The more I looked, the more the “Elephant in the Room” analogy held very true for me and alcohol. I am a very rule-based person, more so than I think I’d prefer to be. I make logical decisions based on information and science about what is best for my health, and then I’m fairly strict about following those guidelines. But alcohol got *significant* exceptions when other things did not.

1. As A Painkiller

My husband and I do a lot of yardwork. It is hard work, and it’s sometimeshard to get motivated. We affectionately referred to alcohol as “go-go juice” because it would help make it … better. Some of that was surely the psychological. After all, alcohol is mapped in the mind to “fun” – thus, anything you do drinking is more “fun”. But it was more than that, at least for me. My body, having its issues, consistently struggled with the physical exertion of yardwork. It would hurt. It would not feel good. It was work I had to get done, thus, I needed something that would “numb-out” the sensations that I didn’t like.

On an seemingly completely separate subject, a friend of mine had been having back pain. He recognized that pain is an important message from the body to warn you that you might do additional damage if you keep going. He stopped taking the painkillers for his issue because it would ‘mask’ the pain, and put him in danger of making his problem worse. I emphatically agreed with his wisdom. After all, *I* don’t take Advil or anything like that when I do yardwork for the same reason.

Wait, what?

You just said you drink alcohol to numb-out your body to get more yardwork done…

Apparently, deadening my senses is *okay* if it is done by alcohol, but not by an OTC painkiller.

After all, I am very careful and cautious around my use of OTC painkillers…. I’ve read all the studies that show that they are harmful to the liver and/or kidneys. I rather pride myself on the fact that I use them very sparingly…

Wait, what?

I *know*, through a billion personal experiments, that alcohol makes me feel physically poor. Sure, it is go-go juice as long as you *keep consuming* it, but once I stop, it rather quickly makes me feel extremely lethargic and heavy. That is anecdotal evidence of true, negative side effects.

Yet, I’ve never *actually* experienced a negative side effect from taking Advil…. I’ve just read about it…

Hmmm… That doesn’t make much sense when you really look at it. I continually choose something that I *know* makes me feel poorly by that very evening, yet, from some pedestal of health awareness, am very careful about taking OTC painkillers. Which, would and do actually offer true relief. Do I really think that alcohol is better for my liver than Advil??? My actions suggest that I do, but that doesn’t add up. I can go out and find tons of literature that says alcohol is bad for the liver (duh), but, the elephant is pretty big and apparently I can stuff a lot of paperwork under there 😉

2. Sugar

Another thing I pride myself on from my health pedestal is how much I’ve removed sugar from my diet. Sugar is very addictive, affects blood sugar levels, etc., etc.. I haven’t had a sugarized soda pop in so many years. I don’t even consider drinking them anymore, it is as if they don’t exist to me. This is because I’ve so heavily labeled them in my mind as empty ‘junk’ with no health-redeeming qualities that I wouldn’t dream of putting into my precious body.

Again, what? The same can be said about alcohol.

Sure, there are those studies that prove that resveratrol in red wine can have some benefits. However, many of these studies have been equally debunked. What it *sounds* like is that we’re desperately trying to discover scientific justification to keep engaging in our addiction. The small benefits do *not* outweigh the costs. It’s basic math. You still end up with a net-negative number. Unless you are one of the magical people out there that don’t get negative side effects from alcohol. I’m sure they exist. I’m not one of them. And if I claim to have learned to “listen to my body”, then cause-and-effect repeated misery from consuming alcohol answers the question of ‘Is this a health-affirming substance’ more unequivocally than any scientific study ever could.

Somehow, I successfully rationalized that a glass of sugar is worse for me than a glass of alcohol. Again, there are so many studies on how bad sugar is for us. And, I knew I was tormented by always wanting more sugar. (Again, there are so many studies on how bad alcohol is for us too, if we bother to look for and see them). So, forget science. If I ask my body… if I have two sodas….will I be hurting the next day? Highly unlikely. Two drinks, quite likely, if not guaranteed. At least a headache at 5 a.m… I have never had a “hangover” that wipes out my following day if I’d gorged on too much candy corn. Yet, with alcohol, I’ve spent numerous next-days feeling truly “poisoned” from the inside out. Do I really need any scientific proof to answer which is probably taking a larger toll on my health?

And no, this doesn’t mean I’m defending sugar. I have no intention to replace alcohol with sugar. Primarily because I’m already fully aware I’m very addicted to sugar, and my goal is to not swap one addiction for another. The point is that, when I really look at it, I *know* alcohol has more negative impact than sugar on me … yet I have rules that I “really take care of my health” by not drinking pop…. weird, right?

3. Money and Consumption

When I *do* have the taste for pop, my goto pop is Zevia. Zevia is pop made with stevia (stevia doesn’t affect blood sugar, no calorie, but isn’t as frankenfood as aspartame and sucralose). It’s good, try it! But Zevia definitely costs more than regular pop.

I’ve noticed that when I ‘splurge’ and have a Zevia … it feels really weird to have a second one in the same evening. Like, they’re special, and pricey, and should be conserved…

But, you can drink several alcoholic drinks in one evening and it’s a non-thing…

Although Zevia may be expensive for “pop”, it still costs less than alcohol does. People, myself included, spend a lot of money on alcohol. We “splurge” … quite frequently. So why is having two or three drinks in one evening “okay”, but having two or three Zevias feels like wasteful consumption? I think I was on some level rationalizing that I’m paying, gladly, for the ‘buzz’ of course. That is a separate subject and one that still comes with all those physical side effects, but the point is, if I’m trying to cut *back* on alcohol, I need to not have ridiculous BLOCKS towards letting myself have an enjoyable substitute!

If you’ve had a hard day and need some ‘taste stimulation’ to distract from the stress, then don’t limit yourself to one Zevia when you would *not* have limited yourself to *one* alcoholic drink! …”Splurge”.

And then we wonder why we feel so oppressed when we try to take a break. A significant amount of that ‘oppression’ is negotiable, if you explore weird inner rules that block your solutions.

4. Negative Effects

The MOST strange rule that I have regarding alcohol is my ability to rationalize the side-effects for so very long. I have autoimmunity, that likely stemmed from gut issues. I took many food sensitivity tests in the past. These tests measure your IgG and IgM reactions to food. These are the reactions that probably show up as symptoms in your body – e.g. your body is subtly reacting to the food. These reactions can take 3 to 7 days to show up in some cases, and you eat a lot of variety (hopefully) in the span of a week, and it makes it very hard to map cause-and-effect between a food and a symptom. Thus, the test hope to do some of that sleuthing for you.

So you give up a bunch of foods that you love, to feel better. If you remove them for 6 months, while healing the gut, some of them resolve. Others are lifelong. But I gave up tons of foods I enjoyed eating, because I so very much wanted to feel better.

All the while lamenting that it was such a hazy science. I think my food issues are very delayed, and there is always more environmental stuff going on at the same time to add to the puzzle, so I’ve always struggled to “correlate” a certain food to a certain ailment. But not for a lack of effort.

But there *is* something you consume that has a plain-as-day cause-and-effect… No “test” required because it so obviously takes a toll…

Alcohol, above all, is the one “food” that *always* has a direct, visible, undeniable, negative reaction in my physical body (after the fleeting fun moments wear off).

But alcohol is never tested on these tests.

It’s not an allergen. (It is simply a poison). So we never get something concrete to see with our eyeballs that shows a big red bar on our chart showing how ‘bad’ it is for us. It remains the elephant in the room, that we can continue to conveniently ignore.

Alcohol is barely ever even mentioned in the *numerous* health summits and podcasts I listen to regularly. Sure, they *always* talk about toxins, and reducing toxins… but rarely ever explicitly focus on alcohol. If anything, it is fleetingly mentioned. Allowing us all to comfortably carry on in hiding our elephants. I recently listed to a full-hour talk from an expert about the importance of reducing toxins in our life and environment… but I don’t think he ever explicitly mentioned considering alcohol. Now that I’m looking for it, that strikes me as extremely peculiar – given the prevalence of people that drink.

It dawned on me one day, that if it were any other *food*, that, upon consuming it, often made me feel rather awful that evening or the next day, I’d have easily concluded it wasn’t good for me. Furthermore, if I had a lot of this food, and it made me literally feel poisoned the next day, I would have removed it and probably never looked back. But alcohol was alcohol. *Everyone KNOWS* it makes you feel awful …. so, that’s “normal”… not something wrong “with me”… and I was looking for what was making *my* health bad, which clearly must be unique to me, since not everyone had what I had. (and I wanted to continue drinking…)

But it began to feel ridiculously inconsistent to avoid foods that ‘sorta kinda might eventually’ cause me problems, because I was so desperate to have a more energetic, functional body – when I continue to regularly consume something that *unequivocally does*. Just because one is a histamine/allergic reaction, and one is just “normal” (because, after all, you are drinking a toxin), doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.

What about you? Can you see some inconsistencies of things is your life that alcohol gets a free pass for? Maybe even some things you pride yourself on, but that alcohol goes against?