Mums relying on wine could benefit from mindful drinking

OUR booze culture and the mummy wine jokes are becoming increasingly uncomfortable, writes Angela Mollard. Thankfully, there’s an alternative to self-medicating with alcohol.

BEING a reasonable person of moderate temperament (cough) I’ve never been a fan of “I don’t” people.

We all know them — those inflexible sorts who refuse to eat pastry even though they’re not coeliac, or won’t swim because it’ll mess up their hair, or won’t go camping because, well, it’s camping.

I’ve always found the “yes, let’s” tribe far more appealing than the “I don’ts” because life’s most delicious moments usually happen when unexpected opportunities meet an elastic attitude and a dusting of devil-may-care.

But then I saw pictures of Claire and Chris Chadwick and — as well as having the most matchy-matchy initials — I wanted to be them.

Mr and Mrs C gave up alcohol two years ago and they look fantastic. They have two kids yet they run early in the morning and have golden shiny thighs and sparkly eyes and post pictures on Instagram of the freshly squeezed juices they treat themselves to after a day at the beach.

As Claire explained, they started by not drinking for 100 days. Then 100 turned to 200 and then 300.

They lost 32kg between them and felt fast and light on their feet.

“We’ve never been happier or felt so alive,” says Claire, who says their new-found stamina prompted them to throw themselves into a life of bushwalking, climbing, bike riding, swimming and meditating with their kids.

Claire and Chris Chadwick gave up drinking and lost 32kg. (Pic: Instagram)

The trouble is, I’m deeply suspicious of any form of puritanism. Anyone I know who’s “given up” anything has replaced the thing they’ve given up with talking incessantly about the thing they’ve given up.

I’ve never done Feb Fast or Dry July and I haven’t been on a diet since I was 17. While “all or nothing” might work for some, that type of prescriptiveness is as foreign to me as working nine to five.

And yet…

I’m becoming increasingly uncomfortable with our booze culture and the mummy wine jokes and memes which encourage stressed mothers — oddly, never fathers — to self-medicate with a glass or three of wine.

A picture of a mum with a sofa-sized wine glass and the caption “technically, you’re not drinking alone if your kids are home” is not very funny when you’ve just learned an old school friend — a mum like you — is in rehab for alcoholism.

Fortunately I’ve found a solution and it’s so damn smart I wish I’d come up with it: mindful drinking.

Self-medicating with a glass, or bottle, of wine has become somewhat of a national joke aimed at mums. (Pic: iStock)

Granted it’s an irritating name conjuring visions of orange-robed hippies sitting in a circle sipping a thimble of some dubious juniper-infused elixir but mindful drinking is more than old-style moderation dressed up with a new label.

Mindful drinking is not about demonising drink but being more present when you drink. It’s about acknowledging why you want a drink, savouring the ceremony and sense of celebration and building in plenty of alcohol-free days.

It’s choosing one glass of lovely wine and drinking it from a fine glass rather than throwing back a bottle of cheap sauv blanc in your standard issue pub beaker. It’s about valuing your health, skin, sleep, sex life, mood and work effectiveness over getting bladdered.

It’s recognising that alcohol is often a numbing agent and that instead of pouring a glass of wine, relaxation is obtainable through yoga, a cup of tea, a walk or a good book.

Now I’m not a big drinker but having read Rosamund Dean’s Mindful Drinking: How Cutting Down Can Change Your Life (on sale January 11) I realise I often drink mindlessly — not to a point of obliteration — but simply because so many social occasions are underpinned by expectations of drinking.

Mindful drinking could take the guilt out of boozing as a form of escapism. (Pic: Supplied)

Indeed, while writing this at home I popped downstairs to pay the carpet cleaners.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” I asked one. “Not sure,” he replied, “but it’ll involve a large bottle of rum and a lot of beer.”

For Clare Pooley, whose book The Sober Diaries, is also published on January 11, drinking went hand-in-hand with being a busy mum. Yet slowly the amount of wine she needed to wind down increased and she found it impossible to moderate.

As she says: “I spent years thinking the amount I drank was perfectly okay, because everyone else was doing it too.”

She says wine was her oasis and her sanity — “the way I slid from one part of the day into the next”.

She wrote of her experience because “I think we have to look at why mothers end up relying on wine, and start creating lives for ourselves that we don’t feel the need to run away from”.

I like Dean’s notion that you always need to have a plan and I applaud groups such as Club Soda in the UK, which rates pubs on their attitudes to sensible drinking and their selection of interesting non-alcoholic drinks.

Mark my word, there’s a motza to be made by those offering modern and delicious alternatives to the ubiquitous lemon, lime and bitters.

Anyway, enjoy your Christmas tomorrow. And if your family is driving you nuts, consider that a walk — or those noise-cancelling headphones you bought for your nephew — may prove more effective than another beer.