You Don't Have a Drinking Problem. You Have an Aliveness Problem.
I’ve watched this pattern play out over and over…
The Substitution Game
I’ve watched this pattern play out over and over, in my own life and in the lives of hundreds of women I’ve worked with. We look for ourselves everywhere except where we actually are.
If it’s not a man, it’s a martini. If it’s not a martini, it’s a MasterCard. If it’s not a MasterCard, it’s a muffin.
We keep reaching outside ourselves, convinced that the next thing will finally make us feel whole. The next promotion, the next relationship, the next bottle, the next whatever. Worthy. Alive.
It’s an insatiable tank that will never fill.
You can stuff every hole you have (literally), do this long enough, and you’ll discover it’s nothing more than a game of whack-a-mole. One craving goes down, another pops up.
None of those things are what you actually need.
Here’s what’s actually happening; you’re drowning.
You’re managing the job, the kids, the aging parents, the partner who doesn’t see how much you’re carrying. You’re navigating a world that feels like it’s constantly on fire. The news. The politics. The economy. The climate. The everything.
Your body is changing in ways no one prepared you for. You’re not sleeping. You’re constantly anxious. Your nervous system hasn’t come down from high alert in years.
And wine is the only thing that makes you feel like you can finally exhale.
It’s not about the alcohol. It’s about the moment when everything stops demanding something from you. When you can finally just be.
Except you’re not really being. You’re numbing. And you know it.
The Real Problem
You already know this. You know that drinking every night isn’t making your life better. You know you’re using it to cope, to relax, to feel something other than the endless numbness of taking care of everyone else’s needs while ignoring your own.
Here’s what no one tells you… you don’t have a drinking problem.
You have an aliveness problem.
Wine has become your way of accessing parts of yourself you’re not allowed to be when you’re sober. The fun version. The relaxed version. The version who doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. The version who actually feels something.
And wine also has a way of denying access to parts of yourself that you don’t perceive as safe to feel. The grief you’ve been carrying for years. The rage at how small your life has become. The loneliness even when you’re surrounded by people. The terror that this is all there is.
Somewhere along the way, wine became both the key and the lock.
It lets you access parts of yourself. And it protects you from parts of yourself.
And you forgot how to do either one without it.
I know this pattern because I lived it.
What You’ve Been Missing
For years, I tried to face hard times through ways I genuinely thought would work:
Have a drink; it will relieve and relax you. Find a man; having someone to love you and protect you will make you feel safe. Shop; you’ll look and feel better. Pound the pavement until you can’t think; if you’re thin, you’ll be praised.
I deprived myself of feeling, nourishment, and pleasure.
I distracted myself with attention, validation, and material things.
I fell into depression when one didn’t work. I blindly defaulted to the next external high.
What I didn’t see was this: I was constantly choosing things outside of myself to feel good about who I am. To be noticed. To be chosen.
I was never choosing my Self. The one unidentified with the title, the man, the outfit or the friends.
Tuning In and Turning On
Your body has been trying to get your attention for years.
Every time you reach for wine, your body is saying: “I need something. I’m overwhelmed. I’m exhausted. I’m numb. I want to feel alive.”
Wine just helps you ignore it for another night.
The message is still there in the morning, isn’t it? You still wake up feeling the same emptiness. The same disconnection from yourself. The same sense that you’re moving through your life like a ghost.
That’s because wine doesn’t give you back what you’ve lost. It can’t.
You're not the problem. You're the solution. You are the way back to wholeness.
Not the wine. Not the man. Not the promotion. Not the new dress or the perfect vacation or the number on the scale.
You.
What Wine Is Actually Doing
Wine isn’t random. It’s serving a specific function in your life.
For most women, it’s doing one (or more) of these five things:
1. PERMISSION Wine lets you be the fun version. The relaxed version. The spontaneous version. The version who doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Wine gives you permission to let go, to stop performing, to finally just BE. Without it, you feel like you have to stay in control, stay responsible, stay “on” for everyone else.
2. ESCAPE Wine helps you not feel the anxiety, the overwhelm, the grief, the rage, the emptiness. It buffers you from emotions you don’t know how to handle. It creates distance between you and the reality of your life. Without it, you’d have to actually feel everything you’ve been avoiding and that feels impossible.
3. CONNECTION Wine helps you feel close to your partner. Vulnerable with friends. Intimate in ways you can’t access sober. It softens the edges, lowers the walls, makes you feel less alone. Without it, you feel disconnected, awkward, like you don’t know how to be close to anyone anymore, including yourself.
4. ALIVENESS Wine wakes you up in a body that’s gone numb. It makes you feel sexy, engaged, turned on by life again, even if it’s just for a few hours. It promises you energy, passion, desire. Without it, you feel dead inside. Like you’re just going through the motions of a life you don’t even want.
5. TOLERANCE Wine helps you tolerate what you actually hate. The marriage that’s gone cold. The job that’s slowly killing you. The life that doesn’t fit anymore. It makes the unbearable bearable. Without it, you’d have to face the truth: something has to change. And you’re not ready for that.
Most women have more than one.
And here’s the truth: until you know what wine is doing for you, you can’t stop drinking it.
Because you’re not just giving up alcohol. You’re giving up permission. Relief. Connection. Aliveness. The ability to tolerate your own life.
No wonder you keep pouring a glass.
This is why willpower doesn’t work. Your conscious brain says “I don’t want to drink.” But your body says “I NEED this”—and your body is right. You do need something. You just don’t need wine.
You need to learn how to give yourself what wine was giving you. You need to meet the parts of yourself wine was protecting you from. You need to give yourself permission to be the woman you’ve been hiding.
That’s the real work. Not “stop drinking.” Not “count your days.” But actually understanding what you’ve been using this FOR and then learning how to get it back without alcohol.
What Aliveness Actually Means
When I talk about aliveness, I’m talking about something most women at midlife have completely lost.
I call it erotic energy. And before you close this tab, I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about EROTIC in its truest sense: your life force. Your passion. Your curiosity. Your full engagement with being alive.
Think about a time when you felt completely turned on by life. Not sexually, but ALIVE. When you wanted to devour a book, create something, dance in your kitchen, stay up talking for hours. When everything felt vivid and possible. When you felt AWAKE in your own body.
That’s erotic energy. And most women at midlife have lost it entirely.
Frankly, wine becomes a cheap substitute for it.
Wine promises you that feeling of aliveness. That engagement. That sense of being fully present in your own body and life.
It delivers numbness instead.
Real aliveness, real erotic energy, is what presence gives you back.
A Practice to Start
Before you reach for wine tonight, try something with me.
Put your hand on your heart. Feel the warmth of your palm against your chest.
Take three slow breaths. In through your nose, out through your mouth.
Now scan your body. Where do you feel tension? Your jaw? Your shoulders? Your belly? Just notice. Don’t try to change it.
Ask your body: “What do you need right now?”
Not your head. Your body.
And then listen. The answer might come as a sensation. A color. An image. A knowing. It might be: rest. Movement. Touch. To cry. To scream. To be held.
Whatever comes up, that’s what’s true.
Ten out of ten times— it’s not wine.
Your body knows why you drink. Your brain just hasn’t learned to listen yet.
The Way Forward
I’m not saying you need to quit drinking forever. I’m not saying you need meetings or labels or a whole new identity.
What I’m saying is this: you need to get curious about what wine is actually doing for you.
Because once you understand the function it’s serving, you can start to find other ways to meet those needs. Real ways. Body-based ways. Ways that actually give you back your aliveness instead of numbing it.
That’s what the work is. Not about NOT drinking. About reclaiming what you’ve lost.
Your energy. Your presence. Your passion. Your desire to actually be in your life instead of watching it pass by from behind a wine glass.
Your aliveness.
This isn’t about deprivation. It’s about getting yourself back.
The wild, alive, turned-on version of you that wine promised but could never deliver.
She’s still here. She’s just been waiting for you to tune in.
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Ashely, you knocked it out of the park with this one! Not having a drink isn't necessarily the hardest part - that comes after, when we have to see and feel and learn to show up fully for ourselves. I love how you have so clearly set out what is happening and what needs to be explored.
Such a good read here. Thank you for going there, Ashley.
I particularly love how you make the distinction that life asks us to be alive in it. Erotic. Awake.
To be perfectly honest, not drinking isn’t hard for me at all anymore. But the staying awake to life still sometimes is. That pattern runs deep. Persistent even when wine is far in the rear view mirror.
My experience has been that removing alcohol isn’t deliverance to an awakened life but I never would have known living that way is an option if I kept drinking.