Hey everyone welcome to the Outlier Health Podcast I am Matt Frazier joined by Matt

Tolman and Matt I got news every time we do these we seem to talk about my sleep

disorders which is also how we start the morning shows they often begin that way too

I found a little bit of success recently and it has at least correlated with my stopping drinking alcohol temporary. I have no intention to give it up for good, but I think I've been in denial for a while that it really does impact my sleep because sometimes when I've done limited tests of not drinking it doesn't fix it, but I don't know. I've been four or five days now and the

sleeps are starting to get better each night so I don't know maybe it's a big factor.

Okay why are you in denial?

Because I like wine too much.

It's one of my favorite things in the world

to have a glass of wine.

So we're talking about alcohol today.

That's a theme.

Glad to hear your sleep is getting better.

It's important to all of us.

But let's set the stage.

What is the history, the arc of alcohol, and where are you right now in your journey, you know, with addiction and denial?

Well, I don't want to lessen anybody's real struggles with alcohol by, you know, saying these

phases of addiction for mine because I can't call it that. It's just too easy to drop it when I get any incentive to do so, like the sleep thing. But I don't know, I think since I've had kids is when I began,

maybe not coincidentally, began drinking like

as a matter of routine, like finish the day,

kids are in bed or whatever, and like have a glass of wine,

have a beer, and just, you know, it was like a celebration sort of ritual and and one that at back when I started it

Which is now 13 years ago. I was still of the belief that it was a healthy thing. I thought this is a nice treat and it happens to be good for me good for heart health as long as I'm not overindulging which I really almost never do. So that's that's where I am. But then like in the past since really 2018 this like no safe level of drinking kind of talk started happening and you learn about the cancer risks and now Huberman talks all these scary things about what alcohol actually does in your body.

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