At 45, I was horrified by the toll of my white wine habit. Here’s exactly what a month off alcohol did to my body: POLLY DUNBAR

From my first illicit sip of wine as a teenager, I’ve always been partial to a drink. The taste, the ritual of pouring a chilled glass at the end of the day, the convivial sparkle it brings to an evening with friends – I’m not ashamed to admit that I love it all.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to suspect the feeling isn’t mutual – booze does not love me. At 45, the pleasure I get from alcohol in the moment is often accompanied by a creeping sense that I’m paying for it elsewhere.

As a writer who works from home and the solo mother of a six-year-old, I hardly ever get the chance to exceed the recommended 14 units per week for women, but I do drink often – around four nights of the week, on rare nights out or, more often, on the sofa in front of the TV.

And, increasingly, I find that even a modest couple of glasses of my favourite dry white wine can play havoc with my sleep, trigger debilitating migraines and leave me with an existential dread that makes me want to hide under the duvet.

Like so many midlife women, I’m tired all the time, which makes me irritable and less patient than I’d like with my son, Nat.

Most worrying (and a new one for me) is the effect even a couple of glasses has on my skin. Once, a hangover barely left a trace on my youthful face. Now, it announces itself with a megaphone, in the form of dark circles under my eyes and dry, red, irritated skin.

So when I decide to try Sober October, giving up alcohol for 31 days, I’m curious to see what impact it will have. Will I awake every morning feeling rested and refreshed, and will my skin look as peachy as it did in my 20s?

I’m excited. Surely it can’t be that difficult, I think – until I realise that, in my entire adult life, the only times I’ve gone without a drink were during fertility treatment, pregnancy and the first few months of my son’s life. Gulp.

To prepare for the challenge, I weigh myself – I’m 5ft 9in and 10st 1lb and my BMI is healthy – and visit my GP to check my blood pressure and cholesterol. The former is 104/71mmHg, also optimal (anything under 120/80 is considered good) but my serum cholesterol is 5.2mmol/L, slightly above the desirable level.

An even more, erm, sobering moment comes when I have my skin assessed by consultant dermatologist Dr Mohammad Ghazavi at London’s Skin Horizon clinic.

I sit with my face in an Opatra Dome, a high-tech skin scanner that uses visible and ultraviolet light imaging, combined with AI, to reveal everything from wrinkles and pigmentation to signs of sun damage that may not be visible to the naked eye.

Having thought that my skin was holding up fairly well, my penchant for booze notwithstanding, I’m dismayed to discover that the machine puts its apparent age at 47 – two years older than me.

Dr Ghazavi explains that enlarged pores around my nose combined with signs of dryness and sensitivity point to a mild case of seborrhoeic dermatitis, an inflammatory condition that causes redness and irritation. ‘Like rosacea and eczema, this kind of sensitivity can be exacerbated by alcohol,’ he tells me.

Drinking can affect the skin in other ways, too. ‘Alcohol can contribute to dehydration, interfere with sleep quality and potentially increase oxidative stress,’ he says. Oxidative stress occurs when harmful molecules called free radicals build up in the body, damaging cells and contributing to skin ageing.

‘If I were to be completely honest, I would tell you that even the tiniest amount of alcohol can affect your skin,’ he adds cheerfully.

To track any changes to my face over the course of the month, I decide to take a selfie with no make-up on in the same place in my kitchen every morning. When I see the bags under my eyes in the first, I blanch.

I also get an Oura Ring (from £399) to assess the impact of an alcohol-free month on my sleep. Fitted with sensors, it analyses 30 biometrics, including sleep patterns, stress and heart rate, uploading the data to a linked smartphone app.

Then, on September 30, I prepare to give up my best-loved vice by booking a babysitter, gathering a couple of my most hardcore friends and getting rip-roaring drunk. I start with a cocktail, move on to wine with dinner and end the evening with another cocktail ‘for the road’, before tottering unsteadily towards home.

We share increasingly candid, and hilarious, stories as the evening wears on, reminding me why an occasional blow-out is so good for the soul – if not the complexion.

That night, however, I sleep appallingly and spend October 1 stuffing my face with white carbohydrates, Diet Coke and Nurofen Plus, and counting down to bedtime.

For the next couple of days, drinking is the last thing I feel like doing – but, unfortunately, the sense that I’ve poisoned myself doesn’t last.

By Saturday, October 3, I’m starting to fancy a drink again, and at a friend’s daughter’s party, I stare longingly at the ice-cold flutes of fizz in the adults’ hands. I manage to resist but, without alcohol’s familiar buzz, I find myself flagging more quickly.

I also miss its inhibition-lowering effects and am more conscious of feeling shy than usual. I don’t know many people there and, without Dutch courage, social interactions feel more awkward.

At one point, I’m introduced to a school dad I’ve never interacted with before. After a couple of exchanges about the buffet, the music and which children are ours, I’m left racking my brains for something else to say, but without that all-important glass of fizz, my brain fails me.

I trail off into silence, then sidle away muttering something about needing to find someone, while dying slightly inside. The entire thing feels positively exhausting. When it’s time to leave early to put Nat to bed, I’m relieved.

The following day, Nat has an accident at another birthday party, cutting his head open, and we spend more than four hours in A&E waiting for the wound to be glued. He’s fine but it’s upsetting to see him in pain, and I realise in moments like these that I’d usually rely on a glass of wine back at home to help me decompress.

Instead, I light an expensive scented candle and eat a bar of chocolate. It’s hardly as good as a glug of Albarino, but at least it offers some consolation.

In fact, in the first week of my sober month I find myself craving sugar. With more than 7g of sugar per bottle of white wine, sugar withdrawal symptoms can be strong after quitting booze. Eager not to replace one bad habit with another, I try to satisfy them with tiny, 18g-sized bars of Dairy Milk, and gradually they fade.

By Day Ten, I’m surprised to find that I don’t miss my evening glass of wine. It turns out that it was less a treat than a habit I’d come to associate with winding down, which I repeated without even thinking about it. With the weather turning increasingly vile, I curl up with a good book, finding it far easier to concentrate stone-cold sober.

Social occasions continue to test me, though. At dinner for a friend’s birthday, I feel like a party pooper when I announce I’m not drinking, and my friend’s disappointment is palpable. There’s a sense that I’m letting her down, somehow; that I’m deliberately choosing to be less fun than usual.

I try to reassure the group that my abstinence shouldn’t make anybody feel self-conscious about their own drinking, but I can’t help wondering if it does. So often, I realise, many of us view sobriety as more than a bit smug.

Towards the end of the month Nat and I visit my dad in Yorkshire, along with my brother and his family. When the wine flows over a delicious dinner, I resent having to stick to water. I’m realising that, for me, this is what alcohol is really about: the clinking of glasses and the joyful, carefree feeling of being part of a shared celebration.

Yet I can’t deny that I’m feeling positive changes, too. My sleep has improved, and my Oura Ring consistently gives it a score of more than 80, rated as ‘good’. I average 7 hours 45 minutes of sleep per night, with decent levels of both REM and deep sleep.

Although I’m sure that booze was not the sole cause of my ever-increasing insomnia, it has definitely been a contributing factor. Although it knocks us out, it also reduces the amount of time we spend in the rapid eye movement (REM) cycle of sleep, which has the most restorative effect on our body. Most noticeable is the renewed sense of energy I have. Which has the added bonus that I’m much more careful about my food choices and stop relying on so many Deliveroo takeaways.

I also notice that I’m less bloated. By the end of October, I’ve lost 3lb and the waistbands of my size 10 jeans dig in less when I sit down.

It also means I’m less snappy and irritable with Nat, which makes getting out of the door in the morning a far more harmonious experience. I feel calmer and less stressed in general, even when a particularly hectic work week coincides with the childcare highwire act of half-term.

My at-home blood pressure monitor shows no difference, but when I return to my GP for a repeat of my cholesterol test, it comes back at 4.9mmol/L, now within the healthy category.

But is my month off the booze having a positive impact on the most visible part of me: my face?

At first, evidence from my selfies appears inconclusive, but as the month goes on my dark circles seem less apparent, and my skin looks more even in texture and tone. I’m thrilled when I receive no fewer than three compliments about my appearance within a few days. Two are from old friends who say I’m looking radiant, while the third is from a manicurist who does my nails – a woman I’ve never met before – who says I look like I’m in my 30s.

Even the eye-wateringly expensive serums I’ve tried and £300 of Botox every six months have never elicited this kind of response before.

Still, I’m in for a major surprise when I return to Skin Horizon for a follow-up scan and consultation with Dr Ghazavi. The Opatra machine now puts my skin’s apparent age at 45 – two years younger than at my first scan, and bang on my actual age.

Dr Ghazavi says he can see a noticeable reduction in the areas identified by the imaging system as showing sensitivity or redness. There’s no change in my wrinkles, which, he explains, would require a more targeted intervention, such as laser treatment, to make a significant difference.

He also notes an improvement in the appearance of my pores and less dryness in its texture.

‘Your results are particularly interesting because they demonstrate measurable changes over a relatively short period,’ he says.

He cautions that other factors, including skincare, environmental exposure and hydration, can influence the results. But I haven’t changed my skincare routine or made any other significant lifestyle changes during the month. The only difference has been cutting out alcohol.

So, will I be giving it up for good? Absolutely not. I’m already looking forward to savouring a big glass of warming red as I settle down to watch a film at one of those overpriced, pseudo-arthouse cinemas, one of my favourite cosy treats as the nights draw in.

And if I had to choose between raising a glass with friends or fabulous skin, the former would win every time. But Sober October has made me question the mindless drinks I pour at home simply as a reward for making it to the end of the day. I don’t need them to unwind on the sofa, and my body certainly doesn’t thank me for them.

I’m happy to note that I’ve saved more than £100 just by reducing my wine bill. And if cutting down means more energy, focus and patience – not to mention skin that’s glowy rather than grey – it’s a trade-off I’m now happy to make.

I may not have fallen out of love with alcohol, but I’m determined to be more selective about when I invite it in.