Actress Gwyneth Paltrow shared the ways she coped with the tragedy of the wildfires that broke out in Los Angeles in January of this year.
Wildfires broke out in different Los Angeles areas early this year, with one fire hitting the Pacific Palisades neighborhood where many celebrities reside. The fires resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of people and at least 29 deaths.
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Paltrow addressed her alcohol consumption
The 52-year-old Oscar winner spoke about her alcohol consumption during the unfolding of the wildfires, admitting that drinking made her menopause symptoms more difficult to deal with.
Paltrow opened up in a conversation on The goop Podcast in an episode with Dr. Mary Clare Haver, OB-GYN and author of The New Menopause.
The actress spoke about her menopause
Paltrow started talking about her experience with menopause, saying, “I’m really in the thick of it right now, so I’m all over the place.”
“But I noticed my symptoms are, like, pretty well under control unless, you know, in January when the fires were happening in L.A. I’ve, like, used alcohol for its purpose.”
Paltrow’s family was safe from the fires
Fires in the Palisades area cost a lot of celebrities their homes, but at the time, Paltrow had confirmed that she and husband Brad Falchuk were safe from the disaster. Despite this, she was still heartbroken as “so many of our close friends … have lost everything.”
“I think I drank every night,” Paltrow admitted to her guest.
Drinking helped her handle the grief
“I was medicating,” Paltrow explained to Dr. Haver why she reached for alcohol. “Normally, now at this point, I don’t drink a lot at all. Maybe I’ll have one drink a week.”
Noticing her menopause symptoms getting worse was what made the actress slow down on drinking.
They were becoming hard to handle
Paltrow explained that she noticed her menopause symptoms becoming “completely out of control”, adding, “It was the first time I really noticed, like, causation in that way.”
Dr. Haver then assured her that this was normal
“Lots of my patients say the same thing. They’ve really just spontaneously realized that they’ve cut back on alcohol or just quit altogether because it just hasn’t been worth it. They don’t bounce back the same way. It stays in our system a lot longer,” Dr. Haver reassured Paltrow.
Dr. Haver also shared that drinking alcohol during menopause could result in sleep disruption, saying her patients often have “horrible” hot flashes.
Paltrow admitted she struggled with sleep
The Avengers: Endgame actress also shared that she usually sleeps well but “went through a particularly bad time with it” as she goes through her menopause.
“There were nights where my anxiety — like, I just thought it meant, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna be able to sleep because you don’t have enough progesterone or whatever.’”
Her anxiety would get the best of her
Paltrow explained her experience with sleep anxiety, saying, “I would just wake up [and] I would get crushed with anxiety, which I’ve never had in my life. And I would lie in bed thinking about every mistake I’ve ever made, every person’s feelings I ever hurt, like, every bad, you know, And I would be up, like, for six hours. It was crazy.”
Despite this difficult experience, Paltrow added that she is starting to feel better, saying, “I feel like hopefully I’m coming out the other side.”
Last Updated on March 5, 2025 by Nour Morsy
