4/4 alcohol vertigo – At a time when we are questioning ourselves more and more about our relationship to alcohol, we have collected the testimonies of women who made the choice to assume, trick, or to lift your foot.
Dams of heat, headache, palpitations, night sweats … There are many that will recognize themselves in this typical profile of women who have reached the age of premenopause, which generally intervenes between 45 and 55 years. Symptoms whose intensity can be aggravated by various factors, including alcohol consumption, even in reasonable quantities. This was the case of Elizabeth, 52, casting director in Lyon. “I stopped alcohol at 50, not out of conviction, but because my body has forced me to,” she recalls. I have already presented for several years the first signs of menopause: weight gain, mood swings, fatigue … I had trouble assuming them, in particular because I evolve in an environment in which physical appearance and resistance to stress are enormous, and where female competition is particularly present ”.
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“After a glass of white wine, I remember feeling an almost unbearable migraine”
If she admits that her alcohol consumption was hitherto mainly “worldly”, with a few champagne cuts on the occasion of preview, one or two glasses in the evening at dinner and a little more certain weekends, she could never have suspected her body suddenly whistled the end of the recess. “It all started when I was in Berlin for a festival. I came out of an intense stress period, between the preparation of the event and the announcement of my father’s cancer. That evening, after a glass of white wine, I remember feeling an almost unbearable migraine, tingling in the neck, and a sudden desire to vomit. At the time, I put everything on the account of the poor quality of German wines, ”jokes Elizabeth. Back in France, she decided to take a week’s vacation with her sister in the Landes, preferring to adopt the ostrich strategy rather than consult. “During this period, I accompanied my father to all his appointments in the hospital, and I had the horror doctors,” she apologizes. I was thinking of stress, overwork. I was far from imagining that my body was saying to stop, and I took some time to make the link with alcohol. ” The months following this first “crisis”, she prefers denial, not standing to consider reviewing her lifestyle: “I already had the impression that the arrival of menopause was stealing a part of my femininity, and having the reputation of being rather a good living, I did not see myself spending entire evenings with a perrier tranche! Especially since in my environment, refusing a drink is almost seen as an affront ”.
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“My legs flage, I had trouble fixing my gaze”
She therefore continues to drink, by social reflex as much as by personal habit. “But at the slightest glass, rebelote. First, the bar at the forehead and immediate nausea, while before, I needed several to feel the slightest heaviness. Then a feeling of intense warmth, almost suffocating, which invaded me from the aperitif. I woke up at night, soaked with sweat, with the heart that was beating at full speed ”. In his entourage, no one seems to pay attention to it. But one day, in the middle of a lunch with a director, she is forced to leave the table after drinking a single glass of Sancerre: “My legs flage, I had trouble fixing my gaze. Shame was such that, for several weeks, I avoided any professional outing involving alcohol. The same evening, I spoke to my husband, who gently made fun of me. ”
It will be necessary to wait for a first consultation with his family doctor for the diagnosis to fall: sudden hypersensitivity to alcohol, probably triggered by the hormonal upheavals linked to menopause. “My metabolism, which until then managed alcohol without difficulty, was no longer able to treat it properly. The liver, slowed down by hormonal fluctuations, reacted excessively. The slightest dose was enough to trigger an immediate inflammatory reaction: hot flashes, tachycardia, digestive disorders. I found myself faced with a reality difficult to accept: I could no longer drink, even moderately. It was a shock ”.
“I felt like I lost part of myself”
Beyond social discomfort, the impact on his daily life takes on very real proportions: “I remember a birthday where we insisted that I taste” just a cup “of champagne. An aperitif with friends where my refusal aroused comments like: “Come on, do not make your spit!” “. A dinner where, when I drink, I had to raise my glass of sparkling water under the worried looks of the team. Quite quickly, I felt sidelined: some invitations have been spaced, as if my abstinence had become the sign that “I no longer had the age”, she admits, her throat knotted. The first months, I felt like I was losing part of myself. Alcohol had always been a common thread of my adult life: wines discovered while traveling, the evenings to be discussed around a bottle, improvised aperitifs. It all was erased at once, and I took a long time to find new benchmarks. ”
Over the months, she however manages to find a new balance, and even begins to consider this “curse” as the opportunity to better manage her entry into menopause: “My nights have become deeper, my more serene awakenings. My level of fatigue has also decreased. And, against all odds, I also won free: I can leave an evening when I want, without being trapped by the collective euphoria. When I see a glass of wine on the table, I feel a certain tenderness for the woman I was, but I do not experience lack or jealousy. The menopause taught me to listen to what my body told me, even when I had no desire to hear it. ”
