155. Identity Crisis: Does Drinking Less Mean Becoming Less You?

When you're changing your drinking habits in midlife, the challenge isn't just about the alcohol itself—it's about the identity you've built around it. 

In today’s episode, I explore the deep-rooted connection between alcohol and how we see ourselves, from the drinks we choose to project confidence to the role booze plays in our closest relationships. 

This tackles the fear that reducing alcohol intake means reducing who you are, and why that's simply not true. I discuss how to reframe identity shifts from loss to growth, recognising that different doesn't mean worse. 

Whether it's the Old Fashioned that made me feel powerful and confident, or the prosecco that signalled your arrival at every party, understanding why we use alcohol to express ourselves is the first step to reclaiming choice without losing who we are.

1:20 Fear Of Losing Your Self

3:15 Alcohol & Your Persona

7:50 Change, Growth, And Evolving Identity

11:00 Reframing From Loss To Learning

14:00 4-Week Mindful Drinking Reset And Substack

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You can email me at denise@lownodrinkermagazine.com

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🗣️ Join the growing community on Substack
https://lownodrinker.substack.com/

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🌱 Reset the way alcohol shows up in your life with the 4 Week Midlife Mindful Drinking Reset
https://www.lownodrinker.com/4weekreset

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🧮 Drinking Impact Calculator: Find your personal tipping point
https://mindfuldrinkinginmidlife.com/products/drinking-impact-calculator

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🧐 Take the quiz and find out what's REALLY driving your midlife drinking habits
https://www.lownodrinker.com/

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Chapters

• 1:20 Fear Of Losing Your Self
• 3:15 Alcohol & Your Persona
• 9:07 Change, Growth, And Evolving Identity
• 12:17 Reframing From Loss To Learning
• 15:17 Invitation To Reset And Substack

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The challenge with changing the way that you drink in midlife is very rarely just about the alcohol by itself. It's that the alcohol is tied up in so much of the identity with which you see yourself and you believe that others see you too. It becomes hard to separate who you are with a drink in your hand from who you are as a person without one. In today's episode, I want to talk about the relationship between alcohol and identity and whether reducing your alcohol intake has to mean that you also reduce your identity. 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 recognize 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. There are a lot of uh fears and challenges and stresses and concerns around changing the way that we drink that we talk about all the time. There's a lot of stuff that's out there in the open, but there's also a lot of stuff that we don't quite feel uh that we're confident enough to talk about sometimes. There are things that make us feel a little bit more vulnerable, uh, that we might be more judged. Uh, and and our identity that's tied up with alcohol, I think, is definitely one of those things. There's a fear when it comes to changing the way you're drinking much later in life than, say, you know, the the 20-odd-year-old uh Gen Z that are doing it. When you're in your late 30s, 40s, or 50s, like we are. The the fear isn't so much about missing the alcohol, although that's definitely a part of it. There's a fear around losing who you are when you have the alcohol. From the way you uh walk into a a party, from the drinks that you use to portray a certain side of yourself, alcohol and identity are so intertwined. Uh, and the question comes up, whether we we we know how to verbalize it or not, that if I start drinking differently now, then then who do I become? If I reduce my alcohol intake, do I reduce my identity as well? I know that for me, alcohol was a really big part of how I presented myself to the world. Uh, I would use drinks to put forward a persona, uh, a side of myself that I wanted people to see. Obviously, I didn't know I was doing this at the time, and so this might sound a little bit weird to you because maybe uh you do or don't do this, or do or don't recognize it in yourself. Uh, but for example, for me, when I look back now, I can see that the drinks that I chose, particularly in certain company, I was doing so to make a statement. So, my uh my favorite cocktail was an old-fashioned, absolutely loved an old-fashioned. Uh, if you don't know, an old fashioned is basically um stirred bourbon in a glass over ice, a little bit of uh angostor bitters, a bit of sugar, uh maybe a glace cherry. I always had two. Um, but it's a very strong drink. Think of it like a bourbon martini in some ways. Um, but I really liked that drink. Yes, I liked the way that uh it tasted back when I could handle alcohol of that strength, but I also liked what it said about me because it was bold and strong and uncompromising. It was a drink that took no prisoners. Yes, there was a little bit of sweetness to cut through the harsh edges once you get to know me, but it was a drink for the brave and the confident. It was the kind of thing that when I held it in my hand, I felt like uh the actor from one of those sort of aftershave commercials where they're standing territorially at the top of the mountain, you know, with like a pet puma or some shit beside them. You know, it made me feel a certain way and it portrayed a certain persona to other people. And and different drinks do that for different people in different ways, of course. Maybe uh for you it might be uh the serve, it might be something like a uh an espresso martini, you know, it's got to look perfect, it's got to have the right level of uh coffee crema foam on the top and three perfectly placed espresso beans, or maybe it was a quality, you know, I only drink top shelf because I deserve the best in life and the finer things. And by showing you that I only purchase top shelf spirits, you know, that shows what kind of personality I am. Alcohol found a way to be so much more than just a drink for me. You know, I think about the way that that I or or other people would, you know, enter a room, you know, how you'd enter a party. Would it be that you had, you know, two bottles of prosecco in in each hand and uh a really lively whoop of excitement because the party started now that I'm here. Um, or maybe you're more cool, calm, and collected as you enter with a rare bottle of gin from this tiny distillery in the cotswolds that nobody's ever heard of. You know, there are all these things that are tied up with it. And when you decide that you want to start changing that, there's the unspoken, maybe unknown or unrecognized, but there's that niggling thought in the back of your mind somewhere that once I strip all of that away, can I still walk into the room like that? Can I still be that cool, confident person? Will I still have that same persona? Will that confidence still exude from me? Or will I become some sort of wallflower version of myself? And then there's the other role that it plays, of course, in terms of the identity that you have within your social connections, not just what you're portraying out to the general public, but the role that it plays in your identity with the people that mean something to you. I've spoken before about my relationship with my husband, which started when we both worked in bars in in the same company, different venues, uh, and our connection was over drinking, you know, late-night uh rums in the basement of my bar, uh, cheeky cocktails in in his bar. It was uh a language that we used on our, I remember one of our first dates that we went out, uh, just he and I, and it was my turn to get around in. And I asked him what he wanted to drink, and he said, surprise me. And so I came back to the table with uh an archers and diet coke. Um, but it was my way of showing that you know I was I was fun and I was cheeky, and I was also testing him to see how he'd respond. So, you know, the point my point here is that it's so ingrained into so much more than just oh, I'm gonna get drunk tonight, or oh, I feel like having a G and T. You know, there's there's more to the nuance of the way that we've used alcohol by the time we reach midlife than there is at any other stage in our life. And reframing that can be frightening. You know, what will it mean for your relationships with your nearest and dearest if you pull at the thread of the thing that you've always thought stitched you together in the first place? And as we age, obviously things change and we change, and all those glamorous things that happen in midlife, you know, getting older, kids, work, parents, all the things that that happen, all those glamorous things, you know, they do change us. Um, and of course they should change us. I mean, it would be um rather worrying if we hadn't changed at all since our 20s. But it stands to reason that if all of those things have changed us, then alcohol has changed us as well. And removing or reducing it might change us too. But our identities are always evolving, and they should be always evolving. We haven't reached the end of who we are until we take our last breath, and not to be morbid or anything, but unless you are dead, then there's no excuse for you not to be changing and growing and developing your sense of self and exploring who you are, both with and without alcohol, on your own and with others. Life is uh a constant journey of exploration. There's that phrase, isn't there, that's saying that uh life is about the journey, not the destination. Uh, and to go on that journey means to acknowledge that sometimes we take different paths, sometimes we end up in different places that we didn't expect. Uh, and to get the most out of the adventure, we need to embrace it and to dive into it and to see what it can give us. And when we do that, that brings about a change in our identity. That brings about a shift in who we are, in what we think we know versus what we learn, in what we used to believe versus what we believe now. And what I think is really important here is that we all understand that those changes are going to happen, those shifts in persona and personality, and likes and dislikes and all those things, they are going to happen. And we will be different when we reduce or remove alcohol from our lives. But the thing that I think gets misunderstood is that different doesn't necessarily mean worse. Different doesn't mean less. It doesn't mean that just because we're not the last one on the dance floor uh every evening or every party, that we no longer have value as a social being who brings joy and laughter and wit and all the other things, both positive and negative, that we bring to any social situation. You don't have to lose yourself because you've decided that you want to change the way that alcohol shows up in your life. You don't have to become a completely different person. You just might be able to be a different version of the person that you already are, a version that puts yourself first more often than not, a version that recognizes that you have a choice to act when it comes to your alcohol intake rather than to react to other people. A version of yourself that allows you to know that it's okay to say no and it's okay to say yes, as long as it's always your choice. You can still do and be and have all the things that you did before, but they might just look a little bit different. So maybe now when you go to the party, you might not walk in with four bottles of Prosecco, but maybe just one. Maybe instead of trying to portray my uber cool exterior persona by drinking extremely strong cocktails. Perhaps now I'll figure out ways to do that with my words. Uh, and maybe instead of assuming that the only way to show that you deserve the finer things in life is by spending ridiculous money on top shelf spirits and champagnes, maybe you just treat yourself better because you know you deserve the best and don't need any external validation for that. I think reframing the identity shift from change and loss, you know, I've I've stopped drinking or I've reduced my drinking, so I can't be fun, I'm not as cool, reframing that from change and loss to learning and growth. I'm getting to know myself better, I'm getting to understand myself better, I'm getting to develop myself more. For me, that that mindset shift helped me to adjust the whole experience around drinking differently and therefore what it could do for me and for the life that I wanted to achieve, and to recognize that what first looked like I guess fear of the change and fear of a loss of identity was in fact an opportunity, an opportunity to grow and to step into my next evolution. And I'm still in it. You know, I don't know where this journey is going to take me. I I've told you before that I've never said that I'm I'm going to be sober for the rest of my life. That's not my aim. It's not a goal that sits with the life that I'm trying to build. But how is that going to manifest over the next six, twelve, twenty four months? Who knows? That's part of the adventure, right? That's part of the journeys, figuring out all as we go along. And you don't have to have all the answers, right? We don't have to know exactly what life is going to or supposed to look like in six months' time. I think what we need to know is what we want to achieve in ourselves, how we want to feel. We have an idea of what a quality life looks like for our standards, not the specific hotel you're going to go on holiday to, not the exact job title you're going to have, but how you want to feel, who you want to be, how you want to be seen by the people that love you. And that identity can shift and grow and be nurtured by you taking back the power of choice from alcohol, choosing to live a life less intoxicated, not because you need to, not because you have to, but because you want to and you deserve it. If you would like some help with that journey, with that adventure, then of course I encourage you to check out the four-week midlife mindful drinking reset. Uh, thank you for indulging me today on this little philosophical existential uh stream of consciousness. It's a slightly different episode than I normally do, but it's just a topic that I felt needed to be addressed and shared and something that we should talk about together. Uh, I actually write like this quite often over on my Substack. So if you found this episode to be thought-provoking or supportive in any way, then I highly recommend you go and check out my Substack. You can find it at lonodrinker.substack.com, or of course, just click the link in the show notes. There's a lot of topics there that I'm exploring this year, and I would love you to be part of that journey with me as we go on our adventure together to a life less intoxicated. I'll see you next week.