Is Alcohol Wrecking Your Relationships and Your Life?By Michaela Weaver

If alcohol is causing your relationship problems, then I can totally relate, as I have been there too. Alcohol has caused me relationship problems, I have suffered blackouts and bouts of complete memory loss.  At times I embarrassed myself in front of family and friends with my drunken behaviour. At that point in my life, my addiction to alcohol had started to severely affect my personal life, and seriously affected my close relationships, so I understand what you are going through.

I know what it’s like to be addicted to alcohol.

I know exactly what it’s like to be addicted to alcohol, yet still function in society behind a mask, and be that ambitious, strong, competent, successful high-performance woman in the workplace – outwardly accomplished, but inwardly struggling with failed promises and morning regret.

My own turning point came when I started using my expertise, as a Biochemical Scientist and post-graduate executive coach amongst various other roles to shine a spotlight on my own descent into the alcohol trap. I further studied addiction science, the biology of desire, neuroscience, and psychology. Since breaking free from alcohol, I have helped thousands of successful high achieving women break free from the alcohol trap, transform their lives and enhance their relationships with those nearest and dearest and find fulfilment without alcohol.

One of the main reasons that successful women come to me as a client is because, alcohol is affecting their relationships.

My clients are highly successful competent career women who are in their forties, fifties and sixties, who maybe juggling a successful career with raising a family and social commitments. They may have also been drinking for two, maybe three decades, and it’s been a problem for maybe five to ten years.  

You too, may see yourself in one of these groups above and alcohol is wrecking your life. You may be a high achieving successful woman such as corporate board member, company director, industry leader, senior lawyer, realtor, doctor, nurse, teacher, entrepreneur, or you may have retired from one of these roles, or a similar highly successful career. Where you have also been drinking for two maybe three decades, and it’s been a problem for maybe five to ten years, or maybe it’s just becoming a problem for you?

What is wrong with me?

You may be thinking ‘What is wrong with me?’ I can do all this stuff in life, I’ve done, I have achieved, I am successful, I get up and I do things. And yet, there is this thing called alcohol which over the years has slowly infiltrated your life. To the point where it has infiltrated almost every aspect.  I want to tell you now that there is a way through, a route out, should you wish to take it. You also need to know that the problem is not with you and this is not your fault. The problem lies in all kinds of other places which I will share throughout my blogs, just remember that, the problem does not lie with you. 

Alcohol is the ‘social drug’ in theory, so we are led to believe, and therefore socialising and social lives without alcohol is something that particularly when we are stuck in the alcohol trap, we cannot imagine life without. And so, relationships with friends, family and particularly the closest loved ones as well, all of that is affected by alcohol. 

If you’re in a place where you’re unhappy about it, you’re also in all likelihood, in a place where you’re concerned about how I can ever function without it, my relationship kind of revolves around it, although it’s also being wrecked by it. So maybe these are some of the things you are thinking about, and so I will focus now on the most significant relationships in your life which are the main reasons clients come to me. 

Clients who I work with are women in their forties, fifties, sixties where they have been drinking for two, maybe three decades, and it’s been a problem for maybe five to ten years,

Clients who I work with are women in their forties, fifties, sixties where they have been drinking for two, maybe three decades, and it’s been a problem for maybe five to ten years, and they are at that point where there is a realisation that there is actually a problem. It’s not just some fun social thing anymore, whereby we go out and have a good time, and then there is this little downside. Where I turn into this nightmare, and say things I didn’t mean to say, and hurt the people I love, and wake up feeling absolutely racked with guilt and shame, and inauthenticity, it’s not just that. 

It’s the fact that these people we are now seeing the repercussions of that because, what happens is these people then begin to distance themselves. The teenagers who leave the table straight after dinner because, mum’s getting stuck into the wine.

The partner who leaves the lounge at 9:30pm or 10.00pm at night, as they don’t want to sit with you.  The man who doesn’t want to sit by the pool with you because, he knows you’re gonna be stuck into the bubbly. All of the above. 

No more sleepovers at ‘nannies, granny’s’, that’s the reality.

The grown-up children who don’t want your grandchildren to come and stay with you. No more sleepovers at ‘nannies, granny’s’, that’s the reality and maybe it’s reality for you, and if it is. If you have a niggling feeling that any of this is even remotely at the early stages of what I’m writing to you about now.  I want you to know that it is not your fault, and that it is enormously, completely solvable.  Alcohol causes fear, it causes fear of succeeding.

If I stop, ‘give up’, it’s nothing to give up, but we say that. If I were to ‘give up’ drinking, my life would be over.  So, there’s a fear of success that might be an exaggeration, but you get the point.

So, there is a fear of success but there is also an enormous fear of failure because, in all likelihood you’ll be reading this, and reading other blogs, or watching other videos, you maybe Googling for answers on how highly successful women stop drinking. Your relationships are being ruined, and so what can you do. You may be Googling and looking for answers to the problem because, you’ll know it’s there.

We are socially conditioned from birth to consume this highly addictive drug.

Highly successful women maybe like yourself, fall into the trap of alcohol in which we are socially conditioned from birth to consume this highly addictive drug because, a drug it is. And, if you were at that point where it’s beginning to affect your relationships, or maybe it has, and you now find yourself at a crisis point. I want you to know that it’s not your fault.

You may think that when you’ve been drinking, your inhibitions go, and the truth comes out. The deep niggling truths of the things that you were thinking and have been thinking for some time. Or maybe you just are embarrassing, maybe you just stop making any sense, and your family members just don’t want you around.

That’s hard because, when you wake up the next day, and are your full self, albeit wracked with anxiety and guilt and shame.  That is not who you are, so you don’t understand it, you don’t understand why they don’t want to know you because, that’s not who you are. And that is the truth. It is not who you are! So, in that you can celebrate and revel and go to skip outside, that is not who you are. 

But what alcohol does, after we consume it, in terms of the relationship issues, it shuts down the logical rational emotional regulation part of our brain. 

How do I know these effects on the brain? As mentioned, I’m a Biochemical Scientist and Masters Level Coach amongst various other things, and so this is why I can write about this and as I mentioned, I was once addicted to alcohol and you can probably tell from reading this, that I have been exactly where I’m writing about right now. 

Alcohol shuts down that part of our brain, the emotional regulation, and women drink for different reasons to men, however, we are all emotional beings, and we need it regulated. Imagine living in a society where there were no regulations, no rules, no social norms. It would be chaos! And that is you when you are drunk. That is you after a couple of glasses of wine. Emotional chaos. But that’s not you, and nor any kind of demons coming out. It’s not you without inhibitions. It’s you under the influence of a psychoactive, ‘it affects our brains’ drug.

It closes our emotional regulatory capacity. Which means that any emotions which normally we just override, something was said, and we just ignore it. We can we become hyper defensive, we read into everything, in a totally illogical way because, our logic is gone. We become reactionary, we can become hysterical, and we damage the people around us.  And where it is not our fault. It is my friend, our responsibility, and I would go as far as to say our duty, to stop that, those people do not deserve it. They certainly don’t need it, and it will be affecting them in all kinds of ways in their life. 

There is nothing worse than having somebody that you love, lash out at you, hurt you, dredge up things which there may be an element of truth in, but nobody needs to hear it. And then on the flipside of that the next day, you have all the guilt because, you know maybe you don’t even remember what was said. There may be huge blanks but there’s this black cloud, between you and the people you love, and that black cloud is called the aftermath of alcohol.

There is a way out, a different world awaits you, if you are ready to take the next steps

I want to share with you that there is a different world, a whole other world in a whole other place, where you can live in sunshine in absolute harmony with those people in your life, and when you’re inside the world and you carry the social secret in your heart, you are in a completely different place. That is what I want for you, if I can help you and you are ready to transform your life then get in touch.

You can view the video that accompanies this blog at: https://bit.ly/3xa87OE