Long, long ago on the Ahuriri waterfront where ‘Closing Time’ could be heard signalling the lights are about to go on, you would find me—10 tequilas, a few vodka sunrises, and god knows what else deep—hailing a taxi to take me to town for a kebab before deciding the next stage of the journey, which may or may not entail a nap before heading off to conquer the day.
Fast forward to today, and if I look too closely at a glass of Savvy after 7:00 PM, my body reacts like I’ve swallowed waste oil.
I used to think I was just exhausted from life. But it turns out, there is actual science behind why alcohol and middle-aged female biology get along like my kids. It seems my body has decided to stage a full-blown mutiny. My liver and brain have teamed up against me, rewritten the rules, and hung me out to dry.
This post is about the science that has partially motivated me to change. I’m not going to go all Huberman or Einstein on it but just noting three of the major points I have learnt in all my years of background research that have influenced this decision.
Point one: The all-important assets – the boobs (and why they hate paint stripper).
I’ve always known it, but I stuffed it down deep in my subconscious, so I didn’t have to face the reality that alcohol is a poison. The alcohol we drink, ethanol, is the literal chemical sibling of methyl alcohol—the toxic stuff found in paint stripper. Ingesting a poison can never be good for your body, but for women it is particularly bad.
Because drinking alcohol is so closely related to methyl, your liver treats every sip like a hazardous spill. The liver gets so overwhelmed playing toxic waste containment that it completely drops the ball on its other day job: breaking down oestrogen.
This causes an oestrogen traffic jam in our bodies. According to the NIAAA (1), this hormonal pile-up is exactly why regular drinking bumps up relative breast cancer risk by 5% to 10%. Reading that is scary, but it’s not all doom and gloom. The moment you quit drinking; the toxic emergency ends. Your liver immediately catches up on its chores, oestrogen levels stabilise, and your immune system gets an instant upgrade. That is good news. That is where I’m going.
Point two: The 2AM brain party – and why the thermostat is set to the Pilbara.
Picture this: it’s 2:00 AM and I’m trapped in my own bedroom, trying to fake-sleep my way back to dreamland. Instead, my mind is wide awake, aggressively auditing a completely irrelevant interaction I had with a taxi driver after a night out twelve years ago. I am also soaked through, sweating like I’ve just finished a spin class. I’d gone to bed early and fallen asleep fine, yet here I am—boiling hot, panicking about ancient history, and staring at the ceiling again. Why?
The answer? My neurochemistry was throwing an absolute temper tantrum.
While that wine initially slowed down my brain and knocked me out, my central nervous system treated that sedation like a hostile takeover. To fight back, my brain triggered a massive rebound effect. It completely cut off my deep, restorative REM sleep and flooded my bloodstream with a surge of cortisol (the stress hormone) and other ‘wake up, we are alive!’ neurotransmitters.
At the exact same time, the ethanol metabolites completely glitched my brain’s almond-sized command centre (the hypothalamus) that regulates core body temperature. Combined with my already fluctuating midlife oestrogen, it was like a drunk toddler took over my internal thermostat and cranked it to ‘the Pilbara on a warm summer’s day’.
The good news? My neurobiology is desperate to stop the madness.
The moment I quit drinking, that chemical rebound loop broke. Within just 48 to 72 hours of going alcohol-free, my cortisol production should normalise, my neurotransmitters will balance out, my hypothalamus should regain control and God I hope I get a full night’s sleep tonight!!!
Point three: My strength and stamina have officially vacated the building.
For me, this isn’t about over-night weight gain or a brand-new spare tyre where it is not needed, but it is about the fact that doing 40 burpees used to be my warm-up, and these days… well, pre-break any way back when my limbs actually worked, doing four burpees nearly required a call to emergency services.
It felt like I had to work twice as hard just to maintain the exact same size and hold onto my muscle, and the sheer effort of it was leaving me completely exhausted.
The science behind this frustration comes down to how midlife affects our muscles. As our oestrogen drops, our bodies naturally want to shed lean muscle. To fight back, we work out. But the moment I introduced ethanol into the mix; it acted like a chemical handbrake. Alcohol directly blocks muscle protein synthesis—the exact process our cells use to repair and maintain muscle tissue after exercise.
Basically, my body was too busy processing a toxic chemical and keep me alive to actually rebuild from my workouts. Because my liver was working overtime to clear out the alcohol, it also couldn’t efficiently restore glycogen (our muscles’ primary fuel source). Even before the leg break, I was essentially trying to do those soul-crushing burpees on an empty tank, leading to total physical burnout.
Now I’ve stopped drinking, when I return to the gym my muscles should actually get the chance to recover, my strength should stay where it belongs without the extreme exhaustion and my body should focus its energy on important things—like, you know, ensuring my bones stay strong and in one piece
The Grand Finale: Resting my bones (and my liver)
So, here’s to reclaiming a full night’s sleep, protecting the assets, and giving my bones a fighting chance to knit back together without a nightly chemical hazard spill getting in the way. I hope this may give some food for thought and, if your body is also staging a mutiny, consider this your official invitation to join the rebellion.
I’ll be back later this week with my ‘Dear Diary’ confessionals and a full breakdown of the stats—mostly so you can track whether my sanity is returning alongside my muscle density, or if I’ve just replaced the Sauvignon Blanc with an obsessive Temu shopping habit.
(1) https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/sites/default/files/publications/22295_NIAAA_WomenAlcohol_Factsheet_English_v1_NSDUH_Update_Oct2020.pdf