Stop drinking entirely. I know it is hard to not have that nice beer or glass of wine, but the reality is that alcohol is just poison.
Once you stop, you realize that it feels like some great conspiracy. We're literally bombarded with ads and social pressure to drink. It is like the pressure at your job to sign up for a 401k because you don't know how to manage money yourself and you should let someone else do it for you because it is too much effort.
As soon as I stopped drinking beer a couple years ago, my belly disappeared (and no more hangovers). I realized that bloated feeling was my body reacting to it. A couple years later, I cut out the rest of alcohol. The more things that I cut out, the better I feel. I've since cut out eating chicken too, once I realized it made me super gassy. Don't miss it at all.
Despite the initial annoyance, it's fun to say no now at dinners because I know that I'll wake up in the morning feeling fine.
It's interesting to see posts on twitter and elsewhere now saying the same things. People seem to be waking up to the fact that we just don't need to drink. I feel so much better as a result, especially as I age.
I have mostly stopped drinking alcohol. Our downstairs fridge has 4 or 5 different kinds of good-tasting non-alcoholic beers; there has been a real explosion in the variety and quality of them available over the last decade. Many are fairly hard to distinguish from their alcohol-laden counterparts and even what small difference exists is far from worth the hangover/sluggish feeling.
When I have a drink now, it's likely a red wine with a beef dish and only a single.
On the flip side, I think the pressure to invest in a 401k is a strongly net-beneficial pressure. (Roth if your marginal tax rate is low now, traditional or a mix if your marginal tax rate is high now and you think it will be lower in retirement.) It’s not just about being a skilled investor or not, but the psychology and practicality of making a decision to save once and having that decision auto-implemented every paycheck has a way of preventing that retirement savings from turning into new cars and fantastic vacations now and a meager retirement nest egg later. The modest tax advantages and being largely judgment proof are icing on the cake, but the easy way to implement a disciplined process is very valuable.
Once you stop, you realize that it feels like some great conspiracy. We're literally bombarded with ads and social pressure to drink. It is like the pressure at your job to sign up for a 401k because you don't know how to manage money yourself and you should let someone else do it for you because it is too much effort.
As soon as I stopped drinking beer a couple years ago, my belly disappeared (and no more hangovers). I realized that bloated feeling was my body reacting to it. A couple years later, I cut out the rest of alcohol. The more things that I cut out, the better I feel. I've since cut out eating chicken too, once I realized it made me super gassy. Don't miss it at all.
Despite the initial annoyance, it's fun to say no now at dinners because I know that I'll wake up in the morning feeling fine.
It's interesting to see posts on twitter and elsewhere now saying the same things. People seem to be waking up to the fact that we just don't need to drink. I feel so much better as a result, especially as I age.