View from the Pew: May 2021: Breaking Up with Booze

During lockdown last spring I began to take stock of my relationship with alcohol. Like an increasing number of Gen Xers, I was “sober curious” and had been flirting with the idea of going alcohol-free for some time. I was an occasional, social drinker in my 20s and 30s. My heavier drinking started when I hit middle age and became a parent. Motherhood transpired for me at the same time that I moved to the U.S. from the U.K., leaving behind a career and a lifestyle that I loved. Suburban stay-at-home parenting left (and still leaves) me feeling lonely and bored, so I began turning to alcohol each evening to take the edge off. While I would not describe myself as a functional alcoholic, 5 pm definitely elicited a strong, daily Pavlovian response of pouring myself an increasingly large drink (or three). My drinking had become a bad, very deeply ingrained habit.

I had lots of time to think during lockdown last year, and decided that using alcohol to deal with unacknowledged emotional issues just was not working for me anymore. Through Facebook I stumbled upon a book called This Naked Mind. It's not quite a self-help book, nor is it a memoir; it's more of an exploration of the psychological, neurological, and social underpinnings of alcohol dependence. It encourages readers to take a 30-day alcohol-free challenge, supported by daily emails, YouTube videos, and podcasts – all of it free. I did the 30-day experiment and found it completely effective and easy. The book's research-based approach to removing the desire to drink worked. As I write this, I have been alcohol free for exactly 37 weeks.

Sobriety, for me at least, is also an act of protest. If you're on social media, you'll know about “Mommy wine culture.” Mothers poke irreverent fun at themselves for drinking wine, aka “Mommy juice,” as a way of dealing with the stresses of parenthood. “Wine Mom” humor can be found on dozens of cutesy social media memes and now appears on everything from t-shirts to oven mitts to tchotchkes you can buy on Etsy. I like to think of my decision not to drink as a transgressive act – my own small yet powerful way of disrupting the narrative that has normalized alcoholism among middle-aged moms.