Midlife drinking….

Merriment or Mayhem?

My fave - Rosé wine in Paris

Let’s talk about alcohol and midlife women. A topic I really, really, reeeeaaallly don’t want to talk about but feel the conversation is like Cathy’s ghost in Wuthering Heights, who has been knocking on my window for quite some time, whispering “Let me in… let me in.”

I’m going to start the conversation around alcohol by stating clearly I’m not quitting alcohol. I’m letting the ghostly ghoul in to chat with her, but I have no plans to marry her. It’s a date to see how we like each other, not a life-long commitment. 

I work with women in midlife, am a woman in midlife and so I spend a fair amount of time reading about, researching and talking to midlife women.  And in this current wave of celebrating (and exploiting - menopause tea anyone??)) midlife women, we are staggering through a blizzard of information, campaigns, events, and discussions on key topics such as menopause, money, sex, careers and diet. And amid that noise there is a constant conversation around alcohol.

This is a scary subject for me. As I navigated dry January, I was really intrigued about the mind-games I had going on in my head - the idea that I’m owed a drink at the end of the week, or as comfort when I got some bad news.

So, here I am, a women in midlife, taking a very reluctant look at how alcohol plays a role in my life, because, well, I love it.  It’s been as natural a part of my life as having dinner. So I’m warily watching how many women in midlife are making the decision to cut back or cut it out. Here’s the nub: I want to have a better relationship with alcohol without making any changes. There I said it.

The why behind the wine

So I’ve just finished my second dry January.  The first one, last year happened by total accident, which is often where and how the best learnings in life come from. 

I was appearing on The Tommy Tiernan show, a big Irish TV talkshow and the recording was on the 25th January. Despite doing a bit of TV and radio, the idea of this was so terrifying, I just made the decision that until the recording from my New Year Day hangover, I’d “be good”, keep a clear head, get loads of sleep and be my absolutely best for the show.   Even writing that highlights how mad it is that we would behave in any other way. I had a clear goal, a rigid deadline and a definite driver - fear. Fear of the show, and therefore fear of not being on my absolute best form. 

Anyhoooooow.

It was totally and absolutely fine. Not a bother on me at all. Not a hankering, or a craving, not a FOMO or a FOTW (falling off the wagon.).  Yet I had repeatedly refused point blank to ever do a Dry January despite many of my pals gradually getting on that wagon.  I hate being told what to do. So things like Lent and Dry January just make we want to drink a bottle of wine and smother my face in chocolate out of principle.  (And also I wasn’t sure I’d be able to). But suddenly I had a clear why.  I recorded the show, had a glass of wine to celebrate and went on my merry way. 

Just to clarify, I don’t drink a lot. I don’t drink during the week, but I do indulge when I’m out with pals, and even, it has to be said, am alone on a Friday night after a long week. But I am conscious that when I do drink, I’m not the sort of person who sips one glass and calls it a night. It’s like a trigger in me - “whooppeee!  I’m out out and therefore in it to win it!”  There isn’t much moderation, only joy that this is “me” time. Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that having a drink was a reward for a bad day, a treat for a hard week, and a celebration of time off.  With this WHY behind the wine, it means I drank / drink with a view that I deserve it.  What’s interesting to me is those italiced words - indulge, treat, deserve, celebrate, reward.  That’s the mind games piece for me. 

Culture has played a big part in my, and I imagine most of our - relationships with drinking. Isn’t it even worth noting that when we talk about “drinking” no-one assumes you mean tea or water, or Kombucha? 

As I grew up, culturally, alcohol was as part a way of life as smoking on a plane. (My kids don’t actually believe me that that you were allowed to smoke on a plane - or a cinema).  It was as ordinary as orange juice and as pervasive as breakfast and lunch.  For most of human history, it’s just been there, along with grapes and potatoes, from which it came. 

By the time I was born into the western society of the 70’s, we had a starting-gun age from which it was legal to start poisoning ourselves. But of course, most teens don’t wait for that gun to go off, and start lashing it into themselves at a ridiculous rate much earlier. As the mum of three teenagers, it has been a bit shocking to witness the extent of the vodka consumption.

If I kick away the crutch…Do I fall over or fall into something new?

So I come to this conversation with myself as someone who loves the idea of drinking, from a culture that celebrates drinking and a curiosity about what are my options, given I am now knocking on the door of 54, and my body has decided that alcohol isn’t as kind to me as my haphazard hormones would like it to be. The fucking unfairness of it means it has taken me years to even have this conversation of curiosity with myself… why should youth get good skin AND hang-over free drinking? Surely, this is the very age - having waded through decades of parent-care, child-care, love, loss, divorce, disappointment, ageing in an age of debilitating anti-ageing propaganda, exhaustion, overwhelm and underwhelm - that we get to slurp some Sauvignon without any ill effects?!

So I’m in a place where I want to get perspective on it being a treat, find other, healthier ways to treat myself, and also find an enjoyable way to consume it without it consuming me in terms of foggy heads and soggy sweats.  I love the buzz, but hate the buzz-kill.

I often think what would happen if we decided to create a human experiment to get a rounded group of people of all ages, gender and race,  and put them on an island and start again. Given that every ancient tribe in history has used drugs or alcohol to celebrate and commiserate - from the ayahuasca ceremonies of south America to tobacco smoking native Americans - we would allow this human experiment one such state-altering item for fun. In this ideal society, I would bet my Gin collection that alcohol would not be considered, given its health risks and personality impacts, over other drugs. That with hindsight, if we started with all the facts and a blank slate, would alcohol be legal while other drugs were illegal? I wonder. 

Damp Destinations

This January, I decided to go Dry again, even though I didn’t have the same driving force. I actually did it this time because it felt so good last year. And it felt good this year too. I enjoyed waking up spritely on a Saturday.  I was in book planning mode, post-Christmas lethargy mode and really enjoyed early nights and restoring my body and mind.  

And here I am in February. I’ve decided not to be Dry but not be Wet, and find a Damp Destination in between.  As it happens, seven days in and I haven’t felt the need yet but that probably says more about my social life than my will power. I’ve decided that I won’t bother if it’s a weekend I’m at home with my girls, and the weekends they are with their dad I can, if I choose (but I’m trying to move away from it being an inevitability of a Friday and Saturday night).

I feel my relationship with alcohol right now is like my teenagers must feel being told to wear a coat going to school when it's not cool to wear a coat but they secretly know they'll be better off wearing a coat but don't want to wear a coat.

(Anyone with teenagers knows this ridiculous routine where you chase your child down the wintery street waving their coat and they pretend they don’t know you while hurtling whispered “I’m not remotely cold!” at you, even though their skin is blue. Sigh).

Everywhere I look, there are more women saying they’re stopping or slowing down. It comes up at every menopause event I’m at, and my scrolling script is full of either funny drinking Mum memes or sober curious content - perhaps an indication of our complex relationship with drinking. 

So as I traverse this conversation with myself, I recently interviewed alcohol coach Esther Nagle for my Midlife Musings series and I asked her for some tips to help me navigate the change in my mindset around drinking from being “I have to” (because it’s Friday, I’m bored, I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m out, I’m staying in, I’m on holiday therefore drinking at lunch is a must etc) to “I want to” because it’s on my terms.  They all really resonated with me and helped me have agency over my alcohol decisions.

Esther’s tips:

1. Get clear on the purpose behind your choice. What are you hoping to get from changing your drinking habits. Instead of going into this thinking 'I have to cut back/stop', think about what you will gain from it, and keep that in mind when you make your decisions.

2. Take time to notice the difference in how you feel when you do and don't drink. Notice what it does to your mind and body as you're drinking, the following day, and the couple of days after. And notice how different you feel when you don't drink. And celebrate what feels good. Really celebrate it, make it glow in your mind

3. Giving yourself a reason to make a different choice is really helpful. Not drinking because you want to be able to give yourself the gift of an early night or early morning yoga is a profound kindness to present and future you. Continuing to see it as a gift will reinforce the positives behind the choice you make. I started doing this long before I stopped drinking when I started hiking, and would stay sober on Friday nights so I could go hiking early the next day.  

4. As you're not sure you want to stop completely, remember that it's always a choice you can make at any moment, Even if you want a glass of wine at 8pm, you don't have to drink it all if you change your mind. Because you’re focusing on developing that ability to make a conscious choice, remember that you're not tied to your choice one way or another. 

5. Be kind to yourself in it all

Thanks Esther! So as I enter Damp February (I really must stop saying damp), I’d love to know your thoughts on where you are on the conversation with yourself?   Are you affected by alcohol more?  Are you curious about changing habits? Are you happy as you are, thanks very much?  I’d love to hear your thoughts so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

And please take a moment to like and share if you enjoyed it!

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I am really excited to be launching my 6 week Happier Habits Programme starting on the 19th February, where I’ll be giving practical and powerful tools to develop long-lasting healthier and happier habits, create a plan for running your life rather than be run down by it, and get the confidence and clarity to live with an empowered midlife mindset. All the details are here. If you are a paid subscriber, message me and I’ll give you a discount code!