ipEdwards is just shy of her 40th birthday, and she’s
never felt better. The fashion industry stalwart, who
made her mark at brands like Ksubi and Sass & Bide
before co-founding athleisure label P.E. Nation,
exercises daily (sometimes twice if her Instagram
and washboard abs are any indication), maintains
a healthy diet and, earlier this year, pondered what
her ‘peak self’ – her mental and physical A-game -
might look like. So she gave up booze, too. It began
with Febfast – 28 days of sobriety in February – and
sober March and April, too. By May, although she
marked her birthday with a celebratory cheers, the feelgood factor of
ditching cocktails had become her new norm. “My speed, clarity,
memory, foresight ... everything is sharp. There’s no lag, no fog, no
excuses,” she says without skipping a beat. “I became
more fierce and to the point and I had more thoughts and,
suddenly, more action.”
Edwards is part of a growing group of women
questioning the cosy nook carved out by alcohol in their
everyday lives, and how their personal best might look
and feel when you remove the booze. Fellow designer
Sarah-Jane Clarke, previously of Sass & Bide and founder
of resortwear label Sarah-Jane Clarke, declared 2017 a
year of alcohol abstinence on social media and, since then,
has dramatically altered her intake. “It took two decades
and many failed attempts to finally be brave enough to
look deeper into the chaotic relationship that I shared
with alcohol. I knew I was a problem drinker, a binge drinker, and a
little voice in my head was telling me that I needed to take a break from
alcohol,” says Clarke, who most recently completed Dry July.
Actress Anne Hathaway told Ellen DeGeneres in January she had
given up alcohol to evade the gruelling hangovers. She later toldBoston
Commonmagazine: “I didn’t put [a drink] down because my drinking
was a problem: I put it down because the way I drink leads me to have
hangovers and those were the problem.” And, if there was more proof
needed, even perennial party girl Kate Moss is advocating a healthier
lifestyle: in the May issue of BritishVog ue the model inferred that she,
too, had cut out drinking.
Whether it’s to curb the punishing hangovers, the brain fog, or the
‘hangxiety’ (the morning-after apprehension that hits you with the
intensity of a tequila shot), Australians are following suit. According
to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, the proportion of
people aged over 14 who consumed alcohol daily declined between
2013 and 2016. And the Australia Bureau of Statistics recently reported
that alcohol consumption had fallen to the lowest level in half a century
overa period spanning 2016 and 2017.
“It’s interesting, because it’s a different way of looking at alcohol, in
the sense that you don’t necessarily have to have a diagnosable alcohol
use disorder to want to change or to benefit from making the change,”
says Briony Leo, psychologist and health coach at Hello Sunday Morning,
a non-profit organisation that advocates for a more thoughtful drinking
culture through its online support program Daybreak. The shift, she
says, is largely being driven by health-conscious millennials and Gen Z.
“Young people are starting to drink later, and they tend to be drinking
less.” But in a society where health is wealth, is alcohol avoidance just
the latest frontier of perfecting our most prized asset – our bodies?
Although drinking is firmly woven into our cultural
DNA, so too is the desire to super-charge every inch of
our emotional, mental and physical selves. Aside from the
physical pitfalls of sugary alcoholic drinks – weight gain,
sallow skin, lousy sleep – it’s the mental cues that are
often harder to ignore. Alcohol slows down the activity of
the anxiety-inducing neurochemical glutamate in your
brain, and triggers the feelgood chemical dopamine
(responsible for that fuzzy first-drink feeling). “But then,
while we sleep, our brains actually produce more
glutamate,” explains Leo. “So a lot of people find that they
feel particularly anxious the morning after drinking, and
part of that is because their brain has a surplus of this
chemical ... And you can see why it’s used so much in social situations,
because not only does it block anxiety, but it reduces that inhibition and
our consequential thinking.”
In other words, alcohol is humankind’s most popular social lubricant.
It’s an express pass to relaxation: a nightcap at your favourite speakeasy,
a bubbling toast to a new job or an ice-cold beer to signal the start of a
holiday. And even if you’re not actually out there socialising, there’s
a collective sense of togetherness via the stream of wine-endorsing
Mummy memes poking fun at parenthood and the desired pause
button buried in a giant glass of pinot grigio.
Of course, that’s not to say there’s anything inherentlywrongwith
a glass of wine or a gin and tonic to take the edge off: it’s the most
vanilla (and legal) of all addictive substances. According to Department
of Health guidelines, adults should have no more than two standard
drinks per day. However, it’s telling that the first step of any healthIn the pursuit of peak performance and harnessing
our best selves, many women are questioning the
place of alcohol in their day-to-day lives. Remy Rippon
explores what it means to be sober-curious.LAST DRINKS
“You don’t have
to have a
diagnosable
alcohol use
disorder to
want to change”