Intoxication rarely leads to a performance boost so the golden rule of alcohol for performance is do not get drunk. Alcohol is most effective in cognitive pursuits, once motor skills become involved it is less effective, can be downright dangerous and is often illegal.
My first experience with drink was as a 17 year old exchange student in Germany. I went to a wine tasting, drank too much and ended up vomiting into a toilet bowl for the rest of the night.
Within a year I was an officer cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where drinking was commonplace socially, but interestingly taught informally. You were expected to be able to drink until the wee hours and then turn up for work on time and in good order. Each major exercise was preceded by a dinner night, in which the food was followed by the Port, and after the toasts we retired to the bar and the whiskey until three in the morning. By 6 AM we were on lorries bound for some remote part of the British Isle.
Flight school was a notch up, there is a strict rule, 8 hours bottle to throttle, which pilots must follow. We had a series of lectures from Flight Surgeons during the course. In one such lecture the instructor gave us the standard word on drinking and flying, then in a departure which I am certain was not in the curriculum, he explained how to mitigate the effects of drink and avoid the condition of being ‘hung over’ which is as dangerous as being drunk if you are going to do any mechanically complex action. Over the years I have, through trial and error developed my own approach which I keep a closely guarded secret and will not share here.
During my early years as a bobsleigh athlete I resorted to liquid courage on many occasions as I learned the craft. By the time of our 1994 performance, my mental toughness and visualisation techniques which I used for everything from seeing performance to setting mood in the moment, had made drink less necessary.
Over the years since, I have included alcohol into my personal routines, for performance. Here is how.
You cannot mix drugs (over the counter, prescription or recreational) and alcohol. Your liver has to deal with all of this and will become overwhelmed. Before using alcohol, fix your health, under supervision reduce and eliminate long term drug use. There are people who will need drugs for the rest of their lives, but this number is far fewer than the people currently on long term drug use.
Set a drinking window, when you are going to start drinking and when you will stop. I try to keep this in line with my fasting window, but in situations may have alcohol before eating solids. Generally do not start alcohol until afternoon, on a full stomach, and in limited quantities.
Choose your type of alcohol carefully, you need something that impacts you quickly, at relatively low quantities. Red wine is my go to, it also provides a lot of beneficial substances for health. One drawback for me is that it rapidly increases tiredness, as a result I favour vodka until I am fully winding down. Like I take my coffee black, my liquor, neat. No chasers, maybe a lime or lemon.
Alcohol is best used to help set the tension, the degree of alertness versus relaxation that you need for the moment at hand. Usually this is to reduce tension, and as such is a one off thing. I have on occasion gone through all night negotiations during which I had a pot of coffee to the left and a bottle of wine to the right, coffee cup and wine glass in front of me, pouring and sipping as my tension demanded. It was also alarming for the gentlemen across the table.
Avoid going to sleep drunk, if the trauma of the day is making sleep difficult then a glass of red wine, drank quickly just before bed may help. This is a better alternative to sleeping pills. It would be good if we could all fall quickly into a deep sleep on demand, but for many this is difficult, I would put a glass of red wine ahead of a sleeping tablet.
The harms and evils of alcohol are well publicised, many people proudly maintain that they are teetotalers. I would ask to look inside their medicine cabinet, I will bet it is full of medication which they take daily to control their tension. The cost and consequences of this are prohibitive, judicious use of alcohol is a far superior alternative.
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