It’s Not All A Bed of Roses (& That’s OK)
Prefer to listen? Find ep. 103 wherever you get your podcasts.
Everyone talks about the clearer skin, the deep sleep and the blissful weekends. About becoming the type of present and attentive parent that would put Mary Poppins out to pasture. But unsurprisingly, that’s only half the picture when it comes to making choices to drink less in midlife (or at any time, for that matter).
After years of helping people explore their relationship with alcohol, I’ve noticed certain truths that consistently catch people off guard.
Not the Instagram-worthy benefits you’ll see plastered across wellness feeds. The real, sometimes uncomfortable realities that come with changing how you drink when you’re 40, 50 or 60-something years old, with a mortgage, kids, and a properly established life that just won’t stop pulling you in twelve different directions all at once.
1. It’s Not Really About the Alcohol
Yes, alcohol has physical and emotional effects that we are trying to mitigate.
But changing how you drink isn’t just about the booze—it’s about you.
Two simple yet important questions you’ll face:
- What do you wish your evenings, weekends or social time looked and felt like?
- Is alcohol helping or holding you back from that vision? How?
(BTW: Understanding the answer to Q2 will help you achieve the answer to Q1)
The shift to moderation is as much mental as it is physical. You’ll get the chance to understand your motivations, redefine what a night out means to you, and consider who you actually enjoy spending time with.
You’ll start to see where your drinking has become habitual, rather than driven by desire.
It’s a mindset shift, not just a menu change.
2. The Adjustment Period Is Real (And Uncomfortable)
Just because you decide on Tuesday to make a change doesn’t mean everything’s hunky-dory by Wednesday.
These things take time. And whilst changes are happening, it might not be as comfortable as you’d like.
Your sleep will almost definitely be disrupted initially.
Alcohol might help you fall asleep quicker, but it impacts the quality of deep sleep and REM sleep your body needs for restoration, which can leave you feeling tired and potentially cranky or anxious during the day.
You might experience mood swings, headaches, and fatigue as your brain chemistry rewires itself.
These negative impacts will only last for a short while (depending on how much you were drinking previously and how much you’ve reduced your intake by); the key is not to judge your entire alcohol-free drinking experience on those first few challenging weeks.
3. Your Social Interactions Will Shift
This one’s unavoidable. Changing your drinking habits affects your relationships—romantic, platonic, and professional. Your choice to drink differently impacts other people, and pretending it doesn’t is naive.
While you don’t have to justify your choices to anyone, clear communication with the people who matter most is essential.
Whether it’s your partner questioning changes to your relationship dynamic or friends reassessing their role in your social group, adjustments will be made on both sides.
People close to you might be supportive but still have questions. They may also be confused, defensive, or simply curious.
You might discover that some friendships were purely based on the booze, and while that’s an uncomfortable realisation, it’s also somewhat freeing.
On the plus side, real friends will stick by you, and they will find ways to support you in your choices. Some may even start examining their own relationship with alcohol once you open the conversation, and this is where you can give them back some of that support you needed first.
4. You’re Not the Only One
Despite feeling like “the only sober in the village” on a night out, I promise you, you’re absolutely not.
Midlife is full of people privately questioning their drinking habits.
The low-no market is growing at a rate of knots. It is worth billions, and you can’t have a multi-billion-dollar industry without masses of people buying into it.
Tom Holland’s Bero is one of the best celebrity alc-free beer brands available*
From celebrities like Tom Holland (your friendly neighbourhood, alcohol-free beer-brewing Spider-Man) to the parents you kind of say hello to on the school run, more people are reconsidering their relationship with alcohol than you might realise.
Restaurants and bars are investing heavily in alcohol-free consultants, and workplace culture is shifting away from just throwing a credit card behind a bar as the only form of staff appreciation.
You’re not alone—and finding voices, communities and spaces (a bit like this one) who get it can make all the difference to your journey.
This seems like a good time to remind you to subscribe.
5. Prepare for Some Serious Self-Reflection
Removing or reducing your alcohol intake is going to give you a lot of time and a lot of space to do a lot of self-reflection.
For many of us, alcohol has been a regular part of life since our teens. Without it, you’ll experience a clarity that might be both enlightening and confronting.
I have known myself better in these last few years of reducing my alcohol consumption than I have ever known myself in my 20s or 30s. I have more clarity, more confidence, more energy (sometimes), and more capacity to actually create the life I want.
Yes, it came with confronting some of my past actions I may not be particularly proud of—but it also comes with power and purpose.
I want that for you, too.
Week 1 of the Reset gives that self-reflection some structure, so you can get honest about what alcohol is doing in your life now and what you actually want to change.
6. It Doesn’t Have to Be All or Nothing
Despite what social media might suggest, you do not have to make a lifelong decision to never touch a drop of alcohol again just because, for the time being, you might be considering taking a sober curious, mindful or flexible drinking path.
You might choose to moderate passively or actively, drink more mindfully, or coast with mid-strength drinks throughout an evening. You could alternate between full-strength and AF with zebra striping or bookend your evenings with low/no drinks at the start and end, with just a couple of full-strength drinks in the middle.
Progress isn’t always linear, and you’re allowed to make your own rules and change your mind in either direction whenever it serves you best.
I’ve never sworn off alcohol for life. I just never want another hangover. That’s my line in the sand. What yours looks like is entirely up to you.
7. Your Relationship with Alcohol Will Fundamentally Change
The more you explore low, no and light alcohol options, the more your palate changes. Alcohol acts as a numbing agent in the mouth. As your taste receptors regenerate over the weeks, you become more sensitive to flavours in a way that was lost to you before.
When you do have full-strength drinks, you’ll notice the alcohol tastes more boozy and burns more intensely. You’ll need fewer drinks to feel tipsy, and the appeal of getting drunk starts to diminish when you’ve realised that you can experience enjoyable nights without paying for them the next morning.
Over time, the ritual (glass in hand, the pop of a cork, the clink of a cheers: the experience) becomes more meaningful than the buzz itself.
The Extra Bit: Be Careful Who You Listen To
Finally, be careful whose advice you follow. The triggers that impact you, the choices that lead you, are different for people in midlife than they are for a lot of the ‘influencers’ that you will see on social media.
When you’re in midlife with established responsibilities, your stresses and triggers around drinking are vastly different from those of someone in their twenties still trying to figure out their identity.
And that’s fine; life is supposed to look different in different seasons.
But dealing with parenting, a high-pressure career, ageing parents, and maintaining long-term relationships all while coping with pension plans, mortgage payments, finding a dinner that they’ll both eat without complaining or sourcing the money to help with uni fees is not something a 22-year-old, with their own set of unique challenges, can fully relate to.
You need guidance from people whose lives look similar to yours.
The reality is that changing your drinking habits in midlife isn’t just about swapping one beverage for another – it’s about recognising that time is precious and making conscious choices about how you want to spend it.
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