This is Annie Grace and you're listening to this naked mind podcast where without judgment,

pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture.

Hi, this is Annie Grace and this is this naked mind podcast and I'm so glad you're here today. We're here with the naked life story from Mike. Hi, Mike. How are you?

I'm great. Annie. How are you? Good. Good to see you again. It was so fun to meet you at the live event. That was just awesome. Great.

It was great. Yeah. That's great. So cool. So why don't you back way up sort of to the beginning, like maybe even your first drink and take us way back there and let me know start there.

Okay. Well, basically, I guess I can start sort of back from my first recollection of that time. When I was my parents immigrated to Canada, where we currently live, when I was about five years old. So my first, they both came from the UK.

And it was very much, you know, an environment where they had a lot of smoking and drinking in the house, which is something that they come up with culturally. So my first recollections are coming upstairs from being downstairs watching TV, house parties with my parents and their friends.

I was all sort of standing around with a drink in their hand and a cigarette in the other hand and just kind of that was the culture at the time, which is what I always thought, you know, from day one, it was a normal, every day, thing that everybody did.

I sort of, you know, that was the very much normal for them. It was normal for me.

As I got older, I sort of, you know, as you sort of adapt a little bit and sort of recognize more things, you sort of see, you know, you come aware of things a little bit more. And as I got into my teenage years, I noticed that there was a lot more, you know, a lot, it became a lot more obvious of it became more aware of it.

And, you know, and as I've been the oldest of three kids, I had a younger brother and younger sister and they both, you know, I sort of felt a little bit of protectiveness around them. So a lot of times I'd sort of stay, you know, I sort of give them a little more room and a little more.

Sort of come upstairs and spend some time with my parents while they were drinking. So my kids, my kids, my brother and sister didn't have to.

And that extended right up until my later high school years, when I went off to, I'd go out to parties and I come home late at night and usually my mom would be sitting up waiting for me at that point. And it was very much, you know, sort of all this, you know, to sort of get her to talk to her when I got home and kind of explain it one night one and everything.

And she'd usually ever glass a wine with her. It was very much still a, you know, that was once again sort of the culture at the time. I didn't think anything of it at the time. But then, you know, as I got older and older, I realized that it wasn't probably normal at that point.

When I went off to university in Ontario and Canada at university, it was an energy of 19, I turned 19 two months before I went to university. So I arrived at university, you know, out of an environment where I was basically, you know, sort of basically ready to ready to party.

I didn't drink a whole lot in high school. I had a few events here and there where I remember some bad recollections, some bad nights as most people did experimenting here and there with alcohol.

But generally, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a regular cultural thing that I would do. I didn't go out and get hammered every weekend or anything. It was very rare.

So when I went off to university and turned legal, so I could go into pubs and I can go into bars and I can go into clubs and I can go by alcohol for my friends and I can do everything else.

I was pretty popular in first year at my university. And I took full advantage of that. So I spent, you know, basically my first two years of university.

My first year in residence with a whole bunch of friends and all that all guys residency, you can add just some of the parties that we had.

My second year, I moved in with a couple of friends into my apartment. So my first time sort of living independently away from sort of a residence type setup.

I knew experience again, but once again, you know, a lot of opportunities to go out and party and do that. I think so my academics really suffered the first two years in university.

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