I’m 33, married for 11 years, 3 kids, and I enjoy alcohol.

My consumption level is average, about 5-6 days a week, 1-4 drinks. Less during the weekdays, more on the weekends.

I’ve always known alcohol was “not good for you” - listen to the Huberman podcast, watch a sobriety video, study the effects and it’s easy to see.

But outside of the occasional weekend bender, I’ve been able to maintain a healthy balance with alcohol for years. However, the older I became, the more the drawbacks crept in. I felt it more, and not in a good way.

Then I saw Marc Andreessen, founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, say he paused drinking alcohol six months ago.

It’s not just him. Andreessen is one of many dry billionaires, athletes, and actors.

Nat Eliason, Sam Parr, and other entrepreneurs I follow gave up alcohol and credit a lot of their hard work and success to its absence or reduction.

So it made me curious.

• Is there a secret world of hustle and happiness out there, that others have tapped into that I’ve not experienced yet because I’m choosing to enjoy alcohol?

• Just how many successful people don’t drink alcohol?

• How strong is the correlation between no alcohol and an individual’s chance of greater success?

What I found shocked me.

The alcohol habits of 36 ‘very successful’ people

Below is a list of individuals categorized into billionaires and multi-millionaires, athletes, actors, celebrities, and historical figures and their views on alcohol.

Billionaires and multi-millionaires

• Elon Musk (Yes)

  • “Once you acknowledge that alcohol is poison, it’s fine to drink a little. The trade is a small amount of health for an even smaller amount of fun, but that’s not crazy to do once in a while with friends,” Musk said.

• Warren Buffett (No)

  • Buffet does not consume alcohol or smoke. In fact, Buffett says that he has never had alcohol or smoked in his life. The reason? He simply wants to preserve his health. Source

• Sheryl Sandberg (No longer)

  • A Wired story mentions a dinner with wine and she was “merry” but didn’t say she drank directly. A sleep research site mentioned Sandberg saying, “If I could go back and change one thing about how I lived in those early years,” Sheryl says, “I would force myself to get more sleep.”

• Indra Nooyi (No)

  • Pepsi CEO writes in her memoir: “I departed India 43 years ago, but India has never left me. I am still a vegetarian; I don’t smoke or drink alcohol beyond a few sips of wine.”

• Susan Wojcicki (Maybe)

  • Nothing online that I could find, but given the NYT calls the former CEO of YouTube “The Most Measured Person in Tech” and she is the mother of 5 kids, I’m going to guess no, she doesn’t drink alcohol. Or very little.

• Tim Cook (Maybe)

  • A very private person, the Apple CEO held a large beer in Munich in 2019 and had a fancy lunch in France serving ‘good wine’ in 2017, but that doesn’t prove anything.

• Mark Zuckerberg (Yes)

  • Meta’s founder and CEO just posted his daily routine on Threads which involves “very little alcohol.”

• Dara Khosrowshahi (Yes)

  • I just wrote about how the Uber CEO turned the company around and brought it to profitability, including his personal habits, which include a love for good steak and red wine during family dinners.

• Kevin Ryan (Yes)

  • A recent guest on My First Million podcast, the “Godfather of NYC Tech” apparently has a really nice wine cellar and is a “good drinking buddy” per one LinkedIn user.

Athletes

• Tom Brady (No)

  • The 50-year-old NFL quarterback told Steven Colbert in 2018 that he was “quite the beer drinker back in the day” and proved it by downing one on stage but states he’s continuing with his notoriously strict NFL diet, which excludes alcohol completely, despite recent retirement.

• Peyton and Eli Manning (Yes)

  • Eli definitely does. “I think there’s too many out there and I like to try them all. So I’m still in my quest to find the perfect beer, liquor or wine that’s going to suit me,” he told Forbes.

  • Peyton, too. He’s even launching a premium bourbon brand called Sweetens Cove ($200). Forbes joked, “The Mannings may have co-created a brand to have an excuse to drink bourbon with one another and their friends.”

• Novak Djokovic (No)

  • The tennis GOAT doesn’t drink at all. Except for one time in his life apparently.

• Serena Williams (Not really)

  • “Guys, I’m not a big fan of drink, but my husband came home with this 23-year-old Armenian brandy, so we’ll drink a glass. Can’t remember when I last drank, that was a long time ago,” said Serena during the 2020 lockdowns.

• Tiger Woods (No longer)

  • The golf champion definitely enjoyed alcohol, vodka cranberries apparently, but perhaps a little too much, as it got him in trouble, leading to addiction problems and a DUI.

• Michael Jordan (Yes)

  • The billionaire former athlete “prefers the extra añejo” of his own tequila brand, which he was shown sipping on The Last Dance. And he was caught on Twitter downing a shot of it with fans last month.

• Michael Phelps (No longer)

  • After the Olympic swimmer admitted an alcohol addiction, including two DUIs, he decided to give it up to focus on his new children.

• Simone Biles (Yes)

  • The Olympic gymnast occasionally drinks alcohol, she told Women’s Health.

• Lionel Messi (Yes)

  • “Messi loves to drink alcohol.”

• Christiano Ronaldo (No)

  • The 38-year-old soccer star avoids alcohol to stay at peak performance. “I never drink.”

Actors and celebrities

• Ryan Reynolds (Yes)

  • His wife Blake Lively doesn’t drink, but girl-dad Reynolds does, so therefore they don’t have a liquor-free household. By the way, the actor-entrepreneur sold Aviation Gin for $610 million to Diageo, the world's largest producer of spirits and beers.

• Dwayne Johnson (Yes)

  • The Hollywood star confessed that he drinks but does not get drunk. His tequila brand Teremana is worth $4 billion.

• Eminem (No longer)

  • The rapper is celebrating 15 years sober this year after 5 years of addiction. He overcame through peers inspiring him and a drive to compete.

• Adam Sandler (Maybe)

  • Not much about the actor’s drinking habits can be found online except this quote: “Alcohol equals puke equals smelly mess equals nobody likes you.” He wrote a song about alcohol addiction, but it’s unclear if it was self-reflective.

• Nicole Kidman (No)

  • "I don’t drink alcohol,” the actor said. She puts sparkling water in her glass at events.

• Michelle Obama (Yes)

  • A 2009 Politico article writes, “[Barach] Obama opted for a wine… while Michelle sipped on two martinis.” In 2023, she roasted her daughters on the Jimmy Fallon show for making “weak martinis.”

• Kelly Clarkson (Yes)

  • The singer went day drinking with Seth Meyer in June 2023.

• Hugh Jackman (Yes)

  • The actor cuts out alcohol for roles like Wolverine, but recently posted an Instagram video of him enjoying a double martini in London in July 2023.

• Joe Rogan (No longer)

  • “I do drink here and there like a glass of wine or something, but maybe not for a while, for the last five years,” he said in May 2023.

• Joe Biden (No)

  • The sitting U.S. President confirmed he doesn’t drink alcohol when he had water in his champagne glass for a toast and joked about it with PM Modi (who turned out to have only ginger ale in his glass).

Historical figures (U.S.)

• George Washington (Yes)

  • Beer was a favorite drink of the first U.S. President.

• Abraham Lincoln (Yes)

  • He did, but was allegedly the perfect picture of moderation.

• Billy Graham (No)

  • The American evangelist did not drink and George W. Bush credits Graham with helping quit alcohol himself.

• Franklin D. Roosevelt (Yes)

  • FDR loved martinis and ended Prohibition.

• Maya Angelou (Yes)

  • A glass of sherry wine in the morning was part of the famous poet’s writing process.

Out of 36 individuals: 

• 19 said Yes

• 14 said No

• 3 said Maybe

Takeaway

The majority of individuals on this list do enjoy alcohol but almost all of them aren’t “drinkers” - most of them described their drinking as occasional or rare, not regular. For those who were more regular, it was maybe one beverage but never getting drunk.

So the correlation between no alcohol and an individual’s chance of greater success is pretty clear from this limited, subjective study:

A drinking habit of more than one alcoholic beverage per day holds you back from being a more successful version of yourself.

Very successful people value their goals and their time too much to let any substance put their ambitions at risk. Their focus is simply too important to be slowed down by the effects of alcohol, so they keep it to a minimum.

Everybody is different and everyone’s body is different. We all need to figure out what’s best for ourselves and our goals, and sometimes that means trying something new to see how it feels.

Thanks for reading.

See you next Thursday.

Dave

PS. I’m on Day 6 no alcohol.