Ep 160: Alcohol Hits Different in Midlife — Here’s Why

Alcohol impacts women differently in midlife—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In this episode, we explore why drinking feels harder now, what it quietly takes from your energy and peace, and how midlife can be a threshold into a clearer, more awake way of living. If you’ve been wondering why your habits feel heavier in this season, this conversation is for you. 

What if this Lent could be the season that changes everything? The Freedom 46 Lenten Challenge isn’t just about giving up alcohol; it’s about stepping into a deeper connection with your faith, your purpose, and the freedom Christ desires for you.

This challenge is your opportunity to break free from old patterns and rediscover the woman God created you to be.  Join today!

👉🏻 Get started with my FREE 5-Day Sacred Sobriety Kick Start
https://the-catholic-sobriety-coach.myflodesk.com/5-day-sobriety-kick-start

👉🏻 Book a Clarity Call
https://app.paperbell.com/checkout/packages/38683

Visit my Website: https://thecatholicsobrietycoach.com

Transcript

 Welcome to the Catholic Sobriety Podcast, the go-to resource for women seeking to have a deeper understanding of the role alcohol plays in their lives. Women who are looking to drink less or not at all for any reason. I am your host, Christie Walker. I'm a wife, mom, and a joy filled Catholic, and I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and I'm so glad you're here.

 All right. Let's talk about something I hear from women all the time. Why does alcohol hit me so much harder now that I am midlife? Like the hangovers last longer, my sleep is wrecked. My anxiety feels so much louder and my mood is off. I feel so irritable the next day. And you're also sitting there thinking.

Okay. But I used to be able to have a couple glasses of wine and still function like a normal person. If that's you, I just want you to know that this is midlife. And the part that I wanna say right up front is that even though  

I don't personally struggle with alcohol anymore. I do struggle with sugar and I've noticed the same thing in my own body.

 Let me just caveat that though, and say alcohol affects our bodies, our brains, and all of that in a much different way

than sugar. But I. It's similar, so the stuff that felt small in my thirties, that doesn't feel small anymore. Like I can't just decide, oh, I'm not gonna have sugar for a little while and I'm going to increase my exercise and I'm gonna lose the weight. You know, this five, 10 pounds that I've tacked on because I got a little lazy.

That doesn't work anymore. So the sugar is hitting me harder and it messes with my sleep more. I wake up and I get headaches. Sometimes I feel hung over almost if I eat too much sugar before bed. I noticed that my energy crashes so much harder, and if I'm honest, I can be a little bit moody as that sugar high starts to wear off.

And really that's just my blood sugar levels being completely out of whack. And then here's the other thing, cravings. Like, cravings for other things, not just sugar. Like, uh, I don't know. A bag of potato chips is a lot harder to resist than it used to be. So when women tell me that alcohol feels. A lot different now.

I'm like, yeah, I totally get it. Because the season of life that you are in, that I am in changes how our bodies and our brains handle these substances in our bodies, and it really, it also affects how we handle comfort. Midlife changes the cost of coping. It is costing you something. It's costing me something.

And let's be honest, midlife is not exactly a low stress season.

You're tired and you are handling a lot of things. There's kids, there's aging parents, there's work, there's marriage, there's health stuff, and there's big questions about your life. Midlife is like this long chunk of time. In that time, there are lots of little transformations, um, and a lot of changes in our life.

So when you are stretched thin, anything that is promising some relief is going to start to feel really good. And for me, that shows up as sugar, not because I'm hungry, not because I particularly want sugar, but I'm just kind of tired. Being on. And for a lot of women that relief shows up as wine because that's what we've trained our brain to go to.

So we're on this cue craving, reward cycle, right? So we get, we get stressed. That's a cue. So we crave. Relief really is what we're craving. So we crave the alcohol, sugar, whatever it is, and then we want that reward Again, the reward we might think is alcohol or sugar, but the reward is actually that feeling that we want.

So is that the ability to numb the edges, blur the edges a little bit so we don't have to think about everything? Is it relaxation? Is it fun? Is it, uh, you know, you're bored, so you're just drinking and watching tv? I don't know, but. It's not necessarily because you want alcohol for alcohol's sake, not, I mean

I don't really understand wine, but a lot of people, you know, are very sophisticated with their wine and they do like the taste of it and pairings and all of that kind of thing. But that's not typically why people want alcohol in the evening when they're. You know, binge watching a show or something, it's because they're craving a moment of relaxation, of like just shutting off their brain, right?

So here's the tricky part, the thing that you are reaching for, to take the edge off. Actually, if we're all being honest with ourselves, it ends up making things feel a lot harder or makes us feel a lot worse, and I see this pattern. Over and over again, and I notice it in myself too. Like again, if I binge a bunch of sugar at night, my sleep is trash.

I'm cranky the next day. My patience is thin and. I'm more likely to turn to that comfort Again, that's the loop, and as I was just saying, alcohol does the same thing. One, drink messes with your sleep more now than it used to. Bad sleep is going to ramp up your anxiety and then anxiety is going to make you want that relief again.

And there you are stuck in this cycle that you did not mean to or want to create. And it's not because you're weak, it's because midlife makes the feedback loop. Tighter. The body just doesn't let things slide the way that it used to. And another thing that no one really warns women about is the emotional cost of drinking in midlife.

When women tell me that they feel more anxious, they're just kind of flat or bored, they feel foggy or emotionally fragile, less patient, less motivated. They don't always connect it to alcohol. Because the drinking, actually feels like it's helping in the moment, and quite honestly it does.

But the next day, the next day tells the truth of what it's doing. That the thing that you reached for to relax with is actually stealing from your bandwidth. It's stealing from your life. It's stealing presence. It's stealing moments, and it may be stealing time from your next day because you don't feel good.

And then here's the other side, the spiritual side of this season, midlife is often when deeper stuff starts surfacing. So questions that you didn't have time for before. 'cause you're busy with kids and everything else. It starts to surface, especially as we become empty nesters. As you know, things start happening.

There's grief, there's longings, there's old wounds. Then there's the sense that God might be inviting you into something deeper, something I don't know. Some, a lot of women just say like, I feel the Lord calling me to something, but I don't know what that is, and I know that I noticed this in my own life, in my mid.

Forties as I, in like my early to mid forties, as my kids were starting to get older, especially as my youngest got older, I started noticing this feeling like God is calling me to something, but then I would check out. I would check out, not necessarily with sugar, but I would check out with things like scrolling.

I would distract myself with things. I would distract myself with busyness. And looking back, I was doing that because I wasn't comfortable with that feeling of not knowing, like knowing that there was something, but not knowing what that was. So it took me a little bit of time to get comfortable with just.

Being present with the Lord with just asking questions and. Feeling or dealing with things that I hadn't before that started to come up. Like when I started doing this work, this sobriety work, working with women who, you know, are looking to drink less, I had to re-look at a lot of things. That I just kind of pushed aside, like that was a whole other lifetime ago.

I don't even wanna think about it. I don't even wanna talk about it. I don't even, you know, it's, it's all in the past, but in order for me to do this work that the Lord was calling me to, I had to, it's kind of like, you know, when you have those, I. Big like Rubbermaid totes that you've put like all your mementos in, like these lifetime mementos, and you don't really look at them.

You just know that they're there and you like keep them. But then you bring them down and you open up that box and you start looking at each thing one by one. It starts bringing up emotions and memories and things that you hadn't even experienced or thought about in a really long time. And that's what happened when I started examining what the Lord was asking me to do, and that will happen with you as well.

It's going to deepen your awareness. It's going to make feeling a lot more vulnerable. But that's okay. That is okay because growth comes in discomfort. Comfort can dole awareness, and it just keeps you on the surface. And so if you just stay on the surface when something deeper is trying to grow, or the Lord is inviting you into something else.

Then you can miss it or you can feel really frustrated because you know it's there or you sense it's there, but you can never quite get to it because of the comfort that you're using to numb or distract you. Like it like was my case where I was trying to distract midlife. Just has this way of raising the stakes.

So what used to be no big deal starts costing more alcohol costs more in this season. It affects us midlife women, completely different than it did in our twenties and thirties. Physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. And here's the thing that I really want you to hear. I need you to, to come close and listen to this.

Midlife is not the beginning of the end. It is the threshold. This is a season of travel, of grandkids, of , caring for parents and doing things. That you said you would do someday. Maybe it's stepping into leadership. Maybe it's serving the church in deeper ways. Maybe it's finally becoming the woman that you've been growing into for decades and you don't wanna enter this season.

Fogy. I don't. I don't wanna be tired all the time. I don't wanna be numbed out. And I don't think you do too. You do either. I wanna be awake, I wanna be present, I wanna be soaking things in because I know, looking back when I'm old and gray and in my rocking chair. Talking to my kids and grandkids. I'm not gonna be wanting to say, gosh, I wish I had spent more time scrolling Instagram.

Hmm. I wish I had watched more YouTube videos on cooking and decorating. I wish I had spent more time worrying and fretting while watching the news. No. That is not what I'm gonna wanna say. That's not where I'm gonna wanna be, and I know that's not where you are gonna wanna be either. I wanna be a blessing, I don't wanna be a burden, so I wanna take care of myself so that I can do all the things that I know the Lord wants me to do.

 So right now. Maybe the question for you isn't, do I have a drinking problem? Maybe the question is, this is a good question, actually. This is a better question. What is this habit costing me in this season of my life? Forget about labels, forget about whether it's a problem or not. What is it costing you?

What used to feel manageable might now. Be quietly and slowly draining what energy you actually need for the life you want. Midlife is not something just to survive or try to get through. I, it's something to step into wide awake. And if you are listening to this and you're thinking, oh my goodness, Christie, this is hitting a little too close to home, first of all, I want you to know, you do not have to figure this all out alone.

Right now as this episode is airing, signups are open for my Lenten program, freedom 46. It's a 46 day journey through Lent where we walk alcohol free or mostly alcohol free together, it starts February 15th and it's only $46 for the whole experience. I kept it super accessible on purpose. Now here's what is actually included, because I know this matters. First of all, you'll get weekly group coaching, so you're not trying to figure this out alone in your head.

There are also weekly live workshops where I teach and walk you through what's actually happening in your brain, in your habits, in your patterns, and don't worry if you can't make it live. I will send you replays. You also get access to a private Slack community where you can cheer each other on, ask for prayer, share your wins, and you'll find daily short audios with scripture and coaching questions in there as well.

And this helps so that you're not just giving something up, you're actually being guided through the season with something to lean on every day. And you'll get a workbook that carries you all the way through lent into Easter. So this doesn't just end on Easter Sunday and disappear. You get three prep days, and then we begin day one on Ash Wednesday. Now, this is not about perfection, it's about walking the season awake, supported, and actually changing how you relate to alcohol and comfort. It's about learning new routines so that you will be successful.

Long after this program ends. So if you've been thinking, I do not wanna keep numbing my way through midlife, then Freedom 46 is a really solid place to start. You'll find the link in my show notes, or you can go to my website, the catholic sobriety coach.com and click the banner there

whether you join or not, just hear this. Midlife isn't asking you to shrink or get smaller. It's actually inviting you to step into this season with clarity, strength, and a lot more freedom.

 Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend who might also get value from it as well, and make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic sobriety coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about.

The coaching that I offer, visit my website, the Catholic sobriety coach.com. Follow me on Instagram at the Catholic Sobriety Coach. I look forward to speaking to you next. Time and remember, I am here for you. I am praying for you.