Sobriety 101 - Why Sobriety? | Modern Wisdom Podcast 123

Jonny & Yusef from PropaneFitness join me for a new series. Over the last 3 years I've spent more than 24 months sober. Choosing to not drink when you don't have an alcohol problem is a lifestyle change many people don't understand, so today we're breaking it all down. And talking about a lot of times we got far too drunk. Extra Stuff: Check out the 6 Months Sober Course - https://6monthssober.com Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  If you can only bear to be around your friends when you're drunk, like you definitely need better friends, full stop. Or mate, can't wait to shut down Newcastle tonight. Horn emoji, horn emoji, aubergine emoji.

• 0:14Jonny?

  It's such a dick thing. You know, when people get like a table and a bottle and the first time that that becomes like something you can afford to do and you feel like such a big deal. And then you're like, the next morning, you're like.

• 0:25Chris Williamson?

  What did I do though? Been to Ibiza 12 times and all that you're doing when you go away and you get that blind drunk is choosing what destination and visuals you want to deal with a hangover in. Have you ever had a hangover?

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Once. I think first time I tried alcohol must have been a bit before that, which was a pint of gin.

• 0:43Speaker 02

  So I just said.

• 0:45Chris Williamson?

  Extreme events on nights out are seen as badges of honour. There's no other experience in which two university students would ring each other and say, hey man, how was your night last night? And the other one goes, mate, it's amazing. John broke his leg.

• 1:03Chris Williamson?

  Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by the mustachioed man himself, Youssef, and Johnny from propanefitness.com.

• 1:10Jonny?

  Johnny from Youssef.com.

• 1:11Chris Williamson?

  Johnny from Youssef.com. How are you? You good?

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 1:16Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. Thank you for joining.

• 1:17Jonny?

  Great.

• 1:17Chris Williamson?

  Aren't we? Uh, we've circled around this topic for ages. We're talking about why sobriety today. All of us either by religious doctrine or lifestyle choice have gone sober for extended periods. Uh, and even the man behind the camera, video guy Dean.

• 1:36Jonny?

  Can you feel the hot potato? It's, it's, it's boiling. I'm ready for it. I'm ready for it.

• 1:40Chris Williamson?

  Um, yeah, the man behind the camera, video guy Dean is one week away from a year sober, which is a fucking feet and a half.

• 1:48Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:49Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 1:50Jonny?

  Feet, almost two feet.

• 1:51Chris Williamson?

  Two feet. Yeah. Well, it's foot and a half, isn't it? Rounded up to two feet. So, yeah. Why sobriety is an interesting question, I guess. People who maybe haven't heard us talk about this topic before might not know what, like, why we even consider it something to think about. Like, I don't see a problem with my drinking. Everyone drinks. I've always drank. It's part of society. But some of the people will know I've done episodes with Ed Latimore, I've done two with Don McGregor, both of whom are massive sobriety advocates. Michael Caju, who's addicted to fucking heroin at the age of 14 and stuff like that. He's big into it. But yeah, I just wanted to, a lot of people, it's the most replied to

• 2:36Chris Williamson?

  content that I put out online about resetting people's drinking habits. And I thought just having a discussion about it would be pretty valuable.

• 2:45Jonny?

  So what made you decide, what way do you pick sobriety as something to do?

• 2:54Chris Williamson?

  So three years ago, now just approaching three years ago, and I needed, I just wanted to do more stuff. I was kind of in a bit of a rut with where I was at. I was about to start doing CrossFit. That was one lifestyle change that I made. I was just like, I'm just fucking sick. Like, I'm not doing, I thought life would be different than this somehow. And I need more time. I think I did this analogy where I'd sit down with an accountant at the end of my year and look at how much time I have. It could be Neil or Chris, it's probably Johnny.

• 3:29Jonny?

  Big Chris has, yeah.

• 3:30Chris Williamson?

  Do not ring me. And I looked at my, the amount of available time that I have across a whole year. And if my accountant was looking at it, he'd say, hang on a second, what's, like, every Saturday, you lose a whole day. Then every Sunday, you lose half a day. And then every Monday, you lose a quarter of your day in terms of productivity units, whatever you want to call it. Plus, you're spending all this money. Plus, it's killing you. Like, it's making you live short. It's not going to make your life any longer. I was just thought, hang on, if I stop drinking. I'll have more time to spend on anything which isn't drinking.

• 4:03Jonny?

  Um.

• 4:04Chris Williamson?

  Um. Another big part of it was I get I get increasingly bad hangovers as I get older, which I think everybody does. Um. Another part of it was that it's expensive. I didn't feel like I had anything left to learn.

• 4:17Jonny?

  Um.

• 4:18Chris Williamson?

  From alcohol. Like, it is a drug which takes you to the exact same place every single time.

• 4:25Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Chris Williamson?

  Um. And that's like one of the maddest memories that I've got. Um, is going away to Vegas. Both times I've been away to Vegas. For four days, the same four days, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, fly back on Thursday. And both times I've learned and unlearned the same lesson every twenty four hours at around about three P M.

• 4:47Chris Williamson?

  Arrive, think I'm invincible, start drinking, continue to think I'm invincible, wake up, realise I'm not, hate myself, think, fuck, shouldn't have done that. Gets to three P M, forget how I felt on the morning, remember how I felt on the night, get back on it.

• 5:00Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Chris Williamson?

  And the mad thing is, because when you get like super, super blackout drunk, um. It takes you to a place that's so overwhelming to all of your senses that you literally could have been in like the pub down the road.

• 5:13Jonny?

  Anyway, yeah. I do feel that there's a, there is some kind of like moral obligation to do that though, when you go to Vegas, at least once.

• 5:21Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I think.

• 5:21Jonny?

  I think if you if you go to Vegas and you just have a quiet time.

• 5:24Chris Williamson?

  It's part of the entry requirement.

• 5:26Jonny?

  Yeah, you've like, you've you've done it incorrectly. You've not had the.

• 5:30Chris Williamson?

  To to enter Vegas, yeah. To get the stamp in your in your passport.

• 5:34Jonny?

  You have to have had that.

• 5:35Chris Williamson?

  Experience.

• 5:36Jonny?

  Time is it? Not really sure.

• 5:38Chris Williamson?

  Let's drink.

• 5:39Jonny?

  Um. I nearly ate a bowl of nut calamari at three in the morning in uh in a casino in Vegas.

• 5:47Chris Williamson?

  Is that even a thing? Nut calamari?

• 5:48Jonny?

  So I ordered calamari in a pizza, three A M, pissed, uh, I said to the waiter, she was leaving. By the way, I've got no allergy. And he went, my god. I'm like, he's like, sir, we cook everything in peanut oil.

• 6:01Chris Williamson?

  I love when when you when you drip out stories from Vegas, it it's brilliant because you've got so many gems that just like.

• 6:08Jonny?

  That would have killed both of you.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Uh if it was, well, I'm okay with squid, actually.

• 6:14Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but you have.

• 6:15Jonny?

  You said shellfish.

• 6:17Chris Williamson?

  Uh.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 6:19Chris Williamson?

  Uh. Uh. Oh, no. Um but yeah, like you, when you go away and you drink that heavily and you have one of those party holidays, like I've done th- twenty, thirty of them, Marbella, Marbella, Rabitha, like I've been to Rabitha twelve times and every time I've gone, pretty much I've done that same thing. All that you're doing when you go away and you get that blind drunk is choosing what destination and visuals you want to deal with a hangover in.

• 6:46Jonny?

  Yep, yep.

• 6:48Chris Williamson?

  That's the God's honest truth, and this is coming from someone who was a professional party boy for like ten years.

• 6:55Jonny?

  So that's it, like this is, this is the thing that you di- did, isn't it? Like this is your, you have a level of expertise in drinking.

• 7:03Chris Williamson?

  I was world-class level party, yes. Um so like, since I did it, um I've encouraged you to try and go sober as well.

• 7:13Jonny?

  Yep.

• 7:14Chris Williamson?

  And you did that three months, this five years?

• 7:16Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:17Chris Williamson?

  Talk me through your experience there. What sort of a drinker were you before?

• 7:21Jonny?

  So I, I think my drinking definitely used to be quite a big deal. Like I used to drink a lot.

• 7:29Chris Williamson?

  What's a lot?

• 7:29Jonny?

  Well, I mean, so at uni, heavily, three times a week, four times a week. Um like obviously fresh is weak. I think the most I did.

• 7:40Jonny?

  There's a story I can't say for various reasons. There's a, there's a, there's a thing I did where I, uh drank every night for fourteen nights in a row. And every night I began with a bottle of um white Grenache, Gallo family white Grenache wine.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 7:55Jonny?

  So it's rosé wine from like the co-op. It, to be honest, awful, but at the time, you just become so acclimatized. I remember drinking the entire bottle while playing Call of Duty before going on this night out and every time being, getting slightly better at Call of Duty as the nights went on, thinking this is having less and less of an effect.

• 8:12Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  You felt like you were getting less drunk.

• 8:15Jonny?

  From the same.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Every day.

• 8:16Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Okay, progressive overload.

• 8:18Jonny?

  Uh in the same period of time, I first time hit a hit a one forty bench. One of the most proud periods of my life.

• 8:24Chris Williamson?

  That's the season.

• 8:26Jonny?

  But yeah, so it used to be like that.

• 8:27Chris Williamson?

  It's a very representative drinking then. And then what did you move into when you were at work?

• 8:31Jonny?

  So it started um in like accountancy training and it got quite bad again. So it tapered off. Because like, you know, you think like, shit, I've got to actually get a degree here. Otherwise, this has been a major waste of time and money. So like, got a degree, started a job, and then it's like freshers again. And suddenly everyone wants to go out again. It wasn't that bad, because obviously you've got to go to work. But it probably got more intense. So that's when Vegas happened twice.

• 8:55Chris Williamson?

  You've got more money now to spend on drinking.

• 8:57Jonny?

  Yeah, suddenly you're like, okay, like.

• 9:00Chris Williamson?

  The previous material limitations of your alcoholism.

• 9:04Jonny?

  I can now drink, but in other parts of the world.

• 9:07Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I can have top shelf spirits.

• 9:08Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah. And that became a thing, like ordering, like, it's such a dick thing. You know, when people get like a table and a bottle. And the first time that that becomes like something you can afford to do, and you feel like such a big deal. And then you're like, the next morning, you're like.

• 9:24Chris Williamson?

  What do I do now?

• 9:25Jonny?

  Wanker. Um, and then it it it slowly kind of tapered off. But I remember used to, I used to hate the idea. And I think you'll probably be the same. I used to hate the idea of like having a few beers in a pub, because I didn't see the point of that. But I absolutely saw the point of getting.

• 9:42Chris Williamson?

  Off my face.

• 9:42Jonny?

  Blind drunk. And I told the story that you shared on the beginning of Instagram of like tactical puke in a, in a um, in an alleyway. Um, and that was like the best thing that happened all weekend for me at a point.

• 9:55Chris Williamson?

  So I I never realised, so interject there, I totally forgot. I'm on this sobriety sort of little sort of stint at the moment, but my master's dissertation was the effectiveness of anti alcohol advertising on students at Newcastle University. I just totally forgot that I'd done that.

• 10:13Jonny?

  Right.

• 10:14Chris Williamson?

  Uh, if Northumbria University are listening, actually, James Quinn, if you go back and check it, check his dissertation. I submitted mine before turn it in. He just changed the word alcohol for smoking.

• 10:24Jonny?

  Oh, my god.

• 10:25Chris Williamson?

  Can they retrospectively? Command an F, replace, like, drinking, smoking, alcohol, cigarettes.

• 10:31Chris Williamson?

  Really dropped a minute there. It's fine. He's already got, he's got his, he's got his thing.

• 10:34Jonny?

  Well, so see, so one, they can't retrospectively, you can just be like.

• 10:37Chris Williamson?

  So mine was in before Turn It In was a thing, plus we were at different unis, but he submitted my dissertation.

• 10:43Jonny?

  Turn it in, is that like an anti?

• 10:49Chris Williamson?

  Uh, yeah, so, and one of the things that I discovered there was that students, and this is for everyone, right? Especially in the UK, it's big drinking culture, there's not a lot happening in the UK. It's not like fucking uh, America where there's literally fifty countries within your country. And you can go to the mall and do different things and spend the same money and everyone uses the same words.

• 11:09Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Chris Williamson?

  The UK is an island, the weather's pretty shit, there's not a lot of sunlight, there's not that much to do, really, people drink.

• 11:16Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Chris Williamson?

  They need to drink to keep themselves excited.

• 11:18Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Chris Williamson?

  And what I realised was, two things, first, drinking's a rite of passage for young people. And that's, that's quite interesting, like, if you want to be an older adult with representative experiences that allow you to relate to other people, you have to drink when you're younger.

• 11:36Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:36Chris Williamson?

  Because you need to know what it's like to like have a drunken argument with your girlfriend at nineteen. Or lose your phone and your keys stranded in Manchester and have to find your way home. Because that's a representative experience, that was half of it. The other half of it was that um, extreme uh, events on nights out are seen as badges of honour. So like, there's no other experience in which two university students would ring each other and say, hey man, how was your night last night? And the other one goes, mate, it's amazing, John broke his leg. And you're like, hang on.

• 12:14Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Chris Williamson?

  That, why is that amazing? Oh, because it's a, it's this marker of ex- excess. Uh, films like The Hangover have glorified taking substances, alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be.

• 12:27Jonny?

  Mm.

• 12:27Chris Williamson?

  To excess and it's seen as like, I'm hard, this is something to be proud of, this is something that's cool. And um, yeah, that, like, that just totally reframed everything. So you, normal, normal drinking cadence.

• 12:40Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 12:40Chris Williamson?

  Bit more of a weekend warrior, bit more money to spend.

• 12:42Jonny?

  Yeah, and then that, that slowly tapered off. And I think probably where I was when you suggested to me, it was like. It was more a couple of beers than it was getting blind pissed, because I think you've just.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Boys, I don't mean to go out now, a couple of paints.

• 12:59Jonny?

  You're gonna have to explain that.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  For heaven's sake.

• 13:02Jonny?

  Who's that? So who's this?

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Get silly with.

• 13:04Jonny?

  We're, we're on a ski trip and we're sixteen, right? And the gym, the PE teacher, big bloke, like big, thick man, like thick forearms, thick neck. Big, big barbell round.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  You can imagine it wears like, like eighties cop sunglasses, just stands like that.

• 13:19Jonny?

  Put it this way, everyone else is wearing like salopets and big, um, big ski wear. He's wearing jeans and a barber jacket, just untouched by skin of leather, real Jordy, the strong man. So he's standing up and just goes, lads, you know, because it was legal where we were to drink in Austria, um, you know. I would take a couple of quid out with you, have a couple of beers, but for heaven's sake, don't go silly with us. Right. I took that, I mean.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  A couple?

• 13:46Jonny?

  I'm going silly with it. He then had like a disciplinary chat with me where he basically just said, you went silly with it. I told you to not go silly with it. That's exactly what you did. But yes, that, that was.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  What, was silly with it? What did you do?

• 13:58Jonny?

  I, I had like five beers.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:01Jonny?

  But that was like the first time I'd got like.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Really drunk.

• 14:03Jonny?

  Legit, yeah, like really drunk. It was brilliant. But, um, so I, I was having like probably a couple of beers, the odd night out here and there, but not as, not as serious. But the thing that I found, giving it up for three months, the biggest change was you realise just how many, like little things you go to. Where the default would be three beers, four beers. And then you add that up and you're like, shit, over like three weeks I've had. You know, however many calories from alcohol, or, you know, you wake up the next day, you're a bit fuzzy. Or there's the odd time where you wake up and you think, I probably shouldn't drive. And you just think like, what? I haven't really, I couldn't quantify the gain, because in a way, like if you go to Vegas and you get blind pissed, at least you've got all those stories.

• 14:48Jonny?

  But if you just have a few beers and then have like a few conversations where the other person's had four beers as well, and it would have been exactly the same conversation. If you'd both been sober, you know, all I've had is downside here. I've had cost, calories, lost time.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Lost like.

• 15:04Chris Williamson?

  Bored of conversation.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I suppose it makes it like it takes the edge off a little bit, doesn't it? Which is why people do it.

• 15:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Like, why do people drink? They get something out of it at the time.

• 15:14Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  And we live in a society where people make very short term decisions and ignore the long term costs. So that that's why it's a problem.

• 15:20Chris Williamson?

  It is. It's the the reason that people choose to drink is for a whole host of reasons, but one of one of the main ones is that they're um the gains are immediate and the costs are in the future.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  They're tomorrow, aren't they?

• 15:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Tomorrow's problem.

• 15:34Chris Williamson?

  Future Yusuf will deal with this hangover.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 15:36Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever had a hangover?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Once. Yeah. So.

• 15:42Chris Williamson?

  Is that when you drank an entire bottle of spirit?

• 15:45Speaker 02

  The the surprisingly not. It was so I've I've there's a lot of back.

• 15:48Chris Williamson?

  Don't tell me it was after I made you drink that rum.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 15:50Chris Williamson?

  Oh, that was that was funny.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Okay, there there's a lot of backstory to this. Um.

• 15:55Chris Williamson?

  Well, hang on. First off, first off, when was your first ever drink?

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Twenty.

• 15:59Chris Williamson?

  So I can remember. I remember when your first beer was.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  First beer, yeah, I was with Johnny.

• 16:05Chris Williamson?

  We were at a marketing event.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Marketing.

• 16:07Chris Williamson?

  Standing in a room full of personal trainers.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 16:11Chris Williamson?

  Guy hands out everyone Stella Artois.

• 16:16Chris Williamson?

  Is it? Is this right?

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Stella, it was either Stella or the.

• 16:18Chris Williamson?

  Corona, it was Corona. And Yusuf like takes a sip. Trying to sneak in and the guy goes, guys, Yusuf's first beer.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Like, everyone goes. Which is interesting in itself that people applaud. Like, that it's a.

• 16:33Chris Williamson?

  Thanks. Right, you're now part of us.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:36Chris Williamson?

  You're one of us.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  You've joined.

• 16:37Chris Williamson?

  So when was your first beer? Twenty two, do you say? Twenty three?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  No, tw- I think twenty five.

• 16:41Chris Williamson?

  So you've never drank?

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Not a drop.

• 16:43Chris Williamson?

  Was that the first bit of alcohol you had?

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then so that that was the first beer.

• 16:47Chris Williamson?

  A cocktail?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  Had a cocktail, but that was kind of like, mm, and then I think it was either before or after. And I remember the the first time I pro- I think the first time I tried alcohol must have been a bit before that, which was a pint of gin. So I just said. It was it was a half half litre, half litre, yeah.

• 17:07Jonny?

  Meat.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, and so it was, because I've drunk much worse stuff like we, Johnny and I have drunk horrible supplements over the years that.

• 17:16Jonny?

  Yeah, but to be honest, like.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  The same.

• 17:17Jonny?

  They're not neat gin, it's like alcohol's up there with like, you know, it's, yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  I whoever I whoever I was with was like, is that gin you just drunk? Like, why? How are you not like?

• 17:28Jonny?

  You do just have a tendency to go, because when Chris, Chris bought Youssef, what was it, like?

• 17:35Chris Williamson?

  Ray nephew's, Ray nephew's eighty percent.

• 17:37Jonny?

  Eighty percent, yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  A double that.

• 17:39Jonny?

  And and Youssef standing at the bar and just went.

• 17:44Jonny?

  Yeah, it's quite strong. Yeah, everyone else goes like.

• 17:47Chris Williamson?

  Turns everyone else's face inside out, yeah.

• 17:49Jonny?

  Just neutral expression.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  I think I'm so used to hydrolyzed casein that everything.

• 17:55Jonny?

  It's worse.

• 17:56Chris Williamson?

  It's different, isn't it?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  It's got more of a.

• 17:58Jonny?

  It's more immediate, I think.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:00Chris Williamson?

  So, um. That's interesting, like for us as a representative slash unrepresentative group of people to be talking about alcohol. I was like infrequent but hard.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 18:12Chris Williamson?

  You were consistent and sort of low level with some hard ones.

• 18:15Jonny?

  I was that. When I was younger, I was that and it it slowly kind of changed over time.

• 18:20Chris Williamson?

  And then you are someone who was sober for, so I mean, what did you think of party culture when you were at uni and stuff?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Be asked with it. I found it so exhausting. Like, I'd always be the boring old man at like one AM, I'd be like, right, guys.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  No, I'm like, I'm so tired. And like, I'll I'll tell the poo tight poo tight story as well, but, um, but the, but the gin was just like. In my mind, alcohol was something that is a drug, like the many spectrum of other drugs possible. And so I just thought like, okay, how would I try a drug? I would take, I would take a therapeutic dose of it, um, in in a in a bolus and then wait for the result and see what happens. And I would, I would administer it in the most efficient manner that I could. So it was like, well, I can't go IV.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  So I'll have to just, I'll, I'll find what's, what's a concentrated drink that's quite like botanical.

• 19:20Chris Williamson?

  Botanical.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Gin will be nice. So I had, um, had, it was like something value, like it was a cheap.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  So had that and then like just didn't have anything else the rest of the night. And it's, I suppose similar to like, you know, you were saying like you have. You have like a few beers, you're like, oh, it was a bit rubbish and it's a lot of calories and fluid. Um, was that the Harry Potter themed gin? And uh. Whereas like the men of Henselmans approach is that you want to front loads of alcohol as much as possible. So you, you start with an empty stomach and you have eight units and then you stop. And then by the time you go to bed, you, most of the alcohol has metabolised and you're going to bed fine. So. Yeah, but, but then the time, the hangover was just, um, post, I did a sports massage therapy course and.

• 20:10Chris Williamson?

  I thought it was around then.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the guy took us all out for drinks at the end. And he was like, oh, use it. I'll get you a drink. And I'm like, oh, I don't really drink, Nick. He's like, no, I, I. I'll get you a proper old man's drink. I'll get you old speckled hen. You'll love it. You'll love it. You'll be great. Had old speckled hen. Have you, have you both had old speckled hen? Oh my god, like for someone that already thinks beer is just a scam, like it's just, someone's put like dishwater in it. So. Had it and I was like, Nick, this is the worst thing I've ever drunk. And he was like, no, I'll get you another one. You'll, you'll love it. But having a second one isn't gonna make.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, same thing. And like throughout the night, then they would give me like red wine and white wine and. Lagers and I think the mixture from what you said was quite vomi, hangover-y, but. Really only two, three episodes of alcohol in my life. It's never, it's never really s- stuck with me. I think because it's philosophically. At odds with, because it's like, I guess in moderate doses, not in like a good old whack.

• 21:10Chris Williamson?

  Pinto gin.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, like in, in moderate doses, it's designed, you said, like to take the edge off. And I think that's just philosophically at odds with. A lot of my life, like I'm not really about comfort.

• 21:22Chris Williamson?

  You're about, you're about lea- sitting with the edge, aren't you?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Sitting with the, like I slept on the floor for two years, three years, like, um.

• 21:29Chris Williamson?

  That's like the philosophical side of it's not one that I've really thought of, but you, you're really correct with that. The fact that. People say, I use alcohol because it helps to make me more confident on a night out.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 21:40Jonny?

  Okay, so you're not confident on a night out. No, I I am. Right, okay, what happens if I remove the alcohol? Because the alcohol's not a part of you. It's like me saying I can run the hundred metres in one second if I'm in a car.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  But Johnny's car can go.

• 21:52Jonny?

  A hundred miles an hour, yeah, I know the words to Candle in the Wind. Um, yeah, like, that's one of the reasons that people say that they drink. They say, um, it makes me more personable and it makes me have more of a laugh around my friends. And you're like, right, okay, so your friend's not funny if you don't have a drink.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 22:07Jonny?

  Um, yeah, maybe. So you're like, right, okay, so why are you going out? Well, I'm going out because my friends want me to go out, but I have to drink because otherwise I'd be bored. Okay, so you're taking this substance to sedate yourself from the fact that you can't bear to be around people you're choosing to be around without sedating yourself to be around.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  It's depressing when you put it like that. It's like.

• 22:29Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah, an interesting experiment.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  It's just I hate my life, isn't it?

• 22:32Jonny?

  Well, yeah, I think for some people that is the case, but the. So when I, when I, some of the things I tried when I was at uni and I was really heavily into like, you know, calories, you know, alcohol calories are metabolised differently to carbs and I need to time it. So I tried to consume alcohol in a way that would, you know, according to the science that I understood at the time, not store any of it as as body fat, which was some really extreme shit. Um.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  What like?

• 23:00Jonny?

  Well, just menohensinol's front loading all of it, so I did.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  No fat during the day.

• 23:04Jonny?

  Yeah, so o- only protein, only protein throughout the day. And then I basically did Centurion with shots of vodka. Until I reached the point where I was like, I'm drunk enough now. Then I left the house and drank only water. And got back and still had a hangover. So it was like, fucking pointless. Um, but during that time, I tried going out sober to see what it would be like. And if you just reframe it as like, everyone's expecting me to be drunk. If I just do what I want, if I'm just like.

• 23:36Jonny?

  Mark on future Rainbow Rhythms where he does that, like if you just do that, people go like, people just assume you're like mint, having a good time. So you can fully let go. No one, no one knows you're sober anyway and no one cares.

• 23:49Chris Williamson?

  Whilst being totally calm.

• 23:50Jonny?

  No one even notices. So actually.

• 23:51Chris Williamson?

  Isn't the reason why people are threatened if you are sober is that like, oh, Johnny's going to remember how much of a.

• 23:56Jonny?

  It's ghost at the feast thing, isn't it? Yeah. Like people say like, oh, they're watching, they're watching what I'm doing. I'm expressing myself. But there's someone there who's taking notes.

• 24:04Chris Williamson?

  But what does that tell us about what's going on? It says that the behaviour that I'm currently doing because I'm drunk is something that I don't want to remember or might not be that virtuous.

• 24:14Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Chris Williamson?

  And the only reason that I'm prepared to do it is because I know that everybody else, I have as much shit on everyone else as they have on me.

• 24:21Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 24:21Chris Williamson?

  Plus the fact that this, that one of the side effects of this drug is that memory kind of gets a little bit hazy anyway. Um, what you said about, about nerfing kind of the edges of stuff, super interesting, like.

• 24:33Jonny?

  I love your use of nerfing.

• 24:34Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. That's what it is, isn't it? It's nerfing.

• 24:37Jonny?

  I torpedoed.

• 24:38Chris Williamson?

  It's a Sam Harris. Torpedo is on holiday. Yeah. I used that Ezra Klein thing as an, as an example the other day.

• 24:44Jonny?

  Yeah. So nerfing the edges of the.

• 24:46Chris Williamson?

  Of, of your experience. Yeah. Like it's fucking hell, man. I, I think this is, this probably actually gets to why I think there's a fitness manopause in your late twenties, which you've undergone and you've undergone and I've undergone. And fucking Darren, Daz Morley's undergone, everyone has that I know about, that you get to later in your twenties and you go like, hang on, I'm not really growing or learning much more from this particular training methodology. I want to be more holistic in my approach to the way that I do my fitness. I'm going to find, I'm going to find something that is a little bit more aligned with what I want and a little bit less sort of like.

• 25:22Jonny?

  Look at me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:24Chris Williamson?

  Um. And then it's the same with alcohol, or it was the same with alcohol for me, where I was like, okay. I've kind of, I've kind of maxed out what I'm gonna learn from doing this thing. Every time I do it, it takes me to the same place. And.

• 25:36Chris Williamson?

  You curbing the edges off all of the interesting shit in life, like even if you were gonna get in a fight with someone. Like, if you're gonna get in a fight, or if that fight's gonna happen, you might as well be sober and experience what that level of fear is actually like. As opposed to being like, oh, well, I think it was a little bit like this, but this weird substance that I decided to take to kind of. Fucking blasted me to one side.

• 25:59Jonny?

  I've been, I got nutted twice when I was drunk. And.

• 26:03Chris Williamson?

  Like in a row?

• 26:04Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah. I got nutted twice, then punched in a, because, I mean, it's a, it's a long story, but I was outside venue. In Newcastle. And, um, is it really? Wow. Um.

• 26:17Chris Williamson?

  I've not been nutted when drunk, but I can imagine you feel the, the pressure and the movement. Was it on, was it on nose or on head?

• 26:24Jonny?

  I tried, this is the thing, I don't know. I didn't really feel anything. I remember, like, I remember it happening and then there's like the. Like module loading, module loading, module loading. I just got nutted. And it's almost like a.

• 26:40Jonny?

  Did you just, did you just nut me? And then, not me again, you're like.

• 26:44Chris Williamson?

  It's happened again.

• 26:46Jonny?

  No, okay. So someone I knew, um, had, this guy dropped a bottle that was brown. Brown ale bottle. And there was a, there was an argument erupted about how it was racist, which is obviously ridiculous. And I like, I like stepped in and said, like, come on, we're going to the next place. And the guy just went, crack. And then, uh.

• 27:08Chris Williamson?

  So unreasonable.

• 27:09Jonny?

  He ended up, the guy who nutted me, ended up being put in a bin upside down.

• 27:15Chris Williamson?

  Welsh. By someone I know who's involved in rugby at quite a high level. But the whole thing was ridiculous, but like afterwards, I just remember thinking like it was so weird to have that happen. And obviously there'll be adrenaline and stuff like that, but you don't feel it at all. But you did, I remember thinking at the time, I'm glad I wasn't sober. But just because, because like that it would have been very like, ah, I'd be nutted. Yeah. Whereas it was like. Oh, my god.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  I've been sucker punched sober and.

• 27:47Chris Williamson?

  By a Nazi.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  But yeah, very similar. Like you, you just, you hear a noise, like, like someone throwing a chaff grenade.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a stun grenade, isn't it?

• 27:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Flashbang.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  And you don't, yeah, you don't feel the pain. You're just like module loading. And then you're like, ah. A Nazi's just throwing shit in the face. Yeah.

• 28:05Chris Williamson?

  It's, it's interesting. Like if you were to design a drug, this is like a, a Hamilton Morris thing that he talks about with alcohol. Uh, Hamilton Morris, Hamilton's pharmacopeia, big psychonauts, loads of like psychedelic research. The man behind. But he's not, he's the opposite. Oh, right. He's the man behind big drugs. Anti-big pharma. Anti-big drugs. Um, and he talks about like, if you were going to design a drug, it would not be alcohol. For um, the, what was the, what's that thing? Dose? The therapeutic. Therapeutic dose amount is fucking huge. Um, the effects of it, it's like, what do you want? Do you want um, memory loss and lowered inhibitions? A little bit of aggressiveness and some kind of like enhanced sadness and kind of uh.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Those lower sex drive, um, massive like anxiety rebound, after effect, worse sleep, worse like liver function, all these things that are just like.

• 29:00Chris Williamson?

  How about, how about having your willpower the next day completely through the floor? And cheering. Yeah, yeah. So I, it's just like, if you were to design a drug, alcohol would be a shit one. And I think what's interesting for you is Yusuf, is that because you weren't indoctrinated into this little fucking cabal of alcoholism when you were eighteen and you go to uni and you're like, oh my god, I've got a flat and halls of residence and I can drink. You view it. As you view every other drug, it's like, okay, should I try, should I try nicotine? Like, I wondered, like, have you ever put nicotine patch on? I bet you have.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Not, not a patch, but I'm very keen to, yeah.

• 29:35Chris Williamson?

  You just because.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  I've, I've, I've tried like, like, um, what's it called?

• 29:39Chris Williamson?

  Snus.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, snus, snorting it, whatever, just like trying.

• 29:44Chris Williamson?

  I wonder what happens. What's a therapeutic dose? I will choose to. Very much after.

• 29:48Jonny?

  Yeah, I've tried nicotine gum. Do you remember when, I remember it was, we were going through a phase where nicotine gum was advised as like a fat loss.

• 29:54Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 29:54Jonny?

  So what's it like? What's it feel like?

• 29:55Chris Williamson?

  Awful. Is it like having a coffee?

• 29:58Jonny?

  So it's like having a coffee, but more, it feels more like a strong nootropic. It's like an edge, it's more of an edge to it.

• 30:07Chris Williamson?

  Hamilton Morris uses, uh, nicotine gum as a writing tool.

• 30:13Jonny?

  I mean, like, it definitely makes you alert, but it's not, I don't think it's a nice alert.

• 30:18Chris Williamson?

  Dan Bailey got asked, have you ever smoked? And he said, yeah, once had to do like this seven hour drive at night and he's got a twenty pack and just like. Just chain smoked them, like in an effort to keep himself awake.

• 30:29Jonny?

  So that's viewing it as a drug. It's just that smoking is a very inefficient delivery mechanism, but just like drinking is an inefficient delivery mechanism.

• 30:37Chris Williamson?

  When you think about like, you know, we, we talk about, um, other drugs on this podcast, you talk about the dosages that people have of mushrooms, grams of mushrooms. Or an effective dose of cocaine, part of like grams, like half a gram or quarter of a gram or whatever. Or then you talk about, um, LSD and it's like.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Micrograms.

• 30:56Chris Williamson?

  Single micrograms, right?

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:57Chris Williamson?

  And you're like, how much fuck it, like volume, sheer volume of alcohol, it's so much that your body has to excrete out the past stuff to make room for more.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  That's why I went for the gin, because I was like, I cannot believe that people get, people go out and drink ten beers and they drink.

• 31:14Jonny?

  It's five percent alcohol.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, like a social low percentage is a horrible drink and who drink, you don't even take ten pints of anything. And yet, for some reason, it's normal to go out and drink five litres of some kind of.

• 31:27Jonny?

  It's crazy that people just don't like in any other.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Hypo nootropic or something.

• 31:34Jonny?

  If you were to go, if I were like, right, we're all gonna go to this place tonight and take a drug. Everyone's main concern would be, well, how much am I taking? Like, if I'm gonna take a drug, I wanna know, like, is the amount I'm taking alright? Or am I gonna run into problems? But people just go into a bar and just have at it, don't they?

• 31:54Chris Williamson?

  I think that's, a lot of that is because we know what the dosage is, right? We can equate.

• 32:00Jonny?

  Roughly.

• 32:01Chris Williamson?

  One double equals this much drunkenness, two doubles equals this much drunkenness.

• 32:04Jonny?

  But you're like dealing with the like, what happens once I've taken it as a measure, rather than, whereas people aren't like, I, I take two paracetamol to get rid of my headache.

• 32:14Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 32:15Jonny?

  But I don't like take the paracetamol based on how bad my headache is.

• 32:18Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 32:18Jonny?

  I just, I take the dosage of the drug that is required.

• 32:22Chris Williamson?

  You're right.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  People tell me I'm approaching it all wrong and that's why I'm not into it.

• 32:25Jonny?

  You've not had like the, the installation.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they say like, oh, you shouldn't drink thinking about the effect, you should just let the night flow and just have, you know.

• 32:33Chris Williamson?

  So obviously, I mean, the, the elephant in this room is that I make my money from drunk people. And I've done a mil-, I've had a million people, a million customers go into my events and all of them, I would guess ninety five percent of them more were drinking. Um, but again, I don't have a problem with drinking. I don't think that that's a bad thing. My problem is when you do that back and forth for like thirty years, twenty years, even ten years, like throughout your twenties. If all that you do is live for the weekend and be a weekend warrior, you hit thirty and you're like, mate, what the fuck? You've taken two steps forward and two steps back every week. Your weight loss goals aren't going anywhere. Why do you think that is? You've never developed any good habits, your sleep's still fucked, your mood's still fucked.

• 33:14Chris Williamson?

  All of the skills that you should have that you can then double down on for the rest of your life, like confidence or the ability to like approach anxiety, the ability to approach someone of either the same sex or a different sex, um, your ability to deal with, um, anxious situations or uncertain situations, that all of that, plus let's talk about cost on time, cost on money, cost on calories, the hangover the next day, all the mistakes that you, let's not even to talk about social costs. How many times did you cheat on your girlfriend or get in a fight or fucking lose your keys or annoy someone?

• 33:43Jonny?

  Or lose a friend or fucking whatever.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  So the thing you said about like you hit thirty and you're like, oh god, I've kind of pissed away quite a lot of money, time, age, et cetera. Yeah, like.

• 33:52Jonny?

  Lot of time pissing.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  In.

• 33:53Jonny?

  Yeah. And then I'm out again.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  And there's something you mentioned before we started recording is like, we're, we're thirty now, like thereabouts. And I think this is the age where you see people that you used to go to school with. You haven't seen them maybe ten years and for some of them you're like, oh, you're looking good. And some of them you're like, oh, like.

• 34:13Jonny?

  Tough paper round the last decade, mate.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's happened to you. And I think it's because like at sixteen years old. You can do like, what, four years old, like all four year olds are the same, like they can do whatever they want and they're fine.

• 34:24Jonny?

  Made a flubber, aren't you? Rubber, rubber and magic, yeah, it just bounced back, yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Sixteen, still the same thing, like you can, you can be a like chain smoker, drink loads, like terrible lifestyle.

• 34:34Jonny?

  Very resilient. You can do that then wake up the next day and do heavy deadlifts.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, literally, yeah.

• 34:38Jonny?

  No doms, don't matter.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Just fine, you can do it destructible.

• 34:41Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  And then the cumulative effect of that doesn't really manifest until about thirty and then it's like, oh, like biological age fifty.

• 34:49Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Shit.

• 34:50Jonny?

  Yeah. That was, I, I was sending you stuff a voice note and I walked past someone that we were at school with, who I've not seen, he didn't see me. I've not seen him for a long time and bad example of, of behaviours that compound, yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  Cause it, it, they divert, it's so insidious, cause you don't.

• 35:09Jonny?

  It's that, it's that graph from James Clear where it's like one percent better every day is thirty eight times better by the end of the year. One percent worse every day is naught point naught one of what it was at the start of the year.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:20Jonny?

  And like the, we're always practising something, the Kit Lachlan thing, like you're always doing behaviours. It's just either good or bad behaviours, yeah. I think like my, I probably stand in between you two on sobriety and drinking in general, like I still drink. Even after trying sobriety, cause I, I think I just see it as like it's one of. A hundred behaviours that you do. And it's more, I think, where I think the most benefit people get from giving something up is like what that thing is masking. Or what you do that thing instead of, or what you you do that thing to like, escape from a feeling or escape from a a thought. Um. Or like a part of your life. And when you strip it away.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Um.

• 36:00Jonny?

  And you have to then deal with that thing. That's when it's, cause I.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  So it's the it's the underlying thing is the real, the real meat of it is.

• 36:07Jonny?

  Cause cause he like, it's, you know, people, how long do people spend on their phones? Why are they doing that? It's not like, is being on your phone a bad thing? Yes, it's not a great use of time. But then, like, is watching T V, like, so many other things. It's, are you like, ignoring a conversation or? It's what is underneath that.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Because you can't sit with your thoughts, because you can't.

• 36:26Jonny?

  Exactly, yeah. And I think you spend a lot of time, have spent a lot of time, hundreds of hours of time, meditating, which is like the opposite, right? It's dealing with what's there.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Front and centre, yeah.

• 36:39Jonny?

  Face to face with it. Which is the opposite of drinking, which is running away from what's there or trying to round the edges off. So it's not quite as sharp.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Or enhance them as well. Doesn't appeal, I don't know.

• 36:48Jonny?

  Cause you're already rounded.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Well, well.

• 36:50Jonny?

  Bolsterwood.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Well. I don't know if I'm a ball of bolsterwood, but but I think like it's, it's maybe because it's so contrary to to that. Yeah. I feel like, oh, why would I wanna?

• 36:59Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  But, interesting quote on what you've just said from Anthony De Mello, who is a Jesuit preacher, priest, whatever. He said, whenever the priest comes to me, asking for refuge and help, all he wants to do is talk about sex. When the prostitute comes to me, all they wanna do is talk about God. And so he's like, it's not about the thing. It's like, whatever you renounce, you bring back into your life. Tenth of, because you're pushing it away, you're pulling it towards you in some way.

• 37:28Jonny?

  Um.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Such an interesting.

• 37:31Jonny?

  That's what, well, you have this, so me and Johnny, no one even knows this. Me and Johnny have the same meditation coach now.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Um.

• 37:36Jonny?

  Uh. And Brian talks about um not uh not fixating or suppressing. Like, that's what equanimity is.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:45Jonny?

  It's.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Not wanting more of a good thing or less of a bad thing.

• 37:47Jonny?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:48Jonny?

  It's, it it and and that's, that's exactly what you're talking about there. So what what did you learn from? Three months of sobriety. Did it reframe anything for you?

• 37:59Jonny?

  I think it made it made alcohol seem more like an option rather than a default. So it made drinking seem like, you know, if I wanna go to an event that I would normally just drink at. I suppose, so it's like, I'm trying to give an example. It's like a, it's, I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's an automatic behaviour. It's not, you don't have a thought of like, I'm going out this evening and I'm gonna have three beers.

• 38:23Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 38:23Jonny?

  You just find that happening, yeah.

• 38:25Chris Williamson?

  But I would have thought because you have to plan your taxi and not driving.

• 38:30Jonny?

  It's the default though. It's, yeah, it's like you're going out with friends, so, you know, it'll be food and some drinks. Or we're going to a bar, so there'll be drinks.

• 38:39Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting, cause I, maybe I'm so out of the habit, but for me, I would have to, I'd be like, oh, right.

• 38:43Jonny?

  Conscious decision.

• 38:44Chris Williamson?

  Cause I can't drive.

• 38:45Jonny?

  I think it depends as well on, like, who, who, which circle you're in. Cause obviously like when we go for food and like when.

• 38:52Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 38:52Jonny?

  We're a real rarity though. Yeah, but that, that, cause I remember George saying, it was like, it was like this time last year. It's like so weird to go for food with a group of guys and not drink.

• 39:03Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 39:04Jonny?

  Cause I'll go for that same situation with a group of other people. And it's like weird if you've not had a beer by midday, cause that's their default. But it's, it's, I think quite dependent on who you're with. Cause there, there are people who just don't drink, cause that's what they prefer.

• 39:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 39:19Jonny?

  And some people who like.

• 39:20Chris Williamson?

  It's so rare though, man, like.

• 39:22Jonny?

  Yeah, very rare.

• 39:22Chris Williamson?

  Thirty, like, and then, I guess maybe as, as you move a little bit further on, but it seems to me to be s- the, the few people that do, and this is an Ed Latimore-ism, right? The alcohol is the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem. And that's why so many people, I think, have this aversion to going sober. So brightly seen as something that's only done when someone has an issue with alcohol.

• 39:46Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 39:46Chris Williamson?

  Can't be a lifestyle choice.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Let's talk about that, like the, the, this, the backlash that you get when you don't drink. Like, do you get social backlash? Do you get people like, assuming you have a problem or trying to get you to drink, trying to like, get you to join in?

• 39:59Jonny?

  They did when I started, they did when I started, but I'm like fairly sort of well.

• 40:05Chris Williamson?

  Stanced now as the sobriety guy or the guy, the guy that does periods of sobriety.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  People keep on trying to like.

• 40:10Chris Williamson?

  Well, not even that. It's like, I think a lot of people are very timid about, let's say that they've got something on the next morning. You, you, you go into it, like people have to go into it, fucking caveats and litigation about why they're not drinking.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 40:24Chris Williamson?

  Or mate, well, I've got, uh, I've got doctor's appointment at 10 in the morning, like, or maybe that's not even the truth, but they have to do it because, oh, I've, I've brought the car. Like, oh, um, some, I know some people who take their car keys out with them without the car.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Really?

• 40:38Chris Williamson?

  So they can be like, oh, I've got the car, man. Like, I don't need to, I, I can't drink. And it's like, that's how.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  It's the equivalent of I've got a boyfriend, when, when you haven't got a boyfriend.

• 40:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it is. But it's, it's, it neutralizes that conversation quickly because people are like, oh, I'm prepared to push you if I think it's your will. But there's certain things I'm not prepared to push you on. But people are prepared to push you if they think it's your will. I'd like, why? And I, again, I get it. We are all here, the fucking hell, this podcast went up. This breaks down the podcasting schedule again. Today's episode went up with Paul Bloom and he does this, video guy Dean picked out the best experiment in there. I wonder if you know about this. Psychology experiment, they put people in a room and they get all of them to toss a coin. By law of averages, about half of them go over there, half of them go over there, tails group, heads group. And they go over to the tails group and they're like, what, what do you think of yourselves then?

• 41:29Chris Williamson?

  Well, we're so, because we're a bit smarter, isn't it? He said, what do you think about the heads group? Yeah. Like you got a bunch of dicks over there. They're just a lot of schmoes. And it's like the most random arbitrary way to split people up into us and them. And it causes people to make value judgments.

• 41:48Chris Williamson?

  That's because for the vast majority of evolutionary history, we were in groups of 25 to 50 and we were fucking terrified of what was in the next valley. Cause they were going to kill us, rape our women. They had some pathogen that we weren't going to be able to fucking deal with because there was no antibiotics or whatever it might be. We were terrified of it and that's still the module that's in there.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  So funny. I'm, I'm even on that, like, cause I rotate between medical and surgical jobs and.

• 42:11Chris Williamson?

  Even that, they're like, oh, it's the fucking surgeons, like they're just, oh, the bloody medics always just refer anyone with abdominal pain to us.

• 42:20Chris Williamson?

  It becomes such an us and them, like, oh.

• 42:21Jonny?

  Football teams, like sport, it's, it's in everything.

• 42:24Chris Williamson?

  Kill each other over stuff.

• 42:25Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, religion is the biggest one, isn't it?

• 42:28Chris Williamson?

  Tribalism, man, yeah, they need to plant a flag in the ground, but it's like, here is, he's one of us, he's drinking with us, he's, and it's like, hang on a second. If you're fucking annihilating yourself and taking two steps back this weekend, if you were that good of a friend, you'd support me in my cause for sobriety. So that was like, one of the main questions, or one of the main issues people have when they go sober is how do I do this? When all of my friends are around me drink, and it's like, well, it'll identify exactly who the friends are that are in your life that are good for you.

• 42:58Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Chris Williamson?

  Because the ones who are like, fucking hell, man, are you trying that? Like, if you explain your reasons.

• 43:04Chris Williamson?

  Really? You're gonna, fucking hell, well, like, fair play, man, as opposed to what? Like, you're not coming out, you think you're better than us? Like, what, you're not coming out? And it's like, manifesting.

• 43:13Jonny?

  Your best interests at heart.

• 43:13Chris Williamson?

  They don't care. They only want you there if you're destroying yourself with them. And if you can only bear to be around your friends when you're drunk. Like, you definitely need better friends. Full stop.

• 43:24Jonny?

  I think it comes from, so that I have, I have some friends who sometimes don't drink and they are boring as sin when they do that. Like, not, not just because they're sober, but I think it's because they're in this mindset of like, I'm not really fully participating here. They leave early. They're not, they're a bit, you know, they're reserved.

• 43:45Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 43:46Jonny?

  Yusuf's a good example, like, he's there and he'll be there till it finishes, whatever the things finishes.

• 43:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Jonny?

  He's not drinking and you can't, you don't even notice. In fact, he's probably more like, uninhibited, inhibited, yeah.

• 43:58Chris Williamson?

  Uninhibited.

• 43:59Jonny?

  Uninhibited than other people who are drinking.

• 44:00Chris Williamson?

  But that's, a lot of that is to do with the fact that Yusuf never had to rely on alcohol to be that crux to make them sociable. Because you've, you've developed that particular pathway to be like, oh, I can be here and I cannot drink, but I can also be a part of this group.

• 44:16Jonny?

  But I've been on nights out with you and you're not drinking. Ben's another good example. Like they're just there, they're not drunk, but they're still being, still having a good time, they're still engaging in it. And I think where this, for me anyway, where I'll have a resistance to it is if some people say, I'm bringing the car. Just like, you feel like saying, look, just don't, just don't come, because you don't, you don't really want to be there.

• 44:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Jonny?

  You're just kind of doing half so that no one gives you shit. But I think it's, for some people, it feels like, there's a, there's a shift in the way that they act when it's like, right, I'm not bringing the car. Or, I'm not drunk, right.

• 44:49Chris Williamson?

  Fucking, now let's get on it, boys.

• 44:51Jonny?

  But like, there's no reason why you can't just be like that. It's like the thing I was saying with the nightclub, like, once you realise that it's all an illusion anyway. And that you can just be how you want. And if people judge you then, like, they're gonna judge you either way, so just have a good time.

• 45:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Jonny?

  And then people will give you less shit if you're just an interesting person when you're sober.

• 45:08Chris Williamson?

  There's, and so you, again, you, you're super right with that, that alcohol is still controlling that person who's chosen to go sober. But is being super reserved. They're still controlling their behaviour. They're just now controlling their behaviour, what, by its absence rather than by its presence.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Placebo effect as well, that a lot of people like, yeah, there was that thing where they gave people non-alcoholic.

• 45:28Jonny?

  Yeah, they gave two, like, two tables, non-alcoholic beer and alcoholic beer, and they just acted the same. I think they measured like how much of the food they ate.

• 45:37Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 45:37Jonny?

  Seen that one?

• 45:38Speaker 02

  No.

• 45:38Jonny?

  They made, they gave them like onion rings and stuff. And get, and make, they got, gotten to rate their perceived drunkenness and how much of the food they ate, and it wasn't that different.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Right, interesting.

• 45:47Jonny?

  Which is crazy.

• 45:47Chris Williamson?

  Mental.

• 45:48Jonny?

  It's like if you're drinking non-alcoholic beer. There is a similar, like, I've had times where I've drunk an alcoholic beer, got in the car and thought, oh, fuck. But then you're, I mean, like, it's ludicrous, like, that, you know, like, Heinrichs aren't gonna put alcohol in a non-alcoholic beer.

• 46:04Chris Williamson?

  They might.

• 46:05Jonny?

  I mean, there's some big lawsuits on.

• 46:07Chris Williamson?

  Being shit, yeah.

• 46:07Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 46:08Chris Williamson?

  There's a, there's a particular, I was gonna do a YouTube video on this, but I couldn't do it without just essentially calling people out by name. So I'll try and, I've tried to navigate this like five times before I just gave up. Um, I have a problem with, uh, you two may not be exposed to this because you're not massively exposed to party culture, but people listening will know this person or these people.

• 46:31Chris Williamson?

  Guys specifically, mostly guys who have this semi flirtatious, almost like

• 46:41Chris Williamson?

  gay candor before they go on a night out, talking about how heavy the night's going to be. It's like, oh mate, can't wait to shut down Newcastle tonight, horn emoji, horn emoji, aubergine emoji. Like, oh, do you remember last time we were in there? And it's like, are you, are you guy, are you going in there and rubbing up against each other or something? Like, what are you doing on your night out that makes you think that you have licence to use this sort of language in advance? This isn't Dan Bilzerian's fucking villa. You're not unloading yourself into the fucking Playboy mansion here. You are going on a night out to sit in the corner, be nervous about talking to the girls and complain because

• 47:20Chris Williamson?

  George, George didn't put five pounds in for the bottle of vodka. Like, yeah, that, that's the complaint you have. And I see these people. It's heartbreaking. The same guys who give it massive licks before they go on a night out. And they're like, yeah, man, it's gonna be fucking sick tonight. Like, oh, they have this like weird dick measuring thing going on before where it's like, yeah, like you think that you're gonna run rings around me, but just you wait till we get in there, mate. It's like, you, you, you're drinking. You're, you, this isn't. You're consuming a commercially available drug. This isn't the Abu Dhabi F1.

• 47:52Chris Williamson?

  Like, you're not the. You're not Lewis Hamilton. This is so far outside of my reference book, because I, I would have thought like, oh, I wanna get as drunk as possible for as cheaply as possible. I wanna be the lightest weight person in the group because. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? How being a lightweight is seen as a bad thing. Well, actually. He spent three pounds and. Well, again, it's rite of passage. It's like, look, I'm able to drink this much because I've drank this much before and more. It's very self referential, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it's the, it's interesting though, like because that fuels the same thing. If you break from that, your friends are like, oh no, but you've gotta, gotta be like us again. And, and it's like.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, it does differentiate the people that I don't, not necessarily that they they have bad intentions, but they just. They prioritize their own sense of security over what's best for you. And it's why, like, I'm so, I'm so grateful to to Johnny for like, for being um supportive of the fact, because obviously. We text quite a lot for propane stuff, but Johnny was probably one of the only people that was like wholeheartedly supportive of. Me getting rid of my phone, getting like an Nokia thirty three ten, even though.

• 48:59Chris Williamson?

  He would be the person quantifiably who was the most.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  In in the short term would be most impacted by it, but I suppose like probably because you like.

• 49:07Chris Williamson?

  I've seen the.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Seen the long term benefit of it, but yeah, but.

• 49:10Chris Williamson?

  The light in Pandora's box, yeah. Yeah, it's, so I think um. To go back to why people don't, or one of the fears that people have about going sober, it's like, well, if I don't drink. Then all of my friends are going to say, why are you not drinking? It's gonna be social pressure. Maybe I'll stop getting invited out to whatever. Like, how do I, the question I get a lot is, how do you deal with social pressure? You're around people who are drunk all the time. How do you deal with it? And for the most part, I think the same as with a lot in life. It's like, if you say things with conviction. People will go fucking out. It's like when I first started doing sobriety, I was very open about my reasons. I was like.

• 49:51Chris Williamson?

  I want more time to spend on some other stuff and I'm challenging myself to see if I can do it. Like, I'm challenging myself to see if I can do it, turns it from you abstaining from something to you adding something. It's like, oh, I'm I'm trying to achieve this thing. It's like, hang on, mate, why are you going out for that morning run? I'm doing a marathon. I want to train for the marathon. I want to see if I can do it. It's like, why are you not drinking? Oh, well, I'm I want to see if I can not go sober for six months. And I found like, I'm patient fucking zero for being exposed to people who want you to drink. Like, there's no, you, top, top point one of a percentile on the globe of people, of. Humans that have been exposed to drunk people, I'll be in easily.

• 50:36Chris Williamson?

  Easily.

• 50:36Speaker 02

  Seen the most.

• 50:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, by by miles.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  You've even developed the uh.

• 50:41Chris Williamson?

  A special handshake for keeping people away from me when I try and when they try and fucking come into.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Get sweaty.

• 50:46Chris Williamson?

  So if I can do it and if I can do it with conviction and you can maybe say, oh, well, you're in a position of authority for the club stuff. Maybe that kind of means that people are less pushy, but it's bullshit. Like I sit down with with loads of people. New people and blah, blah, blah. And as soon as you explain, oh, I just wanted a bit more time or money or. I just wanted to challenge myself, see if I can do it. And um, people seem to be really responsive, which if you do it with confidence.

• 51:13Jonny?

  Yeah, it shines a light back on them though, doesn't it? It's like when, you know, you see examples of couples where like. One of them will get in shape or one of them will like hire a P T and start losing weight and it like pisses the other one off. Because it.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Immediately alienates.

• 51:29Jonny?

  It alienates, but it also like they're forced to deal with their lack of progress in that area.

• 51:35Chris Williamson?

  People don't like to see other people growing around them.

• 51:37Jonny?

  Exactly.

• 51:38Chris Williamson?

  Like they're only they're only happy if you're destroying yourself with them. And this, this is like one of, for me, you know. By fortune or whatever, um, my circle's always been sort of fairly small in any case. So I've never had a influence that's kind of been that negative, but I see it with a lot of people and um. It's bad, man. Like that, that's you're literally talking about your life, like that someone's fucking around with the values that you lead your life by.

• 52:08Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 52:09Chris Williamson?

  That person could have said to you, hey, man, like I watched this podcast with that modern wisdom thing and they talked about going sober. Like, do you fancy trying to do it for a bit? And should we should we do Dry January or whatever? And your response to that person could be the beginning of them making a really interesting change to their life. Or it could be, nah, I'm like, fuck that. Like it's, it's, it's, it's John O's thirty second. Like you can't, you can't miss John O's thirty second. He's going to York for it. You're like.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  You're not gonna miss it. Like.

• 52:38Chris Williamson?

  What, what, what do you mean? What do you mean? We're going to York again for John O's thirty second. His thirty first was fucking shit. Like, do you know what I mean?

• 52:47Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very repetitive.

• 52:50Chris Williamson?

  I don't know, man.

• 52:50Jonny?

  I think the there's there's definitely, cause I so I think something that I know that we all do is like, there's something you do, there's a behaviour, it's like, right, I'm gonna try and not do that.

• 53:00Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:01Jonny?

  I I love doing.

• 53:01Chris Williamson?

  Caffeine, sleeping in a bed, masturbation.

• 53:04Jonny?

  Uh, phone use is the latest one.

• 53:06Chris Williamson?

  Phone use.

• 53:07Jonny?

  Social, social media and all that, that's my latest, like.

• 53:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:10Jonny?

  Still don't feel like I'm.

• 53:11Chris Williamson?

  Sleeping late, sleeping in.

• 53:13Jonny?

  All sorts of stuff.

• 53:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Jonny?

  Eating.

• 53:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:15Jonny?

  Not eating.

• 53:15Chris Williamson?

  For a day.

• 53:16Jonny?

  That, yeah. Um, well, just how I I think people do dry January and you'll see, you'll see it happen as January rolls around, like people's social media fills up with, like, can't wait for, you know, people put those countdown timers on their Instagram.

• 53:32Chris Williamson?

  Until when they get to have a drink again.

• 53:33Jonny?

  And then they go back at it just as in, in just as an intense fashion and like realistically, all you've done. You know.

• 53:40Chris Williamson?

  This is renouncing something and then bringing it back harder into your life again.

• 53:43Jonny?

  Yeah, you, well, you've done it, you've maybe given internally a month of of rest, those systems. But like, what effect, especially if you go harder when you go back.

• 53:52Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, the first, the first couple of weekends where you compensate.

• 53:56Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Chris Williamson?

  It's like the overcompensate. It's like the the person that's using intermittent fasting wrong.

• 54:00Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 54:00Chris Williamson?

  It's like, oh, I won't eat for today, but I'll eat triple tomorrow.

• 54:03Jonny?

  Oh, yeah, exactly.

• 54:03Chris Williamson?

  No, no.

• 54:04Jonny?

  But it's.

• 54:05Chris Williamson?

  How the numbers work.

• 54:05Jonny?

  And and you know, the people who are like, the there's all the stuff about, um, it's Friday, so it's prosecco time or

• 54:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Jonny?

  can't wait for Saturday when I'm.

• 54:14Chris Williamson?

  It was a clock.

• 54:15Jonny?

  Yeah, exactly, like that, that stuff, that is, in in my view, like, those are the people that need a year off it. You need time to realise.

• 54:25Chris Williamson?

  Calibrate.

• 54:25Jonny?

  Just just to re, it's like you are using, you are using a drug to to cover up parts of your life that maybe aren't right at the moment.

• 54:33Chris Williamson?

  But you you're using the use of a drug to determine your week, your weekly cadence.

• 54:39Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 54:40Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, uh, and it it it must sound like to some people that are listening, like a lot of the things that we talk about, it must sound so fucking autistic. Like, for us to just be like, you you you know this thing that's taken for granted by everyone? What we'd really like to do is find out what's going on there.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Do you have a magnifying glass?

• 54:59Chris Williamson?

  Like, but it is like, I promise you, for the people that are listening, like, if you think to yourself, is a good question to ask, like, when was the last time that you didn't drink for more than six months?

• 55:09Speaker 02

  For even a week for some people.

• 55:12Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, okay. When was the last time you didn't drink for a week? When was the last time you didn't drink, apart from pregnancies for women? Uh, when was the last time you didn't drink for a month? And when was the last time you didn't drink for six months? And that six month distribution will be for most of the people that are listening before they start drinking.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:29Chris Williamson?

  That's I, you, you discovered, someone told you upon the day that you arrived on this earth, you're gonna have this drug from the age of sixteen until the time you die, more frequently than once every six months, or more frequently than once every month, or for some people more frequently than once every week. You'd be like, is this, is this like mandatory? Is this like a part of, do I have to sign this off as part of my membership to life or something?

• 55:53Speaker 02

  You know, the super size versus super skinny thing where they, they take someone who's super size.

• 55:58Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  And they go, here's what you've eaten in a week, or, and, and they show it all on a.

• 56:03Chris Williamson?

  In a big tube.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the super skinny is like fifty Red Bulls and like some coffees, like loads of packs of cigarettes.

• 56:12Chris Williamson?

  That's someone who's figured out that caffeine's quite good for appetite suppression. Carbonated drinks and a caffeine.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  And then like the fat, the fat person has just got piles of like pasties and like.

• 56:21Chris Williamson?

  It's all beige, isn't it? Beige food.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, one colour.

• 56:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  And if, if you were to do that with the alcohol ahead of time, and also you have like a big blown up three D rotating image of your liver, and just showing like how it's getting.

• 56:34Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Cerrosed over the, the years, you'd be like, oh, actually.

• 56:39Chris Williamson?

  Cause I, so I think if we were sat here now, probably not you included, we'll include the V M D. If we were to have four beers, I think we'd all enjoy the four beers.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 56:52Chris Williamson?

  Apart from you.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:54Chris Williamson?

  The fifth beer.

• 56:56Jonny?

  Um, six beer, maybe not. It it tapers down, I think, quite quickly. I think like the process of you're in a bar with your mates chatting, you have you have a couple of beers. It's it's quite nice.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's when you start getting silly with it.

• 57:12Jonny?

  It is when you start getting silly with it, they was right all along. Um, but like past then, really, it's just all shit.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Well, everyone.

• 57:21Chris Williamson?

  So there's two, there's two like little cliches that I've come up with since thinking about this. One of them is that um, every drink you have makes not having a subsequent drink more difficult.

• 57:30Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 57:30Chris Williamson?

  Everyone's been out and one wine turns into a couple of beers turns into a bottle of vodka turns into a kebab at three in the morning. Everyone's let it go. Like, there's even that super fucking meme about, I just popped out. And now I've ended up out. Do you know what I mean? There's that. And then the other thing that I realised, I I keep meaning to make a graph about this. But um, alcohol gives you diminishing margins of return in terms of pleasure. But gives you a exponential increase in terms of suffering. So ten beers doesn't double your enjoyment from five beers, but it more than doubles your suffering the next day.

• 58:05Jonny?

  It starts to become really quite serious, actually. I any anyone who's had like, so I think if we're talking pints over seven. And you're into some real quite serious territory there, like, that's a lot of volume.

• 58:18Chris Williamson?

  I need to, so there's a, there's a glass ceiling that I bounce off unless I get spirits out.

• 58:23Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 58:24Chris Williamson?

  Like, there's only, because you're just limited gastrointestinally.

• 58:28Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Chris Williamson?

  Like, you're.

• 58:28Jonny?

  There's a mechanical error, isn't there?

• 58:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I can just fit so much in and I'm sick of, it's like, I can make myself full enough to want to throw up. If I'm allowed to have dessert, I couldn't do it, just save it.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  So I know this is like the extreme case, but imagine like this is a spectrum that you get some, you get patients in hospital that their entire calorie intake, three thousand two hundred calories a day, which I worked out is the amount of spirit that they're drinking and it's just that. Every day, so they'll just have, just have vodka, three thousand calories of vodka a day.

• 59:00Jonny?

  No protein.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  No, no protein.

• 59:02Chris Williamson?

  Why, why? Are they quite lean?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Do you like, usually very lean or with a with. Like a with a bit of a swollen swollen organs, but.

• 59:10Speaker 02

  But like.

• 59:10Chris Williamson?

  To get three thousand two hundred calories a day.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  Of spirit. And so you end up having to give them like replacement vitamin injections. It's like an urgent thing because they're so deprived on.

• 59:19Chris Williamson?

  We've got scurvy and stuff like.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, we you like, yeah, there's something called Pabron X, which is just like the like big vitamin, like whacking dose of vitamin replacement.

• 59:28Chris Williamson?

  Is that like the um what's like, is it Narcan for getting people out of uh opioids?

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I see.

• 59:36Chris Williamson?

  Opiates, uh O Ds, that's Narcan that they use. And it's a nasal spray that just binds to the receptors, but it binds, it binds harder than the drugs do.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  But that's the like, when you give that, you have to like run out of the room because they'll get a punch you.

• 59:48Chris Williamson?

  Really?

• 59:49Speaker 02

  They get really angry.

• 59:50Chris Williamson?

  Why are you taking the heroin away?

• 59:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:51Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:52Jonny?

  Oh, really? Is that why?

• 59:53Speaker 02

  Uh as in like if if.

• 59:54Chris Williamson?

  You've just you've just wasted.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  You give the, yeah, because it just cut, it just stops the high and they're they're having a great time, but they're obviously in respiratory depression and you like.

• 1:00:01Chris Williamson?

  Can't breathe, obviously.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  And you give them the um the naloxone and they're gonna, they're awful. So like you usually have to like either like tie them to the bed or something. Or have like two policemen to taser taser and you're like.

• 1:00:13Jonny?

  I love how they say taser twice. I don't know why. It's just completely like if you have to shout taser. And then you're gonna get tasered. The second taser at that point is just.

• 1:00:23Chris Williamson?

  Well, you know, it's you know, it's coming then. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:00:26Jonny?

  To say it twice.

• 1:00:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Jonny?

  It costs. Because there'll be loads of times where you might say the word taser once and they're over that. Fair enough.

• 1:00:34Chris Williamson?

  Waiting for this, waiting for the second.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  I'd love to test that. Or like if you have a room of policemen, you just shout taser taser.

• 1:00:41Jonny?

  I think if you go in and shout taser and everyone's just.

• 1:00:43Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever been tasered?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Have I ever been tasered?

• 1:00:45Chris Williamson?

  I have.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Have you been tasered? What the fuck?

• 1:00:48Chris Williamson?

  Someone in college had a handheld one.

• 1:00:50Jonny?

  Oh, that's not the same. I'm talking about the one that like.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  What was the stone gun like?

• 1:00:57Chris Williamson?

  Um it put me on the floor in the back in the hamstring. Like it just immediately like just cramps you up.

• 1:01:03Jonny?

  Disabled.

• 1:01:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the fact that the fact that it's that it it people use that as a controlling thing. It doesn't surprise me because it's so inhibiting. But it it's also, it's mad.

• 1:01:16Jonny?

  Isn't there a video of a guy?

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Who just takes.

• 1:01:18Jonny?

  Getting tasered and he just deals with it.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  He's like a juggernaut.

• 1:01:21Jonny?

  Terrifying. Because you think like it's all all right in the UK because we've got taser.

• 1:01:27Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what you need? Taser, taser, taser. The big taser, like the minigun taser and then we were like.

• 1:01:36Jonny?

  Then at that point, they just use like, you know, like the crowd control, like the rubber bullets.

• 1:01:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Is it Dirty Sanchez where they you they try out all the different like, so they have the thing and the spray, what's the?

• 1:01:46Jonny?

  There's the one where they it shoots a little bag. Have you seen that one? It's on Dirty Sanchez. It shoots like a tiny little hard bag at them.

• 1:01:53Chris Williamson?

  Like a beanbag or whatever.

• 1:01:54Jonny?

  Pritchard or whatever. He goes like.

• 1:01:58Jonny?

  Like gets him. It's like.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  He wants to know lethal bullets.

• 1:02:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. I once came back from an after party. I I once came back to our after party in Ibiza to find Pritchard um in our barbecue kiln.

• 1:02:12Chris Williamson?

  Pritchard from Dirty Sanchez in our barbecue kiln. Then he jumped off the roof of the uh villa into the pool and nearly broke his leg.

• 1:02:18Jonny?

  Those guys have a really great, like really enviable attitude.

• 1:02:21Chris Williamson?

  You know what he's doing now? Like hardcore Iron Man and triathletes.

• 1:02:26Jonny?

  I'm not surprised.

• 1:02:26Chris Williamson?

  And he's like really good.

• 1:02:27Jonny?

  Yeah, I'm not surprised.

• 1:02:28Chris Williamson?

  He's like really, really good.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  He's just being an extreme person, wouldn't he?

• 1:02:30Jonny?

  If you can tolerate that kind of pain for fun, think it's funny.

• 1:02:33Chris Williamson?

  You know, you know, they said the most painful thing that they'd ever, ever done was, you see when they jumped into nettles?

• 1:02:38Jonny?

  I have seen that, yeah.

• 1:02:39Chris Williamson?

  It's the most painful thing they've ever done, isn't it?

• 1:02:41Jonny?

  Yep.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  More than like mace.

• 1:02:45Chris Williamson?

  Putting them on their balls.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  Oh, that's so.

• 1:02:46Jonny?

  They're like naked paintballing and stuff, aren't they? But I suppose at that point, like.

• 1:02:50Chris Williamson?

  One of them got shot in the dick. Got got shot on the shaft.

• 1:02:53Jonny?

  On the, yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  I've I've I've been shot on the glands with um paintballing. It was very.

• 1:02:58Chris Williamson?

  Did you even feel it?

• 1:03:05Chris Williamson?

  Man, it nearly brought me to arousal.

• 1:03:08Jonny?

  With blood dripping down his leg going. What's wrong? Oh, God.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  Is the guy that falls asleep like that and they get D lock? You know, like.

• 1:03:16Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  Guys, what? And he's eaten the key.

• 1:03:24Chris Williamson?

  He's been hit with the key.

• 1:03:25Jonny?

  My favourite ones where they put a guy's asleep and they put like an electric um bounded dog collar on him.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:03:32Jonny?

  So whenever he tries to leave the sofa, it just. And he like goes down, gets up, he's like shouting, he's swearing at them.

• 1:03:42Jonny?

  Is it, is it like location based? It's locate like ring fenced. Around his neck and he can't get it off.

• 1:03:48Chris Williamson?

  There's a video from um Tough Mudder where this guy, so you know in Tough Mudder, the final bit electroshock therapy. There's some of them that have got ten million volts in them.

• 1:03:57Jonny?

  I didn't know this.

• 1:03:58Chris Williamson?

  Oh, so some of.

• 1:03:59Jonny?

  Tough Mudder?

• 1:04:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but if the amp, the ampage or the wattage or whatever is really low.

• 1:04:02Jonny?

  Alright.

• 1:04:03Chris Williamson?

  Um, but the voltage is super high. So yeah, it floors people, but there's, there's maybe, let's say there's five hundred of these little threads.

• 1:04:09Jonny?

  It's not when you're under, under the ice, is it? Like surely that would be pretty.

• 1:04:13Chris Williamson?

  No, so imagine, imagine a bunch of different pieces of string that is um twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. And you have to, they're all dangling. There's five hundred pieces of string, let's say, the wires, like little wires.

• 1:04:25Jonny?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:25Chris Williamson?

  And you have to run through the wires. Some of the wires have no voltage. Some of them are basically non. Some of them have enough to hurt and some of them have this ten mil. Um, and you have to, you have to go through them and there's different.

• 1:04:37Jonny?

  Coop that you have to sign the.

• 1:04:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the waiver for. So there's some, some different strategies. The strategy to do it, I've asked the guy who created Tough Mudder.

• 1:04:45Jonny?

  Of course you have.

• 1:04:46Chris Williamson?

  Is to run through it as fast as possible.

• 1:04:48Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Chris Williamson?

  Because the way that wattage works is it's like a capacitor goes up and then discharges. It goes up and then discharges. So if you move very slowly.

• 1:04:55Jonny?

  You'll get the phone.

• 1:04:56Chris Williamson?

  You'll end up getting it at some point because you'll be touching all of them at the point that they discharge. Um, and there's this one video of this guy who's like running and he gets like clocked by this one. It's right at the very end, gets clocked by this one. But they're about that far off the floor. So then he's on the floor, face down in this mud. And then every time that he pushes himself up, it just gets him again. So he just goes.

• 1:05:20Jonny?

  Surely that's at the point where it's like a threat to his health.

• 1:05:25Chris Williamson?

  Well, he, he.

• 1:05:26Jonny?

  If it's a solid snakey way.

• 1:05:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, eventually. He's like creep, creeping forward like half a foot each time.

• 1:05:33Jonny?

  Ah, that's really made me reframe the Tough Mudder. Like I thought it was like running with the. Like a barrel.

• 1:05:40Chris Williamson?

  It's a good distance as well. It's like a fifteen K as well.

• 1:05:42Jonny?

  Oh God.

• 1:05:43Chris Williamson?

  Uh, anyway, there's so much more that we've got to talk about for sobriety and we've gone off topic as always. Um, but if anyone wants to find out a little bit more, if you head to sixmonstober.com slash podcast, uh, you can find out a little bit of info or just give me a DM. If you have any questions or thoughts about what we've talked about at Chris Well X on all social media, just give me a DM. I'm happy to give you a little bit of advice about how I think you could go dry for January, or if you're watching this in 2022 in the middle of June or something, just drop me a message and we'll see where we go from there. Thanks very much, guys.