All it Took Was One Book for Nikki Glaser to Quit Drinking

“You want some fake beer?

It’s so..

It’s zero..

I can’t… I mean, I don’t drink, and this is absurd to me that I would have a beer.

It’s a fake beer.

But I don’t miss the taste of alcohol.

Oh!

Who misses that? No one would drink alcohol if it didn’t get you effed up.

I would drink these. They taste good.

Really?

Yeah, I love it.

This tastes like the St. Louis Funny Bone, which is a great taste. It does taste like the St. Louis Funny Bone, 2009, living in my best life…

When was the last time you drank?

2011, December 9th, Cleveland Hilarities after the show.

You were like “I’m done”.

I… well, I just had a couple beers to close out the evening. I was by myself, just gonna go…

Next thing you know, you’re shooting heroin?

I don’t know what happened. I… well, I was at a point in my life where it was like, ‘This has got to stop,’ because my hangovers were getting so ridiculous and debilitating for a whole day. And I was just doing… you know, I would black out from like two drinks because my mind… John Mulaney has a great joke about it where he says he would black out very quickly after a couple drinks ’cause his mind was like, ‘We know where this is going. Shutting down early.’ Like, if you know it’s gonna be… you’re gonna black out, your brain just blacks out earlier.

Right.

‘Cause every time I drink, I would black out. So I just… I woke up that morning, and I had only had a… it wasn’t a hard night of drinking, a couple beers, but I was just the sickest I’ve ever been. And the thing about hangovers that I really had to look at was like… the best part about being sick, if you’re gonna find the best part about being sick, it’s that people feel sorry for you. You get babied a little bit. You get nurturing from your friends and family that you don’t get when you’re healthy. But when you’re hungover, no one gives you that. So you’re sick, and you don’t even get the only good thing about being sick, which is people feeling sorry for you. Everyone’s like, ‘You piece of [ __ ], you did this to yourself.’ So I was like, in the shower, Anna, in the fetal position, thinking, ‘This is how I should feel if I’m dying.’ Like, I really don’t want to feel this bad unless I am on my way out. So I’m not doing this anymore. And I read a book, and when I was done…

What was the book?

‘Easy Way to Stop Drinking’ by Allen Carr.

What’s the easy way?

Easy way is you read this book, and then you’re done at the end of it. And what he does… well, I’d used his method to stop smoking. ‘The Easy Way to Stop Smoking’ by Allen Carr. So many people have read it. It’s the one book that when you’ve tried everything else, nothing else works. This book… my mom quit smoking after 35-plus years.

Really?

So many of my friends… I heard about it. I think like Ellen DeGeneres and Ashton Kutcher, I heard a bunch of celebrities kind of talking about it. I read the book, and you can smoke while you read it. And then by the end of the book, he just promises you. He goes, ‘Go have a cigarette,’ and you’re just like, ‘No, I don’t want to. I don’t need to.’ His method is… and this thing he does with drinking… any excuse you have to do that thing, he talks you out of it. He tells you a reason why your excuse is actually [ __ ], and there’s no science behind it. And he disproves any reason that you have to do it. And we’ve been brainwashed by tobacco and alcohol industries to believe that quitting is really hard. And quitting alcohol is hard if you have an addiction. You can like die from it, obviously. But with tobacco, it’s part of their propaganda to tell you that it’s hard to quit smoking. They are the ones pushing that message, which seems like… why would they tell people it’s hard? But they’re doing that because if it’s hard, you won’t quit. So that has been their message to be like, ‘It’s so hard to quit smoking. It’s so hard.’ When really, it’s not. You know, the withdrawal symptoms of not smoking lasts up to two weeks. I think it’s less than… I think it’s like seven to 11 days. And the discomfort caused by wanting a cigarette is the same discomfort as being a little bit hungry. You’re a little bit annoying. It’s like… it’s not insurmountable. It’s uncomfortable, but it passes after seven to eleven days, I think it is. And then it’s all… even when you’re going through it, it’s not that bad. But it’s the psychological effect of thinking it’s hard that makes it then hard.

Mmm.

So once he proves to you it’s not that hard, and any excuse you have to smoke, which is like, ‘It calms me down.’ It raises your blood pressure, so that’s inaccurate. Um, ‘It makes me more social.’ Actually, it isolates you. You know, if you really look at it, every time you smoke, you feel kind of bad. People think you stink. Like, it just… every excuse you have. And then he did it with drinking too. I went through this book. I read it. You can drink while you read the book. You have to wanna quit to pick up the book. You have to want to be like, ‘I want this out of my life. I don’t know how to get it out of my life.’ And I gave this book to so many of my friends, and my friends don’t drink anymore. And a lot of them, you know, use programs or other things to supplement, but all I needed was this book, and I was done. And I’ll tell you, I drank every single night of my life, and I never thought I could live without it. It was just… I was just like anyone listening that’s like, ‘No, no, no, you don’t understand. All my friends drink. It’s my life. It’s my social life. It’s my work life.’ It was everything to me. It’s all I look forward to. Yeah, I’ll never go like this when my friend enters a bar again. Like, I’ll never do that. I will never greet a friend with, ‘She’s here! Yes, yes, yes!’

Was that you?

That was me. That was like… that’s something I miss. I’ll never have that kind of ‘to drink’ enthusiasm anymore. But because I don’t drink, I am [ __ ] killing it. My life changed. I can trace my career before and after like on the dot. Hmm. So, you know, it’s not for everyone. If you have a problem, you should maybe look into it. But that book seriously changed my life.

That sounds amazing. And there was no like difficulty in quitting?

None. No, really, was easy. I never… maybe a couple times I felt like, ‘Hah, it’d be nice to have a drink.’ You know, I was dating a guy that like just wanted to have a glass of wine with me, and I’m like, ‘Well, I can’t. I just have a glass of wine.’ And I’ve been tempted, and I don’t think that I would go off the deep end again, but… but I don’t. I just… I go back to that book, and I’m just like, ‘I just… any reason I can give myself, it’s just really… it isn’t true.’ And I’m better without it.

Well, it’s definitely not true if you’re drinking it every night and you’re blacking out.

Yeah.

But if you just have a cup… glass of wine with dinner, it feels nice. Oh, I know.

It’s a social lubricant. You have fun with friends, start laughing and joking around. But you don’t have that ability to stop there. Is that it…?

I could for a few months, and then it would trickle into… it’s just exactly the voice. You at every… people are listening, and I know you relate to this of… you go, ‘I’m just gonna have two tonight.’ But then that person… and you go, ‘Promise yourself you’re just gonna have two.’ But then you get that voice drunk, and that voice is like, ‘Have another. Come on, you can’t talk to yours.’ You can’t plan for how you’re gonna feel two drinks in because you get drunk, and then you… it just keeps going. You miss it, man.

I have a bit about that about drunk driving. The problem’s not whether or not you can drive drunk. The problem is even thinking you can drive drunk because when you’re drunk, you don’t know what the [ __ ] you can do or can’t do.

Yeah.

I think that’s why guys get in fights with people way bigger than them when they’re drunk, and they don’t even know how to fight.

You’re… you’re stupider.

Yeah, when you’re drunk, you’re a [ __ ] moron when you’re drunk. So the idea that you could drive drunk like, ‘I’m fine.’ Like, you don’t even know if you’re fine. That’s the problem. Yes. The problem is you’re drunk.

And that’s a big part of the book is talking to people about this liquid courage that everyone cites. I mean, ‘I need a drink because I can’t go onstage if I don’t have a drink. I need a drink to talk to the girl.’ And it’s not courage. What you’re doing is you’re making yourself more stupid.”