Brittany (00:02)

Welcome to another episode of Hormone Harmony, where we dive into all things health, hormones, and longevity. Today, we are tackling a topic that is so normalized in today's culture, alcohol, how does it impact our sleep, our mental health, hormones. We are joined by Megan Wilcox, a sober coach who helps women break from alcohol and experience life with clarity, vitality, and better health. Megan, welcome. I am so pumped to have you on today. Tell us about your journey. What led you to become a sober coach?

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Megan (00:44)

Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm very, very excited. I am so passionate about this topic and just bringing this information to women, information I wish I had years ago. So, yes, my name is Megan Wilcox. I'm the founder of Sobah Sistahs. I am currently just hit four years alcohol free on Christmas, actually. My sober date is the day after Christmas, December 26th. And, you know, I didn't always have an issue with drinking. It really was after my divorce that I started using it as a coping mechanism to deal with stress and fear and loneliness. I mean, loneliness and boredom are two of the biggest triggers for, especially for women when it comes to drinking alcohol. And so it really kind of escalated between being a single mom, working in health care in the hospital during the pandemic, trying to homeschool my kids that I really went from having a glass of wine and falling asleep to having a bottle of wine most nights and really needing it. The obsession that sort of took over where it was like the first, the most important thing to me. As soon as I woke up, it was like, well, when can I make sure I pick up my bottle of wine for tonight? So I tried to do it myself, I would say, like, all right, I'm not gonna drink till the weekend. And I would go two days maybe and kind of forget about it and start all over again. And I did that for a long, long time. And so I finally, you know, I guess you could call it a rock bottom moment that I had hit and just was like, I need help. Someone please help me. And I said, I remember saying it out loud, kind of waking up in bed. And I guess here we are 40 years later. So, you know, obviously there's a lot more to that, I guess, and how I did it, but it was a combination of online support groups. I used a medication for a while that helps with cravings and it's just been the biggest, the best thing that I could have ever done for myself. I didn't realize how much it was really affecting my mental health, my clarity, my self-confidence, my self-worth, all those things. It's just been my mission ever since, you know, again, I work in healthcare, in an ER, but I went back and became a drug and alcohol recovery coach and a mindset coach and alcohol-free life coach. And I guess here I am today.

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Brittany (03:20)

That's amazing. And I love the name. What brought you to that name, Sober Sisters?

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Megan (03:28)

Yeah, so I'm in Boston and although I'm originally from Buffalo, New York, but I've been in Boston about 20 years. So I had started a group chat with two other single moms in my community where we are all trying to quit drinking, particularly wine. And so we started a group chat called Sobah Sistahs, you know, kind of like a take on a Boston accent. And we just started this group chat being like, my God, I need to quit. Yeah, me too. I feel so crappy. Why did I drink again? All of that. So eventually I did quit and I started an Instagram about when I was six months alcohol-free I started the SobahSistahs Instagram with no intentions of it becoming a community or things like that, it was really for accountability for myself. And it just kind of blew up over time.

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Brittany (04:19)

I love it. I love it. And you know, even with alcohol and what it does, a temporary band-aid, but we feel great. And then hours or the next day we're like, my gosh, what hit me or why did I do that? And I think it's important to first tackle sleep because many people think alcohol relaxes me. I can sleep better. I just sleep so hard, but it really disrupts the sleep cycles. Can you break down that impact that alcohol has on your sleep? Because that's huge. We all need sleep, right?

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Megan (04:51)

Yes, exactly. And that is such a myth and something I believe for so long is that it was helping me. And I hear that often, you know, from women who maybe come to me and they're like, well, I need it to sleep. I can't fall asleep without it. maybe that, that is true once you kind of that's become your way to really just pass out. You know, you're not sleeping at first, you're sedated. And so when that sedation wears off at, 3 a.m., anyone who drinks knows that feeling of all of a sudden you wake up at 3 a.m., your heart's racing, you're sweating, you know, maybe your head hurts and you're like thinking to yourself like, gosh, why did I, why did I do it again? And so the sedation now has kind of worn off at that point. And this is when all those stress hormones start just flooding your body, cortisol, adrenaline, and you're going to toss and turn for the rest of the night. And you're never going to get that REM sleep, that rest and restore sleep. And so you're really not sleeping at all. And it becomes like norm too for anyone who's drinking, you know, multiple times a week or even once a week, like that becomes, you feel like that's your baseline, a normal of getting not great sleep. And so say you're in bed for eight hours after a night of drinking a few glasses of wine, you're not actually sleeping those eight hours, probably two. It's like so minimal, the actual rest that you're getting. And so now when you wake up, you're already behind the eight ball because you're gonna, your cravings are gonna, your willpower is gonna be so scaled back because you're tired, you're irritable, you're cranky. And now you want to drink to kind of get rid of that feeling. And that's just like why it is such a horrible cycle, but it does not help our sleep. You will have the most magical, amazing sleep when you're alcohol free. It's really not something that I struggle with at all, unless I'm maybe under a lot of stress or my kids are keeping me up or my dog. But otherwise, sleep is such a magical time for me.

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Brittany (07:00)

And I think it's really important to note the melatonin production is reduced with alcohol and cortisol levels are rising and making that body harder to recover. The liver working on overdrive, oh no, we have this toxin in our body, we have to clean this up and so your body is working on overdrive. I think it's very interesting too with alcohol affecting the central nervous system and it works as a depressant. Especially during COVID, alcohol sales were through the roof. I mean, alcohol was very popular during COVID and a lot of us were cooped up and going to alcohol for loneliness, sadness, and then on top of the world kind of coming to this shutdown, feeling depressed and sad. So it was a domino effect of things happening mentally and seeing the alerts of counseling and therapy and finding these online therapists to speak to. So I think it's really important that we talk about how it affects our mental health because that's huge too. We need sleep and we mentally need to be sound. And again, alcohol is affecting that.

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Megan (08:15)

Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't realize how much it was affecting my mental health until I really took a long enough period away. And not just a couple of days or a couple of weeks, really like solid months that I felt, really like a new person. I am someone who I feel like I do struggle with depression and things like this, but it was on a whole nother level and just feeling anxious every day, you the hangxiety because now we're just walking around with like all these elevated stress hormones from drinking the alcohol and then we drink to try to make that feel better that's, I mean, again, it's like endless cycle. Truly the impacts that it has on our mental health is not something that is talked about enough. At the end of 2020, I didn't, feel like anyone cared if I was here or not, you know? And I was a single mom and that is just where it took me. And I can say that honestly in four years, I've never felt that way. And not that I'm like woohoo every single day, but I don't have those insane lows that I was having when I was drinking. It was 100% the alcohol that was just bringing me down and keeping me small. When someone is taking a medication for their mental health, and then they're drinking on it, it actually counteracts any of our symptoms. And I did not know that I was taking something to try to help with my mental health. And then I was drinking, which is very, very dangerous. And even though it says it on the bottle, I just didn't realize how much it was actually exacerbating all of my symptoms and therefore just like it was doing way more harm than good. And so once I was able to stop drinking, my medication was able to work for me.

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Brittany (10:08)

I think even commercials make it this sex appeal and this fun living life. But when we think about our needs as humans, we need sleep, alcohol affects that. We need to be mentally happy and sound, alcohol affects that. I mean, let's even talk about our health because you're affecting neurotransmitters, you're affecting your sleep, you're affecting cortisol, anxiety and depression is worse. I know your community focuses on women between their 40s and 50s. What are they noticing about alcohol effects? Because they say as we get older, it just feels different, it hits different. What do you notice with their health when it comes to their energy levels and their symptoms?

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Megan (10:50)

Yeah, they're just they're coming to me, you know, depleted, exhausted, just feeling really low, low energy, all the things. And once they do, you know, remove it, they're feeling alive again. They're feeling a zest for life. And so, yeah, it's just, I just wish everybody could try if they're struggling to have support to see what it is really like to give yourself enough time away from it to see how much better you're gonna feel. Because there is something, with the older we get, that is our 40s, 50s, there's a lot of women actually in the community too in their 60s, is that even smaller amounts are affecting us differently. It's one glass of wine is affecting our sleep. I hear that all the time. Sometimes if a woman goes back and has a slip and she'll say, I had one glass and I slept horrible, so it's just where the hangovers are worse, the older we get and it's just the smaller amounts we're feeling it as opposed to when we were maybe younger in our 20s and more energetic, we weren't feeling these, massive effects from it. But I mean, the range of health effects really that I'm seeing can range from some women having their liver enzymes elevated or their cholesterol, their blood pressure, all these things are really linked to drinking. So many times though, thank God, our body is so miraculous. We can make huge changes in really a short period of time. I've seen women like been able to go off, work with their doctors and go off medications and certain things like that. Their blood pressure goes down, they lose weight. Their cholesterol levels goes down, all the things. It's pretty crazy to be able to like witness it and watch and just hear how quickly our bodies can really rebound from it.

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Brittany (12:46)

100%. I mean, even as women, right, when we get older, our hormones are declining on top of that. So if we look at women, ideally perimenopause can start at 35, go on for 20 years. So you already have hormones declining in that young timeframe. Well, then we enter menopause, which means alcohol is in making hot flashes at night, sweats and mood and sleep even worse. If we focus just on estrogen though, we are increasing the risk of osteoporosis. So chronic heavy drinking decreases then your bone density, which then increases the risk of osteoporosis. So there is research that states if you have three or more drinks a day, you're gonna be at a higher risk of developing osteoporosis. That's related to alcohol. Well, then we have the hormone decline too. So it's really important to note as well that the balance of calcium and vitamin D in the body is essential for bone health but when we're drinking, we're not even getting the good minerals that we need because technically in 1988, it was a level one carcinogen. Not many people know that.

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Megan (13:54)

Yeah, they think it was like new info. It's like, no, 1988.

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Brittany (13:59)

Here we are drinking a carcinogen, having all these symptoms from it. And I would love for you to talk about the link of that with disease processes like cancer and how that can make things even worse for our viewers and listeners.

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Megan (14:16)

Yes, and this is something that I've learned over time. I really didn't know this. I just thought alcohol affected our liver. We all know that. That's what we all hear. We hear cirrhosis. We hear it affects our liver. But really, our cancer risk is you don't even need to drink that much. Two to three drinks a week for a woman increases our risk of breast cancer to 15 to 20%. And for every drink after that, it increases more, like directly linked, not like maybe there, there are so many studies out there, really strong studies that are showing that it's linked to, at least seven different cancers and breast cancer, colon cancer, and esophageal cancer are the top ones. There are so many studies. So it's something that we really just need to continue to talk about. I wish I knew a long time, you know, a long time ago. I don't know if it would have stopped me drinking sooner, but I just I've gone to like a breast cancer benefit and the booze was flowing they had gift bags all of booze and I was just thinking I bet this person probably doesn't even know you know the direct link and again I think just having the information out there for people is just really important so then we can make our own decisions.

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Brittany (15:37)

100%. I mean, even looking at women and the topic of osteoporosis, you want to, obviously do strength training workouts and get in the gym to work out to prevent that. Obviously hormone replacement therapy is beneficial, but you can go and have a bender the night before and be in the gym the next day strength training, you will not get benefits. Your body is too busy detoxifying your system. That strength training is not doing anything. You're actually wasting your time. I'm not here to say being in the gym is wasting your time. If you had a bender the night before, think sweating things out and getting your body moving is key. But your liver is thinking we need to rid this carcinogen. Danger, danger, let's focus on this only. And it's working on that. I mean, one of the biggest challenges I feel like for anyone is the social aspect of vacations and holidays and gatherings. And you say no to getting offered a cocktail. It shifts the vibe a little bit. It feels a little bit off. And so the room kind of shifts when you decline any alcohol. And I think in a world of human nature, we want to be accepted and loved and part of the pack. But now with more people speaking up saying, I don't really want the drink. I don't want to drink. The perspective is shifting more and more with the more knowledge we have. So I'm curious, how do women navigate through this? Because it can make things a little bit awkward in the room when you're offered a drink and you don't want to drink.

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Megan (17:09)

Yes, yeah, and it feels really awkward and it won't always be. And so if it feels like it at first, just don't give up, keep trying. And so that is something that we talk about. We practice that in our community is what to say, like have your one-liners. If someone asks you why you're not drinking or offers you a drink and have these like ready to go and you kind of know your audience because what you'll share with one person might be different than somebody else. Like if it's someone you don't really know or maybe it's a coworker or your boss and you don't want to maybe share you're not drinking because maybe you had an issue with it, you can just be like, I'm just not drinking today and I feel great, I haven't been drinking for a while and I'm just going to drink a soda water, or maybe you could share, I've struggled with it and I'm 30 days without a drink so I'm going to keep it going. But, you know, obviously again, like what you feel comfortable with but feel proud of it to not drink in a society that's, I feel obsessed with drinking where it's everywhere. My gym has a bar in it. Literally, my gym has a bar in it. They had a Prosecco and Pilates the other night. And I think it's crazy sometimes, but to just feel proud in your decision, especially if you felt like it was, you know, affecting your mental health, your physical health, and that you made a choice to not drink. To not feel embarrassed about it. It's a level one carcinogen. It's a psychoactive drug that changes our brain. And so you shouldn't feel that shame. But you can have fun again. Do not worry. I've traveled so much. I host retreats around the world. I have way more fun. Being in bed hung over on your beautiful Sunday, that is boring. That is not fun or having just surface level conversations, the same ones over and over again, or people repeating themselves, that's not fun. Having deep conversations with people and making more meaningful connections is what's fun. Find those people. There are people out there that don't drink. There's people out there that are trying to not drink. You just have to kind of find them, but you will have fun again.

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Brittany (19:26)

Absolutely, and I think we need to understand what is that drink replacing, like you mentioned, anxiety, loneliness, sadness, and if we can kind of dive into that part of our brain and uncover it and kind of soothe that, then we can get to the root cause on why we don't even need a drink anymore. On Thrivelab, our platform does offer life coaching. Any sort of bumps in the road, stresses, the goal is to really point them in that direction because hormone therapy is not going to be the magical wand that cures everything from head to toe. There's always different missing pieces. And what I tell patients is whether there's insomnia and they want to have a nightcap to help them sleep, I hear that a lot. Magnesium glycinate is amazing for that. 400 to 600 milligrams is great. L-theanine, right? Helps relax the brain.

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Megan (20:18)

Love that, that's one of my favorites.

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Brittany (20:26)

Yes, 200 to 400 milligrams. And I think when we think, if we take away this alcohol drink, what am I going to do? What's my backup? Definitely the magnesiums are great and the L-theanines. Is there any supplements that come to mind for your patients or from your experience that you have found help kind of soothe that part of your body that's helped you kind of have almost a crutch on not drinking and feel relaxed and calm because alcohol does relax you in that moment. And then we fast forward a couple hours and it's like, I feel worse. What's helped you?

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Megan (20:57)

Yes. Yeah. That's such a good point to mention that it does, it does relax us. Like it's doing what we're asking it to do. We're stressed and we pour a drink and we have a sip. We are feeling, good in that moment, but that buzz only lasts 20 minutes. And then you'll spend the rest of your night drinking more, drinking more to get that feeling again, which you never will in that, that time. So something I love, I love L-theanine, that is one of my favorites, but also lemon balm is one of my other, favorite, supplement things. I get the dropper of it. I'll put it in my seltzer, my hot tea. And, just really thinking of your evening routine. If you're trying to kind of cut the wine out and put in some, healthier things, just thinking about your evening routine as like a wind down, not wine down, but wind down relaxation, get the sleepy time tea. That was huge for me in my first few months was sleepy time tea, the lemon balm. They have lots of drinks now that are kind of mocktails, if you will, that have the adaptogens in it. And I feel like they really help to relax you. I did adult coloring books, meditation, anything that is just going to actually relax you and you will be able to break you know that that habit of reaching for for the wine because when we we keep going back to it we do believe it's giving us some type of benefit so kind of asking yourself what is it, what do i think that alcohol is giving me and find healthier things because we know it's not relaxing us it's not more fun, we're not sleeping better all the things so those are some of my favorite ones.

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Brittany (22:43)

My favorites too are the pretty mocktails. They're so pretty, they're so good. And then by the time your friends and loved ones are drinking, they don't even remember you ordering the mocktail. So it's kind of like an undercover way of being involved, but not feeling the effects of it. On a high note though, the biggest benefits you've mentioned of your clients' experiences of cutting back are energy and sleep. I mean, how are they feeling with their empowerment, their anxiety, their relationships? What other feedback have they provided with you?

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Megan (23:15)

Yes, gosh. Relationships for sure. Friendships. Maybe they even had to cut some not so healthy friendships out of their lives, which can be really hard at first. But when you start to kind of take a look at, was this friend just a drinking partner or, this person wasn't treating me that great, kind of, looking into that. But anyone in a relationship, they're seeing it. I know personally for me, it's night and day, my relationship that I've been in for eight years, from when I was drinking to when I'm not, it is totally different. I see a lot of women, in 40s, 50s, 60s, even up to 70, kind of being like, who am I now? Like, and getting excited about that, discovering what they like, what kind of hobbies they like, just who they are as a person, which is so incredible and beautiful to see this woman just like come back to life and from removing one thing and that's alcohol because it keeps us small. It keeps us playing small and just not being, our authentic self. So really seeing that, that change, like people making career changes, people getting their health back on track, having better relationships with their children or grandchildren. It's endless. It is really endless, the benefits, but mostly just seeing their self love, come back, is, I just, that's definitely probably one of my favorite.

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Brittany (24:42)

So for anyone listening or watching, they say, all right, Megan, I want to do this. I realize I have a problem. My goodness, it's super expensive. And I'm tired of waking up with a headache. What first steps would you tell them to initiate now? Because I know not only physically they'll change, but it's mentally, right? I mean I imagine a lot of it's a mental game of telling yourself, no, I don't need this and wanting to go for the crutch. What advice would you give to those clients that are listening? And also too, what self-talk should they tell themselves if they happen to have another drink and feel defeated on, clearly I can't do this anymore?

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Megan (25:26)

Yeah. So I would say definitely progress, not perfection, especially if you're somebody who has been drinking the majority of your adult life or it's part of your every night routine is to give yourself some compassion where we feel we usually need more discipline. We actually need more self-compassion, more self-love, you now, progress, not perfection. Most people don't wake up one day and say I'm never going to drink again and never actually drink again. It's a process. And so if you do drink, use it as a data point write down how you felt, journal. I'm a huge advocate for journaling especially in early sobriety to write about it if you drink, write about it. If you don't, write about that too because you're gonna see how night and day how much it actually when you do drink that it affects your mental health. I would say get curious, really get curious, start listening to podcasts, start reading books. There's so much out there. We're really in such a great time to explore your relationship with alcohol because the resources are endless. It's kind of, I don't wanna say it's like the hot thing right now, but the sober curious movement is huge. People wanna be healthy and they're sick of feeling tired and feeling like crap. There's just endless resources. Yeah, listen to podcasts, listen to books and join a community because, connection is the opposite of addiction. And, I truly believe that is like connecting with people. Like we all just crave connection. Loneliness, boredom, two biggest triggers and reasons why people drink. People are lonely, where a lot of people maybe live alone and that's the only way that they know, how to socialize or whatever it might be. So join a community because you're going to really see you're not alone and that there's so many incredible women out there that are kind of waking up and saying, alcohol just doesn't align with who I am or who I want to be. I am a healthy woman. I read labels. I do all these things and I'm drinking rocket fuel, essentially. I'm drinking a level one carcinogen. There's this book called Quit Like a Woman and in it she says that like we're this health conscious, green minded generation. We juice, we cleanse, we do all these things. We're hyper vigilant about everything we put into our body. And she says, we're drinking rocket fuel. And when I read that, I was like, that's me. I have a sign that says, don't panic, it's organic in my kitchen. And I was drinking a bottle of wine, you know, most nights at the end. So yeah, definitely join a community and don't do it alone.

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Brittany (28:09)

I remember seeing a meme. It was funny. It said a haunted house, but being asked, why aren't you drinking? And it does feel that way. Right? I mean, you say, no, I don't want to indulge in this. And it's, well, why not? And the room shifts. But if we think of it as rocket fuel, which it technically is, it really shifts the perspective on being ahead of the game there. But this was super insightful. And I know you mentioned podcasts. I'm aware you have one too and really kind of having this community of coaching details and Instagram reach out to where can we find you and kind of dive into more of the depth on what you cover.

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Megan (28:51)

Yeah, absolutely. So my podcast is Sobah Sistahs, Sobah Sistahs Sobriety. You can find me on Instagram. That's my main social media. My handle is SobahSistahs. So S-O-B-A-H S-I-S-T-A-H. I'm sure it'll be there in the show notes. But yeah, send me a message if you listened to this episode and you found it helpful. I'd love to chat with you. And thank you so much for having me. This was awesome. Love it.

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Brittany (29:18)

Thank you again and for anyone listening, if you're curious about alcohol and how it might be affecting your health, take the first step. Small changes make a huge impact and we will see you next time on Hormone Harmony.