On women and alcohol

Thoughts and news for the week of August 28

Good morning, my sweets: 

I am about to get REALLY vulnerable here: I am 17 days sober. This is not my first rodeo with sobriety - I had 30 days in 2021 - and I know it will stick this time. I am positive for many reasons, which I will share soon.

I’ve always loved red wine and acquired an obsession with pinot noir during my divorce. I hadn’t told a single soul outside of my best friends about the trauma I had endured during this marriage. Because no one knew the story and because we live under patriarchy, it felt like many people were judging and blaming me (the woman) for this divorce. It was the scariest and loneliest time of my life, and I began to depend on wine to dampen the pain. On my own for the first time, I was an emotional baby bird, and addiction is a nasty predator.

The patriarchal Christianity of my first three decades left me with no framework for navigating being a divorced woman at 30, and I fell deep into the clutches of a culture that normalized my new way of coping with trauma. My ever-growing need for numbing with wine and increasing tolerance for it was reinforced everywhere. Instagram, movies, and shows normalized my struggles in a way that deeply appealed to me. Long day at a job that overworks and underpays you? A glass or four of wine should help. Harsh confrontation with your soon-to-be ex-husband? Chug it all, baby. I saw myself in the memes; I started believing that it was normal for thirty-something women to develop a wine habit like mine. And maybe it was.

Thanks to my doctor and my prescription for Naltrexone, this is not triggering a craving for me right now

After several years and thousands of dollars in therapy and medical help, I began healing from my first marriage. But my drinking stuck around. I moved to Los Angeles and started working in luxury real estate, an industry fueled by glamorous parties and open bars. In a blink, I was up to a bottle and a half to two of wine and a few shots of tequila or whisky per night, and far more if I went to an event or a party. Then, the pandemic hit, and my wine habit accelerated like it did for many women (41%, according to the Journal of American Medical Association.) I started to feel conflicted. I knew my drinking was starting to get out of hand, but my culture kept reinforcing it. Why couldn’t I hang?

I know now, even just 17 days in, that I am not alone - women like me make up a huge portion of the market for the trillion-dollar alcohol industry. Marketing budgets for booze companies are expected to rise to $7.7 billion annually. With the rise of spending power among thirty- and forty-something women despite the gender pay gap, we are a promising new target demographic with a potentially huge ROI. (Sorry, I worked in marketing for a decade so this is how I make sense of things.) And we hang out on social media, which is why my feed is nothing but bullshit like this:

Three posts from Betches in the last few weeks to prove my point, and in fact they are sponsored by a tequila company

Thanks to capitalism, our culture is very vested in keeping me drunk.

And thanks to patriarchy, the boozy messaging directed toward women just further proves that our culture doesn’t quite know how to keep us in our place as times change, but it sure will try anyway it can. Each generation of women faces the same questions about kids and careers - can women have it all? Are women more than our responsibilities? Today, alcohol companies are eager to answer those questions for us: yes, you can have it all, and the booze will be there for you when it gets exhausting! Yes, you can keep your identity outside your job or family - by bonding with other women over drinks! And it works. It’s no wonder how these messages have made it into our content and entertainment, how normal and romantic the idea of women coping with life with booze has become.

I’m not the first by far to call this out. Wine mom culture has been criticized for the past few years as a cringy subculture at best and a deeply troubling phenomenon that glorifies excessive drinking or promotes drinking as a coping mechanism among parents at worst. It’s not as fueled by advertising, and it’s more prevalent in kitschy Etsy shops than on the NYSE - but wine mom culture is often seen as cathartic and even empowering for mothers, allowing them to keep and embrace their identity outside of motherhood. This isn’t cute. It’s a problem, and patriarchy eats this shit up. (Or drinks this shit up.)

Look - I have contributed my VERY fair share to this normalization and romanticization of alcohol and addiction over the years as a writer, marketer, and person on social media. I was deep in the women and wine culture. I tried to quit so many times, but I lacked the resources to help me. White-knuckling it alone in our booze-soaked culture was a fast track to relapse for me. For years, I had seemingly nowhere to turn to support my sobriety until I actively sought it out two and a half weeks ago. Our cultural default for women is drinking - and drinking a lot.

But the good news is that once I began seeking sober environments, I began to find others who found the strength to quit. Studies have found that millennials and Gen Z actually drink less than all other age groups, even though our culture won’t admit it. I’ve found a large online sober community that is making these first weeks much more bearable. My husband and best friends have blissfully supported me every step of the way. My therapist helped me find an amazing recovery group not affiliated with AA. And I discovered a new obsession with non-alcoholic beer and mocktails.

Drink alcohol or be sober; it’s completely, 100% your choice and I will love and support you either way. But if you’re questioning your use, please know that the culture acts the way it does to reinforce and normalize heavy drinking among women and that you are not abnormal for being confused. There is so much support out there for you. Reach out to me and I’ll happily point you to some podcast or book or group directions.

Until next week my loves, I’m raising my NA beer to you! I love you-

Sarah

Recs of the week

Reading

Survivor Injustice by Kylie Cheung - not done with it yet, but I really like Kylie’s writing for Jezebel, and this book has my full attention so far. State violence leads to domestic violence - this is not a surprise, but she does a good job at showing how. For example: we do not have universal healthcare, so many women are trapped in violent relationships because they depend on their abusive partner’s insurance.

Listening

In the news

1. Good news! New Jersey will require school districts to offer free menstrual products for grades six through 12 under a new law Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed Wednesday. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, New Jersey joins at least ten other states and the District of Columbia that have established or expanded requirements for free menstrual products in schools since 2010. Among the states that passed similar measures recently include Alabama, Delaware, and Utah. Menstrual hygiene is a necessity - not a luxury. Girls should NEVER have to choose between staying home because of their period or going to school. Ever.

2. A woman in Texas has been awarded $1.2 billion in a nonconsensual porn case after her ex-boyfriend allegedly shared “visually intimate material" of her online and in emails to her family, friends, and colleagues after they broke up. He also told her she would “spend the rest of your life trying and failing to wipe yourself off the internet," the woman’s lawyers alleged. Ironic, because now if you Google that man’s name, his $1.2 billion judgment pops up, lol. Justice. PS: Advocates prefer the term "nonconsensual pornography" or "image-based sex abuse" to the more commonly used "revenge porn," arguing that the latter term implicitly blames the victim and can obscure a variety of motives.

Final thoughts

LA readers! My bestie

Arielle Zadok

- pole performer, intimacy coordinator to the stars, and sex educator extraordinaire - is hosting a few sensual freestyle pole classes for all levels in September! And they are actually affordable! Sign up here:

ESSAY SOURCES

1. https://www.damemagazine.com/2022/10/03/sober-curious-gen-z-and-millennials-have-sparked-the-next-health-trend/

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/06/27/millennials-have-sparked-sober-revolution-alcohol-brands-are-starting-notice/

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