Episode 61 – Unhealthy Habits & ADHD: Why We Get Stuck & How to Shift

Jane McFadden:
If you are a hyperactive ADHD mum, you don’t need any accountability. You already have a slave driver and it’s you. So what we need is to strip it back, make it more simple and remove the guilt and the perfectionism and get back to what’s important.

First up, my personal values clarification exercise. This will stop you doing the same thing over and over and wondering why you didn’t get a different result. It is quick, it is simple, it is ready to implement straight away.

The next part is the essential de-stress planner for hyperactive mums. You can pick these up, put these down, start anytime. It won’t guilt trip you if you forget that it exists for a week.

Use it to brain dump the chaos, prioritize like a boss and stop pretending that you’ll just remember everything in your head. One of the things I got sick of was reflecting at the end of the day and thinking of all the things that were really important to me that I didn’t do. These resources are 100% fluff free and made for the ADHD mum life.

They’re cheaper than therapy and far more satisfying than yelling at your microwave for ruining your fourth attempt at reheating coffee. This isn’t about perfection. You need something that works with your life, not against you.

Grab your copy now at adhdmums.com.au and all of the links will be in the show notes.

Hello and welcome back to ADHD Mums. In this podcast, we tackle the tough, often unspoken realities of motherhood, neurodiversity and mental health.

Hello and welcome to ADHD Mums. Today, we are breaking down the mummy wine culture, ADHD, alcohol and mum life and how it all interacts into this perfect storm.

Mummy wine culture is a societal narrative that really glorifies wine or alcohol as the ultimate coping strategy for a stressed out mum. But when you’re an ADHD mum, this mum wine culture becomes extra complicated. And of course, ADHD mums, we know that nothing’s straightforward. It feels like everything is more complicated for us and this isn’t different.

Alcohol, ADHD and mum life is very much the perfect storm. What can start out as a harmless glass of wine, a beer, a gin and tonic or a vodka and soda, for some neurotypical mums, they may be people that can pick up and put down alcohol without thinking twice. For an ADHD mum, that can be a little bit more tricky.

The way that our brain regulates stress and emotion is not the same as the neurotypical brain. So surprise, surprise, alcohol can be harder to pick up and put down. And it also has a larger impact on our brain, which we’ll get further into.

This is not going to be a guilt ridden episode about why you shouldn’t drink and making you feel worse about yourself. But what we are going to be doing is we’re going to be diving into why. The why we’re drinking, we’re going to strip back whether it’s actually working for you at the moderation that you’re at, whether you need to reduce down, whether you need to go sober, whether you are one of those people that can pick up and put down and you’re feeling great about it.

So this episode is for ADHD mums that have found themselves being drawn to that mummy wine culture, whether it’s a social connection, a way to relax or a quick escape from the demands of motherhood. It’s also for anyone who’s curious about the science of alcohol, how it interacts with the ADHD brain.

I’ve definitely been a hardcore binge drinker throughout my teenage years and through my 20s. And it was always difficult for me to stop. I remember when my dad would talk to me about, you know, you have a drink, you wait half an hour, you see how it affects you. I was like, that’s boring.

So a lot of us with the excitement and the impulse control, alcohol can be a bit of a trap there. I remember a mum when I had three kids under four and I had started my business and I started having a glass of red when I’d be cooking dinner. And I just got that nice little buzz, that high, all that stress seemed to fade away.

And it was around about that time I was like, I actually can understand how people become alcoholics because it wasn’t drinking with someone. It wasn’t drinking on the weekend. It was a Tuesday night, five o’clock, I’m cooking dinner.

And I could see how easy that would be to fall into. Now there’s nothing wrong with doing that, but I suppose for me, I noticed that I wanted to do it every day. And then you’re chasing that feeling.

You need to have two glasses to get that same feeling. And then if you look at your alcohol intake over a week, it just starts to creep up and creep up. And a glass here, a bottle there seemed like a really harmless way to unwind after kind of the chaos of parenting or working for the day.

And because some of those coping mechanisms weren’t available to me anymore, like for example, going to the gym when I got three kids, there’s no crèche open at that time. My husband wasn’t home from work and it felt like there wasn’t a lot I could do. You know, the witching hour, the chaos afternoon.

I noticed that it wasn’t just about stress relief. It was also my brain’s need for a quick dopamine hit. For example, on mum’s night, I would be the one that would be having quite a few drinks in the beginning because I have social anxiety.

But then I would have anxiety over what I’d said the next day, sort of like medicating the social anxiety while I was there, but then dealing with the anxiety the next day about what I’d said and whether I should have said that. And I was also, as well, felt like I was drinking because of the overwhelming need to feel like I was keeping it all together, where I wasn’t, if I’m honest, keeping it all together.

I’m only sharing my story because I think it’s very similar to a lot of other people’s, where we don’t have a lot of outlets. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like joy is accessible to me in the day. And if something is going to give me that quick hit, then it feels like that’s what I’m thinking about doing, even though I know that it’s not good for me.

So over the last five years, I’ve been in either one of those, I’ve got to kind of, you know, reduce my drinking back. I’m going to be taking a 30 day break or, you know, I’m not going to buy any more alcohol so I can’t drink any, or, you know, I’ll be looking at cutting back. I’m usually fairly conscious about it because I do feel like, particularly with my brain, I could see how I could be addicted. I could see how it does start to really blow out.

And if you’re not watching it, for me, I find it can be problematic.

Jane McFadden:
Okay, first up, we want to have a look at alcohol and the ADHD brain and have a look at what the effect of alcohol is on the brain. So dopamine dysregulation.

We know that alcohol temporarily increases dopamine by up to 40 to 50 percent. So if you have a dopamine deficit, which is what ADHD is, we can see how an ADHD brain is going to really like alcohol. So it spikes up that dopamine, which a lot of us are looking for at the end of the day, particularly in the afternoon with kids.

ADHD brains already have a lower baseline of dopamine than a neurotypical brain. But after the spike of the alcohol, it drops down to well below the baseline. So we have even less than what we had before.

So this is going to create a cycle of dependence as you chase getting that spike of dopamine and then wanting to get it again. And then for me, I can notice that that’s what I’m looking to chase.

We also want to have a look at the GABA and the glutamate imbalance. So alcohol enhances GABA. And GABA is a calming neurotransmitter. So some people take GABA from their naturopath and they swear by it as like a calming anti-anxiety thing and suppresses glutamate, which is an excitatory neurotransmitter.

So those two combinations can make you feel quite relaxed. However, the brain overcompensates and then that leads to higher anxiety and restlessness once that alcohol wears off. If you’re drinking around lunchtime, you may find that you hit that period later on in the afternoon or the evening.

And then you may find yourself drinking for a longer period of time because you want to continue on rather than feel the effects of those neurotransmitters starting to drop below the baseline that you started. So whatever your baseline was when you started drinking, you are going to end up below that when the alcohol wears off.

We also know that chronic alcohol use actually shrinks the hippocampus. Now the hippocampus is critical for memory. A lot of us talk about having quite a terrible working memory. Chronic alcohol use is going to make this worse.

We also know that alcohol damages the prefrontal cortex, which is essential for decision-making, impulse control, which are already areas that are going to be vulnerable within the ADHD brain.

This here has now been referred to as anxiety, which is a hangover-induced anxiety and it can last for hours or even days. If you’re cumulatively drinking and you’re drinking daily, however it is that it’s working for you, you may find that your anxiety will become cumulative as well.

So if you use alcohol regularly and often and you have long-term anxiety, this can start to change the brain’s stress systems over time. And what this means is that you have a higher baseline level of cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

Neuroadaptions cause reduced GABA receptor sensitivity and increased glutamate activity, which makes it hard for the brain to naturally regulate anxiety without alcohol. So what you’re creating is a vicious cycle where alcohol is needed to feel normal, air quotes normal, but it actually worsens the underlying symptoms of anxiety underneath.

One of the key points here is that long-term alcohol use can rewire the brain, which makes anxiety a persistent issue, even during periods of sobriety. So you may not drink for 30 days or a period in time and then you may find that your anxiety is peaking during that period, which means maybe you need anti-anxiety medication, whatever it is that you’re using or doing, but actually that vicious cycle of the alcohol use has sped that over time.

So anxiety is one of the most common symptoms of alcohol withdrawal due to the sudden removal of the alcohol’s calming effects on the brain. It can look like mild irritability, it can look severe with panic attacks, stress responses, and really the key point here is that the anxiety experienced during this period reinforces the compulsion to drink, which then creates the cycle of dependence.

There’s also some pretty significant studies around anxiety disorders, for example, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety, OCD, and alcohol use. People with anxiety disorders are two to three more times likely to develop an alcohol use disorder. And the other way, people with an alcohol use disorder are more likely to experience anxiety.

And, you know, sometimes we’re really black and white too, aren’t we? We’re either in or we’re out, we’re drinking or we’re not. A lot of us struggle to go out but then drive because you’re going to have one or two, depending on how long you’re out, and they struggle to have the moderation. So you’re either not drinking or you are.

A little bit socially, like you’re either speaking and you’re talking and you’re holding the floor and telling story after story, you’re the life of the party, or you are mute.

Jane McFadden:
So we know that alcohol initially spikes dopamine and it creates a temporary feeling of wellbeing and motivation. However, this is short-lived and the long-term dopamine suppression follows, which is low mood and low-lying anxiety.

When that tolerance builds, we need more and more drinks or one or two more to get that high that we’re looking for. And it can create a really vicious cycle where people drink more to recapture that fleeting high, but then that low starts to deepen and they need it more often and more of it to create that high.

In regards to stress, if you are drinking regularly over a long period of time or over a period of time, it starts to increase your cortisol levels, even when you’re not drinking, which means that your feelings of stress and anxiety are going to be higher at your baseline, as opposed to if you weren’t drinking.

There’s also a reduction in stress resilience. And so you can find yourself more stressed out about things that you would have handled easily before. And that can really increase your feelings of being overwhelmed as well.

We also know that alcohol impacts the gut microbiome, which a lot of us have already got issues. Alcohol makes that just that worse. And then this continued inflammation can lead to poor mood regulation, cognitive decline, and then increased alcohol craving.

Even a small amount of alcohol can really start to disrupt sleep quality. It can reduce the REM sleep, which is great for memory and emotional processing. Sometimes after you’ve been drinking, it can feel like sleep, but the brain struggles to really enter that restorative state.

So you can have been in bed, but you wake up and aside from the hangover, you feel exhausted. Poor sleep also compounds into stress, anxiety, and poor decision-making.

If you are taking stimulants and you have poor sleep, often you take more stimulants in the day to get yourself through, but then that disrupts your sleep moving forward as well.

When I first discovered vodka and soda waters, I discovered that I could have quite a few of them and I would not feel hungover the next day, but I definitely would have a spike in anxiety, low mood, struggling to get motivated, low energy, and it wouldn’t be a hangover per se, but I could see that I didn’t feel good, but I would never want to look at it. I would never want to admit that it was the alcohol from the day before.

The brain can change and it can heal itself. We’ve heard all that and that’s great. It can also negatively change too, and it can adapt to the alcohol’s presence and that creates dependence where your brain starts to need it because it’s used to having it there.

Really key areas are more related to impulse control, decision-making, emotional regulation, and those areas start to weaken over time. If you stop drinking for a period of time, some people do dry July, 30, 60, 90 days.

I know a couple of people that go off social media and alcohol for three months at a time. They feel amazing and then they make all kind of attempts to create balance after that, but then inadvertently they go back to what they believe is an overconsumption and then they have to go back onto the three-month challenge every time.

Reducing intake can really start to reverse the effects. If you’re somebody that wants to reduce alcohol and you want to heal your brain, absolutely, you can always do that.

Jane McFadden:
We also know that social drinking, and for ADHD mums, I think this can be really important, is when we start to get that temporary relief from stress or maybe we want to build social bonds, we’re feeling anxious and we get that initial dopamine spike and it feels easier to bond with people. It feels more fun, but that chronic pattern of social drinking starts to reinforce dependency and it starts to create those friendships where you always drink and if you feel like maybe you can’t say no or your friendship is based around sharing a bottle of wine.

That stress release or social comfort can become quite deeply ingrained in your friendship. If you are creating friendships, make sure that you have a nice balance where you don’t feel like you are always having to catch up with wine or with alcohol because often that can be a really tricky thing to change.

That can be that feeling of when we have ADHD and we’re neurodivergent and we just want to create a connection. We just want to feel connected and belonging and that may mean that we don’t have the confidence to say, hey, I don’t actually want to have a drink today. We’d prefer to go along with it and be included than to risk not being included.

So if you are someone that you feel like maybe you have drunk a little bit more than what you’d like to, you’d like to reduce alcohol intake. What we do know about alcohol in the brain is that your brain and your body are highly resilient and whilst alcohol can cause harm, you can also recover and your brain can recover.

So we know that if we take a break from alcohol, our brain, dopamine and serotonin system will start to reset. Even just reducing alcohol intake will start to repair the gut but you can also eat particular foods to repair the gut and we also know that we can manage stress without alcohol.

We just need to start to do things differently and if you can get through the initial change to reduce your alcohol intake, you may find that you do feel quite stressed initially and that’s going to be your brain going back to your baseline but remember your baseline will be higher once your body starts to regulate with getting used to not having that alcohol.

In terms of key statistics, I really wanted to go through some statistics that are specific to Australia. The mummy wine culture in Australia is going strong.

In 2020, a study found that 57% of mothers reported increased alcohol consumption during the pandemic. Having their children at home, trying to work, financial pressure, pressure to homeschool children or pressures all over the place, it was just such a stressful time.

We also know that people with ADHD are two to three times more likely to develop an alcohol dependency. So we know that ADHD brains are going to get hooked earlier, we’re going to be reaching for that bottle quicker and we’re going to be thinking about reaching for that bottle more often and we will be more likely to end up with an alcohol issue than a neurotypical brain.

It might feel like a lifeline but on an already overstimulated ADHD brain, it can be really, really tricky to navigate.

I want to go into next the cost of the mummy wine culture on us as women and I think we really need to highlight perfectionism and shame here.

A lot of the times ADHD mums feel like they’ve fallen short. We feel like we haven’t got the executive function that we wish we had. We haven’t got the emotional regulation that we wish we had and often that mummy wine culture can start to offer a socially acceptable place that masks the struggles.

We can feel quite isolated. We all see online that it says, you know, it takes a village to raise a child but then there’s no village anymore. It’s a lot of us are by ourselves without extended family or, you know, if you do have family nearby, often our parents are still working.

So that isolation means that sometimes we can connect over a wine night or a girl’s night out or social drinking can create like a false sense of connection and a lot of the time this can amplify the feeling of loneliness because at the time when we feel like we’re connected, all of that anxiety and stress and our baseline of feeling sad at times can really be there when that buzz wears off.

Particularly if we’re drinking during the day, that buzz can wear off right on bedtime and we start to feel really grumpy and irritable and angry.

Jane McFadden:
If we look at how this happened, I think that the wine culture emerged because of kind of those traditional gender roles. Women were, you know, expected for decades and decades to handle the emotional labour, to handle the kids, to do all of this without complaining and then once we started working as well and alcohol became accessible, it became that kind of socially acceptable way to cope.

Marketing started to really shift away from men having a beer at the pub towards women and mothers who were sold kind of the idea that wine time is me time and that, you know, we don’t get a lot for ourselves so what can you do? And this is what I mean about being housebound sometimes. It’s like, but what can I do for me? What breaks up just a mundane? What can I do?

And sometimes it feels like there’s not a lot. A healthier choice would be to, you know, do yoga or do something really positive at home but it does feel for a lot of us easier to just reach for the fridge, sit down, have a drink to get that quick dopamine hit rather than, you know, getting out your app, getting changed and trying to do a quick workout at home or yoga at home or trying to get that buzz or that joy.

There’s also been that myth around being a cool mum, so being a laid-back, relatable mum and for those of us who are struggling with mental health, this can kind of create that cool vibe whilst masking your struggle.

The other reason I think that mothers, I think, drink is because we kind of just face this impossible standard of perfection from parenting styles and being the perfect parent to self-care. Alcohol can become a way to soothe the guilt of not meeting standards or to numb the stress of being stretched so thin and I think it’s reflective of the amount of stress and unrealistic expectation that we are under.

And it can be really tricky as well if you have a partner that says, you know, you shouldn’t have that glass of [wine] because sometimes it can really feel like you’re alone in the struggle and if someone points out that that glass of wine, you shouldn’t need it or you shouldn’t have it and they’ve been at work adulting all day and you haven’t been, it can feel like a way of rebelling, if I’m honest.

Like what, you say that I shouldn’t have this? Well, I will. I deserve it. I’ve got nothing for myself all day and if having this glass of white wine while I cook dinner and listening to some music, if that’s the happiest 20 minutes I’m going to have for today and you’re telling me I can’t have it, then I’m going to have it.

So I think if we didn’t have the amount of stress that we had and we had more accessible stress ways of coping and taking breaks, I think this mummy wine culture wouldn’t be there as much. And that’s my personal opinion. Maybe that’s a reflection of where I’m at in my life, but I do see that a lot.

But that calming effect that alcohol has can feel like a lifeline, which is why a lot of us have got this feeling of not wanting to know. We don’t want to know what alcohol is really doing. We know we shouldn’t drink as much. We know that maybe we’re drinking a little more than what we want to, but it may seem like one of the only things that gets you through the day or that is your happy place, that 20 minutes that you get with your glass of white.

Or maybe it’s a way to unwind with your partner and they like to have a drink at the end of the day as well. Maybe that’s your way of connecting with them, which is where it can start to get cumulative, where it’s only one or two a day, but it’s seven days and then now you’re hitting 14, 15 drinks a week.

The Australian Drug Foundation noticed that women, particularly mums, often turn to alcohol to self-medicate for stress or undiagnosed conditions. And this is where the media has really had that play around, mummy needs a drink, mummy needs a wine.

And it starts to really validate and reinforce that drinking is okay for a stressed mum and that that is a pretty normal coping mechanism. And it is a normal coping mechanism, but whether it’s good for us or not, I think is a different question.

And if you have mental health struggles, which a lot of us will have if we have ADHD, it can mean that your baseline of mental health actually gets a little bit worse.

Jane McFadden:
And I noticed this online as well, sometimes with influencers where, you know, they dress up so beautifully. I mean, God, I wish I could look like some of those people in Instagram. Some of those mums look incredible and they have a glass of wine in their hand and they’re cheesing with their friends and they’re having a great time.

And they’ve got, you know, let’s say affiliate links with, you know, the wine or the drinks or the clothes that they’re wearing. And it can create that feeling where it’s glorified. And that casual drinking, that casual mums, ladies out can be the only like kind of happy time for that month or for that couple of months.

There can be a real divide as well where women start to cross into dependency. And then when they cross into dependency, there can also be a shame, stigma, and then lack of support. I think as well, motherhood can be so isolating.

We know that through the Australian Drug Federation, that drinking is often tied to social occasions or alcohol can be present at play dates, or it can celebrate milestones with a glass of wine, a birthday, Christmas, graduation. However, the shared moments makes it easier to overlook the long-term risk and the long-term cumulative effect, which can make us, if we have ADHD brains, more susceptible to continuing that on outside of those times.

Mothers who choose not to drink can face exclusion or judgment in some of those circles, or maybe they have been in those wine environments and then they choose not to, but then they feel like they don’t belong.

Opting out can require constant explanation, justification, and you can feel like you’re on the outer even more than you already feel. And for people that feel like we’re out on our own a fair bit, or we feel lonely, that can be really hard to drop.

Okay. We have talked for a long time about alcohol and the negative effects on the brain, why we drink, and how it’s an issue for so many of us. And particularly, I think for women who are really great mums, because if we weren’t under the amount of pressure that we were under, and we weren’t under the amount of stress, I don’t think we would feel that need to drink as often.

And I mean, the pressure to be perfect, the pressure to have the perfect house, have kids that look clean, and the judgment around people looking at your child and judging your parenting, you know, extended family, especially around ADHD medication and parenting.

And we know it can be more tricky for ADHD mums. Even just leaving the house, doing those basics, our brain is going to make all of that harder.

Jane McFadden:
You may feel completely fine with your alcohol intake. So this is not about reducing alcohol intake as if everybody needs to. There will be people on this podcast that don’t want to, don’t need to, and they’re happy with their alcohol intake, and that is completely fine.

So if you are feeling at this point like, look, I really want to reduce alcohol intake, then what I’m going to do is I’m going to release an episode tomorrow around what are the strategies that we can do to reduce alcohol intake.

The reason I’m not going to put these episodes together is because I think they’d just be too long. And ADHD, often we listen to one episode halfway through, we never go back. I do want to leave you with a couple of really key thoughts as we wrap up today’s episode though.

Firstly, it’s crucial to understand that drinking isn’t just about the social aspect or the occasional glass of wine. The neurobiology behind alcohol’s effects on the brain, particularly for women, is really complex. Alcohol activates the brain reward system and it provides that temporary dopamine boost.

But this comes at a cost, particularly for those of us navigating challenges of ADHD, emotional dysregulation. The science is really clear, alcohol is a neurotoxin. And while we might think it seems like a quick fix for stress, anxiety, and overwhelm, it actually doesn’t solve the underlying problems, but it’s a great short-term solution.

I can see why people including myself do it. But if we’re really honest, the science does show us that drinking and alcohol use really does amplify the very issues that we’re trying to medicate and self-medicate. And this leads to a cycle of codependent self-regulation issues, and then those chronic levels of depression, anxiety that a lot of us talk about.

As we’ve discussed, women, particularly those that are managing ADHD, we are definitely more vulnerable to the negative effects of alcohol. From impaired executive function to increased impulsivity and emotional dysregulation, the consequences are severe.

The socially acceptable way to cope and the culture of the mummy wine culture really only perpetuates the harmful cycles and they make this mummy wine culture seem normal and like a very socially acceptable way to cope with stress. But that doesn’t address the cause of the stress or the anxiety or the overwhelm.

So acknowledging alcohol’s role in our life and the long-term impact is the first step, but we also need to explore healthy alternatives to cope with stress and start to regain that control over our mental health, whether it’s physical activity, whether it’s creative, whether it’s mindfulness, whether it’s stuff to do with our kids, whether it’s more time out. I don’t know what that is for you because that will go back to your values and what you enjoy.

So this isn’t about perfection. This isn’t about all of us not drinking at all, but it might be about small intentional shifts away from alcohol and how to support our mental health through that.

I hope this episode gave you some really valuable insights around why women, particularly ADHD mums, turn to alcohol. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode where we move towards a healthier, more sustainable coping strategy. These are going to be strategies that are more advanced.

I’m going to put all the references in the show notes and I really want to acknowledge you for sticking with this episode. This is one of those episodes that I feel like you could easily just ignore or put it in a too hard basket or feel like I don’t want to look at that. That’s the only thing that I enjoy.

Thank you so much. If you found this episode helpful, please share this with a friend. The key message here is you are not alone. Thank you for listening.

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