Gwyneth Paltrow Says Her Menopause Symptoms Were Made Worse by Drinking ‘Every Night’ amid L.A. Wildfires

• Gwyneth Paltrow and Dr. Mary Clare Haver had an honest conversation about menopause on her Goop podcast, which Paltrow, 52, said, “I feel like I’ve been in it for years”
• The Academy Award winner said her menopause symptoms were made worse by alcohol — and that she drank every night when wildfires broke out in Los Angeles
• Paltrow also shared that she struggled with insomnia and bad anxiety, which would keep her awake for “six hours” at night

Gwyneth Paltrow says her menopause symptoms were made worse by alcohol — and she drank “every night” during the outbreak of wildfires in Los Angeles.

Paltrow, 52, had a frank conversation about menopause on the March 4 episode of the Goop podcast with guest Dr. Mary Clare Haver, a board-certified OB-GYN and author of the New York Times bestseller The New Menopause.

“I’m really in the thick of it right now, so I’m all over the place,” Paltrow said of her symptoms. “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.”

The Academy Award winner previously said she was in “deep grief” over the wildfires, which broke out in Southern California in January. Paltrow lives in Los Angeles with her husband Brad Falchuk, whom she married in September 2018. While she shared that they were safe from the wildfires, “so many of our close friends… have lost everything.”

It was during this time, Paltrow says, “I think I drank every night.”

“I was medicating,” the Avengers: Endgame star said. “Normally, now at this point, I don’t drink a lot at all. Maybe I’ll have one drink a week,” she said, adding that drinking every night impacted her menopause symptoms. “My symptoms were completely out of control. It was the first time I really noticed, like, causation in that way.” 

“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,” said Haver, who penned the foreword for Naomi Watts’ book about menopause, Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known about Menopause. 

Haver said her patients often see sleep disruption when they drink, and “their hot flashes are horrible.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Paltrow shared that she’s been struggling with insomnia, explaining, “I’ve always been a real sleeper” but after menopause, “I went through a particularly bad time with it.”

“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,’ “ she explained about what she expected from menopause-induced insomnia. But instead, “It wasn’t that.”

“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.” 

“I feel like hopefully I’m coming out the other side.”

“In perimenopause, we call it the zone of hormonal chaos,” Haver explained. “It’s all over the place. It is completely unpredictable, and our brains hate chaos.”

“It’s years for some women,” Haver said, prompting Paltrow to reply, “I feel like I’ve been in it for years.”