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Redesigning Life with Sabrina Soto
Redesigning Life with Sabrina Soto is a podcast dedicated to inspiring intentional living, personal growth, and transformation. Hosted by design expert and lifestyle expert Sabrina Soto, each episode dives into conversations about wellness, mindset, home and self-improvement with leading experts and thought leaders. With a mix of practical advice, heartfelt storytelling and empowering insights, Redesigning Life is your go-to space for creating a life that feels as good as it looks... one thoughtful choice at a time.
Redesigning Life with Sabrina Soto
Sarah Rusbatch: Redesigning Life Beyond Booze
In this conversation, author Sarah Rusbatch takes us beyond the outdated "alcoholic or not" binary into the nuanced territory of gray area drinking. Sarah Rusbatch shares her personal journey from being "Sarah the party girl" to embracing an alcohol-free lifestyle that brought more joy, better health, and authentic connections.
The conversation dismantles the cultural messaging that's normalized drinking for women, and what Sarah calls the "wine mom" culture where alcohol is presented as the solution to parenting stress, work pressure, and life's challenges.
Ready to explore life beyond alcohol? Connect with Sarah's online community and discover how redefining fun might be the key to creating the life you truly want.
Connect with Sarah Rusbatch
https://sarahrusbatch.com/
Sarah Rusbatch on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/sarahrusbatch/
Sarah on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/sarahrusbatchcoach
Connect with Sabrina:
Welcome to Redesigning Life. I'm your host, Sabrina Soto, and this is the space where we have honest conversations about personal growth, mindset shifts and creating a life that feels truly aligned. In each episode, I'll talk to experts in their fields who share their insights to help you step into your higher self. Let's redesign your life from the inside out. Welcome to another episode of Redesigning Life. This week is special. I have author Sarah Rusbach on. She wrote a book that I really love called Beyond Booze, so I want to thank you so much because I know you are far, far far away from California in Australia, so I thank you for taking the time to speak to me and my listeners.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me, sabrina. It's always a joy to speak to my friends on the other side of the world and to be able to share more. And you can probably hear from my accent I'm from the UK. I live in Australia. I still really want to come to California. That's in my dream. I'll look you up the next time that I get over there.
Speaker 1:That's in my dream, I'll look you up the next time that I get over there, please do. I'll put that in my wishes that you come and we can meet in person. So I want to really dive deep into this book, and the reason why I reached out to you and I told you in the email is in all of the podcasts that I've done over 100 episodes I've had amazing guests, but the most downloaded episode is Holly Whitaker and she wrote Quit Like a Woman, and I think it's because this topic is hot right now. But it also speaks to a lot of people, especially women, especially in menopause, and I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how alcohol fits in their life and, if it does, and what life looks like afterwards, and that's what your book talks about. So can you give listeners a little bit of background of who you are and why you started on this journey?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm a gray area drinking coach and I am an ex-gray area drinker, and that might be a topic that some of your listeners have not heard before. It might be a name gray area drinking what on earth is that? And it's a relatively new idea around alcohol use, and so before we used to have this idea that you were an alcoholic or you weren't. I'm 49 years old. I grew up with Dallas. My idea of an alcoholic was Sue Ellen, who was in her silk lingerie all day drinking hard liquor out of a bottle, lying around on the sofa, couldn't do anything and adult Sarah was like well, I'm not Sue Ellen.
Speaker 2:I don't drink hard liquor all day and don't have a job and can't go to look after my kids. I'm not that, so I can't be an alcoholic. But I also knew that my drinking wasn't healthy, it wasn't serving me, it was taking more than it was giving and it was starting to have a negative impact on my life. But I didn't know what I was or what my label was or anything, and because I didn't fit that criteria for dependence, for needing to go to rehab, for needing to have medical support to stop drinking, I just kind of thought well, well, I'm just a big social drinker and therefore, because I don't have a problem, I should just be able to stop when I've decided that I've had enough. But the problem was I could never just stop when I decided I'd had enough.
Speaker 2:I played Russian roulette with alcohol for a really, really long time, where some nights it would be yeah, I'll just have one or two, but some nights it was like the wheels came off. I didn't know how I got home. There were just lots of little red flags that started happening, and I think that's the thing for grey area drinkers there's often not a massive rock bottom moment, but there's lots of little red flags that just keep popping up where we start to question our relationship with alcohol. So that maybe sets the scene for what gray area drinking actually is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that there is also a new layer too with menopause, and we'll get to that later. But when it comes to gray area drinking, I think there's probably people, especially women, listening to this that can say, yeah, I kind of see myself in that, that you know, sometimes I say the wrong thing. I say that you know I act foolish, but like I never not know how I got home and I never have gotten in trouble because of it. So you know, maybe I'll just drink every weekend and I won't drink during the week. And then you start with these rules. So what do you say to the woman who feels like maybe it doesn't belong in their life, but it's not creating a problem?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think gray area drinking to me is a scale right, say you've got a scale of one to 10. One is someone who doesn't drink. 10 is someone with physical dependency on alcohol who needs medical support to safely withdraw from alcohol. Grey area drinking is about a four to an eight on that scale.
Speaker 2:So we've passed the point of being a take it or leave it drinker, which basically means we've passed the point of just not caring if alcohol is in our life anymore. We're using it for something. It might be we don't drink during the week, but the thought of going to Friday night drinks with the girls and not drinking is like oh gosh. No, I can't possibly do that. So we're starting to move into that territory where we have associations with it. Maybe it's our stress reliever, maybe it's what we use for helping if we've got a bit of social anxiety. Maybe it's what we turn to when we've had an argument with our husband, when our kids are doing our head in, when everything just feels too much. We've had an argument with our husband. When our kids are doing our head in, when everything just feels too much, it's I need a drink. It's that solution comes in the form of alcohol and some of the signs that you're a gray area drinker would be you make rules around your drinking, but you often find a reason to justify breaking those rules. So for me it was I don't drink during the week. Monday, tuesday, wednesday definitely don't drink. Thursday was kind of hit and miss, and then it would be Wednesday and then it would be I really fancy a drink. So then the internal chatter would start oh, I really fancy having a drink tonight, but it's Wednesday and I'm not supposed to have a drink. Well, maybe if I have a drink tonight, I could not have one tomorrow. So I'll have tomorrow's drink tonight. And then, going back, it's starting to take up headspace where we've got this chatter and people that are not grey area drinkers. They don't have the chatter about alcohol, they're just kind of like do I fancy a drink? Do I not fancy a drink? Don't care, it just doesn't take up that headspace.
Speaker 2:Some of the other signs that you're a grey area drinker would be you often drink more than you intended to. I'm just going to have one. Usually ends up being two, three, four. You have started to notice that alcohol is negatively impacting you, but you make plans to change that and you're like, oh, I'm not going to drink this week. I've had a big boozy weekend, I'm going to take this week off and maybe you manage that. Monday, tuesday, wednesday, but then by Thursday lunchtime you're out with the girls. Someone says, do you want to drink? And you're out with the girls. Someone says, do you want a drink? And you're like, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So the plans and those goals to stay stopped or to create a break, they only last for a short amount of time and then, as soon as we start feeling better again, and those reminders of the anxiety and the tiredness and feeling rubbish, it's all kind of gone out the window and we're like, oh yeah, now fine, I can just have a problem with alcohol. So, for gray area drinkers, we tend to surround ourselves with other gray area drinkers. So therefore you're in this kind of circle of going. Well, I don't have a problem because I drink like Sabrina does and I drink like she does and she does, and we all drink the same, and so therefore there is no problem because I just drink like everyone around me. So you get this false sense of security, of kind of being like okay, this is what we do, but we live in a society now that has normalized alcohol, particularly for women, as being a normalized everyday solution to anything that happens in life.
Speaker 1:It's everywhere, it's everywhere.
Speaker 2:Every WhatsApp group you're in, it's a mom's group. Oh, I've had a hard day, the kids are driving me bonkers, and the first response is oh, go home and have a glass of wine. Like, we've just normalized wine for women as being the solution to parenting, to being a woman, to working, to the stress that we all have, and that is not without its repercussions, and so we will come on to what that looks like in menopause in a moment. So we're definitely in that place where grey area drinkers are not meeting any criteria for dependence. We might not have had a big rock bottom, but there's just a few warning signs starting to go off that show that maybe our relationship with alcohol is not that healthy.
Speaker 2:And the question I would ask to all of your listeners right now is just notice what comes up for you when I say this Okay, tomorrow, let's all do 90 days off booze. So from tomorrow, let's all just take 90 days off and do it as an experiment. If you're not a gray area drinker like I've got a lot of friends who are not gray area drinkers they just be like, sure, yeah, I can do 90 days, all the gray area drinker like I've got a lot of friends who are not gray area drinkers.
Speaker 1:They just be like sure, yeah, whatever, yeah, I can do 90 days. All the gray area drinkers now are like wait. I have a wedding wait.
Speaker 2:I have a party, I have a birthday, I have a holiday. I can't go to xyz and not drink, and so we've created associations in our mind that we need to have alcohol in a certain scenario and that scenario, without alcohol, would be less than would be hard, would be whatever. The fill in the blank question is there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, I'm sure you're familiar with Mel Robbins. She talks about her relationship with alcohol a lot and how it's become this turn off switch at the end of her day where she's got so much going on in her head that she knows when she opens up that bottle of wine. It's her way to tell herself and the world I'm done for the day. Do you notice that a lot of gray area drinkers are very high, achieving type A women?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I've got a community of 25,000 women and I asked them why do you drink? And the number one reason was that. So it was like overwhelm, escapism, oblivion. We're living our lives often at 100%. We're so busy, we're so stressed, we're so overwhelmed and our head is so full that we drink just to escape what's going on in our head. And, interestingly, the other two reasons were loneliness and boredom going on in our head. And, interestingly, the other two reasons were loneliness and boredom. So we've got a generation of midlife women who are stressed to the hilt, bored and lonely, and alcohol is stepping in as the temporary solution. But the problem is that in the short term alcohol is a great solution. It fixes what we want in that first short term, but as a long-term solution it's absolutely bloody awful.
Speaker 1:But you were saying like I can't go to the party without. So I've been on a sober, curious journey for a long time now and I noticed that when I'm not participating in the drinking and I'm at a party, I can be there for a good hour, two hours, after three or four hours where everybody's getting buzzed and I'm not on that level. I don't want to really be there anymore. So when people are like well, I'm worried about taking the fun out of my life, how do you speak to your clients about that sort of fear?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've written a whole chapter in my book about this, because it's a massive one that comes up so much. And I think it's really important that at some point we redefine what fun is to begin with. And so we've been raised in a society and culture that tells us, as a midlife woman, the only way to have fun is to get dressed up, go and get drunk with your girlfriends and that's the fun that you have as a midlife woman. But actually there are so many ways that we can have fun and they don't have to be at night. In fact, for me now they are often not at night, because I treasure my sleep so much, because when Sarah's had a great sleep she shows up as more calm, more joyful, more energized, she's a better mom, she's a better friend, and so loads of the fun things I do now will be during daylight hours. It will be connection, it will be trying new things, like all sorts of stuff that doesn't have to involve that evening.
Speaker 2:And I have the same rule I go out at night and I love socializing at night and I love going out, but generally after two hours, when everyone's starting to repeat themselves and spit in my face, I'm like, see ya, that's it, I'm done, and I just like I'm happy to just kind of go.
Speaker 2:That was my two hour fill. I'm finding it all a bit much, much, and that just is absolutely fine for me, because I always make sure that I've got lots of fulfilling stuff planned for the next couple of days, so I don't feel like I've missed out in any way. And that's the most important part, and I think that's the secret to changing your relationship with alcohol You've got to create a life that you love so that you don't miss the alcohol, and that's why I wrote this book, because I could see there were so many books out there that were memoirs of people's journeys to quit drinking, or they were stories of how to quit drinking, but there was nothing about well, how do I create a life that I love as a midlife woman so I don't need to drink, because all I've done for fun for the last 20, 30, 40 years sometimes is go and get drunk with my girlfriends Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head because I realized that a lot of the times that I'm not participating, it's the wait. You're going to leave already. Wait, you're going to not stay here. No, stay for another hour. But that person's like buzzed and speaking real close to me, spinning the whole thing repeating themselves, and I'm like, well, do I want to stay here? Do I want to be here? And the answer, if I'm being honest, is I don't. I want to be home watching the Golden Girls and having a shower and calling it a day, like I don't actually want to participate. And that's where I think you have to shift your mindset of like, truly, what is going to make you happy instead of being part of a community. But then I ask you, we as humans need to be part of a community. So when you are outcast and I'm being dramatic but if you're not part of the club that's drinking all the time, how do you deal with that with your clients?
Speaker 2:What advice do you give? Yeah, and it's really hard and I share in my book my opening line in the chapter about socializing is being at the school gate and one of the mums saying to me oh, let's catch up when you're drinking again. Yeah, and I was like it was like someone had punched me in the stomach and I went home and I nearly cried because I was like it was like someone had punched me in the stomach and I went home and I nearly cried because I was like, well, if I never drink again, does that mean that she never wants to catch up with me again? And to backtrack a little bit, I was Sarah the party girl. I was the one that everyone came to my house for pre-drinks. Everyone came back to my house after the party had finished because there was always champagne and wine in my fridge. And so, as Sarah the party girl, I had to go on this whole journey of creating this whole new who actually was I without alcohol, and that's been absolutely life-changing.
Speaker 2:But, to answer your question, there are a couple of things that happen. So, number one we discover who are the friendships that go deeper than the people we get drunk with, and it's okay that some friendships will slip away, because in that season of your life, when you were Sarah, the party girl and loved drinking, you naturally gravitated towards people that also loved drinking and that was a priority. But when you stop drinking you then discover well who are the people that I have a depth of connection with and I could love spending time with them without alcohol, and who are the people that I don't. And it's okay that there might be some people that it doesn't go that deeper with, because I was listening to Mel Robbins actually talking to the lady that wrote the book about adult friendship Danielle I can't remember her last name and she was talking about the fact that women tend to change 50% of their friendship group every seven years.
Speaker 2:Wow, and I think that's really interesting to actually consider this.
Speaker 1:And so I think we also switch taste buds every seven years too. Well, there you go, right so that says it all.
Speaker 2:And so I have met lots of new women who've come into my life who are on this alcohol-free journey, because when you join a community and it's so important to join a community when you do decide that you want to be curious about changing your relationship with alcohol, because if you're surrounded by gray area drinkers, it can feel incredibly lonely. So I really really recommend there's online communities, which is what I did initially, because I didn't have any in-life friends who were alcohol-free, but then, through the online communities, I met people who lived, in-life friends who were alcohol-free. But then, through the online communities, I met people who lived in my local town and I've met some great friends who I now spend a lot of time with. But I still have lots of drinking friends and it doesn't bother me that they drink and they don't care that I don't drink.
Speaker 2:There was a period of transition and it involved honesty and it involved saying to them alcohol's been really impacting me. I've noticed I have an increase in anxiety. It's making me not the person that I want to be, and I've decided to take a break for a while, but our friendship is really important to me, so I'd love if we can just for a little while, arrange some catch-ups that are not focused on alcohol. But it's really important to me that we work on our friendship because you're an important person to me.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, let's take a major step back too, when you first started to take a break or just stop drinking altogether. What was that moment? I know you speak about this in your book. Anybody listening if you're even sober, curious at all want to reevaluate your life with alcohol. I promise you, this book is so good it's so good that I went out of my way to stalk Sarah and DM her to be on the podcast. But when you said, okay, I'm done, what happened? What was the story there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had started drinking at 14. I grew up in the north of England and I discovered alcohol. And in that moment of discovering alcohol a few things happened for me. So number one we'd moved town, moved city a lot as a child. So I'd gone to lots of different schools. So as a young girl I'd had to be the one to figure out how do I get people to like me, how do I fit in, how do I make a whole new group of friends now that I'm another new school? And we did the last move when I was 13, and that was a really tricky move for me. You know, it's a very difficult age at 13 to leave all your friends behind.
Speaker 2:We moved from Scotland to England. I had this really strong Scottish accent. We went to this really posh all-girls school where I felt like I was so out of my depth and I really struggled to fit in. And about a year or so after moving there I got invited to the local park and everyone was drinking and I drank and I realized that I got really lit up by alcohol. So I definitely have a brain that a bit of alcohol goes in and I get lit up like a Christmas tree. And then I started getting feedback. You're so fun when you're drunk, you're hilarious when you're drunk and you know like when you drink with someone and they're like you're my best friend, I love you. That was music to my ears as the new girl that was always struggling to find people to like her, new girl that was always struggling to find people to like her. And I discovered at that age ah, alcohol is a great segue of creating connection with other women, other girls and making friends. And that became my life for many years and alcohol wasn't problematic.
Speaker 2:I moved to London. It was the era of sex in the city. It was the era of the Spice Girls, it was girl power. It was women can earn their own money, they go on nights out with their girlfriends, they drink their Cosmopolitans, they have one night stands. They kind of have this real female empowerment stage. That was happening in the 90s.
Speaker 2:And then I met my husband and we moved to Australia after we got married and had a baby and that was when my drinking really changed, because I went from being someone that was a big social drinker to being on the other side of the world. I got pregnant again very quickly, so I had two under two. I had no family around. I didn't have any friends around. I had gone from having a very successful career to being at home all day pureeing carrot, changing nappies, going to monkey music and I didn't know who the hell I was. And I was really sad and I was really lonely and I was really homesick. But I didn't know how to manage any of those emotions. I probably couldn't even labeled at the time that that was how I was feeling. I just knew I felt wrong and that that evening glass of wine made all those feelings go away. Because that's what alcohol does it numbs us. So alcohol then became that crutch for me. At five o'clock I can pour a glass of wine and it was like you know, it was like my treat, my reward, that, the thing that made all those icky feelings go away. And for a short time it worked. But the problem with alcohol is we build tolerance, so we need more.
Speaker 2:I turned 40 and throw perimenopause into the mix and just as I was getting older I was noticing when I drank I would wake up at sort of two or three in the morning. I couldn't get back to sleep. Even if it was just one or two glasses. I was riddled with anxiety and I was someone who I'd never had anxiety before. But I was starting to question everything. Oh God, what did I say last night? Just all those that inner chatter was so negative. I would wake up in the morning and I'd be like oh God, you're a loser. You said you weren't going to drink last night. You finished that bottle of wine, you smoked cigarettes. You're disgusting. And my inner world was becoming really negative. And then, the icing on the cake I went to a 40th birthday party and I got so drunk I fell over and landed with my face on a concrete driveway and I got taken home and put to bed. And I got woken up the next morning by my five-year-old daughter standing by the bed and she said to me Mommy, what happened to your face? And I just felt such utter disgust with myself, such shame, such self-loathing that I had got so drunk in front of all these people that I'd smashed my lip open. There was blood everywhere. It was just revolting.
Speaker 2:So I decided to take a break from alcohol. I thought I'll do 21 days because I thought I've just got a bad habit. So I just need to break this habit that I've developed. They say it takes 21 days and this was in 2017. So there wasn't the podcast, the books, the support groups that there is now. And so I did my 21 days and everything changed. So the anxiety disappeared, the sleep improved, the inner chatter in my mind became more positive, I lost weight, I had more energy, I felt more motivated, I felt happy, my mood, everything was so much better.
Speaker 2:So I kept going and I got to 100 days and then I was like, well, I can't never drink again, because that would be weird, because I'm Sarah the party girl. So I know, now that I have taken 100 days off, I clearly don't have a problem. So I will be a grown up, moderate drinker. I've nailed it. I've done a hundred days. Now I'm just going to be one of those midlife women that just has a glass of wine every now and then and everything's fine. And the first night I drank, I went out for dinner with my husband and my best friend and her husband and I sat there with my glass of wine. I was like, look at me, I've got this sussed. I'm just a one glass of wine kind of woman. Now Everything's fine. And within a month I was back to drinking the same as before, because that's generally how it goes for grey area drinkers.
Speaker 2:And in 2019, after two years of trying to moderate, fighting so hard to be, what I believed was the epitome of female midlife was to be able to have a glass of champagne or a glass of wine when you wanted it, stop when you wanted to not have the repercussions of it, and I fought so hard for that.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't me. There's a lot of evidence that I understand now about my brain, my neural pathways, about gray area drinking that makes it. It was never going to be me, and so in the end, I had a decision to make do I carry on drinking like I am that's making me miserable, anxious, overwhelmed, tired, unmotivated or do I stop drinking where I feel happy, content, energized, motivated, positive, like it was a no brainer in the end? So, april 2019, I had my last drink, and then, 2020, I retrained to be a gray area drinking coach. And 2021, I launched my business, which started with one interview in an online women's website and I shared my story of gray area drinking, and 8,000 women contacted me within 24 hours and said you just told my story and I'm sure you're going to get that after this airs, because I feel like there's so many.
Speaker 1:But wait back to that April day. Was there some? I know you hit your head before that, but was there something that night before your last drink? That happened Nothing, you just had a shift.
Speaker 2:I set the date a month before, okay. So in the March I was just sick and tired of my own bullshit and I was like, sarah, when are you actually going to stop, yeah, fighting for something that isn't there and telling yourself that you're going to be able to do it? Everything in your life is better when you don't drink. So I had my friend's 40th in the April and I decided that was going to be my last night and I thought, oh, I'm going to have a massive night. I got my hair done, I got my makeup done, I went going I'm going out with a bang and I went. I had about three drinks and went home because I think I was just so excited for the next chapter of my life to start.
Speaker 1:You were saying that 8,000 women reached out to you. I have. When I posted podcasts with other authors about gray area drinking and being in sober curiosity, a lot of women DM me their own journeys and their own fear about telling their friends. Why is there such a fear of coming out and saying, hey, this isn't really working for me anymore? Why can't we all just agree that that's sort of normal, especially during menopause and perimenopause?
Speaker 2:There's just so much shame and so much stigma attached to having what's deemed as a problem with alcohol, and I think that that goes back decades. I think that there's this whole idea that we're meant to be able to moderate our drinking. All of the taglines are drinking, moderation and all of this, but in actual fact, no one talks about alcohols, up there as one of the top five most addictive substances in the world. It's a level one carcinogen that directly causes seven types of cancer, but we've just all been brainwashed into believing that it adds to our life and the only people that have a problem with alcohol are weak, that they have succumbed to this terrible addiction, and that's absolute bullshit.
Speaker 2:And what we now know is that 30 years ago, the alcohol industry sat around a table realizing they were not making enough money from women and they decided to segregate their marketing, to have a marketing campaign directly targeted at women. And it's worked, because over the last 30 years, alcohol use disorder in women has increased 87 percent. So we know that it's increased, but yet we still have this weird society where you tell someone you stopped smoking and they're like well done, good on you. And you say to someone you stopped drinking, and they go oh, don't be so boring, can't you just have one. Or there's all these hushed whispers.
Speaker 2:Sarah stopped drinking. Do you think she had a problem where I saw her really drunk at a party? Like it's so weird that smoking is one thing but alcohol and maybe as well. I think that the people that have a problem with us not drinking are generally the people that have a bit of a problem with drinking. So then it shines a mirror on their drinking if we decide to stop drinking and they fear that they're going to be judged or that we're going to try and get them to stop drinking, and so their way of channeling that is to criticize or, to, you know, make negative comments around us not drinking.
Speaker 1:What do you say to the women that, like you were saying earlier, like how am I not going to go to this party if they're like, okay, I'm not going to drink, but I am going to Italy, greece, mexico, wherever, like, fill in the vacation spot, I'm going to go there, I won't drink until then? There's still this romanticizing of alcohol that's happening.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's so ingrained in our subconscious and in our beliefs. I was working with a client the other day. She goes look, sarah, I'm fine with not drinking, but I can't imagine not drinking at my daughter's wedding. And I said, okay, when's your daughter's wedding? We'll work towards that. And she goes oh, I don't know, she's only 12. And I'm like, oh my God, we have these weird kind of ideas that we associate with alcohol. And that's just the associations we have formed from the age of two, three, four.
Speaker 2:Research shows that at the age of two, a toddler can tell whether their parent is drinking an alcoholic or non-alcoholic drink and in what kind of circumstances alcohol would be expected, alcohol would be expected. So I know for me that growing up my parents were super social. They had lots of dinner parties and from a very young age little Sarah got this kind of vision of oh, as an adult, to have fun you have to drink alcohol. So we've got these associations.
Speaker 2:But I always say to clients we'll just go one day at a time, because it's incredible how quickly your brain actually and your neural pathways start to change. That you'd be surprised. Let's say, it's August and you're going on holiday in December and you're worrying about how you're going to cope with Christmas in the Bahamas or whatever it is. But you'd be surprised over those few months how much your neural pathways will change. So I always say to my clients don't waste energy worrying about something that's in the future, because by the time you get there you're going to be in a completely different headspace and we'll deal with that scenario with the headspace you're in in that moment. I love that.
Speaker 1:Okay, the other like elephant in the room of menopause. I know that you are certified in menopause coaching and I used to live in New York City years ago before I had my daughter, olivia, and there's a huge drinking culture in New York and I think it has to do with the fact that most people don't drive. You could take the subway here there, everywhere there's always a bar downstairs from your apartment to meet a friend for a drink. It was very much a drinking culture for me especially. I had no problem drinking almost every night. Something happened when I was hitting perimenopause. That same amount of drinking does not agree with me anymore. I say it's like a toxic relationship where sometimes he's nice to you and sometimes he's an absolute jerk. So I know a lot of women are going through the same time. Anybody in their 40s and early 50s are like I can't drink anymore. It keeps me up at night. I wake up with such anxiety, being that you're certified in menopause coaching and stress management. How do you? What's the correlation there? What's the connection?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a few things going on. So number one women produce less of an enzyme ALDH alcohol dehydrogenase than men. So women, anyway, are, in this situation, the weaker sex when it comes to metabolizing alcohol. So for a man and a woman to have the same amount of alcohol, more alcohol content enters a woman's bloodstream than a man's because men are way more efficient at metabolizing and processing alcohol than women are. So we have less of this enzyme anyway. And from about our 30s onwards, we produce less and less of this enzyme as we age. So by the time we get into our 40s and 50s we've got less of the enzyme that supports us metabolizing and processing and removing alcohol.
Speaker 2:Number two our liver volume is shrinking. So as we age our liver it's shrinking, it gets tired, like with all of our organs as we're aging. If we haven't been looking after them, they are not going to be working the same in our 40s and 50s as they are in our 20s. And most of us have not been looking after them. Because you look at what our liver has to do it has to process all the toxins in the products we put in our skin. It has to process caffeine, it has to process sugar, fast food, ultra processed food, alcohol, tobacco. If we've done that, what we breathe, our liver is working so, so hard and it simply cannot work as effectively as we're getting older. So for more and more women as well, what we find is we're producing less of the hormone progesterone as we're aging, which means that we're feeling more anxious.
Speaker 2:Anyway, what happens when we drink alcohol is we have a release in the brain of the neurotransmitter GABA. So GABA is what makes us feel calm and relaxed. So this is why when you first have a drink, you get that calm, relaxed feeling that is like ah, and that will last about 20 minutes. But it's a really big surge of GABA and the brain does not like us to have a lack of balance of all the neurotransmitters and it kind of goes oh too much GABA, so it will release the opposing neurotransmitter, cortisol, or the more stimulating neurotransmitters to balance that out. So we end up producing more cortisol, which is our stress hormone, in response to the GABA that's being produced by the alcohol.
Speaker 2:The problem is that the GABA wears off quicker, so we're making ourselves more stressed and anxious by drinking alcohol. The problem is that the GABA wears off quicker, so we're making ourselves more stressed and anxious by drinking alcohol, and the next day we will have more circulating cortisol because of the impact from the alcohol, and then we're feeling more stressed and then we reach for a drink, and then the cycle continues. And so I find so many midlife women are in this vicious cycle of drinking to relieve the anxiety. The alcohol is increasing the anxiety, so we're drinking more.
Speaker 2:The liver can't process it. Our estrogen is going up and down, up and down throughout this time as well. The liver also has to process estrogen, but if it's having to process alcohol all the time, it doesn't get the chance to get to the estrogen. So we've got higher circulating estrogen, which then can lead to estrogen dominance, which can lead to weight gain, which can lead to heavy periods, which can lead to heavy and more PMS. And so it really is an absolute shit show for our hormones when we are adding alcohol into the mix at this age.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's gone are the days that I could get away with it. I mean, it's just not the case anymore, and I know a lot of women are going through this because a lot of my friends are talking to me about it, so I know that I'm not alone. And if anyone's listening to this, sarah obviously checks her DMs because she got mine, but you could also DM me and Sarah also has an amazing Facebook community. You also run, I guess would it be safe to say, like an online retreat or workshop that you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So four times a year I run women's alcohol-free challenges. And for anyone listening to this, this is not a lecture, this is not fear-mongering, this is not to say you must never drink alcohol again, but it's an invitation. It's an invitation to ask yourself well, can I relate to what Sarah and Sabrina are talking about? Have I noticed that I'm more anxious after I drink? Have I noticed that it's impacting my sleep? Have I noticed that my mood is lower? Have I noticed that I'm feeling not as optimal as I would like to feel as the woman I am today? And if that's the case, then the invitation is maybe look at taking a break from alcohol as an experiment.
Speaker 2:There's a brilliant book out there called Tiny Experiments, and it's all about putting ourselves into situations to challenge well, what works and what doesn't work for us. And if we take 30 days off alcohol, we then have the opportunity to go okay. So how do I feel without alcohol in my system? Is my sleep better? Is my mood better? Is my energy better? Am I calmer? Do I shout at my kids less? Do I find I'm more motivated at work? Have I got more positive self-talk? Have I lost weight? Is my skin glowing by the way. All of these are generally the benefits that I see women get. So then we give ourselves the opportunity to know the version of me and how she feels when I'm drinking three, four, five nights a week, whatever it is, and the version of me that has 30 days without alcohol. And then I get to decide well, who do I want to be, how do I want to feel?
Speaker 2:Because the fact is that most people in the Western world will never take a long enough break from alcohol to actually know how they feel when they haven't got it in their system, because we've got to remember it takes 72 hours for alcohol to leave the system. So even if we drank every third day, we're still not showing up as our optimal selves, because the body's still having to process it and there's still work that's going on internally. So I always say give yourself the opportunity and the experiment of a bit of time off alcohol, but don't do it in a way where you're going oh well, this is terrible, I just have to stay home and cross off the days that I'm boring and it's awful and it's a punishment. Do it as an experiment of going huh, okay. So what am I going to do because I'm not drinking.
Speaker 2:What are the positives that I'm noticing? What am I going to add in? Because I'm not hungover on a Saturday morning and I can get up and do that early morning hike or yoga class or whatever it might be. And that's why I think my challenges work so well and we have women from all over the world that do them. Because it's a safe space to support, to share, to connect and to learn about the impact that alcohol has on our neural pathways, on our brain, on our body.
Speaker 1:I love it. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I never want to like my whole podcast since I started it. They're just conversations and I don't want anyone to think this is any lecture. I just think it's a conversation I'm having with my friends and I wanted to make it public because I don't want anyone out there who feels the same way or can relate to any of this to feel alone, like you are not alone, you aren't crazy. There is like another way, and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. If that doesn't work for you, there are many options in this journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I think for anyone who's piqued their interest this conversation, like get a copy of my book Beyond Booze, get a copy of my book.
Speaker 2:And maybe join my free Facebook community is called the Women's Wellbeing Collective and we've got women from all over the States Canada, new Zealand, australia, the UK and it's putting yourself into an environment where you are listening to women talking about how great their life is without alcohol, because most of us live in a world where what we're hearing is and the stories we get told are your life will be boring and terrible and an awful punishment if you never drink alcohol again. But putting yourself into an environment where you start hearing women going oh my God, I'm a thousand days alcohol free. This is what's changed for me. And all of this it just starts to go into your mind, planting these little seeds of starting to contemplate okay, well, maybe at some point I might want to do one of Sarah's challenges and see how it feels. And then I've got some information to be able to decide.
Speaker 2:Because, at the end of the day, what is this existence on planet Earth if it is not about having self-inquiry and curiosity about what gives us the best experience of our lives? Because that's what it's all about? Right, absolutely. And I think that it's not about saying I've got a problem with alcohol. It's about going well, maybe I've outgrown it and that's how I see it. I just see it that I outgrew alcohol and it stopped working and it started to take more than it was giving, and so for me, I've never been a just have one kind of person, so it was easier to have none than it was to have one. Right, and that's just how it's been for me Amen, thank.
Speaker 1:And that's just how it's been for me Amen, thank you, sarah. For anyone listening, if you're driving, I will have all of the show notes, how to get in touch with Sarah Obviously, you're on Instagram and a link to the Facebook group as well and your workshops, your challenges, that you do. Thank you so much. Also, if anyone's listening, I got Sarah's book as an audiobook and it was an easy listen, especially because your accent. Everything just sounds better. So, if anyone, the audio book is also fantastic. But thank you, sarah, so much for your time. Thank you for having me.