Gwyneth Paltrow is opening up about a stressful time at the start of 2025. The Hollywood star revealed that she dealt with stress during the dangerous wildfires in Los Angeles, admitting that she started drinking "every day" at the time, and explained that many of her friends lost their homes during the fires.
During a conversation with Dr. Mary Clare Haver on her Goop podcast, the actress-turned-businesswoman talked about the worsening of her menopause symptoms during the fires. Gwyneth explained that she drank regularly during the difficult moments, and struggled with insomnia and anxiety.
“I'm really in the thick of it right now, so I'm all over the place,” she said about 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.”
“I was medicating,” the star said. “Normally, now at this point, I don't drink a lot at all. Maybe I'll have one drink a week,” she clarified, adding that drinking made an impact on her symptoms. “My symptoms were completely out of control. It was the first time I really noticed, like, causation in that way.”
“I've always been a real sleeper” but after menopause, “I went through a particularly bad time with it," Gwyneth said about her insomnia problems. “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.”
“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 said on the podcast.