I’m in my mid-50s and reached menopause almost three years ago. Contemporaneously, I also managed to quit drinking, following years of questioning and struggle. On their own, either of these life changes is momentous and worthy of reflection. That they dovetailed so closely has given me pause to consider their relationship to one another.
A useful tool in this exploration has been the archetype of the Wise Woman(also called the Wild Woman), a metaphorical frame I use to think about this stage of my life. The Wise Woman is the third of four traditional feminine archetypes: the Maiden, Mother, Wise Woman and Crone. These archetypes are further associated with the seasons, as in Maiden (Spring), Mother (Summer) and so on. The Wise Woman is thus paired with Autumn.
When viewed through this lens, as I relinquish my youth and biological fertility, the trees outside are shedding their leaves, and the world prepares itself for Winter’s rest. This poetic take on ageing gives it a ripe, fully expressed quality that reassures me that I don’t need to fight it. The Wise Woman gently encourages the release of things that no longer serve me, while reminding me of the potent value my years of knowledge and experience hold.
The deeper I venture into my journey as a sober woman in postmenopause, the more I see how my inner Wise Woman’s guidance is supporting me in releasing alcohol from my life and reclaiming the power of my years.
As such, I have come to believe that the timing of these two transformations is far from coincidental. Experiencing them in concert has given me a new appreciation for how miraculous this type of inner guidance can be.
But first, some context.
My drinking started to bother me roughly 10 years ago. While I do not necessarily ascribe to the idea that ‘problematic’ drinking is assessed by specific frequency or amount consumed, I know it’s a detail that many of you will be curious about.
By the time I started actively trying to quit–a process that took around 5 years–I was consuming 2–3 glasses of white wine every evening. Typically a glass to ‘unwind’ after work, followed by top-ups as I was making and eating dinner. Roughly half a bottle a day, sometimes more on weekends.
It obviously did not start that way–it was a progression that took years to become intolerable–decades, even. For most of my drinking years I was just someone who enjoyed wine, good food, friends, parties, celebrations, and so on: a ‘normal’ drinker.
At some point though, wine also started showing up as a consolation for things like loneliness and frustration, which in hindsight was a red flag. I was not visibly someone with a problem; my questioning was largely internal, compounded by a deep shame that I had allowed it to get out of control.
By ‘bother me’, I mean the physical repercussions of drinking. Namely, a state of perpetual fatigue that I now recognize as a low-grade hangover. For years, this discomfort was perfectly assuaged by–you guessed it–a 6pm glass of wine to ‘take the edge off.’
What I now see is that my daily wine habit was creating the perceived ‘edge’ (tiredness, irritability, stress) that justified being ‘taken off.’ And so a vicious cycle of self-infliction and self-medication was conceived, ironically all in the name of relaxation.
Another concern was the emergence of an internal voice that increasingly justified my habit. The voice–I call it the Winer–was fastidious about keeping track of whether there was wine in the house, and reminding me when I needed to stock up. The Winer became an inevitable presence, rationalizing how I ‘deserved’ my end-of-day treat, or intoning that it would be a shame not to pair some tasty local pinot with a nice meal.
I tried to moderate/control my drinking for a few years and finally came to see its futility. It wasn’t so much that it wasn’t possible, but that it demanded so much mental energy that it rendered whatever pleasure may have been derived from my meagre 5 ounce ‘mindful’ glass of wine pointless. The exercise devolved into an irritating dispute with the Winer, their wheedling wearing me down until it had what it wanted.
Looking back, I feel like I crossed an invisible line many years ago that made going back impossible, or at least far more work than simply letting it go.
I appreciate that there is complex neuroscience and diverse theories about addiction–that it’s not as simple as the emergence of a voice in one’s head–however that’s what ended up sounding my alarm. Back to my earlier observation about how problematic drinking is not necessarily just about quantity and frequency; if you are experiencing a voice inside your head telling you to drink, I would suggest that you take a close look at your relationship with alcohol.
The final straw in all of this brings me to the crux of the menopause journey and drinking: sleep. Until I started researching alcohol’s health impacts as part of my efforts to overcome my growing dependence on it, I didn’t truly appreciate sleep and the foundational role it plays in our overall health. Sleep, my sweet friends, is a very, very big deal.
For the last couple of years before I quit for good, I fell into a pattern of waking up somewhere around 2–3am and staying awake for at least an hour or two, if not for the rest of the night. I’d had enough experience with Dry January and odd nights when I did not drink to be able to discern the difference: it was definitely the wine. Funnily enough, I would typically spend the wakeful hours worrying about my drinking.
It turns out what I’m describing is a fairly well-documented phenomenon. While alcohol–being a depressant–may help us to get to sleep, a few hours later the effect wears off as our body metabolizes it, which wakes us up. It’s related to the cycle of addiction; your body is essentially withdrawing from the booze high, and the crash wakes you up.
As frustrating as having the quantity of one’s sleep reduced is, it turns out that alcohol also compromises sleep quality. There are four stages of sleep, and alcohol messes with the latter two, N3 and REM, which are the most nourishing for our brains and overall restfulness. While the long-term impacts of alcohol-impaired sleep are still being studied, it’s clear that things like creativity, memory, and critical thinking may all be negatively impacted.
To get back to the menopause part of this, as many readers will already know all too well, sleep interruption is a classic hallmark of perimenopause (as progesterone declines) and can continues through postmenopause, if left unaddressed. In this case, it’s typically associated with hot flashes or night sweats.
Sleep issues are reported by reported by close to half of all individuals in perimenopause and postmenopause. In my case, it was a double whammy. I was waking up thanks to the booze at 3am, finally getting back to sleep a couple of hours later, only to be woken with body-soaking hot flashes.
Even with hormonal interventions the hot flashes persisted, and I was exhausted. Something had to give. There wasn’t much that I could do about menopause, so I instead decided to admit that I could no longer deal with alcohol, and got serious about getting it out of my life once and for all.
I believe it was this moment of admission that made space for the Wise Woman to get her foot in the door of my dependence. In the end, turning the corner was as simple as mentally shifting from self-delusionally wondering whether I had a problem to owning that in fact I did. As loathe as I am to use the term surrender, there is no word that better captures how this felt.
Waving the white flag to my struggle with wine counterintuitively opened up my path to sobriety. As with my belief that there is no definitive way to know whether you are in a problematic situation with drinking, I don’t believe that there is just one path to recovery. The steps I took are detailed in a series of previous essays: enjoy them here.
Following this crucial turning point, another voice began emerging during those middle of the night internal conversations. Rather than arguing with the Winer or making myself feel crappy about breaking yet another promise to slow down or quit, the new voice was kind and would stroke my sweaty brow.
Rather than telling me what I should be doing, this voice asked me how my heart was. It lovingly reminded me that I was powerful, that change was possible, and that I would be ok. It wept with me when–after 100 days of sobriety–I went back to booze on my daughter’s birthday. But it did not judge.
The voice also got curious about the possibility that life on the other side might actually be awesome, pointing me to sisterly feminist teachers. It positively vibrated with recognition when I read Kristi Coutler’s essay, Enjoli. It got me to fire up Holly Whitaker’s masterpiece, Quit Like a Woman, and promptly devour it.
On a bright April day when I knew that I was ready to quit but was dithering about committing to a date, the voice sat me down for my first online recovery meeting and whispered just try this. It was like I was befriending myself and holding my own hand. And so began my final Day One.
At the risk of sounding a bit weird, I feel like the Wise Woman showed up to do battle with the Winer. I now see her as my higher, best self who protects me like a mother wolf or bear. She knew what I needed to do, took my hand and helped me let alcohol leave my body and my life. And let it go I did, tears and all. It was like shedding a former self, and all the while she was there saying you’ve got this.
My body joined in the party, gifting me with deeply restful sleep and more light in my eyes. This is another weird observation, but it felt like my body was thanking me for removing alcohol’s toxic load by giving me more energy and clarity daily. In sobriety circles, this surreal, buzzy feeling is aptly called ‘the pink cloud.’
The thing about women when they have been kept down (or have been keeping themselves down), is that when they break free, you’d better get ready to run. Let’s just say that booze was not the only thing that I ended up letting go of as part of this process of coming back to myself.
The weeks and months since quitting have felt a bit like surfacing from a deep, murky pool. I can breathe again, and everything is increasingly clear. I have found myself possessed with sudden insight about what to do in situations that previously flummoxed me, and feel more confident in having hard conversations and setting boundaries.
As discussed earlier, we commonly say that we drink to ‘take the edge off.’ As I shared, this edge was uncomfortable and self-perpetuating. It was dull and numbing and blurred the good, sweet things along with the tedious ones. It distanced me from my presence, clarity and intuition.
Today, a very different understanding of what constitutes the edge is taking shape.
Here’s what I know now: my edge no longer needs to be taken off. It is nothing less than my undiluted truth and power, matched with that of reality. The edge is clear and shining. It no longer feels scary to me–I’m here for it. When I was drinking, it never really went away. It just got blurred for a while.
I now see myself as edgy in a luteal (the Autumnal third phase of the menstrual cycle) sense, meaning that I am a truth-teller, someone with little patience for bullshit or meaningless niceties. Want a searingly honest opinion? Ask someone in their luteal phase. Or someone in recovery. Or a Wise Woman.
Wise Women are teachers, guides and healers. Their experience is meant to be shared and consumed by those in earlier seasons. It is in this spirit that I say to my sisters still enjoying Spring and Summer, let me be a harbinger to you.
Your body and spirit likely have more years and beautiful seasons ahead. Alcohol has a way of sneaking up on you, and it can harm you whether you fall prey to addiction or not. If you choose to drink and alcohol is not a problem in your life, fabulous. Just know that this can change, so subtly that in hindsight the boundary may be imperceptible.
At the risk of sounding evangelical, I can’t over-emphasize how much I wish I had seriously curtailed or quit drinking earlier in life. Sobriety is completely different from the bleak experience that I had feared when I was still clinging to the idea that I could comfortably retain alcohol as part of my life. I feel more alive, happier and more energized. I would not trade this feeling of freedom for all the wine in the world.
Rest assured that it’s not all peace and bliss in Wise Woman land, even without alcohol. We are cyclical beings living in a linear world, after all. It has sharp corners, and we will naturally seek relief or distraction when they inevitably poke us. How do I take this edge off, when I am feeling world-weary? How can we soothe ourselves in supportive, life-giving ways that do not deplete us or put us at risk?
I would start by observing that I feel less stressed overall than I did when I was drinking–in other words, there is less edge to be taken off in the first place. That said, there are of course still times when I can light into pure fury with shockingly little provocation, or simply looking at a newspaper can reduce me to despair.
One of the most prominent features of sobriety has been the stark realization that there is no more avoiding uncomfortable or challenging things, at least with alcohol. Wine had become a way to not feel certain things. Without it, guess what?
But here’s the thing: feeling means processing. It means coming to terms. It means acceptance. It means that you deal with it, do what you need to do or say, and move on.
Dealing with whatever the Winer was trying to put off has been easier and less painful than I had feared. It has put some of my biggest fears and issues into a fresh perspective. I feel less stuck and more capable of dealing with whatever life hands me. Rather than seeking distraction, I now find the best way to feel better is to simply feel my feelings, however challenging those may be.
I have also doubled down on wellness practices like yoga and massage. Writing in particular has helped me to process my recovery in real time. Being enthusiastically ‘out’ about my sobriety has helped me to obtain support and actively resist our persistent culture of shame around addiction.
If I had told my drinking self how comforting and satisfying a hot cup of tea would be to me today, I would have curtly advised taking a very, very long walk to somewhere unpleasant. While I appreciate that non-alcoholic wine and beer may not be ideal for some folks, they have been wonderful for me, bringing a meaningful, hangover-free sparkle to occasions or punctuating the end of a workday.
I hope that I have not created the impression that this path has been easy: it has not. It has been a constant challenge, but one so very much easier than the one before.
Overall, I find asking the Wise Woman what she needs is the best medicine. Is there something that I need to speak up about? Something that needs to change or leave my life? Do I need help, or a break? Just the simple act of tuning in and listening to my inner voice is more powerful than anything. The truth is that she was there all along; only now I can hear her better.
With special thanks to my daughter Gigi for her wonderful editing support.