The Diamond

It seems like everyone and their mother has a podcast these days. When I started writing this blog, several readers told me that “nobody reads anymore,” so if I wanted to share my thoughts I should do so via the spoken word, not a written blog. I chose not to follow that advice for several reasons.

A.       What would I talk about?

B.       I think I can write a piece that can hold the someone’s attention for 5 to 7 minutes max, but not an hour! (Or sometimes even longer.)

C.       Isn’t there a massive glut of podcasts out there already?

D.       Writing is much more of a challenge for me than chatting, and who doesn't love a challenge?

I don’t listen to podcasts, though I’ve heard that several of them are excellent. Informative. Thought-provoking. Funny. And an easy way to learn something new or be entertained as you walk, drive, run, stretch, cook, clean, ride your bike, or have your hands otherwise occupied. “Much better for multi-taskers than reading a book,” I’ve been assured. And in this fast, and rapidly getting faster world we live in, aren’t we ALL multitaskers these days?

I have listened to an episode of one podcast though, and that was by Dr. Andrew Huberman on the effects of alcohol on the human body. Funnily enough, this podcast was sent to me by several of my friends who drink alcohol. Some are heavy drinkers and some are not but they all sent this to me with the same tag line: “Thought you might like this.”

Dr. Andrew Huberman is a wildly popular podcaster. He even has his own “Hubersphere” which refers to his massive health-focused following. He is a Stanford University neuroscientist and tenured professor who teaches both neurobiology and ophthalmology there. In his “What Alcohol Does to your Body, Brain and Health” podcast he does a very deep dive into how alcohol affects us and he does so without any judgement. “Do whatever you want and please don’t shoot the messenger,” he seems to say several times during the two-hour long recording.

I don’t drink anymore. I have not had a drink for over a quarter of a century and I don’t really hang around heavy drinkers. But the vast majority of my friends and family drink alcohol in moderate quantities. I don’t mind being around drinkers but I do mind being around people who have obviously been "over-served.” So, if the people around me start to get sloppy I simply pull the old Irish goodbye and skedaddle away. But like Huberman himself, I do so without judgement.

Last month I was able to witness first-hand everything Huberman revealed to his listeners in his “alcohol’s effects” podcast. I was having dinner at a restaurant in New York with a friend when I ran into the son of a colleague who I have known for years. This “kid” is 25 now and he’s wonderful. Smart. Funny. Curious. Handsome. A real gem. I’ve watched him grow up and was thrilled to bump into him. But he had clearly been drinking, and as he sat down to have another drink and catch up with me and my dinner companion (whom he also knew) I came face to face with everything that I had learned from Dr. Huberman. This young man, let’s call him Pete, was very loud, because as Huberman lays out, alcohol affects the part of the brain that controls our voice modulation. We know to be quiet in a library and loud at a sports arena. When we drink, the part of the brain that tells us what volume is appropriate gets turned off. Like a light switch. His eyes were droopy, because the part of the brain that controls the orbicular oculi and levator palpebral superioris (eyelid muscles) and how open or closed they should be in any given situation (wide in surprise or fear, and closed in harsh light situations that could damage the retina) was out of commission. Pete repeated himself because the part of the brain that controls memory goes dark. His hippocampus, the memory center responsible for storing encoding retrieving and consolidating memories was getting hammered. Pete slurred a word or two (albeit slightly) as booze slows down the entire central nervous system, disrupting communication between the brain and the tiny muscles of the mouth, tongue, and lips. In fact, alcohol retards communication between the brain and all the muscles of the body. When Pete got up to go to the bathroom he swayed a little, because the part of the brain that controls balance and hand-eye coordination was too tipsy to care about anything as boring as equilibrium.

As I listened to Pete and tried to get him to drink some water all I could think of was that seeing him affected this way was like taking a beautiful gemstone and plopping it into a pile of manure. Every single thing that makes Pete sparkle and shine so beautifully was dulled and muddied. His wit, his intelligence, his recall, his speech, his humor, were all dimmed. Even his posture was bad, since the part of his brain that reminds us to stand up straight with our shoulders back, was taking an alcohol-induced nap.

I could see the wonderful Pete there at the table with me, behind his unfocused eyes, straining to get out. But the alcohol was winning the fight. And what I was left with was a somewhat boring, hugely diminished version of the person that Pete is when he’s not drinking. He was like a poorly-formed cheap crystal from Amazon when what he really is, when not under the influence, is the Hope Diamond.

I don’t think Pete has a drinking problem. I think he just had one too many the night I ran into him. I was still happy to see him but it really made me think about my own drinking. All those nights, into months, into years that I spent poisoning myself with alcohol. I was, at the time, one hundred percent convinced that alcohol made me what I was, but better. Yes, the alcohol served to relax me and make me more confident. But eventually I turned the corner from heavy drinker to alcoholic and then I’m quite sure the confidence became arrogance and the relaxation became sloppiness.

The booze lied to me. It told me that I needed it. That it made me smarter, funnier, faster, wittier, taller, skinnier, happier and just a better person to be around.

Those were lies. All of them. And I’m glad I was able to stop drinking before alcoholism killed me. I can still recall what alcohol made me believe about myself. That without it I would be a loser, a nobody, an outcast.

It promised me, in my own reassuring voice, that with it I was a new and improved version of who I am. In reality what I really was, while drinking myself into oblivion for all those years, was nothing more than a diamond, obscured and dark, drowning in a glass of mud.