Three years ago I realised I needed to leave my husband. I wasn’t in love, I was miserable, and the sheer effort of putting on the daily performance of being one half of a happy couple was exhausting me.
Every night I sat in the front room watching TV whilst he sat in the back of the house watching another TV. I had nothing left to say to him, but didn’t yet have the words to tell anybody else what I was feeling. I was lonely and I needed a friend.
I found that friend in a nice supermarket bottle of Pinot Blush.
Now the thing I was very proud of was that I knew lots of women who were also reliant on their good friend Vin Rouge; but I was better than them. You see I only needed one glass to take the edge off my worried anxious mind. It had to be a huge glass which took up almost half the bottle; but still. If the liquid fitted into the glass, I could tell myself, and anybody else who asked, that I only had a glass a night.
My nightly catch-up with my good friend Blush was something I looked forward to immensely. It was my reward for getting through another day parenting my three gorgeous high-octane crazy kids. It was my relief from the fast-flowing river of anxious thoughts that pelted through my brain all day. I needed it. I deserved it.
Like lots of women my drinking had increased dramatically during the Covid pandemic. What had been a treat a few times a week now had become something which featured every day. The natural break between a day spent at home with my kids, and the night-time which would again be spent at home with my kids. It was something to do, for want of a better excuse.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh produced a study this year, the results of which probably don’t come as a huge surprise. They show that middle-aged women were the demographic who were hit hardest by drinking alcohol during the pandemic. Whilst alcohol-related deaths are still more common in men; incidences of liver disease and alcohol-related hospital admissions soared for US women in middle-age during the pandemic and in the year that followed.
It’s a similar picture in the UK. Research has shown that the person who was more likely to be drinking increased amounts due to the pandemic was female, with a high income and a higher level of education. The reason for the increase was stress of varying forms. Stress about contracting the illness, stress about finances, stress about home life and the future.
It’s true, it was an incredibly stressful time. Whereas in normal life we’d probably connect with friends and family, in Covid times we were incredibly isolated. And drinking became our medicine, our distraction, our soother. And it wasn’t permanent was it? This is what we told ourselves. It was just to get us through this rough time, and then we’d get a grip of it as soon as life returned to normal.
And maybe for some people that was the case. But for me, I went straight out of the pandemic and into separation, divorce, court proceedings and a house move. Now was not the time to take away my crutch, my reliable old friend Pinot Blush. And so over the next three years, with a mammoth glass of wine in my hands almost every single day, and a binge drink into obliteration every weekend… those words became my mantra: “I’m going through a very difficult time but I’m going to cut down the booze when life calms down.”
A couple of months ago, my best friend came up to visit me and this sparked the beginning of a change for me and my relationship with alcohol.
Siri looked really well, despite having had a really tough year this year. She confessed to me that it wasn’t Botox, but that her skin was now much improved and she put it down to a big reduction in the amount she was drinking.
Sure, I wanted in on the clear skin and the dropping of a few pounds around the waistline; but I needed a stronger reason than that. Behavioural change scientists will tell you that ‘finding your why’ is key in making a change and sticking to it in any area of your life.
It was already niggling at me that I knew I was drinking way too much, but I told myself because I worked out four or five times a week, ate relatively healthily and had never smoked or done drugs; I was actually going to be fine and it all balanced out. A recent course I’d been on at work had put the frighteners on me a little bit recently, but surely those government guidelines were just a bit over the top weren’t they? I mean, they’re for the average person, not someone who was pretty fit, like me.
I asked Siri why she’d cut down so much and she told me about a book she’d read recently by a leading professor in alcohol called David Nutt. It was imaginatively titled ‘Drink’. She said learning about what every drink was actually doing to her body, had changed ventirely the way she viewed alcohol. On her recommendation, before I ordered a copy, I began listening to several podcasts he featured on.
Finding my ‘Why?’ turned out to be relatively easy when I finally stopped hiding from the truth and learned what my levels of alcohol consumption would be doing to my body and my health. Being brutally honest with myself I soaked up (no pun intended) as much information as I could over a few days, then I entered my drinking breakdown into an NHS calculator. The results were upsetting but not surprising. I was hugely increasing my risk of cancers, of heart disease and of mental health problems. Alcohol is after all, a depressant, and why, now that my life was finally looking really positive again; was I consuming something which over time might lead to me feeling depressed again?
My ‘Why?’ is ultimately my children As a single parent I bear all of the responsibility for these three precious souls of mine. I didn’t want to one day have to tell them I was ill, and wonder whether actually I had brought it on myself. My resolve to make some serious changes was immediate and strong.
Now I’m not claiming I’m a tee-totaller these days, and I’m only six weeks into this new healthier version of myself, with Christmas, the booziest time of the year on the horizon. But I have to say I’ve surprised myself by how reducing alcohol is making me feel.
It helps massively that my partner agreed to do it with me as he also had concerns that he was drinking too much. We’ve put some rules in place around not drinking Monday-Thursday and not drinking back at home after we’ve been to a restaurant or a bar already in the evening. We are each others cheerleader and that’s a huge help on the days when you’re stressed up to the eyeballs and feel tempted to ‘just have one,’
I’ve noticed a difference in my sleep already, and also in my general anxiety levels. In fact when I do have a drink at the weekend, seeing the stark detrimental difference it has on sleep and anxiety, makes me want to drink even less even on the days I’m ‘allowed’. I love waking up hangover-free and without that jittery feeling which had just become the norm for me.
There’s a huge perception isn’t there that people who don’t drink much, or at all, are a bit boring. I’ve definitely been guilty of ‘beer-bullying’ in the past; questioning people as to why they’re not drinking and cajoling them into having ‘just the one’.
It’s bizarre now to feel I’m almost coming full circle, and this festive season I might be the one being asked why I’ve taken the car and have an Appletizer in my hand. I’ve found that making excuses about not wanting a hangover or having an early start or being skint, just delay the inevitable. In future if I’m asked why I’m not drinking it’s time I was honest and told them the truth… That although I wasn’t drink-driving, turning up to work trollied or passing out hammered in front of my kids, I was definitely reliant on alcohol; and I’ve taken the decision to get a hold of it, reduce my consumption and prioritise my health, for the sake of my children.
Who’s going to be able to argue with that for a ‘Why?’
// Sarah Lawton
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