Why mothers drink (and how to stop)

I've given up alcohol. It's not the first time, but I hope it will be the last. Now, I'm looking into why mothers drink and offering support to those who'd like to quit.

My daughter was three years old and at preschool, my son was a tiny baby and I’d had a really hard day.

I’d spent the morning being photographed for an article I was writing, and had gone to a pub for lunch with friends.

During the lunch, my baby had suckled and snoozed, and when it was time to walk home - a couple of miles; through Hackney Downs - he didn’t want to be in the buggy.

He screamed and writhed about; I tried to keep the conversation going with my friends; the whole thing felt incredibly stressful.

A screaming baby - when it’s your own, especially - is incredibly distracting.

Try as you might, the conversation cannot continue. The baby needs you. You want adult conversation. The baby wins.

It was getting close to the time I was meant to collect my daughter and I don’t like being late.

I am never late.

I am, in fact, usually extremely early.

So as the clock ticked, and the friends didn’t up their pace, I found myself panicking.

Screaming baby, everyone moving too slowly, fear of being late.

Eventually, I peeled off and there was some relief because I could now storm the streets to get there in time. But the baby was still unhappy.

We got to nursery, picked up my daughter and I rushed them home.

At last, I could relaaaaaaax.

It felt safe, being home.

It didn’t matter if he cried (which he didn’t, because now he was in my arms, suckling away) and I had the two kids contained.

I discovered a bottle of Baileys in the kitchen, poured some into a glass, over ice, and felt my body melting as the alcohol seeped into my system.

I took a photo of me and the Baileys, shared it on Instagram and got a bunch of messages from other mothers agreeing that sometimes, all you need is a shot of booze after a hard day with the kids.

But is it, really?

Well, I didn’t question it and continued to drink alcohol - not loads, but more than I should have - over the next few years.

I took long breaks in pregnancy and when they were newborn babies - though even then, people popped champagne and offered me a glass; I declined - but it would creep back in.

In the stress of motherhood, especially when one baby became two and then two became three, alcohol felt soothing.

A refreshing pint in the pub at the end of a long week; a glass of Prosecco with friends on a Saturday afternoon; a big glass of warming red with a Sunday roast.

And then in the pandemic, I started popping mini bottles of Prosecco in the afternoon.

Like everyone, I was panicked by the unknown.

Alongside fellow introverts, I was also quietly delighted that I didn’t have to make any social plans ever. Causes célèbres!

By 4pm, I’d be ready for a drink in the garden, under the summer sun.

Not every day, but a few days a week.

At weekends, we’d make espresso martinis and sip them while the kids played in the mud or wheeled each other round in a wheelbarrow.

In photos, I look genuinely happy about the situation.

But my skin said otherwise.

I developed an angry rash on my elbows, wrists and palms and ended up visiting a Chinese herbalist (online).

He prescribed me some muddy teas to drink for a few months, twice a day, and the rash started to fade but so did my sweet tooth.

The teas were sorting out my gut.

Soon, I’d gone off alcohol.

I stopped drinking for three months and felt amazing.

I was clear-headed, full of energy, sprightly, positive, calm.

The rash continued to fade away.

I was more connected with my children, now that there was no escaping into the booze.

They felt less annoying; I felt less bored.

It was joyful.

And it was easy, because we were barely socialising.

But when the lockdowns eased and parties were back on, so was my drinking.

It was mostly at the weekends, when out at the pub with friends, but occasional weekdays, too.

I would never drink enough to have a hangover, or to be sick or black out but having experienced the lightness of sobriety, I felt a lot of guilt around drinking.

And it has never left.

I’ve done the odd few weeks of sobriety here and there, and the occasional month but having relocated and spent one and a half years building a completely new community of friends, alcohol has been a useful crutch.

Until I had the realisation, last week, that actually, alcohol might be causing more issues than I realised.

It had started to creep into the earlier days in the week - Monday rosé in a pub garden; a midweek negroni - and then I’d keep up the drinking all week.

Only one or two drinks, but it was becoming most days.

And then every day.

I’d gone from being a clear binge-drinker in my teens and 20s - only drinking when I was out with a big group of mates, never at home - to drinking most days, and sometimes at home, too.

I wasn’t binge-drinking very often, but I was consistently drinking ‘lightly’.

It felt like my ‘treat’ at the end of the day, having done all that mothering and working.

A little escape.

Also, perhaps I felt connected to the ‘party girl’ of my past. She was wild, and stayed up all night at least one night of every weekend.

She drank pints in an east London boozer the next day, for a pick-me-up ‘hair of the dog’.

But when I had a very weird day, two weeks ago, and may have experienced auditory hallucination - following on from a migraine and heart palpitations - I needed to stop and reassess.

The cause of the above, I’m pretty sure, was anxiety.

The cause of the anxiety? Well, I don’t have any huge traumas in my life right now so I needed to consider the fact it might be - at least in part - the booze.

How I stopped drinking (and you can too, if you want to)

First up, guilt doesn’t help us to take positive action. Positivity does. So I decided to change the message in my head from:

Urghh, I’m drinking too much

to

I’m excited to be sober, now.

Next, I started looking out for tips from other already-sober people.

I saw a post by Victoria Emes on Instagram, who is six months alcohol-free, and she shared some resources that had helped:

A book: The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober

A podcast: Over the Influence

In particular, this episode with Sarah Turner (aka The Unmumsy Mum).

I listened to the podcast and although I said a few times: yeah, I’m not as bad as she was (classic avoidance) - I also found a lot of correlations.

Mostly, the motherhood one.

Sarah is mum to three children, a few years older than my three.

Much of what she described about sinking into the sofa with a glass of wine, at the end of the day, resonated.

Likewise a little glass of wine while cooking.

And, crucially, she talked about how she’d begun to feel really anxious; like something bad was about to happen.

Eventually, she decided that although she didn’t drink every day - and could go for periods without alcohol - she should do an experiment.

She stopped drinking and - no surprises - the anxiety lifted.

It would still appear occasionally but the sense of general panic and doom was largely gone.

Sarah also spoke about the ‘mum drinking’ culture, where we’re encouraged to reach for a g&t after a long day with the kids, or to drink wine during playdates.

And this culture is TOXIC.

Literally.

Alcohol is not the answer to motherhood stress.

It might feel like it is, in the moment, but I’m pretty sure it actually makes it much worse.

I don’t want to sound preachy, though.

I’ve spent nine motherhood years - pregnancy aside - knocking back wines in the pub with my mates, bouncing babes on our knees.

And it’s been fun.

So I can’t now be telling other new mothers to quit drinking because it’s bad for them.

However, with hindsight, I can see that it really wasn’t help me.

Anyway.

After listening to the podcast - there are loads of other good episodes, I now listen every day on my morning run - I devoured Catherine Gray’s book (The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober).

She was a journalist for Cosmopolitan and Glamour and held down these jobs, just about, while going to some extremely dark places with her drinking.

It helped me to understand the sadness of true alcoholism.

Also, how easily people can slip into it.

Also, the link between shyness/introversion and drinking.

(Which I actually wrote about in my second book: Shy - part-memoir, part research. It’s common for shy teenagers to turn to booze, as it gives them a new confidence.)

But also grey area drinking, where it’s not making you feel good but you can’t seem to stop.

That’s me. I’ve been in the grey area.

Not drinking first thing in the morning, always remembering how I got home, never stumbling around but also never stopping after one glass.

And so I’ve decided to quit booze.

For good.

So far, I’m nearly two weeks in, and I have more energy, I feel more positive and it’s given me a sense of freedom.

I can now drive, on a night out, for instance.

Also, I haven’t stopped socialising and so far, I haven’t missed alcohol.

I went to celebrate a friend’s birthday at the pub after school one day and felt completely fine mingling and chatting with everyone, sober.

Perhaps this is normal for some people, but I have rarely been to a pub and chosen not to drink.

I also went to a new friend’s house for evening ‘drinks’ and stayed on the soft drinks.

Again, I felt calm, confident, chatty and didn’t miss booze at all.

At 11.30pm, I went home, went to bed and had all the usual night wakings from my youngest - plus a 5.30am wake-up - but I could cope with it.

In the morning, I felt so pleased that I’d stayed sober.

One thing that helped was that the new friend was totally supportive of it.

I told her, before I went, that I wouldn’t be drinking and she sent me a link to a really nice alcohol-free ‘spirit’.

Annoyingly, you have to order it online so I rocked up with two diet Cokes I’d picked up from the local kebab shop instead but in time, I’ll become more organised.

We need support

One thing lots of people who’ve managed to stay sober have said is that you need a support network of other sober people.

People to message if you fancy a drink but don’t want to give into temptation (like at a party, wedding, awkward social event etc).

So if you’re keen to quit booze, too, let me know.

I’m thinking of the best platform for us to connect and share tips/struggles etc.

It might be on here, in the chat thread, or Whatsapp or a Facebook group but before I decide, I’m keen to see how many of you are interested in going sober too.

Let me know.

Annie x

Ps. If you’re looking for a longer read, you might like my non-fiction books: Raise your SQ, Shy and The Freelance Mum.

Pps. I’m so grateful to those who support my writing by paying £3.50/month. If you’d like to support this Substack too, you can do that here…