Can You Do This Without a Drink? | Melissa Reader | Club Sandwich
If a glass of wine has become your shortcut from caregiving stress to “I can finally exhale”, this episode is for you.
Ageing parents? You’ve got them. We’ve got you.
JOIN THE CLUB: Visit https://clubsandwich.community to join the tribe, access resources, and find our private Facebook community.
SEND US YOUR QUESTION: hello@clubsandwich.community
In this episode:
The Conversation: Sarah Macdonald and Melissa Reader talk honestly about alcohol in midlife, especially for women caring for ageing parents while juggling work, family, stress and the mental load of everyone else’s needs. They unpack why alcohol became such a normal coping tool for Gen X, why it can stop working in midlife, what it does to sleep, and how to build new rituals for the hardest hour of the day.
This Week’s Hack: Replace wine o’clock with time o’clock. Build a deliberate non-alcoholic ritual for the hardest part of the day, whether that is a proper mocktail, a walk, exercise, or something else that genuinely helps shift your energy.
Hot Mess Moment: Melissa shares the family gathering that went pear-shaped, and the two strong gin and tonics that followed.
Meet the regular Clubbers
Melissa Reader - CEO of Vera and expert on Australia’s ageing crisis.
Jo Lamble - Clinical psychologist specializing in guilt and family dynamics.
Dr Ginni Mansberg - GP and women’s health advocate who tells it straight.
Dr Stephanie Ward - Geriatrician helping you understand when “old” becomes a crisis.
Kerry Milligan - Gogglebox star bringing humor and honesty to the sandwich generation.
Topics covered in this episode
* midlife women and alcohol
* caring for ageing parents and stress
* why Gen X grew up drinking this way
* wine o’clock and the sandwich generation
* alcohol, hormones and sleep
* why alcohol can stop working in midlife
* ritual, habit and stress relief
* non-alcoholic alternatives
* mocktails and replacement rituals
* how to slow the day down without a drink
This episode was supported by Australian Unity, home health and care services. Proactive local care that helps your parents live well at home, less stress for them, less worry for you, and more time for the good stuff. Visit https://www.australianunity.com.au/clubsandwich.
Credits
Club Sandwich is brought to you by Vera, helping families caring for ageing parents navigate this stage of life so you don’t have to do it alone.
JOIN THE CLUB: Visit https://clubsandwich.community to join the tribe, access resources, and find our private Facebook community.
SEND US YOUR QUESTION: hello@clubsandwich.community
Melissa Reader - CEO of Vera and expert on Australia’s ageing crisis.
Jo Lamble - Clinical psychologist specialising in guilt and family dynamics.
Dr Ginni Mansberg - GP and women’s health advocate who tells it straight.
Dr Stephanie Ward - Geriatrician helping you understand when old becomes a crisis.
Kerry Milligan - Gogglebox star bringing humour and honesty to the sandwich generation.
This episode was supported by Australian Unity, home health and care services. Proactive local care that helps your parents live well at home, less stress for them, less worry for you, and more time for the good stuff. Visit https://www.australianunity.com.au/clubsandwich.
Need more clarity at 3 AM? Vera gives you a structured 15-minute voice conversation to help you understand where your parent stands and what to do next. Discover more at https://vera.guide.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Club Sandwich is recorded on Gadigal Land, home of the EORA nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present. Always was, always will be.
Club Sandwich is brought to you by Australian Unity Home Health and Care, helping Australian families keep their parents well, independent and at home for longer. Visit australianunity.com au club sandwich. Hello, it's Sarah here. A friend rang me last week, a great old friend, and she said, I don't know how much longer I can do this. My mum's in hospital, my teenager's in a really bad place, I can't quit my job, my husband's trying his best and I'm really falling apart. I'm falling apart in the car, on the school run, I'm falling apart at Centrelink, I'm falling apart everywhere. So we sat with this for an hour and I thought, you know what? There's thousands of women going through this exact phone call with not as many people to call as they'd like. And so what we're doing is we're going to gather into a situation on the eve of International Families Day and we're calling it. It's a lot. It's Thursday the 14th of May at 8 o'. Clock. I want you to grab a cuppa, grab a glass of wine, find a comfortable chair and join us online, because we see you and we've got you. Hello, welcome to Club Sandwich. Now, this is a podcast for you. If you often find yourself asking, can I do this without a drink? Perhaps you're thinking about it on the way home from seeing a parent in an aged care centre or trying to clean their home because they won't get anyone in to help them. And that glass of wine is calling you to. In fact, sometimes I get home and I am reaching for that glass of wine before the very old and decrepit and deaf dog has even heard me come in the door. But here's the thing. I'm starting to really rethink my relationship with alcohol and I've got a lot of friends who are outgrowing it and quitting it or really cutting down, if that's you, listen up, because we are going to discuss this stage of life and whether you can be in the sandwich generation without a drink club. And CEO of Vera, Melissa Reeder, is thinking about her relationship with alcohol and she's with me now. Hello?
Hello, Sarah.
Do we need a drink for this?
Oh, my goodness.
It's not Billion Dollar Question, it's water. But here's the thing, we've already gone to a joke about alcohol because it is a real coping mechanism for the sandwich club community, isn't it?
It really is. It really is. And it's been such a crutch, I think for Gen X's for so long.
And it really came to a head for you recently.
Yeah, because like you said, I have been trying to be more, let's just say more considered with my alcohol consumption. But you know, we had a big family get together this last weekend and most of it was really, really lovely. And then it all went really, really pear shaped. And after. I won't overshare, okay. I'm just going to be respectful of my family. But all of those dynamics kicked in.
The things, the old dynamics, the old
systems, the things that you think you've outgrown or you'd hoped others had outgrown to. Turns out that we hadn't. And you know, things got messy. And after that, the first thing I did was pour myself a very strong gin and tonic. And you know what I did after that? Pour myself a second. It was that kind of a day.
Yeah. And was there instant relief when it hit your tonsils?
I needed to feel numb. I was so upset, I was so angry. I was so hurt. I needed to numb it out a little bit. And you know, I don't think we've really been taught how to numb that feeling or when you're in pain without alcohol. I think that was our generation's go to.
Yeah, we really grew up with it, didn't we? In such a different way. I mean, my parents didn't really drink. My dad was a doctor and so he didn't really drink. He was always on call and my mum I never really saw. But I think for our generation it was our coming of age.
Like, gosh, we drank a lot and we drank quite early. Was that your experience too?
I remember I changed schools when I was 15, 16 in year 11 and I was really young for my year. And I remember I'd seen a bit of it in my old school, but I got to this other school and I remember going to a party and everyone was legless.
There was a lot of legless parties. Do you know what my terrible story is of teenage alcohol use? I was leaving my high school and I was asked to do a speech and I got drunk and I did the speech. Drunk at Catholic girls? No. Cause I was rebelling.
Right.
Cause I was happy to be leaving and cross at the school that I'd been at. But that was a terrible thing to do. But I look at my kids now and they'll go out. If they're out at a club or whatever, they'll have drinks, but they don't drink with the same frequency. And certainly they don't associate a glass of wine with a meal in the way that I think we have for decades.
The thing is, I think that, number one, it's expensive for them. But also, number two, I think socialisation and a multicultural Australia is changing a relationship with alcohol and dependence on alcohol. But we were probably at the peak of it, perhaps. Excellent. It was, yeah. A coming of age. So 15, 16, 17 people started really drinking. The 21st people would get blind pissed, weren't they? Of course. And we see, we laugh about it. Cause it was part of our.
But it's during the week, like even during the week, I worked in advertising and I would get really quite drunk on a Thursday night. When in your first job. Yeah, yeah.
It was associated with work too. I worked in a newsroom. We would finish at 2 in the afternoon. After starting at 4 in the morning, we'd go to the pub.
Yep, yep.
And that was my way of fitting in. Yes. Do you think also for women, it was part of the kind of lad culture, the ladette culture was like, yeah, we can drink as much as you guys, so we're gonna get pissed too. Cause, hey, feminism.
Cause we're right here at the table with you and we can drink all night and then, you know, wander in the next morning. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that just became acceptable over time. And then I think about the years, you know, when you're going through your 20s, you're drinking at every social event, then you start finding the only reason that someone doesn't have a drink if you're a woman is if you're pregnant. And the minute you didn't have a drink in front of you, that'd be the first question you were asked.
Are you pregnant?
Oh my gosh, are you pregnant? And of course, so true.
It was so hard. It was really hard to hide if
you were pregnant and you were trying not to drink. But that, you know, I think everything up until that was, you know, it was pretty consistent, pretty consistent alcohol consumption.
And so we've got a sort of need for it, perhaps that other generations may. May not. And so in midlife it becomes a stress reliever. But before that, there's also those, if you do have kids, those 1 o' clock hours of when the kids, or the arsenic arrow of when the kids are just.
We turned it into a novelty to make ourselves feel better.
That's right about the video. Fish fingers or the chicken nuggets, all
five fingers in those frozen pizzas.
Sarah, you'd have the glass of wine and it became this social thing. And then we used to sit out on our street on a Friday afternoon and the women would have a glass of Savvy B, or the Cardenay, as Kath and Kim called it. And the kids are playing on the bikes. And it was that. Yes. Cause you're. Cause you deserve it.
Cause you deserve it. Because it's that point of the day where you want things to slow down, you need things to slow down. And that's. I think we were trying to have a little bit of influence over slowing things down. So that signal, that first glass of wine, or whatever your drink of choice might be, tried to kind of flick the switch on the pace of the
day and it did. And that's the Pavlov's dog response.
Totally.
Because it just automatically then sets our mind that I'm relaxing now. So for you, after this really stressful family situation in the sandwich, that gin and tonic hit that spot of like,
relax, relief, anxiety down, lessened, maybe not down, but it gave me some of the relief that I needed and I wish I had better coping skills and strategies and that. And, you know, I think if we're going to have a conversation like this, Mum, we need to be real about it. I didn't have anything in my toolkit that afternoon. I needed those gnts.
We do it and we need it. And it's very much something I've been thinking about lately because a lot of my friends are really starting to question that relationship and think about it and think, have I become too dependent on it? Am I doing it too much? Am I reaching for it when I'm cooking? Am I reaching for it when I go out? Am I reaching for it when I
ask what is the thing that suddenly makes us question it?
One thing I think is because the next generation's doing it less, we know more, it's like tobacco. We know how bad it is, especially for women. I think we kind of. Cause we had that ladette thing. But, you know, we can drink them under the table, but our livers are smaller.
We metabolise alcohol very, very differently to men. We always have. We've pretended that's not been the case, but that's always been true. And then there's a raft of really confronting and interesting studies that are showing us it's actually not about that binge drinking, it's about the impact of really Quite moderate drinking over time. So you think about that six o' clock drink in midlife is actually influencing your brain health when you're 70 and
beyond the dementia you may get.
Yeah. There's links between, while you're drinking to
deal with your parents dementia, you might be causing your own. Well, not causing, but it's one of the factors. It's multifactorial.
How do you cope with the convergence of all these things that are happening in your life? But I think for Gen X's in particular, we have relied on alcohol in a particular way. I'm wondering, like, what brings it up for midlifers? Why do we suddenly start to question it? I can remember maybe two and a half years ago when a certain friend announced to me that he hadn't had a drink for a year and he wasn't planning to have another one. And I was kind of gobsmacked. I thought, wow, I'm not even sure I could. That was the kind of awakening moment for me. And since then, I've seen dozens of people in my friendship groups and my work life step back from alcohol altogether or really reduce their concerns.
I think a lot of people are doing it. Yeah. A friend of mine was at pottery class and she said, I'm gonna bring a bottle of wine next week. And a woman said, oh, I don't drink. And the other one said, I don't drink. And the other one said, I don't drink. And she said, no one in the pottery class drunk. She said, why don't you drink? And they said, well, I just felt it wasn't working for me anymore. And she said, no, me either. And they said, well, stop. So she did and went, completely hasn't had a drink since one year. My husband hasn't had a drink for a year. He's done it too. And he felt. And here's the other thing I think that starts happening and why we're questioning it. I think it stops working for us. So even though you had that stress response on that weekend when the sandwich was completely falling apart, I did mention they were quite strong G and T's, but that didn't. When I said it, stress reduced your anxiety. You went, oh, I don't know. Because I think it stops working. And particularly for women, perhaps with our stress and anxiety with menopause, maybe the interaction with the hormones and our sleep, well, it stuffs up your sleep.
Well, let me tell you that the first couple of people that told me how much better they were sleeping, I was like, you sound like every Other midlife person who's given up alcohol, you know, surely that can't be true. Turns out not for everybody, for many. And it's certainly been my experience, I forgot what good sleep was like. Yeah.
So when you stop drinking for a couple of weeks, you started sleeping properly or just on nights you don't drink, you notice, you sleep.
I just notice the difference. You know, less to we.
That too, that too.
But I have, I have a deeper sleep and I, I wake up feeling really quite different.
Yeah, well that's what my husband says and he says the effects are kind of compounding the longer it is really the sleep effect.
Well, that's quite motivating.
It is quite motivating. That's true, that's true. And I think with hormones it does have a real impact and an extra hit to your system because you possibly start as your metabolism changes, perhaps the way you metabolize alcohol changes as well.
Radically. Radically.
We have just finished a club sandwich tour of five cities. We met hundreds of sandwich generation people in rooms together and I kept asking the same question, what do you wish you'd done sooner? The answer almost every time was this. Got proper support in place before things started getting really hard. Australian Unity home health and care is built for exactly that. A dedicated care partner who actually knows your parent. A local neighbourhood team built around them a plan that grows with them before it's urgent and before there's a crisis. If you're waiting for a sign, this is it, visit australianunity.comauclubsandwich
We've been talking a lot on the pod today about that 5 or 6pm ritual that we are all looking forward to. To just slow the energy of the day down a little but not use alcohol to do it. And that's where Hopper and their new product Exhale comes in. With some ingredients like adaptogens and nootropics that really you relax and help you feel a little bit more revitalised.
So you get that kind of ritual, you get the grown up glass, you get that wind down moment, but you don't get the 3am Wake up.
None of us want that 3am Wake up, do we? If you want to be in the draw to win some of this fantastic new product, just jump onto whatever platform you're listening to Club Sandwich on and leave us a review. We'll pop you in the drawer to get some of this incredible product.
So jump on now and find your new ritual.
And now we're seeing the rise of all of these non alcoholic options. So it doesn't feel as awkward as it maybe once did to say, oh no, I don't want a glass of the wine, thank you.
Yeah, no one says you're pregnant now
and you don't have to sit now that's not a question I've been asked for a while, come to think of it. But you also don't have to sit with like a, you know, a diet Coke or a glass of water. You can actually choose something that feels still a little bit special but is not alcoholic. And so the thing that I've been really kind of testing and training myself is, you know, that one o', clock, that five or six o' clock moment, I'm still trying to make myself a really nice non alcoholic drink. Trying to create the moment and try to have that same deliberateness about slowing the day down, but just making sure it's something that is non alcoholic.
Well, someone told me about one that is apple cider vinegar, bit of lime cordial and soda water and then you might put a bit of a mint leaf in it and it gives you that sort of cocktail effect. You can do a cocktail glass or a wine glass. Cause it's that sense of a wine glass.
You still want it to be a grown up drink.
Well, that's a healthy one too.
Yeah.
Because apparently apple cider vinegar solves everything.
Must try that.
Can even get your mum to accept that she shouldn't be driving anymore.
Maybe I should have had that on the table over the weekend.
Well, maybe. Was alcohol in the mix of why it got so messy?
It actually wasn't right, you know, I can't point to anything like that. No, it wasn't.
I think as we also get middle aged, we kind of settle into ourselves and we. Some of the things that used to work for us stop working for us. The way we manage. You hear about a lot of people getting midlife diagnosis of autism or adhd and perhaps that's because the ways we're interacting with the world and the way the world's rapidly changing or the layers of responsibility adding up just are no longer working for us or we run
out of puff at the coping strategies that we might have fiercely held onto. Or we stop caring so much about hiding things or being polite or being protective and we just feel like we want to be a bit more direct and honest.
And you can do that without alcohol, you feel? I think so because you're being so.
I think it comes with your 50s, you know, it's the give no fucks thing that is often thrown around on a Whole lot of podcasts. I'm feeling that in my 50s. I quite like it.
Well, I wonder if when we were young we were drinking much more than other the generations of now. It wasn't just cultural and generational change and more information coming out about alcohol, but maybe it was about our anxieties. We covered up our anxieties.
Social lubricant best there is.
That's right. Whereas now they'll go, no, I'm anxious. And they're like, I'm just anxious. And we would never have said, I'm an anxious person.
We would have said, I've just had two glasses of wine, I'm fine.
Yeah, I've passed out in the corner. And some of the risks we took were kind of crazy.
They were, weren't they?
And they're also. We weren't supervised as much that we have supervised our children.
Did you regularly pop wine corks on a footpath? That was my secret party trick.
What do you mean?
I was the one that could get the right wing strength of stick to pop the cork on the cheapest bottle of white wine, which was usually Queen Adelaide. Yeah, yeah.
How do you pop a cork?
You know, I could demonstrate after we recorded these are the things. And remember, all wine was corked back then. No screw top wine. So I was very, very adept at popping that cork with a stick on any suburban street in the 80s.
The joys of a 80s childhood.
What a CV.
The anxiety thing's interesting though because if it stopped, perhaps we were anxious, we were masking it. We're still doing that now. But I think the other thing that happens in midlife, especially for women, but also for blokes who've got. When you've got really stressful jobs and you've got the stress of looking after your parents and other things that are going on in your life, alcohol actually makes stress worse. It's a short term reliever. But it makes you more anxious.
Absolutely. And it makes you more tired. You just kind of get that fog feeling after a couple of hours and you're kind of. Well, I do. I just used to hit the pillow really hard if I'd had a couple of glasses of wine. But yeah, of course then you wake up and you kind of feel the suffications.
You're more stressed, you're more stressed. So you're gonna replace it with stuff at night of a little kind of non alcoholic cocktail.
I'm not in the, in the camp of saying I'm giving up completely. No, I actually really like alcohol.
That's my problem.
I bloody love wine and I don't think I need to give it up. Love it.
It's making me want one.
I don't want to give it up completely. That may change in the future. But what I want to do is to be much more thoughtful with what I drink and when I drink it.
And how are you going to deal with stress then? If you're kind of trying to break that nexus of it being a stress? I mean, it's not just a stress relief. It's a celebration.
It's all sorts of things.
It's a weekend with the girls, it's going to a party. There's, you know, it's. Yeah. So how are you gonna kind of. What are you gonna do about stress?
I am doing all sorts of things to try out what works for me. Exercise is good and I don't wanna sound like an exercise solves everything, you know, person, but it does actually help because again, it gives you that pace change. It gives you some of the endorphins that just help you get over the edge of the day. I bought myself a really cheap massage chair on Facebook Marketplace.
What? One of the ones that vibrates, which
listene a lot more than costs a lot less rather than, you know, a couple of bottles of really nice wine. So what I'm trying to do is actually just spend half an hour in this massage chair.
Vibrate.
Cause I love a good massage. Does it work?
Does it pummel you?
I actually love it. It's a bit strong for some people. My husband was yelping when he sat in it the other day. I. I'm finding that works. I don't always want to do it, but I find it really works because it gives me a little cocoon, a little moment and it just shifts my energy levels.
People say they'll go for a walk or do something like that at that five o', clock, six o' clock when they want to reach for a drink, when that.
Because what we're trying to do as we reach for that drink is shift something, isn't it? Offload the pace or offload the stress or forget that last shitty conversation you had on a zoom call or something has happened that you're trying to reset or get rid of so you can actually have a nice evening. So I haven't got this right and I'd love to hear from listeners if they're trying things too, but I'm trying to be deliberate about what else might kind of fit that five or six o' clock moment.
I Find it really easy to not drink when I'm not in my area. Like when I'm not at my house or with my friends or at the aged care centre. Seeing Mum when I, when I was in India and I did an Ayurveda week, it was so easy to not drink. I even gave up coffee. Like I didn't even. She gave up coffee. I know. I didn't even get a bad headache.
You didn't get a splitting headache? No. Oh my gosh, that's amazing.
My friend did. They gave her a cup of chai every day.
Did you feel great straight away or did it take a few.
I slept really well. I slept really well and yeah, I did feel good but I kind of deprogrammed. But when I got back, it's different there, you know, you're in a country that's not part of their culture. It's not everywhere. I kind of stopped the cravings. I didn't really have. I don't really have cravings. To me it's about the place, it's about routine, it's about habitual and breaking those habits. So doing something at the time of night, I mean, that's what I put time o', clock.
That's what we need to call no longer whine o', clock, time o', clock,
time o', clock, Pilates o', clock, yoga
o', clock meditation, massage chair o'. Clock. But tell us listeners, if there's stuff that's working for you in time o', clock, we wanna know about it. Yeah.
And what this kind of time of life has done to your relationship with alcohol, what kind of impact your parents have had on that and the stress of looking after your parent, how that's changed the relationship you have with alcohol. The good thing is there's non alcoholic beers and wine now, which are good too.
There's lots of really good options. But I think, you know, this is not necessarily around about the, the chemical, the drink. It's the emotions, it's the energy that we're trying to shift. It's something that we're trying to do to change the dynamic of the day.
So can you do with this, this without alcohol?
Can you do that without alcohol?
What is the things you do? What works? We're not going to go back to the candle that we dissed in episode.
No weighted blankets are going to, you know, work for me at time o'.
Clock.
That's not going to work.
But Dr. Ginny talked about this. She talked about exercise, good food, cutting back on the booze. I mean, they're just all such basic
things that we've all. They're so basic, they feel boring when we say them out loud.
They're boring. How do we make them?
That's why I'm trying to do some different things. But I. I would love to hear what's working for other people. I imagine there's some really interesting social research either already happening that I haven't seen, or maybe ahead of us. Because, like you said, my parents weren't drinkers. They'd have a few beers at the odd barbecue. But where did we develop this habit, this ritual, this need, how prevalent it was in our teens and our 20s and our 30s, and it's kind of coming crashing down in midlife.
Well, like we have the elongated sandwich generation time that other generations haven't had. We also have a particular, I think, relationship with alcohol other generations don't have.
Cheers to that.
No, not cheers. Not cheers, not beers. Om or something else that we do that's different. Or vibration. I'm just thinking, you in that chair every afternoon.
It's really great. I think you have to be a person that likes massage to take that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I've got friends who have started running. See, I think this is the marathon running, that sort of extreme fitness craze is often running away from that or thinking of new things.
I'm not an extreme person like that. I like to work in incremental. So for myself, when we ask, what
have you done for yourself this week? This one's for you.
Like the massage chair, I think is my thing at the moment.
Yeah, I'm gonna get back to that drink I told you about. So apple cider vinegar, that drink, soda water, bit of lime cordial, and a mint leaf.
Sounds lovely.
And try that out as your should
we whip one up?
Mocktail of choice. And then it can be apple cider vinegar o', clock, whatever you want to call it, clubbers do. Share this with someone you know who's starting to think about their relationship with alcohol. Send us your questions to the podcast or perhaps some topic areas you would like us to cover. We always love to hear from you on our Instagram and our closed Facebook account as well. So have a go. Share it. Give us a rating. And remember that you are not alone in whatever you're doing. It is a stressful time of life. You are doing a great job. Don't reach for that bottle of wine when you go home if it's doing you damage, which it quite possibly is, because we're finding out more about it. And remember, you've got them. We've got you. Today's episode was supported by Australian Unity Home Health and Care, Proactive local care that helps your parents stay independent or living well at home. Visit australianunity.com auclubsandwich Altina drinks have got a very special prize for a Sandwich generation listener. It is a tasting box of their alternative wine. It's wine without alcohol in it. So if this podcast is really singing to you, go on to wherever you're listening to your podcasts, give us a review and we will draw a number out of a hat of the people giving us a review and to send them a sample box of Altina drinks. If you want to get off the grog, you can still have the little glass at that time of the day when you need it, without any guilt.
If you're listening to today's episode and you're thinking no one is asking how I'm going, this bit's for you. Vera75 is a free 15 minute AI voice conversation that gently looks at both sides of the picture, where your parent stands and how you're coping as you care for them. It's not just about risk, it's reflecting what you're carrying and then it gives you a personalised guide, a clear sense of your situation and some steady next steps and support that's chosen specifically for you. Because sandwich Jenners you matter in this story too. Have a Look at the Vera 75 link in the show notes or visit Vera Guide.