minutes of pain for 24 hours of feeling great is a no-brainer over 15 minutes of pleasure followed by 24 hours of feeling rubbish. But the irrational mind often wins out.

Brent: That reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where Jerry says, "Nighttime Jerry doesn't care about Morning Jerry. Morning Jerry will have to deal with it."

Brent: When we go out, we tell ourselves that tomorrow's self can worry about the consequences.

William: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brent: People often claim a glass of wine helps them sleep. Can you address the misconception of alcohol as a sleep aid?

William: Alcohol demolishes sleep quality. Falling unconscious isn't proper sleep; you need specific sleep cycles to feel refreshed.

William: During REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, brain activity lights up almost as if awake, which is when dreaming occurs.

William: Because alcohol is a sedative, it prevents you from entering REM sleep, severely reducing the amount you get.

William: Studies depriving humans of REM sleep showed rapid declines in mental health, disorientation, and depression. REM sleep is essential for recovery.

William: The mental health suffers massively. So there's a lot we don't know about dreaming and REM sleep, but we do know it's absolutely essential for feeling good and waking up feeling rested. So when you drink alcohol, you massively reduce your body's brain's ability to get into our REM sleep. So although alcohol may knock you out, it's not allowing you to sleep properly.

William: I don't know if you've read Matt Walker's book Why We Sleep.

Brent: Yes, yes.

William: In Matthew Walker's book Why We Sleep, he states that alcohol knocks you out of consciousness rather than providing natural sleep cycles.

William: The primary symptom of a hangover is tiredness due to broken sleep cycles. Even a single glass of wine significantly interrupts your sleep, leaving anxiety when it wears off.

William: A couple of glasses wear off after a few hours, leaving you twitching and overstimulated like you drank strong coffee in the middle of the night.

William: When non-drinkers head to bed, the brain naturally winds down. Alcohol disrupts this natural sleep hygiene.

William: If you drink nightly, your brain stops doing the work of shutting down on its own, relying instead on the sedative drug.

William: When regular drinkers take a night off, they struggle to sleep because their brain has stopped initiating its natural wind-down process.

William: Taking a few consecutive nights off allows the brain to regain its natural sleep capability.

William: People falsely conclude that they need alcohol to sleep, when in reality, alcohol stripped away their natural ability to fall asleep in the first place.

William: It creates a trap: drinkers believe alcohol helps them sleep, when it actually destroys sleep capability.

Brent: They test it by taking one night off, sleeping poorly, and concluding they need alcohol to sleep.

Brent: You need to take several nights off for your brain to recalibrate and return to normal functioning.

Brent: Consider the next-day cycle: after drinking too much on Saturday, poor sleep leaves you tired, moody, and anxious on Sunday.

Brent: Drinking a glass of wine Sunday evening temporary restores energy and mood, making you feel normal again despite alcohol being a depressant.

Brent: Could you elaborate on why a hangover creates a perceived boost in energy with the next drink?

William: When any animal is ill or injured, evolutionary mechanisms lower energy levels to encourage rest and recovery.

William: When healthy, we feel energetic and want to stay active. For example, when my sons are sick, they become sluggish.

William: If you give them liquid paracetamol, they suddenly start bouncing off the walls. The medicine dulls the feeling of sickness, triggering a rebound in energy.

William: Alcohol operates similarly: taking a mild anesthetic like alcohol dulls symptoms of hangover and chemical imbalance, releasing a temporary surge of energy as you feel better.

William: That burst of energy comes from dulling the sickness caused by alcohol in the first place, leading some to falsely view it as a stimulant.

William: It remains a chemical sedative that temporarily masks the sickness it produced.

William: Alcohol isn't a stimulant, but it can mimic one by temporarily relieving discomfort.

William: Chemically, it is strictly a depressant.

Brent: The short-term cure exacerbates the long-term problem. What about people who view alcohol as a necessary social lubricant?

Brent: Is alcohol being a social lubricant a myth?

William: We naturally release endorphins when socializing, eating well, exercising, or having sex—activities beneficial for survival.

William: Humans evolved to share ideas and connect, naturally generating endorphins when relaxed in social settings.

William: However, initial social anxiety makes people tense up around others.

William: Alcohol dulls social anxiety, speeding up the release of social endorphins. People misattribute the pleasure of social connection solely to alcohol.

William: The "alcohol buzz" in social settings is actually an endorphin-plus-alcohol effect, which is why drinking alone feels very different.

William: Drinking continuously numbs you as the night progresses, turning a pleasant social high into intoxication and diminished mood later in the evening.

William: Nondrinkers experience a sustained endorphin high without the downward emotional slide or intoxication.

William: Watching drinkers as a sober observer reveals how quickly the initial animated mood dips into slurred speech or arguments late at night.

William: Nondrinkers sustain enjoyment throughout the night without the numbing toxicity of alcohol.

William: Drinkers chase the initial two-drink feeling, ending up six drinks intoxicated while trying to preserve that brief initial state.

William: So that's basically what the dynamic is there.

Brent: To maintain the feeling of two drinks, you end up six drinks intoxicated. Observing drinkers while sober highlights how glassy-eyed and slowed down they become.

Brent: Sober observers realize intoxicated people aren't having more fun; they're just impaired and dulling their own experiences.

Brent: Drinkers only remember the early pleasant part of the night and assume the whole evening was great.

Brent: What about people who insist they drink purely for the fine taste of alcohol?

William: Pure ethanol is repulsive to human senses and causes gagging. We mask it with water, sugars, and flavorings in wine or beer.

William: Nobody likes the taste initially. Like smoking or vaping, the subconscious pairs the unpleasant intake with the subsequent drug effect, acquiring an artificial tolerance and preference for the flavor.

Brent: Taste buds don't change; the brain simply reinterprets repulsive chemical signals as rewarding because of the drug's effect.

Brent: Wine culture adds elaborate storytelling to obscure the simple fact that alcohol is masking a toxic drug.

Brent: How do you respond to people who use alcohol to cope with trauma, stress, or grief?

William: Alcohol temporarily shrinks perceived problems, but multiplies them when it wears off.

William: Proper therapy, CBT, or prescribed medical treatment are vastly safer and effective long-term solutions.

William: Alcohol halts psychological processing and grief assimilation by disrupting natural sleep and emotional processing mechanisms.

William: Drinking prolongs grief indefinitely rather than allowing true resolution.

William: What about viewing alcohol as a weekend reward after working hard?

William: A true reward should leave you feeling refreshed, not sedated, anxious, and lethargic the next day.

William: Consuming a carcinogen and sugar mix that leaves you depleted is a punishment, not a reward.

William: William, your book Alcohol Explained provides incredible clarity for anyone evaluating their relationship with alcohol.

William: Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your work.

William: Thank you for having me, Brent.

Brent: But it really makes me wonder, like, is it all bullshit? Like is it is it's this story and there's, you know, so you're telling the story about the wine and the brand and the way in which it pairs with the food, and then you're drinking the wine and you're getting this a yet this positive benefit from from the wine.

Brent: But ultimately, at the end of the day, like it's all bullshit. It's just like somebody mixed that. They took some grape juice. They fermented it to give you that feeling. They, you know, they made it in such a way that they've masked the taste of the alcohol. Yeah, yeah. And not only have they masked it just in terms of like what you're putting in your mouth, but they're masking it with this elaborate story of where it came from and, you know, the vines and what the temperature was and how the season was.

Brent: And, you know, I wonder if we just wipe all that way. And it's like, actually, it's just it's all total bullshit.

William: I'm sure you could get a different flavor from different types of amphetamine if you if you wanted to. It wouldn't necessarily be something that you want to indulge in. Too often.

Brent: Though. And then what about this notion that, look, I, life is hard. I, you know, something has happened in my life that's really difficult. Difficult or something happened to me as a child. And, you know, I just I struggle to cope with that. Like, for me, alcohol is a good way to just get away from that for a few moments.

Brent: It's really nice. I'm going through a hard time and you know, for me, alcohol is actually helpful for that. But what's the response to that?

William: Well, what we need to remember is with alcohol, it creates a feeling of sedation followed by a feeling of anxiety. Okay. So if you've got a problem that's this big and you have a drink, it goes to this big. But when it wears off it's this big. Okay. And for people who are listening, I feel like I'm leaving my hands here.

William: But your problem is a certain size. You drink alcohol when it shrinks, and then when it wears off, it doubles and quadruples. There's lots and lots of ways you can do, you know, whether it is trauma, mental health issues. There's lots and lots of ways you, you know, you can seek therapy, you can take medication. And I'm talking about, you know, properly prescribed medication.

William: You can go to CBT. There's lots and lots of options. Alcohol and drugs as options should be right down the bottom of the scale because one, there's that dynamic where although it has the immediate effect of seemingly shrinking the problem, it then exacerbates it massively when it wears off. And of course, the other massive thing we've just talked about is how alcohol impacts sleep and the knock on effect on your mental health for that alone is massive.

William: So if you have got something that you are grappling with, the absolute worst, and one of the worst things you can possibly do is destroy your ability to get natural and restorative sleep. You're doing yourself a massive disfavor with it. You may find it's immediately helpful, but my very strong advice would be to find another way of managing it because, as I say, alcohol and other drugs should be way down the bottom of the list of options for you.

Brent: They're only going to make it worse, and it seems there's probably some delay in the processing of the issue that, you know, there's some certain amount of sober like acceptance and understanding and, you know, just kind of like cognitively dealing with whatever the problem is and that, that that process is paused when you're using. And so you're like delaying the time to kind of getting through the, the processing of the issue.

Brent: But in any case, you're never you're not going to find any, psychologist or therapist or psychiatrist who's going to say, hey, you know, for your particular circumstances, I think alcohol is going to be pretty helpful for you.

William: And yeah, this is an interesting dynamic here where you find people who are going through the grieving process. So there is a very specific and recognized psychological process that you go through with grieving and obviously it's the extent of it is different from individual to individual, but the actual mechanics of it remains the same. And it can take longer or less time depending on how the person is affected, all the rest of it.

William: But what you find is when they drink alcohol, they never go through that process because in preventing themselves being able to sleep, which is when your brain assimilates and, absorbs a lot of information and experiences and just through anesthetize you through it, you actually stop yourself being able to go through the process. So although, you know, if you lose someone very close to you, life is never quite the same without them.

William: But you eventually get to a point of acceptance and being able to get on with your life. When people drink, they never get there. It's as raw today as it was four years ago, and that is not natural. That's not a healthy thing to do at all. You're actually elongating the entire thing and stopping yourself, being able to get to come to terms with it.

Brent: And what about the opposite end of the spectrum, which is, look, for me, alcohol, it's a reward that I give myself. I work really hard, you know, all week long I'm working, I'm with my family, I'm with the kids or whatever. I'm exercising, I'm taking care of myself. And Friday night is when I give myself, I allow myself to have that wine and relax.

Brent: And it's really it's really a reward for, you know, working so hard during the week. What's what's the response to that?

William: So, so I, I do a similar thing because I work very hard all week and I've got a young family. And for me a reward should be something enjoyable and pleasant. It wouldn't be something that would make me feel slightly sedated and then wearing off, leaving a corresponding feeling of anxiety. It certainly wouldn't be something that completely demolished my light sleep.

William: So no matter how long I was in bed for, I'd be tired and lethargic the whole night next day. That to me seems a bit ridiculous. So it might be something you do, but I. I wouldn't say it is a reward. I would see that as a punishment. And I think that goes back to treating alcohol with a bit more realism, rather than putting it on this pedestal that we have.

William: If you think that drinking of color is one carcinogen with mixed with a load of refined sugar is a reward, then I would say to rethink that for me, sitting down at the end of the day, relaxing is a reward. It's an incredibly pleasurable thing. I open a book and maybe watch some TV, play a game or something, but taking a chemical that actually makes you feel a lot worse overall just to me, is not a reward.

Brent: It goes back to this issue of it feels nice at first. I get it at 5:30 p.m. on Friday. Halfway through that, that first glass, it feels good, but the ROI is not positive. William, your book Alcohol Explained is excellent. We have an, you know, kind of even really scratched the surface of the fullness of the book.

Brent: And so I would encourage, anyone who's interested to pick it up. I really enjoyed it. And I'm, I'm very deep on this, and I loved the book. And I think it's also a really helpful approach for the full spectrum of drinkers. Meaning if you're somebody who feels like, I like I, you know, you know, in your core, I feel like I need to stop and stop permanently.

Brent: I think there's a really nice place for this book. There, but also just for reducing some of the brainwashing. If you're somebody who just wants to moderate or just wants to be healthier and doesn't feel like it's ruining your life, I think having an honest view of what is it, what is it not? And kind of dispelling some of these misconceptions can be really helpful.

Brent: And just having a much healthier relationship with it, because I don't think that abstinence is for everybody. Our culture makes it difficult. But I think the book is awesome, for people in either camp. And so thank you for coming on and thank you for writing the book.

William: And I know thank you for inviting me. I've enjoyed it. Thanks, Brent.

Brent: Death Clock is recorded in Boulder, Colorado, produced by Patrick Gudino, music by Patrick Lee, and hosted by Brent Franson.