Millie Mackintosh on going alcohol-free, living with ADHD, and motherhood
Millie Mackintosh feels calm. That's no mean feat for a mum of two, but it's even more impressive compared to where she was two-and-a-half years ago: having a panic attack on a boat convinced she was dying.
That anxiety spiral hit at 5am the morning after drinking. Her and her husband Hugo were on board a friend's yacht, enjoying the luxury of long, wine-fuelled dinners. But she woke up with that familiar post-booze racing heart, her mind thumbing through various half-memories of the night before, then the sensation of breathlessness hit.
'During the panic attack, I thought I was dying, and it was really like my life flashed before my eyes. I saw my children's faces and realised I could never see them again. That was what I thought was my final vision,' the ex-reality star and author of newly released Bad Drunk tells Women's Health. 'Then I was like, "I'm done with drinking," and I haven't drunk since that day.'
Cutting out alcohol was the first step on Mackintosh's path to zen. Since then, she's also overhauled her diet and workout schedule, while getting diagnoses for other underlying health issues that were blocking her road to a more frictionless life.
She talks to me from her newly renovated home, where she's carved out intentional spaces for zen: a ceiling-to-skirting-board green bedroom that makes her feel as grounded as she does in nature. A soft, light bathroom – home to her big, brass bath – was also intentionally planned for a space to indulge in wellness.
It's clear calmness is her MO, and she's doing a good job of fostering it.
Going sober
Let's rewind on Mackintosh's relationship with alcohol. Like so many Brits, she started drinking when she was a teenager. Alcohol was there to celebrate and commiserate, to both numb and enhance her feelings.
At a younger age, her adoration for a drink manifested in a 'party girl' personality. Then, in the depths of early parenthood, it became a slightly different release.
'I think that, for mothers, and this isn't spoken enough, we go through the biggest shift imaginable when we become mothers. It's scary and new, and it's hard for a million different reasons,' she says. 'There's a lot of focus on how the baby is doing and the mum's just expected to bounce back and be able to do it all.'
She believes strongly in matrescence – the now dictionary-minted word to describe the physical, emotional, hormonal and social transition to becoming a parent. In modern life, the pressures to be the 'perfect' mother while maintaining an aesthetic life and balancing a career only adds to the pressure, she believes. 'Of course, when the kids are going to bed, you feel like you need a release. You need a reward,' says Mackintosh.
That came for her, as for so many, in the form of a nightly glass of wine, that sometimes turned into a bottle. 'Wine mum' culture is a huge part of the problem, Mackintosh thinks. It pushes itself via wine glasses emblazoned with 'Mummy juice' and viral memes declaring, 'I only drink wine because my kids whine'. It's ingrained that a tough day of parenting equals a stiff drink to decompress.
Mackintosh now recognises that she became a grey-area drinker. 'A grey-area drinker is someone that's not dependent on alcohol but they frequently drink more than they plan to and frequently regret it. They're living in the shame spiral that I was stuck in, where I drank to feel better and then didn't feel better, and then drank again to try to deal with the feelings that drinking had created.
'For me, it became a kind of hamster wheel that I felt stuck in. I felt like I couldn't break free from the cycle, and it was really destructive. And after I had kids, it definitely got worse, because I was less able to cope with my hangovers. I'd never been good at moderating my drinking, and after I had kids it's like it was an unquenchable thirst.'
Mackintosh has been open about how her drinking changed her behaviour. In Bad Drunk, she details getting so drunk at a wedding that she nearly hit her partner. 'He said to me after that wedding, a few days before we got on the boat in the Mediterranean, "If you don't stop drinking it's going to end our marriage,"' she writes.
Putting her health first
The booze-free life began as a necessary step towards putting her happiness and family first. Now, she realises her decision to go booze-free saved more than just her marriage (and her Sunday mornings, previously lost to mornings under sheets nursing paracetamol-proof headaches).
'Then, the more I understood about what alcohol does to your health, the more I realised how careless I was being with my own health. Then I never wanted to go back to it,' says Mackintosh.
What does she think of the recent calls from the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, to put cancer warnings on booze? 'I think we're all so aware of the risks of smoking, but alcohol use is linked to seven different types of cancer as well as multiple different diseases in the body and I just don't think people are aware of that as they should be. They need to put warnings on the bottles like they do on cigarette packets, I think, so that people are actually more aware.'
Prioritising her health by cutting out booze led to other health breakthroughs. Namely, an ADHD diagnosis. 'A therapist I've been seeing for a while told me they thought I had ADHD, so I did a test, and it was very validating to get the results,' she says.
Mackintosh had found school tough, often unable to write from the whiteboard, a struggle that was put down to bad eyes at the time but she has now realised with a result of her neurodiversity.
'I feel a lot more compassion for myself now,' she says, thinking back to times she didn't deal well with situations while undiagnosed.
It's also given her new empathy around her drinking, acknowledging that, 'You're much more likely to use abuse and addictive substances if you have ADHD because of the way the brain seeks a dopamine hit.'
And the diagnosis has changed how she parents. 'I noticed from quite early on that Hugo could cope with things better than me. I would get overstimulated easily by things like mess and noise – even my baby crying would make me cry myself and end up shaking. Going to a soft play center with the kids would put me into a weird kind of disassociation,' says Mackintosh.
'Now, when I walk into a room and it's chaos, I know to take a deep breath.'
She prefers to manage her ADHD through lifestyle measures where possible. 'Medication was really useful through the book process when I had deadlines to meet, but I don't love how it makes me feel. Now I focus on getting eight hours of sleep, exercising first thing in the morning, being in nature and looking at what I eat,' she says.
On nutrition: she's recently had an overhaul of her diet, cutting out sugar and processed foods to manage her mental health and a candida overgrowth she was diagnosed with at 18 that 'has never really gone away,' she says.
'I'm very focused on the link between food and the brain, I really want to get my health as good as it can be. I've had to completely clean out the cupboards – the kids are doing a less extreme version of this, but my husband and I really wanted to be more conscious of what we're consuming for the family.'
Coffee is also out. 'I use caffeine to manage my ADHD as I find it can really help me focus, but I get it from matcha instead of coffee now. It energises me, but I don't have the crashes I did with coffee and I feel calmer,' says Mackintosh.
There is that word again. And in another bid to keep her peace, she's re-thought her workout routine, ditching high-intensity training in favour of a careful balance of light jogging, strength training and Lagree Pilates.
'All of the exercise I do is not about what body it's going to give me, it's about how I feel afterwards and when I'm doing it. I've removed HIIT training from my routine because of the [high] cortisol levels [after] and wanting to reduce stress in my body. I'm not coming out of classes barely able to walk [now].
'I don't want to do that to myself. I used to walk around constantly with muscle pain. The training I'm doing is to be strong because my kids still like being picked up and carried everywhere, and they're pretty big now,' she says.
Embracing altered states
When Mackintosh isn't in mum mode, how does she let her hair down? Culturally, socialising and downtime tend to revolve around booze – going alcohol-free must change that?
'I've had to find new ways to have fun,' she admits. 'Now, fun to me is cooking with my kids or going for a jog. I also love doing ecstatic dance events, a type of movement meditation where you dance freely to music by a DJ. There’s no alcohol and you don't dance with people, you just dance to your own rhythm and however you want to move.'
It joins a lineup of altered-state practices in her arsenal. 'Without alcohol, I've had to find other ways to calm my busy mind. It's really healthy for your brain to get into a flow state, so I do that with cold therapy, breathwork and sound healing,' she notes. That will be followed up by a brunch with a friend, or a nattering walk with a hot chocolate.
'I think carving out moments for joy is really important, but maybe I don't have the kind of crazy, wild fun that I used to have by drinking days. It's a different kind of fun,' she says. A calmer, more content fun. The type of enjoyment you can get when you're at peace. That's a big goal, but I get the feeling that if Mackintosh isn't quite there yet, she's definitely on her way.
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