Ep. 33 One Glass of Whiskey Taught Me This About Somatic Healing and Intuition

Ever notice how one drink can leave you feeling completely disconnected from yourself the next day — flat, insecure, or unable to name why? That's emotional numbing, and I learned firsthand that it's not just a mood. It's your nervous system's built-in "quiet down" switch getting flipped without your permission.

In this episode, I'm sharing two personal stories — one with a glass of whiskey and my dad, one with a glass of wine on my anniversary trip — that revealed something I didn't expect: alcohol didn't just relax me. It cut me off from my intuition, the exact somatic read I rely on with clients, with my son, and with myself.

I break down the biology behind it — what GABA actually does in the brain, why cortisol spikes the next morning and mimics anxiety, and why serotonin drops can shorten your fuse for a full day after just one drink. But I also go further than the biology, naming something I've never said out loud on this podcast before: the felt sense of disconnection from my own intuition when a substance interfered with my signal.

This is what emotional numbing actually looks like from the inside — not a dramatic blackout, but a turning-down of something I didn't even know was on. And alcohol is just the most obvious mute button. Scrolling, overworking, overthinking, staying too busy — they all do the same thing: let whatever's running underneath keep running without you ever having to feel it.

If you're a midlife woman who's done everything right and still feels stuck, disconnected, or unsure why your emotional regulation seems to disappear overnight after something as small as one glass of wine, this episode names what's actually happening in your body — and why I think noticing it is the whole practice.

What you'll learn about emotional numbing in this episode:

1. Why one drink shut off my intuition and somatic awareness for 24 hours

2. The real biology behind alcohol, GABA, cortisol, and serotonin — and what it does to nervous system regulation

3. Why I'm noticing "mommy wine culture" losing its grip on more women in my circles every month

4. How I recognize my own mute buttons — the everyday ways I numb out beyond alcohol entirely

5. Why I think noticing what goes quiet is more powerful than forcing a tidy answer

This is exactly the kind of pattern work I do with women inside my Intuitive Circle — not "should you drink or not," but what happens in your body when something interferes with your signal, and what's actually running underneath. The Circle is on a summer pause right now, and I'll be reopening doors in September. Get on the waitlist at lesleyturner.ca/theintuitivecircle for first access.

If this episode named something you've felt but couldn't put words to, subscribe, leave a review, and send it to the woman in your life who needs to hear it. You know exactly who I'm talking about

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Transcript

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My dad had kept two tiny whiskey bottles in a cupboard for forty two years, the kind that you would get on an airplane. They were given to him by my uncle the day I was born, and he saved them. Sitting in a cupboard, moving house to house, waiting for a reason to be opened. And two years ago, on my birthday, he pulled them out, poured us both a glass, and said, Let's toast. And I said yes. I hadn't actually had a drink since the summer of 2019, which was the summer I found out I was pregnant with my son. So four years, give or take one glass here or there. No, I I don't even think I had one glass, if I'm being honest. So this was a big deal, a dad and daughter thing, a small, warm moment between the two of us. And 20 minutes later, I was on the couch, laying down, not drunk, not even close, and there was no hangover, but something had gone quiet inside me. Something I didn't know was very loud until it wasn't there anymore. I want to tell you what that is, because I think some of you might know exactly what I'm talking about, but haven't put it into words yet. You're listening to the emotional truth, somatic healing and nervous system regulation for the midlife woman who's done everything right and still feels stuck. I'm Leslie Turner, somatic practitioner and intuitive coach. I work in the body and I have a pretty uncanny ability to see what's actually running underneath. The stuff that therapy touched but never quite moved. Because understanding why you do something and actually stopping it are two completely different things, and that's exactly where we work. We cover people pleasing, mom burnout, perimenopause, relationships, money, and what it actually costs the woman who's always been the responsible one. Short episodes, real stories, specific enough to stop you in your tracks. Let's get into it. I felt tired in a way that wasn't purely physical. I was annoyed and angry at everyone in the room, including the people that I love. I felt flat, like someone had turned a dial down on the version of me that just knows things before I've entered a room. And that dial, it's not just a metaphor for me. It's how I make a living. It's how I sit across from a client and know where the tension actually lives in their body before they've told me. It's the thing I built the sear method around, reading what's happening underneath their words in their body in real time. And for the first time, I was watching that exact signal get numbed in myself. And for about 24 hours it was gone. Now, I wrote about it on Instagram at the time. I called it what it was. It was my intuition offline for a day over one drink. And then I didn't really think much of it. I filed it away under that was weird, that was interesting. And I went back to drinking water and mocktails if I so chose. And I didn't touch alcohol again until three weeks ago. Jarrett and I, my husband, went away for our fourth anniversary. We had a really nice dinner. It was the first night away in a really long time. And I had a glass of red wine. One glass. I genuinely enjoyed it. The taste, the moment, the company, the food, all of it. But that night I slept very poorly. And the next morning I woke up inside a version of myself that I didn't recognize. Now I wasn't annoyed at this time. I was insecure about everything, about the money we were spending on this vacation, about my body in a bathing suit, about my relationship, things that I have sat with, things I've moved through, old, old things that I would normally be more grounded with, more centered and more steady. They felt enormous, very heavy. And it was almost like the floor that I usually stood on had been pulled out from under me overnight. And because of that, I almost sabotaged the second day of our trip. Jared and I had to sit down and have a real conversation mid-vacation about this mood that came out of nowhere. Now, my first instinct was to blame bad sleep because it's the easiest explanation. But somewhere in that conversation, I stopped and thought, oh wait, I had alcohol. I had alcohol. Like I had to repeat it in order for it to really sink in. So I went and I looked into this because I wanted to know if I was being highly sensitive or dramatic. But there is a biological piece and it's real. Alcohol pumps up a brain chemical called GABA, which is your body's built-in kind of quiet down switch. And I know it quite well because I used to prescribe it in supplement form to patients back when I was an atropath. And for most people, in most contexts, that's a genuinely useful switch. Relaxing isn't the enemy here. It's something we want. GABA doesn't fully explain, though, what happened to me. It explains more of a mellow evening. It doesn't explain the 24-hour blackout of the intuitive skills I used to make a living, or a morning where I woke up almost like a stranger to myself. That's not calm. That's something getting switched off. So past the biology, what it actually felt like was maybe not something that's ever been said on a podcast, even. Alcohol cut the cord to, I'm gonna call it source, to spirit, whatever you want to call the thing underneath the thing. Intuition, a felt sense, the line that I stay plugged into so I can know what's going on, read myself, and know what I need. It was one drink, and that line went dead. I'm sure there's a joke here because obviously alcohol is also called spirits. The alchemists believe that distilling something down to its purest form pulled out its actual spirit. Meanwhile, I'm one glass in and cut off from mine entirely. That is slightly ironic. I don't have a clean mechanism for that part of it, the cutoff part. GABA doesn't account for that felt sense of disconnection from something that I felt was a lifeline for me. Maybe it's the biology, but it there's also an energetic piece to this. Or maybe it's something else entirely, but I'm not gonna force a tidy explanation just to sound more credible here. Now the next morning is better documented in research and biologically. Your body doesn't just bounce back to normal, it overcorrects. Your cortisol, your stress hormone, will spike, which lights up the exact same pathways as anxiety. Add in a night of crappy sleep, and you wake up anxious and then worse equipped to deal with the anxiety. There's also an anger version of this, too. So serotonin, your happy hormone, is also an anger diffuser. Your serotonin will drop within 30 minutes of that first sip. And my husband actually clocked this in himself because he enjoys craft beer. And notice that he's he kind of has a shorter fuse than he used to. Enough that he's maybe talking about cutting back. Reaching for a glass of wine doesn't make you a bad person. Don't worry. It makes you someone whose body is very good at its job, good enough to notice when something's interfering with the signal, even when everyone around you would call one drink completely harmless. The research specifically on sensitive or intuitive nervous systems and alcohol is very thin. There's no research money in that. Mostly it's just personal accounts, not clinical studies. The biology piece does back up my story, but my own body and the way it reacted backs up the rest of it. Now, this is exactly the kind of thing I work with, with people inside my intuitive circle. Not should I drink or not? That's not my lane. What I'm actually interested in is what happens in your body when something external touches your signal. What goes quiet, what gets loud, and what's actually running underneath both of them. Now, the circle right now is on a summer pause, but the wait list is open and we will start back up in September. Alcohol is the only substance where not using it is the thing that needs explaining. Nobody asks you if you're at a party, whether you're skipping a line in the bathroom. You know what I mean by that. But someone will always ask why you're not drinking. And there's kind of a script waiting behind that question. Either you're pregnant or you're in recovery or something's wrong. Because I just don't feel like it anymore, isn't usually an accepted answer. Now, I grew up in a small town with a real drinking problem of culture, bush parties. I mean, I think my first drink was a peach snaps and orange juice before I was old enough to know better. This isn't me making alcohol the villain of this story. And it's also me not pretending that it doesn't do anything. What I am noticing, and I hear it from more women in my circles every single month, is a quiet shift. Fewer women are reaching for a glass of wine to close out the day. Less resonance with that mummy wine culture, the whole bit where exhaustion and a bottle of red gets sold to us as self-care. It's not always sobriety in the recovery sense. A lot of the time it's just not landing the way it used to. And that's allowed to be true without anyone needing to justify or diagnose it. So I'm not telling you this to tell you to stop drinking. That's not what this episode is about. I had one drink twice in six years, and I'm still standing here, still married, still working. I'm fine. What I'm telling you is pay attention to what goes quiet. So for me, it was intuition, the read that I trust with clients, with my son, with my partner, with my friends, with myself. And for you, it might be something else. Maybe your patience, your ability to tell the truth to yourself before you tell it to anyone else. Whatever the thing is that you rely on to actually know what's true for you, watch what makes it go quiet. Watch what it costs you the next day when it comes back online loud and rebounding all at once in the form of insecurity that you've thought you've already worked through. That's the whole method, actually, not fix the trigger, but notice what the trigger reveals. This is what emotional numbing actually looks like from the inside. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a dramatic blackout, just a turning down of the dial you didn't know was on. The wine didn't create my insecurity about money or my body. It just turned up the volume on something that was already there quietly, probably all the time. And I don't usually get to feel it at full volume because I've built a life where I can regulate it before it gets that loud. One glass of wine took that regulation away for I think 12 to 24 hours. And that's what showed me how much regulating I actually do every single day without really noticing it. Now, I want to slow down here for a second because that term numbing gets used so loosely, it stops meaning anything. So let me tell you what it actually felt like in my body both times. So the first time, the whiskey. It wasn't relaxation. It was more like a held breath. Like my shoulders came up an inch and stayed there. I kept trying to engage with the conversation around me, and my attention would slide right off the way your eyes kind of slide off a word you've read too many times. I wasn't calm. I wasn't really present. I was absent from inside my own body while still sitting there nodding. The second time, the wine, I actually felt fine going to bed. It was the morning that told more of the truth. I woke up, I reached for my phone immediately, which isn't really me. And that's the numbing showing up as avoidance, reaching for input before I had a chance to sit with what was actually there. And it took until we were in the car later that afternoon before I even connected the insecurity spiraling in my chest to the glass of wine the night before. That gap, that's the actual cost of numbing, that day of not feeling like yourself. So try this. Next time you reach for something, whether it's a drink, your phone, a second episode of something you're not even watching, a task that doesn't need doing right now, pause for three seconds before you do. Not to stop yourself, but just to notice what you'd be turning down the volume on if you went with it. Half the time you wouldn't know. That's fine. But the noticing is the whole practice. The knowing comes later. But we are a conditioned society to numb and distract and deflect and not look at what is actually needing to be seen. Now I don't know yet if I'll ever have that glass of wine again. Honestly, I don't even think that's an interesting question. The interesting question is the one I'm going to keep sitting with. How much am I muting on purpose or by accident? Just to get through an average day? And what would it feel like to not need to? Because alcohol is just the most obvious version of this, but it's not the only one. Scrolling until your eyes glaze over, that's a mute button. Overthinking something until you can't feel it anymore, that's a mute button. Over exercising, overworking, staying so busy that you never have to sit still long enough for the signal to come through, all mute buttons. Anything that lets whatever's running underneath keep running without you ever having to feel it happen, yeah, those are mute buttons. I don't have that answer yet. I'm still sitting with that, and I'm noticing it in clients, and I'm not sure I need to have the full answer, but I think we need to look at it as a collective whole. If this episode landed somewhere, don't just let it sit there. That feeling you have right now, that's not a coincidence. That's your nervous system telling you something is ready to move. The Intuitive Circle is my membership where we stop talking about it and actually do something about it. Twice a month, live with me, body-based, real-time, and specific to what's actually running for you. Doors open back up in September, and the wait list is open now at Lesleturner.ca backslash the intuitive circle. Go put your name on the list. And if this was the episode that made you pull over and think, wait, is she talking about me? Please subscribe, leave a review, and send it to the woman in your life who needs to hear it. You know exactly who I'm talking about. Find me on Instagram at the Leslie Turner. Until next time, the fact that you're here and listening means you're already doing this work.