153. Are You Too Old For Mindful Drinking?

Midlife drinking habits can feel set in stone after decades of established routines, but that doesn't mean change is impossible. 

In this episode, I explore whether you're ever too old to start moderating your drinking, tackling the unique challenges we face in our 40s, 50s, and beyond.

From breaking ingrained habits to navigating peer pressure with long-established friend groups. 

I share the inspiring story of Eamon, a 77-year-old Irishman who removed alcohol from his life after six decades of drinking, proving that neuroplasticity and the ability to make positive change don't disappear with age. 

We look at what mindful drinking actually means (spoiler: it's not meditation before every sip), how to communicate your choices to partners and friends without needing their permission, and why the challenges we face around alcohol are fundamentally different from those of the so-called “mindful-drinking generation”.

Gen Z ain’t got nothing on us Gen Xers!

0:00 Going Live Gone Wrong
3:48 We're Not 20 Anymore
5:03 Back To Basics: What Mindful Drinking Means
8:54 Drink & Let Drink
11:42 Old Dog; New Tricks
15:10 Midlife Peer Pressure Looks Different
17:33 Telling Friends & Family
19:35 You Don't Need Permission, But You Do Need To Share Your Why
23:47 The 5pm Fix

Download the 5pm Fix - https://mindfuldrinkinginmidlife.com

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You can email me at denise@lownodrinkermagazine.com

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🗣️ Join the growing community on Substack
https://lownodrinker.substack.com/

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🌱 Reset the way alcohol shows up in your life with the 4 Week Midlife Mindful Drinking Reset
https://www.lownodrinker.com/4weekreset

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🧮 Drinking Impact Calculator: Find your personal tipping point
https://mindfuldrinkinginmidlife.com/products/drinking-impact-calculator

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🧐 Take the quiz and find out what's REALLY driving your midlife drinking habits
https://www.lownodrinker.com/

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*Some links are affiliate links. If you make a purchase, Low No Drinker may earn a commission. Thank you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Going Live Gone Wrong
• 3:48 We're Not 20 Anymore
• 5:03 Back To Basics: What Mindful Drinking Means
• 8:54 Drink & Let Drink
• 11:42 Old Dog; New Tricks
• 15:10 Midlife Peer Pressure Looks Different
• 17:33 Telling Friends & Family
• 19:35 You Don't Need Permission, But You Do Need To Share Your Why
• 23:47 The 5pm Fix

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I like to think of myself as technically quite competent, quite literate. I managed to create and distribute a magazine globally with no previous experience. I've managed to learn how to record, edit, and produce podcasts with over 150 episodes. So I think I'm quite technically savvy. That is, of course, until I decided to do a LinkedIn Live a few months ago where everything went, as we like to say here in the UK, a bit peak tong. Yeah, it all went a little bit wrong. However, I was able to save the recording from that live session in which over 40 people had signed up to join me on my first live, uh, where I was talking about a question that is so relevant to us here on the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast. And that is, are you too old for mindful drinking? And it just goes to show that this is a topic that that is close to so many of our hearts because even though we might be venturing down this path, there's that niggling feeling in the back of our mind is that have I missed a boat on this? Am I too old to do this now? Am I too set in my ways? So, on that um not so successful production of a live but great recording of one, I took us through a couple of points that I think would be really great to share with you here today. First of all, looking at what exactly is mindful drinking, because although it's what we talk about all the time, sometimes it really helps just to take things back to basics and then have a look at the things that impact us differently for us here in midlife than they do perhaps those in their uh twenties who are drinking completely differently to how we did at that age. Um, and of course the peer pressure and the social dynamics that we feel in a completely different way. Uh and I ended the conversation with a look at some uh of the ways that we can empower ourselves to make different choices in midlife because it is a whole different kettle of kippers, as I like to say, for those of us who are in our late 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, who are recognizing that the way that we used to drink is no longer serving us anymore, that we might not yet be ready to completely throw in the towel and say we never want to have alcohol again, but we do know that something definitely needs to change. So today I'd like to share that recording with you as we jump in to answer that question: Are you too old for mindful drinking? You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace, your mindful drinking mentor. I'm here to help you design, build, and live a life less intoxicated on your own terms. After 24 years of working in hospitality and drinking daily like it was a non-negotiable part of my job, I finally recognize in my early 40s that alcohol was no longer serving me the way it was before. Now I want to use what I've learned as a publisher, writer, and speaker on all things moderation to help you cut through the noise and find out what truly works for you. Together, we will unpack the truth about mindful drinking from the good to the bad to the downright bizarre. If you're ready to make a change without judgment, pressure, or expectation to quit, then come with me as we jump into the world of low, no, and light alcohol drinks, drinkers and drinking so that you can take back the power of choice from alcohol. Let's jump straight in to today's topic. And our question is: are you too old for mindful drinking? Why have I chosen this one for our first um live premiere together? The reason why I rebranded the podcast to mindful drinking and moderation in midlife is because I want to speak to the people who are like me, who I understand, who have busy jobs, who have young kids, who have aging parents, who have demanding careers, who've got bills to pay and other commitments. Uh, and it's different for us. Things are definitely different for us in midlife than they are for your 20-year-old whippersnappers who are out there just experiencing life for the first time. Uh, I like, and I say that cheekily, uh, fully aware that, you know, as everyone talks about Gen Z as the mindful drinking generation, um, I think it's wonderful what they're doing. If you compare it to the way that I, and I'm guessing maybe you used to socialize uh in the 90s, in the noughties, in the tens, uh, and the wild times that we had. They are definitely taking more care of themselves. They are definitely making wiser choices uh than I and maybe you uh made as well. But their choices come from a different place. They are looking at life through their lens, which is going to look, as you'll know, very different in 20 years' time when you've got all the things that I've just listed before to contend with as well. So before we jump into too much detail about uh the pros and cons of changing your drinking in later life, let's talk about what actually is mindful drinking. Um, because I was speaking to my sister-in-law uh a couple of weeks ago. Uh, they recently bought a new house and we were around there to have a little family celebration, and I was updating the family on all of the things that have been going on for me for Lono Drinker, closing down the magazine to focus on the podcast and build the four-week mindful drinking reset system. Uh and I told her about changing the name of the podcast to mindful drinking and moderation in midlife. And she said to me, Oh, mindful drinking. Does that mean that you do meditations at the start of every episode? Now, I'll qualify this by saying that she is a yoga teacher. Uh, and so for her, mindfulness is very much about those zen moments, those uh, you know, sitting down, meditating, top of a mountain style life. Um, and that's just not me. Uh, no, no shade on it, that's absolutely fine, but it's not something that resonates with me personally. Mindful drinking for me isn't about deep meditation about every single sip that you're taking. It's not about dissecting every aspect of your life uh every time you want to go out and socialize. Mindful drinking is about being aware of the impact of your choices on the long-term goals that you're trying to achieve. That's it. It's about understanding that you have the power to choose what you want to do with your drinking habits in any given moment, and that those choices impact the next moments in your life. One of the things that is different for us when we reach midlife is that we have so many years, decades of habit ingrained in what we do. We have been drinking the way that we are now today, likely for 20, 30, maybe even 40 years. Um, I put a poll out on my Substack recently, and the question was, what's the hardest thing for you about changing, uh moderating your drinking in midlife? And 47% of people who responded said that the biggest challenge for them was in changing decades of habit that's ingrained into who they are now, into the way that they are drinking now. And it's probably the same for you. I know that it was for me. Drinking was a daily activity. Um, for those of you who don't know much about my background, I come from a 24-year career in hospitality. I've worked in pubs, in bars, in restaurants, in nightclubs, I've even put on events attended by our late queen. Um, drinking for me was just the norm. It was what you did every day, it was part of my job. Um, and not drinking felt more alien to me than choosing to drink. So when I decided to start looking at my relationship with alcohol, it was very much a change of a lot of what made me or what I thought made me who I am today. Spoiler alert for you, I'm still the same person. I just have fewer hangovers, and I've got to be honest, it's so much better. So, what exactly is mindful drinking? Is it just a gateway to um giving up alcohol? Absolutely not. Now, for some people, when you start embarking on a more mindful way of drinking, when you start moderating more intentionally, um, removing alcohol completely does become something that you uh strive for. And that's absolutely fine. It's also absolutely fine if you decide that you still want alcohol to be a part of your life. Uh, in this low-no space, uh, my uh live and let live, or should I say drink and let drink approach to moderation and mindful drinking isn't necessarily the most popular. There are people in this space who do think that the safest way to have a relationship with alcohol is to not have any alcohol in your life at all. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that the World Health Organization does advise that there is no safe amount of alcohol for humans to consume. I, however, am not of the impression that alcohol is about to disappear from our world anytime soon. The truth of the matter is that it is ingrained in every part of our social psyche, that it is everywhere that we go, everything that we do in our culture, our society, in other Western cultures and societies is marked by alcohol. So it is very um, it's very unrealistic to expect that somebody is just going to suddenly make the decision that they're removing alcohol from their life entirely because I say that they should. Instead, what I want you to know is that any choice that you make to change the way that you allow alcohol to show up in your life is a positive choice for yourself. Whether that is an active moderation, such as a dry January, a sober October, or setting yourself certain rules, or a more passive moderation, uh, which is more about you recognizing that alcohol isn't serving you the way that it used to, and you no longer want it to have such a big role in your life. Whichever way you approach it, you're making a positive decision for yourself. You're taking action, and that's what really matters. So, this would be a really good time to ask you to put in the comments for me and let me know what do you find to be the most challenging aspect of mindfully drinking or moderating your drinking in midlife? Are you with the 47% that responded on my poll to say that it is breaking decades of habit? Or is it something else for you? Uh, is it perhaps the cost of the drinks? Is it the availability of the drinks? Is it uh social peer pressure? Is it your relationship because your partner still drinks and you find it difficult not to drink with them? There are so many different reasons uh why we choose to moderate and why we can find it challenging. So, for our next 10 minutes or so together, I want to have a bit of a deeper look at why it's different for us in midlife and how we can positively impact changes that we want to see in our lives so that we can achieve the things that we want to achieve, whatever that is for you. So there is a um a saying out there that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Uh, this comes from the belief that as we age, our brain matter um deteriorates, yay, aging, and we are no longer able to learn new behaviors. Uh, we find it harder to learn new skills, to make changes to ourselves. However, thanks to the wonderful, wonderful world of modern science, new studies have actually found that neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to learn new things and to make changes and to adapt, does continue into old age as long as you protect it and you harness it. That simply means that you can teach old dogs like me, maybe like you, new tricks as long as you continue to nourish your brain with the understanding that it has the ability to make these changes. Basically, what you tell yourself is what will be. Um, and this we've heard this before, right? It's what we tell our kids. You know, if you keep saying that you can't, then you can't. Whether you tell yourself you can or you can't, you're right. So the first thing that's really important to recognize when it comes to wanting to make changes to the way that you drink in later life is that if you want to make positive changes, you have to believe you can make positive changes and you have to act in a way that allows you to make those positive changes. I want to tell you a brief story of a chap who made some very big changes very later in life. His name is Eamon, and Eamon is uh a 77-year-old Irishman who emailed me a few months ago. And he emailed me because he was hoping we would interview him for Lono Drinker magazine, which we did inside the last issue, which I think you can see there. Um, at 76 years old, so the year before, Eamon had decided that he no longer wanted to allow alcohol to show up in his life the way that it had been for the last six decades, and that at 76 he was going to remove alcohol from his life. Now, talk about teaching an old dog new tricks. You can make changes about around alcohol at any point in your life if you decide that you're ready to take the time to do that. At 76 years old, this gentleman removed alcohol from his life entirely because he wanted to have a better quality of time, uh, a better quality of life with the time that he had left with his uh friends, with his family, with his loved ones. So he wanted to be active and he wanted to socialise, but he wanted to be clear and he wanted to be present in what he was doing. Now, whilst Eamon did go teetotal, and that is not the topic of today, it just goes to show that anything can be achieved if we put our mind to it and that age is nothing but a number. We cannot let the fact that we happen to have been on this planet for a few more decades stop us from doing the things that we want to do. So tell me in the comments, what do you think to Eamon's decision to make a change at 76 years old? Do you want to wait until you're 76 to make positive changes for your life, or do you think that you might want to start now? Okay, the other thing that is different for us in midlife, uh, rather than those who are perhaps coming into their own as adults and changing the way that we drink, is that we have a different level of peer pressure uh amongst our friend group. We have established close bonds with people, be it our partners, spouses, or our friends. We have put 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years into a friendship. And that is a heck of a lot of time. And with those years come certain expectations. By the time you've built a relationship with somebody over this time, there's a certain understanding of how things work between you, whether that is, as I say, your spouse or whether it is your best friend. And so deciding to make a change to your drinking can seem like a really big life impact when you consider how you're therefore going to be showing up with those people. I know that for me, one of the biggest concerns that I had was with my husband and my best friend. My husband and I met when we were both working in bars and restaurants for the same company but different venues, and our relationship was built on uh late-night runs in the basement of the bar that I was running. Sorry, boss, if you're watching. Um, and my best friend uh also worked for the same company, uh and we would have some wild nights out. Uh, and over the years our relationships all deepened based on socializing, on partying, on drinking, on going out, having wild nights. Um, and it was the the the crux of what held us together. It was let's go to this bar and try this cocktail. It was let's have a night in and get these wines. It was always a part of what we did. Um, and I remember having to have the conversation and let my um best mate know that you know I was exploring this sober curious way of life and wanting to cut back on how much I drank. Uh, and I was nervous. I was. I was nervous because I didn't know how it would be received. I didn't know whether or not it would impact the um connection that we had and what we had built up over time. Now, I am grateful to report that I'm one of the lucky ones. My both my husband and my best friend completely supported my choice to reduce uh alcohol in my life and the way that it it showed up. They've been nothing but supportive. Uh and in fact, as a little aside, um my choices to reduce the way that I drink have actually had a ripple effect on my husband. Most definitely, his alcohol consumption has dropped down to almost zero now. And he uh absolutely loves all the alcohol-free uh beers and drinks that we get to try because I'm very lucky to be sent so many different things, as you can see behind me. Um and also reaching out to my friends because your choices do impact other people. And it's important to recognise that your choices to change the way that you drink don't happen in a vacuum. Now, you do not need anybody else's permission to make a change to the way that you allow alcohol change uh show up in your life. That's really important for you to understand. I want you to know that you do not need your other half, your best friend, your work colleagues, your mum, uh Auntie Susan, anybody to say that you are allowed to make these changes. You're making choices to better your life, and people who love you need to support that unconditionally, because that is what love is about. However, it is unreasonable to think that your choices aren't going to impact them. So whilst the majority of people that answered my poll said that um changing decades of habit was a huge challenge, a huge chunk of people also said that um peer pressure and their partner had a big impact on their choice of whether or not to start drinking less. Because at our age, we don't want to have to start again with our friend groups. We don't want, we've done all the courting and all the dating. Uh, we've gotten to know our partner and and become comfortable with each other and who we are, to the point that we don't have to have to start all of that again. It's too much like hard work. What I would say to that is that you need to open the lines of communication. One of the beauties of of being a bit older, of maturing, is that hopefully by now we've learned how to communicate with people, uh, at least to how to communicate with the people who matter to us in our Lives. So you need to be able to communicate to them why you're making these choice changes, what's behind your choices, what you're trying to achieve, and make sure that they understand that this isn't about them. This is about you. This is about your choice to make a better life for yourself, a life less intoxicated, so that you can show up better, you can be more present, you can be clearer-minded, you can be happier, you can be more energized, you can be more engaged, you can be more involved, you can be a better parent, a better colleague, a better employee, a better son or daughter. Reducing the way that alcohol shows up in your life is a choice for positivity that leads to so much positivity in all the other areas of your life. Whatever your reasons, whatever your motivations are, whether it's because you've got a sporting event coming up that you want to train for, whether it's that your weekends with your family are really precious time and you don't want to spend it recovering from things you've been doing during the week, uh, whether it's that you have to be the taxi of mum and dad for the kids and ferry them around all the time, whether it's just that you're fed up of being um groggy and fuzzy headed and you just want a little bit more clarity, um, whether it's that you make really bad decisions when you have a couple drinks too many and you don't want to have to deal with that out uh that fallout anymore. Whatever your choices are around why you've decided to drink less or drink differently, your choices are valid. Whether or not you are looking to remove alcohol completely long term, whether you just want to find ways to moderate, whether you just want to be a bit more mindful about the way that you do it. We have the beauty with age of recognizing that life is a wonderful thing and it is not to be taken for granted. Uh, and the fact that you want to get the most out of it makes you a superhero in my book, and definitely somebody who is worth putting their time and effort into making a better life for themselves and for the people around them. Uh now, according to my calculations, we are around about the 20-minute mark or so. So, if you do have a question that I haven't answered uh yet, then please do put it in the comments below. I am going to stick around and make sure that I answer any questions that you have. But before I let you go, there's something that I've created for you that I want to tell you about. Uh, and this is a free offer. I'm not here on my first um premiere to sell you anything, but I do want to give you some tools that can help you on your journey to a life less intoxicated. And I have created a document for you which comes from my four-week mindful drinking reset. And it is about the um 5 p.m. danger zone, uh, the time that I call it uh where good intentions go to die, because um, we have every intention, don't we, to um drink less tonight, um, to take it easy, to not let so-and-so stress us out and automatically pick up a glass of wine or a bottle of beer. But at the end of a long day, you're frazzled, you're stressed, your boss has been a pratt, your colleagues have been incompetent, uh, and your stress levels are often just rising. And it's very difficult to recognise that you're making choices that aren't serving you. So I've created for you the um 5 p.m. fix. It's called Why You Can't Drink Like You Used To. And it takes you um a little bit further on some of the stuff we've been talking about today, such as what's going on in your body uh during midlife and how that impacts the way that you drink, and how that alcohol impacts the way that you live. And it also comes with what I call my new 5 p.m. fix. So a few uh rituals and routines that you can put into place to help you break those habits that are so ingrained in the way that we like to live. As I said, I am still around in the comments, so do please share your thoughts, your questions, topics that you might like me to cover for future premiers. Um, and good luck on your journey to a life less intoxicated because you, my dear, do definitely deserve it. Thanks.