I had been sober for a little over a year and I wasn’t feeling the way I was hoping.
I was expecting to lose weight. I kept gaining. I was expecting my skin to clear instead I was feeling like I was going through puberty all over again. I was holding bushes of my already fine hair in my hand with every shower. I was expecting my depression to lift. It wasn’t.
That’s when my friend said, “It sounds like you’re displaying symptoms of perimenopause.”
“I’m only 46. How can that be?” I wailed.
Could she be right? Maybe that was the explanation for the insanity I’d been feeling. I thought with a hint of relief.
She gently pointed me to Dr. Anna Garrett’s book: Perimenopause. The Savvy Sister’s Guide to Hormone Harmony, which left me in complete astonishment at how little, nothing really, I knew about this topic.
What followed was a rabbit hole I wasn't prepared for. Because it turned out sobriety hadn't failed me. Perimenopause had just been waiting quietly underneath it the whole time.
How long had I already been suffering from perimenopausal symptoms, but didn’t know it because they are so similar to attributes my daily drinking habit had? Night sweats, restless sleeps, brain fog, agitations, headaches, dull skin, acne, depression…
Having since studied menopause more closely and become a Certified Menopause Coach, I now understand that I had likely been in perimenopause for years before I got sober. But I couldn’t tell. The symptoms were indistinguishable from after effects of drinking or from just feeling like myself on a regular Thursday. The alcohol was doing such a thorough job of mimicking and magnifying everything that my changing body never stood a chance of being heard.
When something is going on in my body now I can look at other sources and causes and actually feel the depth and the interplay of age, environment and mind. Sobriety gave me the unexpected gift of trusting my own soul, my intuition, and my peace of mind. In this stage of life, that’s everything.
But let me back up.
When I bought my last bottle of pinot noir up the hill from our Airbnb in the Naramata Bench, I had no idea how long my resolve to live AF would last. After all I’d been down that road a few times before and just like quitting smoking I kept letting myself down.
But something had to change.
That night I ran a bath, put on some music, and tried to savor every last drop. Deliberately. Ceremonially. Like a proper goodbye. The thing was, I wasn’t enjoying a glass of wine anymore. I was craving it. Jugging it down as fast as I could manage, only slowed down by the etiquette of drinking it out of stemware rather than the bottle. Catherine Gray, author of ‘The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober’, explains that this is the natural reaction when we flood our brain with artificial dopamine like substances, behaviors, and technology. Our natural dopamine baseline is altered and now we need more of it to feel ok. In my experience a useless quest as it always ended with me being way too drunk, questioning my choices, my words, actions, decisions and my life. I couldn’t take beating myself up anymore.
I wiped away the big tears that rolled down my face. Maybe it was the sad song that was playing through my little JBL speaker. Or possibly because I wouldn’t be able to have dinner dates with my husband, at least for a while, because our favorite thing was ordering a bottle of wine, olives and steak tatar. Deep down I knew I would have to bid farewell to many things, including people in my life if I wanted to become sober.
The following three months I devoured “quit” literature as I walked Sophie in the morning and evening when the Okanagan summer heat was still tolerable. Catherine Gray was my favourite. I listened to that book multiple times, taking mental note of the smoothly woven in tips.
So what did sobriety actually give me that I didn’t expect?
Peace of mind. Time. Depth.
One joy I almost instantly experienced was the return of my senses. My sense of smell, my sense of touch and taste and sight. Colors looked more vibrant and food tasted more delicious. I also had the time back to prepare food with care and intention rather than hurrying along to get to the drinking part.
My sober app, that I check in with now only on special anniversaries, tells me I saved about 9130 hours over the last 5 years that would have otherwise been spent drinking. To be clear that’s only accounting for about five hours a day and does not include thinking about drinking or recovery. 9130 hours is 380 days! I gained back over a year in time to do things I always put off for later, like writing and publishing a book!
I would say the most significant joy of being sober is the peace of mind.
I can’t tell you how often I still think to myself, I’ve done nothing wrong, I was sober. Or, I can trust my senses, I wasn’t drinking. Or, I didn’t leave a candle burning, remember you weren’t drunk. That self-trust, the ability to stand behind my own words and actions and choices, that is something I find especially valuable at this season of my life where everything else is questionable.
Becoming sober during perimenopause was absolutely important for me in navigating this season, however, I wanted to share that none of the books I read talked about navigating alcohol and a changing body, mind and soul.
In all the quit lit I read, weight loss and perfect skin showed up over and over as benefits of quitting alcohol. My experience, disappointingly, was a 20lb weight gain with 15 of those pounds piling on virtually overnight. I bought a pair of pants online because going into a dressing room felt too daunting and by the time they arrived I couldn’t button them up and breathe.
And the promise of clear skin and voluptuous hair. Imagine my devastation when in addition to an ever widening waistline I also lost hair at a frightening rate. Wearing a slimming black shirt was a no go as it only highlighted the hair loss on my shoulders. As for my skin, I barely recognized the face looking back at me as crows feet and deep lines smiled back at me.
It all felt like a punch in the gut after working so hard on recovery, not to at least see the benefits I was in fact feeling on the inside.
What I know now, five years in, is that the body was never the problem. It was always trying to tell me something. Sobriety just finally gave me the peace of mind to hear it and the stamina to deal with it.
If you’re reading this and something is stirring, maybe you’re not ready to call it a problem but you know something isn’t working, that’s exactly the conversation I have with women in my work. Not about alcohol specifically. About what you’re really reaching for. And what becomes possible when you stop.
If that’s you, an alignment call is where we start.