| It's all about discipline. I definitely enjoy drinking within certain limits, but I've also come to realize (after a career trajectory pretty similar to yours) that excessive substance (ab)use of any kind is basically incompatible with a serious, high-output lifestyle. It all boils down to the fact that being highly productive is a choice that demands certain sacrifices; chiefly, the sheer amount of time you have to devote to it. And the fact that, health effects aside, the level of drinking you're describing cuts into your available time budget quite drastically. In any case, 4 or more drinks night after night (or nearly so) sounds not just excessive, but distinctly unpleasant. So as to practical suggestions: try to pick some hard, if not puritanical limits, and stick to them. Pick a magic number -- say 4 -- as your hard daily limit, then make a decision to keep to it. After this, I would try whittling down the down the "heavy" days (3 or more) to a more manageable level also, say no more than 1x a week. Then stick to that, also. It's like any other optimization problem, in that sense: first make the problem quantifiable; the set a performance goal (40% volume reduction, say); keep it in place for a while; then do some A/B testing. For me, what it came down to was that I realized that after a certain level (2-3 in one sitting, or thereabouts) I was getting virtually none of the "benefits" (such as they are) of stress reduction or general easing of mood, while the negatives just kept piling up disproportionately. Another tip: if you must drink, try at least drinking better quality (if more expensive) stuff. The thing is, the cheaper stuff ends up upsetting your general metabolism (and mood) in a whole lot of ways, so you end up needing to consume more alcohol to counteract this. And wine (especially red wine) is a whole lot better for you than beer, in a whole bunch of ways. Lastly: please don't consider switching to pot (nevermind the legal status). It's quite different from alcohol, and in my view, deeply insidious, in that it goads us into not just getting on a bit of a breeze, but totally baked, all the while conning us into thinking this isn't harmful. And because it seems (at least superficially) to be so intellectually stimulating -- that is, it tricks us into thinking that we're having productive thoughts, when most of the time we're not, and even when we are, we find ourselves far less capable of sorting them out and putting them into action the next day (or for far longer than that). Upshot being that for some reason, long-term potheads seem to be in an incredible amount of denial about the diminishing positive returns, and increasingly negative effects that accompany continued heavy use of their favorite substance. One of the key feature of alcohol (by contrast) is that even its biggest fans readily admit that its effects are largely deleterious (beyond a certain point), and seem to instinctively realize, at least intellectually, that it gets in the way of serious work (and sensitive social situations) -- and in general, whether they're able to put the brakes on it or not, is just plain bad for them on some level. |