Clifford Stephan is the founder of Booze Vacation, a health and wellness company created for high-performing men who want to elevate their lives and careers by leveraging the benefits of taking a strategic break from alcohol.

He is also the founder of OneCompensation, a successful Bay Area compensation consulting firm that has helped Silicon Valley companies—including Google, LinkedIn, Kaiser Permanente, and Motorola Mobility—attract, engage, and retain top talent.

In his mid-40s, Clifford realized that his regular, "semi-responsible" drinking was quietly undermining his health and long-term potential.

He chose to take a year-long break from alcohol—what he called a "booze vacation."

That decision reset both his body and his relationship with drinking, ultimately inspiring him to create Booze Vacation so other men could take a structured break, reclaim their health, and expand their professional capacity.

Clifford holds a B.S. in Nutritional Science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, has completed more than a dozen long-course triathlons, and is determined to "kick ass and take names" well into his 80s and beyond.

Key Points

• Booze breaks can upgrade your baseline

• Wearables expose alcohol's impact on health

• Breaks from alcohol can recalibrate cravings

• Sleep, fitness, and mood improve sans alcohol • Life clarity and enhanced performance without alcohol

• Clifford's Booze Vacation concept explained

Best Quotes

01:45 - 01:58

• "Yeah, in short, scratching my own itch and yeah, I don't like the term cutting. It sounds kind of, you know, negative, harsh, we, we use in term taking an extended vacation from drinking."

02:54 - 03:03

• "I had, I had got sleep apnea, which was a pretty, pretty bad about that. And yeah, just wasn't feeling my best."

05:30 - 05:49

• "I think that when I started wearing the whoop in 2019, it was probably one of the most eye-opening things that I had done because I, I've worn it consecutively for many years now, and you can tell really quickly what alcohol does to your body."

07:58 - 08:06

• "It's a kind of a lifetime lifestyle experiment. And especially men of success. I think it's important that if you make it to the mountain top, you wanna stay there and enjoy it as long as possible."

10:41 - 10:51

• "You're gonna need more, it's gonna be harder on your aging body and you're gonna find yourself continually in lowered and lower states and, and, and kicking the crap outta yourself a lot faster."