Mark Manson

developed a lot better social skills and relationship skills and met a lot more people but by the time I got older drinking that much alcohol it was starting to hold me back in a lot of ways so it wasn't a functional adaptation anymore and so I quit drinking about three and a half years ago

And this is exactly what happened.

Initially, I stopped drinking.

I was like, I'm doing this to lose some weight, to get healthy.

And I felt so good and it was so transformative that I just didn't go back to it.

But what I didn't expect is that I had been using alcohol to manage a lot of my restlessness.

I was using it to kind of like...

quell a lot of boredom that I experience.

The big thing I notice when I stop drinking is that like a lot of the hobbies and activities that I used to think I loved.

When I stopped drinking, I stopped loving them.

My wife and I, we used to go out to like fancy restaurants all the time.

It was like one of our favorite things to do.

When I stopped drinking, I realized I didn't enjoy it as much.

You just like the wine.

I just like fucking getting drunk.

Yeah.

So it was like you remove getting drunk and it's like, okay, well that was good.

Was it worth $800?

Like, yeah, probably not.

Some concerts and music, I kind of went through the same thing.