.png)
Alcohol and High Functioning Women
As a high-performing executive woman in midlife, I was dealing with emotional exhaustion, stress and overfunctioning which led me to become a grey-area drinker. Alcohol wasn’t imploding my life, I wasn’t ruining relationships and in fact, I was outwardly thriving. Until one day I realized I was drinking too much and couldn’t stop. It wasn’t until I got sober that I was able to recognize the root cause of why I kept reaching for the wine bottle even though I knew it wasn’t good for me. And as a sober coach for women, I see the same patterns repeating themselves over and over again.
Stress Drinking in Women
One of the most common reasons successful women like you and I find ourselves drinking too much is because of stress, especially if you’re in leadership or a senior executive, juggling performance expectations, parenting children, aging parents and household demands. If you’re lying awake at night, not able to sleep and wondering why you’re drinking so much, stress is often part of the equation. Perhaps you already know that you’re drinking to unwind and relieve stress but don’t know how to cut back or what to replace it with. You’re not alone - there is a massive gender divide when it comes to stress drinking, with women now imbibing more than men to cope with daily stress.
As reported by The Atlantic in 2023, women drinking more than usual was most noticeable during the pandemic when “women increased their heavy drinking days by 41% as compared to men at 7%”. When you’re faced with a never-ending list of tasks, unwinding with a glass of wine feels like a quick way to cope with stress, but it’s actually causing more harm than good.
In the short term, alcohol increases the stress hormone cortisol and ramps up glutamate to counter the sedative effects of the wine. Many, many women I’ve met (including myself) are always shocked to discover that the 3:00 AM wake ups, with a racing heart and a mind that won't shut off, may not be just stress alone and often related to how alcohol affects the nervous system overnight. This cycle can lead to numerous long-term side-effects like chronic anxiety and sleep disruption.
Because alcohol is an addictive substance, that ‘just one glass’ habit can escalate quickly without intending it to. Having a glass of wine to unwind from work stress has been normalized in our culture, especially now with more and more women taking ‘work from home’ days where it’s possible to start wine o’clock earlier and earlier. Or even worse, social media moms encouraging drinking wine in your Stanley on the sidelines of your kids games.
This is how problem drinking from stress escalates quietly, from one glass to many. One of my sober coaching clients shared with me that “they didn’t even notice how much wine they were drinking until it became a problem”.
Burnout, Overfunctioning and Alcohol
Burnout, chronic stress, overfunctioning and alcohol use are often closely linked for many women.
Shutting off a mind that rarely rests is one of the most common reasons I reached for those evening drinks as a high-functioning woman. For many of my sober coaching clients, who are in the messy midlife ‘sandwich’, caregiver to young kids and aging parents, and an executive, they are being pulled in both directions. They are spending their days problem solving, managing responsibilities and holding things together for everyone else - and trying to do it seamlessly to show you can have it all. Enter that relaxing glass of wine in the evening.
A member of my coaching community recently shared with me that “the alcohol turned my brain off. That was the point. I just wanted everything to go quiet for a while.” She is not alone.
The Wall Street Journal reported that problem drinking is rising among women in their 30s and 40s and they are not wrong. This is the era of burnout, when women are hustling to keep up with senior management expectations, taking on more than they should in both their home life and professional life, possibly juggling aging parents and working long hours either at the office or logging in after parenting duties are done.
This sets up a pattern of overfunctioning which might look like type-A competence on the outside, but internally creating chronic stress and emotional exhaustion.
Another coaching client in my Feel Good AF program is a midlife executive woman and mother and clearly described the stark contradiction she was facing. “I’m capable and successful at work, but privately I feel like I’m barely holding everything together,” she explained. This is when alcohol came into the picture for her, as a reward and relaxation at the end of the day. “It’s like living a double life - functioning all day and then secretly relying on alcohol to cope.”
When your brain has been ‘on’ all day, in fight or flight mode at home or at work, alcohol appears as the quick reward for all your hard work. It also serves as the fastest ‘off’ switch for that brain working a mile-a-minute.
For myself, I saw how wine slowly shifted into something else over time. It became the only reliable off-switch for me. And I hear this again and again with my sober coaching clients - without alcohol, our nervous system never fully relaxes, our mind keeps racing and true rest can feel almost impossible.
This is where burnout and drinking often begin to overlap. Alcohol masks the deep effects of experiencing too much emotional, physical and mental fatigue and stress for too long which then leads to burnout. Where chronic stress is from too much pressure, burnout is when things have gone too far and there’s no longer any gas in the tank.
Many women experiencing burnout notice symptoms like brain fog, irritability, sleep disruption and emotional numbness.
To make things even more complicated, burnout and depression look very similar. A good friend of mine, also recently sober, thought she was depressed and it wasn’t until giving up her daily glasses of wine she realized the alcohol had masked her burnout. It doesn’t mean you aren’t depressed, but alcohol can temporarily mask these issues while also making both worse over time. This is why asking for professional medical help is always a good idea at that juncture.
If getting rest feels impossible without alcohol, you’re definitely not alone. I’m sure you’re asking “But Lindsay, if I don’t have my wine I get cranky and irritated and can’t find a way to relax.”
If you’re using those glasses of wine in the evening to knock you out and force your brain to relax, instead of relief it’s creating a vicious cycle of tired, groggy mornings and difficult days at the office with a headache or hangover, and causing even more exhaustion.
For many women in midlife, stress and burnout are only part of the story. Hormonal changes can also quietly change the way alcohol affects the body, which is why drinking at levels that once felt manageable suddenly starts to feel different.
Is it menopause or the merlot?
Remember when you could bounce back from a night out with just a Gatorade and a nap? Not anymore! If you’re a woman over 40, chances are you’re getting dealt a double-whammy. Alcohol is hard on your body at any age, but as a woman in perimenopause, those midlife hormones make you feel even worse after drinking that glass of wine.
I hear more and more from the women around me that they just ‘can’t handle’ more than one drink or their hangovers are getting worse with age, than if they were binge drinking in their 20s.
There is a massive connection between alcohol and perimenopause symptoms, which all boils down to the liver, hormones and how the body manages the erratic fluctuations of estrogen and progesterone.
As explained by The North American Menopause Society, our livers are the primary site for hormone metabolism. During perimenopause, your estrogen and progesterone levels are swinging wildly and your liver is working overtime to metabolize these hormonal spikes and maintain balance.
When you add alcohol to the mix, you’re throwing a wrench into the gears. Because alcohol is a toxin, your liver will typically prioritize processing alcohol over regulating your hormones. While your liver is busy dealing with the wine, your estrogen remains 'stuck in traffic,' circulating longer in your system and potentially worsening symptoms like breast tenderness, heavy periods and mood swings.
This is why that 'just one glass' doesn’t work anymore for my clients in midlife. You aren't just processing a drink - you’re forcing an already over-taxed system to choose between detoxification and your hormonal harmony.
So, it’s not just in your head…..your body has truly fundamentally changed its relationship with your favorite drink.
-
Sleeping and night sweats get worse - alcohol is a vasodilator and in midlife, it acts like pouring kerosene on something already on fire; looking forward to a good night’s sleep? Forget about it!
-
Hangxiety-fueled mornings - the hangovers of your 40s are psychological; as our neurochemistry shifts with age, alcohol's rebound effect becomes more aggressive. When the wine wears off, your brain overcompensates with a surge of glutamate which manifests as that crushing, early-morning anxiety and dread for the day ahead
-
Cortisol and cravings loop - when estrogen drops, our stress resilience drops with it. We reach for wine to lower that stress, but then alcohol spikes cortisol further. Leading to a craving for more alcohol. This is a big part of the addiction cycle I see with my sober coaching clients who are women in midlife. It’s different than for men and not because you lack willpower, but because your female endocrine system is trying to find balance
There is a specific grief in realizing alcohol has stopped working for you in midlife. Your primary coping mechanism has turned on you. Alcohol used to be the reward at the end of a hard day. Now, because of the way it interacts with your aging liver and fluctuating hormones, it’s no longer the "off switch." It’s a "glitch" in your system that steals your energy, your happiness and your peace of mind.
Note: Every woman’s body is different and if you’re experiencing severe symptoms of any kind, speaking with a medical professional can help you understand what’s happening physiologically and advise on treatment.
The Emotional Relationship With Alcohol
For a lot of women in my sober coaching program Feel Good AF, they have an emotional relationship with alcohol that comes up a lot in our discussions. We’ve talked about the physiological aspects of alcohol, but as a former grey-area drinker, I learned through sobriety that the mental and emotional aspects of drinking too much are just as important - if not more important.
I hear a lot about the love/hate relationship women have with their glass of wine. The immediate relief that comes from finally being able to relax vs the feeling that you’re doing something that isn’t making you happy. It’s a tricky balance when you’re a high-functioning woman used to being able to problem-solve your way out of situations.
One of the biggest mental hurdles, for both men and women trying to give up alcohol, is how it makes an occasion or romantic evening feel special. We all wonder how we’re going to enjoy our special moments in life without alcohol. It’s a mental conundrum my clients face daily, and very commonly one of the biggest areas of resistance.
“I kept worrying and spinning out about what I was going to toast with at my daughter’s wedding, even though she was only ten years old. I eventually learned about non-alcoholic champagne, but really had to learn first about the mental beliefs I had around alcohol,” said Jennifer, a recent sober client and high-performance midlife woman.
I always say, we try really hard to keep alcohol in our lives because we deeply believe we need to drink on special occasions which is just part of the false narrative the alcohol industry has helped construct for a century.
Alcohol fulfills a lot of roles in our lives and becomes a reliable partner. A woman in my sober network admitted to me that her biggest breakthrough was realizing she was lonely and was treating alcohol like the friends she didn’t have. Her actual journal entry was “Alcohol never lets me down, and is there for me when I need it for any reason.” Breaking up with a friend is hard, even if it’s just the routine of having a bottle of wine to rely on.
Another thing I hear a lot from my coaching clients is that they’re bored when they don’t drink wine. This is what I call the wine-time paradox. Drinking (and heightened dopamine) sometimes feels like it makes the mundane, everyday activities more pleasurable and more exciting. Rotting on the coach for hours watching true crime is much easier with wine. Removing that stimulus could leave you feeling restless and unable to find ‘something to do with yourself’ even if you’re busy.
Even more common is the high-achieving woman overstretched, taking care of everyone else, to feel like alcohol is their ‘me time’. The alcohol industry has spent billions on the narrative that drinking wine is ‘self-care’ for busy moms, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. As Annie Grace explains in her book “This Naked Mind”, this is an example of liminal thinking and unconscious beliefs about alcohol we learn from a young age. Alcohol is not a reward, but we make it one unconsciously.
Even when I made the decision to give up alcohol, I missed my wine but really did not want to drink. This is an emotional and mental struggle that a lot of high-functioning women deal with, and we all need to build the resilience and habits to overcome that tug-of-war.
People always ask me “If alcohol is taking such an emotional toll on me, why is it so hard to put down?’ The answer could be in the high-functioning armor we wear, which becomes a carefully constructed identity that suggests as long as we’re winning at life, the wine isn't actually a problem.
High-Functioning Drinking & Identity
High-functioning drinking can be described as the woman who manages to meet every professional milestone and personal obligation while quietly relying on ‘wine time’ to get through it.
For me, and a lot of other women I know in the sober space, high-functioning behavior was a disguise. Many successful professional women struggling with alcohol report having a bottle of wine at night and then getting up to run a marathon, play tennis, juggle their children’s schedules and work on a report on their laptop while cheering from the sidelines or cooking a family dinner.
‘I’m successful - so do I really have a problem with alcohol?” The answer to that is really up to you. If alcohol is making you unhappy even in the deepest, most private levels of your psyche, then I will encourage you to take a new look at your relationship with it. Outward appearances and actions for successful high-functioning women drinking too much can be a fragile facade that only takes a little bit of force for it to crumble.
When a friend of mine very publicly quit drinking, everyone wanted to hear her story of hitting rock bottom. The problem was that she didn’t - and neither do a lot of people. You don’t have to hit rock bottom to choose an alcohol-free lifestyle like she did. In my case, once I hit four months alcohol-free I was very open about my decision. When people asked why I quit drinking, I just shared that feeling awful everyday had become boring and awful.
It’s very hard for high-functioning women in midlife to release their conditioning around ‘having a problem with alcohol’, but a complete collapse of your life is not necessary. Anytime is a good time to start developing new habits and a new mindset.
Unfortunately, high-functioning drinking is often a game of ‘not yet’ for many of us. You haven't lost the job yet, you haven't ruined the marriage yet or even blacked out and lost your shoes.
A client once shared with me that her “high-functioning life is exactly how I justified continuing to drink.”
I will argue that functioning is not the same as thriving. The consequences of gray-area drinking are often invisible because of the very nature of a high-functioning, high-performance woman adapting to increasing levels of stress and trying to do more with less time.
When everything looks good from the outside, and your answer to personal inquiries is always “I’m fine”, it’s hard to step away from the fragile infrastructure hiding your drinking. You’ve done such a great job of keeping it a secret, that no-one thinks you have a problem.
One of my sober coaching clients said that even her own husband doubted the severity of her alcohol problems. “[He] finally understood the severity of my drinking after hearing the doctor directly state that I should not drink at all,” she explained in a group call one afternoon.
Every successful trip out to the recycling bin with your stash of bottles is a win. Until it isn’t. Real freedom starts when you no longer have anything to hide - not from your husband, not from your neighbors and definitely not from your own feelings of guilt about drinking.
Guilt, Shame & The Emotional Rollercoaster
You wake up thinking: Why did I drink again when I said I wouldn’t? Is my drinking normal?
That small disconnect between intention and action is often where the concern begins. For my client Sarah, unaware of how addictive alcohol can become, it was the start of the guilt, shame and emotional rollercoaster around drinking.
I hear the same refrain time and time again in my 1:1 client sessions: women come to me overwhelmed and feeling guilty about how much they’re drinking. Sometimes this comes along with the added guilt about drinking too much in front of their children, drinking too much around family and friends but more often than not, it’s self-inflicted guilt.
Along with guilt comes shame, even when no-one notices. “I felt ashamed I just couldn’t stop,” shared a recent coaching client. “I panicked when my liver enzymes came back elevated. I threw out all the alcohol in the house because I felt so ashamed.”
Unfortunately for a lot of high-functioning, busy women, it’s not always about just using willpower to avoid drinking. The habit has become intertwined with stress relief, identity and routine and we don’t know how to untangle it. This can turn into feelings of shame.
The mental load of managing alcohol becomes yet another thing to carry, hiding how much you're drinking and thinking about drinking more than you want to. A recent client shared:
“I didn’t realize how much mental space drinking was taking up until I started trying to stop.” I can relate - when you stop thinking about alcohol, it is truly like someone gave you the gift of time.
The good news is that you can go easy on yourself. The guilt and shame you feel aren’t signs of failure, they’re one of the key signals your relationship with alcohol deserves a closer look.
And paying attention to that signal can be the beginning of a very meaningful change.
But first, we have to face the final hurdle which is the social conditioning around us.
Culture & Social Conditioning - 100 years of pressure
One of the biggest changes to women’s social and cultural dynamic in the 21st century has been the wine mom culture, something Gen X and Millennial women in midlife have experienced that previous generations of women have not.
The wine mom culture is a social pressure to drink to relieve the stress of being a mom. Drinking is surreptitiously woven into almost every social ritual of female-centric activity around us. Wine at book club, wine at the sidelines of kids’ sports, wine at new momma playdates, wine after a stressful workday, wine because it’s Friday…and for a sober friend of mine, it was wine at the farmers market too.
The message is everywhere: alcohol is how women cope, celebrate, connect and unwind and sadly, we’ve been conditioned to believe it. Wine is a reward for hard work. And wine is also the social glue - without it we would be left out or let down.
A lot of the pressure comes from the alcohol industry, which has spent decades marketing wine directly to women as a form of self-care and community. Scroll through social media and you’ll see engaging stories celebrating “wine mom culture,” jokes about needing a drink to survive parenting and endless reminders that a glass of wine is the reward for getting through the day.
Drinking has been normalized for professional women at work as well. Corporate culture reinforces it with client dinners, staff events, after work happy hours, networking events and even corporate travel. Where drinks with clients was once a male domain, women’s equality opened a lot of doors including the corporate account for boozy lunches.
But the tide is shifting, and ‘wine mom culture’ is becoming almost passé. You might not think this can help you now, but believe it or not even reading this means you’re already part of the rebellious movement of women saying ‘no thanks’ to the fallacy of alcohol.
Why quitting feels like losing a lifestyle
Quitting drinking might feel like you’re losing a lifestyle, because it’s been part of your life and your social circle for a long time. Your relationship with alcohol is intertwined with everything you do and it will be a loss - but a loss for the better.
And what you gain is so much better in the long run. A sober client recently shared with me details of a trip to wine country.
“I spent four days away in wine country and only had one glass. I realized afterward that the glass had no value. I could have lived without it.”
This was music to my ears because she truly understood she didn’t lose anything by quitting drinking. Instead of letting her shame, guilt and emotions take over, she immersed herself in life and enjoyed the time away from the hustle and bustle to truly recharge and rest.
As for myself, I now spend glorious weekend mornings outside with my husband in the fresh air or moving my body to keep myself strong and healthy, instead of waking up with a hangover and trying to finish that powerpoint with a pounding headache.
So, if you’re ready to feel good AF (alcohol-free), I’m here. I’m Lindsay Hennekey, and if you’re a high-achieving woman who is ready to quit drinking for good, I’ve walked in your shoes and can help you feel good AF too as your sober coach.