True Patriot Love - MIKE & BRADIE on Dry January — Honest Talk About Taking a Break From Booze

00:00:00.000 hello my fellow patriots we just finished dry january and dry january started in the uk but it

00:00:11.120 has made its way around north america and maybe even a good portion of the globe it started from

00:00:15.920 a marathon runner finding health benefits from it and has translated all the way to even having

00:00:20.480 subcategories you can even be california sober which means you still use plant medicine but you

00:00:25.120 stay away from alcohol during january and to talk with me about dry january the driest man i know

00:00:31.600 mike wickson how are you my friend you know what i am dry but that's january for you and i'm going

00:00:37.200 to recommend that you use the right body lotion you'll be okay a little bit of the uh the eczema

00:00:43.520 lotion yeah yeah yes but you're right i i this one only kind of applies to me because i'm watching

00:00:49.040 friends suffer through through it uh i don't drink but uh it is interesting that this year

00:00:56.160 it caught our attention because there's so many articles out so many findings that are

00:01:02.480 you know showing us alcohol is not easy to manage your health alongside that it can have negative

00:01:09.520 effects very quickly that it can have long lasting effects that it can be really detrimental to the

00:01:14.720 longevity of your life apparently it's causing anxiety as they're they're saying now that the

00:01:19.920 hangover could lead on to seven days your hangover and it actually can cause anxiety so we're learning

00:01:25.680 a lot about dry january and this and the stats of how people's health are turning around it seems to be

00:01:31.920 that there's way more people drinking than i ever thought that there was a very heavy amount of

00:01:36.320 drinking not just a casual drink and even myself i very rarely drink but i made it 30 days out of 31 in

00:01:43.920 january but brady honestly that wasn't 31 days in january when's the last time you had a drink

00:01:49.600 like in all nine months it was nine months before that but it's not like you have a problem with

00:01:53.680 alcohol you just don't drink so then when you saw the end of the month coming up the rebellion and you

00:01:58.240 said oh before january ends i must have a drink i am a rule breaker my friend rules are meant to be

00:02:04.960 broken but yeah january 30th i uh started taking the whiskeys back and how many did you have uh not as

00:02:11.040 many as i wanted because a phone died and i couldn't catch an uber home before that but i don't

00:02:15.200 know how many did you have i had three shots and one drink okay so you had four drinks just so you

00:02:19.760 know heavy drinking is reflected by uh seven wait is that heavy is that because i'm so small

00:02:26.720 heavy drinking period you might actually i think that that must have something to do with it i mean

00:02:31.040 your physicality and how much you should or could drink has to come into it that has to come into play

00:02:36.880 and i never stopped drinking because of health mike i i well maybe because of getting into a

00:02:42.240 health could be down the road but um i just get very obnoxious i'm irish i'm small so every drink

00:02:48.000 i have i'm 10 pounds heavier and one foot taller brady i don't you weren't really that obnoxious to

00:02:52.800 be honest with you i told a young man that was working very hard on this shift taking a break that

00:02:57.520 if he's young enough he's 24 he should just do whatever he wants no responsibilities worry about

00:03:01.840 it when he's 35. that is drunken words and he left believing me no i don't think he did that

00:03:07.120 producer nick did he believe me i'm not sure okay well so maybe your perception was off your perception

00:03:14.000 was off okay but going back to dry january i almost made it yeah well good for you uh many people are

00:03:20.160 actually did make it so congratulations to them but uh you know just taking a look at some you want

00:03:25.200 to hear some of the numbers on alcohol because there might be good reason for canadians to take a dry

00:03:29.840 uh a dry moment emily robinson as you pointed out uh uk uh um marathon marathon or a track star

00:03:37.440 uh stopped while she was training for the olympics found that there was some health benefits from it no

00:03:42.480 kidding uh and uh just took the month off and showed so to the newsroom because some of these statistics

00:03:48.240 i had they baffle me yeah it's great uh research thank you check this out uh first of all heavy drinking

00:03:54.640 men uh which is uh for men five plus drinks on one occasion for women is four plus drinks on one

00:04:00.960 occasion uh sexism that i don't i don't endorse but that's how the science handles it uh and apparently

00:04:06.720 6.2 million canadians reported heavy drinking in 2024 up from 6 million in 2023 and down from the record

00:04:14.000 high of 6.4 million in 2022 well we know why that was so high in 2022 it's all we had to do it was

00:04:20.320 covid fatigue yeah yeah uh and then check this out uh 80 of men say they drink 23 of those men

00:04:28.400 are heavy drinkers and 75 of women say they drink and 16 of them say they are heavy drinkers now how

00:04:35.360 much of that is just bottles of red wine i don't know it's funny that you talked about the anxiety

00:04:41.360 though yeah it's a real thing i promise you it is yeah now i don't drink and it's been many years but

00:04:47.120 for several years i did drink professionally uh and i will tell you the hangover as i recall it was

00:04:54.960 the most depressed it's horrible a horrible time of my life uh every single time i drank

00:05:02.320 it caused depression it made me feel ashamed it had physical uh maladies you feel sick and when you're

00:05:10.000 sick when you feel sick you don't do your best you have to overcompensate overcompensating makes you

00:05:14.960 feel anxiety anxiety makes you feel like you're not delivering and then the cycle continues so

00:05:20.880 i do believe anxiety is a real thing it's a poison at the end of the day great alcohol is considered a

00:05:26.240 poison um yeah it's a cleaning product it could be uh used for explosives like it is not i don't know

00:05:34.560 if we should still be drinking alcohol the way that we do as human beings i think a glass of wine maybe

00:05:40.320 you know a beer that obviously the the golden rule is you have a glass of wine uh once a week

00:05:45.200 and you're keeping yourself healthy you have a beer once a day it's not the worst thing for you

00:05:49.440 i don't know if i truly believe that i do think alcohol is a poison i don't see too many other

00:05:54.560 recreational things that are not you know throwing your life out on cocaine or something that causes

00:05:58.880 the amount of side effects that alcohol does all right let's see heavy alcohol use increases the risk

00:06:04.000 of chronic liver disease it does cirrhosis uh it has an impact on cardiovascular has an impact on

00:06:12.480 fine motor skills uh 4 374 deaths in 2023 from chronic liver disease the 10th leading cause of death

00:06:21.040 in canada so there's reason for concern 3125 canadians under 75 died from alcohol and drug use disorders

00:06:29.680 uh excluding overdoses by the way alcohol and drug use disorders cause more deaths under the age of 75

00:06:36.080 than even all motor vehicle accident deaths combined really yeah so it is a staggering little bit of

00:06:44.480 business there and also every month you know what i think has happened and this is the conspiracy

00:06:50.080 theorist in me uh or maybe i'm just observing it but it seems like alcohol in my mind alcohol is

00:06:57.520 something over the holidays that adds a bunch of pounds it makes you feel a little uh a little less

00:07:02.800 than normal as you come out of the holidays the last thing you do before you go back to work is one

00:07:07.040 last party for new year's by the time that hangover is done you're getting in the car you're getting

00:07:11.520 in the car yeah to go to work so uh i think in january people are just exhausted from social so they're

00:07:18.320 not doing things in a social scenario as much reducing the amount that they drink potentially

00:07:22.960 i think they're starting to look at themselves in the mirror at that point and go wow it really over

00:07:26.400 did it uh so january historically and typically has the lowest alcohol sales i'll give you an example

00:07:32.800 this is from uh 2023 okay uh december sales 3.3 billion january sales 1.9 billion so it's got

00:07:41.760 two billion dollar difference it's typically that way wow um the other so the other thing that i have

00:07:47.360 in my mind is alcohol is finally getting its due um justice from the media from the health community

00:07:56.560 where for so long alcohol as an industry had so much money and so much power to stay out of the

00:08:03.280 way of the bad news that they now have reduced their overall uh profits i don't know if this is true i'm

00:08:11.120 just saying and now the realities are starting to bubble to the top of the cocktail showing us the health

00:08:18.400 issues the long-term uh abuse issues the the social uh economic issues the mental issues but you're

00:08:25.840 true though with the alcohol like they're the increase in prices i think if we were looking

00:08:30.000 there is about seven percent alcohol is the price of alcohol is going up now some of that's from tariffs

00:08:34.720 and things like that year over year about 2.3 percent yes so yearly is that counterbalancing the

00:08:40.880 fact that the sales are going down or is this just you know inflation like everything else it

00:08:45.680 seems to me that and we i talked to an activist um mike densmore he came in and that should be

00:08:51.040 already out if you're watching this about cannabis and how cannabis may have taken away from some of

00:08:56.400 these alcohol sales well i wonder this is a kind of the next thing that i get thinking about sure people

00:09:01.360 stop drinking for the month however they're hitting the nick vape california the thc vape uh smoking

00:09:08.320 more joints maybe buying more hash i would love to know if january cannabis sales are up in place of

00:09:16.000 alcohol that would be something we should definitely look into because i would if i was a guessing man i

00:09:20.560 don't think they would have gone up i just think that i dry january doesn't include cannabis for a lot

00:09:25.760 of people i think so i think that california sober thing is uh it's real it's real yeah and california

00:09:31.920 sober doesn't mean just cannabis they mean like mushrooms kratom anything that's considered an

00:09:37.680 organic right stimulant or a medicine they're yeah that's california sober so you could be yes

00:09:44.000 putting down the bottle of whiskey but picking up a bag of magic mushrooms i don't know if that's a

00:09:48.160 good balance but that's considered california sober you're not drinking but you're you're medicating in

00:09:53.520 other ways you're uh feeding whatever addiction or whatever i'll tell you dissociative thing that your

00:10:00.080 body needs with something else one little glass of wine is not as healthy as a low dosage a micro

00:10:07.280 dose of psychosilabin in some people's opinion maybe if you have something else going on and

00:10:12.800 you're not the average person it's good for you i don't know that there's any science behind that to

00:10:16.800 be honest with you and i think that's the problem with this okay if you go dry go dry but don't go

00:10:21.600 dry and try uh weed gummies for the first time maybe because i don't i don't know that the results

00:10:27.280 are going to be what you want you might go back to the alcohol uh if that edible doesn't hit you

00:10:31.600 hit you right yeah i mean it might throw you back into um non-dry january wet january yeah you might

00:10:37.920 find yourself in a state of psychosis for a couple of days and realize that you would have been better

00:10:42.000 off with a glass of wine but it is a real thing dry january is a real thing it's kind of commendable

00:10:47.440 it coincides with people trying to get back into shape getting back on their diets living their best

00:10:52.640 uh selves post new year's resolution a lot of comedians do it joe rogan and those guys they were

00:10:58.640 going uh dry january's i think that set a trend a couple years ago too and i think they just

00:11:02.960 that's true now but they were doing it uh for working out they would all work out together to

00:11:07.200 do saunas things like that but they even had a competition i think at one point it turned into

00:11:10.960 a pretty vicious competition of uh steps in a day or calories in a day or something like that but they

00:11:16.640 were full sober like dry everything but they're sitting there smoking these big giant cigars as they're

00:11:21.680 saying they're sober if you know as well as i do we've been to cigar bars together if you smoke a full

00:11:26.000 two hour cigar you are buzzed yeah there's no doubt about it there is uh there's many ways to offset

00:11:33.840 dry january and i think i mean i commend anybody who does it but i think there's a lot of schmoo

00:11:39.600 between here and there spicy foods during dry january because he likes an extreme amount of

00:11:44.560 spice that gives him sort of an hallucinogenic effect okay so he doesn't even eat the spot he like

00:11:49.120 literally goes full famine style wow some people are really taking this thing seriously i mean it's good for 1.00

00:11:55.600 you members of the staff here i've noticed uh a dry january for certain yeah um because you know

00:12:01.440 most of our team doesn't even partake in alcohol that is true that's a wild thing when you go to work

00:12:06.240 and most of the people there don't drink yeah i i can't think of anybody on our staff who drinks we

00:12:12.720 sound super boring nick drinks and you drink why are we laughing all the time none of this you see you

00:12:18.320 don't need alcohol to have fun with your friends it's true i mean it does help with dancing though that's

00:12:23.440 the one thing can i just say this about dry january there's not a lot of dancing going on a lot unless

00:12:28.560 i'm around i'm just dancing everywhere i go you're dancing fool yeah but you see me in the airport 0.96

00:12:33.760 you add fool to that because you're not drunk you you take fool away and just say that it's a good 0.99

00:12:38.400 dancer when you got a couple of cocktails in you you know what i mean uh but i don't think sober the 0.99

00:12:45.120 hardest thing for me to do is dance really oh man go ahead and comment on this if you're sober is it

00:12:52.320 easy for you to get the dance on well it's not my friend actually while you're commenting let us know

00:12:56.720 if you did dry january nod and how it went for you don't don't be ashamed if it didn't go well you're

00:13:00.960 you at least try yeah brady failed so don't i had a good eight months leading up to it but for some

00:13:07.520 reason the second the month came your defiance is unbelievable you did it in calgary well in all

00:13:12.480 fairness from a rebel you did it i know what threw you off the uh wagon so viciously i've seen owen

00:13:19.600 hurt slammies yeah that's right you see the actual slammies that owen hurt the professional wrestler won 1.00

00:13:25.920 back in the 90s sitting in front of your face the next thing you have to do is say can i have a shot

00:13:30.240 of whiskey i can't deny you uh i can't deny you a little bit of a cocktail a little bit of imbibing

00:13:36.480 in the place you seemed happiest i've ever seen you at uh the hitman bar brett the hitman's uh bar

00:13:42.960 in it was at the cowboy casino in calgary casino the hitman bar yes uh okay let me see what the

00:13:48.640 notes tell me here before we wrap it up if you don't mind uh growing awareness of alcohol's impact

00:13:53.280 on physical mental and spiritual health uh physical inflammation gut health hormone disruption poor

00:13:58.480 recovery lowered energy mental alcohol is a depressant impact on anxiety cycles emotional volatility

00:14:06.000 uh from a spiritual perspective emotional numbness versus presence disconnect from intuition and

00:14:12.080 purpose if that's easy to do when you're drunk i know i did that for a couple of years uh the idea

00:14:16.800 that alcohol doesn't just take time it takes away your clarity and that can that can actually happen

00:14:25.280 in the workplace it carries over you see people hung over they're not delivering their best i've seen a 0.96

00:14:31.760 lot of intelligent people just turn into schmucks on booze like mike you're one of the smartest guys 0.96

00:14:37.920 i've ever met so how long have you been actually sober oh 30 years 30 years plus yeah could you 0.99

00:14:42.960 imagine if you were still drinking do you think you'd be able to no we would be on uh we'd be on

00:14:48.000 a flight to vegas right now you and i yeah or we left calgary and i would somehow have managed to get

00:14:53.600 us a booking at a tattoo shop to get a full-size bust of dean martin uh tattooed on both of our backs

00:14:59.040 matching i think it was a good time i'm so glad you're sober now uh people don't realize uh i'm

00:15:10.160 not broken my nervous system is overloaded and alcohol kind of puts that on the back burner and

00:15:17.280 really it has uh mental effects long term i promise you that so um i grew up like a lot of the kids in

00:15:24.080 in you know i grew up in cambridge ontario just outside of the gta there wasn't much to do it was a

00:15:28.320 hockey town more arenas than there was libraries and that's what we did on the weekend we we we

00:15:33.280 drank beer we had uh bacardi 151 we used to love that stuff because you light it on fire and you

00:15:38.560 only needed a little bit and get the whole group wait you needed to light it on fire for some reason

00:15:42.480 well it was 151 proof it did light on fire i have had 151 proof evenings and i have 151 proof to to to

00:15:48.960 present with it because the net result of 151 proof alcohol is always disastrous it yeah this is why we

00:15:57.200 tried to share the bottle with as many people as we possibly could but i got it all out of my

00:16:00.720 system pretty early yeah like a lot of kids in canada back in the the 90s in the early 2000s we

00:16:05.840 were bored there was nothing to do but by the time i was 25 i had no need to drink anymore drinking was

00:16:11.520 everything in my youth yeah drinking was everything this was the big thing with with my group growing up

00:16:17.120 yeah yeah now it just seems that it's not part of the youth uh process not as much anyway i think the

00:16:24.960 laws around drinking and driving they're a lot more strict how strict it is you can lose your

00:16:29.600 license forever thank goodness um you know i think that there are lawsuits that have happened when

00:16:34.720 people are having house parties uh the news is more aware of what happens in nightclubs with

00:16:39.360 drugging people you're now being um charged when they when they're manhandling some of the patrons

00:16:45.840 even if they are in the wrong the licensing commissions are all over every bar insurance is

00:16:50.800 through the roof right so now we have this culture that doesn't seem as drunk i mean it was everything

00:16:58.400 in my youth i remember showing up on a friday night and then getting home on a sunday and it was

00:17:03.200 just alcohol the whole weekend and a lot of good times can i think can i make a comparison so in those

00:17:09.600 notes it says the number one province and the number one major city that does the most alcohol

00:17:13.920 consumption calgary and alberta really okay hold on i got notes here on and i went to wow i went to a

00:17:20.400 gas station at 12 o'clock at night thinking because i'm from ontario and this has been a normal thing

00:17:24.960 now for the past year that i could get a couple beers no brother they have alcohol specific stores

00:17:30.880 there but i also think too that the reason why we're seeing it in our corner stores here in ontario

00:17:37.440 is because alcohol sales are down and i think this was one of the lcbo sales were done so why not just

00:17:43.920 put it in front of their face when you go to a gas station you see what the counter looks like

00:17:48.640 it's all just clickbait stuff for lack of better words stuff to just grab you while you're standing

00:17:53.040 there it's vital stuff well that's where the beer is now too right it's amazing to me that that's

00:17:57.120 allowed i thought that that would never be allowed and within minutes minutes it happened overnight

00:18:02.320 there's coolers now right at the checkout and it's not just beer and then behind hidden are the

00:18:07.680 cigarettes yeah you can't advertise the cigarettes they have to have rotten feet and hearts and stuff

00:18:12.480 all over them but alcohol can be out in the open with little flowers and bubbles and it looks like a

00:18:16.480 kid's drink yeah it looks like you're actually having the experience yeah in my opinion without

00:18:20.400 looking at this paper i think alcohol sales are on the decline and maybe it is a generation it's not 0.96

00:18:25.280 just though it's not just alberta they come in at about sixteen hundred dollars uh annual spend on

00:18:29.920 alcohol quebec comes in per household yeah thirteen hundred dollars uh no this per person uh about

00:18:37.040 thirteen hundred dollars uh per i thought that was high just for the household okay maybe it is household

00:18:42.240 oh yeah average sorry my bad i'm a little drunk uh average annual household spending

00:18:48.640 seven hundred and forty two dollars from retail stores four hundred and forty one at bars

00:18:54.640 uh canadian households spend more on alcohol than fruit or vegetables no no that can't be a real

00:19:02.880 stat uh apparently we spend about uh a thousand bucks on fruit and uh about a thousand dollars on

00:19:08.560 vegetables uh i spend a lot more than that a year on vegetables good boy way alberta there there you

00:19:13.760 go sixteen hundred and sixty two dollars on alcohol quebec thirteen hundred and seventy two the lowest are

00:19:18.800 saskatchewan they got to get up early in the morning these people they got a lot of work to do in the farms

00:19:23.760 710 bucks in new brunswick they got the fishing to do i guess or foresting uh 835 dollars per year

00:19:32.800 so a big gap almost twice as much yeah in some provinces um but yeah it's it's pretty amazing and

00:19:40.320 you know alcohol remains more expensive than most non-alcoholic beverages which means that if you're

00:19:46.720 going to make a choice for thirst and quenching it may not be a beer it may just be ford's promise a

00:19:52.480 couple years ago a dollar a beer if i get elected buck a beer i never seen it sounded great on a campaign yeah

00:19:58.000 never seen it well it's a bucket beer if you and i split it with nick and a couple of other guys we

00:20:03.040 just pass it around they don't want that on the streets around here no and what's the i don't know

00:20:07.440 if our producer knows what's the average cost of a case of beer now like if i wanted a 24 pack of

00:20:12.320 of molson canadian what would it cost do you know nick nick's on it you're gonna find it out right now

00:20:17.200 because i remember back in the day pretending not to know though i think that's 20 25 to 30 dollars

00:20:21.920 yeah right you get a 24 pack you could get if you're really cheap you can go lucky lager remember

00:20:26.320 lucky lager they were 75 cents a a bottle of beer so you could get affordable beer i just want to

00:20:31.680 know what is the average price what were those affordable beers so it was copperhead there was

00:20:36.560 lager you could if you really wanted to you get labat black ice you can get oe old english the 40s

00:20:44.480 oh yeah it's partake bowl max i gotta be honest i gotta be honest with you brady i i i'm feeling my

00:20:50.240 last hangovers coming on so as a kid i used to order a 24 pack of mike's hard lemonade one

00:20:56.080 liters okay one liter bottle yeah yeah and we would just sit there and drink the entire box

00:21:00.160 you guys were a problem yes we were that's why i'm sober now you know one of the things sorry nick

00:21:07.760 12 packs 30 30 30 for 12 it's double here it's doubled since i was drinking do you want to know

00:21:13.840 what i paid for my last two for i think i paid i could be wrong i think i paid 29 30. and that was

00:21:22.160 30 years ago yeah it was pretty expensive then i thought like he must have been drinking heineken

00:21:26.400 maybe it was less was it 24 it was close to a buck of beer like 24 about about 24 80 or something

00:21:31.200 like that maybe buck a beer so it was for 10 years it was how are we going to go back 30 years to a

00:21:36.320 buck of beer i'm not what was he thinking i don't know he was thinking let me just say whatever i can

00:21:42.400 to get into power but that's a discussion for a completely different show i'm going to tell you what

00:21:46.000 i i'm going to offer up something if i may from a personal note dry january is an opportunity what

00:21:51.920 do you mean well it gives you the opportunity to say i'm not going to drink for j in january

00:21:57.360 and if you have a problem and you make the commitment not to drink in january

00:22:01.600 i'm going to tell you something brady at the end of that month you don't drink anymore yeah you don't

00:22:06.560 and the choice is for you to make at that moment but at that point you've got enough momentum you're

00:22:12.800 feeling better alcohol is not part of your uh extended uh social scenario and after 30 days

00:22:20.800 you've really got an opportunity to become sober and i think that's the coolest thing about dry

00:22:26.400 january is it's it's a soft entry point for somebody to say i think i can do this well if uh anybody

00:22:33.360 watching this has a problem with alcohol we'll make sure that the information is in the uh in the

00:22:37.840 description but please get help please try to dry yourself out whether it's january february march

00:22:43.440 whatever it is you can do it you can do it if there's a problem with alcohol get it out now it

00:22:49.280 is a poison all right thanks for talking dry january with me bless your heart mike thank you for having

00:22:54.000 me download the app at uh the app store the play store or check us out at tplmedia.ca thanks mike for

00:23:02.080 schooling me on dry january

True Patriot Love - February 05, 2026

MIKE & BRADIE on Dry January — Honest Talk About Taking a Break From Booze

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