Why I gave up my weekend bottle of wine

For a long time, a weekend bottle of wine felt harmless and deserved, until I didn’t need to deserve it.

What I did realize is that while, of course, I was needing it to relax after a long week, I wasn’t actually looking after my body in the process. I was putting more stress on it while simply numbing the noise in my head, forcing my muscles to relax, and really not gaining anything other than an additional toxic load for my liver to process.

When I was writing my book last year, I started looking at alcohol through a biological lens because up to that point, I still had the occasional glass of wine. And to be honest, February 2025 was the last time I sipped wine. It was also the last time it left me feeling like shit the next day, because of weeks of abstinence. I’d gotten so used to feeling good, waking up fresh, that just that one glass of wine was enough to remind me why I didn’t need it.

Fast forward a good couple of months. In November, I had a friend over who came to help me with my dog that was sick, and she felt like a glass of wine one night. Lo and behold, I had none. But I did have some leftover whiskey that another friend had left in my house that same February, still mostly untouched.

I agreed to have a shot of whiskey. It was, after all, a sad occasion and one that, by tradition, needed a bit of sorrow drowning... but this time it didn’t feel great. It burned my stomach, my head was spinning within a couple of minutes. And overall, I didn’t like the feeling it gave me. I no longer saw purpose in it.

The question came, would you like another one? And my answer was confidently no. Not because I had to tell myself that I didn’t want it, but because I genuinely didn’t want it.

The following day, she bought herself a bottle of wine, and I had absolutely no desire to have any of it. I did not have a need for it, nor did I feel obligated to socially share it. It was not nourishing my body. It was causing chaos in my body. There was nothing good about putting that alcohol into my body.

Now, why it’s taken me a lifetime to get to this place, especially with the amount of alcohol abuse that was around me growing up, and well into my 20s, I don’t know. Alcohol abuse became something that revolted me. I did not like being in the company of drunk people, regardless of whether it was a numbing drunk or a happy party drunk. Yet, on occasion, on my terms, I’d still join in.

Eventually, as I evolved, I started remembering not just the act of alcohol abuse, but the devastating effect it had on those lives, and how many of those people didn’t make it. Because let’s be honest, it’s a harmful substance, you don’t see people partying with a pot of green tea in western worlds... It would rather be a pot of green buds. It’s addictive, as any destructive substance will be, and whether you choose to believe it or not, in whatever quantities, it will cause damage.

So, let’s get to the science of it. Ethanol is not something we use, it’s something we neutralize.

When alcohol enters your system, the liver prioritizes breaking it down above everything else. Now, your liver is a powerhouse of function. We’re talking hormone clearance, blood sugar stability, fat metabolism. All of that needs to be put on hold to neutralize the alcohol you’ve just consumed.

The immune system also takes a temporary hit, which matters more than people realize, especially if you’re dealing with stress, inflammation, gut issues, or burnout.

Then there’s the polyphenol argument. I talk about this in my book. Yes, red wine contains polyphenols. But for that to matter, to get a meaningful benefit from wine, you would need to drink far more than you think. You can get the same compounds from berries, olives, herbs, cacao, and vegetables without introducing a toxin that your body then needs to clean up.

“But Sam, they drink wine in the Mediterranean and they have the highest rate of centenarians.”

Yes. And they also sit around and relax a lot more. They have a largely plant-based diet. Their grain crops are not tainted by glyphosates. They have cleaner air. They have cleaner water. They have healthier pasture-raised animals. Their glass of wine is often diluted and enjoyed with long, still meals, and not followed by a second or third.

We cannot compare toxic loads when we are worlds apart.

Another piece that often gets overlooked is recovery time. Alcohol doesn’t just disappear in the body. Depending on your physiology, it can take up to three days for your body to fully process the inflammatory and neurological effects.

Your sleep quality will drop. Yes, you can technically be asleep, but the quality of that sleep matters.

So, the big question, why did I kick the fermented grape bucket?

Alcohol (ethanol) is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco and asbestos, and is linked with increased risk for several cancers, including colorectal, liver, breast, esophageal, mouth, throat, and laryngeal cancers. Alcohol, specifically ethanol, breaks down into a chemical called acetaldehyde in the body that can damage DNA, raise inflammation, and increase hormone levels like estrogen, which is why even moderate drinking can raise cancer risk.

At the same time, alcohol suppresses immune function, reducing the body’s ability to identify and clear damaged cells, while increasing gut permeability, disrupting the microbiome, and contributing to inflammatory and allergic responses.

And while I myself have known people to drink and smoke all their lives and die at 90 from natural causes, why play Russian roulette for the sake of a chemically induced good time when there are so many other ways to get the same relief, when you can have fun without needing a substance to initiate it?

So, what I became curious about was the pattern.

Why did I want wine to relax?

Why did it feel like I deserved a glass of wine on a Friday night?

What was it giving me that I wasn’t able to give myself?

Why was I not able to regulate myself without alcohol?

Alcohol softens the edges. But when that relief only comes from a substance, that’s not relaxation, that’s compensation.

The need for that glass of wine faded on its own. That’s when I knew alcohol was falling into the same category as my food patterns.

What was I escaping?

And that’s a very different conversation.

I’ve also included a link to a podcast from Tribe Sober, an online community that a good friend of mine, Lynne Platt, is very passionate about. She’s a member, she’s a cancer survivor, has just celebrated her first year of sobriety earlier this month, and is one of the most determined women I have ever known.

Lynne has read my book, and we have often discussed the parallel between comfort eating and alcohol abuse. While the word “abuse” can sound dramatic, even for the weekend drinker, the mechanism is the same.

There’s a podcast episode she wanted to share, with Tribe Sober founder Janet Gourand, and special guest Professor Tim Stockwell, Senior Scientist with the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in Canada. He’s a man with a mission, to inform people about the link between alcohol and cancer. He has been working tirelessly towards this goal for years and has made himself very unpopular with the liquor industry in the process.

The fact that alcohol is one of the top three causes of preventable cancer is not exactly a secret, but it may as well be, as so few people seem to be aware of it.