Subscriber OnlyPeople

I’ve liberated myself from the toxic cycle of wine o’clock

Sobriety may be trendy right now, but for me it’s been a much deeper personal shift

'I found myself stuck in a pattern of opening a bottle of wine on a Friday night once the kids were in bed. Instead of having a glass, I’d stay up later and later to finish the whole thing.' Photograph: iStock
'I found myself stuck in a pattern of opening a bottle of wine on a Friday night once the kids were in bed. Instead of having a glass, I’d stay up later and later to finish the whole thing.' Photograph: iStock
Niamh O'Reilly
Thu Oct 31 2024 - 00:00

Change may be inevitable, but it’s still full of quirks. Facebook was once the world’s premier virtual hotspot for sharing everything from entire albums of holiday photos to telling the world about your relationship status. Today it is a virtual space filled with tumbleweeds. For most of us, it’s been relegated to an online birthday reminder service or a way to mortify you about that weird thing you said 10 years ago that you thought was profound. These days many of my so-called Facebook memories seem to revolve around me celebrating the fact that it was Friday and finally wine o’clock.

That was in my pre-children, pre-marriage days when I was beholden to no one and there were few if any consequences to drinking wine on a Friday and Saturday night, with a sneaky glass or two on a Sunday, before jumping back into the working week again. But with the benefit of hindsight, I can see it laid the foundations for a path I later got stuck on.

Fast-forward a few years and my life changed considerably. I got married, became pregnant with my first child and all of a sudden had a year of sobriety thrust upon me. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my weekly wine o’clock when I was expecting.

I can vividly remember going to a hen party when I was only a few weeks pregnant. I’d not even had a scan yet, so I didn’t want to tell the world my news. I decided to concoct a cock-and-bull story about hurting my back and being on heavy anti-inflammatories to explain my sticking to mocktails for the night. Each one of my sisters-in-law suspected I was pregnant. They gave me wry smiles and knowing looks, thoroughly unconvinced by my shabby attempt at subterfuge. When the wedding rolled around, I was 12 weeks pregnant and felt I had no choice but to share the news earlier than I had wanted to, because once again I wasn’t drinking, and it would have raised the eyebrows of everyone I encountered.

READ MORE

“Does she not drink? Is she sick? Maybe she’s on antibiotics? No, she must be preggers!”

This wasn’t a damming indictment of my drinking habits, or the judgmental nature of my sisters-in-law, but simply the culture at the time. If a grown adult wasn’t drinking on a night out or at an occasion, it had to be investigated and a reason concluded. If you were a man you were probably on antibiotics, and if you were a woman of childbearing age you were obviously pregnant.

To avoid the whispers and questions, we decided to tell everyone. It was the first wedding I’d been to without having at least one drink and, coupled with the absolute fatigue of the first trimester, it was one of the longest evenings of my life.

Still, that aside, the alcohol-free time passed easily enough. Mercifully, the thoughts of a glass of wine turned my stomach when pregnant. I had two babies in three years and was so busy in the days of early motherhood that my weekly wine o’clock often faded into thin air.

Then Covid happened. With a five-month-old and a three-year-old when the world locked down, I, like many adults, found myself delving headfirst into some questionable habits to get by. Who among us didn’t do things such as bake baskets of banana bread, build tiki bars in the back garden or pretend we had to drive over to our mother’s house to feed her goldfish in order to break restrictions and find some headspace?

I discovered sea-swimming, which kept me sane when I was in the freezing cold water, but back in the suffocating confines of the house on those days when we couldn’t go further than 2km, I found myself looking forward to that glass of wine on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday once again. With unending lockdowns in sight, the days blended into one.

After the hell of lockdown was in the rearview mirror, I found myself stuck in a pattern of opening a bottle of wine on a Friday night once the kids were in bed – and instead of having a glass, I’d stay up later and later to finish the whole thing.

I reframed wine o’clock from a hallowed reward for my long, hard week, into something that often makes me feel more tired, stressed and unhealthy

I was waking up exhausted and fluffy-headed, unable to be fully present for my children, but putting on the mask and carrying on regardless. I’d often do it all again on a Saturday night, too, and then back on the wagon for the week to come.

It became a habit, a routine, a culture. I saw it as a reward for my hard week of juggling work, being a mum and the mental load of the family, or simply my consolation for a tough week at all the above. Whether it was to celebrate or berate, I’d happily declare my intention to imbibe on social media with all the memes about tired mums and wine o’clock.

I’d be dying for wine o’clock on Friday, but it started to feel like it was an unhealthy habit that was slowly killing me. I was trapped in a toxic cycle, and it felt like I was sabotaging or punishing myself on an unconscious level. So, in a very Irish mammy-esque move, I took a good, long, hard look at myself and my drinking habits, and I didn’t like what I saw or where it was going.

So, I stopped.

A recent report in the Lancet on global alcohol consumption discovered that Irish women consume the seventh-highest level of “average daily drinks” at 3.1 alcoholic drinks. I didn’t consider myself one of those statistics because I didn’t drink every day. I wasn’t an alcoholic, but the term “grey-area drinking” probably wouldn’t have been far off where I was headed.

[ Irish women ranked in top 10 for alcohol consumption, study finds ]

Like many people, I did dry January this year. I didn’t put any pressure on myself, and despite hitting a few personal speed bumps along the way that could have become an easy excuse to have a glass of wine, I decided to take the other path.

Before I knew it, four months of sobriety had passed. It was the circuit breaker I’d been looking for and very soon I started to see and feel all the benefits. I woke up on a Saturday morning and felt rested. I felt fresher. I felt like this was the real reward and not the wine the night before. I felt like I was back in control of my life and no longer stuck on this toxic treadmill I never wanted to be on. It was as if I’d stopped the self-sabotage that had crept in.

I rarely drink wine any more. Sobriety may be trendy right now, but for me it’s been a much deeper personal shift. I reframed wine o’clock from a hallowed reward for my long, hard week into something that often makes me feel more tired, stressed and unhealthy. I don’t frown on having a drink, and I’ll occasionally have a glass of something at home or when I’m out, but the key for me is that it’s on my terms, and no longer an automatic action or something I do because it’s expected of me, and that’s been liberating.

[ I thought that after a month of not drinking, my relationship with alcohol would fix itself. I was wrong ]

This month a campaign called Sober October has been under way. While it’s a savvy marketing spiel based on a sublime rhyme, it’s also a great opportunity to look at your drinking habits, take a step off that toxic treadmill you may have been stuck on and maybe see where the new path takes you.

READ NEXT