— Why is talking about alcohol such a relevant topic?
I’ll probably start with two personal observations from recent times.
The first is that there’s a real boom in non-alcoholic drinks right now. It’s a strong trend. Non-alcoholic wines, tequilas, cognacs—anything you like—are appearing. More and more people are either quitting alcohol or have never tried it at all. On the one hand, it’s simply a fashionable topic, part of the culture of the present moment.
The second observation is deeper. I keep thinking: why does a person consume something they know with absolute certainty is harmful to them? Everyone understands alcohol harms the body, yet they keep drinking. Even someone who “has a classy glass of wine.” We don’t step into a fire—we know we’ll get burned. We don’t jump from the third floor—we know we’ll break a leg. But we keep drinking alcohol despite knowing the harm. Why does a person do this despite the obvious knowledge?
— I’ll start by saying you put it very precisely regarding the awareness of harm.
You don’t drink alcohol now, and you now understand this consciously. But when you did drink, I told you that even one glass of wine is harmful. And you answered, “One glass doesn’t do harm.” That is, for you, alcohol’s harm wasn’t in a glass of wine but, say, in a bottle of vodka. And that’s an important point. Why did that happen? Why did you stop drinking even a glass of wine? What became decisive? Because the question here isn’t just about the drink, but about what stands behind it.
What even is “non-alcoholic wine”? What is non-alcoholic tequila? Let’s take tequila, so we don’t touch the sacred topic of wine for many (otherwise, I think half the internet will explode). People say, “Wine is creativity, culture, taste, love, varieties.” Love for fish, bobbers, fishing rods, the look of fishing rods and all the rest—what does wine have to do with it? There’s a lot mixed in. I want to sort out non-alcoholic tequila.
I quit drinking 13 years ago. And I remember that moment very well—not because I developed cirrhosis, not because I beat someone up or got into trouble. No. I simply realized what alcohol is. But for the first three or four months after that, I still had a psychophysical dependence. If I came to a restaurant, I needed a glass of whiskey and Coke. That was from my youth, when there wasn’t much money and we drank something cheap, “specific.” On New Year’s—definitely a glass of champagne. It was an automatic action. Back then, I felt awkward without a glass. I needed the taste, the form, the ritual. Although if someone drinks next to me now, I perceive the smell of alcohol as something disgusting—as if they brought ammonia to my nose. And back then it seemed there was taste, style in it.
But the point isn’t taste. The point is the reason. Why was I doing it? What stood behind it? The same thing as with you: there was a reason why you could easily have a glass of wine but wouldn’t get drunk. And then you realized that even a glass of wine isn’t normal. This is what I want to emphasize: people don’t fully realize what alcohol brings.
Today I want to talk precisely about what it actually brings. What consequences arise. What manifests because of it.
Now back to non-alcoholic tequila. It’s the same habit, the same dependence. Just a change of form. It’s like the story with the company that produced burgers without meat. I think it was called Simple Burger. I remember when it appeared, I thought: “What nonsense? Who are you trying to fool?” There’s no meat—and you know it. So why pretend it’s there? If you want a burger without meat—make a sandwich: bun, cheese, vegetables, sauce. Why the deception? As a result, by the way, the company lost huge sums; the stock collapsed. Because deception doesn’t work—especially self-deception.
It’s the same with non-alcoholic drinks: a person seems to have “quit” alcohol but continues to play the same game. They change the dependency but keep the dependency itself.
Alcohol consumption is always a matter of different levels of addiction. One is not physical, but ritualistic, habitual. It is an addiction to the very act of pouring, raising a glass, tasting, and relaxing. The other is psychophysical, already bodily.
And if we truly start to examine alcohol, it’s important to ask yourself: what happens to people when they drink? If a person honestly looks at that, a lot becomes clear. For example, why it’s often impossible to stay in the company of people who are drinking. I remember when I quit drinking and would arrive at a club at night. Everyone’s drinking, and I’m not. And I felt: it’s hard for me in this space. In Moscow I could at least order tea—that saved me. Here—the best you can get is water with ice from the tap. That’s all. But a few years later, I would arrive—and I’d easily dance, laugh, enjoy myself without alcohol. At friends’ wedding I danced for eight hours straight! And people who didn’t know me most likely thought I was on drugs or at least buzzed.
Because most people don’t understand how one can be joyful without alcohol. They don’t know how to manage their body and state. When a person drinks, their perception narrows. They stop sensing the space. They do things they wouldn’t do in a sober state.
For example, many find it easier to be on camera with alcohol. Without alcohol, fear appears: you feel your body, awkwardness, old traumas. But the more a person films, the easier it becomes—simply through experience, without doping. Gradually the clamp loosens, naturalness appears. But perception remains clear.
When you drink alcohol, your perception of your own problems decreases, and it seems like they disappear. But the problems don't disappear; they're still there. If there was a man with a gun in front of you before, he's still there, but you don't see him anymore. You just forget. You forget that you have problems at home. You forget that you have difficulties at work. You forget that you hate your job. You forget that it's difficult for you to be around your own children. All of this doesn't disappear; you just stop noticing it.
— Right now you’re basically talking about rather banal things, the consequences of alcohol. After all, many drink precisely to forget themselves, dial things down, relax.
— No, no, no. This is very important—I’m talking about a completely different construct. It’s not that a person reduces stress. They reduce perception. Maybe that’s what you meant, but it’s important to understand: this isn’t banal. Everyone thinks they “reduce stress” with alcohol. A person says, “How else am I supposed to reduce stress?” But in reality they’re not reducing stress; they’re reducing their perception of reality. They’re sure they’ve remained just as smart, collected—well, at most they forgot something. But that’s not true. In fact, the person doesn’t reduce stress—they increase it. Because when perception decreases, energy level drops. And when perception returns, it doesn’t always return to its previous state. Sometimes it’s already distorted, weakened.
— I think not everyone now understands what you mean by the word “perception.”
— Perception is the ability to be aware of the problem, to see the cause of stress.
Here’s an example: you’re shy about being on camera—that’s stress. And you say, “I’ll drink now to relieve the stress.” But in reality you’re not relieving the stress—you’re simply numbing it. You’re not working with the cause; you’re temporarily turning off the ability to see it. That’s a substitution of concepts.
— But very few people truly understand the causes of their stress. Many simply don’t know where it comes from.
— Exactly. And therefore, when a person doesn’t understand the cause of stress, they don’t understand what happens when they drink alcohol. Their cause-and-effect chain is built incorrectly. If you don’t understand the cause of stress, that doesn’t mean you should plug it with pills or alcohol. It means you need to figure out where it comes from. And the worst thing you can do is to numb the stress without understanding its cause.
Because if you numb the stress and don’t eliminate the source, the cause doesn’t disappear—it only intensifies.
— But people don’t drink only because of stress. Often it’s just celebration, joy, tradition.
— Of course. On the surface it may look like a tradition, but if you dig deeper, it’s often a psychophysical form of suppressing stress. A person says, “But it’s fun, it’s atmosphere, a holiday!” And in reality their psychophysiology simply operates in a mode where alcohol is a way to turn off inner tension. It’s a habit, a dependency.
They think they do it because they feel good, because “it’s cool.” But in fact—it’s because they can no longer do otherwise. Because they don’t know how to handle stress differently. It’s their only way of temporarily getting rid of inner tension.
— So you want to say alcohol is always connected with stress?
— Of course not always. Basically—no. It’s not the only cause. It’s just one of the constructs. You asked why people drink if they understand alcohol is harmful. Well—most don’t understand wherein the harm actually lies. If they did, their attitude would be completely different.
One of the main problems is that a person muffles the real reasons they resort to alcohol. They don’t sort out what’s really happening in their life, what internal processes form this behavior.
Sometimes it starts accidentally: a person just happened to be in a company where people drink, tried it—and nothing happened. Like if I don’t eat chips but suddenly ate a couple just because they were on the table. There’s no dependency in that.
But if the action repeats—once a week, every weekend, at meetups—that’s already a linkage, a habit, an automatism. Not necessarily daily use, but repeated, embedded in behavior. For example, guests come to our place. With some of them my wife will definitely have a glass of wine or champagne, and with others—she won’t, and the evening is perfectly fine. That means in the first case an automatism, a habit kicks in. And you don’t grasp the consequences of this habit.
— We’ve already talked about narrowing of perception. What other harm does alcohol bring?
— Beyond narrowing perception, there’s a substitution of concepts. There’s a failure to understand what alcohol actually brings as a phenomenon. When you act from the position that “alcohol is cool,” you’re playing a game of self-justification. You close off the possibility of real development.
Because regular alcohol consumption leads to a gradual degradation of perception. First—in the moment: you drank, perception narrowed, you did something you shouldn’t have. Then—at the system level: your ability to be aware and perceive reality gradually declines.
Every time you drink, you reduce the depth of your perception a little. This means that you put yourself in a position where you make false decisions. Decisions that are not yours, not real. In work, in relationships, in words, in dreams. If you know that alcohol narrows your perception, understand that you are not capable of making true decisions at that moment. Just accept it.
I’m not even talking now about the obvious things—about addiction, about health, about what example this sets for children. Yes, if you drink a lot—the body suffers. Yes, you can shift into aggression and destroy relationships. That’s all well known. That is, there are many different consequences to this; there are other aspects too.