High times: Here’s why some older women are trading wine for weed

I've just completed 30 alcohol-free days, thanks to Dry January, a tortuous annual ritual for people like me who imbibe too much and want a reset.

Boy, I could use a drink - or two.

Looks like that will be my limit for the week if I'm to follow the controversial new Health Canada guidelines that dramatically re-define low-risk drinking. While some experts are questioning the veracity of the research these guidelines are based on, the recommendations advise no more than two drinks per week if you hope to reduce your risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke. Two drinks? That's like eating just two potato chips. Impossible. It's enough to make me want to move to Belgium where 14 drinks a week is considered low risk for women.

It's not a bad idea to drink less, especially as we get older. Alcohol has been the drug of choice for Baby Boomers like me to ease the inevitable upsets that accompany aging - the empty nest, late-life divorce, the end of paid work, the onset of illness and the general indignities of aging, from hearing aids and hip replacements to dry vaginas and enlarged prostates. It all goes down easier when there's wine with dinner.

Older women

Drinking is especially dangerous for older women. We have a 15 per cent higher risk of breast cancer if we have just three drinks a week. Alcohol is a factor in the majority of falls, the leading cause of injury-related deaths for women over 65. We're just one drunken topple and broken hip away from the nursing home.

We drink more than we think. Canadians lowball their alcohol consumption by as much as 75 per cent, according to a 2014 study from the Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse Research. The deprivations of the pandemic made things worse. We began drinking in isolation, stockpiling booze along with toilet paper. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found almost one in four women reported binge drinking since the pandemic, when pitstops at the liquor store became as routine as applying hand sanitizer.

Those two 10-ounce goblets of wine? That's actually four drinks, which technically constitutes binge drinking.

That's me, at least on weekends, when I release the pressure of a deadline-filled week with a celebratory pop of a cork. There have been many nights when wine made me feel better. And many mornings when it didn't.

The alcohol industry markets booze as a liberating remedy for women but what it's really selling is dependence rather than independence. Think you're not hooked? Try giving it up for a month and see how you do.

Dry January

For me, Dry January seemed like a good idea. But how to get through it? I tried sampling some of the fancy zero-proof drinks, favoured among teetotaller pals. One is advertised as a floral blend of hand-picked peas and homegrown hay with traditional garden herb distillates in celebration of the English countryside." It nearly made me choke, not just because of its earthy essence, but because at $50 a bottle it costs more than Grey Goose.

Instead, I opted for a dealcoholized lager (a bargain at $7.99 a 12-pack). I'd pour it into a big wine glass with ice, garnish it with lime and wave it around like an imitation drunk, hoping it might be possible to get a wee bit tipsy on a few cans of 0.5 per cent beer.

It wasn't.

Gummies

So I tried a different approach. I began replacing booze on the weekend with THC-laced pot gummies, tasty bite-sized sweets with fanciful names . (THC is the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis that gives you a high" while CBD is used to treat pain, anxiety and insomnia).

I've never been a toker, not even in my younger years when joints were passed around at parties. Wine has been my drug of choice for 45 years.

Now that I'm 60 I question my lifetime of drinking and wonder about the toll it will have on my longevity.

Gummies, frankly, have been an eye-opening delight to this relative newbie. I'll pop 2.5-5 mg of a tasty chew and within 30 to 60 minutes, I feel lighter, looser and, at times, even euphoric, with periodic laughing fits that almost make me pee my pants (a common side effect, no doubt, among the post-menopausal set). The feeling can last for hours. I'll drink a litre of water over the course of an evening (another side effect from the gummies is dry mouth). I wake up hydrated and happy.

Edibles can offer high times with no calories, no hangover and are low cost compared to alcohol. They can help you sleep better and are even purported to give your flagging libido a boost. Suddenly a lifetime of drinking that began at age 14, guzzling Baby Duck in the local park with neighbourhood kids, seems so ... stupid.

Not all positive

While cannabis has been a positive experience for me, it may not be right for everyone. Health Canada warns that ill effects can include confusion, heightened anxiety and increased heart rate, which can be dangerous for people with cardiac issues. Longer term effects include impaired memory - definitely something to consider if, like a lot of older folks, you head down to your basement and then can't remember why the heck you went down there in the first place.

But many women like me are opting to pop a gummie rather than pour another glass of wine. Stats complied by Flowhub, a cannabis tech company, report that from early 2020 to late 2021, cannabis sales to female customers increased by 55 per cent.

A number of my friends are switching from booze to weed. When Hamilton server Gail Pustelnik, 56, started experiencing menopause-related insomnia a few years ago, she started taking half a prescription sleeping pill at night - until a friend suggested she try some gummies, which she ordered online. They worked like a charm," says Pustelnik. I take one, read for a bit then sleep comes over me"

Cutting back on alcohol

Pustelnik, previously an avid wine lover, cut back on her drinking months ago and has only had a few glasses since. I realized ... alcohol is a poison. It impairs rather than empowers. The more you take of it, the more it takes of you - there's been toll on my health, my relationships ... and there are hangovers and anxiety the next morning. I believe alcohol is the new tobacco."

Elizabeth, a 67-year-old Hamilton nurse (who asked that her last name not be used) cut her drinking from two or three glasses of wine a night to one or two a week after a cancer diagnosis four years ago and a diabetes diagnosis a year later. Wine was always my go-to. I was born in Portugal and grew up drinking - even when you're a kid there'd be wine mixed with ginger ale for Sunday night dinner. I never thought I was an alcoholic because I was European," she laughs. But those two diagnoses scared me straight."

Marijuana helped get her through the chemo nausea and now a couple of tokes each night is part of her routine. I prefer the gummies, but I can't afford them because I'm on a pension," says Elizabeth. Thirty dollars' worth of pot lasts her six weeks. That's like, three bottles of wine."

I like being high," she continues. Part of human nature is to want to be bent once in a while. It opens up your inner world. Especially if your world has become smaller due to illness or pain or isolation. Smoking pot is a way to cope."

Some argue that switching out wine for cannabis is trading one bad habit for another. While the science generally indicates that cannabis comes with fewer risks than alcohol, there's a dearth of long-term studies to prove this is true. Before taking any drug it's best to consult your doctor for advice.

There's no denying the legion of seniors who have discovered, or, in some cases, rediscovered, the appeal of pot. Thanks to legalization, marijuana use among people over 65 jumped 75 per cent from 2015 to 2018, according to the U.S. National Survey of Drug Use and Health. Almost 30 per cent of Canadian adults use cannabis. Here in Hamilton there seems to be a pot shop popping up on every corner. I count about 30 LCBO outlets in Hamilton and more than 100 cannabis retailers.

When marijuana first became legal in 2018, I watched a couple of elderly women with canes walking from the old age home up my street to the Georgia Peach pot dispensary on Dundurn Street in Hamilton shortly after it had been raided and then reopened. The women had difficulty navigating the half dozen stone steps to the front door of the store and I remember thinking these business would be smart to made their stores wheelchair accessible.

In the U.S. some cannabis retailers are aggressively wooing seniors with free buses and catered lunches that ferry them from assisted living facilities.

It just a matter of time before that happens here.

I expect a legion of ganja grandmas will be among their happy customers.

annebokma.com