I dreamt that you were twisting through seven sons of gold and the gypsy was insisting

that his story must be told I came two in the morning but I took it as a warning

that you might be a treasure.

I could touch but never hold.

Hello, you are listening to the So Before podcast, and I am Veronica Valley.

And today I'm going to answer the question, what is a dry drunk? And this usually triggers a

whole bunch of people to post things saying, ah, you shouldn't use that word and all that kind of

stuff. And I get it. But it's useful to explain the theory. So please stay with me. Bear with me

when I explain something. Because I think

this is going to be really, really helpful to anybody who is struggling to get sober and stay sober.

Because here's the thing. Everyone can stop drinking. It's easy. You've done it. You've done it

countless times. It's staying stopped. That's the challenge. So this will be

very relevant to you. And if you also know someone who has stopped drinking but doesn't just seem

very well or quite right, this will be very helpful to you as well. Now, to explain what a dry drunk is, I need to really explain what an alcohol problem actually is.

When we start drinking, we don't set off to have a problem with it, right?

We don't think, oh, in 20 years, I want to be an alcoholic.

That's my goal.

When we start drinking back in the day, and I started as a teenager, probably you may have done

as well, or in your 20s, I started drinking because I believed it was the best way to have fun

and connection. I thought that's what grown-ups did. And it looked like fun to me from the outside.

And I couldn't wait to be in that world.

So off I went and I had some fun experiences and I had some connection and I had a really,

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