Ultimately, pleasures and hardships fade, what remains at the end is what we accomplished and what we regret. That is, the very memories I'm suggesting you use to evaluate your habits.

You had a good time at a party once. Great. Are you really still enjoying that good time? Not likely.

You climbed a mountain another time. You were tired and it was very difficult. Are you still exhausted months later? Not likely. But the accomplishment remains the rest of your life.

I remember good nights out as well as sporting achievements in my life.

I'm a little over a week without alcohol, but I drank every day because I have a lot of difficulty winding down and relaxing. I still do, but I've made the personal decision to prioritize my physical health. How do you square this advice with people who drink because the alternative is highly stressful evenings? Evaluating the history, I can see that drinking _eventually_ led to poorer health, but over the course of years also helped me to wind down and relax when I otherwise couldn't

I was also a daily drinker for years. My experience was after a while, the booze was not really helping me unwind. It was increasing my base level of anxiety, creating the “need” to use it to unwind. I could only see this after I stopped for several months.

That's sort of a false dichotomy. The options aren't

1. Drink alcohol to calm down

2. Stay anxious and stressed

The options are more like

1. Drink alcohol to calm down and impair your sleep ensuring you'll get stressed more often and need to have a glass of calming juice again soon

2. Wear yourself out at the gym to calm down and improve your cortisol regulation and reduce the need to calm down

3. See a therapist and learn better stress coping strategies and reduce the need to calm down

4. Remove stressors from your life and reduce the need to calm down

5. Eat healthier and sleep better and improve your cortisol regulation and reduce the need to calm down

...

N. Stay anxious and stressed

Of course, all of those other options are actually difficult in certain ways. 2+3+4+5 can all be expensive. 3+4 are stigmatized in many cultures. 2+5 require knowledge that not everyone has.

That said if you're having trouble calming down in the evening, assuming you see a doctor for routine physical examinations, you can discuss options with them. They will know this list and more, and occasionally they can convince your insurance to cover the cost of something. It's better than developing a substance habit.

2 also assumes you aren't disabled and/or working a physical job already.

Like right now, I work retail full time. 8 hours a day on my feet. If I exhaust myself too much working out after work, the next workday is going to be a bad time.

It's both and, instead either or. We don't all want to reduce stressors, but find ways to deal with it better.

Sometimes you push hard, and a good glass wine is exactly what you need.

Sometimes you push hard, and you had enough wine the week before.

Therapists are overrated, no scientific backing in learning how to deal with high stress situations.

I recommend everyone working out, but when you had a stressful day or week, a gym workout might just add more cortisol.

Funny, frequent exercisers seem to drink more than other people

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.0015...

> Therapists are overrated, no scientific backing in learning how to deal with high stress situations.

Huh. I've had a lot of success with therapy in this regard. Wouldn't recommend something I haven't tried.

I've had a couple bad therapists and a good therapist.

The good therapist discouraged me from worrying too much about using a drink at the end of the day as a tool to unwind (I was considering quitting alcohol to try to help my anxiety).

Therapy can be great, but it's not a commodity. Success is highly correlated to a strong relationship between patient and therapist, and finding that is very challenging for me and others I've discussed that with.

For me alcohol increased my baseline anxiety. When I stopped drinking my anxiety basically went away completely. It was a licensed alcohol and drug therapist that clued me in to that. So the experience of the therapist may matter.

I also started cold exposure and breathing exercises. Now I was skeptical of that stuff for sure at first but I think you can increase your stress tolerance and also train and reconnect your bodies nervous systems. It's a neurobiological thing.

I do the breathing exercises when I get stressed and that takes 5-10mins of effort. After which I've forgotten what I was stressed about. So it breaks the rumination cycle for me.

Yeah your advice is for people to be more careful. That's one way that works a bit. And normally is what you come to with therapists. Then there is also a way to be more wild, not take things to serious and push further. That's a narrative that's very powerful but missing very much lately.

> Sometimes you push hard, and a good glass wine is exactly what you need.

Because it makes you feel good? You certainly don't need it. It's a crutch. For socialization, sure. But to "wind down" or "de-stress"? That's not healthy in the long term.

> I recommend everyone working out, but when you had a stressful day or week, a gym workout might just add more cortisol.

Huh?

I remember injuries from exercising and other things involving exercise because they lasted months or forever.

You’re acting as if exercise never has any drawbacks - like the other commenter said. It definitely does. Getting injured is part of it and is a routine issue for many people - you try to avoid it but it just happens.

I’ve had issues with my patella tracking for years now. My fingers don’t act the same cause of a minor incident while skiing. I’ve got wrists that make funny noises and aren’t as strong because I nearly broke both (but only broke 1) while playing ultimate 15 years ago.

Do you think I forget that shit? I don’t cause I have to live with it everyday.

The whole thread makes me think of the young vs the old. Young people can’t fathom how injuries that were no big deal at 22 can take you out at 50. Same with drinking frankly, I used to be able to drink with no hangovers but that stopped years ago.

This sort of applies to misguided training as well. If you are into training, training like an idiot with get-jacked-quick schemes like german volume training 7 days a week or the bulgarian method or whatever, that sure may appear sweet before you try it. A torn ACL or rotator cuff later, and maybe it wasn't such a great idea.

In retrospect, boring modest training would have gotten you a lot farther.

There are risks that cannot be fully mitigated in your climbing a mountain example - rockfall, avalanche, unstable terrain, sudden storms, etc.

Going to the gym and doing boring modest stairmaster will be a lot safer than climbing actual mountains. Yet you seem to recommend the accomplishment aspect of climbing mountains.

The mountain is a metaphor, and it's the hard thing you would be proud of yourself if you did. It may be writing a novel or standing on your head or running a successful business or a kickass parent. In an avalanche of tautology, an accomplishment only matters to you if it matters to you.

If it does matter to you, then having tried and failed is arguably better than having been safe and taking no risks and then dying anyway because death knocks on your door no matter how much you try to avoid it.

So many defeatists in this thread. The GP is not recommending indulging in dangerous activities.

Perhaps we shouldn't get out of bed in the morning, we could be injured. There's a non-zero risk that can't be denied. Ammirite?

A lot of athletics is dangerous - I think it's only fair for people to be informed about the risks because often awareness and procedures can mitigate them.

I'm a decently strong climber, and I would never discourage people from trying it. But I think an honest presentation should include the risks

Exactly. I’ve had to stop climbing multiple times due to injuries. It just fucking happens for most of us. I had a fucked up shoulder for 6+ months that limited me from climbing and other activities. Even now - I don’t think about it all the time but it makes different noises and feels than before the incident - and not good ones! It reminds me often of what happened.

“Climbing a mountain” can include walking up a well-maintained trail at a reasonable grade as well.

There’s a guideline here to choose a charitable interpretation of other’s comments. Not the worst possible.

climbing a mountain might be completely unmemorable for one person and going to a party could be that thing to others. I do not know anyone who ever brings up their friend who climbed a mountain (and I know a handful of people who do) but I can recall many stories of people at parties doing insert wacky memorable activity.

Exercise is mostly good for your heart but heavy cardio training (say for marathons) can cause problems, see

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/21/1233

My doc told me I should train for an hour a day but not two hours a day.