Steven Bartlett ruined his life with three glasses of wine (and other wellness disasters)

Steven Bartlett recently “ruined” his life by drinking three glasses of wine. His head hurt the next day, he didn’t sleep well, he didn’t eat well, his podcast suffered, and he didn’t go to the gym.

Ruined, I tell you. Ruined.

Not only is his enormous privilege showing, he’s seemingly sparked a global philosophical debate.

The wellness world has turned into a behemoth of virtues. Bartlett is one of its figureheads (and, I read recently, “manosphere lite”, so that’s also joyful). And hangovers are suddenly a life-ruining event.

Perhaps Bartlett’s idea of ‘ruin’ is different to mine. Perhaps Bartlett’s perspective mechanism is failing to function correctly. Perhaps he’s not eating enough gluten (which apparently causes autism. Who knew…).

And this isn’t to attack anyone, whether a drinker or not, a wellness fan or not, a health freak or not.

The problem is when someone of Bartlett’s influence begins to tout a puritanical approach to health and wellbeing. He belongs in the same category as the bloke I saw repping an enormous health brand earlier last year — a bloke who sanctimoniously told the camera that he only ate four times a week, mostly eggs. 

These guys track metrics and stats and go to bed ‘on time’ every single night. Promoting their way as the only, sensible way to run a human body. As if this is what being alive really is: maximising and optimising the human experience to within an inch of its life. For… what? So they can get more cumulative early nights than the rest of us? Or is it really an ego-trip disguised as a health kick? 

Meanwhile, folks are watching, reading, and listening to this dross and attempting to use it to better their lives. Reducing their one and precious every day to a metric to be tracked, a performance to be monitored, and, in the meantime, they’re missing out on the gold and magic and richness of this human experience.

Is that day we missed a workout / struggled at work / slept a bit funny what we’ll actually remember when we’re on our last legs? Or will we remember those times we stayed up late / connected with good people / let our hair down / had so much fun we stopped tracking our HRV?

Wellness, for sure. But our health and wellness don’t come as a separate package to the amount we enjoy our lives, to the way we embrace the spontaneity and adventure and magic in it all.

As the incredible Tom Hodgkinson writes, “hangovers can take on a spiritual quality in that they take you to a different dimension, where sounds are louder and objects wobble.”

Perhaps Bartlett needs that reminder.

And while he's nursing his hangover, reinstating his early nights, and super-optimising his routines, may we take his ruin as the ultimate reminder: as soon as we reduce life to something to continuously improve, we forget how fucking glorious it is in the first place.

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