I tracked my emotions for 11 years and here’s what I found out about mental health

Before we dive in, here are some of the most surprising findings: Alcohol makes me happier and doesn’t affect my sleep, happiness, or productivity the next day. Ramen and chips ~3×'d my irritability intensity. Ovulating ~3×'d my grumpiness frequency. Polyamory doesn’t hurt my emotional well-being (surprising to me) but it dramatically reduces my life satisfaction. Antidepressants probably gave me depression. 2020 was actually my best year on record. More on this later in the post. Weather totally affects my mood, specifically, grey overcast skies. Good thing I spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest, a place famed for its sunniness. Starting a charity approximately bajillion x’ed my mentions of the word “stressed”. Meditation works for me - only when it’s a new meditation technique. Then the effect fades and only comes back if I try a new technique. Cannabis, despite making me very happy in the moment, does not affect my mood overall, one way or the other. Drugs, meditative states, and Christmas are the source of practically all of my peak days. Work accomplishments don’t show up in this list. Polyamory and conflict (related) are the source of practically all of my worst days. Largely my mental health is unpredictable and data analysis falls short of what I’d like to know. Alcohol makes me happier, despite “what the science says”. There’s currently a big fad amongst high achievers to stop drinking. All of the studies at a population level say that drinking as much alcohol as I do is unhealthy, and even if it doesn’t feel like it’s affecting my sleep, it does. And yet - my analysis found that alcohol makes me happier and it doesn’t affect my sleep. I’ve got an Oura ring and if anything, my sleep is better when I drink. I have better sleep onset, I don’t have the micro-awakenings or changes in the phases that everybody says happens. I am just as happy and productive the next day as I am if I didn’t drink. And overall, I’m happier. It doesn’t just not affect my happiness. I am, in fact, happier when I drink regularly. I’ve tracked my emotions and a million other factors almost every day for the last 11 years. Before I go to sleep every night, I write in my “journal” (the qualitative cell in the spreadsheet), and then fill out various things in other columns like: Emotional well-being Life satisfaction (importantly different) Energy levels Productivity levels Irritability Physical symptoms (e.g. headache, cough, etc) What meds or supplements I’m taking What I ate And many other things, depending on what hypothesis I’m testing at the time So I can actually see alcohol’s effects. Also, since I’ve tracked for so long, I can actually compare periods of time where I didn’t drink at all to the ones I drank every day. And the results are loud and clear: periods where I drink every day I record as happier. Productivity stays the same. Irritability stays the same. How does this square with all the science saying this shouldn’t happen? Am I just a college student, coasting on my youth? Thanks for asking, but I’m 36. Depending on your age, that will sound like a crone or like a baby, but I think I’m definitely past the “I’m just relying on my youth.” It could be that all of the worst health effects show up later. I think this is plausible. This is why I have a yearly liver scan done. Liver damage is the first detectable sign of alcohol’s long term damage, and I’m intending on cutting down once I see any damage. As it is right now, my liver scans show a pristine liver. It could also be that a lot of the long term health outcomes are driven by the outliers. While I technically drink more than a lot of scientists say is healthy, I only drink socially in the evenings, I pretty much never drink enough to pass out, vomit, make bad decisions, or have a hangover (except New Years, which is allowed imo). I also drink drinks optimized for lower immediate effects, mostly vodka sodas. Drinks with more sugar or particulates (such as red wine) are more likely to cause the immediate negative effects. Meanwhile, I’ve watched documentaries about alcoholics, and they’re regularly day-drinking, drinking alone, passing out, and the whole shebang. They’re drinking multiple bottles of wine equivalents a day. It could very well be that most of the stats about liver disease and the like are driven by the truly problematic drinkers. Anyways, the underlying interesting thing here is that what happens on average isn’t necessarily what happens to you. On average, women are shorter than men, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t women who are taller than men. And if you track things, you can see what works for you instead of the population on average. Ramen and chips triples my irritability intensity. Birth control stopping ovulation reduces irritability frequency. First off, I don’t mean eating ramen like a normal human or like in Japanese cuisine. I’m not cooking it and adding vegetables and whole foods. I buy the bags, break the noodles in