Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mama Mea acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on.
Speaker 1: Hey there.
Speaker 3: Before we start today's episode, I just want to say
Speaker 3: that you are going to be hearing from some wonderful
Speaker 3: Mama Mea voices over the next few weeks as I
Speaker 3: work on another project. Hollyway and wright Claire Stevens, a
Speaker 3: Nama Brown, who is the executive producer of this show,
Speaker 3: are all going to be sitting in my chair for
Speaker 3: a few weeks and doing the same wonderful interviews that
Speaker 3: you know and love from No Filter. There are some
Speaker 3: great conversations coming your way about red and green flags
Speaker 3: in relationships, sex and porn, addiction, escaping from a religious cult, narcissism, sobriety,
Speaker 3: and more. You'll be hearing from me soon.
Speaker 2: Enjoy.
Speaker 1: I went to a friend's fortieth I got really pissed
Speaker 1: and went outside for a cigarette because when I drank,
Speaker 1: I smoked, I was wearing high heels, which as a
Speaker 1: mum you don't do very often more. And I crouched
Speaker 1: down to put out my cigarette, was pissed and sway
Speaker 1: and I fell forward, but I didn't have any reflexes.
Speaker 1: And so I landed face first onto a concrete driveway
Speaker 1: and cut my lip open, cut my nose, blood everywhere,
Speaker 1: and my friend took me home and put me to bed,
Speaker 1: and I woke up the next morning to scarlet. My
Speaker 1: daughter was five at the time, standing beside my bed,
Speaker 1: and she said, Mummy, Mummy, what happened to your face?
Speaker 1: And Oh, Holly, in that moment, I just felt such shame,
Speaker 1: such disgust, such self loathing.
Speaker 2: So, Mama, Maya, you're listening to No Filter, and I'm
Speaker 2: Holly Wainwright sitting in for mea Friedman, and I am
Speaker 2: welcoming you back to regular programming. I hope that you've
Speaker 2: enjoyed our hot pod summer. But now we are off
Speaker 2: sun lounger and we are back at work. How are
Speaker 2: you going so far in twenty twenty five? Did you
Speaker 2: survive that party season, that holiday season? Did you choose
Speaker 2: a word of the year that might lead you into
Speaker 2: a sober, curious place. Perhaps you're one of the many
Speaker 2: people who chose to get through the holidays sober, or
Speaker 2: maybe you're one of the people who didn't and woke
Speaker 2: up after Christmas and New Year and all that January
Speaker 2: fun going, You know what, I really need to address
Speaker 2: my drinking wherever you might be on that spectrum from
Speaker 2: mocktail to cocktails at five, this conversation is for you
Speaker 2: because my guest is author and health and well being
Speaker 2: coach Sarah russ Batch, and she's lived it all. Sarah's
Speaker 2: written a book called Beyond Booze, How to Create a
Speaker 2: Life you Love Alcohol Free, because she has lived through
Speaker 2: her own what she describes as a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol.
Speaker 2: But she's at great pains to point out you don't
Speaker 2: have to be hitting rock bottom to question your relationship
Speaker 2: with drink. She's not a preacher, She's not all luxury
Speaker 2: about these things. She's not here to judge you or
Speaker 2: how much you are or aren't drinking. She just wants
Speaker 2: to talk to us about something that she calls gray
Speaker 2: area drinking and to let us know that if you're
Speaker 2: thinking that you would like to reconsider booze, but you
Speaker 2: don't know quite what life would be like on the
Speaker 2: other side, well, she wants to tell you that it's
Speaker 2: pretty good. Here's Sarah. Sarah, I heard that when you
Speaker 2: were drinking, so before you gave up drinking, entirely. You
Speaker 2: had rules around alcohol, and they were, I don't drink Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Speaker 2: I don't drink before five pm. I don't drink white
Speaker 2: wine on an empty stomach. Now those rules around alcohol
Speaker 2: sound very sensible to me, But you say that actually
Speaker 2: setting rules like that about alcohol can be a red flag.
Speaker 2: Tell me why.
Speaker 1: So it's really important to put this into context. And
Speaker 1: I think there are some people who have their set
Speaker 1: rules and that just those are the rules that they
Speaker 1: live by, and that's that. But I think that for
Speaker 1: a lot of people who fall into the gray area
Speaker 1: drinking category, we have rules around our drinking then, and
Speaker 1: they really really govern our thoughts around alcohol. We're thinking
Speaker 1: about it a lot, and then we often find ways
Speaker 1: to justify why we can break those rules. So I
Speaker 1: lived with this constant chatter in my head where it
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I don't drink Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, But
Speaker 1: it is Wednesday, and I am seeing my friend tonight,
Speaker 1: so at least I'm not drinking at home, So maybe
Speaker 1: I could have a drink tonight, and then I won't
Speaker 1: drink tomorrow because I'm staying home tomorrow, so I could
Speaker 1: have Thursday's drink on Wednesday. I won't drink on Thursday,
Speaker 1: and then my units are all as they should be.
Speaker 1: And there was this constant negotiation, this constant chatter, whereas
Speaker 1: people who are not gray area drinkers, they don't have
Speaker 1: that chatter, Holly, because they're just like, I fancy a
Speaker 1: drink and I'll have a drink. I don't fancy a drink,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to have a drink, And that
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 2: That is so interesting, I think, and leads us obviously
Speaker 2: to the question and the main point of a lot
Speaker 2: of your work, which is gray area drinking. So explain
Speaker 2: to me what the gray area drinker is, because obviously
Speaker 2: I think we'd all be familiar with what we problematic drinking,
Speaker 2: but where that line is, we don't know what's a
Speaker 2: gray area drinker.
Speaker 1: So a gray area drinker sits in between the space
Speaker 1: of very severe problematic drinking, so someone who has physical
Speaker 1: dependency on alcohol and needs to have medical support to
Speaker 1: withdraw from alcohol, So someone who might be a ten
Speaker 1: out of ten on a scale of one to ten
Speaker 1: and the other extreme being the one, so someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't drink, or someone who has a glass of champagne
Speaker 1: at a wedding once a year, and that's their only
Speaker 1: use of alcohol. Gray area drinking is what's in the middle.
Speaker 1: So we've passed the point of being a take it
Speaker 1: or leave it drinker, but we're not reaching or meeting
Speaker 1: the criteria for physical dependence on alcohol. We probably don't
Speaker 1: drink every single day. We can take short breaks from alcohol.
Speaker 1: We don't meet that stereotypical definition of an alcoholic that
Speaker 1: people have of Oh, if you're an alcoholic, you're drinking
Speaker 1: in the morning, you're drinking every day. You've lost your job,
Speaker 1: you've lost relationship, you've lost your home. You're sitting on
Speaker 1: a park bench drinking out of a brown paper bag
Speaker 1: all day. Gray area drinkers are in that middle. I
Speaker 1: would say about a three or a four to maybe
Speaker 1: a seven, seven and a half eight on that scale
Speaker 1: would be gray area drinkers. And Holly, it's estimated two
Speaker 1: billion people across the world sit in the gray area.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know about you, but I don't know
Speaker 1: many people that are either at the ten out of
Speaker 1: ten or the one out of ten. Most people are
Speaker 1: sitting somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 2: And that was you, right, So to get to a
Speaker 2: little bit of why this has become such a big
Speaker 2: part of your life. You can't obviously ignore your story
Speaker 2: of gray area drinking. Can you tell me a little
Speaker 2: bit about your relationship with alcohol and how it began.
Speaker 2: You and I are both originally from England, as I'm
Speaker 2: sure listeners can tell by our voices and we I
Speaker 2: think it's quite fair to say that England and with
Speaker 2: similar age, we probably both grew up in a drinking culture,
Speaker 2: right and Anglo Australia is also strong on his drinking
Speaker 2: culture and it can often feel like, well, this is
Speaker 2: just what we do. Can you tell me a bit
Speaker 2: about your experiences with alcohol?
Speaker 1: So I started drinking at fourteen. That was quite standard
Speaker 1: for where I grew up in the North of England,
Speaker 1: in Manchester.
Speaker 2: My parents I'm from Manchester too. We were probably park drinking,
Speaker 2: not that far from each other at some point.
Speaker 1: We're probably passed like one of the local roller rinks.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was my initiation into alcohol, and I
Speaker 1: think prior to that, you know, looking back, mum and
Speaker 1: dad had a very active social life. So mom and
Speaker 1: dad often had dinner parties. And I grew up in
Speaker 1: Scotland before we moved to Manchester, when I was thirteen,
Speaker 1: So there was often parties with men drunken, men in
Speaker 1: kilts wandering around my house like pissed and happy and laughing.
Speaker 1: And little Sarah grew up with this very strong, ingrained
Speaker 1: belief from a very young age that what adults do
Speaker 1: to have fun is get pissed and drink alcohol. And
Speaker 1: that was what I saw, that was what I witnessed.
Speaker 1: So for me growing up, it was never a case
Speaker 1: of if I would drink, it was when I would drink.
Speaker 1: And moving from Scotland to England at thirteen was a
Speaker 1: really difficult move to do. I had a very strong
Speaker 1: Scottish accent, I was a bit overweight, I had a
Speaker 1: terrible perm. We moved from a really standard high school
Speaker 1: where there was no uniform to a very posh all
Speaker 1: girls school where the girls were playing lacrosse and hockey,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Speaker 1: So at fourteen, when we went down the park and
Speaker 1: got pissed on our diamond white and old English cider
Speaker 1: and Tenants super or whatever we could concoct in our parents'
Speaker 1: drinks cabinets in the soda stream bottles, it was music
Speaker 1: to my ears getting drunk with other girls because it
Speaker 1: was the first time I felt like I fitted in.
Speaker 1: I started getting this positive feedback. You're so fun when
Speaker 1: you're drunk, You're hilarious when you're drunk. So when you
Speaker 1: start getting that, you start to create this identity in
Speaker 1: your mind of well, people really like me when I'm
Speaker 1: drinking party girl. I'm the person that gets the party going,
Speaker 1: and that became my identity. Then for years and years,
Speaker 1: went to university, moved to London. My first job in
Speaker 1: London was working in recruitment, where the fourth stage of
Speaker 1: the interview process was doing shots of sambuca to see
Speaker 1: how well you could handle your boots.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Right, So this was the nineteen nineties in London.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not unfamiliar to me. I was, yeah going
Speaker 2: to I mean, I don't know if the culture is
Speaker 2: still the same now, but certainly in England in the
Speaker 2: nineties and the noughdies, going to the pub after work
Speaker 2: was just a standard thing and at lunch time after
Speaker 2: and it was how you bonded. It was how you
Speaker 2: made your friends. It was the living room that you
Speaker 2: all gathered in like it was one hundred percent and
Speaker 2: alcohol focused. Experience.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and you know, we've also got to remember this
Speaker 1: was a time where there were real there was a
Speaker 1: real shift in femininity and in female girl power. We
Speaker 1: had the Spice girls, we had sex in the city.
Speaker 1: We had women kind of going, we can get paced,
Speaker 1: we can match the lad's pipe for pint down the
Speaker 1: student union. We're making our own money. We don't need
Speaker 1: a man to buy us a single drink for the night.
Speaker 1: We'll go and get wrecked with our girlfriends and have
Speaker 1: one night stands and do all the things. Because that
Speaker 1: was that era that we were living in at the time,
Speaker 1: and it was really hedonistic and in many ways it
Speaker 1: was absolutely amazing. But it was also problematic, I think,
Speaker 1: and that's why we do have a generation of now
Speaker 1: women in their forties and fifties who have developed very
Speaker 1: dysfunctional relationships with alcohol, because it was kind of ingrained
Speaker 1: in us from that age that alcohol was just a
Speaker 1: part of our life. It wasn't problematic. No one looked
Speaker 1: at you and went, oh, she's drinking a lot, because
Speaker 1: you just drank like everyone else around you. It was
Speaker 1: just very standard.
Speaker 2: When did you start to question your alcohol use?
Speaker 1: Honestly, not until my forties right.
Speaker 2: So that's a long time, right, and there's no judgment
Speaker 2: in this sentence. I'm the same. I know many people
Speaker 2: who are. So we basically start drinking in our teens
Speaker 2: early is teens, and we're drinking pretty solidly, really pregnancies off,
Speaker 2: perhaps the odd feb Fast or whatever, and then we're
Speaker 2: here in our forties and beyond, and that's when you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: and what began to make you question?
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'd always thought, oh, I'm a bigger drinker
Speaker 1: than other people, but actually saw that as a positive
Speaker 1: rather than a negative. I had a big capacity for alcohol.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel hung over the next day, lying in
Speaker 1: bed vomiting like some of my friends would be. I
Speaker 1: was like, right, come on, let's get going. I who
Speaker 1: was hair of the dog type thing. And then we
Speaker 1: moved to Australia and I had my kids some very
Speaker 1: quick succession, and that was when alcohol went from being
Speaker 1: something I did to socialize to being something I did
Speaker 1: as a self soooth it became something that was like,
Speaker 1: I was really lonely, I was really homesick. We'd moved
Speaker 1: to the other side of the world. I wasn't working
Speaker 1: for the first time in my life, and I'd got
Speaker 1: a huge sense of identity and achievement for my career
Speaker 1: in London. I was pure and carrots, I was going
Speaker 1: to Baby Ryan time. I was desperately lonely, and alcohol
Speaker 1: then became something to look forward to at that five
Speaker 1: six o'clock when it was you know, witching, how I
Speaker 1: have a glass of wine. And this coincided with mummy
Speaker 1: wine culture, you know, all of that marketing that started
Speaker 1: to happen for young mums around alcohol. And then it
Speaker 1: was after my in my early forties, I just really
Speaker 1: started to notice the impact that alcohol was having. I
Speaker 1: couldn't bounce back like I used to. Even just a
Speaker 1: couple of glasses of wine was really impacting my sleep,
Speaker 1: and I was waking at three am. I started to
Speaker 1: have really bad anxiety that I'd never had in my
Speaker 1: life before, had never been that person that had anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I remember going to my doctor and I was
Speaker 1: crying and I was a mess, and I said to her,
Speaker 1: I was shadow of myself. I don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on with me. And at no point did she say
Speaker 1: to me how much are you drinking? That the question
Speaker 1: around alcohol didn't even come up. And yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just given a prescription for anti anxiety meds and told
Speaker 1: that I was just managing a lot. There was a
Speaker 1: lot going on and these would help me.
Speaker 2: Well, there's to just put a pause in there. There
Speaker 2: was a lot going on. And it's interesting you might
Speaker 2: use the phrase mummy wine culture, and I'm sure we'll
Speaker 2: talk about that a little bit more, but to be
Speaker 2: kind to the women who've kind of fallen into that.
Speaker 2: You know, now we're very roundly dismissive of mummy wine culture,
Speaker 2: and rightly so because it's proved to be dangerous. But
Speaker 2: the world that you were just describing where you're suddenly isolated,
Speaker 2: and that happens whether you've moved to the other side
Speaker 2: of the world or not. Your life changes very suddenly.
Speaker 2: There's suddenly everything you're doing is not about you. It's
Speaker 2: about these people you're caring for. You're often on your
Speaker 2: own a lot and for a lot of people, that
Speaker 2: glass at that bad time glass of wine becomes there's
Speaker 2: mummy me and then there's grown up me, and this
Speaker 2: is the marker of it. And it feels like it's
Speaker 2: your friend, right Like, it feels like it's your friend,
Speaker 2: and it's the thing that will bond you to other
Speaker 2: people all those things, and yet as you are discovering
Speaker 2: it isn't really your friend. It's making things harder. Like
Speaker 2: what do you say to women who are at that
Speaker 2: particular moment who are like, but I, you know, I
Speaker 2: need it to get me into that who I used
Speaker 2: to be, you know, that kind of mindset.
Speaker 1: It's a really valid point, and I think that more
Speaker 1: needs to be said about the fact that the transition
Speaker 1: into becoming a mother is not talked about enough in
Speaker 1: terms of the mental side of things, where you do
Speaker 1: go from you know, if you've had a career and
Speaker 1: you've been working and you've been surrounded by your friends
Speaker 1: all the time and having complete independence and spontaneity, to
Speaker 1: suddenly having these little people that are relying on you.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if you can't say that you're struggling
Speaker 1: because everyone else out there is going it's amazing. Motherhood
Speaker 1: is the best thing ever, and of course I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's not. But it's also freaking hard, and there
Speaker 1: is so much shame that comes with feeling you're struggling
Speaker 1: because on paper, I felt like I've got everything I
Speaker 1: could ever have asked for. We've moved to Australia. I
Speaker 1: live by the ocean. I've got a boy and a girl.
Speaker 1: We are happy, and we are healthy, and I have
Speaker 1: everything on paper. So why am I not happy? Why
Speaker 1: is there something inside of me that is struggling with this?
Speaker 1: And I felt shame around that, and I've spoken to
Speaker 1: so many women who have felt the same. And that's
Speaker 1: where alcohol. Alcohol is great at making those feelings go
Speaker 1: away because it numbs us so we don't have to
Speaker 1: feel them anymore.
Speaker 2: Until maybe it becomes part of the shame. Right, So
Speaker 2: is that what happened for you at that point?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, And I say to everyone that becomes a
Speaker 1: gray area drinker. Alcohol is not the problem. For many
Speaker 1: of us. Alcohol is the solution to whatever the problem was.
Speaker 1: And for most of the women that I work with,
Speaker 1: I've got a group of twenty thousand and I asked
Speaker 1: them why do you drink? Or why did you drink?
Speaker 1: And there were three main reasons and it was awed
Speaker 1: and stress and loneliness.
Speaker 2: Right, that's so interesting. Boredom, stress and loneliness. So they're
Speaker 2: not Those are all obviously negative emotions, negative places that
Speaker 2: you want to escape from, and alcohol appears to be
Speaker 2: the key to another place where you're not stressed, bored,
Speaker 2: or lonely.
Speaker 1: Right, And so because number one for stress, alcohol in
Speaker 1: the short term gives us a depressing relaxant effect, so
Speaker 1: it minimizes that stress with boredom, and I find with
Speaker 1: boredom tends to be my ladies who have their kids
Speaker 1: have started growing up. They don't need them so much anymore,
Speaker 1: but they've given all of themselves and all of their
Speaker 1: lives to raising these kids, managing the juggle of work
Speaker 1: and home and everything. Suddenly they have all this time,
Speaker 1: but they don't know what to do with it, because
Speaker 1: they haven't focused on themselves for so long that this
Speaker 1: time is almost daunting. So they drink because they don't
Speaker 1: know what their help with hobbies are anymore, they don't
Speaker 1: know what they love doing. And loneliness because we are
Speaker 1: the most disconnected we have ever been as a human society,
Speaker 1: and alcohol nuns uncomfortable emotions, and so for all of us,
Speaker 1: alcohol was it might eventually become the problem, but initially
Speaker 1: it's the solution to whatever the problem is, and we're
Speaker 1: using it to escape that emotion. And so whenever we
Speaker 1: do come to the point of wanting to look at okay,
Speaker 1: how am I going to change my relationship with alcohol?
Speaker 1: We have to look at why we're drinking in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, So back to your story. You are, as you
Speaker 2: just described it, living this supposedly idyllic life, your relationship
Speaker 2: with alcohol. Did it escalate or did just the effects
Speaker 2: of it get more? I mean you were saying, how
Speaker 2: you are anxiety and you're going to the doctor. What
Speaker 2: happened next in terms of you beginning to put these
Speaker 2: pieces together that maybe that alcohol was the problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I wouldn't say it escalated. I went through
Speaker 1: phases where there would be significant drinking and then phases
Speaker 1: where I would cut back. But it was always there
Speaker 1: in some way. And whenever there was a day where
Speaker 1: things were really hard, there was a big stress at work,
Speaker 1: there was a problem, my husband and I had an argument,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, alcohol was always my solution. And then
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, I went to a friend's fortieth I
Speaker 1: got really pissed and went outside for a cigarette because
Speaker 1: when I drank, I smoked. I was wearing high heels,
Speaker 1: which as a mum you don't do very often anymore,
Speaker 1: and I crouched down to put out my cigarette was
Speaker 1: pissed and I fell forward, but I didn't have any reflexes,
Speaker 1: and so I landed face first onto a concrete driveway
Speaker 1: and cut my lip open, cut my nose, blood everywhere,
Speaker 1: and my friend took me home and put me to bed,
Speaker 1: and I woke up the next morning to scarlet. My
Speaker 1: daughter was five at the time, standing beside my bed,
Speaker 1: and she said, Mummy, Mummy, what happened to your face?
Speaker 1: And oh, Holly, in that moment, I just felt such shame,
Speaker 1: such disgust, such self loathing. I lied to everybody and
Speaker 1: told them that we'd been out on the boat and
Speaker 1: the boat had gone over a big wave and I'd
Speaker 1: fallen forward and landed on my face. Because I felt
Speaker 1: so ashamed that I had this drinking accident. I was
Speaker 1: forty one. I was like, what is wrong with me?
Speaker 1: And I went to the chemist to get some I said,
Speaker 1: I was like, I have to go to the school
Speaker 1: concert this week. I have to go to all these things.
Speaker 1: You have to make me look normal. So she gave
Speaker 1: me all these ibuprofen and arnaca and all these things,
Speaker 1: and then she slipped me a card for domestic violence.
Speaker 1: Oh and honestly, light it was like someone that punched
Speaker 1: me in the stomach, and I stood there and my
Speaker 1: eyes just filled with tears, which probably made her think
Speaker 1: even more that she had done the right thing.
Speaker 2: More of my conversation with Sarah respect after this shortbreak
Speaker 2: stay with us. It was like she sensed there was
Speaker 2: some shame here or some distress here, that this wasn't
Speaker 2: just an incident on the boat, but she misdiagnosed its source.
Speaker 1: So I decided there and then I'm going to do
Speaker 1: a twenty one day reset, because everyone says it takes
Speaker 1: twenty one days to break a habit, and in my mind,
Speaker 1: I just had a bad habit. I wasn't an alcoholic.
Speaker 1: I'd googled that many times and I had, you know,
Speaker 1: very happily said to myself, No, I do not fit
Speaker 1: those criteria. I'm not an alcoholic, so therefore I don't
Speaker 1: have a problem with alcohol. So it's fine.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with the statement I've heard before, which is,
Speaker 2: if you're googling am I drinking too much? Or am
Speaker 2: I an alcoholic? Then the answer is almost certainly yes.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with that statement or not?
Speaker 1: So the first one that you said, yes, if you're
Speaker 1: ever googling am I drinking too much? You're drinking too much?
Speaker 1: Do I think I was an alcoholic? I don't like
Speaker 1: that label. I don't like that term. It depends in
Speaker 1: what definition you call an alcoholic. But yes, I was
Speaker 1: definitely drinking too much.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's even used anymore, is it. It's
Speaker 2: not so it's now that you have alcohol use disorder?
Speaker 2: Is that what it's called now? And do you is
Speaker 2: there one of the reasons you don't like that term
Speaker 2: because it's stigmatizing, but also because maybe it's a bit
Speaker 2: too easy to not include yourself in it. Why do
Speaker 2: you not like that?
Speaker 1: I think it's really unhelpful because I think we've although
Speaker 1: we don't use that term anymore, and we use alcohol
Speaker 1: use disorder, as you said, and we call it mild, moderate,
Speaker 1: or severe, and severe alcohol use disorder would be the
Speaker 1: equivalent of what the old term would have been around
Speaker 1: being an alcoholic, and most people's stereotypical view of an
Speaker 1: alcoholic it's someone who drinks every day, someone who drinks
Speaker 1: in the morning, someone who's lost their home. And I
Speaker 1: didn't tick those boxes. And so because I.
Speaker 2: Didn't, vodka hidden under the sun, they've got yet.
Speaker 1: I wasn't drinking hard spirits. I wasn't Suellen from Dallas
Speaker 1: sitting around in my silk neglige a all day drinking
Speaker 1: hard liquor. I was a mum who drank a bit
Speaker 1: too much a few nights a week. I wasn't what
Speaker 1: I would have called an alcoholic. And so because I
Speaker 1: didn't give myself that label, and there was no other
Speaker 1: label that i'd heard of, because I hadn't heard of
Speaker 1: gray area drinking, I just thought, well, I'm just a
Speaker 1: social drinker, so I'm fine. Whereas that That's where I
Speaker 1: think the term gray area drinking is helpful because it
Speaker 1: gives people more like ownership of where they sit on
Speaker 1: that alcohol scale.
Speaker 2: So you going right twenty one days? So had you
Speaker 2: tried that before? Or was this the first time you
Speaker 2: decided to do a proper break other than pregnancy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I've done my breaks in pregnancy, and back
Speaker 1: in London, i'd done a couple of dry januaries, but
Speaker 1: this was my first break for quite some time. So
Speaker 1: I did twenty one days and I sailed through it
Speaker 1: like I was literally really, I think that I was
Speaker 1: so ready for change that and this is twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: There wasn't the books, the podcast, the support communities that
Speaker 1: there is now. I read Annie Grace's book This Naked Mind,
Speaker 1: and that was it. And I got to twenty one days,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe the difference, Like my anxiety much disappeared.
Speaker 1: I was sleeping eight hours. I felt really positive, I
Speaker 1: felt really energized. I was really making headway. I had
Speaker 1: my own recruitment business here in Perth, and so I
Speaker 1: got to twenty one days and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep going because I'm feeling fricking awesome.
Speaker 1: So I kept going and got to one hundred days,
Speaker 1: and do you know, in that three months, I made
Speaker 1: more money in my recruitment business than I made in
Speaker 1: the entire year the year before.
Speaker 2: Because that's amazing. So the benefits were in all areas
Speaker 2: of your life. I want to ask you about socially,
Speaker 2: but maybe we'll get to that in a while, because
Speaker 2: that's I always think that must be one of the
Speaker 2: biggest barriers. So anyway, you get to one hundred days
Speaker 2: and then I.
Speaker 1: Go, well, I can't never drink again because that would
Speaker 1: just be weird. Because I'm Sarah the party girl and
Speaker 1: I hadn't done any work on myself to think about
Speaker 1: identity shifts or anything else, which is a part of
Speaker 1: changing our relationship with alcohol. But I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: So I thought, I've done one hundred days. I clearly
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with alcohol, because if I did,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been able to just do that. Everything's fine.
Speaker 1: I've now reset. So now I'm going to be a normal,
Speaker 1: moderate drinker, and I'll just be someone that goes and
Speaker 1: has a glass of wine every now and then like
Speaker 1: other people, and everything will be good. And so that
Speaker 1: first night, I remember going out for dinner with my
Speaker 1: best friend and my husband and her husband, and I
Speaker 1: had a glass of wine and I was sat there going, oh,
Speaker 1: look at me, I am a reform drinker. I had
Speaker 1: a glass of wine, didn't want any more, felt okay,
Speaker 1: went home next day super proud of myself, and within
Speaker 1: a month I was back to drinking how I had
Speaker 1: been before. It crept up slowly. There was always another
Speaker 1: reason to justify it. Was like, as soon as I'd
Speaker 1: opened the door and inch, it flew open a mile
Speaker 1: and I was shocked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you think that's because I think we're in
Speaker 2: terms of the stories we tell ourselves about alcohol. You know,
Speaker 2: we just talked about some of them. What a problem
Speaker 2: drinker looks like? One of them is also, can you
Speaker 2: just have a couple and stop That's another one of
Speaker 2: those stories we tell ourselves. Or we say, I'm not
Speaker 2: an addictive personality. She over there definitely an addictive personality
Speaker 2: because she can't stop it too. Do you think that's true?
Speaker 2: Do you think moderation can work for some people and
Speaker 2: some people are just not built for it, or do
Speaker 2: you think moderation is another one of those kind of
Speaker 2: traps that we we fall into.
Speaker 1: Some people will always happily moderate some I've got a
Speaker 1: friend who is just a take it or leave it drinker.
Speaker 1: She's a two on that scale of one to ten.
Speaker 1: You say to her, hey, han, what can I get
Speaker 1: you from the bar? And She'll be like, do I
Speaker 1: want a whine? Or do I want a diet coke?
Speaker 1: You know, alcoholist doesn't? It just doesn't feature for her.
Speaker 1: I always say, if you've crossed the line and gone
Speaker 1: from being a take it or leave it drinker to
Speaker 1: a gray area drinker, you've then created neural pathways in
Speaker 1: your brain that associate certain things with alcohol. So when
Speaker 1: I'm stressed, I have alcohol. When I'm tired, I have alcohol.
Speaker 1: When the kids are driving me bonkers, I have alcohol.
Speaker 1: Those neural pathways don't disappear no matter how long you
Speaker 1: take off. And that was what I found, was that
Speaker 1: as soon as I'd opened that door a tiny bit,
Speaker 1: the neural pathways almost started firing up again. And then
Speaker 1: it was like, oh, you're stressed, you must have a drink.
Speaker 1: Or it's Friday, so you must have a drink. And
Speaker 1: all of those associations come back. And I have supported
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of women now, and I see it
Speaker 1: day after day after day that people think, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: taken a break, I've reset. Now I'll be able to moderate,
Speaker 1: and it often doesn't happen, don't. I can't think of
Speaker 1: anyone actually who I know who's gone from being a
Speaker 1: gray area drinker to being someone that is just a
Speaker 1: complete take it or leave it drinker.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, okay, So then at this point you're back
Speaker 2: drinking as you were before. Was it an obvious given
Speaker 2: the good experience you'd had of sobriety, Was it an
Speaker 2: obvious decision now too? I need to actually become sober.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I was in denial because and I kind
Speaker 1: of shoved away all the thoughts and all those little
Speaker 1: voices going you were so much happier when you were sober.
Speaker 1: Everything was so much better when you so But I
Speaker 1: just pushed all of that away and I just had
Speaker 1: then two years that followed of taking breaks, going back
Speaker 1: to drinking, taking breaks, going back to drinking, And finally
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, a dear friend of mine said to me,
Speaker 1: why do you keep going back to it when you
Speaker 1: always tell me that everything in your life is better
Speaker 1: without alcohol? You show you are the mum you want
Speaker 1: to be, You are the wife you want to be.
Speaker 1: You are happier, your health is better, your smashing goals
Speaker 1: at work, your mental health improves. Why are you fighting
Speaker 1: so hard to keep it in your life?
Speaker 2: That's so interesting? Why are you fighting to keep it?
Speaker 2: What was your answer?
Speaker 1: I hung up on her.
Speaker 2: Concerning conversation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, who asked you? Friend? Yeah? And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to hear it. That what she said
Speaker 1: to me never went away. And that was in the March,
Speaker 1: and I then set a date for the April, and
Speaker 1: I said I'm going to take a year off because
Speaker 1: I've never done a year before, I'd done two stints
Speaker 1: of one hundred days. I've done a few thirty days,
Speaker 1: but said I'm going to do a year. But in
Speaker 1: my heart of hearts, Holly, I knew that that would
Speaker 1: be it because she'd just put up a mirror to me,
Speaker 1: and everything she said made sense, and I had proved
Speaker 1: to myself time and time again that moderation was never
Speaker 1: going to be an option for me, so that wasn't
Speaker 1: There was no third option, So the two options were
Speaker 1: simply carry on drinking like you are, which is causing
Speaker 1: you more and more anxiety the older you get, impacting
Speaker 1: your sleep. I was at the point where even two
Speaker 1: glasses of wine, I was taking half a sleeping tablet
Speaker 1: to override the three am wake up that would come
Speaker 1: from the two glasses of wine. So you can imagine
Speaker 1: how you feel in the morning that half a bottle
Speaker 1: of wine had sleeping tablet. And then you can't show
Speaker 1: up as your best self and be the mom, the worker,
Speaker 1: the friend, the wife you want to be when you're
Speaker 1: just feeling ooh like I never felt hungover, but I
Speaker 1: just felt four or five that at ten most days, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to go back to your friend who held
Speaker 2: up the mirror, because one of the things I really
Speaker 2: would love us to dive into is kind of the
Speaker 2: social aspect of being the person who stops because you've
Speaker 2: I've heard you say that Gray Area drinkers hang out
Speaker 2: with Gray Area drinkers because we don't want that mirror
Speaker 2: held up to us necessarily. And if everybody's doing the
Speaker 2: same thing, then you don't have a problem. These are
Speaker 2: friends you know that you I'm sure you know from
Speaker 2: all different kinds of walks of life. Was it hard
Speaker 2: socially to be the person who when you're at one
Speaker 2: of your Sunday lunches or you're at a you know,
Speaker 2: one of the many social occasions that come with having
Speaker 2: families and friends and stuff. Was it hard to be
Speaker 2: the one who said, oh, no, I'll have a soda order?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Really hard, because I didn't expect no one, like
Speaker 1: everyone says, to not drink around me, Like I can't go, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not drinking, so therefore no one else is allowed to.
Speaker 1: So you kind of put on this show that it's
Speaker 1: not hard and yeah, yeah it's fine, and you feel
Speaker 1: this pressure to still pretend that everything's still the same
Speaker 1: but inside you're feeling really clunky, You're feeling really awkward,
Speaker 1: you feel a little bit paranoid, You're worried what people
Speaker 1: are thinking about You're not drinking. Am I being funny enough?
Speaker 1: Am I talking enough?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: No, I'm being really quiet. Like that doesn't happen now,
Speaker 1: by the way, But that is what it's like at
Speaker 1: the start, in.
Speaker 2: The early days. And what do you tell your women
Speaker 2: that you work with and support will help them get
Speaker 2: through that tricky bit? Because I know it seems sad
Speaker 2: to say out loud, but I just think that, given
Speaker 2: what we've talked about about the culture that we've been
Speaker 2: swimming in for thirty years, often by this point the
Speaker 2: idea of going to a Saturday lunch with the girls
Speaker 2: and not drinking, or Sunday afternoon barbecues with the kids
Speaker 2: and not drinking actually seems can seem impossible, almost, like
Speaker 2: because that's just not what we do. What's your best
Speaker 2: advice for getting through those weird early days?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I wrote a whole chapter about this in
Speaker 1: my book because it's the area that comes up time
Speaker 1: and time again. And I and my advice in my
Speaker 1: book is what I'll say to you now, as well,
Speaker 1: which is I wish I'd been more honest at the start.
Speaker 1: So I felt shame and I felt like I was
Speaker 1: letting people down by not drinking, because my story that
Speaker 1: I told myself was well, people want me to be
Speaker 1: the life and party and people expect me to always
Speaker 1: have wine in the fridge when they come to my house.
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to say to people, are my
Speaker 1: mental health really suffering? I really am not going well
Speaker 1: with alcohol, because I felt ashamed that I'd got to
Speaker 1: that point. So my line was, Oh, I just want
Speaker 1: to lose a bit of weight, but then you leave
Speaker 1: yourself open to a well have a occur and so
Speaker 1: do them because there's no calories in that, or you
Speaker 1: don't need to lose weight. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: So I probably did give myself set myself up to
Speaker 1: make it a bit harder than it needed to be.
Speaker 1: And if I was to have my time again, I
Speaker 1: would have been way more honest and open with how
Speaker 1: alcohol was impacting me from a mental health perspective with
Speaker 1: the people that I trusted and asked for their support.
Speaker 2: Did it make some of your friends uncomfortable? Absolutely, because
Speaker 2: it made them feel judged, Absolutely, and even though you
Speaker 2: weren't judging them, but that's how they it can feel,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Of course. And you know when I was drinking, I
Speaker 1: was the one that was like, oh God, what do
Speaker 1: you mean You're coming to my birthday and you're not drinking.
Speaker 1: You have to drink. There's no point you coming if
Speaker 1: you can't drink. Like I was terrible for putting that
Speaker 1: kind of pressure on people because I had a problem
Speaker 1: with alcohol. So it made me uncomfortable if someone was
Speaker 1: able to go and have fun and not drink, like
Speaker 1: I just thought they were weird and they were not
Speaker 1: my people. And so I really do not my people.
Speaker 2: That's such an interesting phrase that we using.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so it was a process that I do
Speaker 1: think that the more open and honest we can be,
Speaker 1: and then we have to be really selective with what
Speaker 1: we choose to go to. Like I had a client
Speaker 1: email me the other day and she was like, I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm ever going to have fun again. I
Speaker 1: went to a beer festival with all my friends and
Speaker 1: I actually just found everyone really irritating them or because
Speaker 1: they got the more annoying they were. I just sat
Speaker 1: there thinking, oh my god, I'm never going to have
Speaker 1: fun again, and I was like, Han, what the hell
Speaker 1: are you doing going to a beer festival if you're
Speaker 1: not drinking beer? Like, you've got to be really selective
Speaker 1: with what you do and where you go, because you
Speaker 1: can still have fun. My life is probably more fun,
Speaker 1: more adventurous, more fulfilling now than it ever was before.
Speaker 1: But you have to be selective with what you do.
Speaker 1: You can't just do what you did and not drink,
Speaker 1: because it turns out being around loads of people who
Speaker 1: are getting absolutely shitfaced and when you're still sober, laughing
Speaker 1: at things that are not funny just because you feel
Speaker 1: like you have to fit in is actually really hard
Speaker 1: work and not that much fun.
Speaker 2: And drunk people are indeed boring and annoying when you
Speaker 2: are not drunk yourself exactly. Of course, what about in
Speaker 2: your close relationships? So I've heard you say that you
Speaker 2: and your husband, for example, used to have a drink
Speaker 2: together at the end of the day, Like I assume
Speaker 2: not a binge drink, but you know, you would sit
Speaker 2: down and have a beer or a win together at
Speaker 2: the end of the day and it was an important
Speaker 2: reconnecting time. And there are moments like that that we
Speaker 2: probably lots of gray area drinkers would have in our
Speaker 2: lives where we go. You know, it's the mark between
Speaker 2: Friday and the weekend. It's the mark between summer, or
Speaker 2: it's holidays or it's whatever. How did that play out
Speaker 2: in your relationship and your intimate relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was hard, and it actually led to us
Speaker 1: being in couples therapy and going through quite a challenging
Speaker 1: time because we hadn't recognized the importance of that ritual
Speaker 1: of connection that came with him coming home and I
Speaker 1: would hear his truck pulling into the driveway and I'd
Speaker 1: be like, it's wine time, and then I would get
Speaker 1: my wine, I'd get his beer. We'd go sit outside,
Speaker 1: we'd have a drink, and we'd be like, how are you,
Speaker 1: How was your day? So when we stopped drinking, he
Speaker 1: stopped at the same time that I did. We didn't
Speaker 1: do that, but we didn't realize the importance that that
Speaker 1: ritual of connection had had just in that few minutes
Speaker 1: of having eye contact and going how are you, how
Speaker 1: was your day? And you know what it's like when
Speaker 1: you're both working. We have our own businesses. We've got
Speaker 1: two kids that seem to do every fricking sport under
Speaker 1: the sun. So every day you're going from one logistical
Speaker 1: thing to the other. And because we didn't have the
Speaker 1: alcohol is the thing that was like, oh, let's go
Speaker 1: sit down and have a drink together, we stopped doing
Speaker 1: it and we went to the couple's therapy and I
Speaker 1: remember the therapist going, do you not see what has
Speaker 1: changed with you not doing that anymore? Because it's more
Speaker 1: than just sitting down having a drink. It's a way
Speaker 1: of saying to that person you matter. To me, you're important.
Speaker 1: Let's just sit down and have a drink together and
Speaker 1: let me ask you about your day. And we'd stop
Speaker 1: doing that. So our new ritual became, you know, not
Speaker 1: quite the same as having a drink, but equally as important.
Speaker 1: Every night, after dinner, we went for a walk and
Speaker 1: on that walk, how are you, how was your day?
Speaker 1: Because just setting that time, sometimes it was five minutes,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was forty five minutes, depending on how much
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about that day. But in that
Speaker 1: process of doing that, you are saying to that other person,
Speaker 1: you're important. I want to spend a few minutes with you,
Speaker 1: even if that's all it is.
Speaker 2: So it's about it's not the alcohol. And I imagine
Speaker 2: that was probably in some of your friendships too, because
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about some friends I have that when we go,
Speaker 2: we're going to have a catch up. What that means
Speaker 2: is we're going to go and have a wine, right,
Speaker 2: And so if we don't go and have a wine, like,
Speaker 2: does the catch up happen? I guess that again, it's
Speaker 2: fine and the other thing. So it's go for a
Speaker 2: walk together, go and do something else together, exactly. And
Speaker 2: is that what you started to do with your friends?
Speaker 1: Totally? Totally so. And if they were going out and
Speaker 1: getting pissed, I was always happy to be the driver
Speaker 1: and I would be like, I'll probably stay for two
Speaker 1: hours when you all start spitting in my face and
Speaker 1: repeating yourself, I'm going home and I'll catch up with
Speaker 1: you again soon, so don't be offended if I do.
Speaker 1: And it was having the courage and the confidence to go.
Speaker 1: It's not fun for me after they pass a certain
Speaker 1: point of pissness, but because there's any judgment from me,
Speaker 1: but just that's when we're on different wavelengths completely, So
Speaker 1: I would just go home. But equally, we started doing
Speaker 1: more things and I'm quite a proactive person. So I'd
Speaker 1: be like, right, let's go to this comedy show, let's
Speaker 1: go to this theater. Who wants to comes to this
Speaker 1: yoga class with me? And I do lots of walks
Speaker 1: with girlfriends at you know, five six in the morning
Speaker 1: and put the world to rights. And so it's really
Speaker 1: really important that we maintain some form of connection with
Speaker 1: the people that really matter to us, because it can
Speaker 1: feel you can feel really isolated and really lonely when
Speaker 1: we live in such an alcohol centric society to be
Speaker 1: the person that's not drinking.
Speaker 2: The rest of my conversation with Sarah respect when we
Speaker 2: come back. You said that your husband stopped at the
Speaker 2: same time as you. Was that a deliberate thing? Did
Speaker 2: he have a similar relationship like with alcohol part of
Speaker 2: your relationship apart from the wine at night? Do you
Speaker 2: think you kind of had to stop together? Do you
Speaker 2: think it would have worked otherwise?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the question I get asked the most I
Speaker 1: get most, you know, is how do I navigate if
Speaker 1: my partner's still drinking? I mean, we met when we
Speaker 1: were twenty four, and my chat up line was do
Speaker 1: you want to come and play my drinking game? Like
Speaker 1: our life was started on.
Speaker 2: So the answer was yes, alcohol was part of your.
Speaker 1: Pace, right, And so we've grown up together. And his
Speaker 1: relationship with alcohol, in some ways was different, in some
Speaker 1: ways was the same. He had never taken breaks during
Speaker 1: those two years when I'd done one hundred days and stopped,
Speaker 1: he carried on drinking. But he was observing. And that's
Speaker 1: what I always say to my ladies is you don't
Speaker 1: have to say anything, but if anything, if you're going
Speaker 1: to say anything, you can't tell someone what to do.
Speaker 1: You can't tell them that they have to stop drinking,
Speaker 1: like it's their choice to make. But if you talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the positives you're getting from not drinking,
Speaker 1: it does impact them more than your real life. So
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh my god, I can't believe the
Speaker 1: change in my energy. I can't believe how productive I am.
Speaker 1: I can't believe how much clearer my head is. I
Speaker 1: can't believe how much happier I feel. And when you're
Speaker 1: saying all of that, they can't help but notice. And
Speaker 1: he then just got to that point, although he hadn't
Speaker 1: taken all of these different breaks, where he was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to join.
Speaker 2: You, and it's stuck for him too.
Speaker 1: He's dabbled a little bit since, but is realizing again
Speaker 1: that moderation is not that he hadn't gone through what
Speaker 1: I've gone through in those two years, and so he
Speaker 1: had got to that point of wanting to test it
Speaker 1: and then just was like, it's not worth it. Like
Speaker 1: I'm forty eight now I can't drink like I used
Speaker 1: to do. The impact and the hangovers and everything else.
Speaker 1: It's And that's what I say to everyone, is you
Speaker 1: don't have to call yourself an alcoholic to decide to
Speaker 1: stop drinking. But we can remember that in our forties
Speaker 1: and fifties, we're never going to be able to metabolize
Speaker 1: alcohol like we can in our twenties, and it's going
Speaker 1: to have way more of a trade off. And then
Speaker 1: that's where we get to that point of going is
Speaker 1: it worth it? Or have I passed that tipping point
Speaker 1: where it takes more than it's giving and it's simply
Speaker 1: not worth it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're talking in the middle of summer. It's been Christmas,
Speaker 2: it's holidays, it's a highly social time. It's often a
Speaker 2: time that women are questioning, well, people are questioning their
Speaker 2: alcohol use, even if they love it. You know, even
Speaker 2: if they don't, you get to a point where you're like,
Speaker 2: is it serving? Isn't it serving? What do you think
Speaker 2: of the questions to ask yourself about whether or not
Speaker 2: you are a gray area drinker?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a few signs. So number one, as
Speaker 1: we started this whole conversation, do I have rules around
Speaker 1: my drinking? And do I have a lot of internal
Speaker 1: chatter about my drinking? Am I constantly negotiating breaking my
Speaker 1: rules and finding ways to justify doing that? Is a
Speaker 1: sure sign that we're in that gray area.
Speaker 2: It's almost like alcohol is a character in your story,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Whereas if you didn't have
Speaker 2: any issues with it, it wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Be achter, It doesn't take up heads, would.
Speaker 2: Be a cameo. It just turns up every now and again.
Speaker 1: And yeah, exactly exactly do you find that alcohol is
Speaker 1: your go to every time you're experiencing and uncomfort motion?
Speaker 1: So is that the only thing in your toolkit? Which
Speaker 1: is what I find with most of the women I
Speaker 1: work with, is they don't have anything else. They've been
Speaker 1: using alcohol for a really, really, really long time for
Speaker 1: any kind of adversity, and that's when it can become
Speaker 1: problematic as well. Do we often drink more than we
Speaker 1: intend to? Is it always I'm just going to have
Speaker 1: one and then it usually ends up being more. Have
Speaker 1: we started to notice the negative impact of alcohol on us? So?
Speaker 1: Have we started to notice that it's causing us to
Speaker 1: wake up at two or three in the morning? Have
Speaker 1: we noticed the next day we might not feel hungover,
Speaker 1: but we might have a bit more anxiety, we might
Speaker 1: be feeling tired, we might be feeling that five out
Speaker 1: of ten. Here's another really great question. If I said
Speaker 1: to you, to any of your listeners and all of
Speaker 1: your ladies listening now, and then right today, we're going
Speaker 1: to do nighty days off booze. So from today going forward,
Speaker 1: nighty days off booze. Let's see how we go. If
Speaker 1: you're a gray area drinker, I can pretty much guarantee
Speaker 1: that there will be something that's coming up in your
Speaker 1: head as resistance, because people who are not Gray area
Speaker 1: drinkers just be like, yeah, sure, I don't know. A
Speaker 1: days off, I don't mind. But if we've got a
Speaker 1: relationship with alcohol in some way, I can't go to
Speaker 1: that wedding, I can't go to that party. I can't
Speaker 1: go on that holiday, I can't do any of those
Speaker 1: things without alcohol, then we've definitely formed some kind of
Speaker 1: either emotional dependence, social dependence, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you, because there will be lots of
Speaker 2: people listening to this who when you ask that question,
Speaker 2: have that reaction? As you say, one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why you're passionate about Gray Area drinking, as you've said
Speaker 2: several times, is that you know, we've told ourselves this
Speaker 2: story that people who have a problem look like this,
Speaker 2: and the rest of us are over here and we
Speaker 2: just like having good time, whatever it might be. You've
Speaker 2: talked about the mental health benefits of giving up alcohol,
Speaker 2: certainly for you, and the physical benefits of feeling great.
Speaker 2: Tell me about some of the risks of alcohol that
Speaker 2: we understand more now than we perhaps used to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the most alarming thing that I learned
Speaker 1: when I started researching my book and and getting very
Speaker 1: involved in this world is that women cannot metabolize alcohol
Speaker 1: in the same way as men. Women are very, very
Speaker 1: vulnerable to the health risks of alcohol because we produce
Speaker 1: less of an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenates ald H, and
Speaker 1: this is the enzyme whose job is to break down
Speaker 1: and remove alcohol from the body as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1: So women have less of this, which means we have
Speaker 1: whenever we drink more alcohol enters our bloodstream because our
Speaker 1: body can't metabolize it as effectively. This means that women
Speaker 1: are more susceptible to liver disease, heart disease, stroke, cancer,
Speaker 1: brain health issues. I interviewed and Dasett Johnson, who's an
Speaker 1: incredible health journalist from Canada who's written a book on
Speaker 1: women in alcohol. She said, alcohol related stroke happens in
Speaker 1: both men and women, but happens seven times faster in
Speaker 1: women because we cannot metabolize alcohol as effectively. So that's
Speaker 1: one situation we've got. And then the next is as
Speaker 1: women age, our levels of ALDH drop even more, plus
Speaker 1: our liver volume begins to shrink. Plus we've got perimenopause
Speaker 1: issues going on. So women and men metabolize alcohol differently anyway.
Speaker 1: And then you've got a woman in her forties and
Speaker 1: fifties who's struggling even more to metabolize alcohol. So this
Speaker 1: is why you start to see for women in this
Speaker 1: age group where they're starting to get more affected by anxiety.
Speaker 1: The next day, they're starting to get more affected by sleep.
Speaker 1: Women's risk of breast cancer related to alcohol. One in
Speaker 1: five breast cancer deaths in Australia is caused by alcohol.
Speaker 1: And people think that this is if you're drinking like
Speaker 1: Suellen and Dallas and hard liquor every day. But Hoberman
Speaker 1: did a podcast that states very clearly three units of
Speaker 1: alcohol or more per week increases your chance of developing
Speaker 1: cancer by fifteen percent. So it's not we don't have
Speaker 1: to be drinking huge, huge, huge amounts start to have
Speaker 1: the impact the negative impact on our health from alcohol.
Speaker 1: And I think that a lot has been done by
Speaker 1: the alcohol industry to try and muddy the water here,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole red wine's good for the heart,
Speaker 1: and everything that they'll try and put out there to
Speaker 1: make us think it's not damaging and.
Speaker 2: Please drink responsibly, and the number of units in a
Speaker 2: bottle and all those kind of things. From your journey
Speaker 2: and your experience and from this ever increasing knowledge, we
Speaker 2: know that younger people are drinking less than ever before.
Speaker 2: Is your general position that alcohol just shouldn't be a
Speaker 2: part of anybody's life, that that is not really a
Speaker 2: safe level and that we've kind of been a little
Speaker 2: bit exploited by the alcohol industry. Is that your general position.
Speaker 1: Yes on the exploitation, right, So yes, there there's evidence
Speaker 1: now that has come out that showed about thirty years
Speaker 1: ago the alcohol big wigs in the alcohol industry sat
Speaker 1: down to talk about how can we make more money?
Speaker 1: We are not making an money from women. How can
Speaker 1: we get women to drink more? And this was where
Speaker 1: we saw the introduction of alcopops and we saw the
Speaker 1: introduction of feminine specific marketing campaigns to get women to
Speaker 1: consume more alcohol. And it's worked.
Speaker 2: Something we would all be familiar with, right, we would
Speaker 2: all be familiar with girls lunches, bottomless brunches, rose all day.
Speaker 2: You know, it's marguerite to time, all that stuff. It's
Speaker 2: very much aimed at women.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And my position is not you must never drink.
Speaker 1: Everyone has free will. I am not advocating for prohibition
Speaker 1: and saying we should, you know, make alcohol illegal at all.
Speaker 1: What I want is for there to be more information
Speaker 1: available for women to make informed choices and decisions, and
Speaker 1: for them to be more awareness around the health impacts
Speaker 1: of alcohol, specifically to women, and for them to be
Speaker 1: more awareness and support and information out there about how
Speaker 1: to actually change your relationship with alcohol if you don't
Speaker 1: fit that criteria for ourlcoholism. Because I've even got a
Speaker 1: client who went to a medical rehab facility because she
Speaker 1: was worried about how much she was drinking and she
Speaker 1: wanted help, and she was drinking two bottles of wine
Speaker 1: at night, and she was turned away and told, you're
Speaker 1: not drinking enough to be admitted here. You just need
Speaker 1: to cut down. Now, alcohol's the fifth most addictive substance
Speaker 1: in the world. It is highly addictive. If we've passed
Speaker 1: the point of being a taker or leave it drinker,
Speaker 1: it's simply not as easy as going. You've just got
Speaker 1: to cut down, Like, we need to have more support.
Speaker 1: And there's only one of me, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do an awful lot which I do to support midlife women,
Speaker 1: but there's so much more that could be done around
Speaker 1: this area.
Speaker 2: What do you tell your kids about drinking?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an interesting one because my son's nearly fifteen,
Speaker 1: and so you know who's the age I was when
Speaker 1: I started drinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's and it's in there. It begins to be
Speaker 2: in their world.
Speaker 1: Totally and I've said to him, it doesn't bother me
Speaker 1: if you drink alcohol, because it doesn't. But he will
Speaker 1: be educated and told about the risks of alcohol in
Speaker 1: a way that I never was.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. If there are people listening to this who
Speaker 2: are like, yes, that is me, that is me, but
Speaker 2: they're like, I literally cannot imagine my life without the
Speaker 2: five o'clock glass of wine or whatever, it is a
Speaker 2: little bit about the sort of support that's out there
Speaker 2: from you and other organizations like you mentioned before, that
Speaker 2: we are now living in a world that's much more
Speaker 2: open to being sober curious as people say, and you
Speaker 2: know there's more support out there. What do you say
Speaker 2: to the woman who's like, well, yeah, I know it's
Speaker 2: a problem. I know I'm not living my best life,
Speaker 2: but I just can't imagine a world without alcohol.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I couldn't. And I think, don't go that far,
Speaker 1: don't think too far ahead, just baby steps and just
Speaker 1: go right. I'm just going to take a thirty day break,
Speaker 1: and I run women's thirty day programs throughout the year
Speaker 1: where we come into a group together. We've got women
Speaker 1: from all over the world who are doing thirty days
Speaker 1: off together because that that's what just starts us on
Speaker 1: that path of going ah, and then we can ask
Speaker 1: ourselves the questions, Okay, well is my sleep there, has
Speaker 1: my anxiety disappeared? Do I feel more positive? Have I
Speaker 1: got more energy and my calmer with my kids? Is
Speaker 1: my skin looking better? Maybe I've lost a little bit
Speaker 1: of weight. Maybe I'm going back to doing some more
Speaker 1: hobbies and I've got the exercise to go to the gym,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing all of these things. And those are
Speaker 1: the things that we can just ask ourselves to get information,
Speaker 1: because what I find is most people are just living
Speaker 1: on autopilot and their life is just passing them by,
Speaker 1: and they're never pausing to go well is this still
Speaker 1: serving me or not? And that thirty day break can
Speaker 1: just be the first starting point of going okay. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to see this as an experiment because all
Speaker 1: those things that I just said, I can guarantee you
Speaker 1: that they change in thirty days and plus so much more.
Speaker 2: This has been marvelous. I hope you really enjoyed that conversation.
Speaker 2: I did. Look, as I said to Sarah, I'm not
Speaker 2: a sober person. I do drink. I did drink over
Speaker 2: Christmas but I find it really interesting that it's becoming
Speaker 2: so much more mainstream and acceptable to question your relationship
Speaker 2: with booze, and that sobriety is coming out of being
Speaker 2: something that all, most weirdly in Australian culture we think
Speaker 2: is strange, and that this far less stigma attached now
Speaker 2: to choosing to be alcohol free. Both Australia and the
Speaker 2: UK are big drinking cultures, and when you really start
Speaker 2: to notice that, you notice it everywhere. And if you're
Speaker 2: the first in your family, or your friend group or
Speaker 2: your circle of friends to make that change, it can
Speaker 2: be daunting, isolating, and Sarah's conversation I hope will help
Speaker 2: you with that. As I say, I'm certainly not a
Speaker 2: sober person, but I know that I am much more
Speaker 2: interested in moderation now than I was in my twenties,
Speaker 2: and I find these kind of conversations like the one
Speaker 2: I've just had with Sarah it's so interesting. I hope
Speaker 2: it's been helpful for you too. And if you want
Speaker 2: to learn more about what Sarah does, links in our
Speaker 2: show notes here to tell you more about her programs
Speaker 2: and also more about her book, So go and check
Speaker 2: that out. The host and creator of No Filter is
Speaker 2: Mia Friedman. Our executive producer is Niama Brown. Our audio
Speaker 2: design and sound production is by Jacob Brown. And I've
Speaker 2: been your guest host Holly Wainwright. Cheers to you friends,
Speaker 2: whether it's shampas or sprite in your glass.