Total Health in Midlife Episode #223: Midlife, Anxiety, & Alcohol

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night, heart racing, mind spinning, and had no idea why? Or maybe you started noticing this low level anxiety creeping in during the day. This feeling like something is off, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You’ve probably blamed it on stress, hormones, or maybe even just getting older.

But what if the real culprit is something that you never thought to question. What if the thing that you believe is helping you to relax that glass of wine at the end of the day or the cocktail with friends is actually making your anxiety worse?

I’m not here to tell you to quit drinking. But I am here to tell you what I wish I had known years ago that alcohol doesn’t just take the edge off. It also quietly adds to our stress. It disrupts our sleep. It triggers your stress hormones. And it keeps you stuck in a cycle that you might not even realize that you’re in. The best part, you don’t even have to give it up completely to start feeling better.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing my own experience, what the research says about alcohol and anxiety, and the small shifts that you can make that make a huge difference. If you’ve ever wondered why, you feel so anxious for absolutely no reason, you need to hear this. So, stick with me.

Welcome to Total Health and Midlife, the podcast for women embracing the pivotal transformation from the daily grind to the dawn of a new chapter. I’m Elizabeth, your host and fellow traveler on this journey.

As a Life and Health Coach, I am intimately familiar with the changes and challenges we face during this stage. Shifting careers, changing relationships, our new bodies, and redefining goals and needs as we start to look to the future and ask, what do I want?

In this podcast, we’ll explore physical, mental, and emotional wellness, offering insights and strategies to achieve optimal health through these transformative years.

Yes, it’s totally possible.

Join me in this amazing journey of body, mind, and spirit, where we’re not just improving our health, but transforming our entire lives.

Hey everyone, thank you for tuning into the Total Health and Midlife podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman. So, let’s talk about something that so many of us experience, but we don’t always connect the dots with, ‘anxiety.’ It seems to show up out of nowhere in midlife, right? Like one day, you’re handling things just fine, and then the next, it feels like we’re constantly on edge. That we’re waking up in the middle of the night and we’re completely freaked out.

Maybe your heart races when you wake up at 3:00 AM for seemingly no reason. Or maybe you feel this low level buzz of worry, running through the background of your entire day. Or maybe you start questioning why things that never used to bother you suddenly feel completely overwhelming.

Now, if that sounds familiar. First, you’re not alone. I’ve been there too. And like most women, you’ve probably blamed it on your hormones stress, or just getting older, which nothing wrong with that. But what if there’s something else that’s contributing to it? Something that we’ve all been told actually helps with stress.

Yeah, alcohol. I know, Mommy Juice. We’ve grown up in a world where drinking is everywhere. It’s how we bond with our partners. It’s how we connect with our girlfriends. It’s how we celebrate birthdays, promotions, weddings. It’s how we we’re taught that we were going to be an adult. Basically, everything. And if you don’t drink, people want to know, well, why don’t you drink? As if not drinking is the strange thing.

So, if you feel a little resistance to the idea that alcohol could be making your anxiety worse. First, I get it. Don’t get defensive, just keep an open mind with this podcast episode. Because I’ve been there. I didn’t want to see it either. That’s why this episode isn’t about convincing you to quit drinking.

It’s about awareness. I want to give you some information and you get to make the decisions. Because like many things in health, there’s a huge space between going alcohol free and staying exactly where you are. There’s a big range in there. There’s a lot of gray.

I’m going to share what the research says about how alcohol affects anxiety, how it messes with your brain chemistry, spikes your stress hormones, and wrecks your sleep. But I’ll also share my own personal experience, how I used to wake up with really big anxiety, assuming it was just menopause. And then, what happened when I changed my relationship with alcohol a few years ago?

And then, here’s the good news. You don’t have to quit drinking entirely to see a difference, even small shifts. Just cutting back a little bit can add up to actually really big results. So, if you’ve ever wondered why, you feel anxious for absolutely no reason or why your sleep has gotten worse, I want to invite you to stick with me in this episode.

Again, this isn’t about judgment. It’s about giving you all of the information that you need so that you can make your own decisions about what’s right for you, on your terms, and in your own time. So, let’s get started.

First, for years, my drinking looked like what most people would consider normal. At least, I did. I’d have a couple glasses of wine while making dinner, a cocktail on a Friday night, a few drinks at a party. It wasn’t what I thought was excessive. I wasn’t blacking out or losing control. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that normal doesn’t mean harmless.

I was probably drinking two to four drinks a night, four to five nights a week. Not every night, but often enough that it was part of my routine. And every so often, I’d wake up at two to three in the morning just when I was starting to move into the perimenopause years, where my heart was pounding. I would be wide awake, and I would be drowning in anxiety in the middle of the night.

I’d just lay there, staring at the ceiling and my brain would be spinning with absolutely everything that I hadn’t done, things that I had absolutely no control over, especially at three o’clock in the morning. And irrational fears that felt so incredibly real in the middle of the night.

Now, I chalked it up to menopause stress, or maybe even just getting older, and it never really occurred to me that alcohol could be playing a role in this habit that I was creating. After all, wine was supposed to help us unwind, right? But then something happened that changed everything.

One of my clients who, like me, was experiencing weird, unexplained anxiety started researching her own relationship with alcohol. She wasn’t a heavy drinker, but she wanted to understand if it was affecting her in ways that she hadn’t noticed. So, her curiosity, led me to get curious with my relationship with alcohol.

And so, I picked up the 30 day Alcohol Experiment by Annie Grace. And that’s when I started to see just how deep the cultural messaging around alcohol really and truly is. Once I started paying attention, I started noticing it completely everywhere.

Alcohol showed up in TV shows where women bonded over bottles of wine after a stressful day. Or commercials that make drinking look like self-care. The casual jokes about needing a drink to deal with life. It was so ingrained that I had never even questioned it. But it made me start to question it.

So, I decided to try something different. I wasn’t ready to quit completely, but I wanted to see what would happen if I cut back. I started to think about what did I want my relationship with alcohol to look like. And the changes were immediate. Immediately, my sleep improved. My anxiety wasn’t gone completely, but it was manageable. And in the morning, I used to feel that heavy, panic feeling of stress that actually started to feel lighter.

Now, even though I drink far less than I used to, I notice that even one or two drinks can still trigger those anxious wake up in the middle of the night. So, I’m exploring what it would look like to cut back even more. Not because I have to, but because I like how I feel when I don’t have anxiety, right?

So, most of society considers alcohol to be a stress reliever. It’s a way to take the edge off after a long day. And in the moment, it does feel like it works. That’s because alcohol boosts dopamine. The brains feel good chemical. And it increases Gaba, the neurotransmitter that helps to calm your nervous system. That first sip sends a wave of relaxation through your body. You exhale. You just feel lighter.

But then what happens next, is where things start to backfire. After that first drink, as the alcohol wears off, your dopamine starts to crash, and your brain tries to compensate, and it reduces GABA and increases glutamate, which is an excitatory neurotransmitter.

So, this makes you feel restless, wired, and anxious. It’s why so many women, myself included, wake up in the middle of the night with a racing heart, feeling panicked for absolutely no reason. And that’s just the beginning.

Alcohol also messes with cortisol. Your body’s primary stress hormone. Normally, cortisol follows a rhythm. It rises in the morning to help wake you up, and then it falls at night to help you relax. But alcohol throws that cycle completely out of kilter.

Instead of calming your body, it actually spikes cortisol even higher than what’s released during normal stress. So, while your brain thinks you’re relaxing, your nervous system is getting the signal to stay on high alert.

Now, over time, this keeps your body in a constant low level state of stress. And for women in midlife, who are already dealing with shifting hormones, life changes and increased stressors. This only makes things worse.

A lot of women drink at night because they think it helps them fall asleep. And technically, it does. You might kunk out a little bit faster. But the quality of your sleep is going to be pretty bad. Alcohol suppresses REM sleep; the deep restorative sleeps your brain needs in order to regulate emotions and process stress.

Instead, it keeps you in a lighter, more fragmented sleep state, which makes you more likely to wake up during the night. So, have you ever noticed how after a couple drinks, you might wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 AM feeling anxious and restless? That’s because your body metabolizes the alcohol, and it triggers a stress response. And then, that stress response releases adrenaline and cortisol.

And poor sleep isn’t just about feeling groggy. It directly impacts your mood, your emotional resilience, and your ability to handle stress. When your sleep deprived, your brain becomes more reactive to stress. Your ability to regulate emotions decreases, and you’re more prone to feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or irritable.

So, the drink you had to relax actually made you more vulnerable to anxiety the following day. What’s even more frustrating is that alcohol affects women differently than men.

Women metabolize alcohol more slowly, meaning that it stays in our system longer and has a stronger effect on our brains and hormones. Our hormonal shifts in midlife make us more sensitive to alcohol’s impact. Especially, on sleep, anxiety, and mood.

Research shows that women in midlife are drinking more than ever. Just as our bodies are becoming less tolerant to alcohol’s effects. And yet, we are still being told that a drink is the best way to relax. The reality is it keeps us stuck in a cycle of stress, poor sleep, and increasing anxiety. And the most powerful thing that you can do is start paying attention to how it affects you.

Now, if you’ve ever woken up feeling anxious after night of having a few drinks, let me tell you, it’s not just in your head. You didn’t imagine it. You didn’t do anything wrong. And it’s not just your hormones or the stress of midlife catching up with you.

Now, I didn’t make the connection at first either. I thought my anxiety was just part of getting older, a side effect of menopause, or maybe just a bad night of sleep. But when I started paying attention, I noticed the pattern.

The nights I drank, even if I had a glass or two of wine, were followed by mornings where I woke up feeling just off, heavy. Not hungover, just not quite right. My heart would beat a little bit faster, and I’d have this low level just buzz of anxiety running under everything that I did. It wasn’t a full blown panic attack, but it was just enough to make me feel unsettled. I wasn’t calm like I normally am.

And that’s when I started to make the connection. The very thing that I was using to relax on the weekends with my partner was actually the thing keeping me stuck in a cycle of stress.

Alcohol gave me relief for a couple of hours, but it stole my peace the next day. It disrupted my sleep, it triggered my stress hormones, and instead of actually reducing my anxiety, it was actually making it worse. But here’s the part that I really struggled with. I didn’t want to quit drinking. And so, I kind of had to figure out, how do I not have to?

Instead, I started experimenting. So, I have this framework that I use with my clients, it’s called ‘Decide ahead of Time.’ And we use it when we’re trying to improve our habits for eating, or exercise, or whatever.

So, I decided to use that same framework for myself in my relationship with alcohol. I decided, when I was going to drink alcohol, how much, and what I wanted my experience to be while I was drinking my alcohol.

And I started checking in with myself in the morning after and really paying attention to how I felt. Was my sleep disrupted? Did I feel more anxious? Was it worth it? And so, over time, I started drinking less. Not because I forced myself to, but because I liked how I felt when I wasn’t drinking as much.

I went from drinking most nights of the week to only a couple times a week. And also reducing the number of drinks that I had within those times that I would have alcohol. And then, I started noticing that even just one or two drinks could leave me waking up anxious.

So now I’m re. Fuck.

Okay, let me try that again. Starting at the beginning of that paragraph.

So, instead I started experimenting. I used my decide ahead of time framework, and it’s the same one that I use with my clients where I made a plan before I drank alcohol, instead of just going with the moment and seeing where the night took me.

I decided ahead of time when I was going to drink alcohol. How much. What I was going to drink? And then, also how I wanted to experience the evening, how I wanted alcohol to be a part of that.

And so, I started checking in with myself the morning after I would drink alcohol. And really paying attention to how I felt, how was I feeling? Was my sleep disrupted? Did I feel more anxious? Was it worth the alcohol? Like was the payoff worth it?

And so, over time I started drinking less and less. And not because I was forcing myself to drink less, but rather because of, I liked the way I felt when I wasn’t drinking. I went from drinking most nights of the week to drinking only a couple times. Now, probably just twice a week. And on those nights that I do drink alcohol, I drink significantly less.

Now, I’m someone that doesn’t really get hangovers, and so it’s this other type of anxiety that I just don’t want in my life. And that’s what I want you to take from this. You don’t have to give up alcohol completely to change how it affects you. You just want to start noticing. Paying attention to what your body is telling you. Because when you do, the choice about what’s right for you will become a whole lot clearer.

You don’t have to do anything today. You don’t have to make any decisions right now. You don’t have to change your habits, but what you can do is start paying attention, start connecting the dots. Because that’s how every meaningful change starts. Not with this huge, big declaration, but with the quiet moments of awareness.

When I was drinking most nights of the week, I wasn’t ready to stop. I wasn’t even ready to consider stopping. I had a long list of reasons why I didn’t want to change. I liked the ritual of pouring a glass of wine while I cooked dinner. I liked drinking wine with my partner. I liked how it marked the transition between work and the evening. Relaxation. I liked having a drink when I went out with friends.

And honestly, I didn’t want to be that person who didn’t drink. It felt like part of my identity. And I wasn’t ready to let it go, until the day that I was. Not all at once, and again, not overnight, but little by little. I started questioning the role that alcohol played in my life, and the way I did it. The way I helped my clients do it is really super simple.

So, first, I made two lists. On one side, I wrote down every reason that I wanted to keep drinking. The comfort, the social aspect, the enjoyment. I didn’t filter myself or judge my reasons. I just wrote them all down.

Now, on the other side, I listed every reason that I was thinking about cutting back. How would that benefit me? And the anxious wake up, the restless sleep, the sluggish mornings, the way I sometimes felt when I needed. I felt like I needed a drink to unwind instead of just wanting one.

And then, I looked at my lists. I went through each reason one by one, and I asked myself, “do I like this reason? Does this align with the person that I want to be in the future?” That’s it. No pressure, no right or wrong answer. Just an honest evaluation of what actually served me and who I wanted to be in this world.

And for a long time, I really liked my reasons for drinking more than I liked my reasons for stopping. But eventually, that started to shift. The things that used to feel important fitting in, keeping up with the old habits. The identity that I had built around the alcohol, that started to feel less important.

And the things that once felt like a sacrifice, like better sleep, less anxiety, waking up feeling clearheaded. They started to feel more like a gift to myself. And that’s what I want for you. Not to feel like you have to change, but to get really clear on what actually makes you feel good. To stop following the default unquestioned habits that our culture hands us and start making choices that genuinely serve you.

The goal isn’t to give up something that you love. It’s to figure out whether it’s really adding to your life or quietly taking something away. And only you get to decide that.

Now, your stress isn’t going to go anywhere. Life will always throw things at us. Work, family responsibilities, the unexpected. And for so many of us, alcohol has been the thing that we’ve turned to for relief. It’s the pause button, the deep breath, the thing that helps us transition from stress to relaxation.

But what if you could actually feel better every single day without needing it? What if you woke up with steady energy, a clear mind, and without that anxious undercurrent running through your mornings? What if you didn’t have to rely on a drink to wind down at the end of the day because you already felt calm?

That’s actually possible. And you don’t have to go all in or quit drinking to get there. Coming up with your lists, the reasons to keep drinking, the reasons to cut back is just the first step. I have a whole framework that I use with my clients for any habit change, whether it’s eating, exercise, or in this case, drinking.

As I mentioned before, it’s the same process that I use for myself when I started to shift my own relationship with alcohol. And learning to moderate my own drinking in a way that works for me instead of feeling like, I had absolutely no control over it. And I can help you do the same.

Now, if today’s episode resonated with you, if you’ve been wondering whether alcohol is working for you, or against you, and you want support in figuring out how to manage your stress and anxiety in a way that actually makes you feel good. Let’s talk.

Book an ‘I know what to do, I’m just not doing it’ strategy call. The link is in the show notes, or you can go to elizabethsherman.com/call. Let’s find out what works for you on your terms and in your own time.

That’s all I have for you today. Have an amazing day. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye.

Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the plethora of health advice out there and are looking for something straightforward, our ‘8 Basic Habits that Healthy People Do’ guide and checklist is just what you need. It breaks down essential habits into simple, actionable steps that you already know how to do. By following these habits, you’ll set yourself on a path to better health, surpassing most people you know. To get your free copy, just click the link in the show notes. It’s an easy start, but it could make all the difference in your health journey. Grab your guide today and take the first step towards a healthier you.