Wine is an important part of my life.
Some of my most memorable trips and memories have been to wine regions around the world. Day trips over the Golden Gate to Sonoma and Napa from Catherine’s house in San Carlos. Long stays in Rioja, tasting my favorite wine in the world. Learning about the winemaking process, seeing the people who work in the vineyards, learning their names, the smell of the barrel rooms, the sounds of the wind whipping through the fields.
This is what runs through my mind every time I open a bottle of wine and pour a glass. It immediately takes me to those places.
Enter pandemic. I’m guessing that I, much like many other people, was looking for ways to divert my attention from the daily onslaught from businesses, people, media, governments, lockdowns, riots, and protests. Not being able to travel to Rioja or Montalcino or Sonoma or Bordeaux didn’t mean I couldn’t open a bottle and escape to those places in my mind.
And then I had my first significant panic attack in October…and I didn’t yet know how much of a contributing factor alcohol can be. The night prior to the attack, I was celebrating with friends, opening some of the best bottles from my cellar. I knew I’d likely awaken the next day with a hangover, yet I didn’t care. I had just achieved a life goal (qualifying for a USGA national championship) and it was time to celebrate. I was willing to deal with the pain.
The panic attack the next morning sent me into a tailspin. What the hell could have caused this? I was celebrating, for God’s sake. I was on Cloud 9. I was scared, confused, and didn’t know where to start.
And then I learned that alcohol and anxiety/panic is akin to throwing gasoline on an open flame. But it’s more complex than that.
Alcohol is a double-edged sword. It’s a depressant…it placates you in the moment, helps you to feel happy, lowers your inhibitions, and other wonderful things. It also saps your body’s ability to replenish and balance the stress hormones to keep you feeling happy longer term. Serotonin and other neurotransmitters get out of whack, and you continue a slow decline of feeling just a little bit worse every day, yet you don’t know why. Then you have another night of a few drinks, and you feel even more anxious and panicky the next day. And the cycle continues.
Yet for me, I had no idea this was happening until the attack happened. I didn’t understand the science. And when I did, I immediately stopped drinking for 5 weeks.
Going back to my ‘escape to Rioja for a few hours by opening a bottle of wine when cooking dinner’, I realized it had become a habit. Every time I was cooking dinner (usually 5-6 nights a week), I was having about 2 glasses of wine that night while in the kitchen and eating. Nothing excessive, yet even the (relatively) modest amount of alcohol each night was wrecking my body’s ability to handle stress and process through anxiety creating thoughts and events. And that accumulation likely led to my first full-blown panic attack.
This is where the hard part begins…and I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
Drinking alcohol is undoubtedly making your anxiety worse. Repeat that with me. Drinking alcohol is undoubtedly making your anxiety worse.
It will make you happy in the short-term. It might trick you into thinking those effects will last into the longer-term and you’ll always be this happy. But the human body is governed by certain laws and rules. And the chemicals in your brain and in your gut are the only thing that govern how you are going to feel. Depleted serotonin? You aren’t going to be as happy. Adrenal glands exhausted and can’t function optimally? Small stressor events are going to blow up and cause you to erupt when you would have otherwise not even cared.
I’m not telling you to stop drinking. I’m saying that if you’re serious about reducing anxiety and ending your panic attacks, and are willing to do the hard work, you need to consider ceasing drinking. At least for a while.
Still don’t believe me? Simply google ‘alcohol and anxiety’. Then spend the afternoon parsing through every article that describes how alcohol worsens anxiety. You’re going to need some time because there’s a shitload of them (fun fact: there are over 386,000,000 google results).
We have now officially arrived at our Kevin Bacon moment from A Few Good Men: “These are the facts, and they are undisputed.”
I can’t tell you that immediately after I stopped drinking that I felt like a million bucks. I didn’t. I just knew I was giving my body the best chance possible to recover, rebuild, process, and heal. Given the other work I was doing (see Chapter 3: “Lay Yourself Bare”), I needed all the processing power available in my body to do the emotional work. I trusted the science and removed what is a known contributor to anxiety to give myself a chance.
Eventually, I started to reintroduce alcohol into my life. Slowly. Very slowly. I de-coupled cooking and dinner from drinking. I made myself acknowledge and understand why I was looking to open a bottle or have a glass. When I wanted to escape to my favorite places, I’d find videos on YouTube for a 20-minute walk through Rioja, or a history of Montalcino. I watched them without ever taking a sip.
Was it the same as enjoying a glass? Nope. However, much like everything else on this journey, it hasn’t been easy. Yet reducing / removing alcohol is one of the bigger elements within your control that can have significant benefits. Reducing or eliminating for some period of time allows you to develop a greater sensitivity and understanding of your limits. It lets you tune in to your body and be able to listen to the effect of what every drink does to you.
Everyone is different. For Catherine, a total of 4 drinks per week is about the limit. That can be 2 drinks on 2 nights, or 1 drink each night for 4 nights. Beyond that, the real negative effects begin to set in. For me, no more than 2 drinks on a given night is my max, and I can’t do that for more than 2 nights in a row. Beyond that, I wake up the following day markedly more anxious, wondering if panic is near.
The reason is my reserves have been depleted. If I’m feeling panicky I can usually take refuge in a safer place in my mind, a place where I meditate and reflect. I lower my energy output, confine my thoughts to lighthearted, happy, non-triggering topics, and wait it out. I’ve found, however, that alcohol depletes those reserves and when I try to go there, they don’t exist. It’s like having a dead battery, then your replacement battery has nearly zero charge and can’t help you.
Reduce or eliminate, listen to your body, then experiment, and be honest with yourself. Don’t use alcohol as a crutch. Drink to enjoy, not to mistakenly dull yourself when in reality you are only weakening your defenses in their battle against anxiety and panic.
houckOUT 