There’s an interesting change happening in our relationship with alcohol.
Younger generations are drinking less, while in the UK some of the highest levels of drinking are found among people in midlife and older age.
And for many women in their 40s and 50s, drinking doesn’t necessarily look problematic from the outside.
The bills are paid. The career is intact. The kids are sorted. You exercise, turn up to work, remember the appointments and generally keep life moving.
But something can still feel deeply wrong on the inside.
Maybe you’re drinking alone at home more often than you’d like. Maybe one glass regularly becomes a bottle. You wake up feeling terrible, promise yourself you won’t drink that evening and then find yourself pouring another glass at five o’clock.
This is the territory often described as grey area drinking — the enormous space between the occasional drinker and the stereotypical image we’ve been given of someone with a serious alcohol problem.
And it’s the territory I explore with Kate Bee, founder of The Sober School.
When Drinking Became Part of Being a Woman
One of the most interesting parts of our conversation is looking at how alcohol became so entwined with female identity.
For women coming of age during the 1990s, ladette culture presented drinking alongside men as a kind of equality. Popular culture increasingly portrayed wine as sophisticated, independent and successful.
Then somewhere along the way, alcohol became self-care.
Wine became the reward after a difficult day. The way to switch off. The social lubricant. The thing you deserved because you’d survived another week.
And by midlife, there can be a lot to switch off from.
Careers. Businesses. Teenagers or younger children. Ageing parents. Financial pressure. Relationship changes. Perimenopause. The endless mental load of keeping everything running.
When something is inexpensive, readily available, attractively packaged and completely socially acceptable, it isn’t difficult to understand how it can become a coping mechanism.
Until eventually, it stops feeling like one.
“But I Don’t Have a Drinking Problem”
Kate’s own drinking didn’t fit the traditional image of alcoholism she had in her mind.
She was functioning.
And that can be one of the biggest barriers to questioning your relationship with alcohol.
We’re often encouraged to ask whether things have become bad enough. Have I lost my job? Damaged my relationships? Been arrested? Had some dramatic rock-bottom moment?
But perhaps there’s a much simpler question:
Is alcohol making my life better?
You don’t have to wait until your life falls apart before deciding something is no longer working for you.
That was something Kate discovered through reading an anonymous sobriety blog. She finally recognised herself in somebody else’s experience in a way she hadn’t when looking at more traditional recovery models.
Eventually, she began writing anonymously herself.
Sharing her progress gave her accountability without requiring her to publicly identify herself as someone who had a “drinking problem.”
Sometimes we just need to see our own experience reflected back to us.
Why Is It So Hard to Stop?
This is another important part of the conversation because women who are incredibly disciplined in other areas of life can become frustrated by their inability to simply decide not to drink.
Kate talks about both the physical and habitual aspects of alcohol use.
Repeated drinking creates associations that become incredibly familiar:
Stress = drink.
Loneliness = drink.
Celebration = drink.
Friday night = drink.
Hard day = drink.
Eventually, reaching for alcohol can feel almost automatic.
And when you begin doing something differently, there is often an uncomfortable middle ground.
The old behaviour is familiar but no longer what you want. The new behaviour still feels awkward, unrewarding or strange.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the new life isn’t working.
It may simply mean it isn’t familiar yet.
Understanding that can be incredibly freeing, because the conversation moves away from “Why don’t I have enough willpower?” and towards “What have I trained myself to believe about alcohol, and can I learn something different?”
What If You’re Not Giving Something Up?
Cognitive behavioural therapy plays an important role in Kate’s work at The Sober School.
Rather than simply telling yourself that you can’t drink anymore, you begin examining the beliefs you’ve built around alcohol.
Does it really help me relax?
Does it actually reduce my stress?
Does it make me more confident socially?
What happens to my sleep afterwards?
How do I feel the following morning?
How does drinking affect my anxiety?
Instead of relying on the story you’ve always told yourself about alcohol, you start gathering evidence from your own life.
And that can completely change the way sobriety feels.
Rather than seeing an alcohol-free life as deprivation — I can never have this again — it becomes an opportunity to notice what you’re gaining.
Better sleep. More energy. Less anxiety. More time. More money. Greater confidence in yourself.
And perhaps one of the biggest gains of all: waking up and feeling proud of the choices you made the night before.
You Don't Have to Decide About Forever
The idea of never drinking again can feel enormous.
So Kate encourages people to work with much smaller windows of time.
Start with six weeks. Then perhaps aim for 100 days.
Apps and trackers can help because they make progress visible — not only the number of alcohol-free days, but money saved and other milestones along the way.
These longer stretches also give you the opportunity to experience what life without alcohol actually feels like.
Because repeatedly stopping for a few days and then starting again can mean continually repeating the hardest part.
Sometimes you need enough distance to discover what exists on the other side.
“Why Aren’t You Drinking?”
And then, of course, there are other people.
Alcohol is so socially accepted that choosing not to drink can attract far more questions than drinking does.
Kate’s advice is simple: you don't owe anybody your entire story.
You can give as much or as little information as you want.
For some women, saying alcohol is affecting their sleep, migraines or anxiety is enough to move the conversation along.
We also talk about alcohol-free drinks.
For some people, an alcohol-free beer or wine is a brilliant bridge into a new way of living. For somebody else, it can feel too much like maintaining the old ritual.
There isn’t one rule that works for everyone.
Pay attention to how it makes you feel.
Imagine What You Could Do Without It
Perhaps my favourite idea from this conversation is also one of the simplest.
Many women who question their drinking are already doing an extraordinary amount.
They’re raising families, building careers, running businesses, exercising, caring for other people and managing complicated lives.
And they’ve been doing all of that while drinking.
So rather than asking what you’ll lose by taking alcohol away, there’s another possibility worth considering:
If you’ve achieved all of this despite alcohol, imagine what you might do without it.
This article was generated with the assistance of AI from the original podcast transcript and edited for readability. The ideas and conversation are drawn from the original episode of The Midlife Rebel Podcast. This article is for general information only and is not intended as medical advice. Anyone who may be physically dependent on alcohol should seek medical advice before stopping suddenly.