Long Tail Hangovers

The Morning After Hangxiety Spiral

When Your Drinking Starts To Bore You

The Wasted Time

The Emotional Fallout

Two Extra Signs

SPEAKER_00 0:01

So most people that I speak to don't wake up uh one morning proclaiming that they are never, ever, ever going to drink again. And I don't know anyone who suddenly one day just decided out of the blue to become a mindful drinker. For most people, starting the journey to change the way you drink is far more subtle than that. It's a slow dawning, it's a gradual realization that something just feels a little bit off. And wondering, just wondering if alcohol might have something to do with it. Now, sometimes it might be more obvious, like spending too much and remembering too little, but other times, the quiet times, those are the times that sneak up on you. The times that you can't quite put your finger on it until they start to more fully reveal themselves. So today we're going to take a look at some of those times and uncover the signs that are trying to speak to you and to tell you that they are there and ready for you to notice them. For each one, I'm going to share an episode that I've made for you that dives deeper into that subject so that no matter what you're feeling, and no matter where you are in your realization of the shifting patterns that you can't quite put your finger on, there's something further out there that can help you and to support you to understand what you're feeling and more importantly, so that you can do something about it. You're listening to the Mindful Drinking and Moderation in Midlife podcast with me, Denise Hamilton Mace, your mindful drinking mentor. After 24 years of working in hospitality and drinking daily, I finally recognise 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 public speaker on all things moderation to help you design, build, and live a life less intoxicated on your own terms. If you're ready to make a change without judgment or pressure to quit, then come with me as we dive 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. So to get us started, I am going to need you to be a little bit forgiving of me today, my friend. You may be able to hear that I'm a little bit gruff in the voice department today. My darling daughter has brought in a wonderful throat infection into the house for Easter. And we're all suffering with it at the moment. So I'm feeling a bit rough, but I promised you that I would show up for you every week. And that's what I'm going to do. I am lemsipped up to the hilt and ready to talk this out with you. So let's start with maybe one of the more obvious signs that you have probably felt along the way and that has maybe brought you to a show like mine. And that is that hangovers are just hitting us differently. They're not necessarily worse or more intense, but what you've noticed is that they are getting longer. And I don't mean longer in that sense of it takes you longer to get over that initial, obvious, you know, terrible headache, sick stomach, can't keep any food down sort of situation. I mean longer in that long tail sense. You know the end bit of the hangover? It just doesn't seem to go away as quickly as it did before. It's that ongoing fuzziness and fogginess in your brain where your memory's not quite up to scratch, your patience is uh still not back, you're snapping at your kids, maybe at your husband, you've got no patience at work. But it's also the physical, physical signs as well. You know, you've got less energy, less motivation, you're not feeling quite as energized and empowered as you were. You're looking in the mirror and your skin feels a little bit grey, you're noticing more spots, all of those sort of long tail things that just don't quite seem to leave. That's the kind of long tail hangover that's speaking to you quietly from the back of your mind after three days, four days, five days, and you're thinking, surely I should be feeling a bit better by now. And maybe, maybe you don't even notice it straight away. Because maybe in between the night out that you had and day four of you still not quite feeling yourself, maybe other things have happened. And so you don't necessarily always equate the way that you're feeling with the alcohol that you had. Maybe you've had a couple of rough days at work, maybe you had a row with your other half, maybe you went to the gym and you did a really tough workout, or you went for a run and you went further than you normally do. And so you're wondering or assuming if the way that you're feeling is probably down to those other things. But there's a little voice in the back of your mind that's just maybe it's the alcohol. And that voice over time starts to get a little bit louder, not in a shouty in your face kind of way, but just in a hey, you might want to notice me kind of way. And you're starting to think, is this fully worth it? Is it worth going out and having a great time for four or five or six hours, but then feeling like crap for three or four or five days afterwards? And look, only you can answer that for yourself. You know I'm not going to tell you what you should or shouldn't be doing. But if that voice is there and if it is niggling at you, then maybe it wants you to listen to it. So I made an episode that could help you with this. Uh, it's one of the most popular episodes, most downloaded episodes of the podcast, in fact. And it's number 118, why you can't drink like you used to. And in it, I dive into some of the reasons why that long tail hangover tends to stick around a bit longer once we reach midlife. Now, the good thing about this episode is that it will help you to recognize that this isn't a failing on your part. This isn't about your body letting you down or you not being a cool cat anymore, able to keep up with the kids. This is just biology and it happens to the best of us. So, in this episode, we take a look at some of the physiological reasons why alcohol starts to hit differently as we age. So, if one of the things that has been sitting in the back of your mind, that's been trying to make itself known, is the fact that these long tail hangovers don't quite seem to leave as quickly as you would like, then this would be a really good place for you to start to see why alcohol hits differently and of course what you can do about it. The next sign that your drinking doesn't feel quite right anymore is the anxiety. Yes, anxiety is one of those made-up words by newspapers and magazines that sit on headlines and social media gurus so that we've got something to talk about. I say we, I'm equally guilty, I'm part of that crowd. But it is a very, very real thing. So just in case you've never heard of it before, anxiety is that feeling that you get when you wake up the morning after the night before, and whilst you're still maybe lying in bed or on the sofa, wherever you made it to, your brain starts to tick over and it starts worrying, and you start wondering, just what is it that I did last night? Maybe your memory's a little bit spotty and you're not sure exactly what you said to that person at that time. Maybe you're wondering what you did and if your boss was still there at the end of the work do when you started dancing on the bar. Maybe it's who did your message and your hand tentatively reaches for the phone as you open up your WhatsApps to have a look and see what messages were sent the night before. It's that replaying of your evening, of your actions. And look, not every night that you go out are you going to find yourself doing something dire and embarrassing. Of course not. Of course not. Um, but we do sometimes do stupid shit when we're drunk. Okay. But even the nights when you don't, the nights when you uh had a perfectly reasonable evening, you got home at a perfectly respectable hour, you still wake up the next morning with that little questioning pit in your stomach, going, should I have said that? When when they said this, should I have said that? You know, did they give me a funny look? Was that the right thing to do, the right thing to say? And it's that doubting yourself, that second guessing yourself, and it makes you feel just a little bit off. And you start wondering, if I hadn't had that last one drink, two drinks, three drinks, would I have said what I said? Would I be feeling this way right now? Would I be doubting myself the way that I am? And now look, like I said, not every night that you go out are you going to be waking up with this sort of anxiety, this uncertainty, this self-doubt. But if you're starting to find that it's creeping in more and more often, if you're questioning yourself more and more frequently, and you're wondering if perhaps you could have handled things differently or better if you had drunk less or differently, then maybe that anxiety sign is trying to make itself known to you. Now, in episode 103, called No One Tells You This About Drinking Less in Midlife, I look at some of the truths about drinking mindfully and about the changes that we go through, including the fact that you will get to know yourself like you never have before when you start drinking differently. And it's that knowing of yourself that helps you to eliminate the self-doubt, the self-deprecation, the questioning the morning after, the night before, so that you can take that anxiety and move it from a quiet, niggling voice that keeps pecking at you to something you can put away in a box and say, Do you know what? I don't need you anymore. I know myself and I know what I've done and I know how I've behaved. And I'm really proud of the choices that I've made. The third sign that we're looking at today is the boredom. Now, this one is a little bit controversial because a lot of people will say that not drinking is boring. But what I say to the boredom naysayers, it's the same thing I say to my kids. And it's something that my mum used to say to me, which used to really annoy the crap out of me, but I completely understand it now. And that is that only boring people get bored, right? If you are thinking that not drinking on a night out is boring, that's because you're being boring. And if you are thinking that drinking alcohol the way that you have been doing is boring you because it's the same old, same old. It's a repetition again and again. Well, maybe you're being boring about the way that you're consuming alcohol as well at the moment. Tough love moment. You know I'm uh a big fan of those. But look, when I talk about the boredom of the way that you're currently drinking, I don't mean it in a judgmental, you've got to stop doing the same old things kind of way. What I mean is that feeling that you get inside yourself, when you're telling yourself that you are bored of doing the things that you keep doing. It's when you're not excited about your drinking occasions anymore, when the drink that you order doesn't hold any interest for you, when you're just having the same old, same old and you're having the same conversations in the same bars with the same people at the same time, and you know exactly how the night is going to play out for the better or for the worse, but yet you keep on doing it. Things feel flat, conversations don't excite you anymore, and all you're doing is going through the motions of ordering drink after drink after drink until you get yourself into a uh a condition that you feel is sufficient to say that you've done your night out well. It's when you feel that you are just going through the motions. It's not desire, it's not wanting, it's habit. And it's frustrating because you know that you don't want it. You know that you don't want to keep doing it, you know that you want to do something a little bit different, but you're just in a rut. And nobody wants to be stuck in a rut. You have to give yourself a break here, though, because it has taken you years of programming to get where you are today. This wasn't just some overnight activity where you just jumped into drinking the same way, the same time with the same people over and over again. This is years and years of practice, and you should probably tip your hat off to that. You were very dedicated to your task, but you've come to realize that it's time for things to change. That voice in the back of your head is asking you, is this what we want to keep doing? Is this worth it? Am I enjoying myself? Is this fun? If the answer is not as much as it used to be, then maybe there's space there for you to start making some changes. Maybe that is a sign that your drinking doesn't quite feel right anymore, and there are some things that you want to change up a little bit. So in episode 153, are you too old for mindful drinking? This is a great one for this topic because it talks a lot about the fact that we have built up these habits, that we have decades of patterns that we are following that lead us to drink in the way that we do. The automation of it, the autopilot aspects of it, all of these things that fall into us repeating the same old habits again and again and again. So if you are tired of just going through the motions and you want to start doing things a little bit differently, then in the show notes, you'll find the link to episode 153. Are you too old for mindful drinking? And also, I'm pretty sure you can guess what the ultimate answer to that question is. Right, the fourth sign that we're looking at today is the wasted time. And this is one that I don't find that many people talk about, but I think it's really, really important. And it's that feeling that you're not reaching your full potential in the other areas of your life because of the time that you feel that you are wasting either drinking or recovering from drinking. Now, this is one that sort of creeps in. This is definitely that quiet voice that you didn't expect to be listening to. But you've got plans, right? You've got plans for your life. Maybe they're big plans, maybe they're small plans, maybe you'd like to have plans, but you don't have the time to make the plans that you want to have. You got a plan to have a plan. The thing about alcohol is that it does get in the way of a lot of the things that you want to do. If your weekends are built around recovering, getting better, getting over it, if all you're doing is saying, right, okay, Friday night, Saturday night, I've got that planned. I'm going down this pub with these friends, I'm going to this club with those friends, I'm at this bar or this restaurant, and then Sunday, I'm, I know I'm going to sit on the sofa all day and just recover. That's fine if that's what you want to do. And it is fun. Don't get me wrong, I had great times doing that. But then Monday rolls around. You got to go to work. Monday evening you're exhausted. Tuesday, Wednesday is the same. Thursday's a new Friday. Friday's a weekend, and before you know it, you're back at it again. When do you find time for you? When do you do the things that you really want to do? When do you plan for the future that you want to have? When do you give yourself space and time to create the plans, to build the life that you want, and then to follow through on them? This is such an important part of changing the way that you allow alcohol to show up in your life. It's the recognition that there are other things that are equally or more important to you than just going out and drinking the same way that you always have been. It's not to say that alcohol isn't part of your future plans. Perhaps one of your plans is to go to a wonderful vineyard. Perhaps it's to go on a wine tour. Perhaps it's to go and visit some breweries and actually see how beers and alcohol-free beers are made. Alcohol can be part of your plans for your future. Maybe it's going for your favorite restaurant. You might have a list of top five restaurants that you want to hit and have some amazing food and have one of their tasting menus where they've paired some wonderful wines with some wonderful food, but you know it's going to be a measured and paced and relaxed evening rather than a wild night out. Your plans can look like anything. They're yours, and you have the right to explore them and to implement them however you want. But it's so much harder to do that when alcohol keeps getting in the way. So an episode that I've got for you here that could fit really well is episode 155. Does drinking less mean becoming less you? One of the things a lot of my students from the four-week reset tell me that they worry about when it comes to changing the way that they drink is will I still be fun? Will I still be sociable? Will I still go out? Will people still want me to come out? And that whole identity crisis element of it is a very real concern for a lot of people. So if you are feeling that, know that you're not alone and that that is perfectly, perfectly normal. Inside episode 155, I break down some of the identity shifts that take place when we start changing the way that we drink alcohol. But before that, I also look at the identity that you've built for yourself around the alcohol in the first place and why it becomes so hard to make that change, to break that connection, but why it's so important that we do if we want to be able to move on, to make plans for ourselves and to take back some of that wasted time. Now, the last sign that we're going to look at today, and there are some more signs, I'll tell you about them in a moment, but the last sign that we're going to look at today is the emotional fallout. It's those feelings that your most important relationships are being affected or impacted in some way, shape, or form by how much you drink. And I'm not talking about here the dramatic TV depiction or Hollywood depiction of an alcoholic who's burned all their bridges, who's effing and Jeffinette, their partner, who, you know, doesn't see the kids anymore. It's not all about that, right? That's that's the Hollywood side of it. That's the TV side of it. In real life, most of us continue to maintain our important relationships. We don't, you know, leave our spouses and estrange ourselves from our kids. But those relationships do get strained. Maybe it's not your family, maybe it's your closest friends, you know, the people that you go out with all the time. And yet, as time goes on, there are more and more and more frequent occurrences of bickerings and falling out and misunderstandings. Those relationships are just as important for different reasons as the one that we have with our spouse, or maybe it's with our parents, or maybe it's our relationships at work. There are important relationships all over the place, depending on how you've designed your life. But the emotional fallout that ensues when alcohol feels like it's impacting us more and more frequently, that fallout might not be dramatic. It might not be blowing your life up, but it's there and it's consistent and it's growing. And it looks like you being short-tempered or cancelling plans frequently, saying things that you wouldn't normally say, regretting things that you have said or done. It's all the small moments, it's all the little things that add up. And it's the days when you think to yourself, I wonder, I wonder if I felt a bit better about myself, if I would have said that, or if I would have done that. And I wonder if I drank a little less alcohol a little more often, might I feel a little bit better about myself? And it's all connected, it all adds up into this one big, ongoing, whispering thought in the back of your head of is alcohol part of the reason why I'm feeling this way. One of my more recent episodes will really help with this, and that's 161. It's the real reason your friends can't take no for an answer. And this episode is all about those social situations where you are finding yourself drinking more than you wanted to, more than you planned to, more than you intended to, because you're trying your best to keep that emotional equilibrium between you and the people that you spend time with. Because when you are feeling that alcohol is impacting your personal relationships, one of the ways that you might try to salvage them is by going drinking together. You might think, oh my God, me and Hubby or me and Wifey, we had a bit of a falling out, or we've just been snapping at each other lately. Let's sit down and have a couple of drinks together. That will make things better. And it might, I don't know your relationship, I don't know your situation. But it also Might add another layer of complexity that perhaps doesn't serve you as well as you had intended that it would. So check out episode 161 for a little bit of insight into why people might encourage you to drink more and why you might feel that you have to succumb to that. As I mentioned, this isn't it. Okay, that was five signs there that your drinking doesn't quite feel right anymore, and that you might might want to start taking some steps to make some changes. But that's not all of them. I do have two more signs that you can look out for. When you sign up and join me over on my Substack, where I'm loving writing for you at the moment, I'll send you the complete seven signs your relationship with alcohol is changing ebook, which is where this episode comes from, and that will have in it the links to all the companion episodes I mentioned today and the two extras. You'll also be joining my weekly emails and be one of the first to know when I launch the Vault. That's right, I've got a brand new resource library coming that I'm putting together based on all of the help and frameworks that have resonated with you the most. So you'll find the link to my Substack and the episodes I've mentioned today in my show notes. And of course, until next time, cheers to a life less intoxicated. I'm off to have some more Lemsip.