PODCAST - How Society Normalizes Alcohol (And Why I Stopped Playing Along)
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
So you've decided that you don't want to drink alcohol anymore, but you're finding it extremely hard to get away from it. ~Well, ~today [00:01:00] on the show, I'm gonna share with you how society has normalized drinking ~and why I decided, ~and why I stopped playing along.
~And why I decided to stop playing along. Well, ~it all starts with the normalization of alcohol.
~While you have a choice, while you have a choice, just like I did, to stop playing by society's rules. Why, ~while you have a choice ~like I did ~to stop playing by society's rules, it's not your fault that you have been misguided to partaking in alcohol, billionaire, Brian Johnson of the Blueprint Movement.
~Billionaire Brian Johnson of the blueprint and the do not and the billionaire Brian Johnson of Blueprint and of the Don't Die Movement ~says, ~when says that ~when you drive by 20 fast food restaurants a day, how are you supposed to make the right choice to avoid eating fast food? It's the same ~thing ~with alcohol.
Dr. Benjamin Hardy, the author of numerous books, and his first book, willpower Doesn't Work, may be one of the most powerful. Extensive research shows ~that ~your environment affects how you make [00:02:00] decisions.
~The great thing, the ~the great thing is ~you can change your environment, ~you can change your physical environment, and you can change your inner environment. But when society has completely normalized alcohol, to the degree that if you don't drink, you are ashamed. Look at the comments ~I get on my, look at the comments I get on my, look at the comments that ~I get on my YouTube channel related to alcohol.
There are amazing people that believe what I believe, and then there's a handful ~here and there ~that just need a place. To say that we're stupid, we're not, but they aren't either. ~'cause ~society has normalized it for them. ~What does this mean? This means that ~there are liquor stores everywhere. ~They're everywhere.~
There are grocery stores ~that are ~fighting ~to be able ~to sell alcohol. ~This is the thing. Certain states in the United States, ~some states allow all ~their ~grocery stores ~to have ~a liquor license. Other states only allow one store in a county. Like there's all these different laws about who can sell alcohol.
Everyone wants to sell alcohol [00:03:00] because everyone wants to buy alcohol. ~Everyone wants to sell alcohol 'cause ~they know how profitable it is and how we have been brainwashed to think that we need it. Grocery stores, ~I mean ~Costco, ~I mean big box stores. I mean, big, big, I mean ~big box stores. ~Costco, there's ~convenience stores that sell it.
It's everywhere. You see the advertising, there are ads all over the internet. They're all over billboards. ~They're all over our TVs. If you even watch ~tv, ~our ~streaming services, ~well, I guess that's on the internet, but ~we are being inundated. With ads everywhere. There are semi-truck that have ads on, Hey, you should drink this beer, drink this spirit.
Alcohol is all around us. ~So ~just like how Brian Johnson says, if you drive by 20 fast food restaurants a day, how are you supposed to eat healthy? It's the same thing here. ~Willpower and willpower is a tool, but it is, and ~willpower is a tool. But to sustain change ~in your life, ~you need ~a lot ~more than willpower.
[00:04:00] You need to change your environment, which means that part of this is you gotta stop looking at these things. ~You. ~I understand that you can't stop a semi-truck from driving by you and having a billboard that you drive by promoting these things, but you can ~decide to ~stop looking at it on the internet.
The internet adapts to what you search. You can stay off ~of ~social media. ~With people promoting it. You can ~skip watching ads on tv. You don't have to go to liquor stores. ~Yeah, I know you probably still have to drive by them. ~And you can go to grocery stores that don't have a big liquor section. And just stay outta convenience stores unless you really need something.
Convenience stores are just filled with stuff ~that is ~bad for our bodies. ~Now the other thing is, 'cause ~it's not just ~all around ~our environment ~that we're experiencing, ~it's also ~where. It's ~in our homes, ~it's ~in our social life. Social gatherings [00:05:00] are, a lot of times they're just, they revolve around it or it's, Hey, what should I bring?
Oh, grab a pack of beer, ~bring some ~wine, ~grab some ~tequila. ~Bachelor party. I can go there.~
Holidays, birthdays, other celebrations, it is looked at as a good thing to celebrate with alcohol. Now you may know my story. I drink maybe once or twice a year at this point. ~I used to like everyone else, binge drinking. ~I used to like everyone else, binge drinking college and post-college. Still had a little bit of the bug, so I would drink heavily and then I'd work out the next day.
~But ~I ~finally ~figured out ~that, hey, ~I can be ~so much ~better. I can do so much more if I cut alcohol outta my life. I am already performing at an extremely high level. What level can I perform at without alcohol? And that's really over the years why I slowly removed it from my life and why I ultimately took 14 months off one a hundred K race during [00:06:00] that time and became an elite ultra runner with asthma.
And now why, as we're recording this video, it's been almost three months since ~I've had ~my last drink, and before that it was 14 months. I believe in this so deeply that for me, moderate drinking is one or two times per year, not per week. ~Per year. And I say this 'cause I'm not an alcoholic and I, and ~I'm okay with deciding to partake in alcohol one or two times a year, and I've accepted that I'm just gonna deal with Brain Fog for a week. ~I've accepted that. I'm, it, I've, I've accepted ~it's gonna take ~me ~30 to 90 days to get back into the best state possible. ~And that's why, where the effects that alcohol have on our bodies start completely disappearing. I, hmm.~
~Start to disappear. I,~
~I'm okay.~ I own that decision and you need to as well. So if you decide that, yeah, you know, I'm gonna keep drinking every week, you need to own that decision. And if you wanna make change. Then you start changing your environment. Stop going to those ~social ~gatherings or have a strategy when you are at these social gatherings.
Bring your [00:07:00] own NA beer. Bring your own NA wine. Bring a sparkling water. I bring a 12 pack of sparkling water wherever I go. When I go to social gatherings, if there's gonna be alcohol there or not, I bring it because it's delicious, ~it's ~hydrating, and ~I love the taste of sparkling water. ~I love the bubbles.
Hey, friend, I wanted to take a moment to ask you a quick question. Are you struggling to lose weight due to your asthma? If so, I get it. I used to run marathons and still kept gaining weight. It wasn't until I learned about the three pillars of healthy living that everything changed,
so I put together a healthy living guide that you can access absolutely free [00:08:00] by clicking the link in the description. This guide shares these amazing three pillars of healthy living that you can easily integrate into your life. To start losing weight and live healthier today. Click the link in the description or go to athlete with asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
Now let's get back to the rest of the show.
So while it's not your fault that making the decision to not drink is so difficult, that doesn't mean that you can't still make the decision. I decided to ~stop playing along. With society, ~stop playing society's game of alcohol. ~And I did that because the World Health Organization, and I did that for a number of reasons.~
The World Health Organization, the WHO, one of my clients and my other business [00:09:00] e-learning partners, they estimate that almost 3 million deaths, which is 5% of deaths worldwide each year from alcohol. 3%, 3 million deaths per year, and this is what can actually be estimated.
~This doesn't include the fact that this doesn't include the fact that. ~This doesn't include deaths by disease ~that can be ~caused by alcohol in the first place, cardiovascular disease, ~all these ~other diseases, chronic illness. Now, for the most part, these are long-term. Results of our societal problem here.
Alcohol, ~but I mean, 3 million. ~3 million deaths a year. Not $3 million worth of deaths, 3 million deaths a year. You could be ~really ~young and have this happen to you. I don't wish this on anyone. ~My, okay. I'm not gonna say that ~you don't know when these deaths can occur. ~Hmm. I don't wanna say that. So ~with 3 million deaths per year and chronic illness, these are ~long-term, okay.~
~These are really ~long-term results of drinking. ~When I look at, okay, okay, okay. Actually, okay, here we go. ~This includes cardiovascular.
[00:10:00] Disease, neurological disease,
cancer, liver disease,
diabetes. And I'm probably missing some as well. Cardiovascular being heart health, neurological being brain health, Alzheimer's, dementia, cancer, so numerous types of cancer. Liver disease, because the liver is filtering all of this poison going in your body. Diabetes, metabolic disorders, messing with how your body metabolically functions.
This is. The long-term effects of alcohol on our body ~and ~this alone should be enough ~for you ~to at least think about how often you want to drink. Maybe you wanna do it like me, where you only drink maybe once or twice a year. And when you do that, you're moderately drinking once or twice a year.
Maybe you want to cut it out completely. Maybe you're drinking weekly now and you wanna move to monthly. Maybe you're drinking monthly and you wanna move to quarterly, whatever it [00:11:00] is, I. Invite you to make a decision in your life to avoid these things, and you're also gonna need short term reasons as well.
~And ~that's ~really ~what pushed me ~over the edge of why I have decided ~to stop playing along with society.
By not drinking. I give myself every opportunity to ~always ~be at my best. This doesn't mean ~that ~I'm always at a peak state or a flow state, but ~when I. Make sure, but when I commit, ~when you commit to cutting alcohol out of your life, you're giving yourself the opportunity to be at your best 'cause. You can't be at your best with alcohol in your system.
I don't care if you think you're at your best with alcohol in your system, you are not at your best with alcohol at your system. What this is done for me is I am a better partner. ~I'm ~a better dog father. I am definitely a higher performing athlete. I'm a better friend, but Johnny, I have my friends because we drink [00:12:00] together or we get together and we socially drink.
How can I be a better friend if I don't drink anymore? ~Well, ~you'll have deeper connections with your friends by taking alcohol out of the relationship. I'm a better son. I'm a better business owner. I run two businesses. I need to be at my best all the time.
I am ~a ~better ~everything ~because I choose to only drink once or twice a year. And at some point I may be making a video where it says, I didn't drink for the past 10 years. Here's what happened. Because of how powerful it is, not drinking, going your own way, playing a new ~game, a ~powerful game. Of always being at your best. ~Now, ~if you want to take your health and wellness to the next level, I have created my three pillars of Healthy Living Guide for you, and it's linked in the show notes and in description. If you're watching this as a video on YouTube. These three pillars of healthy living are movement tracking and accountability.
Accountability [00:13:00] may be the most powerful part of all this, along with changing your environment, adjusting what you interact with on a daily basis, having someone to be accountable with really elevates your success rate in anything exponentially. So I highly recommend ~that ~you grab my three pillars of Healthy Living Guide. It is linked below and in the show notes. Or you can go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your copy today. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you [00:14:00] found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
