I’ve never been a heavy drinker. But for most of my adult life I’ve been a moderate drinker. A couple beers a night some weeknights, maybe three on weekend nights. I’m now 28 and over the past decade I’ve slowly increased my alcohol consumption to the point where I’m getting close to the 15 drinks per week that the CDC defines as heavy drinking for men.
While I’m certainly not “old” yet, I am aging. Sometimes on a special occasion like hanging out with friends or a holiday, I’ll have four or five drinks — and the consequences the next day seem to be getting worse and more prolonged with each passing year. Gone are the days in college and my early 20’s where a quick breakfast was all that I needed to bounce back with a full recovery.
A week ago on Christmas Eve for example, I think I had 4 beers and a glass of wine while celebrating with family. I didn’t get sloppy or embarrass myself or anything. But despite all attempts at sufficient hydration, a nice headache followed me around for most of the following day.
We all know about the outcomes of heavy drinking and alcoholism. But recently I’ve wondered about the long-term effects of moderate, “responsible” drinking. I remember reading and hearing many years ago that moderate alcohol consumption of one to two drinks per day was supposedly healthy for you. It turns out that may just be a common myth from a poorly designed scientific study. Another study which challenged that claim found that moderate drinkers were simply more likely to be of a higher socioeconomic status than non-drinkers or heavy drinkers, and that wealth was the primary driver of these positive health outcomes. When controlling for socioeconomic status, any perceived health benefit of moderate drinking was completely eliminated in men and substantially reduced in women.
What I’m more curious about though is the less easily measurable effects. Not like, did this person get liver or heart disease which are some of the factors the above study looked at to determine health outcomes. But more of the day-to-day quality of life things like, reduction in productivity the following day after having a couple drinks, reduction in exercise performance, brain fog — all claimed effects of moderate alcohol use but ones which are more subjective. So I’ve decided to do this little experiment on myself to try and figure some of that out. And ultimately try to make a decision on what level of alcohol consumption fits into my ideal life.
Where alcohol fits in with FIRE
On the surface this article may seem like it’s out of left field, but I think the connection is pretty relevant.
First and most obviously we’ve got financial benefits to reduced alcohol consumption. During my budget review for the first half of the year I noted that my alcohol consumption was getting too high at an average of $88.15 per month over that six month period. I was successful in reducing this slightly to an average of $72.17 per month over the second half of this year, which will be published in my next budget review coming out in a few days. I still feel that’s a bit high as I rarely drink at bars, so most of this spending is at the liquor store. It’s also not hard to argue that saving an extra $800 per year compounded over decades would end up being quite a bit of money. That’s $10,000 over a decade, and $54,000 over 30 years if the savings were invested at a 5% annual return.
Clearly that sum of money when put in perspective with where I’m at is not going to make or break my retirement plan. But as I’ve experienced myself I think there’s a trend to both slowly drink a bit more over time as your tolerance builds, as well as to increase the quality of the stuff you’re drinking which can work in tandem to raise your monthly alcohol expenditures. So it’s definitely a good thing to be conscious of, and ask yourself if it’s money well spent.
The less obvious connection to FIRE is that of your holistic health picture. Maintaining your physical and mental health is a close second behind financial success to having a long, high quality life. Even if you retire early, you want to maintain your health for as long as possible into old age to maintain your independence. I exercise five times per week and consider myself pretty fit, I’ve got a decent diet, and my mental health is solid. But could I be even better with reduced alcohol consumption?
There’s also kind of this, I guess you’d call it general attitude of self-improvement rooted in stoicism that tends to be present in people that end up in the financial independence movement. Maybe it’s a correlation in personality types, or maybe it’s something with worrying less about money giving you time to focus on other issues. Regardless of the source I think that people who are attracted to optimizing their finances, tend to be attracted to optimization, improvement, and self-discipline in other areas of life as well.
Variables of interest for my self-experiment
Clearly with a sample size of one, this isn’t really an experiment rich in scientific rigor. Many of my observations will be subjective. Still, as an engineer myself I’d like to collect measurable data where practical. Here are some things that I’d like to look at for a before versus after snapshot:
Workout Performance
For a couple of years now I feel like my physical fitness has plateaued. I have maintained the same regular workout and my number of repetitions in each exercise has stayed constant for quite some time. I have recorded my current number of repetitions for each exercise in my routine and will see if I have made any gains by the end of Dry January. Our exercise bike also provides a bunch of metrics on things such as power output so if I can find an easy tool to visualize this over time, it would be interesting to look for any obvious trend changes.
Weight
I’m a healthy weight, but I’ve been very slowly drifting upwards a few pounds every year since college. Another five pounds would put me on the cusp of overweight category by BMI. I’m sure that the extra calories from craft beer are mostly to blame here. I’ve averaged a few data points of my weight over the last few days and we’ll see if not drinking for a month causes me to lose a couple pounds.
General daily feeling
This is where the subjectivity comes in. For example, I’d say that right now I feel like most days I wake up with a slight headache, lay in bed for 20–30 minutes before getting up, and do a bad job focusing at work (especially in the mornings). This is the type of anecdotal evidence that I don’t have hard data for but would still like to consider in the before-and-after picture.
Dry January begins in T-minus 2 days!
I’m excited for this challenge of self-discipline. Though I’ve definitely done a week or two here and there, I don’t think that I’ve gone an entire month without alcohol since graduating college. I think it’s good to question established societal habits, much in the same manner that I question the common American financial behaviors.
Now that I’ve publicly written it down on my blog, there’s no going back and I’m committed. I’ll be writing another post with what I’ve learned and how I plan to structure my drinking habits going forward in early February once this self-experiment has concluded.