Rock icon found 1 sneaky awesome health gain after he quit alcohol

I think that, of all the incredible health benefits that come with quitting alcohol, there’s one that stands above all the others.

And it’s because that one king benefit affects all the lower-tier ones below it.

Yes, there are many incredible ways your health improves when you stop pouring poison down your throat every day, including:

Reduced internal organ damage
Reduced cancer and heart disease risk
More energy
Less bloating and excess weight
Less inflammation in general
Less heartburn
Clearer, properly hydrated skin

After quitting alcohol myself a year and a half ago, I’m convinced there’s no bigger contributor to all those health gains than 1 simple task that becomes impossible to accomplish with booze running through your system.

And it turns out that a well-known pop-punk music icon agrees with me.

The rock star life is often associated with substance abuse, but even rockers eventually figure out alcohol is brutal on their bodies as they age. (Credit: James Julian/Dall-E 2)

A loud crash, a long recovery

Green Day lead singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong has always been pretty candid about his mental health struggles over the years — often tackling them in song — but I hadn’t seen him address his alcohol abuse in depth before.

That changed this week.

The band’s new song, Dilemma, is about Armstrong’s sobriety journey, and in a new interview with People Magazine, he discussed his past alcohol abuse, his trip to rehab in 2012 after an on-stage meltdown, and the fact that he no longer drinks at all.

At 51, he seems to be in a really good place — and he’s noticed that a lot of other people are, too:

“I don’t drink. I didn’t use any kind of program or anything like that.

“I ended up being around a bunch of really good friends that don’t drink.

“There’s a lot more sober people — I’ve noticed that, and maybe because I was the only one that was hammered before, that now I notice that people are more sober now.

“And it was just something that I was unaware of, because I was s**t-faced or something.”

This is just more great, encouraging evidence that society is getting wise to the alcohol scam.

Armstrong was one of the top, top music icons of the 1990s (when I grew up), and back then, it was very cool to get wasted all the time.

Now, it’s turning into the opposite.

And that’s awesome, because I can tell you from personal experience that life really is so much better without alcohol in it.

Which brings me back to the health benefit I mentioned at the top.

Armstrong continued:

“For me, alcohol gets in the way of everything, from my relationship with my family to just trying to get a good night’s sleep.

“It gets in the way of my happiness.

“So that’s why, really, I wanted to quit, and I was done.

“So with the friends that I have, I’m still able to go out and go listen to some music, see some band or go to a party — and it’s still a fun, sexy kind of evening, even though there’s no alcohol.

“And then the next day, I wake up …”

“(With alcohol) I’m just tired. Now there’s no shame and hangover and all that s**t.

“I feel really good.”

The king benefit

I feel this, and it’s why I call quality sleep the king health benefit of quitting.

Alcohol has a way of keeping you sad any time you aren’t consuming alcohol, and one of the ways it does this is by keeping you tired all the time.

That’s because of how destructive it is to your sleep.

Here’s what I wrote in a recent piece about 3 ways drinking trashes your fitness:

“When I was drinking every day, I spent the right number of hours in bed, but I never felt ‘rested’.

“I spent a lot of time in the gym but never felt ‘healthy’.

“Without sleep, nothing else matters.

“Not diet, not exercise.

“Because if you don’t get enough sleep, your diet will probably be undisciplined and your exercise probably won’t happen.

I then talked about what fitness tracker Whoop’s data says about alcohol and sleep after its team members decided to do Sober October back in 2019.

They found quantifiable improvements in the following areas:

Sleep Duration: +6 minutes per night
Sleep Performance: +1.28% (sleep achieved vs. sleep needed)
Recovery: +1.58%

And as I noted:

“While this may not seem like a ton of improvement, it’s over one month.

“Keep the concept of compound gains in mind.

“Besides, I would argue that the degree to which sleep improves after quitting alcohol is almost unquantifiable.

“To this day, it stands as the №1 physical health benefit for me since I quit back in the summer.

“Alcohol had become deeply, deeply detrimental to my sleep quality.

“Once you experience great sleep again, you start to actually resent alcohol for taking it away from you.”

The best way to improve every aspect of your life right now

If you’re drinking every day, I would wager that your mental and physical health probably aren’t where you want them to be.

I should know — I wasted 15 years of my life doing the same thing.

But I can also tell you from personal experience that it doesn’t take as long as you think to turn everything around.

When I quit drinking, I saw marked improvements in all areas of my health within five days.

By the two-week mark, I was a different person.

And I truly believe that enjoying high-quality sleep every single night was the single biggest contributor.

So take it from me and Billie Joe Armstrong: kick the booze and catch some zzz’s.

Your body and mind will thank you for it.

Hey friends, thanks so much for reading! Got a positive health experience to share after you quit booze? Let me know in the comments!

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