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What One Glass of Wine Revealed About My Intuition
- Jul 27
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
My dad kept two tiny whiskey bottles in a cupboard for six years. The kind you get on an airplane. He'd saved them from the week I was born, waiting for a reason to be opened.
Two years ago, on my birthday, he pulled them out. Poured us both a glass. Said, "let's toast."
And I said yes.
I hadn't had a drink since the summer of 2019 — the summer I found out I was pregnant with my son. So this was a big deal. A small, warm, dad-and-daughter moment.
Twenty minutes later, I was on the couch. Not drunk. Not even close — one drink, no hangover, nothing dramatic to look at from the outside. But something had gone quiet inside me. Something I didn't know was loud until it wasn't there anymore.
I felt tired in a way that wasn't physical. Flat. Like someone had turned a dial down on the version of me that reads a room before I've even said hello — which isn't a metaphor for me. It's how I make a living. I filed it under "interesting" and didn't touch alcohol again until three weeks ago.
Then I had one glass of wine on my anniversary with my husband, Jarrett, and woke up the next morning insecure about my marriage, my money, my body — things I thought I'd already made peace with. It nearly derailed our trip.
I went and looked into what was actually happening, biologically. There's a real answer involving GABA, cortisol, and serotonin. But I don't think it's the whole answer — because none of it fully explains what it actually felt like: like something got cut off. A cord to source, to spirit, to the line I stay plugged into so I can read a room, or read myself.
I don't have a clean, tidy explanation for that part. I'm not going to force one just to sound more credible.
What I can tell you is what "emotional numbing" actually feels like from the inside — not the concept, the felt, physical experience of it, both times, in detail. And what I think most of us are numbing constantly without ever calling it that.
I get into the biology, the part I still can't fully explain, and what to actually do the next time you feel yourself reaching for a mute button — in this week's episode of The Emotional Truth.
