How Drinking Alcohol Made Me Lose Over $10 Million
The real cost of drinking alcohol is higher than you think.
The unfortunate truth is that due to drinking alcohol, I have lost more than 10 million dollars over the last 10 years.
Typically when you think about the monetary toll that alcohol has on you, you simply look at the large bill you woke up to the morning after. We rarely take into consideration where else alcohol might have made us lose money.
Alcohol impairs your judgement and as a result, you make poor decisions and take risks you wouldn’t have otherwise taken.
I’m going to be very transparent about exactly how drinking alcohol made me lose over $10 million dollars.
The sticker price
The first and most obvious way that I (and many others) have burnt money with alcohol, is by purchasing it.
We can try to budget the best we can, say we will only spend $100 tonight, and wait until happy hour, but then the more the alcohol hits, the more the price doesn’t seem to matter. On top of that, in Vegas, a double vodka soda will ring you $36 and a bottle of Ciroc is $1000, so it is pretty hard to budget.
Even when the price isn’t high like they are in Vegas, I have still managed to rack up a $2800 bill on $2.25 shots…
Between all the lounges, bottle service, lines of shots, and bottles of wine, I have spent over $400,000.00 in alcohol over the 10 years.
Gross.
And then you go to the casino.
I love playing games, especially blackjack, but after a while, they get a little boring unless you have enough on the line. At least, that’s how I feel when I’m drunk.
It’s pretty typical to go to the casino, make bad decisions, and risk too much money when you’re drunk.
I mean, that is why they serve you alcohol for free in Vegas casinos after all.
My biggest downfall in casinos was because I would make money when I was sober. Over the years overall I was up over $10,000 when playing blackjack sober, but of course, every game in the casino has odds that are against you. As liquor hits your system you play riskier, and it starts to go downhill fast.
I’ve lost over $2,000 several times playing blackjack when drunk. In Vegas, I lost as much as $25,000 in a night. However, I do believe I was drugged at the Belaggio that night, but that’s a story for a different day.
Overall, I believe that gambling at the casino while drunk has cost me close to $45,000.00.
Useless purchases
Amazon is a drunk man’s best friend, or worse enemy depending on how you look at it.
How often do you think of a great idea while you are drunk and then act on it immediately?
For me, it was quite often.
Sometimes it was car parts, other times it would be useless decor for my house, and another time I bought a camera and studio equipment. (I do still use the camera though).
I even bought a Porsche once while I was debatably still drunk from the night prior (my birthday) which was a bad decision, and resulted in me losing over $60,000 over a few years. While I did love it, I probably would not have bought it if I was in the right mind.
Over the last 10 years, useless purchases thanks to alcohol cost me close to $100,000.00.
And all the other bad decisions…
I often talk about the power of decisions. The biggest reason for this is that I’ve witnessed their power firsthand.
Bad decisions while drunk have cost me an immense amount of money.
I used to trade crypto with high leverage for some years. For a while, I was making money, but I started to lose money when I would make decisions while drunk.
At one point I was drinking and had a martini glass next to my computer. It spilt and ruined my computer and I couldn’t cash out my trade while it was ahead.
That incident alone cost me around $225,000.00.
That wasn’t the worst one though.
I had one “short” position which was up quite a bit. I switched the trade to a “long” position earlier than I planned because I was drunk, and as a result, lost a lot…
If I had stuck to the plan I made when I was sober, I would have profited over $10,000,000.00 if I had cashed out in 2021 when it hit my target exit.
Making good decisions can change your whole life, and making bad decisions can set it back a few years. I learnt that the hard way.
Conclusion
Alcohol has many negative effects. We typically look at how it affects our health, but for many of us, we look past that and tell ourselves that if we balance it out, it’ll be worth it.
What we often fail to realize is that alcohol negatively affects other parts of our lives.
Once you take into consideration the real cost of alcohol, you will realize just how much alcohol is bringing you down.
Thanks for reading.
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