Most of us wouldn’t buy a high-performance car and then ignore what we put into it. We’d use the right fuel, keep up the maintenance and pay attention when it stopped running properly.
But many of us expected far more from our body than we would ever expect from a machine. We drank heavily, slept badly, pushed through the next day and still expected ourselves to think clearly, handle pressure and perform as though nothing had happened.
The point isn’t really the car
Our body isn’t a Ferrari, and we don’t need to treat life like a performance contest.
We already know that if we put the wrong thing into something, we can’t expect it to keep running well. We wouldn’t blame a car for running badly after giving it the wrong fuel. But when our own energy, mood or concentration dropped, we often blamed ourselves and poured another drink later that day.
Our reactive body was doing exactly what we’d expect after everything we kept putting it through.
Alcohol doesn’t work like fuel
Alcohol contains calories, but that doesn’t make it useful fuel for our body.
Our body deals with alcohol first because it needs to get rid of it. While that’s happening, sleep, recovery and clear thinking can all be affected.
We may feel switched off for a few hours. But our body is still dealing with the alcohol, so that isn’t the same as proper recovery.
If we wake tired, anxious or foggy, our body hasn’t failed us. It’s dealing with what alcohol did.
What the hidden cost looks like
The cost doesn’t always hit us in an obvious way. It may look like needing more caffeine, taking longer to get started, avoiding a difficult task or having less patience by the afternoon.
We still get the work done, so we tell ourselves we’re functioning fine. But we may be using far more effort than we realise. Many high-functioning heavy drinkers become very good at pushing through and hiding how much harder everything feels.
And once we get used to feeling like that, we may not realise how much energy alcohol is costing us until we’ve been away from it for a while.
Looking after our body doesn’t need to be perfect
This isn’t about building a flawless routine or eating perfectly. We just need to give our body the basics: proper food, water, rest, movement and enough time to recover.
Those things won’t cancel out heavy drinking. A good meal and a workout don’t make alcohol harmless. But once alcohol is gone, food, rest and movement can do far more for us because alcohol isn’t constantly getting in the way.
Look at the whole result
The first drink may have felt like a reward after a demanding day. But we also need to include the sleep, the morning, how much energy we had left and how much effort it took to perform again.
Our brain’s own chemistry already creates feelings like calm, motivation and reward on its own. Alcohol changed those feelings quickly, took the credit, then left our body to deal with it afterwards.
So the Ferrari question is really a simpler one. Why keep putting something into our body that makes everything we expect from it harder?
— Brent