“Would you like a glass of wine?” my friend called down the hall, uncorking a bottle of wine. The writing group I was with had rented a lake house in Vermont last June, on an island in the middle of Lake Champlain, where shorebirds and ducklings floated by.
The thought of relaxing by the campfire in an Adirondack chair with a glass of chilled rosé had me salivating, the way my dog does when I take the lid off the treat jar. Any other time, I would have had a drink (or two), but I was testing sobriety.
I've been thinking about it for years, but I never got around to it until the booze started taking away my sleep. I've tried natural sleep aids and acupuncture, but none of them worked.
At 44, I wasn’t drinking enough to suffer hangovers as bad as I did when I was a journalist living in New York City in my 20s. And while I drank every night during the early stages of the COVID pandemic, I had recently cut back a lot. When I unexpectedly hit perimenopause in my early 40s, my body began to react to alcohol differently. Even if I had just one glass of wine, I would wake up several times during the night. I suppose I could have avoided those moonlit bathroom visits with a sleeping pill, but that would have only masked the larger problem: I wanted to stop drinking and couldn’t.
“People’s relationship with alcohol changes at different stages of life.”
— Elaine Skoulas, Los Angeles-based marriage and family therapist
I wrote about my frustration in my journal. Was it worth a Grey Goose martini on Thursday night and the three cappuccinos it would take to shake off the brain fog on Friday morning?
I wasn't the only one who suddenly questioned a lifelong habit. Elaine SkoulasA licensed marriage and family therapist based in Los Angeles who specializes in addictions, she said it's not uncommon to reevaluate drinking habits as one ages.
“I often hear that people’s relationship with alcohol changes at different stages of life,” said Skoulas, who has been sober for 12 years. Whether due to aging or a change in metabolism, many people cut back on alcohol as they age because the negative effects of drinking get worse over time, she said.
But what would giving up drinking mean for my personal life? Alcohol was linked to some of the most important milestones in my life. I met my husband in a bar over a Northern Standard cocktail and then… wrote about it for Food & Wine magazineI received a bottle of Vermont WhistlePig rye whiskey for my 40th birthday and a Merry Edwards Russian River Pinot as a wedding gift. And I loved to drink: Miraval rosé under the summer stars, mezcal margaritas on lazy Saturday afternoons, boozy Bloody Marys, scrambled eggs and croissants on Sunday mornings.
If alcohol hadn’t started affecting my sleep, I probably never would have quit. I didn’t even stop drinking it when my husband and I started fertility treatment in 2020. Ordering a comforting whiskey cocktail at my favorite local bar tempered the disappointment of each IVF failure.
I don't think anyone would have called me an alcoholic, but I knew I had a problem when I realized how often I wrote in my journal about how bad wine made me feel.
Last December, an astrologer told me that my birth chart suggested I could benefit greatly from giving something up. It made me think back to when I was only 7 years old when I stopped eating meat. I had managed to stick to it all my life.
Could I give up alcohol, too? Christmas was just around the corner. I was worried that my friendships would suffer. And what would my husband and I do for fun if we couldn't go to our favorite bar on the weekend?
I finally hit my breaking point in March when I met two friends for dinner. We all ordered drinks and then spent most of the meal talking about our not-so-great relationship with alcohol. I slept terribly that night and decided the next morning to try to quit for good.
I was tired of feeling guilty for giving my body something that made it miserable, tired of planning and rationalizing my drinking, and tired of trying to get my brain to focus on so little sleep.
My husband was supportive, as were my friends. I was lucky. Skoulas says having a trusted circle of loved ones can make all the difference in staying sober.
“It creates a sense of responsibility because if you’re trying to get through an event on your own and no one knows, of course it’s easier to turn to alcohol than if you have a friend by your side who knows you weren’t planning on drinking that night,” she said.
“It’s like a jet plane: it takes a lot of energy to get it up into the sky, but once you get there, it’s a lot easier to handle.”
— Steve Kobashigawa, a Los Angeles-based marriage and family therapist, on how to achieve sobriety
I couldn’t have picked a worse time to try sobriety. A week later, I attended the funeral of a woman in my writing group and then went out to dinner that night, where I kept reminiscing about the day’s events. I was mourning her absence and desperately needed a drink to wash away some of the sadness. I leaned toward my husband.
“Could we share a drink?” I asked.
“Do you really want one?” he replied.
I did. Anything to ease my emotional pain. But then I thought about the next morning. My sadness would still be there, and it would be even harder to process if I didn’t sleep well. When we saw the waiter again, we had already finished eating and my wave of cravings had passed.
The next few weeks were tough. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, and it felt like I was competing against my own desires. I drank soda water at weddings and drove my 83-year-old father to stressful doctor appointments without relaxing with a martini afterward. When my friend’s fiancé committed suicide, I was surrounded by bottles of wine scattered across the kitchen counter, but every time I walked out the door completely sober, I could breathe a sigh of relief.
Steve KobashigawaLos Angeles-based marriage and family therapist, said that when you feel the urge to drink coming on, do whatever you need to do to get into a more positive frame of mind. Call someone, journal, or use a mindful drinking app like Sunny sideSometimes avoiding alcohol can seem impossible, but staying sober becomes “exponentially easier” over time, he said.
“It's like a passenger plane: It takes a lot of energy to get it up into the sky, but once you get there, it's a lot easier to handle,” said Kobashigawa, who specializes in addiction treatment and has been sober for 25 years.
Skoulas advised staying away from places where you used to drink regularly while you establish new healthy patterns and rewire your brain. If you go back to a place where you used to drink, even if you don't drink alcohol, your brain still experiences some of the more euphoric parts of drinking, which can be triggering.
“When you walk into familiar places, some of those neurotransmitters start to be released,” he said.
I learned that if I'm going to be around drinkers, it's best to plan ahead. When I went to the lake house with my friends, I called the local cocktail bar ahead of time and asked if they could make me a non-alcoholic drink to go. I felt silly doing so, but they told me my request wasn't that unusual.
I had a great time that weekend, even though I was the only sober one in the group. Sometimes when people ask me why I don't drink, it's easier to say that I suffer from insomnia than to talk about my complicated relationship with alcohol.
Recently, a friend asked me why I didn't drink.
“I’m just taking a break,” I said. She responded with a mischievous smile; she knew I had tried IVF before.
“I’m not pregnant,” I said, surprised that I could talk about my infertility without getting angry. It was then that I realized how much alcohol (a depressant) had been affecting my mood. A cocktail could only mask the pain for so long. Eventually I had to face reality.
Alcohol produces a surge of dopamine, and when you stop drinking, you may feel sad at first, but that usually goes away within a few months, Kobashigawa said. Sometimes quitting drinking involves anhedonia, which is the inability to find pleasure in activities you once enjoyed. But you can help stave off that feeling by staying active.
“If you feel down, that is unfortunately part of the recovery process, but try to go for a walk or resume activities that used to be enjoyable for you,” she said.
In a few months I'm going to Italy on my honeymoon. I had thought I'd like to spend my evenings there drinking Tuscan wine, but now I'm not so sure. I feel more like myself now. I've lost weight and have fewer wrinkles. It turns out sobriety is a lot cheaper than Botox. It's hard to imagine things going back to the way they were.
I always thought that if I stopped drinking martinis on the weekends, the desire to drink would take over, but here I am, sober for almost five months. Aside from the occasional craving, I don't think about alcohol much. I drink raspberry cocktails when I'm on vacation with my friends and go out for ice cream with my husband on the weekends. I'm less anxious and more present in conversations and the world around me. In sobriety, I actually feel freer than ever.
By Betsy VereckeyHer first autobiography will be published next summer by Rootstock Publishing. She lives in Vermont with her husband and Four boisterous terriers.
